Is it innate or just ego to try to achieve what we each consider perfection?

It’s most definitely not innate to being human. Striving to be better than others is a cultural trait. It is specifically a trait in Western civilization. The idea of one person becoming greater than others is not shared in Asia. It’s not even universal in European cultures. In Australia, it is said the tall poppy gets cut first.

@Hawaii_Jake I would argue that all cultures share that. We all compete. Better boyfriend, better car, better test score, a better job, a better cook, best wife, best son, best holy person, or even just to do better because they like the challenge. Whatever we believe we do best we strive to do it better. Now, not everyone has that drive. There are people who simply do not care. Usually, those detached from society as a whole or people who feel they will always fail do not have that desire to compete.

@Pandora I lived in Asia a long time. I can state authoritatively that Asian cultures do not compete to be best. They work to see that the group survives. They don’t even necessarily want the group to be the best group. They want it to continue.

I don’t think of trying to be perfect as always trying to be better than others. To me, perfectionists put the pressure on themselves for a variety of reasons. Afraid to make a mistake, afraid of being wrong, afraid of consequences. I think perfectionism has a lot to do with fear. I’m just thinking about myself and why I worry about doing some things “perfectly” and other things not so much.

I’m not competitive, I don’t feel a need to be better than others, I just care about being good, happy, liked, loved, helping others, and my perfectionism shows itself in my fears of doing something that will bother me long term, like looking at something in my house that drives me crazy. Or, something that will hurt me financially long term. Or, God forbid, harm my health long term. Lastly, doing a good job when others count on me. I double and triple check my work. To a lesser extent, but still true, caring about what others think of me drives some of the tendency, but there is a whole bunch of stuff I don’t care about what others think.

What I learned about 20 years ago was expecting perfection is exhausting. Expecting it from others means you need to be perfect yourself, or you can just accept nobody is perfect and relax a little.

@JLeslie I think it could still be one of the two even if fear is a factor.

Sorry for another answer.

@Pandora I’m curious if you feel like you want to be better than other people and why?

As far as ego, or even self esteem, some people compare themselves to others a lot and some don’t. I don’t think it’s innate, I think it’s more learned.

Maybe I’m not sure what exactly you’re getting at.

I agree with what @Hawaii_Jake wrote too.

@Hawaii_Jake Yes, Asian society teaches from school age to working that teamwork is necessary for success. But it doesn’t erase individual desires. You can’t tell me that in all Asian nations there is suddenly no need for ranking as an individual in school or sports or what have you. Men or women don’t try to look their best or care if they don’t win the heart of someone they to have a relationship with because someone better looking or smarter came along. You are thinking of society. I am talking about each individual. Not just what it looks like. Even Asian children may learn to study harder to please their parents or simply to please themselves. Yes. Pleasing others to get something like affection or attention or some reward is competing. Like the way a lion competes for top spot among lionesses.
So it could fall under survival instints initially, but later, does it become ego?

Here’s an example. My husband’s father worries a lot about how he looks and dresses and judges others based on it too. Ironed shirts, physically fit, well groomed, etc.

My dad, doesn’t evaluate people based on looks at all and confirms to expectations of society regarding fashion and how he looks at a bare minimum.

My husband’s father was raised in a macho culture. Fairly strict rules.

My dad was raised by parents who neglected him to some extent, because of their own difficulties, but the culture and community he lived in emphasized the pursuit of learning and helping society. As an adult he worked with scientists, and scientists are trained to question and accept being wrong as a learning tool.

I think of too much ego as compensating for feeling inadequate.

Great question. I have not read all the other feedback yet and wanted to give my straight up answer first.
Innate sense to be better, yes. Perfectionism, comes from pressure.
It is a natural born instinct to do as best as you can for your tribe or for your survival.
Perfectionism to me comes from a pressure to outshine or to do so good that nobody can fault you. Parents, society, schooling has put pressures on us to strive to be perfect. To be number one. To not be told or shown that you are wrong.
While everyone want to have the right answer, they sometimes miss out on the process of learning through failing. Edison once said “Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don’t work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they’ll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they’ll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they’ve got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.” Also from Edison “Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.”
Many people have a phobia about failing. They even carry it to lying to not be told or proven wrong. This is an extreme that much of society is focused around.
There is conflict between the drives of the id and the demands of the cultural superego.

Both equally.

The motivation to excel is one of those things ingrained into us from birth. There’s no escaping it. A 4 year old can see the difference in expression on his mother’s face when shown his report card with the A and that same face taking in his next card with the big red D. Those lessons are incessant. Who reaches for the adequate cookie when there’s a really good cookie on the same plate? How many chubby girls with great personalities and superior intellects wound up with the dreamboat guys in your high school? And looking at breakfast right now, I can tell you that I will settle for my own cooking, but would be a fool to choose it over my wife’s divine cullinary magic.

