Discussing Perfection (the norm)

As I was reading through the previous blog I became acutely aware of the difficulty of discussing perfection (the norm) and why discussions of deviations from perfection seem to be more exotic than discussions of perfection.

Systems knowledge is perfection (the norm). It describes life as it was before humans introduced toxic variation into the system. But our research methodologies are designed to explore variations from the norm.

Think of the norm as being represented by the period at the end of this bolded sentence of twenty words.

The limitations of the norm are obvious. Its boundaries are clearly defined by the boundaries of the period. But the flip side of the norm has no limitations. None of the twenty words in our sentence represents the norm but each is a flip-side of the norm, because each uses the norm as its reference point. One word from the period. Three words from the period. But none is the period. Consequently, by discussing each of them we are indirectly discussing the norm, without ever understanding the norm fully. Since a discussion of part of the flip side of the norm indirectly addresses the components of the norm the same is true of a discussion of the differences between two parts of the flip side of the norm. It makes complete sense yet it is completely confusing.