“Realize, then, that in this vice there is a poison which not only chokes the first seeds of virtue, but even destroys those already formed. What the worm does in wood, sloth effects in the spiritual life. It is used very successfully by the devil to draw men into snares, particularly those who seek perfection.”
It’s important to note that perfectionism is one of the smaller clans of viruses within the greater tribe of Sloth’s demons. The virus named “Perfectionism” corrupts our individual CPU by doing two things, it allows a person to do nothing and provides excuses to do nothing. Further, the virus of Perfectionism encourages doing ever less. “We cannot do _______ until we are sure that it will cause no harm.” Eventually, we see that the _______ is expanded at every opportunity so as to include every single human activity except dying, which is sold as the surest way to avoid error.
Each and every human activity is attacked by Perfectionism until the society paralyzed by it is destroyed by those with a little more ambition. “They are barbarians!” say the Perfectionists, waiting their inevitable opportunities to infect and destroy the new wave of people who like to get things done.
