Friday, March 31, 2023

My Letter To Pacifist Friend (And Plowshares Activist Patrick O'Neill), Concerning Perfectionism And The Tendency For "The Perfect" To Be "Enemy Of The Good"



  • Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
    • The best is the enemy of the good.
      • "La Bégueule" (Contes, 1772)
      • Variant translations:

        The perfect is the enemy of the good.
        The better is the enemy of the good.

      • Note: translation of earlier traditional Italian Il meglio è nemico del bene, attested since 1603: Proverbi italiani (Italian Proverbs), by Orlando Pescetti (c. 1556 – c. 1624) (p. 30, p. 45)
      • Note: Voltaire cites this saying in his poem "La Bégueule" ("The prude woman") while ascribing it to an unnamed "Italian sage"; he also gives the saying (without attribution) in Italian (Il meglio è l'inimico del bene [note spelling difference: l'inimico instead of nemico for "[the] enemy") in the article "Art Dramatique" ("Dramatic Art", 1770) in the Dictionnaire philosophique


*****

Religion, Perfectionism, Savonarola and The Pending Apocalypse of The Republican Party (This Post Was Written In 2012)

Neo-Puritanism And The Quest For Perfection As Frequent Precursor Of Fascism

Let Love Live, And The Compulsive Passion For Perfection Will Die

http://ascboston.org/downloads/publications/Sermons/Sermon_2020-2-2.pdf


Dear Patrick

Thanks for bringing this well-written article to my attention. https://awareofawareness.com/2017/10/08/war-crimes-we-can-believe-in/

I clicked on one of the embedded links and read the intro to Ta-Nehisi Coates' interview titled "Better Is Good" -- https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/ta-nehisi-coates-obama-transcript-ii/511133/ -- and immediately recalled an essay I wrote inspired  by Voltaire's philosophical premise (no doubt embedded in the French oral tradition for centuries prior) that "The best is enemy of the good," or, as sometimes rendered "The perfect is enemy of the good." 

Why I Always Vote - And Routinely Compromise My Principles - In Order To Elect A Winnable Candidate Who Is "The Lesser Of Two Evils"


In my day-to-day politics I am routinely pissed off by "play-it-safe" incrementalism, but at the highest level of electoral politics I believe -- above all -- in electing people who are not manifestly insane. (Hitler was -- literally -- a homeless person a decade before rising to power. 

Or, perhaps I should say, "my electoral politics" - especially at the highest levels of power - aim, above all, to keep lunatics out of office.

From the beginning, I saw Obama as a black man - with a black wife - to whom the system was very good, doling out the infrequent prizes that comprise The Official Story's attempt to demonstrate how "fair" neo-liberal America is, and how black people who play by "The Liberal Book" can make it all the way to the top.

And in its own limited way, it is true.

But this mini-truth covers up the much larger fact that "The Liberal Book" sucks the hairy wazoo.

As always, I could write at greater length.

But further expostulation would come across, I think, as encouragement that you change, and I'm not sure you should, for I suspect  -- in some mystical way (and given the inexorable laws of karma) - that the huge arcs of meaning that are playing out "in God's time" are beyond our ken-and-conception.

It has occurred to me that we are all ingredients in a global stew and that we all, at some deep level, need to play out our "assigned" roles -- which is to say, to play our assigned instruments and the chord/notes that "ring true" to us, in order that humankind's "concert" (whose etymology suggests "struggle") reaches its final resolution.

I also read once (but cannot confirm) that the etymological roots of the Greek word "mysterion" (mystery) means "that which can only be understood by living our lives fully, right to the end," when The Big Reveal will take place.

Be that as it may, I have been "humbled" in recent decades by realizing that the Magnum Mysterium is (at least for me) the best name for God. And while swimming in that irresolvably mysterious uncertainty, I have also learned that Love Exists (Wow! Imagine that!?!) and that Love is indispensable to us essentially meaning-seeking creatures. 

Pax et amor

Alan


On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 11:23 PM pmtoneill@aol.com <pmtoneill@aol.com> wrote:

This is incredible writing with deep honesty. Integrity, humility and redemption.... Patrick 

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Mary Rider 
To: Patrick O’Neill <pmtoneill@aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 01:06:30 PM EDT
Subject: War Crimes We Can Believe In – Aware of Awareness



 

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