Imperfection: the Workshop of Creation

Perfection is an illusion created by the human mind. It does not exist anywhere else. It is part of a world view created by the ancient Greeks, who saw purpose, design and order in everything. We have faithfully followed this course for over 2000 years and it has infused our thinking and our religions. Modern science reveals a totally different world. Instead of purpose, there is randomness; instead of order, there is chaos; instead of design, there is accident. The poet Blake wrote of the tiger: What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Science proposes that the tiger is the outcome of millions of tiny genetic accidents. In the universe, imperfection abounds. It can be found in the heavens, in the living world and in man himself. All the formative processes of our universe can be shown to be driven by it. It was imperfection that created the multitude of heavenly bodies, the extra-ordinary diversity of the living world, and many of the great achievements of the human mind. Out of chaos and disorder, imperfection knows how to build things of extra-ordinary sophistication and beauty. Truly it can be said to be the workshop of creation. Many of our ideas of Creation have perfection at their core. On closer examination, perfection played no role. Instead imperfection lies at the heart of the creation process. We need to realign our thinking and not regard imperfection as something that is there to spoil an otherwise perfect universe; that the universe was intended to be perfect but that something went wrong along the way. Acceptance of imperfection as a core concept can release us from many of the mental prisons of the past and bring us a new sense of freedom and liberation.