Thursday, March 28, 2013

Yes, I am egotistical.


What do you mean by ‘ego’? If you are referring to the Freudian ‘Ego’, you are employing a simple and probably outdated psychological model by virtue of which no progress can be made in understanding human motivation and behaviour. Incidentally, this is the model that most people use, and it is failing. If you are referring to a particular perspective toward which you attribute the characteristics of ‘untruth’ and ignorance, then history has shown that a deviant opinion held by one individual is not nearly as dangerous as one held by many, irrespective of the originator.

            If you mean to disregard my point of view but cannot see outside of the confines of the one in which you are entrenched, who is the egotist in this scenario? After all, the ‘ego’ represents myopiea. It may not be, in itself, (whatever its actual nature) a menace, so for you to attribute such importance to it as to call my life ‘dominated by the ego’ (as though Ego were an Ontological Entity, which is open to debate) is as absurd as to say that a person does not have a Soul because he/she has freckles, without any discussion as to the existence or Nature of a Soul. For all I know, the ‘ego’, by many definitions, is a useful tool if not abused and, by many other and a few of the same definitions, is inevitable as a characteristic experience in a sane psyche.

            But if, by ‘ego’, you seek to pigeonhole an entire spectrum of ignorance, greed, malice, myopia, and violence by virtue of which one defends a superficial image of oneself and feels justified in blindly disregarding the viewpoints of Others (be they general or specific), is it really the person you are targeting who has an ego problem?

 
Dm.A.A.

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