8 ms·

How to Kill the Toxic Ego That Will Ruin Your Life

111 points by omilu 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
crimsonalucard 8y ago
Ego like many other human traits exists because it helped us survive. Every trait you possess no matter how negative it seems exists because it passed the filter of natural selection. Ego blinds you to the darkness and weakness of yourself. We lie to ourselves to create a delusion that keeps.us moving forward.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Traits are good only insofar as they are well-adapted to their environment. A trait that is vital to a savannah ape's survival may only lead to stress and frustration in a modern office worker. Humans have the unique and wonderful ability to deliberately alter some of our traits on an individual level--which itself is a trait well-adapted to many environments.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Ego like many other human traits exists because it helped us survive. Every trait you possess no matter how negative it seems exists because it passed the filter of natural selection. How about self-destructive behavior? What might help the individual survive in small does is not the same in large does. What might help the individual survive in the jungle/caves is not necessary that it works well within a civilization. Lastly, what helped us survive as a species is not necessarily to help the individual survive. Evolution is not a monotonically compounding collection of good traits. As the environment changes, certain traits become invalid or even actively harmful, and others might be needed. Add to the mix the incredible speed by which we alter our environment (with technology, culture, and so on), and the very slow speed by which evolution operates in comparison....
- simion314 8y ago
  Evolution does not always keep only the positive mutations, it keeps mutations that are also useless because there is no pressure to remove them (some mutations could be useful for future generations) and some bad mutations are kept around if the impact is not significant.
- lm28469 8y ago
  > because it passed the filter of natural selection That alone doesn't tell much, you can still judge the value of any trait independently of natural selection. Evolution didn't keep up with technology during the last decades. We don't live in small communities with strong bonds, sleep in huts, hunt, &c. anymore. If you say "we evolved to be like this" and "everything evolved is right" there is no place for any kind of argument to be made.
  - big_youth 8y ago
    Modern society doesn't' change the fundamentals of human behavior and needs. Per your example we still need a community with strong bonds, a diet of lean proteins and greens, and a dusk till dawn sleeping pattern to function optimally.
    - lm28469 8y ago
      I'm sitting 8+ hours a day in front of a glowing rectangle. Evolution didn't do anything to help my body accommodate that. All I get is back/neck pain, short hamstrings, hampered digestion and a shitty posture. Sure I still need to sleep and eat, but that's about it. We're talking million of years of slow and incremental changes dictated by environmental constraints VS 200 years of exponential technological almost entirely tweaked for convenience. Look at obesity, diabetes, back pain epidemics ... clearly most people diets / lifestyles are not matching what evolution engineered them for. > Per your example we still need a community with strong bonds, a diet of lean proteins and greens, and a dusk till dawn sleeping pattern to function optimally. To "function optimally" yes, but even without that you can live very long, reproduce &c. A few thousands of years ago you'd just die.
- lordnacho 8y ago
  Any trait could also be an unhelpful one that is on its way towards extinction.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  All of your arguments focus on one thing. A possibility. A possibility that an evolutionary trait is either a neutral trait or an outdated trait. None of these arguments prove that Ego is an ineffective or negative trait. First off people need to list examples about how a big Ego can be a neutral trait or an outdated trait as a supporting argument. If the ego is outdated at some point in time it must have been a positive trait, how can this be? If the ego is a neutral trait there should be an example about how a big ego can be inconsequential to the overall group or positive to the individual. Of course we are talking in terms of possibilities but the absence of examples of the above possibilities makes for weak arguments in my humble opinion. My argument offers that the ego exists because humans need self delusion. They need to lie to themselves and see their existence as consequential in order to be happy. Why has everyone ignored this statement? No argument is completely effective until every point is addressed. Perhaps it's because none of you could come up with a counter retort to the self-delusion argument so you chose to ignore it. Isn't that a form of self delusion? Are we all participating in an argument or are we just trying to win? Perhaps the participants in this argument is not us per se, but our egos. Perhaps all arguments are a meeting of egos.
yeetmode 8y ago
Relevant af to this forum
PedroBatista 8y ago
I know this article is just marketing content to sell a book, but it would be nice for the author to fully present at least one of his "exercises" for one of his bullet points. I wonder how much of these "traits" (?) are just how some people are and they can't do much about it no matter how they try.
rabidrat 8y ago
Overall this article has some really good advice. But I have come to realize that a violent stance--"fighting" to "kill" a "toxic ego"--reinforces a separate, negative part of yourself, and it becomes stronger, subtler, and can eventually become another kind of ego on its own. Ego is all about division and separation, and to truly diminish its hold, we have to take another approach: to embrace it (but not to indulge it), to understand it, to invite it to tea. In today's egotistic world, we need to cultivate a healthy ego, so that we don't sacrifice ourselves to unworthy causes. Ego is an important psychological tool that, when wielded wisely (with intention and awareness, as the article points out), can be very powerful and positive. We just need to make sure that we're in the driver's seat and that we don't let it take over. And especially that we don't come to believe that our collection of ideas about ourselves IS ourselves; as long as we remember that it's just a game--a mask, or a shield that can be dropped at a moment's notice--then we'll be okay.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  Completely agree. The problem with the "kill" mentality is that it doesn't encourage self-awareness of the ego, the "silent observer" as Eckhart Tolle calls it.
