The Search For Perfection

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I've seen - reached - perfection.

And then intentionally lost it to become better.

Reaching perfection, while possible, should never be the actual goal.

There's no goal other than the journey.

And sin is an important part of the journey. You can't be perfect if you've got no flaws.

 

When you're perfect yer supposed to have no flaws, in many people's views.

 

I did read your last post, I just thought as you seem to change your mind there I'd reply to your old thought incase your mind changed back

And there really isn't much difference between skill and personality. If you want to become a harder worker, you practice at it, just as you practice at learning to play an instrument. If you want to become a kinder person, once again, same process.

 

Perfection: Physical
Impossible without a huge quantity of bio-engineering. Anyone who's ever tried to play golf can tell you it's impossible to get a drive perfectly right all (or in my case any!) of the time. To be able to get total, utter, full co-ordination of all parts of the human body is hard enough for a single difficult activity, to be able to acheive it for of of them is not going to happen.

Perfection: Mental
Defining it as accumulation and use of knowledge, the storage capacity for an individual is simply not big enough, and not very likely to change. I suspect that given all of the knowledge you would end up like most governments and paralysed by the number of conflictive responses each action has.

Perfection: Emotional
Too subjective. You may appear to be perfect to somepeople, but to others you could appear to be a cold fish or a hot-headed loony.

Happiness with oneself should be the target.

 

1)Not many people are always right, not even most of the time. I think this way of defining perfection is flawed.

2)This is more like it, but evades the point made here over and over again. it can always be asked should one try to achieve 'perfect' happiness. Then check point 1.

3) I disagree. The search for a "real" anything is a neverending process meant to fail. Something's "realness" brings no additional value to anything, but tends to reduce the value of the things we have. This is the problem of the western, namely christian tradition of defining perfection.

Defining perfection as a static, but always elusive state of being does have some value however. But the downside is that the knowledge of this unattainability might and will bring some people down. It would be better to define perfection in some other, more dynamic way. Then individual perfections would be more achievable as well.

 

@:Iku-Turso: If you have a flaw in whatever way you wish to achieve as perfect then you aren't perfect. Also, I didn't mention that there are perfect people, in fact I don't believe anyone can become perfect no matter what their view of perfection is, only a selected few will be able to become 'perfect human beings'.

 

That depends entirely on how you see perfection. In Japanese aesthetics there's a principle called wabi-sabi, which can in my opinion be applied to people as well.

Wabi-sabi means roughly that something is perfect exactly because it's imperfect. Because that something doesn't meet the set standards it is possible for that something to be perfect. It puts into question the setting of certain standards, bringing out that the standards themselves are not, and can never be static, inanimate objects through which the world should be seen.

Everything flows, but there is always a balance to be found. This balance depends completely of the situation. Every situation, and everything in any situation can be perfect within the given situation, even people.

 

I thought Wasabi was some kind of Japanese horseradish?

 

He said Wabi-sabi not Wasabi

 

He. If I had anything to say in Japanese philosophy, then I'd make damn sure to give a proper name to an important principle.

 

Well Mu to you!

 

@Iku-Turso: That concept sounds a bit self-contradictory. If something is perfect because of being imperfect, then the premise is negated by the conclusion. It's a bit like a dynamic switch between conclusion and premise in the middle of the inference. This doesn't mean the concept is rubbish, but it shows it's quite metaphorical and probably intended as a certain kind of paradox.

Same way, you could say everyone's the king in democracy (democratic republic, at least) because there's no king. But hey, where did the no king premise go? And you could say everyone's the king and there's an emperor above them all, or even a high king, already in a monarchy.

 

Yes, it is self-cotradictory. Yes, it's intended as a paradox. But as far as I understand paradoxes in Zen-buddhism are meant to challenge the customary binary logic, instead of proving that something cannot exist because it leads to an impossible logical conclusion.

Wabi-sabi's meant to evoke certain kinds of feelings, especially longing. Perfection is elusive, since everything is constantly changing. Thus trying to achieve a fixed state of perfection in aesthetics, or in other pursuits of life is fooling oneself.

The problem of conventional western logic is that it's lacking when trying to describe dynamic situations. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but more "code" is required with binary logic, than with fuzzy logic, which is closer to zen-buddhist thinking than conventional western dialectics.

 

I thought Wabi-sabi ment to appreciate the imperfect in the same way you appreciate perfect or appreciate the uniqueness the flawed as well as the unflawed.

 

Maybe it's the appreciation of the unique what brings more understanding into what we think what's perfect?

But if we exclude the christian ideal of perfection, that is God, then we might find that many things that which we think is perfect is closer to unique than something fulfilling an ideal completely.

It's like Adam and Eve, as perfect they might seem, the snake in the paradise was still able to seduce them. Free will or not, it was a bad decision on their part, and cannot be considered as a perfect choice made by perfect people. This might mean that Adam & Eve were not perfect OR that a perfect human being is still flawed in some sense, but that this flaw does not mitigate the perfection in any way.

 

Now take a look at Jesus Christ, he was perfect and had free will. Yet, he still did all he did without sinning once.

 

1) Jesus wasn't a simple human. He's not a fair point of comparison.

2) Jesus had no free will (at least, not beyond stuff like "should I have my bread for lunch, or eat the cheese first?"). According to some of the gospels He knew from his youth that he was the Son of God, and therefore was destined for something more that an ordinary life.

 

He was born a human, completely. His 'powers' were given to him by god (unless if you think Jesus IS god, then things get complicated).

He did have free will, he could have become anyone he wanted just like us (except better at it). He CHOOSE to follow the path his father wanted him to follow, he didn't HAVE to. Of course, if you have different believes then why are we arguing?

 

Aha! I get to disagree with my twin.

As Eldular says, Jesus was born human. He did have free will. I doubt Satan would have tried to tempt him if he didn't have free will.

However it is my understanding that he did not have the taint of Adam which was why he could be our redeemer. That does make him, imo, different from us average imperfect humans. We are born imperfect but can strive to be perfect; he was born perfect but could have fallen into imperfect. I think.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be perfect just that it is difficult.

 

The assumption that Jesus also had eerie powers must have helped though.