Why is the idea of an ‘ideal man’ so self-destructive? You ain’t him, so you will in due course either reject your ideal or you will affect to be him in your behavior.That’s anegoism – selflessness – either way.The man you want to be is the man you have always wanted to be. Be that man –be yourself, but better. Be yourself better now.
What’s perfectionismism? A passive-aggressive Inverse-Tiger-Momism-by-Proxy: We don’t want to be perfect – nor even simply better, for that matter – we just want to rhapsodize perfection in anyone else, especially anyone other than our own loved ones.
Anything they do is to be held up to the ideal – and is always to be found wanting: Either ‘truthfully,’ with an ‘honest’ comparison of tree-houses to skyscrapers, or in the form of treacly lies that cheat all ambition with counterfeit praise.
Want to know what’s worse? The ‘elite’ don’t believe in themselves, either. They live in terror of being compared to something they cannot themselves attain. They live in a binary world – where !1 = 0, and if you’re not Dutch, you’re not much – so if you’re not the ideal, per your own insane perfectionismism, you’re nothing.
“What would Jesus do?” Heads up, kiddos. He’d hang from a cross. Why aren’t you doing that? You ain’t him – and we’re all of us lucky for that.
“What would Mohammed do?” Oy! Don’t get me started!
And, of course, we’ll never know what any real life Howard Roark might do, because, per the doctrine, his mammy had him killed.
But that’s hardly incendiary enough, so I decided to do those three moral ‘ideals’ what I had already done to myself: I PEAK scored their DISC profiles.
I know I’m nobody’s moral lodestone. I am odd-beyond-odd as a matter of odds, just to begin with, plus I am a full-on Di – a prick boss – by my own steady admission. I’m working to burr down my prickliness, but these things take time. Here is me, prickers and all:
All three supposed moral ‘ideals’ are essentially ideas to us, so I am DISCing who they seem to us to be. Two are reputed to have walked the Earth, one was just a paper baby of a barren Baronness, but they are who we know them as, not who others might have.
So: Big surprise: Mohammed was a real shit, and his PEAK score shows it:
Gripe about the PEAK weighting all you want, Mohammed DISCs as Ci or Cd – a diligent-if-untrustworthy accountant or a relentless contract killer.
Just in passing, guess who scores even worse than Mohammed? Karl Marx, Ci, the moral ‘ideal’ of all the ungrateful unemployables – molded in his image and likeness – shambling around campus:
The slavish individualists grimly quarrying for Ayn Rand’s ‘non-contradictory joy’ may be dismayed to learn that Howard Roark, Dc, is only fractionally better, as a man, in PEAK terms:
“Oh, but that’s not fair!” Damn straight. It’s Rand herself we should be PEAKing, not her proudly stalking imaginary red-headed step-child. But: Give the old crone some respect: She’s the least-ugly Ci we’ve seen so far:
A Ci writes a paragraph with a 10,000 page footnote, but, to Missy Rand’s credit, I don’t think I can DISC-summarize The Fountainhead in one 140-character Tweet.
But who is the idealest man of them all?
No one, of course. It’s a stupid idea, perfectionismism at war with all attainable good. But of the ‘ideal men’ I DISCed then PEAKed – and feel free to plug in your own numbers; kind is kind and cruel is cruel – the one who scored best – nowhere near perfect, but best – was none other than Yeshua Nazarenus, Sd:
“But that’s really not fair!” You’re twice wrong: We’re weighted to favor Sociability because that’s how we thrive, but even without the weighting, Jesus considered just from his DISC profile is a far better person – and a far better husband, father, in-law, employer, employee, fellow-warrior, neighbor or friend – than any of these others.
You see what you see and I see what I see, but can you guess the coolest thing I see in this sea of charts?
You can be a better man than any of these supposed ‘ideals.’ If you’re a Sociable – and we’re all born that way – all you have to do is apply yourself to attain your own ideal of moral perfection. And if not? Smile. It’ll grow on you. 😉
The Greek idea of the ideal – of perfection – is the absence of all imaginable imperfections, a necessarily impossible state of being. Nothing in existential reality can be perfect in that way. Living things die. Dead things decay. Decayed things emerge as new things. But only on the map does nothing ever change.
There is a better idea of perfection: Better. Just that. Better. Better today, better still tomorrow, better every day from now on.
The idea of an ‘ideal man’ leads you to self-destruction in one of two ways: You either affect to be him in your choices and behavior – in which case you are not being yourself. Or you insist that you cannot be better than you have been until now because you cannot live up, instantly and comprehensively, to your ‘ideal’ of perfection – in which case you are defiantly not being anything at all.
Any life you lead but your own is anegoism – actual, enduring selflessness. You know who you want to be – who your own lifelong ideal self is.
Be yourself.
Be yourself better.
Be yourself better now – and from now on.