- shlant 8y ago
  exactly. The ego serves a purpose. It has a lot to teach us about how we perceive ourselves, others and reality. Not only can you not "kill" it (people who claim to have "transcended" the ego still eat food :p ), but trying to will just result in the flip side of the same coin. The solution is integration, not destruction. As Buddhism says, the answer lies in "the middle way".
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- danielbigham 8y ago
  This year for whatever reason I keep seeing the concept of "integration" in everything, and have also become interested in what feels like the opposite -- division and separation -- so when I read "Ego is all about division and separation", it really piqued my curiosity. Could you elaborate on that?
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
I have some concerns with this article's advisement. It essentially boils down to stay humble, proactive, and aware. But certain kinds of advice are entirely unnuanced, for example, "dead time" vs "alive time" may mean that someone really needs the rest! Similarly, focusing on effort and not the end goal is not always amenable to reality- it doesn't matter how much you worked at a startup if your stocks ultimately end up shitty. Of course, this article aims to kill ego, not actually enrich the person's life. Killing one's ego can also ruin one's life just as easily as an ego too alive.
- ryanackley 8y ago
  Doesn't most advice like this lack nuance? That is what makes it easily consumed and processed. We attach our own rationalizations and perspectives to it.
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    Yes; this doesn't make the article above discussion of its merits.
b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago
Yeah.. That'll be a hard pass on a bullshit trend word topic. FFS...
cicero 8y ago
> 10. Connect with nature and the universe at large... 18. Choose love. Even better, seek the creator of the universe and the source of love. Many people come to the conclusion that since science has enabled us to understand so much about how our universe works, we can jettison the idea of a creator. However, the contingent nature of our universe and everything in it requires a cause that is not contingent, and religion, especially Christianity, has been telling us about that non-contingent cause for centuries. I urge people to seek out that cause by looking to the testimony of the generations of good people who claim to know this cause.
- nkingsy 8y ago
  The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that this structure we call reality is circles on circles on circles. It seems trivial to me to prove that there can be no start or end to reality, ergo no creator. I've had some pretty profoundly comforting spiritual experiences in my life, but never one that involved a creator. Much more a realization that there is no time, no place, just a roaring hubbub cycling round and round because it's just so fun to spin.
  - resource0x 8y ago
    > It seems trivial to me to prove that there can be no start or end to reality, ergo no creator. Logically, there's no "ergo" here. We may still have OUR creator. As for who HIS creator is - it's for HIM to care, not for us :)
    - unmole 8y ago
      > As for who HIS creator is - it's for HIM to care, not for us :) Why should we only care about one level of indirection? Or, taking the lazier approach, why should we even care about our hypothetical creator?
      - resource0x 8y ago
        Because it's interesting! Other levels of indirection will become interesting too, as soon as we manage to do even the first step. BTW, the idea that there are several levels of indirection out there is not even controversial, if you use the analogy with programming concepts consistently.
throwaway30193 8y ago
The majority of those talking points are solidly rooted in Buddhism, and especially Zen Buddhism. Perhaps that sounds too "hippy" to their readers, but doing a bit of research and quoting the original sources would be nice.
eplanit 8y ago
2 articles on the HN front page have "toxic" in the title. Indeed, "toxic" was the Oxford dictionary's 2018 word of the year[1]. We're sheep. [1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2018 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-t...
- elefanten 8y ago
  Why stop there... we all speak a common language to begin with! How mindless and desperate.
motohagiography 8y ago
The article includes this tendency to equate ego with what is essentially a secular state of sin, instead of looking behind what ego might be. The view reinforces the just world fallacy that good things happen to good people, if only they could be without ego - and failure can be attributed to said ego's conceits. It's too much to unwrap in a comment, but suffice it to say, while some of this can be helpful to someone in need of it, one would not be alone if they found it cynical and trite.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Thank you... wanted to say much of the same. I think it is all part of the PC movement to virtually castrate all aggression (mostly in men, in women it's fine). You need a certain amount of ego in order to lead. And yeah, confidence is not the same as ego but they are definitively interconnected. You need to display confidence to convince people to follow you, and you need a bit of ego to secure that confidence. And some may say, but that's not the point where it is "toxic" but several of the samples in TFA are not counter or even in demonstration of where it might or might not be a toxic level. Even in communist/socialist societies the successful demonstrate an amount of aggression, ego and confidence. It's human nature. When it coincides with competence all the better.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  Are you familiar with the concepts of mindfulness, awareness, and equanimity that have been imported from Buddhist (and other) practices? Perhaps I am biased, but under that lens much (but not all) of the advice in the article becomes much less trite.
HellDunkel 8y ago
constantly worrying about improving and optimizing yourself. is this feeding or fighting the toxic ego?
debt 8y ago
Ego flourishes in situations that have room for it. In dire situations and extreme circumstances, ego really is a killer because time is precious and is wasted by ego. Thus killing not only your ego, but also the project itself, other people’s ego, careers etc. Ego in a dire situation is like a pressure cooker. So the best way to kill the ego is get yourself into extreme circumstances; BASE jumping or insanely unrealistic project deadlines etc.
Zecar 8y ago
> The artist Marina Abramović has said that the moment we begin to believe in our own greatness, that we kill our ability to be truly creative That's the spirit cooking lady, right?

