hey man,

sorry if my last post seemed a little harsh, it was, i shoulda reflected a bit (bad mood) anyway, let me hit those questions one more time, and try to definitively say what i'm trying to say...

1. i think you're right in a way about something not being perfect until you know whether or not it fulfills its purpose without flaw. however, as i've said before, perfection is really only the state of being made for a purpose. theoretically if something's made as a means to an end it's perfect whether it works or not. however, something that's made for a purpose but does work is different somehow... like you can "make something for something else" or "something can be made for something else", like it depends on whether you consider the active or passive sense. so in the active sense most everything is perfect, whereas in the passive sense it depends on how we look at it. and i don't think it's wrong to try to give a working definition for anything, as long as it can be agreed on by both parties. without definitions it makes no sense to talk about perfection, which is why i want to define it. i'd like to find some common ground... webster's does a good job at pointing out the two senses of the word i mentioned, the active (1) and the passive (2). it remains just general enough to be practically universal, and such an idea of perfection is what i'm going with. thus perfection is very much possible... in fact, perfection is everywhere. in a way, saying that perfection is unattainable is setting 'unrealistically high standards' for perfection. hmmm... and i disagree about not being able to apply the working definition to anything. if i need to write something down and i pick up a pen and write what i'm thinking, the pen lacks no essential. it performs its function without any problems at all. it fits the first and second definition of perfection, as it pertains to writing. the pen is obviously not a perfect baseball bat, and perhaps not even a perfect color, but it is still perfect in some respects. pens are made to write with. ...

2 (A). i don't think we as a species are flawed in the slightest, because, in a sense, we're like a novel. to read part of a novel and call it flawed is, in my mind, what people do when they look at humanity and call it flawed. you can't judge something until you've seen the whole thing, as you've said, and even then the purpose of humanity, after the fact, must be fulfilled by the course humanity took, since the purpose of humanity is necessarily decided upon by us, the only intelligent beings in the universe *arguable*. since humanity cannot do otherwise but fulfill the course it sets for itself in a passive inevitable way then humanity is recursively perfect. in essence, being the judge and jury of ourselves, we cannot be anything but innocent. this argument of mine is very clear in my mind but is by its nature very difficult to explain. hmmm... to say that humanity is flawed would be to say that we are flawed in someone else's eyes, and if you mean objectively flawed, you mean god's eyes. hmmm, perhaps the christian faith is a good analogy for my message. humanity is flawed through god's eyes, whereas humanity (and the material world, lucifer, etc) is perfect by its own unholy standards. hmmm...

3 (. by a similar argument to the one i made in 2 (A), i believe humanity's standards are, in effect, the "gold standard" in existence. nothing but humanity's standards are there. one way or another we have to set some standard, no matter what. alright. having established that, the question becomes whether it is possible to pick an unrealistic standard. the simple answer to that question is yes, it is if our standard requires impossibility. our question then becomes is humanity's standard impossible? the answer to that question, as you've mentioned yourself, is that we cannot be sure until it's been done, and only then be certain that it's possible. if we cannot prove something conclusively, if we have to wait to see what happens, as with our living up to an arbitrary standard, we can't be sure it's possible until it happens. we can never be sure it's impossible. this of course is different than, say, physical handicaps or physical impossibilities. we are sure of other things, and it follows from that that other things are impossible. i doubt there's any positive statement that can be made and proven that has as a natural consequence that mankind is incapable of living up a given standard. well, i suppose some standards could be shot down, but why the general "world standard"? what part of that seems so wrong? that we should not wage wars? that we should all live in peace? etc. we know it's possible for peace to exist, we just don't know if it can perpetually exist. and we will never know, really, because if it is forever we'd have to wait forever to prove it - or til the end of the world.

i guess my final verdict, and i hope i've provided some insight into my reasoning, is that mankind is incapable of setting its standards too high because (a) we are ultimately the judge of our standards and as long as the standard is as it is, it is the correct standard as there is no greater intellect than collective humanity to negate it and (b) it's impossible to know whether the standards we set for ourself are too high before we try *forever* to live up to them and (c) perfection is ultimately whatever we want it to be, not some fantastical quality of something we cannot comprehend. i basically believe human power to be limitless, in the sense that there is no limit to our capability to do anything we set our minds to. i know that seems like it's easily debunked but i could then argue about the nature of limitations, in much the same fashion, and prove that possibility is forever - i think. the main problem i have with a theory by which humanity's standards are tragically unrealistic is that it denies the infinite nature of possibility. that i cannot believe. and that's the essence of my case.