"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." ("The best is the enemy of the good.") -- Voltaire

I don't like purism. I don't like being told that my culture, my language, or my life have to achieve complete symbolic perfection, especially not in the eyes of somebody else. I believe very strongly that there's a point where you have to stop and say, "This is enough progress for today. If we push any harder, something's going to give."

This ties in very strongly with my interest in the Buddhist concept of the "upaya"—translated very loosely, "the expedient device." The concept originated as a way for Mahayana Buddhists to answer the question, "If all this new stuff you're adding is part of the dharma... why didn't the Buddha say it in the first place?"

The answer, speaking very generally, was "because there was absolutely no way you would have taken him seriously, because he had to lay the foundational work and let you absorb it for a while."

The Lotus Sutra contains a story about a prince whose home catches fire with his young children inside. When he told his children "There's a fire!" they had no concept of why that was dangerous. When he told them "You must come out at once," they defied him just to be contrary, as children do.

So he told them to come out immediately, because he bought them all their favorite toys and they were waiting outside. He didn't try to explain fire to them. He didn't threaten them. He didn't insist. He certainly didn't sit there pondering whether "I've got toys for you" would create long-term social problems, because the term "toy" implies an ageist, anti-toddler dialectical blah blah blah. And he didn't really lie to them... because not dying, you must admit, is a *fine* gift.

The application of all this to today's discourse is left as an exercise for the clever initiate. Hail Eris.