Harrison Owen just finished his opening talk here at the Practice of Peace conference, and todays topic centered around “muddling through” – the idea that for 14 billion years the universe has moved towards higher and higher levels of complexity with no central planning involved. It’s not perfect, but it’s amazing that we’re around to complaing about how bad it all is.

And that got me thinking about something I’ve heard people saying previously, namely that “the good is the enemy of the perfect.” In other words, that accepting a good solution prevents you from finding the perfect solution. Frankly, that’s just not right. It’s the other way around: The search for the perfect solution often keeps us from achieving a good solution. Instead of perfection, we could go for perfectly allright.

Researching this on the net, I just discovered that Voltaire is with me on this one :o) Here’s to muddling through, 14 billion years of it so far.