/lit/ - Literature

I like scrabble. It's one of my favorite games, because I'm very good at it. Where every other form of thinking feels like swimming upstream, putting letters into words feels natural and innate. All other forms of abstraction and logical connection are a struggle against my natural abilities, but arranging letters into words is perfectly simple. Playing scrabble is like cool water.

But I couldn't compete in a scrabble tournament. I wouldn't get close to the top. Success in competitive scrabble depends not on finding long word patterns in difficult situations, but in memorizing short ones, in thinking geometrically about the board, in sacrificing creativity for speed. The most optimized scrabble play is an entirely different game from the thing I'm good at. It wouldn't even be fun.

It's like this with everything. Optimization kills the nature of the thing being optimized. But greatness is the goal, isn't it? Aristotle says that the singular objective in nature is perfection of potential. So why does the objective of perfection seem tamp down the soul in everything? It would be perfect to feed all the hungry people, but the optimization of food production kills the soul of living off the land. We want perfect communication and connection among humans, but the optimization of that connection has been the downfall of human unity. As we create more perfect products– unblemished cups without sign of man-manufacture, long uncrumpled sheets of aluminum, identically-machined silicone chips – are we leaving anything of value behind?

Sometimes I think it's just me, that there's something in my nature that gravitates toward mediocrity, that there is a fineness of soul out there that could bear the brunt of perfection and not be burnt by it. But then what will we do when all the perfection created by that soil is hoisted onto people not strong enough to bear it?

What can I read that talks about this? And maybe doesn't using fucking scrabble as the entry point? How can I find a perfection to stumble towards, without fearing a great flattening as I reach the end?