Which way lies perfection...?

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I'm getting frustrated trying to figure out how humanity is supposed to achieve perfection. God achieved perfection, and I don't see what's keeping us from managing the same accomplishment.

It's just so frustrating that people seem to think that happiness is more important than perfection. But...can it be said that happiness, or emotion in general, is worth the candle? Any amount of pain invalidates even an infinite amount of pleasure/contentment. Besides, the cosmos, which is older and more noble than us, has no taint of emotion; what right do we have to be dissimilar? Emotion just gets in the way of self-control...

It's a matter of driving irrationality and entropy back out of existence, so that all things are permanent, immune to ruin and death. There has to be a way to do it, a way for everything in existence to become a mirror of God, and cease parasitizing him...

(Sorry about the rant. It's just that I'm having problems trying to get my point across to an anarcho-libertarian who manages to be some kind of spite elemental...The point in question being that morality is not something that's authored by anyone, but something that's discovered, predates all else--life, matter, God, etc.--and completely impersonal; even God is in thrall to it, yes?)

Practice makes perfect...



Seriously now: how is humanity to reach something that doesn't exist? Really, "perfection" is nothing more than an abstract concept. What is perfect?

And it's also impossible to be completely rational with no emotion...you would be a computer than.

Happiness, being the opposite of sadness, only exists because of sadness. You wouldn't know what happiness was if it weren't for sadness. Nobody likes to suffer, sure - but that's just the way things are.

Well, we can't really discuss this until you define perfection. Many people would consider perfection to be roughly analogous to happiness. Good luck in reversing the laws of thermodynamics, I personally will be thrilled if you find a way to decrease entropy. If morality is to be discovered, well, I'd want to see some empirical data for any moral claims you care to make. I do not believe morality to predate God, and even for the non-religious, I don't see how it could possibly predate life or matter. But perhaps I am not considering the same definition of "morality." What exactly do you mean by that term?

Silver Proteus: Explain to me, then, how the abstract is illusory. I'd even go so far to say that the abstract is more real than the concrete (at least, as far as the phrase "more real than" can hope to make sense when the two nouns both describe things that exist).

Orwell: I suppose the best way to put it is that the moral is that which wards off/dispels entropy (and so, sorrow, pain, anguish, ruin, death, etc.)—that is, that which causes things to go on existing. Likewise, the immoral is that which summons or tolerates entropy and that which it encompasses (i.e. causes things to end). In short, existence is the primary good. I can't see how ceasing to exist is good. Any amount of pain can be escaped. How do you escape oblivion, though?

({grumble} I can't be the only one here who realizes that perfectionism is a virtue, not a vice...Can any standards truly be preferable to infinitely high standards?)

OK, that is different from the traditional conception of morality, so now I at least have some idea what you're talking about. By your definition, incidentally, everything you do is immoral in that it increases entropy. It is impossible to decrease entropy, so by your definition all existence is immoral. The only way, according to you, for an individual to be moral (and stop contributing to entropy) is to cease existing, something which you have stated is immoral. Thus, we have reached a contradiction within your moral system. Therefore I reject it. You seem to have a strange sort of ultra-conservationist approach to morality. However, you still have not defined perfection. Am I correct in assuming that you would consider perfection to be a state of zero entropy? Again, impossible. You could state a goal of decreasing the rate at which entropy increases, but you can't eliminate it.

And it could be argued that certain standards can be preferable to infinitely high standards- the maxim "the best is the enemy of the good" guided Patton in warfare and is frequently instilled in medical students, the idea being that the pursuit of an achievable good is better than unachievable perfection in guiding our action. Whether this is true is a matter of debate, and I would be unlikely to condemn the pursuit of an ultimate ideal, but sometimes doing so comes at the detriment of a more realistic goal.

Urgh, I never was good at explaining things, but I'll give it a try, and patch up the holes I leave as we go:

Abstract per se is not illusory. Perfection is - because it can never be attained, only by God (for those who believe in him). How can something be completely flawless?



Unattainable standards breeds constant frustration. It's good to have very high standards, but know that you'll never be satisfied with perfect standards. If you feel you are, it's because you're settling for high and not perfect.

I don't see what makes entropy invincible. Where is it getting all its power from? (Besides, where is it written that the weak can't defeat the strong?)

What pains me so much about entropy is that if unthwarted, it will eventually devour and annihilate all of existence. Everything, no matter how noble, rendered utterly for naught. This can't be anything except evil—what crime could the cosmos have committed to deserve that? (No, my morality is NOT merely concerned with humans, or even the creatures of Earth. Since when is such pettiness right?)

But why is no one able to achieve perfection after God? Why can't his accomplishment of perfection be repeated?

Are you using a different definition of entropy than I am? If you want to know why it can't be decreased, read a physics textbook. OK, so your morality is not merely concerned with humans. Does this mean you consider the sun to be immoral? It has its role in increasing entropy. And anyways, this doesn't deal with my claim that your morality holds human existence to be both immoral and the ultimate morality, which is a contradiction that leaves your morality worthless. Where is it written that the weak can't defeat the strong? Well, nowhere that I know of, but you are anthropomorphizing a fundamental fact of physics, I don't know how one would "fight" against it anymore than one could fight against F=MA. It is true, whether we like it or not and there is nothing that can be done to change it.

