Just Muddling Along versus Perfectability

The notion of perfection or a just order that's knowable to man can impose a severe mental limit on a whole nation of people. They become incapable of change or adaptation and might not even physically survive the various shocks that nature throws at them.

I'm reading a great, concise summary of the history of the Technocracy Movement: Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation by Patrick M. Wood. Quite a few political systems of recent vintage rely on some form of central planning to "perfect" society. The idea of perfecting man, either as an individual or a society is a religious idea.

The model of perfection really varies quite among people who adopt "perfection" as a goal. In prior ages, the strength and endurance of a man, and his capability as a warrior were the guide of perfection. In religious societies various attributes are thought to make a person "holy" or godly. Often in such societies there's an associated caste system.

The notion of "efficiency" is the guide of perfection of most modern "managerial" thinking. The technocrats saw nations as machines, and people as cogs. If the machine could be engineered correctly, it would create utopian abundance and comfort. Since people were a critical component of the machine they needed to be controlled and managed in every aspect of their life.

The notion of "equality" is a similarly invasive basis as a guide for perfection. The various communist schools of thought imagine they need to mold the mind of every person to achieve perfect equality, which then of course ushers in a utopian age for some reason.

The perverse irony of central planning and managed societies is they're far less productive and far less creative and adaptable than completely decentralized, unmanaged societies. We see the same phenomenon with corporations, too. It takes way more resources for Apple or Microsoft or Google to produce software than a bunch of small companies or the Open Source community. The Utopian/Perfection society is really, at its root about stopping people from doing things. It circumscribes action, mainly because such organizations really impose the will of "rulers" or elites. Corporations do the same thing in the name of efficiency.

One of the concepts I wrestle with on a daily basis is that Nature is far more productive than agriculture for the very same underlying reason. I experience this first hand every year. For example this year, my best garlic plant by far is an accident. It grew from a bulb that was too small to harvest last year and just sprouted up among a riot of cover crops. I barely even had to weed around it.

my best garlic is an accident

How do we get out of the way of Nature and our stupid will? I wrestle with the notion of the productivity of nature because I want to systematize it, when that's the whole problem.