American Ego vs Real Ego

[Grayman]

The concept of a comparing a persons inherent worth seems absurd to me. It seems as if Americas associate it with a sense of pride and make value comparisons against each other. When I started studying Buddhism I found a very different meaning of ego. To me the Buddhist meaning of ego being one of your self concept makes much more sense in explaining the human psyche.

Do other people from other parts of the world see ego differently?

 

[Reluctantly]

I just see the American one as a more extreme version of the real ego. Buddhism teaches that self-concept is essentially a bias with reality. The greater the ego, the greater the bias and the more pride and valuing of your own thoughts over others.

But I don't see having a self-concept as negative the way that Buddhism seems to. We all have a kind of nature to our being. To live without bias, is not to live at all if it means disregarding instincts. But maybe proper Buddhists teach awareness of our biases, rather than believing we should be numb and thoughtless to everything. Not sure.

 

[Dorian Tullus]

my ego was made in china, cheaper there

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

I have the unfortunate tendency to compare myself against others in terms of inherent worth, like - who is more intelligent, who has more inherent "potential"? It's ultimately an unanswerable question and probably just gets in the way of actually being the best that one can be.

In Jungian psychology at least, the ego is just the "I", the part of the self which identifies with things, and my understanding is that ego-death involves no longer seeing oneself as this or that, or not this or that, which is a similar thing to dissolving the subject/object boundary, which to me means no longer seeing difference between self and other/world when observing one's consciousness.

Instead of identifying and categorising, one attempts to act in terms of things as they present themselves.

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

"American Ego" consists of nationalistic feelings of duty/pride and materialism, it's basically diarrhea.

"Real Ego" is dependent on the culture and what it finds more acceptable, whatever ego it may be it is probably magnitudes better than Americas Ego.

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

Another: http://www.mind-development.eu/ego-autonomy.html