Perfection (satire)

Some people who know a little about nanotechnology think it could create superior human beings with greater intellect, reasoning abilities and, as a consequence, morality. However, the possible risk of death from taking a pill to cause this evolution into Homo Sapiens Magna has dampened research into the use of nanotechnology to make us smarter and morally superior to the average person.

This is because greater intellect does not preclude insanity, which is validated by schizophrenic people being of a higher intellectual capacity than a person with a mood disorder. Even though bipolar people are highly creative, their tendency toward anxiety in novel situations when not manic tends to moderate their intellect.

As for narcissistic peoples, the only thing they know about the most is themselves, so they would apply their intellect once they confirm what's in it for them, which implies the appearance of high intellect without a corresponding sense of compassion for other people. Were anyone to confront them about their past stupid mistake, things could get really ugly in no time.

Even if we were to evolve, the higher intelligence and reasoning abilities might result in the ability to learn to follow a strict moral code as well as the strong sense of compassion and mercy with the strong risk to develop schizophrenia due to sensory overload caused by too much deep thought.

While it would be cheaper to genetically engineer a human being with superior intelligence and reasoning, it would be impossible to correct the inherent genetic destiny of schizophrenia genetically since most schizophrenia is not due to a genetic predisposition but to not learning successful coping skills in response to stress.

In short, there is no gene that gives you superior coping skills. It has to be learned through experience. Thus, the superior man is not born to cope with life. Rather, he learns how to cope with life through his life experiences.

In conclusion, I reject the nanotechnology and the genetic engineering route for creating the perfect man.

Instead, all it takes is Buddhist learning to perfect the man. This includes daily meditation sessions to develop the calm mind (samatha) necessary to solving koans (vipassana).

Though, the easy way to perfect the man is to chant the Nembutsu or even the Nichiren daimoku "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo". This form of meditation is easy to do, and only requires five minutes or less of chanting daily.

Meditation itself helps Buddhists to discover that Buddha Nature inherent to their own live. Buddha Nature can be considered the perfect qualities of the Buddha which passed into the consciousness stream when he died. Superior intellect, reasoning and morality are three of those perfect qualities.

However, I won't consider this exclusive to Buddhists. Christians use the Sinner's Prayer as an aid to perfect, chanting "God have mercy on me, a sinner" out of humility. Indeed, humility is the essential key to perfection, not the science of technology.

YMMV