If this is about politics then I want close to perfect. All that means is not taking money from people who hurt others, protecting the people over corporations, opposing a genocidal regime, standing up 4 working people by demanding our rights are protected. Not perfect. Not hard. Not radical. Better
the irony, of course, is that if all the people who want that better world had just held their nose and ALWAYS voted for + fully supported the “lesser evil” candidate, we would currently be SO MUCH CLOSER to the progressive ideal than we are now.
in 2016 and 2024 there was this ridiculous, pervasive false belief that by avoiding stopping a MAGA madman from taking over, it could incite a “glorious revolution” which gives us that perfect world.
in reality it’s exact opposite. the ONLY way to keep pushing left is by keeping the left in power.
when every other president is a republican, the following democratic administration has to spend an insane amount of time just getting us back to where we started. hillary/harris was far from some DSA ideal, but they’d have allowed us to actually keep making progress instead of trump tearing it down
(or, in other words: if your goal is for no innocent people to die by our hand, refusing to vote against the guy who will kill MILLIONS MORE INNOCENTS, refusing to even support his opposition, is the single worst possible way to go about it)
Some folks are frozen in the illusion of perfection. There is no perfect outcome. There are outcomes that serve a purpose in the present or in the future tbh.
I struggle with perfectionism by the way. I am currently unlearning but it's tough. For me wanting to be perfect has been closely tied to wanting to be worthy, and I think that's true for many people.
You are worthy regardless of how close to "perfection" you are.
Just got run out of a vulnerable community on here I was trying to be an ally to, and I had to delete my old account because I did some shit that made people feel unsafe. But nobody told me they were feeling unsafe. The only reason I even knew anything is because somebody told me they'd been warned.
And I immediately tried to address the behavior. Everything was good for a little bit, but then someone else brought all that shit up publicly and I started getting harassed over it even after I unfollowed everyone and was DMing ppl that were following me to say hey u may wanna unfollow me.
Perfectionism is an excuse. It’s a way to guard oneself against failure. No failing means there can be no effort. Then if one is criticized, for failure to act, the perfectionism excuse jumps in as defense. It’s actually lazy, and I think you’re right - everyone I know who does this is miserable.
The concept that really helped me with grappling my own imperfections and the imperfections of others was simply "grace". Like something I used to hear my grandma talk of, but giving grace to people is to understand we are *all* very imperfect, imo.
Beautiful and true sentiments. We are all 'works in progress'. Along with everything you said here, too many people focus on punishing others. I just think more often, there are better solutions and remedies.
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this is why perfect as the enemy of good matters.
in reality it’s exact opposite. the ONLY way to keep pushing left is by keeping the left in power.
Not only was my family of origin perfectionists (and thus was I), we were instructed that a mistake would follow us for ever.
So, I imagined a mountain of mistakes I was tugging along.
One day, I cut the rope.
That was when I started changing my outlook.
You are worthy regardless of how close to "perfection" you are.