Perfect Is The Enemy Of Good

Tish said:
It always amazed me when it came down to the Nuremberg trials how many of them used the excuse of just following orders
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Humans can be amazing and shocking , yes.
In the usa many soldiers have said the same thing "just following orders",
and many doctors and ceos/heads of phara companies/ have said that also - "just complying with /the rules/....." or "everything we did was "legal" " when many people died at their hands.

They call 'collateral damage' /people dying or getting lifetime sick/ GOOD

and accept that instead of PERFECT which would be "first of all do NO HARM" .
 

Thank you for posting this. I shared it with my middle grandson who has bi-polar disorder. We had just had a conversation about the pitfalls of trying to be perfect. I had to talk to him about that because he was very depressed over it, thinking he isn't following Islam perfectly or being perfect with other things in his life. I told him that humans will never be perfect or else we'd be gods (of course we only believe in one God), and that's why we ask forgiveness in every prayer. I let him know he is an awesome, worthy, brilliant young man who has a wonderful heart and is doing the best he can so shouldn't be so hard on himself. So the article was right on time!
 
As a child, my mother did not tolerate imperfection from me, nor my father. I was not raised to learn by the trial and error method, which is the normal way to learn. (Hence the lifelong pattern of verbal abuse: "What's wrong with you? Why can't you be like Susan? Can't you do anything right? You're just like your father.")

We can't color within the lines or cut perfect circles the first time we try. Expecting this defeats a person's will to try, so that we never learn to accept our failures and learn from our mistakes.
 

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We are all human and we all make mistakes. Perfect is pure BULL! It seems to me to be some form of human control. It's like that old bull about you giving 110% effort into your job. What crap. You can give only 100% not 110 or 130 or whatever. Some days your up; other days your down. Life is never perfect.
 
Packerjohn said:
We are all human and we all make mistakes. Perfect is pure BULL! It seems to me to be some form of human control. It's like that old bull about you giving 110% effort into your job. What crap. You can give only 100% not 110 or 130 or whatever. Some days your up; other days your down. Life is never perfect.
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Conundrum - the word "perrfect" may not be nor mean what it seems to ...

How many times did someone say "OH what a PERFECT baby ? "
Or "He's a PERFECT football player ? "
Or "They had a PERFECT strategy ? "
 
My mother and father were both perfectionists, and I found myself continually striving to be the same. As I've gotten older, I've realized that perfection is unattainable and we are who were are... warts and all.

IMO perfection is the enemy of good in that it causes people to be self-obsessed and limits what they can contribute to others. We should just try to be the best versions of ourselves.
 

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