On the Edge Of Ego

[Salty]

Just how much is enough?

On one end there are people who feed their egos all day, every day, people who can't set themselves aside for even one second to consider the fact that other people might, perhaps, exist and have needs, emotions, or physical space.   

On the other end there are people who, through social conditioning or religious justification, suppress their egos to the point of near nothingness. I don't think you can wholly void personality, but you can get awfully close. No opinions, no voice, just breathing meat capable of doing what you need how you need it, but with no desire for much of anything outside of pleasing others. This is just as undesireable, IMO and personal experience.  

How does one find the middle? What's the means of balancing the ego? 

I'm starting to think it has something to do with social interaction, that maybe the mirror of other egos is the only way to see it.   

[Jasper]

The pragmatic answer:  Aim for a middle ground.  If your ego is acceptable to others, great.

The Complicated answer: 'Ego' in this sense is not a valued thing.  It is neither bad nor good, but certain characteristics it may take on are undesirable, and some aren't.  The tendency to self-focus?  Not so good.  Lacking a set of preferences and tastes that make up the "individual"?  Best avoided.  Basically, you have to evaluate an ego based on it's functionality as a whole.

[Adios]

Why are you concerned about what others think?

[Jasper]

Why are you concerned about what others think?

Because I happen to be a species with prosocial tendencies, and I depend on a network of my kind for survival.

[Adios]

Why are you concerned about what others think?

Because I happen to be a species with prosocial tendencies, and I depend on a network of my kind for survival.

That is your weak point then.

[Jasper]

Yeah.

Honestly though?  The whole rugged individualism thing about Americans never really did it for me.  EDIT: normal people can't survive alone without extensive technological capabilities.  To say nothing of psychological health.

Face facts.  Humans need each other.

[Adios]

Yeah.

Honestly though?  The whole rugged individualism thing about Americans never really did it for me.  EDIT: normal people can't survive alone without extensive technological capabilities.  To say nothing of psychological health.

Face facts.  Humans need each other.

Only if you allow yourself to believe that. Study early American history, especially the mountain men. Technological capabilities are mere crutches for making life easy. A person can survive with a sharp stick if they had to.

[Jasper]

Yeah.

Honestly though?  The whole rugged individualism thing about Americans never really did it for me.  EDIT: normal people can't survive alone without extensive technological capabilities.  To say nothing of psychological health.

Face facts.  Humans need each other.

Only if you allow yourself to believe that. Study early American history, especially the mountain men. Technological capabilities are mere crutches for making life easy. A person can survive with a sharp stick if they had to.

After a fashion.  But what kind of life is that?

[Salty]

I was thinking about these things, and what Cramulus said concerning Nafs, after the etiquette thread.

I used to obsess over what other people thought. Anxiety attacks, massive paranoia, reclusive and evasive lifestyle. I'm still no good with people day to day, but don't dwell on those interactions anymore. Much better these days. TBH, I could keep on avoiding people and be comfortable doing so. But I don't think that's right. Or healthy.

Often I sit slack-jawed trying to come up with the "appropriate" response to social interactions, and am still trying to figure this shit out in general.   

Like dignity. I wonder where our sense of dignity comes from, what's so important about it. If it comes from the ego then  I probably just internalize my thoughts too much. That's why I ask, to get them out into the light of day.

Also, we all care about what people think about us to some extent. Otherwise we wouldn't brush our hair or avoid clothes that make us look rediculous or apologize for anything.   

[Adios]

Yeah.

Honestly though?  The whole rugged individualism thing about Americans never really did it for me.  EDIT: normal people can't survive alone without extensive technological capabilities.  To say nothing of psychological health.

Face facts.  Humans need each other.

Only if you allow yourself to believe that. Study early American history, especially the mountain men. Technological capabilities are mere crutches for making life easy. A person can survive with a sharp stick if they had to.

After a fashion.  But what kind of life is that?

That question would take a great deal of time to answer honestly. Try this, strap on a backpack and go on a trek for 30 days. I think your feeling about being alone might just alter.

