Our dear friend, Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, appeared on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Thursday, June 18, 2009 to comment on outrageousness in Public Discourse, particularly as it relates to the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Associate Justice.

Here is a really good visualization of how the credit crisis occurred.  Click to play, if you dare.  Remember to breathe and smile.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo

by Samantha (futuredirected)

Now for the enquête du jour…
“If an individual doesn’t think something is perfect, do they have their expectations too high?” The short response is that perfection is not a function of expectations.

As I wrote in the “Beginnings” article, the mastery of anything begins with telling the small-t truth about it: giving up the little lies and motivational self-talk that support our beliefs, opinions and romantic notions. When measured against our self-invented ratios, things show up in everyday life that fall short of our expectations. They might be tragic, terrible, awful, bad, poor, fair, marginally acceptable, good (not good enough to be good, but pretty good), and so on. That’s the ratio. Each of us has a ratio, developed over time through a process of ratiocination. Each of us has a different ratio, as each of us has had a different set of experiences and made different decisions about them. Clearly, one’s ratio is entirely from the past.

When one declares that something is “not perfect,” it is en expression of a feeling that it should be some other way. Another way of expressing this feeling might be, “I have measured this against my personal ratio of preferences and expectations, and I don’t like it, I wish it were otherwise, and I want it the way I want it,not the way it is.” This would be, at least, honest. Most people don’t want to be responsible for their preferences, they don’t want to appear to be whiny and spoiled, so they distance themselves from their declaration, and put the responsibility on something external to themselves. “IT isn’t perfect. My ratio is reasonable, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with me anyway. The imperfection is over there, with that (situation, object, person, condition, etc.).”

If there were a Gospel According to Samantha, and it had a chapter 2, it would be: “If it were supposed to be some other way, it would be that way, and it is not that way. It is this way — exactly this way — and it is perfect. What is, is and what is not, is not.” Right here and right now (and as I’ve mentioned before, this is the only place and time that one can be alive) everything is the way it is. You and me and everyone and everything are exactly the way you and me and everyone and everything are. If we are exactly as we are supposed to be, right here and right now, are we not perfect?

Here is the etymology of perfect (adj.):
c.1225 (implied in perfectiun), from O.Fr. parfit (11th Century), from L. perfectus “completed,” pp. of perficere “accomplish, finish, complete,” from per- “completely” + facere “to perform.” The verb meaning “to bring to full development” is recorded from 1398.

When something is perfect, it is complete, whole and not lacking any necessary quality or characteristic. Everything is the way it is. This is how it turned out, so far. You can create a possible future that is some other way, and constitute yourself as the possibility you create. Living into a future of your own creation is powerful, although it doesn’t mean that the present should be some other way than it is. High expectations will not change the way it is. Lowering your expectations (if such a thing is really possible) doesn’t change the way it is either. “It’s dark in here.” There is the amount of light there is, which is perfect, and there are the perfect number of lamps available. Turn one on. It’s not about your preferences or expectations. Preferences, expectations, desires and opinions can only get in the way of of happiness. They never produce happiness.  Even if your expectations are met — or exceeded — the expectations  added no value.

Some of us have difficulty recognizing ourselves and others as perfect. We are not lumps of dough in the process of becoming bread, with most of us half-baked. We are human beings, and this is our current state of completion. We arrive at this moment complete to this point. The notion that a human being could be “not perfect” crept into Western thought through medieval Christian theology, and the ridiculous notion of “original sin.” The concept of original sin is that human beings are born incomplete, lacking perfection, due to the sin of our distant ancestors, Adam and Eve. It is then up to their god, to bring them to perfection, through discipline, education, prayer and cultic practices, and so on. Original sin is not a concept presented in the Bible. It is the invention of the Medieval Scholastics, particularly the so-called saint Thomas Aquinas. It is an absurd and detrimental concept, although if you have a church and you want to make a lot of money, original sin is good for business. Hmmm. Maybe I should rethink this. No! It’s absurd!

This is an open space of possibility.  One cannot predict what may show up in the clearing…