Beauty, perfection & Tetris

„But just as you construct the perfect line, it disappears. All that remains is what you have failed to complete." - From Russia With Love

Perfection, success, effectiveness. The eternal lure of human development, the obsession of engineers of all kinds, the desire for symmetry and order from the arrangement of Lego tiles in childhood to the most beautiful musical pieces and mathematical equations, and even the synchronous movements of military units and ballet dancers. It is a desire that enables us to create, and also to destroy, almost anything in this world. Yet, it is never truly attained, neither by nature nor by man. Indeed, if DNA copying was perfect, evolution would never have taken place. Even crystals require a bit of dirt to get them started. And even the greatest ideas of social engineers tend to fail on practicalities and the few who cheat the system.

Would true perfection vanish into thin air, if it ever could emerge from the world of ideals to concrete reality, like a perfect line of tiles? Maybe its conspicuous and painful absence is explained by some hidden principle of the universe that does exactly that. If there is such a principle, can it ever be identified and examined, like electromagnetism or echolocation? It certainly calls for an attempt. Until then, all we have is the intuition of it crystallized into a game. A game that is a metaphor for life, the universe, and everything. All human effort and all natural phenomena are reflected in this simple system. As soon as you succeed, there is a new challenge, and all that you can see and remember is your mistakes. The alternation between complete, devastating futility and wild-eyed, hopeful excitement is the natural cycle of the human condition - depending on whether you have just completed a full line or made another gap in the wall. Peace of mind is unattainable. Indeed, it is just like real life.

Each of us is two parallel lines that are endlessly yearning to reach infinity, where they can finally meet. Our best moments are mirror images of our worst, and our aversions and desires betray a duality inherently incompatible with itself. Even in other people we fall in love with our own reflection, and rival our own qualities. We envy and admire what is missing from us, and belittle what we do possess. And this is the root of all inspiration. Creation and destruction are not opposites, but parts of each other, like in the yin-yang symbol.

Whatever is beautiful is a close approximation of perfection. From crystals and fractals to a lioness´ lethal bite and Reinhard Heydrich, beauty carries within a tantalizing element. Tantalizing, because non-transferable, non-reproducible, unique and self-contained. Kant said, „beauty is what pleases without catering to an interest", and that was a rare event when he was right - there is no instinctive imperative in seeking out beauty, and still we do it. In beauty, we perceive the hope that there is a possibility of perfection, which could free us from the struggle for existence, elevate us above temporariness and powerlessness - the promise of Heaven. But it also makes us aware of how far we are from it in reality - the nightmare of Hell. And even beautiful things die - so that new ones can come forth from their remains.