Look, the concept of entropy is depressing for everyone when they first hear of it. I did not like coming to terms with it. All will eventually be destroyed due to entropy. Not exactly a warm fuzzy thought, but the universe doesn't really give a damn for your feelings about its workings.

Why can't God's accomplishment of perfection be repeated? Well, the answer to that depends on your personal theological views. I could give you my own, but that would assume that we share the same theological background, and I doubt that is the case.

Which way lies perfection...? well first of all any word with the word lie in it i think isnt true, believe

i dont know wich way perfection is and i really dont care, in the end you just turn into dust anyways so it doesnt matter

I know that entropy is defined as "tendency to disorder". The problem is, how can the particles possibly know which way lies disorder?

{cries} This is getting so painful, and yet I know I have no right to relent, lest I be guilty of Sloth by lessening my standards. For what is Sloth, if not acceptance of imperfection and disappointment as acceptable?

I'm actually an apatheist—I don't regard God's existence or non-existence as germane to the definitions of good and evil. So speak forth on your background...

Frankly, I am not sure if it is really possible. Our idiocies and limitations keep us from the same accomplishment. I really don't know how God achieved perfection, most notions of God either show him as non-existent or always perfect and thus there is no achievement.


Well, the issue is that we don't know what is the most perfect way for us to act. It is not as if we have a perfectometer to determine whether we act towards or against perfection. Can it be said that anything is worth the candle? Now, that assertion on pain is not borne out by human actions as we repeatedly choose suffering for greater gain. What makes the cosmos noble? I would say that it is ignoble and only a bunch of raw material to be used for our gain. As well, the issue is not of right to be dissimilar, if it were so I could argue that the cosmos is not alive in any biological sense, therefore what right do we have to be alive from a biological sense. I would also argue as Nietzsche does that "The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions." as what will we refer to beyond emotion? Certainly not logic as logic is limited by its logicality.


I disagree with a lot of that. Essentially we have morality springing out of nowhere from nothing. We have it also be discovered despite a lack of ability to measure morality or even prove or disprove its existence. As well, what prevents morality from being personal? Finally, why would God be the thrall of morality? If God is the thrall then is he really God? If he is the perfection of moral order then could he be considered separate from morality? I dunno, it is sort of interesting as the idea relates to the Euthyphro dilemma.



The particles don't know what way lies disorder but rather disorder increases with every action. With all actions taken, there is less than perfect efficiency and thus energy is lost and thus we have entropy.

And the new wall I'm running into HERE is that I can't figure out why there will always be inefficiency...

Granted, I've wondered at times if entropy might not be its own entity, but actually a function of inertia (kind of like the relation between centrifugal and centripetal force). I'm not entirely sure, though...or even functionally sure...

Because we don't know how a perfectly efficient process could ever happen. To have one means to have control over all of the energy, and that essentially impossible.

It isn't its own entity nor anything intelligent unless you name something else as entropy. It is merely a result of physical laws.

It does not take knowledge to create disorder, although that is an option for destroyers. It takes knowledge and directed effort to create order. Orwell is right - entropy is a property of creation begun in the smallest parts and inherited by the largest.

Inefficiency is relative to how much of a system you look at. A machine uses its energy more efficiently than a human for a specific task. A human fits into a natural system better than the machine because the human takes food from nature and gives back the unused "waste" to be recycled and reused by other parts of nature. The machine sits there.

Also, if an employee does only his/her work and trains no one, then more of that specific work is done. That's called efficient. If the employee takes time to train someone else less of the other work is done at first, but the new employee will eventually make up for the loss. That's called inefficient but necessary, yet it is more profitable. The added efficiency from training is gained over time. If time did not exist, all changes would be instant and there would be no loss to make up for training.

Entropy and inefficiency are caused by the time dimension and are agents of change. The changes are broken into parts that can be recorded and examined so we can learn from them. Also, without change everything would stop. No moving particles, atomic interactions, chemical reactions, celluar activity, brain processes, sensory awareness, gravity, clustering of matter, planets, stars - no existence.

Change and movement are necessary for existence. They require time, so entropy and decay result. They force us to learn how to keep things the way we want them. We study nature, logic, ourselves and each other and we grow. We discover the underlying structures of existence. We wonder how such structures are possible without someone to create them. We wonder who did create them. We ask the creator to talk to us.

Perfection requires a closed system. If perfect extra pieces exist outside the system, they are part of perfection. Then they are not outside the system and we have a contradiction. If imperfect extra pieces exist outside the system, allowing them in will create an imperfect system, so an open perfect system is a contradiction. The laws of such a system are subject to the rules of logic, but Godel's Incompleteness Theorem shows that there will be exceptions to the rules of the perfect system. Theorems that cannot be proven using the postulates of the system make the system open and imperfect. It can't be perfect in the laws of this creation.

Perfection in this creation is not possible within our time span. Only in the entire time span of creation will all of the pieces fall into place. When they do, everything here will be in perfect balance and everything here will end. We will be done.

Granted, I'm no logician so this is not a complete and air-tight argument. Just something to think about.