Sir Thomas More was not the first person, nor the last, to disagree with King Henry VIII.   His last serious conflict, refusing to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England in 1533, was interpreted by Henry as a snub against Anne.   From this episode, More's enemies organized efforts to arrest him on charges of treason, ending two years later with his beheading. Surely, a tragic ending for the former Member of Parliament; a statesman, lawyer, and author; who, nineteen years earlier, described the fictional island republic of Utopia.   Common explanations suggest that this landmass in the Atlantic Ocean represented a perfected society, one ultimately unreachable. Five hundred years later, visions of Utopia live on in our imaginations.   But, what can be said of the enduring concept of perfection?

 

Aside from the use of perfect to imply "Exactly what I am looking for!," perhaps after a long search, use of perfect implies an unsurpassable endpoint.   That is, in terms of a product or a service, from a smartphone to a car, there will never be a better one. While one might acknowledge the use of "perfect" to respond to questions such as "Is this what you are looking for?," what can be said of the use of perfect in the context of an ultimate achievement, perhaps characterized by "The Pursuit of Perfection."

 

If such a form of perfection does exist, consider the contrast it creates with Dick Steele's Pre-Conference session, "a Rational Approach to Making Something Better and Better and Better and..."  Yet, in some communities, there remains the curious logic that "continuous improvement is a journey" and "perfection is a very distant goal," well in keeping with Thomas More's Utopia.   A distant goal, agreed, but perhaps a point of stoppage that conflicts with the concept of continuous, quite often defined as "happening or continuing without break or interruption."