What scares me to death? Perfection. That
scares the homunculus out of me (that "little man" inside our brain).
Perfection is my greatest fear. I believe this is the cause of all our social
and psychological ailments. Perfection comes in many forms and the quest for it
is definitely self-traumatizing and self- sabotaging. Think of anything in this
world and I can tell you that perfection has its filthy fingers in
it.
Beauty?
Yes, perfection has been there. Look at the obsession -
young and old. No physical
appearance remains unblemished by the quest for perfection. The cosmetic
industry and the plastic surgeons will go bankrupt if not for this obsession.
Ugliness is to leprosy what beauty is to perfection.
But the insatiable
need to look perfect makes automatons out of us. The world pre-consciously
worships the perfect face and many will spend a fortune to achieve it. The
quest is never-ending because beauty is the ticket to wealth, stardom and even
power. Trophy wives
become the first lady of power and good looking men charm
their way up the apex of society. This part of humanity scares me most because
the more we seek the idealism of beauty, the more shallow we become. And the
more shallow we become, the less of humanity we retain.
Sooner or later, this
illusory quest for perfection reveals its ugliness not in its superficial
physical form but in a hidden face not many will see. It is a face of
self-consuming envy, self-predatory vanity, and self-mutilating bitterness. For
this reason, the damage that ugliness, if any, does to beauty pales in
comparison to what perfection does to it. The latter results in an unspeakable
ugliness that goes to its core and the former is merely transient before one's
character shines through to make beauty even more beautiful.
How about religion? I guess this takes the cake when it comes to perfection.
Perfection in religion is a scary thing. And what makes it even scarier is for
perfection to be institutionalized in the name
of organized religion. Mass
worship brings about mass hysteria. Sadly, for the Judeo-Christian religion,
the quest to be Christ-like has transformed many to be anything but Christ-like.
The scary bit is not in the endless struggles of men to be good and moral
notwithstanding their many repeated failings. That is of course expected and
most understandable.
The scary bit is for
men to skip altogether the struggling part and come forward to present an image
to the world that they are as near to perfect as
biblical perfection would
warrant it. And to compound the fear for me is for these self-righteous men to
elevate themselves to such heights that they have become invulnerable to sins
and mistakes common to all men. There is in fact a disarming mechanism that
blinds them to believe in and swear by their own invulnerability and it comes
in two familiar labels, "hypocrisy"
and "self-deception".
When they have
reached this stage of delusional perfection, they would have
become the end
product of what they had from the start so completely stood against. But alas,
because they have perfection embodied at least in the god-forsaken citadel of
their mind, any suggestion that they have lost their way would be dealt with by
way of the strongest denial.
There is in fact
nothing scarier than a man who thinks that he can do no wrong or all those who
are against him are wrong. And with the twin monolith of what has become known
as institutionalized faith and the
unconditional support of the indivisible
mass of misguided devotees, I am afraid the delusion only deepens further.
Now the danger of
this self-declared and blindly-endorsed invulnerability is that it grants them
the impunity to do as they please and to justify all means by its self-serving
end. This is where perfected religion do the most damage and this is also where
I must always remind myself to look inside my own mental closets for the
lurking shadows of perfection.
This quest for
perfection is a mad race
with faulty brakes. In society, in the name of utopian
economics and the new world order, nazism, fascism and communism have all
done almost irreparable damage as a cover for their leaders' self-preservation. Think about the final solution, the great leap forward and the
cultural revolution and you will witness for yourself how history was derailed,
defaced, and deracinated by this obsession for perfection. Trust me, you can
find no better proof else where.
My last area is the
human hubris as
shown most glaringly in our blind faith in science. Our
progress of course cannot do without the twin engines of the scientific
revolution and the enlightenment. Our eyes are undeniably opened to the wonders
of how a man could plant a flag on the moon, how tonnes of metal carrying human
passengers could defy gravity and travel in the sky, and how a harmless science
project of splitting atoms could on a grand scale annihilate us all.
Now somewhere
simmering in those developments, the quest
for progress has quietly mutated
into the unquenchable search for the perfect human mind. And this perfection comes
with a cost we cannot afford unless it is paid for at the price of our
extinction. This perfected mind glorifies and deifies only itself. It is one
that is god-defying and man-exploiting. It is a mind that is utilitarianistic
even to a fault. Its logic is self preservation and its execution is
methodological. Its cold calculus of deliberation will put expediency above
morality,
convenience above truth, survival above sacrifice, ambition above
love, opportunism above peace, and logic above humanity.
Think along the lines
of the symbolic "selfish genes"
and you should get a foretaste of the foreboding reality of the selfish mind. I
guess the greatest of all ironies is to unknowingly suffer the perfect end to
our existence which is guided by the suicidal hands of the perfect mind.
Imagine a well shorn sheep led to her slaughter or the frog in a pot brought
slowly to a boil.
I hope
this is one fate that would extend beyond the mortal
length of my life on earth. Because nothing scares me more than to witness the
quest for perfection ending in the most imperfect way conceivable. Cheerz.
* Image taken from "spurmag.com".
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