Ego

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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Not the Freudian ego, i mean "you've got such a big ego".

its almost always used derogatorily. its a bit of a dirty word.

but...

there's a lot to be said for it. on a personal level so much of my enjoyment of life stems from my ego. people may not like to say it, but ego is arguably the main intoxicant of falling in love. relationships often break down at the point in which worshipping your partner becomes untenable.

i don't just love my own ego. i love other people's. i love other people self-aggrandising and being arrogant.

i think the most compelling argument for the ego is what happens to those with a lack of it. on a pop psychological level there are the side effects of "self-esteem issues" which can range from drug abuse to being a battered wife and all sorts.

but more than that places where ego death is encouraged are full of completely broken people. i've never met anyone who was proper into clubbing who wasn't a complete wreck of a human being.

maybe we've all been to harsh on big egos.
 
shiels

shiels

_
How much do you love yourself barty? What kinds of things do you tell yourself at your cockiest? We want the extremes
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
plays a big part in political leaders and successful businessmen. Elon Musk would have never moved on to making rockets if he listened to people who doubted his car idea. would Boris or trump be in charge of their countries without big swinging-dick egos?

the average person respects it, even if begrudgingly.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
yyaldrin said:
i always think people with big ego's actually have small ego's
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That's interesting, why do you think that?

I think the reverse can be true, or at least, people who desperately want to come across as having little ego and being all modest are generally pretty egotistical. "Humble-bragging" is a symptom of this.

Didn't Trump actually say something like "Nobody is more modest than me" once? Like he's got a huge golden trophy for World's Most Modest Person that he displays in a big glass case in the lobby of one of enormous, revolting phallus-palace hotels.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
sadmanbarty said:
Not the Freudian ego, i mean "you've got such a big ego".

its almost always used derogatorily. its a bit of a dirty word.

but...

there's a lot to be said for it. on a personal level so much of my enjoyment of life stems from my ego. people may not like to say it, but ego is arguably the main intoxicant of falling in love. relationships often break down at the point in which worshipping your partner becomes untenable.

i don't just love my own ego. i love other people's. i love other people self-aggrandising and being arrogant.

i think the most compelling argument for the ego is what happens to those with a lack of it. on a pop psychological level there are the side effects of "self-esteem issues" which can range from drug abuse to being a battered wife and all sorts.

but more than that places where ego death is encouraged are full of completely broken people. i've never met anyone who was proper into clubbing who wasn't a complete wreck of a human being.

maybe we've all been to harsh on big egos.
Click to expand...

I like this post, there's lots in there.

In terms of the use of the word, then it's a simplification/distortion of the psychoanalytic meaning, but I guess that's fairly standard when technical terms become common currency. We're talking about narcissism in this context, right?

In terms of falling in love, then there is definitely something about narcissism and idealism in there - can a relationship survive the reveal that the person you're in love with isn't perfect? Can it survive the end of the fantasy? And from the opposite perspective, can the other person survive not being viewed as a fantasy - if they are controlled by narcissism, then perhaps not. Links in with all the stuff about true and false selves that Luka and others were talking about on the cringe thread - falling in love can be falling in love with someone else's false self, if one isn't careful.

there's definitely healthy narcissism and unhealthy narcissism...and the unhealthy usually coexists with its opposite - it's used as a chronic defence against shame. I was talking about this in the other thread on 'cringe', in the context of Trump and Johnson - these people have narcissistic personality disorder, and are hiding deep narcissistic wounds which they are determined to hide (and we all have to suffer because of their internal struggles).

But again, if you realise that narcissism is strong within you, then it needn't be such a problem. just something to be aware of and regulate.

"i love other people self-aggrandising and being arrogant." - I love this in the context of art and of sport, self-mythologisation. I was gonna start a thread about it the other day. I like it particularly when it's justifiable - like a rapper's braggadocio when they really are at the top of the game
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Mr. Tea said:
I think the reverse can be true, or at least, people who desperately want to come across as having little ego and being all modest are generally pretty egotistical. "Humble-bragging" is a symptom of this.
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That's attempting to disguise one's narcissism. Can and does co-exist with what yyaldrin said - people with a lot of narcissism (whether or not they choose to try to disguise it), which connotes an attempt to disguise deep shame.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
The TV show 'Pose' - about 1980s Ball culture in New York - is pretty amazing on all this; even if it's not explicitly articulated, it's very present in the script.

How racialisation/racism, homophobia/transphobia, sexism etc depend upon the creation (and daily recreation) of shame for their perpetuation, and so narcissism can be employed as a defence against this. (I mean this descriptively and not as a prescriptive judgment, obvs).
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
craner said:
Huge egos can also be fragile egos.
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Oh god, can't they just. I wonder if we all really have the same 'amount' of ego, like a fixed volume of plasticine? Some people use it to construct this huge spherical shell around themselves, but the bigger the shell, the thinner it gets.

Look at Trump, the snowflake-in-chief, perhaps the most easily-offended man on the planet.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Mr. Tea said:
Oh, luka, without question. Which is why I always smile when I read stuff about psychedelics and "ego death".
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Tbf to myself I've never engaged in ego death rhetoric and I've never trusted it. It's always seemed dangerously self deceiving to me.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
There is something about being right in the Zone with access to all your magical powers and abilities that is intoxicating. But also it is the narrowest of ledges. Or the smallest of sweet spots, of balance points. And you can tell from the responses of those around you when you're starting to get out of equilibrium. The magic becomes something which is imposed on others, it starts to have something overbearing or even of bullying about it. The margins here are absolutely tiny.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
There's no doubt at all that ego (in the sense we are using it) can be ugly and requires vigilance. If it can deceive you it will.
 
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