111 points by omilu 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Ego like many other human traits exists because it helped us survive. Every trait you possess no matter how negative it seems exists because it passed the filter of natural selection. Ego blinds you to the darkness and weakness of yourself. We lie to ourselves to create a delusion that keeps.us moving forward.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Traits are good only insofar as they are well-adapted to their environment. A trait that is vital to a savannah ape's survival may only lead to stress and frustration in a modern office worker. Humans have the unique and wonderful ability to deliberately alter some of our traits on an individual level--which itself is a trait well-adapted to many environments.
coldtea 8y ago
>Ego like many other human traits exists because it helped us survive. Every trait you possess no matter how negative it seems exists because it passed the filter of natural selection. How about self-destructive behavior? What might help the individual survive in small does is not the same in large does. What might help the individual survive in the jungle/caves is not necessary that it works well within a civilization. Lastly, what helped us survive as a species is not necessarily to help the individual survive. Evolution is not a monotonically compounding collection of good traits. As the environment changes, certain traits become invalid or even actively harmful, and others might be needed. Add to the mix the incredible speed by which we alter our environment (with technology, culture, and so on), and the very slow speed by which evolution operates in comparison....
simion314 8y ago
Evolution does not always keep only the positive mutations, it keeps mutations that are also useless because there is no pressure to remove them (some mutations could be useful for future generations) and some bad mutations are kept around if the impact is not significant.
lm28469 8y ago
> because it passed the filter of natural selection That alone doesn't tell much, you can still judge the value of any trait independently of natural selection. Evolution didn't keep up with technology during the last decades. We don't live in small communities with strong bonds, sleep in huts, hunt, &c. anymore. If you say "we evolved to be like this" and "everything evolved is right" there is no place for any kind of argument to be made.
- big_youth 8y ago
  Modern society doesn't' change the fundamentals of human behavior and needs. Per your example we still need a community with strong bonds, a diet of lean proteins and greens, and a dusk till dawn sleeping pattern to function optimally.
  - lm28469 8y ago
    I'm sitting 8+ hours a day in front of a glowing rectangle. Evolution didn't do anything to help my body accommodate that. All I get is back/neck pain, short hamstrings, hampered digestion and a shitty posture. Sure I still need to sleep and eat, but that's about it. We're talking million of years of slow and incremental changes dictated by environmental constraints VS 200 years of exponential technological almost entirely tweaked for convenience. Look at obesity, diabetes, back pain epidemics ... clearly most people diets / lifestyles are not matching what evolution engineered them for. > Per your example we still need a community with strong bonds, a diet of lean proteins and greens, and a dusk till dawn sleeping pattern to function optimally. To "function optimally" yes, but even without that you can live very long, reproduce &c. A few thousands of years ago you'd just die.
lordnacho 8y ago
Any trait could also be an unhelpful one that is on its way towards extinction.
crimsonalucard 8y ago
All of your arguments focus on one thing. A possibility. A possibility that an evolutionary trait is either a neutral trait or an outdated trait. None of these arguments prove that Ego is an ineffective or negative trait. First off people need to list examples about how a big Ego can be a neutral trait or an outdated trait as a supporting argument. If the ego is outdated at some point in time it must have been a positive trait, how can this be? If the ego is a neutral trait there should be an example about how a big ego can be inconsequential to the overall group or positive to the individual. Of course we are talking in terms of possibilities but the absence of examples of the above possibilities makes for weak arguments in my humble opinion. My argument offers that the ego exists because humans need self delusion. They need to lie to themselves and see their existence as consequential in order to be happy. Why has everyone ignored this statement? No argument is completely effective until every point is addressed. Perhaps it's because none of you could come up with a counter retort to the self-delusion argument so you chose to ignore it. Isn't that a form of self delusion? Are we all participating in an argument or are we just trying to win? Perhaps the participants in this argument is not us per se, but our egos. Perhaps all arguments are a meeting of egos.

