American Heathen®

My wife was always trying to be perfect at everything she did.  It was a never ending delusion born of, and nurtured by her father when she was just a child.  It was an unrealistic expectation driven by a demeaning attitude toward anything she did or said, under the guise of making her “better”.   My wife Sherry is EXTREMELY intelligent, inquisitive, skeptical, driven to succeed at all she does.  Her determination and skill have been beneficial to her career as an Electrical Engineer.  But, the unrealistic goal of perfection has been destructive to her self esteem.  When Sherry graduated from a small rural high school in 1979, she was the graduating class Valedictorian.  Regardless of the size of the graduating class, this accomplishment is truly great.  It does not pale the academic achievement necessary to be bestowed this honor.  With that said,  Sherry’s Valedictorian speech was delivered before students, faculty and the Attorney General of the State she haled from.  After the speech her father approached her and said “You sure had them snowed”.  This simple but destructive statement finished laying the groundwork for a life of unrealistic expectations, driven by her father’s words, that anything less than perfection was unacceptable.  It also became a catalyst for a future “workaholic” and a self-destructive method of dealing with her own ego as college called.

Sherry’s college years were enlightening and educational to say the least.  But, as graduation loomed, her excessive drive had run out of steam.  Her grades began to plummet, pushing her into a depression.  She struggled to stay focused.  The words her father uttered on high school graduation day echoed through her head.  It seemed that everything she did, whether in high school or college, was never “perfect” enough.  The mental stress of such demands came very close to laying waste to a rich and talented mind.  Fortunately, Sherry pushed on, managing to do more than salvage her education.  She graduated with honors.

There is an important lesson in my wife’s story.  It’s one that calls to our attention the demands of religion.  Religion claims superiority based on the alleged absolute authority figure, an Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent entity.  Believers claim this entity is “perfect” and infallible.  Just like Sherry’s father, an authority figure in her life, the skydaddy’s “perfection” comes with an expectation to appease.  One must make the “father” happy as opposed to satisfying ones own desires.  Rather than embrace positive self-reinforcement, realistic goals, step-by-step processes to achieve personal success, and realizing that perfection is unrealistic, the person’s self-esteem is discarded in favor of a servile guilt driven subservience.   The goals are no longer the individuals, and neither are the successes.   This leaves the individual to look toward the authority figure for approval, rather than relish the success as a personal achievement.

Religion cannot survive without the false notion of perfection.  This is why Evolution is so dangerous to religion.  Nature is always in a state of change, adaptability, flux.  While humans may perceive perfection in nature, it is far from perfect.  As a whole, human perception of perfection in nature is fraught with error.  From birth defects, to environmental changes, to a whole host of other things, failure in nature is common.  Nature, being what is is, and humans being a part of it, is always adapting, changing, succeeding and failing.  So, religion had to  fabricate  “perfection” in order to reinforce another fabrication…life after death.  Here’s where fear comes into play.

The notion of perfection requires a fear of failure.  Failure is the enemy, but it’s AOK if you fail and ask for forgiveness from the authority figure. To fail in religion without asking for forgiveness is to be excluded from the life-after-death scenario.  In religion’s eyes, if you aren’t trying to live up to perfection, then you cannot have life after death.  Death, thought of as terrible without a skydaddy by the religious, is the tool with which to manipulate the faithful.  Instead of treating death as a natural occurrence, and devoid of mysticism and fear, religion uses it as a weapon.  Religion wants people to believe that it can free you from the natural process of death by accepting the false notion that perfection must be striven for, and when failure is at hand, a “perfect” being must be appeased to avoid the sentence of no life after death.  Enter the problem.

Let’s start with “perfection” as an ideal.  If a perfect being, all powerful, all knowing, all everything created all things, things that can be PROVEN to be imperfect… What does that say about the perfection of the being?  It says that imperfection comes from perfection.  Confusing huh?  Yep.  As it should be, because it is not logical.  What’s more, the very idea that this entity has failed to create anything perfect, from the Earth to the entire universe, says something about the error in this claim.  What’s more likely?  An entity created the false notion of perfection, or humans created the false notion of perfection?  The fallacy of perfection was designed to usurp the individual in favor of the collective UNDER another individual or collective.  It is a control mechanism.

Now, some of you may defend the idea that striving for personal perfection is a good thing.  Is it really?  Is it really a good idea to strive for the impossible?  Is it beneficial to have unrealistic goals, and to be shattered each and every time you fail?  Would it be more advantageous to set goals based on constraints of the imperfection of all things?  Would it be better to try, fail, and learn, as opposed to try, fail, and appease?  Whether appeasing a skydaddy, your father, mother, family, friends, or even yourself…you’re still APPEASING someone.  Failure in anything should not require appeasement.  The realistic, logical, and reasoned approach is to determine for oneself  what goals might be achieved, try, embrace and learn from failures, then try again.  Being better at something should not mean being better than someone else.  It should mean being better than YOU were, and for YOU.

Unfortunately, religion has a stranglehold on the vast majority of the world populace.  Perfection is held up as a goal, and religion knowingly uses this as a manipulation, a weapon, to prey upon low self-esteem, guilt and human imperfection.  As long as religion makes bullshit claims of an all-perfect being, humans will wallow in their imperfection, trying desperately to live up to an impossible, unrelenting, desperate ideal.  Fortunately for my wife Sherry, the torturous journey through perfection is near a close.  And she is better for it.  She’s been an Electrical Engineer for 27 years, as long as we have been together.  And in that time,  she has become one of the most talented and sought after professionals in her field.   She’s highly thought of and regarded as a major contributor to the defense of this nation and the safety of commercial flight.  And, she doesn’t do it to please daddy.  Nor does she do it to please a skydaddy.  She does it for her, her pride, her self-esteem, her dignity, and the insatiable desire to learn and grow.   Perfect?  No.  Human?  Yes.  Real?  ABSOLUTELY!