{"id":652,"date":"2018-12-02T23:51:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T07:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/?p=652"},"modified":"2019-10-23T10:31:17","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T17:31:17","slug":"light-from-many-lamps-v-the-quest-for-perfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/2018\/12\/02\/light-from-many-lamps-v-the-quest-for-perfection\/","title":{"rendered":"Light from Many Lamps V: The quest for perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf there exists a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of mankind towards perfection.\u201d – Plato<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Plato\u2019s 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\u2019s in our very nature to try and understand the things we don\u2019t understand. For us, God symbolizes an infinite force and an embodies both the unknown and perfection.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a fun way to finish off this influential course, I\u2019d like to pose a question that remains unanswered despite thousands of years of inquisition: What is <\/span>perfection<\/span><\/i>? 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?<\/span><\/p>\n

Often, with regards to democratic societies, we see this reflected in the people\u2019s vision of what their ideal society looks like and then elect a leader who best reflects this vision. But as we\u2019ve seen with every election period, people\u2019s 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 \u2018perfect\u2019 society even exists. Novelists, authors, and artists, those we generally categorize as the \u2018creatives\u2019 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

So if perfection doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s atmosphere from decades worth of pollution? <\/span><\/p>\n

While these issues certainly don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s not in us to ultimately achieve perfection. But that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t try to improve the conditions of future generations past us, just as our ancestors paved the way for our present.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf there exists a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of mankind towards perfection.\u201d – Plato Plato\u2019s 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\u2019s in our very nature to try and understand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,118,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-light-from-many-lamps","category-unit-10","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}