How Do You Define A Perfect Person?

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That's like saying believing you are sane makes you crazy and believing you are crazy makes you sane. I'm afraid it doesn't work.
All you are doing is complimenting yourself on your bad judgment.

Actually Sand, it could be argued that sometimes the whole world is gone crazy and we're the only "sane" people ^^; (but all in all, i'm just joking around). In the same vein that we are labeled as Asperger's and thus not quite sane (or that whole debate again with NTs and AS <.< which i won't get into).

And to somewhat resume what has been attempted to be said above, a perfect person would, through introspection, be aware of his/her flaws and therefore admit to his/her imperfection (or the impracticability of calling him/herself perfect). That's what i gathered though.

Quoting Sand:

How do you know if you haven't tried it? It worked for John Nash.

Scenario:
1. A person goes to a psychiatrist believing she is quite sane. The psychiatrist tells her she is crazy. She leaves believing she is crazy and acts accordingly, living an insane life and making insane decisions.
2. A person goes to a psychiatrist believing she is crazy. The psychiatrist tells her she is quite sane. She leaves believing she is sane and acts according, living a sane life, making sane decisions.

A sane person who believes he is crazy, is crazier than a crazy person who believes he is sane. The belief in one's sanity is a superior and positive belief that can only originate in the mental state of sanity. The belief in ones insanity is an inferior and negative belief that can only originate in the mental state of insanity. If you are sane, your thoughts and beliefs will be sane. If you are insane, your thoughts and beliefs will be insane. If you are sane, you will not believe you are insane. If you are sane it would be impossible to be insane at the same time. If you are insane it would be impossible to be sane at the same time.

I am sane

Someone who realizes that he or she is not perfect uses change to become a self actualized person. That is about as perfect as you're going to get.

Quoting Magnus:

Yes. Charles Dickens gave us a very good example of this in "A Christmas Carol" with his character of Ebeneezer Scrooge. His past was revealed to him and also his future if he did not change his evil ways. His actualization made him (his Self/character/personality/consciousness) fully evolved and present in the present.

I get lost in all of that, but I say the only one who is truly insane is the one who knows not that he is.

Either way, however, I never got locked up for being crazy, just only for acting that way.

Quoting LeeJosepho:

Well, as far as I know, there is no law against being crazy. They can't lock you up for being crazy as long as you don't break any laws while in that state. But a good rule of thumb would be to always act sane, especially when you're out and about, because there are some people in this world who love to set you up just because you walk funny or your ears are too big, or you have a uni-brow.

The spirits told me to shut my mouth!

Quoting Magnus:

Spoken like a true Californian.

If a person realizes he or she is not perfect, that would only indicate a consciousness of imperfection. It does nothing to alleviate the imperfection. If I understand I have a bad heart, that does not cure my bad heart. If I realize I have bad judgment that does not make me a good judge of my condition nor does it indicate I have any conception of how to cure my mental deficiencies. Tricky language may be poetic but it can still be imbecilic.

Quoting Sand

There is no legitimate need to alleviate imperfection. If we ask ourselves “Why do we want to be perfect?” and then give serious thought to all possible answers, we will see that our reasons for wanting to be perfect amount to nothing more than shallow, self-serving strategies for becoming “the best” or “better than” all of those lesser beings around us. The best we can do is the best we can do without beating our brains to a pulp in a senseless drive for a perfection that can never exist until we stop striving for it. We will never know when and if we reach that state of perfection because believing that we have reached it means that we have not.

No human is perfect. No human is infallible. To strive for perfection is useless. Realization of the true condition of imperfection transforms the imperfection into perfection. Any human who believes he or she is perfect is in denial of his or her true human condition of fallibility and imperfection. When you accept that you are not perfect and will never be perfect no matter how hard you try, you accept your natural human state and striving for perfection ends. To be without striving to be gives you the freedom to exist fully and perfectly in the present. While humans can have brief periods or episodes of being fully existent in the present, maintaining that state of consciousness for more than a few hours or days is rare. If you ask anyone who has achieved a permanent state of perfection if they are perfect, they will probably laugh and certainly say “No.”

I agree with you to a certain extent. Your heart is organic, tangible, matter. It will take more than understanding your heart’s condition to cure it. A good first step would be to stop thinking of your heart as “bad”. From there you would do everything in your physical and mental power to bring about a change for the better and possibly, hopefully a cure. Your frame of mind would be very important for your heart's recovery and you would have to guard against depression because bodies heal best under the direction of a healthy and positive mind.


How could you know you have bad judgment if you have bad judgment? You could only know you have bad judgment if you have good judgment and if you have good judgment you don’t have bad judgment and would therefore be able to conceive of a way to bring about a change for the better in your mental functioning. If you like a certain painting in the museum, would you consider your attraction to that painting to be bad judgment and say “Although I am drawn to that painting my judgment is bad so I won’t allow myself to enjoy it or to hang a copy of it in my home.” That would be self-deprivation and self-denial.

Many people would agree with you. I don’t think my language is tricky at all. Nor imbecilic. It all makes very good sense to me, as I’m sure yours does to you. If you think my language is poetic, that’s nice. I didn’t intend for it to be.

Have a good evening, or morning, or afternoon, depending on where you are. It's almost midnight here.

Cosmiccat quote: When you stop trying to be perfect, that is, when you realize that you are not perfect and that it is impossible for you to be perfect, you become, in that moment, perfect.

If you cannot realize the idiocy of that statement I cannot comment further.

You definitely have a point... I guess I'd say how successful they "appear". Intellectually, socially, and work-wise, to name a few. I've been proven completely wrong from judging people in this case on multiple occasions though. Like when I found out a girl I envied was bulimic. Furthermore, it bothered me that she was ashamed to get help for this. Everyone has their flaws, no matter how well they're able to conceal them.

Accepting your flaws and trying to improve upon them is better than appearing to be "perfect" in the eyes of society, in my opinion.

And perhaps a flaw as judged by society is a positive thing from a personal point of view.

I don't see or realize any idiocy of my statement, but I understand that you might, or to be more accurate, that you do - and that's okay with me, I respect your opinion and don't take it personal. The people I have quoted below are saying essentially the same thing, and I suppose many people could and have ascribed idiocy to their statements as well.

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in."
~Leonard Cohen

"The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye." ~Winston Churchill

"It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite." Soren Kierkegaard

"It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox." S.K.

Have a nice day, everyone.

True! How we view ourselves vs. how we perceive society to view us is entirely subjective. Furthermore, should it really make a difference?