Perfection: The Western Delusion

By Matt Kelley

We talked in class about Sex and Romance as the fundamental malaise of Western society. I am inclined to say our societal dukkha is caused by something a little more general: the West’s obsession with perfection.
Nichtern called it MegaGuy and MegaGirl, and Loy addressed it in a number of ways, primarily attributing it to the Buddhist root of evil: delusion. Our society strives for perfection, and anything less is unsatisfactory. In the movies and media, celebrities are gorgeous, wealthy and glorified. In the workplace, we can always work harder, faster and more productively. In our places of worship, religions tell us of a perfect place after death, casting a pall over our mortal lives. In the bedroom, our romance should be perfect and sex fantastic. We are conditioned from our youth by our parents to achieve more success than they did, and we are conditioned by our society (the American Dream) to rise from our ranks and become fabulously rich. Our economy is based on always getting more, and our market relies on the fact that we can never have enough. Our armed forces must always be stronger, our children smarter, our GDP higher. Nothing is ever good enough because nothing is ever perfect.
From the times of our ancestors in Greece and Rome, the point of life has been to strive for perfection. This genetic disposition has become deeply ingrained in the mind of the West, and every time we fail to achieve our goal (so, all the time) we are dissatisfied, then disappointed, then saddened and finally, depressed.
Buddhist pragmatism would help to heal this national dukkha. By practicing mindfulness in order to become more aware, we will see that we have been conditioned to achieve the impossible. It’s a very romantic and heroic endeavor that tugs at the heartstrings of all Westerners, but the simple fact of the matter is, while such stories may be enthralling in the movie theatre, they never work out that way in real life. We need to see that our society has brainwashed us so that we will never be satisfied. With that in mind, we need to become more accepting of who we are (instead of who we are not). Living in the moment and being mindful of what is realistic and what is impossibly perfect is the path to the cessation of dukkha.