This seems like a really weird thing to say... but here goes. There is no such thing as perfection. There, I said it. I need to make a mantra out of it so I can repeat it to myself over and over and over again. Why does this matter to me? Because my religious background, and my society in general, really, always taught that there was/is this thing called perfect, and if you try hard enough, you could actually be perfect. Of course, being gay didn't fit into perfect, which caused me loads of grief and years of wasted effort. But that teaching was wrong on more levels than that: there is no such thing as perfection. I don't want to go so far as to say that I was taught a lie, because I don't think people were being intentionally dishonest, but what they were teaching was patently false, maybe even a bit delusional. The fact of the matter is that there is no perfect way to live your life, or to do anything, for that matter. There are just.... ways of doing things. And, yes, some of them are more effective at reaching certain goals than others, but that doesn't make them this artificial thing called "perfect." I've thought about this before, but it's been something I've thought of again recently because I'm starting to take up art for the first time in a very long time. I think it's ingrained in a lot of people that art isn't something you create; art is a photographic, ultra-realistic representation of something else, and that something that isn't 110% true-to-life just isn't art. At least that's what I remember. So I catch myself thinking that this color isn't really accurate, or my skills at drawing really suck because I can't make something look lifelike. But you know, isn't creativity about creating something new? Doesn't that mean I just need to do whatever it is that I want to do? I think so. I will definitely take the time to learn new skills so I can be better at communicating my ideas, but that sure doesn't mean all I have to do is reproduce the efforts of others because someone labelled them as "perfect." What I crank out really is just fine, too.
Are you referring to the elimination of perfection or are you stinky recognising the limitations for which we are socialised by the heteronormative ideology? Maybe it's this combined with a bit of OCD? Food for thought.
Cool, a philosophical discussion, I am jumping in too... Perfection is just what you said, an ideal, like a line in the mathematical sense. Those things are all abstractions, in the world we perceive through our senses, there is just a constant flow of stimuli. Our conceptual/ thinking machinery, does nothing other than trying to categorize things by means of abstraction. A trivial example: in my local supermarket, you buy a pink grapefruit for 60p. The abstraction is the assumption that they are all identical and perfectly interchangeable, when in fact, if you really, really start looking carefully at each one of them, you will find uniqueness. But when counting, there is just this underlying assumption that they are all the same. This is what people do to each other when they categorize unique individuals according to race, gender, nationality, etc... for economics you are counted as labour units, degrading is an understatement. For Plato, only ideas were real, and the perceived world, just an imperfect representation. Some religions have a strong Platonic influence in the sense that there is a disdain for this 'screwed up' world. Only the perfect paradise in our head matters. Many utopian ideologies that wrecked havoc in the 20th century are also based forms of Platonism, but with a practical twist: to shape the world acording to an ideal, to make utopia, i.e. perfection, into something real. The consequences were disastrous to say the least. In the end I am a fan of empiricism: the world we perceive and the thoughts that are shaped by those perceptions are partial, imperfect, but that's all we have. Reality is messy by definition, and we perceive, adapt, change, in little steps, each individual following his own unique path, and the resulty is a giant dynamic and unpredictable kaleidoscopic world.
What we should all want to strive for is excellence rather than perfection. Excellence can really exist and be cherished.
I'm still not sure what you mean by perfection. Being a female, I automatically think about my body, which of course leaves a lot to be desired. (See???? That's exactly what I'm talking about.) Or perfection in the eyes of society as to how you live your life (heteronormative? Is that right?) Or something else entirely? No matter what, I think you have to love yourself and worry less about what the world thinks. We owe that to ourselves.
