Essay - Are you living a Limited Edition of your life?

My good acquaintance Karan Singh Sidhu, who is a great juggler of words posted this thought provoking question - the one that forms the title of this essay. Therefore, this essay is dedicated to him.

Since the query was posted on the facebook wall of Mr. Sidhu, it was interesting to read various very earnest views expressed. Overwhelming majority either responded in affirmation or counter queried, "how do I know whether one is living a limited edition or not?"

Most who responded felt being questioned how positively superlative is the adjective preceding the word life for them. They interpreted it as - "Are you living an exciting or satisfied or healthy or intense or spiritual life etc.?" 

Here is my interpretation of the question:

I thought it important to first understand whether is life a limited edition or not and once this is clear, it will be much easier to answer. Limits are of two kinds outer and inner. Yes there are outer limits to life. But are there inner limits to it? No. There is Zeno's paradox stating that to walk 1 metre one has to cover half and to walk half one has to cover one fourth and so on.... One therefore has to step on the next half, but there is no next half as there are innumerable halves between any half and me. Since the next half does not exist, hence, one cannot move (this predates quantum physics). Similarly, with time there are innumerable moments between any two moments. Adjectives to life are generated by two components one is the power of biases (how much one can fool himself in believing what one wants rather than what it is) and the intactness of memory (power to remember biases). While power of biases keeps us from being mentally bruised; memory consists of events that are stored for future use. The more are such memorable events for a unit time the smaller the units of life. Indeed, human progress itself is nothing but the reduction of units of life. Early man counted life from hunt to next hunt, or harvest to harvest, it all accelerated in last century to being one - from letter to letter and is today from message to message. Presently, events are counted in seconds (say reading Mr. sidhu's query meriting this essay on fb wall). So the more are the events per unit time, the higher the number of memories, the less is the edition of such life limited. The biases (which are scientifically proven to be congenial) then choose which amongst the ever increasing choice of events are to be remembered and how. These biased memories also are increasing with every passing day. Therefore, life is an edition limited only by how many events can one make happen per unit time. They who live intensively are less constrained in life's edition. Life is like a book one writes; whose thickness is pre-determined but thinness of pages is not.

About happy life - there's little to write. Its known that 70% contribution to one's being happy is congenial. I have even known people who are happy being unhappy, congenially.

Mr. Karan Sidhu, I have lived a life with sections that have innumerable, very thin pages and sections that have few thick ones - both occuring at non-statistical intervals.

Authored by: 

Deepak Loomba

An essay - perfect.

"Nobody is perfect......... I think....... perfect is boring....." .... written by my schoolmate Vandana Jindal set aflare in me the desire to understand and write about perfection.

Perfection was first featured in its greek version in Delta volume of Metaphysics by Aristotle and distinguishes three meanings of the term, or rather three shades of one meaning. All three attributes of perfection:

1) which is complete — which contains all the requisite parts;

2) which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better;

3) which has attained its purpose

While many philosophers from various cultures went on to define perfection with some variation, the western concept itself underwent a metamorphosis since the greeks to medieval and then to modern philosophy.

Greek thinkers used the greek version of the word perfect for completeness and entirety. Both Parmenides and Melissos saw perfection in existence. A concept adopted by Plato.

In nutshell Aristotle's perfection was chiselled in the Book of Genesis and hence the creation was deemed perfect but not the creator. The reason thus far being that perfection was completeness which could be fractional, but God was considered absolute, devoid of fractional existence and hence the creator could not be termed perfect. God was perceived as neither matter nor spirit nor idea and exceeded any description or praise; it was incomprehensible and ineffable; it was beyond all that we may imagine — including perfection. 

Through medieval philosophy, perfection remained a fractional, non quantacized conept and hence remained excluded from being considered as a property of God.

It was the 17th century philosophy that started characterizing God as perfect as the meaning of perfect started tranforming from analogue (fractional or that which is divisible) to a digital one (quantum states, fractionless states). Hence, phrases like less perfect ceased to exist. It was started by Rene Descartes and was religiously affirmed by Espinoza and then Immanuel Kant. The history of the concept of perfection underwent evolution — from "Nothing in the world is perfect", to "Everything is perfect"; and from "Perfection is not an attribute of God", to "Perfection is an attribute of God.

The paradox of perfection—that imperfection is perfect happened in last couple of centuries as the new quantum and absolute variant of perfection left no room for progress and improvement. This is the reason of evolution of excellence as being one of the states of perfection. Aesthetic perfection started being defined as the little deviation that disturbs a perfect symmetry. An example is a small mole above side of lips, which disturbed the perfect symmetry of a beautiful face is deemed aesthetic. Compare the mole over or above the left or right end of lips to one in the centre (hence maintaining symmetry). Most appreciate the former that disturbs the symmetry than the one which maintains it. Hence, imperfection became perfect. 

Meanings, colloquial and literary, often reflect different perceptions, the same not being limited to English. While I could not research much data on colloquial understanding of perfection historically, I sum up the one in currency as - 

"A state of delivery that fulfills expectations". It has neither to do anything with completeness or with being fit for purpose or being better comparatively (excelling); it is just a state of complete coupling of expectations with delivery. Not without reason does a boss with aweful linguistic skills call a below average written letter as perfect. The below average letter could probably be the best the boss had seen. 

Literary 'perfection' is more complicated. Flawlessness, which is touted in every dictionary as meaning of perfection makes no sense to me. Good definitions should be objective at least within a sensible frame of time. Flaws are themselves subjective. They are a subset of knowledge. Therefore, a flawless design for an amateur might not even be worth a comment by an expert designer. The state of flawlessness or achievement of it by eliminating known errors is not an objective definition for reasons stated above. In a bid to create a generic and objective definition of perfection I express it as:

"The  state of complete coupling/fulfillment of delivery to most excelling expectations, after knowing the state of the art."

State of the art makes the expectations very objective. Once the best is acknowledged, it is easy to define it as the threshold to excellence. The said definition also satisfies all the three attributes of ontological understanding of perfection as stated in Delta of the Memetaphysics.

Aesthetic is that which is considered beautiful by statistically overwhelming majority. Aesthetic perfection remains aesthetic imperfection -  one that disturbs the symmetry - aesthetically!

Author 

Deepak Loomba