Light from Many Lamps V: The quest for perfection

“If there exists a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of mankind towards perfection.” – Plato

Plato’s quote perfectly summarizes the direction mankind strives to move forward and outlines our relationship with the infinite, the unknown, with religion, and ultimately with God. It’s in our very nature to try and understand the things we don’t understand. For us, God symbolizes an infinite force and an embodies both the unknown and perfection.

As a fun way to finish off this influential course, I’d like to pose a question that remains unanswered despite thousands of years of inquisition: What is perfection? What does a perfect society look like? Is there a perfect set of values that we can embody? Does the very notion of perfection even exist in our imperfect nature as human beings?

Often, with regards to democratic societies, we see this reflected in the people’s vision of what their ideal society looks like and then elect a leader who best reflects this vision. But as we’ve seen with every election period, people’s views on the ideal society change over time depending on multiple factors such as the international political climate, the economic status of the country, the charisma of the leader in question etc. In terms of political ideology, nothing seems to remain constant over time which begs to question whether a ‘perfect’ society even exists. Novelists, authors, and artists, those we generally categorize as the ‘creatives’ in society, do well to explore what this may look like through a aesthetically pleasing medium but even then have been unable to reach a conclusion to this proposition.

So if perfection doesn’t seem likely from a societal context, can a perfect mankind mean gaining the unquestionable ability to survive under any circumstance, and in essence, avoid death from natural causes? While this likelihood can most certainly be envisioned with all the breakthroughs and resources allocated to medicine, can we avoid mutual destruction from the evils of human nature. Governments have the nuclear capacity to decimate significant portions of the world population and forever alter the atmospheric makeup of the Earth from the nuclear radiation left over. Even if our societies ensure world peace, how would we address the toxic waste which slowly poisons our Earth’s atmosphere from decades worth of pollution?

While these issues certainly don’t derail mankind from striving to make progress in all spheres of human inquisition, one has to question whether our efforts for reaching perfection can be resolved from the imperfect beings that we are. I myself believe that perfection only lies in the heavens but also manifests itself here on Earth if we look closely. For example, perfection to me is found both within us and in the natural environment around us from the intricacies which allows our bodies to function the way that they do, to the patterns that nature displays as it’s own self-sustaining life force, to the physical laws which govern the cosmos. They each have their own grand design that we can only dream of fully understanding. However, being that we are still imperfect creatures in the end, I believe it’s not in us to ultimately achieve perfection. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to improve the conditions of future generations past us, just as our ancestors paved the way for our present.