Examples Of Perfection In Flatland

Expect Perfection in Flatland The first idea I would like to discuss from the book Flatland, is the idea that irregular shapes are either imprisoned, sent to therapy to be “fixed”, or destroyed at birth. This caused me to think of the many times humanity has mistreated or even tried to exterminate people who have handicaps or are born with irregularities. The hot topic of abortion also comes to mind, as many women decide to take the life of their unborn child because a doctor told them the child could be born irregular or have mental disabilities. I found a direct correlation of this disturbing practice on page 25 of Flatland, “An infant whose angle deviates by half a degree from the correct angularity is summarily destroyed at birth.” Flatland

In Flatland, women are straight lines and it is not possible for them to be bent or even have irregularities. They are born perfect, although not necessarily valued or respected in society. In society today, women are expected to be perfect and they are surprisingly not. When a woman has a aspect of her body that she deems less then perfect, she simply goes to the local plastic surgeon and “fixes” it for a couple hundred dollars. Social media has fed into this idea that perfection is the standard for beauty and anything less than that is deemed ugly. Women and men are photoshopped and people on social media post photos that portray their lives as anything less than perfect. This has caused men (and women) to assume that women look like the photoshopped models in their social media feed and they are disappointed when women in real life do not meet this impossible standard. Furthermore, people become envious when they see how fun or exciting other people’s “perfect” lives look on social media. They feel if they are not living a life full of parties, exciting adventures, and sex, then they are missing out on living the perfect life. These people feel like they are not worth anything because compared to everyone else’s perfect social media life, their life is not worth living. As in the Flatland society, perfection is valued and

In Flatland, shapes who have ideas about the origin of light, other dimensions, and anything that the circle priests deem to be radical ideas, are imprisoned in asylums and sometimes silenced forever by execution. Although this sounds like a very corrupt Communist society, I have decided not to discuss the political aspect of this idea. Furthermore, insane asylums treated the insane in cruel and unusual ways in the 1800s. Insane patients were deemed unfit for society and put in asylums where they were experimented on and tortured. Just like the society in Flatland, people who are deemed irregular or that deviate from society’s normal are ostracized and mistreated. I personally think that it is dangerous to give society so much power that it constitutes what is normal and then to the extreme, it constitutes what is