Just hear to point out the ego gets a bad rap. There is healthy/productive ego and there is unhealthy/unproductive ego.

I think it’s important to point out that trying to be better than others is quite different than trying to be better than you are. I can’t think of anything where I’m the best in the world, yet I continue to strive to improve my skills at a number of endeavors. Not to be better than anyone else just to be better than I was yesterday.

1. Perfection is not the same thing as trying to be better than others. (And to agree and add to what @Jaxk just wrote, self-improvement is also different from both competition with others, and from perfectionism.)

2. I think both are notions that egos care about. (I am often perfectionistic about things, and sometimes can get competitive, but that’s always an egoic type thing for me. Rarer for me is to want to compete with myself – I like to think of myself as very good, excellent, and/or unique in some things, and it bothers me when I notice I’ve done something I judge as wrong or bad or flawed (perfectionism), but it’s rarer for me to fixate on wanting to beat my own records, except maybe in some single-player games that are simplistic enough that there’s not much else to focus on.)

3. If my non-ego has concerns or even interests related to perfection, or to competition, they’re only related to those is secondary or more distant ways.

4. When I’ve been on satsang or retreat or out in the woods, or am just relaxed, I have almost no thoughts related to perfection or competition.

@JLeslie Perhaps I put it wrong. What I’m trying to get at is where does the drive come from. Is it born in us from our survival instincts or created? I think it can be both, but if its born in us then why do some people settle for not bettering their lives? I’ve known people who were born with the gift of intelligence who strive to do nothing to improve their lives and others who are not so smart who work hard to improve their lives. The difference is in drive I think. So were the ones that don’t try born without survival instinct? I think @Forever_Free came the closest to answering my question.

@kruger_d I agree. Ego is probably responsible for so many discoveries that we use today.

@Forever_Free “Edison once said “Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don’t work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they’ll succeed without ever making an effort.” I never thought about it in that way. This kind of wrecked my brain for a second but then I thought about people who rely on their looks to survive or their pigment identity. Excellent point.

I think that has more to do with personality and experiences. A family with four boys usually has four competitive boys. Kids whose parents are involved in their education and have high expectations have kids who strive to be the best they can be. Not innate.

@Forever_Free So I thought about what you pointed out. So then it would seem we are all born with it only it manifests differently in people depending on how one is nurtured.

Agree that these are all different things.

- ego
– being better than others
– becoming better
– competition
– perfectionism

Could you clarify which you’re asking about?

@SnipSnip you should read some of the answers above, especially @Forever_Free. I disagree with your assessment only because I grew up with 3 brothers. Yes, two of them were competitive and one was not. I was the baby and didn’t need to compete with my brothers but I did it anyway. Not for their affection or attention but because I didn’t like be told I was too little to understand or just a girl, or too weak or delicate. So I was an active tom boy, who worked hard to do better than my brothers in school and in physical activities. I don’t think they ever really saw me as competition but in my mind they were my competition. I wasn’t going to let my youth, or small body, or being born a female determine my capabilities. But my parents themselves never pushed me. If anything in some ways I felt they thought I was limited as well. It wasn’t maybe until adulthood that I stopped having the drive to prove myself to others. Then it just became a drive to just always try to improve myself for myself.

@raum Ego can lead to all of those. But I’m not really looking at that. I’m looking at where is the start. Are we born that way first and then its enhanced or not born with it and through nurturing develop it or don’t develop it.
Though I will say @Forever_Free response makes me believe now that we are all born with it and it just manifests differently in us perhaps because of the way we are nurtured.

Perfection is a cultural meme. It doesnt exist, but has been crammed into our minds by the self-help and supplement industry. We’ve all got it in our heads that the standard by which things are measured is “the ultimate.”

Certainly the pantomime of social media has increased this tendency. Standing out requires a higher degree of effort and creativity than it used to. You can’t be funny or talented or original within your group anymore, because the standard is world class now.

Also, no one wants to die. We are advanced, but death is still unpredictable, so a lot of people have swallowed the notion that there is a perfect diet or perfect lifestyle, or even “one weird trick” that will help them fight the inevitability of aging.

Competition seems to be animal nature, and the notion of perfection is a pretty normal thing to pursue if you are miopically obsessed with yourself rather than the condition of your fellow humans.

@Smashley I agreed with your ideas up to the last statement. I think someone wanting to be the perfect mother would do so in hopes they raise a happy, healthy, and loving child. I know I did. It wasn’t about me. I wanted to make sure my children turned out as happy and healthy and loving as I was as a child. By that same standard, I think animals do the same. They try their best to raise healthy offspring. Only they don’t see it as trying to be perfect. Perfect perhaps is a poor definition. Being your best self doesn’t mean one is myopically obsessed with themselves. It can mean offering the best you to society, or your family or work.