The Perfect and the Good.
The first time I encountered the Perfect/Good tension when I was among Marxist Leninists long ago. Trotsky - a long time communist, was anathema to those guys. The problem was that Trotsky insisted on a pure form of leninism and was critical of the Stalinists with their huge state apparatus and secret police. He fled the USSR and was murdered in Mexico. Trotsky was a perfectionist. The stalinists were pragmatists who just wanted to get things done.
This is a pretty common phenomenon I think. If you are a theorist then you tend to think in terms of perfect structures that work forever. Things are never perfect in reality and compromises must be made and corners cut to get things done. The theorist objects - if you modify the perfect structure then it won't work. It's like trying to build a car without complicated things like wheels.
Medicare provides many examples. Here in Canada we have a single payer medicare system. Medicare is funded by taxes so it's free for everyone. I think it's a very good system, especially as I get older. But it's not perfect.
One change in medicine I've noticed is that there is a new profession - the Nurse Practitioner. Here my primary contact with the medical system is my NP named Nessa. She knows me as a person and knows all my medical history and is a good source of advice. But she's not a doctor. She sends me to specialists when needed. All good. But it takes a few months to get an appointment to see the doctor. Not perfect.
There are doctors who propose to get around that problem by setting up private clinics that don't have waiting lists for people who can afford to pay. That might be perfect for rich people but bad for the rest of us. The waiting list problem is a result, after all, of not enough doctors. Siphoning off doctors to private clinics would make the shortage for the rest of us worse.
Perhaps we can resolve the tension between the perfect and the good by saying that the perfect provides a goal to which the good can approach by getting better. And it seems that in history stepwise improvements in society are better than 'great leaps forward' towards perfection.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.