Avery, Rebekah and Emily
The 4 Paradoxes
Paradox of Perfectionism
1.
Perfectionism must be grounded in optimism, it fosters pessimism
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Can be seen all through American history
Puritans: not only wanted a new form of government but an ideal
form
Social Reform & Utopian Experiments
Social problems became emergencies
Social progress encourages us to be obsessed with perfectionism,
which is unrealistic, making us always fall short of our goal
The 4 Paradoxes
2. Paradox of Proportion
Solving big problems makes formerly small problems seem larger
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Can be seen with fatal disease
100 years ago infectious disease was leading cause of death (influenza,
tuberculosis, measles, etc.)
Now these diseases are under control, our attention turns to other less
common (diabetes, breast cancer, etc.)
Formerly overshadowed by infectious diseases, these once thought of as
minor diseases consume all our attention
Can be seen with illiteracy as well
Social progress makes us obsess with problems that were never
thought of as major
The 4 Paradoxes
3. Paradox of Proliferation
Social progress encourages the recognition of a larger number of
problems
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Can be seen with television
Magazines
Internet
Social progress has allowed an increase in situations where people
can create and talk about social problems
The 4 Paradoxes
4. Paradox of Paranoia
Social progress fosters fears of social collapse
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Can be seen with education
Until recently, a child who didn’t do well is school and left to
work on a farm or in a factory
Today we fear leaving school early leads to poverty
We worry about “schools that fail to teach”
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Drinking water
Technology
We’ve raised our standards
Social progress has lead us to rely on large, intertwined systems of
institutions and we fear of institutional collapse
The REAL problem
 These paradoxes that Best points out hinders our
societies progress with the new problems that the
paradoxes present
 We must realize how far our society has come and to
appreciate it instead of creating new problems for
ourselves
Discussion Questions