Squashing the Digital-Ego

Originally posted by Some Kind of Nature
i have a friend who is ussually/always right, but hes so stuck up and superior about it, could i have some advice on how to cope with it because he gets so smug when hes right.

I know someone just like that too and it's really hard to deal with sometimes. I'm no expert, but, in my opinion, you have two distinct choices

If you want to keep your friend because, no matter how disagreable he or she is, you still value the friendship, then you put up with their attitude and respond with a smile and appreciation for their Solomon-like sensibility but continually try to dull their sharp nature with kindness and patience.

On the other hand, you might flat-out tell them about your perception of the smugness. This may lead to an angry refusal to accept your comment and cause a rift between you, but if that's the case, it's a 'one-way' friendship to begin with. On the other hand, it could also open their eyes and make you better friends. The LAST thing you want to do is get angry... that never helps.

On the subject of 'friends'... it's not like facebook, where someone can have 17,000 of them. True friends are very rare indeeed and we'd be lucky to count only one or two in our lives. Sorting the wheat from the chaff isn't easy. Only time can do that.

Consider your gut feelings about this particular friend and follow your instincts. A true friend is worth more than their weight in gold... if you'd rather have the gold, then they aren't a true friend in your estimation.

I don't think we can truly rid ourselves of our egos.
Sure, we can cover it up, repress it, but, it's always there.

For example, you can let your friend take the last piece of pizza, but deep inside you know that you only did it to feel better about yourself.

No selflessness involved.


We might as well embrace our ego. IMO

Originally posted by dropB
I don't think we can truly rid ourselves of our egos.
Sure, we can cover it up, repress it, but, it's always there.

Wise words indeed.

It's true that our ego will always be there, but we shouldn't allow our ego to control how we interact with others, we should control it instead.

I think if you poll some of those who have been online long enough to remember the early days (BBS's and such) they would recognize that online etiquette has degraded immensely.

Could it be that what we are witnessing is due to a wider range of the public being online and thus the conversation reflecting the degradation of public discourse in general?

It appears to me that an inflated ego without any self-reflection is par for the course not just in internet forums, but walking down the street, sitting on the bus, ordering food, being a movie or tv character, etc...

It is a fine bullet list, personally I would say that rather than trying to get over being right, I try to be right, but get over trying to convince others that I'm right. I would rather spend the time reflecting on whether or not there are flaws in my position. The best skeptics are occasionally suspicious of their own "facts"!

(edit for spelling, tsk tsk)

[edit on 7-4-2010 by The Broadcaste]

reply to post by masqua


You are beautiful.

Thank you so vary. vary. much.

Originally posted by masqua
I believe the D-ego is more prominent because people are less inclined to hold back when posting with a nondescript username and the result can often be awful.

It could be argued that too many hold back too much in real life, and therefore meltdown online...

But I do get the point of the downside... such as Internet Superhighway Rage... darn I thought I had coined a new phrase but it comes up on Google. All the acomplishment and recognition I've just missed out on. If only this thread was started years ago for me to have thought of it before everyone else did...

In light of this thread, tonights South Park was not to be missed! Facebook was the theme, and they went all out with people taking their Facebook 'friends' literally.

Originally posted by masqua

Originally posted by Some Kind of Nature
i have a friend who is ussually/always right, but hes so stuck up and superior about it, could i have some advice on how to cope with it because he gets so smug when hes right.

I know someone just like that too and it's really hard to deal with sometimes. I'm no expert, but, in my opinion, you have two distinct choices

If you want to keep your friend because, no matter how disagreable he or she is, you still value the friendship, then you put up with their attitude and respond with a smile and appreciation for their Solomon-like sensibility but continually try to dull their sharp nature with kindness and patience.

On the other hand, you might flat-out tell them about your perception of the smugness. This may lead to an angry refusal to accept your comment and cause a rift between you, but if that's the case, it's a 'one-way' friendship to begin with. On the other hand, it could also open their eyes and make you better friends. The LAST thing you want to do is get angry... that never helps.

On the subject of 'friends'... it's not like facebook, where someone can have 17,000 of them. True friends are very rare indeeed and we'd be lucky to count only one or two in our lives. Sorting the wheat from the chaff isn't easy. Only time can do that.

Consider your gut feelings about this particular friend and follow your instincts. A true friend is worth more than their weight in gold... if you'd rather have the gold, then they aren't a true friend in your estimation.

This thread just makes me gasp in awe.

I am that friend who is to the T exactly the ego that you state, except in real life to a lot of my friends. My best friend who I have been friends with since 3rd grade, him and I have recently got in a fight, which has not happened since we've known each other. He stopped talking to me for a month until I was finally able to get through to him. He stated that he didn't want to stop being friends but needed time not hanging out because he believed that if we continued on the way I'm about to explain, that it would escalate and we wouldn't be friends. The couple months that we hung out before all this, we would get into arguments, I was usually right, but his close-mindedness and belligerent backlash to even listening to my explanation always fueled my need to get it into his head, as him being my friend, i didn't want him living in ignorance.

When I go to sleep at night, i never gave a second thought to our "debates." His side of our debates always consisted of him trying to shut me down, always saying he "didn't want to hear it" or "he didn't care" when it got to that point. But he told me after the month hiatus that my need to "win" and always be right was ridiculous, and that it was as if I set out to "destroy him" every time. Which I never felt I was. Hes not a calm or patient person by any means, getting belligerent and stuff. Just recently, the facts about my ego had come under my focus, and Ive really been struggling as to what to to with myself because that is how i live life, its how i see and process the world around me, and i never mean any Ill will, but I feel terrible. Honestly I don't know what to do or say, or what to apologize for under my logical deduction of my situation, but I'm starting to slowly understand that i was wrong to be this way, especially with a friend who winning against carried no merit for me in the first place.

