A perfect system is not static. it contains the capacity to make adjustments within itself in order to adapt to changes both internal and external. Nothing can ever achieve a state of perfection that will continue. In order to approach perfection there must always be change. Perfection in a system can be defined as the state of the greatest good for the greatest portion of the system. If it is a machine it is achieved when the greatest number of parts are at their peak efficiency as well as optimal synchronicity with all other parts. With people systems perfection is approached when all people feel needed, respected, and comfortable with their position and the system is functioning efficiently with the natural environment of which it is a part. Since, within the system, new ideas are constantly changing the way we live in and perceive our world, and the external natural forces are in constant flux and for the most part hard to predict with any exactitude, a people-based system must make constant efforts to predict changes and make adjustments to both predicted changes and surprises.

“What I am against—and without a minute’s hesitation or apology—is our slovenly willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to prescribe the terms and conditions of the lives of creatures, which we have allowed increasingly for the last two centuries, and are still allowing, at an incalculable cost to other creatures and to ourselves. If we state the problem that way, then we can see that the way to correct our error, and so deliver ourselves from our own destructiveness, is to quit using our technological capability as the reference point and standard of our economic life. We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.

It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle: An essay against modern superstition (2000)