[Adios]

I was thinking about these things, and what Cramulus said concerning Nafs, after the etiquette thread.

I used to obsess over what other people thought. Anxiety attacks, massive paranoia, reclusive and evasive lifestyle. I'm still no good with people day to day, but don't dwell on those interactions anymore. Much better these days. TBH, I could keep on avoiding people and be comfortable doing so. But I don't think that's right. Or healthy.

Often I sit slack-jawed trying to come up with the "appropriate" response to social interactions, and am still trying to figure this shit out in general.   

Like dignity. I wonder where our sense of dignity comes from, what's so important about it. If it comes from the ego then  I probably just internalize my thoughts too much. That's why I ask, to get them out into the light of day.

Also, we all care about what people think about us to some extent. Otherwise we wouldn't brush our hair or avoid clothes that make us look rediculous or apologize for anything.   

We build our cells bar by bar in our black iron prisons.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Pragmatic answer: if your behavior is causing other people enough discomfort to make things difficult for you, you are doing something wrong, otherwise it's probably ok. This can happen on either side of the ego spectrum, and sometimes has nothing to do with ego, but when it does, if phrasing the problem in terms of ego helps you solve it then do so.

[Kai]

To some of the people in this thread: mountain men still have to come down out of the mountains to trade, find mates, and develop kinship. There's a reason why our populations aren't composed of hermits: because hermits don't reproduce.

We're social, tool using primates. Humans very rarely will survive in isolation.

[Cramulus]

By setting up the OP as a choice between two extremes - the ego-indulgent and the faceless-vegetable - you've insured that everybody is going to say "somewhere in between!"

That's not to say I disagree with the answer - 'somewhere in between' is a good, pragmatic way to approach most stuff.

Speaking for myself, I am a recovering ego addict. When I was a kid, a lot of my sense of humor was about being superior, expressing shock at how idiotically I perceived the world around me, general disdain for the Other. I got really into stuff which I thought would make me distinct, individual, & unique. And fast forward 10 or 15 or 20 years (depending on how you slice it) and yeah, I am a pretty unique individual.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently, who is turning 50, and just sold the LARP company she used to own.

She had a word of warning to me. It started as a question:

She had asked me, "Aside from gaming, and writing stuff for this Discordia thing, what other stuff are you into?"

I listed off a few things, but noted that RPGs and Chaos are my two primary interests. Zany adventures of all types.

And she said, "When I was your age, I wanted to run a LARP company more than anything in the world. And I did. I spent a lot of my youth doing it. And it was fun. But now I'm ready to leave it and I wish I had spent my time developing myself in other ways."

"My warning," she went on to say, "is not to use up your youth focusing exclusively on the things which bring you pleasure."


It's true, LARPing brings me a lot of pleasure. There's a community of 200 or 300 LARPers in my region, and I'm pretty well connected to that social network. I've got a reputation which makes people want to meet me and talk to me. I'm one of the top three people in NERO (a large larp company), and I'm one of the writers who is actually shaping the future of the game. I'm basically sending out all these signals which say "I'm awesome," and every time a system replies with, "you're right", I give that system a little more of my attention/energy.

and then last week I found myself at a party, and somebody asked me what I'd been up to,
and the truth is that I'd spent 10 out of the last 21 days in a fantasy world (or traveling to a fantasy world), and I didn't want to talk about that, so I sort of blanked.

I've been feeding my ego systems so diligently, it felt like I'd excluded other parts of myself. I felt a little too two dimensional. What is the utility of all this stuff? Is it any different than the cat that wants to be stroked? am I caught in this inescapable dance of operant conditioning? Personally, I'm beginning to see the sense of self as a limiting factor. A black iron prison to escape.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Popular misconception - You are dealt an ego and that's all she wrote.

Modify, grow, prune, destroy, rebuild. If you don't take control of it, it will control you. Doesn't matter if it's one extreme or the other, chances are you'll be miserable.