Philosophy - Is perfection a myth?

[MechEng]

We all aspire to be perfect/invincible. A materialist would aspire to be the most powerful person in the world in both health and material desires.  A religious person would aspire to be the most ideal human being.

 

We have seen how the desire to be ideal/perfect has caused havoc, either one becomes a psychopath or a self loathing depressed human. Which is why I sometimes even doubt the existence of religious prophets like Buddha, Christ and etc. It's because their deeds are as such that they're too ideal to be considered a normal human being. I believe nature is flawed.

 

C'mon ICFers, use your grey cells and enlighten!

[zen]

To answer this we probably need to seperate aspiration and ability. Further, ability can be broken down in to a) current capability, and b) capability to acquire additional capabilities including persistence to fulfill your aspiration

 

Therefore, how close you get to your aspirations depends upon the factors above. If your aspirations > abilities, and you are also mentally not strong enough, you could end up in the terrible situation that you described 

 

The prophets that you mentioned, may be their aspirations (extremely high)  = their abilities (extremely high) 

 

Hope this helps you to find the answer

[Muloghonto]

Short answer: yes. 

Longer answer : There are many ways to define perfection. One of the most common way is 'when there is nothing left to add'. Because addition, by definition (linguistic, not mathematical) is a gain and if there is gain, it means the previous state (of whatever we just added to) has been improved. If something has been improved upon, it means it was not perfect to begin with.

With that definition in mind, perfection, in practice is an impossibility. 

[randomGuy]

I would say sorrow, pain, failure etc. are very essential to make us look within. And only when we look within, we can experience/attain a permanent state of bliss (as the enlightened souls say)  which is perfection I believe. So enlightened souls did attain (ultimate) perfection. It's just a point of view or a belief , so I can't prove it.

[dial_100]

I think more than anything a mind is mythical. Spiritually, a perfection is very much a possibility. It is a state of our being. It can only achieved be with our pure attention. Only a perfect attention can lead us to that ultimate goal. I doubt any religious person has that level of attention, i mean none, nobody.

What you consider a psychopath or a self-loathing depressed person is far from being perfect? How can they be perfect. Both are states of imbalances.