Original link: https://yufree.cn/cn/2023/07/28/perfectionism/
“Saint Seiya” or “Goddess Saint Seiya” was the catalyst for my generation’s first contact with the concept of constellations. In the Golden Twelve Weeks chapter, Virgo Shaka is the existence closest to God, and children seem to be the strongest representatives. Afterwards, I learned about the zodiac theory from various sources. At this time, I found out that Virgo is a perfectionist. At that time, I thought that although I was not the strongest zodiac sign on my birthday, I could learn perfectionism. This is the logic of a child, and there is no logic at all.
It should be said that it is not difficult to maintain perfectionism in the difficulty of the coursework in elementary school. Double hundred in Chinese and Mathematics is enough, but when you enter middle school, you find that it is impossible to maintain a perfect score, especially when there are competition questions. , Even if you memorize the answer, there is still nothing wrong with that kind of bone-surprising question. At this time, the spiritual Virgo can no longer maintain it, and it is still resigned to fate.
Later, when the Internet became popular, psychological test questions were overwhelming at that time. Compared with the entertainment-oriented constellation theory, the scale seemed more reliable. At this time, I realized that perfectionism is not compatible with practice in most situations, and I also know that Virgo has nothing to do with the strongest constellation. Without this layer of childhood filter, looking at perfectionism again, I feel that there are more cases of fault-finding and useless work. However, this is a personality, and there is nothing to criticize.
In the digital age, perfectionism has been revived. The biggest contribution here is the Internet, and its specific performance is information optimization. In the pre-Internet era, the foundation of knowledge inheritance was trust. What the teacher said or what the book said was correct, and it was difficult for you to see completely conflicting views. At this time, there was no need for optimization. But the foundation of Internet knowledge inheritance is suspicion. After an anonymous person puts forward a point of view on the Internet, others can use information retrieval to check and refute the facts, looking for that “objective” judgment, which is essentially a continuation of perfectionism.
Originally, this revival of perfectionism could be regarded as an enlightenment movement, but the popularity of recommendation algorithms later almost locked Internet users in their comfort zone to listen to the echo. In fact, there have always been a small number of people who are able to realize and actively break through their own cognitive limitations, and not many people like to compete with themselves. At this time, the side effect of perfectionism came. Many people who were willing to accept different opinions gradually formed their own knowledge structure. In order to maintain the perfection and logical self-consistency of their own knowledge structure, they would ignore or label all subsequent doubts. Traditional shielding, labeling dissidents with various symbolic and abstract doctrines or factions, denying the complexity of real problems.
Another accompanying side effect is the strengthening of the logic of the system, and I like to use qualitative logic to forcefully explain everything. The most obvious case where I feel this side effect is the Malaysia Airlines 370 incident. At that time, I could not understand why a plane would disappear out of thin air in the era of highly developed information technology. For this reason, I checked the information on the Internet every day and read countless Conspiracy theory, but none of them can convince themselves not to get entangled in this matter. My brain wants qualitative life-or-death conclusions, not magnitudes of likelihood. Because of Malaysia Airlines 370, I actually couldn’t sleep for several days, and I didn’t know any of the passengers, but I just couldn’t figure out why it disappeared out of thin air. So how is this entanglement resolved? The answer is very simple, without resolution, I still can’t figure it out to this day, and still don’t have a satisfactory answer. The only difference from me back then is that at that time I just felt that this problem could not be solved. Now I have so many confused accounts in my mind that I can’t solve them.
Similar to it are those digital belief groups who like to record their own data with various sensors, firmly believe that these data hide the secrets of their own health, and especially like to catch up with various healthy diet trends, eating organic vegetables dipped in olive oil , dance aerobics, drink wolfberry and so on. All actions of this type of people have a clear purpose and can give supporting evidence, but they only see the simple value judgment of good or bad, and do not want to discuss the details with you, because the details are actually entrusted to you. Without authority and experts, they don’t know.
This is essentially an optimization of oneself. In this era, you can find supporting evidence for any point of view, and you can optimize it accordingly. What is more special is that the benchmarking in this optimization process is often the highest level in the industry. In many cases, it is simply impossible to understand what is good, but it is still simple to believe that this is good. This is especially true for highly educated people. In order to find a sense of superiority in various senses, they usually form some unreasonable expectations. Once they have seen a good look, they will never go back. And the vast majority of people can’t reach that highest level, so they will always live in the pursuit of fulfilling life goals.
This kind of person is easy to identify, just ask about their attitude towards the spirit of craftsman. People who hold the belief of perfectionism will dedicate themselves to a certain goal, whether it is a career or a family, and their whole life is the ultimate pursuit of a certain goal. There is a special species here, the extreme realists. They are not obsessed with specific goals, but they will turn all goals into considerations for their own interests. In essence, they are a kind of extreme selfishness. They want to control everything for their own use. Such people are easy to succeed, but not easy to be friends with. This kind of obsession is not much different from what I thought I was a spiritual Virgo back then. It is easy to get out of touch with reality, generate a strange view of matching and desire to win, and will be trapped by some abstract problems.
In fact, I have such a stage in my growth experience. Of course, getting out of this stage is not only based on realistic feedback, but more because I realize that I can question my three views. According to my observation, the vast majority of perfectionists or people who are obsessed with something must ensure that they have specific goals to optimize their survival. Even if this optimization is metaphysics, they hardly question their obsessions. If the obsession falls or the goal reaches the meaning of their existence, they will suddenly disappear and be at a loss, and they will definitely set up new goals. When you communicate with such people, you will find that their behavior logic and purpose are particularly clear, and even unconsciously guide you to live according to the “optimized” life planned by them. Naturally, the optimal thing does not need to be questioned. But I fundamentally do not recognize the existence of the best that can be touched, so I don’t have a sense of awe for many beliefs and viewpoints. This is probably the main reason why I cannot be a perfectionist.
In addition, in fact, I have tried to form a concise cognitive system, which does not expect to have no unsolved mysteries, but at least I can sort out clear ideas when thinking about problems. In a sense, this system has been established and exists, but almost all the ends of the system are unsolved mysteries, and many are still intertwined. I can sort out a story from perspective A, and I can sort out a story from perspective B. A story that is equally plausible but has completely opposite values from A. When communicating with others, you can actually simulate the other party’s thinking to deal with it, but this does not mean that you can solve specific problems. Many ideas have no end, only a cloud of unknowns and new problems. In other words, perfectionism seems to me to be a false proposition. There is only logical self-consistency in the world but no complete self-consistency in reality. The existing problems are just to give yourself a signal to stop thinking about the problem and stop entanglement.
But I can also feel their obsessions from communicating with perfectionists, such as family happiness, career stability, and excellent grades. world. I don’t know whether it’s luck or misfortune. I have experienced the chaos of the research world since I started doing research. This is the cemetery of perfectionists. No matter how good your previous resume is and how strong your ability is, if the project is not established, you can’t do anything. Come out, this sense of loss of control and frustration is normal, so scientific research is also called trial and error. Of course, even in the field of scientific research, there are loopholes for perfectionists. They can avoid failure through permutations and combinations, and continue to feed their desire to control their lives.
In fact, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a different way of living. I will laugh at the perfectionists for their inability to think, and I will accept their accusation that my thinking has no upper and lower limits. I just want to have fun. Orderly communication with people is very important, but more importantly, communication with myself. Questioning in an unrestricted mind may be an opportunity for people to truly grow. After all, perfectionists will be entangled whether Liujing is annotating me or I am annotating Liujing, and I may ask:
What is your Six Classics?
This article is transferred from: https://yufree.cn/cn/2023/07/28/perfectionism/
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.