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The enemy of the good   The Perfection Trap. By Thomas Curran.
优秀之敌  完美的陷阱。作者：托马斯·柯伦

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birth-Mark", a chemist called Aylmer marries a young woman, Georgiana, whose sole imperfection is a red blemish on her left cheek. He considers it a "fatal flaw"; she pleads with him to use his skills to remove it. Stumbling on his journal, however, Georgiana is astonished to find it is a catalogue of scientific mishaps.
在纳撒尼尔·霍桑的短篇小说《胎记》中，一位名叫艾尔默的化学家娶了一位名叫乔治亚娜的年轻女子为妻。她唯一的缺陷是左脸颊上的一个红色斑点。他认为这是一个“致命的缺陷”；她恳求他用他的化学技术把它去除。然而，乔治亚娜无意中发现了他的日记，惊讶地发现这是一本科学事故的目录。

Might his loathing of her birthmark stem from his professional disappointment? At length Aylmer concocts a potion that has the desired effect-and promptly kills her. Hawthorne's 180-year-old tale illustrates the perils of perfectionism. It is Thomas Curran's starting-point for a study of what he calls a "hidden epidemic". He thinks the obsessive pursuit of ever higher standards, rather than propelling achievement, is mainly a scourge.
他对她胎记的厌恶可能源于他对工作的失望吗？最后，艾尔默配制出了一种药水，达到了预期的（去斑）效果——但也迅速使她丧命。霍桑180年的故事说明了完美主义的危险。这是托马斯·柯伦研究他所谓的“隐性流行病”的起点。他认为，对更高标准的执着追求，与其说是成就的推动力，不如说是一种祸害。

A social psychologist at the London School of Economics, he describes himself as "a recovering perfectionist". Drawing on both academic research and his own experiences of "deficit thinking", he makes a vigorous case, albeit one occasionally marked by cliché (he sees his younger self as a "chin-stroking, cardigan-wearing intellectual").
作为伦敦政治经济学院的社会心理学家，他（托马斯·柯伦）形容自己是“一个正在康复的完美主义者”。他利用学术研究和他自己的“赤字思维”经验，提出了一个有力的论据，尽管偶尔会带有陈词滥调的痕迹（他认为年轻的自己是一个“摸着下巴，穿着开衫的知识分子”）。

Mr Curran distinguishes between three sorts of perfectionism. The first, which looks inward, is the relentless self-scolding of the workaholic or punctilious student. A second version, directed towards others, is commonly found in bosses who have unrealistic expectations of their staff and decry their supposed failings (he cites Steve Jobs as an example). The third and most troublesome kind is the form imputed to society: "an all-encompassing belief that everybody, at all times, expects us to be perfect". Its victims tend to feel lonely; often they harm themselves and harbour thoughts of suicide.
柯伦将完美主义分为三种类型。第一种是向内看，是工作狂或一丝不苟的学生无休止的自我责备。第二种是针对他人的，通常出现在那些对员工抱有不切实际的期望，或谴责他们所谓的失败的老板身上（他以史蒂夫•乔布斯为例）。第三种，也是最麻烦的一种，是归咎于社会的形式:“一种无所不包的信念，认为每个人在任何时候都希望我们完美”。它的受害者往往感到孤独;他们经常伤害自己，并怀有自杀的念头。

Having noted the ways in which this pathology inflames vulnerabilities and erodes resilience, Mr Curran suggests some causes. These include a lack of job security, neurotic supervision by helicopter parents and the gaudy blandishments of advertising, which fuel consumption and anxiety. "The very fabric of this economy", he claims, "is woven from our discontent." Inevitably he blames social media, which inundate users with images of finely sculpted bodies, flawless outfits, ambrosial holidays and exquisite weddings.
在注意到这种病态想法会加剧脆弱性、侵蚀韧性后，柯伦提出了一些原因。这些因素包括缺乏工作保障，过度保护孩子的父母神经质的监督，以及广告的花言巧语，这些都助长了消费和焦虑。他声称:“这个经济体的结构是由我们的不满编织而成的。”他不可避免地把责任推给了社交媒体，因为社交媒体充斥着各种各样的照片，比如完美的身材、完美的服装、美妙的假期和精致的婚礼。

A less familiar culprit is Don Hamachek, an American psychologist, who in the 1970s coined the term "normal perfectionism", thereby legitimising morbid self-criticism, says Mr Curran. He even reproaches Barack Obama for enjoining young people to learn from their mistakes. Instead, he says, failures should be "allowed to simply wash through us as a joyous reminder of what it means to be a fallible human".
柯伦说，一个不太为人所知的问题起因是美国心理学家唐•哈马切克，他在20世纪70年代创造了“正常完美主义”一词，从而使病态的自我批评正当化。他甚至指责奥巴马嘱咐年轻人从错误中吸取教训。相反，他说，应该“允许失败冲刷我们的心灵，让我们欣喜地意识到，作为一个容易犯错的人意味着什么”。

The author's greatest odium, though, is directed at meritocracy. In this he draws on the thinking of Michael Sandel, a philosopher at Harvard. Especially in "The Tyranny of Merit" (published in 2020), Professor Sandel has argued that using education as a giant sorting machine creates a toxic obsession with credentials, dividing society into winners and losers and depleting the common good.

Like other critics of meritocracy, Mr Curran has a point-until you consider the alternatives.  Daily life, in his view, now resembles an endless tribunal. Young people suffer most from the constant scrutiny of scores and rankings. Decrying a fixation on economic growth, he applauds countries, such as Bhutan and New Zealand, where decision-makers take account of citizens' happiness. Mr Curran's preferred fix is a universal basic income, which he says would "extinguish the fire of perfectionism".

Whatever its  economic merits, his argument errs in treating perfectionism as a purely cultural phenomenon. Might it not also be a disposition embedded in the psyche? Tellingly, his guidance-"Keep going. Do not yield"; "Keep practising that acceptance of fortune and fate"-is couched in the language of the perfectionist's round-the-clock report card.

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