The Perfection Trap

About three decades ago when I first attempted to write a book, I ran in to trouble. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to get past the opening ten pages. These never lived up to my expectations; hence I always wound up putting them aside—never to be completed.
Eventually, however, I got fed up with this self-defeating perfectionism. Thus, instead of stopping at page eleven, I decided to keep going. As a result, I completed a manuscript, albeit not one that satisfied my hopes. That’s when I made a profound discovery. I now realized that what I wrote also had to be edited.
Indeed, over the years I have learned that writing is more about rewriting, than instant excellence. One’s prose can always be improved and ideas can always be refined. Even after a work is published, improvements are possible.
As it happens, these days people come to me for advice on how to write. But of them, only one has actually written several books. The others generally find that what they put on paper does not match their imagination and they stop. In the end, they join the multitude who believe there is a book in them that never sees the light of day.
Today, a similar penchant for perfectionism has reached its toxic tendrils into politics. To be more specific, Newt Gingrich has accused Mitt Romney of creating a venture capital company that ruined the lives of thousands. Gingrich, and his minions, assure us that Bain Capital was not nearly as successful as Romney claims.
By now, Newt’s anti-capitalist rants have been thoroughly discredited (as have those of Rick Perry), but there is more to this mischief than deceitfulness or economic illiteracy. It has also added a fresh layer of juvenile thinking to the acid bath of contemporary politics.
According to Newt, it would be enough to condemn Romney if a handful of the companies in which Bain invested went belly-up. This would presumably demonstrate that Mitt is not compassionate. Never mind, if most of his ventures succeeded; he would still be an economic predator. (Or, as Perry has it, a “vulture” capitalist.)
What this implies is a need for perfectionism. Any mistake, irrespective of how modest, is magnified until it is perceived as a wart that covers the target’s entire face. He (or she) is thus distilled down to the essence of a few missteps.
In fact, Bain Capital was wildly successful. It did far better in its investments than most of its rivals. Yet, it too had failures. Many of Newt’s examples are bogus, but not everything Romney and his partners touched turned to gold.
The question is—so what? If we were all required to be perfect all of the time, no books would ever be written, no buildings would ever rise from the ground, and no seeds would ever push their way up through the soil to become nourishing ears of corn. Life would come to a standstill, with everyone afraid to put one foot before another.
Actually, the effects of perfectionism run amok are currently on display in Washington. After all, hasn’t Barack Obama promised us the world and then assured us he fulfilled his word? Didn’t he, for instance, pledge to save or create millions of jobs—and then deliver?
No, wait! There may be some cynics who remain unconvinced of our president’s ability to create jobs. These people have obviously not been listening to Obama’s recitations regarding his numerous achievements. By his lights, these have made him the fourth most productive president of all time.
For those who remain in doubt, my real the point is that people who promise perfection can only sustain this illusion by making claims of success that are as fraudulent as their initial guarantees. Perfectionism is never in the cards; hence those who deal in it are forced to be disingenuous.
When politics refuses to make allowances for human fallibility, when it instead stoops to adolescent idealism, it bars the door to genuine advances. To make the perfect the enemy of the good, as I did before I learned to write reasonably well, or as Newt has done in ridiculing Bain Capital, is to preclude actual improvements.
This stance embraces fantasies over facts. Sadly, if too many of us adopt it, it will be to our eternal sorrow.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University