[edit on 8-4-2010 by MConnalley]

[edit on 8-4-2010 by MConnalley]

reply to post by masqua


I have one more for you...

Let Go of your need to WHINE

Seriously, the amount if whining I see and hear on a daily basis is increasing, and IMO is just pointless.

reply to post by MConnalley


That's an interesting perspective. A lot of people would rather not change their mind and will use the defense of attacking the other person as arrogant rather than admit their own mistake. That it was an old friend of yours would explain why you didn't lose sleep over it, thinking that your friend would see that your intentions were not malicious.

At some point you have to just accept that the other person does not want to change their mind, or is just not ready to. I've met this situation before, and the OP's list certainly is relevant. You can't change someone's mind, all you can do is provide them the information and allow them to come to their own conclusion.


Which reminds me, I'd like to respond to the suggestion that perhaps the answer is that we should stop offending people:

You cannot offend someone. You can only choose to BE offended. It is a choice made by each person not something forced upon them. For example:

A friend tells me that I am fat. Yet I am quite underweight and always have been. It is a ludicrous suggestion and does not come close to being offensive.
That same person tells someone else that they are fat; same words but if the other person is actually overweight then that person might be offended by those words because it hurts their feelings.

What is the determining factor in whether or not someone is offended? I propose that it is whether or not it is causes a negative SELF reflection, whether true or not and thus in defense the person changes that into an attack on the other person. You are never offended by suggestions that you do not fear may be true, is I guess what I'm trying to say.

(And this isn't to excuse rude behavior, there is such a thing as tact.)

That people are so easily offended these days really shows how insecure we have become in our own selves. And to bring this back to the thread, perhaps another symptom of this is the errors described by the OP in our overzealousness to win in meaningless social situations.

Thanks for the thread.





[edit on 8-4-2010 by The Broadcaste]

Originally posted by The Broadcaste
reply to post by MConnalley

 

That's an interesting perspective. A lot of people would rather not change their mind and will use the defense of attacking the other person as arrogant rather than admit their own mistake. That it was an old friend of yours would explain why you didn't lose sleep over it, thinking that your friend would see that your intentions were not malicious.

At some point you have to just accept that the other person does not want to change their mind, or is just not ready to. I've met this situation before, and the OP's list certainly is relevant. You can't change someone's mind, all you can do is provide them the information and allow them to come to their own conclusion .......

[edit on 8-4-2010 by The Broadcaste]

You are absolutely right, and really after thinking about this a lot I have discovered that assumptions and misunderstandings when left unnoticed and unchecked can become an entrenched enemy with little possibility of correcting. I assumed that my friend thought i wasn't trying to be malicious, but i soon learned that this was not the case. I believe that a persons perceived superiority of ones own logic and knowledge is what fuels there rational behind thinking that they can truly change a persons mind, even if they are dead bolted closed. The need to "win" by blasting open that deadbolt is too strong, logic always told me that it was simple to believe what I know was right, but people are different in strange ways, it is truly very hard to accept.

And sorry for using your thread Masqua to post my story, but i thank you for it. Knowing what I am and discovering that there are others out there like this has really helped pull it deeper into perspective for me.

[edit on 8-4-2010 by MConnalley]

[edit on 8-4-2010 by MConnalley]

I am not saying you are wrong, I would just like to point out that if it were not for people competing, we would not be as advanced as we are. Course then again we wouldn't have any war, so would it be that bad?

reply to post by masqua


Very aptly put. Wish some people were more civilized, sensible and matured.

But maybe its only my wishful thinking.

Cheers

reply to post by Pajjikor


Well, competition only gets us so far. From an evolutionary standpoint it is mankind's ability to put aside our need to dominate and work together that raises us above our closest relatives. It's a common misconception that Darwin suggested survival of the fittest as the key to evolution. Species that work in harmony with others, or simply find a unique niche are sometimes more likely to survive.

Hence the concept of a "healthy" amount of competition.

Absolutely we all benefit from the competition of ideas here on ATS, but we wouldn't get anywhere if at some point people didn't work together to try and find some sort of truth. Being able to take the OP's list into consideration is a helpful way of keeping our competitive instincts in check lest they impede our ability to work together, or at least avoid fruitless conflict.

i think its safe to say the ego will fight this and in my honest opinion i think this is a great thread. And more people should read this especially the poster that spend the most time on here. Well done for posting this. i will star and flag this and i hope it doesn't go to your head lol.

reply to post by The Broadcaste


pride is of pretention being true, being true is only when you realize alone fully something while realizing it so you have no time to sit there without doing anything thinking your awareness relax

stop telling each others to kill themselves or to accept others rules just tell everyone to move their ass while moving yours alone

You get Ego offline too... The internet is the worst for it! You get all these pretentious people thinking they know all when in fact they know as much as the rest of us!

but i feel that the internet is the only place where an atheist can pick up slack for what we go through in reality.

reply to post by masqua


This thread is just BEGGING to get trolled lol good luck with that OP because it won't succeed

reply to post by MischeviousElf


except there really are a lot of less intelligent people out there, and sumtimes its not logical to listen to them.
unless the OP puts logic on that list to forget, sometimes you have to stop someone before they waste too much time.
with this said, the OP ideas are decent.

reply to post by imans


that is why the true pride expression is the rejection of obedience so certainly no slavery acceptance, because being true cant be but you as unik one so noone is there to see or give an opinion about you it would say that overposition abuse because no other awareness is you and you only is aware of a whole reality balance life of objective matters you didnt realize and your awareness is alone to realize something of its opinion about that positive balance knowledge

what could explain how best and worst coexist is the fact that best is the first source so no overposition abuse to it so it stays the number one ruler position that justify the positions of wills of all others realisations