THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING “HUMAN”

(To keep the record straight, my allusion to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest is by no means accidental. The reader must also see my entry Dr. Kent And The Two Yatzers, in the Tikkun Olam section, posted on this blog on December 7, 2012.)

Be Perfect! In the religious Jewish tradition, there are two spirits--- Yatzer Ha-Tov and Yatzer Ha-Ra, good and bad--- hovering behind the person’s back (and occasionally sitting down on his/her shoulders) whispering their differing, contrarian advice into his or her ears. The advice of the bad spirit is to Be Perfect! The presumably destructive value of this advice (what else could one expect from a bad spirit?) is to convince the person that a goal that is too high is unattainable, therefore, it ought to be given up. This is apparently such a frustrating task, to be perfect, that giving up on perfection comes all too easy…

However, here is a very interesting parallel thought from Nietzsche’s Will to Power: “We see that we cannot reach the sphere, in which we have placed our values; but this does not by any means confer any value on that other sphere in which we live. On the contrary, we are weary because we have lost the main stimulus: ‘In vain so far!’"

I find both these observations extremely valuable and thought-provoking, each in its own right. The Jewish wisdom is demonstrably deficient in elucidating the basic meaning of our human quest for perfection. It is rooted in the presumption of human weakness, and, in practical terms, it encourages premature resignation. The impossibility of being “perfect” becomes our excuse for not trying to be good, and thus leads us off the moral track toward dissolute immorality.

Nietzsche’s thought is challenging, but incomplete, as he argues that perfection belongs in a different world and that the Christian system of values has nothing to offer to the real world, and therefore it is necessarily collapsing under the weight of a truthfulness-to-ourselves, leading us to nihilism. In my view, the thought of perfection does create a greater moral challenge to the individual, but so what? Under no circumstances should we seek an inferior second-best as our moral guide. We are not perfect in this world, but only our pursuit of perfection can build the bridge between the real world and the eternity of the afterlife. For most of us, however, even the pursuit, to say nothing of becoming, proves too hard, but our daily failure in this pursuit must not lead us to the sin of resignation, but must seek compensation in our increased dependence on the Love of God, Who is Perfect, and, lest we forget, has made us in His image.