‘Your’ idea of ‘perfection’, beauty’, ‘justice’ etc only exists from ‘your’ position -
and ‘your position’ is right in the centre of ‘your universe’, where you stand with an East, South, West, North, Above, Below and especially a ‘Within’.

The question is whether perception can , therefore, ever really be proved to be shared?

A good one for late-night student-bedroom conversations (which are just a prelude for sex). I remember talking about whether the green of my potted plant was the same green as the green that she was seeing. But really I just wanted to fuck her.

Second point is totally fair. John Gray, in Black Mass, acknowledges that he’s painted himself into a bit of a corner by railing against utopian idealism, implicitly or explicitly arguing that we should do away with it. He pauses at one point to say the hope for a world without the kind of utopian idealism that is ultimately more destructive than constructive is itself idealistic in a utopian kind of way. There’s an abyss of logical recursion there that’s obviously a good idea to avoid. Again, I think the key is to appreciate how much we’re dealing with the dynamic, arational vicissitudes of feelings and unconscious attitudes than with the abstracted, wholly graspable plans and models of logic. The idea that perfection never existed and that there’s nothing to repair can be the perfect tonic for a certain person at a certain time (or a certain culture at a certain time), if it’s allowed to just sink in and dissolve hardened idealism that’s actually grinding them down. If they try to immediately “fix” this new, contrary idea into a new rigid model of the world, of course we just get more hassle and confusion.

I do think there’s something to be said for essentialist ideas (if only because they piss of current orthodoxy so much :-). Again, if they’re taken with the attitude of modern positivism, they’re pretty, as you say, kooky. But without monovision, with an approach that knows there are many different levels to reality (and thus many approaches are needed), they work, at a certain level.

Firstly, and most obviously, the claim that something can’t be made perfect doesn’t say anything about whether or not it can be repaired. Broken things can be made serviceable, even if not perfect. The impossibility of perfection does not preclude the possibility of improvement.

Secondly though, I’m wondering whether or not the notion of “perfection”, although tyrannical, isn’t an essential part of the human psyche. Essential in the sense that it is part of the essence of human psychology; but also in the sense that it is necessary. Without idealism, where would we be? Possibly a more peaceful and balanced place. But it wouldn’t be recognisably human.

I’m actually starting to significantly rethink Plato’s metaphysics (yeah, yeah, you can blame Jung for that). When applied to external reality, they’re pretty kooky I grant you. But as a map of the psyche they make an awful lot of sense.