Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy

Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy

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Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy
Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy
Perfect

Perfect

The world is perfect, but not as you might think.

Mar 22, 2025
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Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy
Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy
Perfect
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gray statue of a woman
Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash

The world is perfect, but probably not how you think it might be. We all search for perfection in one way or another. I once knew a very wealthy man whose car was valeted every day, and if there were as much as a fingerprint on the dashboard, he would explode with rage. Like the rest of us, he was searching for perfection, albeit a particularly infantile kind of perfection, but what else can you expect from an anal-retentive businessman?

Most of us go searching for mummy and daddy. We want perfect love (mummy) and perfect authority (daddy). We never find these things, but despite repeated failures, we don't abandon the search. Some people are hooked on a search for perfect truth and may well spend their whole lives cycling through excitement and disappointment as each dogma repeatedly shows its shaky foundations.

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