Best We Can Do?

The Best We Can Do?

Are we doing the best we can?

Has anyone... ever?

If you know me, and some of you do, you may have heard me go off on this topic before.  But it keeps coming up and is worth exploring.

Let me elucidate.

SUPERLATIVES

If you know anything about logic, you know that superlatives are words that shouldn't be used seriously in any debate or argument. All, never, best, worst... most.  These words push anything you say into hyperbole.

Even if you are using this as a rhetorical device on purpose, it is annoying.  And, it is especially pernicious in one's thinking.  Why?  Because to use a superlative is to say that you know everything.  And since most of us know very well that we truly know almost nothing... it is grandiose and confusing to even think in this way.

If you think to yourself, "This is the worst coffee."  You are projecting the idea that you have tried every coffee... ever.  Even if you were such a super-being that this was actually possible for you... the most you could really say is that the coffee in question was the worst you have encountered so far.

You may think I am pointlessly splitting hairs.  But this is a bigger deal than you might realize.  It is the root of a lot of sloppy, lazy thinking that winds up rippling out into everything you do.

Cartesian thought arises from the dictum Cogito Ergo Sum. (i.e. I know that I exist, because I am thinking).

Nearly everything else that one can say is just speculation.  And yet, people seem very SURE of a great many things, for which they have not a whit of evidence.

To say something is the BEST that can be done is somewhat foolish.  But I do love fools, and folly is the true currency of life in many ways.

Let me go on...

Clearly, Usain Bolt is the fastest man to have ever run on the Earth... in high definition... so far... that we know of.

While very clearly hyperbolic, it happens to be true.  With a number of disclaimers, that is.  He is currently the fastest man to have ever run... in official, international competition.

It is quite likely that in the entire history of humanity, there were people who covered 100m even faster than Bolt... perhaps someone running from a Saber-Toothed Tiger a couple ice ages ago.  Maybe some crackhead freshly coming up on his drug, who had to run from police.  Who knows?  :-)  And, it is relatively certain that someone in the future will run faster than him... even if it takes 100 years to produce another Jamaican with titanium cheetah legs.  Hehehehee.  

Yeah... Right.

The point is that even with Usain Bolt, we can only use superlatives in a qualified manner.  Needless to say, most of the time that people use them, they are not talking about someone or something nearly as truly dominant and demonstrably superior.  In fact, it is usually quite the opposite.

DOING ONE'S BEST

This is the real crux of what I am discussing today.  Misuse of superlatives is one thing, and sets up this topic, but it is really this particular rhetoric that I am taking issue with.

People say things like this all the time.  It is a frequent refrain when apologizing for someone or something.  It is used as a way of justifying... or excusing mistakes or poor outcomes.

"He did the best he could."     or      "I gave it my best shot."       etc. etc.

It is a widespread (mis)conception that there actually is such a thing as doing (or being) the best.

I have written about this before.  My book (currently unavailable) "We Can Do Better" talks a lot about this.  A major premise of that work was that we can always do better.

No matter how well we do anything, even if we have surpassed our current record in that thing, it is literally always possible to improve.  In any activity, there are an infinite amount of variables and gradations in each metric... as such, it is always possible to tweak something and improve your performance... even if this is almost imperceptible.  There is no ultimate achievement.  Just higher and higher bars.

Though if this guy gets any higher he might explode...

No matter how fast you run, the carrot stays just out of reach, which, as the Doobie Brothers profoundly said... keeps you running.  Even if you semi-miraculously managed to figure out how to swing the carrot back and jump forward quick enough to catch it.  It would soon be replaced by a fresher, juicier carrot... and you would be on your merry way once again.

And this is for people actively and truly trying to achieve their best... people on that narrow path of self-mastery in some shape or form.  Sadly, when we say "They did the best they could...." the people in question were most certainly not trying to surpass their previous best efforts.

So J...

• You just went off about superlatives and now you're saying you can ALWAYS do better.
• Why are you up here trying to be the language police now?

To which I say, valid points.  But there is a rationale to this misty madness.

Getting rid of this pernicious mind-worm will have a profoundly positive effect on one's psyche.  When you eliminate the crutch of "your best" and we stop making excuses for our lackluster efforts, we can set our sights much, much higher than our tawdry notions could have ever fathomed.  Looking off into a limitless horizon gives us endless room to grow and continually improve.

When we don't think there is a ceiling, we stop thinking inside the box.  We are free to reinvent things that seemed good enough.  Having the idea that there is no "best" place to rest on one's laurels at... allows people to keep pushing their limits in new and unexpected ways.  And we don't need to be led with carrots or stay on the trails when we have the grand vastness to inspire us.

This also lets us go to town on all the morbid and moribund sacred cows we are all obliged to idealize.  When there is no "best" then we are not stuck with such currently untouchable, infallible pieces of pure brilliance as... the Electoral College... everything having to cost $X.99...  The Two-Party System... Representative Democracy... The Constitution... Market Capitalism... your favorite Holy Book of Timeworn Aphorisms and Parables. etc. etc.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with any of these fine things.  Just that when we acknowledge that we can always do better... that the best is not something carved into dolorite, or laser etched into pure sapphire... back in the hoary mists of time, when most of us shared a bunch of common ancestors (do the math)... we can make shit better.  We could decide to not poison our food anymore, for instance.  Or maybe decide we didn't need to poison anything?

We should be thrilled to know that we live in a world of many, nested varieties of infinity.  That there are an infinite amount of divisions of the space between your eyes and these words.  You could very truly go halfway closer to the screen... forever.  And if you hold yourself 2x as far from your device... you have now doubled that infinity.  You are a badass.

And that is not nearly the best you can do....

To recap:  All one can ever really say is that something is the best you have done thus far... that you can remember.  And in truth, most of this talk tends to center around stuff you actually got second, third, fourth (or more) hand, and which you have no actual sensory experience of.

You might like to think the Constitution of The United States of America is the greatest political document of all time, penned by giants of thought and moral standing... but no one you could ever have known was there, and the document in question is (let's be honest) a mediocre attempt by a bunch of dudes who would be considered morons by today's educational standards... most of whom owned slaves.  Before you cry foul... remember that they forgot the Bill of Rights, and then had to amend the thing incessantly for well over 100 years just to get this infallible work of genius everyone can't stop masturbating over... and which still falls short for today's world... because guys in powdered wigs had no idea we could shoot our minds around the globe over light cables... or blow it up. They didn't even have electricity, let alone HBO
🜹😎🜹.

Just sayin'.

If you take one thing from this post... let it be the freedom that comes with knowing that you... that we... can always do better.

Jah۞Sun Out!