October 30, 2007: The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
Our generation and the ones that follow are going to have more data than ever to process, and the human way of doing this is to quickly eliminate whatever we can.
The more data there is, the finer the criteria have to be: we have only a limited amount of mental processing power, and we're getting better and better at finding the one reason to reject an idea, person, policy, philosophy, or action.
I'm glad to read online that Mark Morford agrees with me in his article "The Whine of Voracious Liberals."
I think we're so eager to simplify the stimuli flooding in from every direction that we'll eliminate whatever we can based on the slimmest criteria. Political parties make this especially convenient: "I can dismiss out of hand anything the Democrats/Republicans say because I'm in the other party." So do other (largely false) ideological oppositions, or strange social criteria: "I can never vote for a person who has gotten divorced or one who isn't a Christian." We seek any flaw that enables us to ignore a possibility.
Let's face it: the task of the voter is really just the proper juxtaposition of fools, choosing the right idiot for the job right now, largely to counterbalance another idiot from the opposite side.
None of them are perfect, and none of them perfectly agree with us. Our task is to juggle their ideas in our heads long enough to see if anything they have to say is worth considering , even with their flaws.
Comments
After reading your blog entry I read the Morford piece, and was pleased to find a reasonable lefty writer. (Is it just my bias, or are those few and far between?) I've added him to my favorites list.
On the other hand, I couldn't help noticing this gem from his article:
"It's an obvious parallel, to see an uber-progressive left that, while encompassing an entirely different ethos (extreme openness and egalitarianism versus extreme clampdown and religious ignorance), still resonates with the same kind of impossible standards of behavior."
Ah yes, the "openness" and "egalitarianism" of the left (I know it so well from years in academia) vs. the Mordor that is Jesusland. I seem to remember a Will blog about the danger of black-and-white, binary thinking...
Still, the guy can write and he's rational, so he's on my short-list of lefties to read.
Posted by: Mart | November 1, 2007 5:23 PM