h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

yeah, well, evolution was aleways held to be a slow way of attaining perfection.

Ask any bowl of petunias or innocent sperm whale.....

I've got it! Evolution reaches for perfection, and given a couple million years it might reach it.. Could it be that the dinosaurs achieved a very close to near perfection, and instead of disapearing they just kinda died? I think so. This could also go on to explain the breaking up of the Beatles.

This poses an interesting question... does this mean the goal of the human race is not to achieve perfection, but to avoid it at all costs?
But then... what happens when we become perfectly imperfect?!?
Uh-oh!

Yes, this phenomena worried greatly about seven years ago. You see I spent most of my childhood and teens being overweight but then something 'clicked' and suddenly I started to train and diet and after a few months my mind was focussed and I was in great shape - in fact, I was almost 'perfect'. This frightened me since I could almost feel the fabric of reality stretching beneath my feet. I had to do something or else I might go the same way as that obviously 'perfect' racehorse, Shergar. Anyway, I'm pleased to say that, after years of hard eating and concentrated inactivity, I've managed to convert all my muscle back into fat.

Evolution has no interest or stake in "perfection", merely survival. The same mechanism is at work in Petunias and Sperm Whales as in Motorcars and Politics. Any organism, system, object, or event will, once it has found or produced a comfortably fitting bum-rut in the Lazyboy of life, tend to occupy it until displaced either by another organism, system, object, or event; or catastrophic failure of the proverbial Lazyboy. This has nothing to do with perfection (Consider the evolution of Television programming). It is merely a cosmic shifting of emphasis.

I disagree with the T.V.s evolution. There's a much greater variety of amazingly boring sit-coms then there was 50 years ago.

That's my point Ms Moocow: evolution doesn't necessarily (and in this case doesn't emphatically!) result in what, from a human perspective, one would describe as improvement; merely a more precise alignment with the cosmos; or, to put it another way, a more comfortable fit in the "bum-rut". What there is more of now, in TV land, is not better, in the sense that it is better crafted, more inspiring or intelligent; but a proliferation of low brow garbage aimed at the lowest common denominator of human viewers. Which proves my point: evolution only "improves" (i.e. leads towards perfection) in the sense that gravity "improves" the fit of hot tea in a chipped mug. Regard how quickly the occassional rare gem (a neon peacock) is bumped to an obscure time-slot, there to face extinction. While it's former habitat is over-run by rats and starlings (Running-man shows, "celebrity" chat shows, Acne medicine Tit-coms, etc...)

Comrade, I'll give you the neon peacock, but humans are in less of a rut then before. With knowledge comes the need to move, change things, become more politicly correct then the Swedes. The need to spread info more quickly (see the internets success) has changed all humans. "LETS GO CLEAN THE PARK! Save the veal. See how the people are being treated in Bosnia!" We, as a culture, have been forced to face the fact (as you can tell, I'm American) America/England/Sweden isnt a perfect place.
You have to admit there wasnt as much of this as there was in the 1700's. Education, I think, has had a part in this.
In small waves people are getting out of their chairs, and doing something to improve the world (at least in their own heads). With the middle evening of Newcasts, people sitting in their own dents are feeling slightly, or so I hope, guilty about it.
And then theres the thing about humans having 6 fingers, but I wont get into that. Wow I sound corny and optimistic.
Super viruses evolve into something better, for them at least.

Perfection is only a mirror for the human unconscious to raise itself above mediocrity. What seemed perfect today becomes imperfect tommorow, as our tastes are always changing and hopefully reinventing themselves. However, it is frightening how so many TV shows can enduce such mindlessness, that people stop caring about what is trully worthwile in everyday existence, as the grasp of reality slips away. Perfection is in essence shapeless, but is required to turn thought into action, whatever the imperfect results.

Perfection, everyone, will not be achieved until the day comes when the Universe reaches its full expansion and explodes, probably because it is too froody and perfect to bear itself. Then there will be a Big Bang again immediately once the late Universe has gone boom and the search or strive for perfectionism will begin all over again...

Comrade Moo, it's hard to argue with such persuasive optimism. I confess I tend to fixate on the negative sometimes. It's interesting that you include park cleaning as an example of forward thinking human behaviour. As a gardener, I spend a lot of time picking up after the humans who have not yet made the moral grade. In my line of work I meet many very interesting people; but I am also witness to some stupendous boorishness. It's sometimes hard to believe that the bullk of humanity has advanced anywhere, when you have just knocked yourself out producing a horticultural gem and then see some clod trample through it.

"I think you mean the pluperfect subjunctive, boy", as my old English teacher used to say. Don't ask me why.

I was referringto Vanye of 4 days ago ("perfectly imperfect") but because this site cannot be perfect, the makers obviously realising that they have to leave a flaw because only God can achieve perfection, replying to the button below the entry doesn't necessarily place you near that entry. It would have made sense then and been funny, which is more than my old English teacher was. The same man taught SNP leader Alex Salmond, so what does that tell us about pluperfection?

Dinsdale ? Dinnnnsdaaale? Thank god for that! I thought I'd been cleft by Conan the Grammarian.

Who's he? Oh, and does anyone grow petunias? They could be a valuable source of reference - ask any petunia!

Dinsdale Piranha, brother of Doug, is a Monty Python extortionist and racketeer, who lives in dread of a giant hedgehog named Spiny Norman (see above).

...and, yes, I have been known to grow the odd Petunia. Which, in keeping with the topic, has, in it's quest for perfection, produced thousands of wonderful variations from two original species.

Have you asked your petunia its views on evolution? It may have some valuable information to add...

Absolutely. Things which evolve do so only because something stoppped them being the same as ever. Evolution can be unified as a message to do something linked with the message to reproduce that message. Evolution then quite naturally applies to DNA, belief systems (spiritual and "scientific")(change the position of the inverted commas if you like.), musical phrases, jokes and stories.

The thought that Yoko Ono is a catylist for perfection disturbes me. Anyone else agree?