It's time to celebrate imperfection. Yes, I said imperfection, not perfection. I will be writting about imperfection and knowledge—and how each thrives on the other. Throughtout this article, I will take the position that in a perfect world, you cannot attain knowledge. Only in an imperfect world can knowledge thrive. That is why we should celebrate imperfection.

Ask yourself: can you learn anything if everything were perfect?

Do we learn more when something is imperfect, or when something is perfect?  I believe that we learn more when something is imperfect.  If everything were perfect, all imperfections would be eliminated, and I mean ALL. 

What is perfection?

The oldest definition of "perfection" is by Aristotle, a renowned Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He once wrote three different ways of looking at perfection:

1. Perfection is complete — that which contains all the requisite parts.

2. Perfection is so good that nothing of the kind could be better.

3. Perfection is that which has attained its purpose.

You might say that perfection is, broadly, a state of completeness and flawlessness. By definition, perfection would stop the pursuit of knowledge because there would be nothing left to pursue. We are talking about a state of completeness and flawlessness, after all. In other words, if everything were complete and flawless, there would be no need to learn anything.

In a perfect world, every story would have a happy ending, so we wouldn’t learn the lessons that come from sadness.

In a perfect world, we would all be New York Yankees, so we would never learn the lessons that come from the agony of defeat.

In a perfect world, everyone would be popular, so we would never learn the lessons that come from isolation and loneliness.

In a perfect world, nobody would die, so we would never learn the lessons that come from grief.

I can honestly argue that we would not need to learn anything because all our needs would be met… perfectly. So why question anything? Why bother?