yeetmode 8y ago

Relevant af to this forum

PedroBatista 8y ago

I know this article is just marketing content to sell a book, but it would be nice for the author to fully present at least one of his "exercises" for one of his bullet points. I wonder how much of these "traits" (?) are just how some people are and they can't do much about it no matter how they try.

rabidrat 8y ago

Overall this article has some really good advice. But I have come to realize that a violent stance--"fighting" to "kill" a "toxic ego"--reinforces a separate, negative part of yourself, and it becomes stronger, subtler, and can eventually become another kind of ego on its own. Ego is all about division and separation, and to truly diminish its hold, we have to take another approach: to embrace it (but not to indulge it), to understand it, to invite it to tea. In today's egotistic world, we need to cultivate a healthy ego, so that we don't sacrifice ourselves to unworthy causes. Ego is an important psychological tool that, when wielded wisely (with intention and awareness, as the article points out), can be very powerful and positive. We just need to make sure that we're in the driver's seat and that we don't let it take over. And especially that we don't come to believe that our collection of ideas about ourselves IS ourselves; as long as we remember that it's just a game--a mask, or a shield that can be dropped at a moment's notice--then we'll be okay.

save_ferris 8y ago
Completely agree. The problem with the "kill" mentality is that it doesn't encourage self-awareness of the ego, the "silent observer" as Eckhart Tolle calls it.
shlant 8y ago
exactly. The ego serves a purpose. It has a lot to teach us about how we perceive ourselves, others and reality. Not only can you not "kill" it (people who claim to have "transcended" the ego still eat food :p ), but trying to will just result in the flip side of the same coin. The solution is integration, not destruction. As Buddhism says, the answer lies in "the middle way".
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
danielbigham 8y ago
This year for whatever reason I keep seeing the concept of "integration" in everything, and have also become interested in what feels like the opposite -- division and separation -- so when I read "Ego is all about division and separation", it really piqued my curiosity. Could you elaborate on that?

SolaceQuantum 8y ago

I have some concerns with this article's advisement. It essentially boils down to stay humble, proactive, and aware. But certain kinds of advice are entirely unnuanced, for example, "dead time" vs "alive time" may mean that someone really needs the rest! Similarly, focusing on effort and not the end goal is not always amenable to reality- it doesn't matter how much you worked at a startup if your stocks ultimately end up shitty. Of course, this article aims to kill ego, not actually enrich the person's life. Killing one's ego can also ruin one's life just as easily as an ego too alive.

ryanackley 8y ago
Doesn't most advice like this lack nuance? That is what makes it easily consumed and processed. We attach our own rationalizations and perspectives to it.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  Yes; this doesn't make the article above discussion of its merits.

b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago

Yeah.. That'll be a hard pass on a bullshit trend word topic. FFS...

cicero 8y ago

> 10. Connect with nature and the universe at large... 18. Choose love. Even better, seek the creator of the universe and the source of love. Many people come to the conclusion that since science has enabled us to understand so much about how our universe works, we can jettison the idea of a creator. However, the contingent nature of our universe and everything in it requires a cause that is not contingent, and religion, especially Christianity, has been telling us about that non-contingent cause for centuries. I urge people to seek out that cause by looking to the testimony of the generations of good people who claim to know this cause.

nkingsy 8y ago
The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that this structure we call reality is circles on circles on circles. It seems trivial to me to prove that there can be no start or end to reality, ergo no creator. I've had some pretty profoundly comforting spiritual experiences in my life, but never one that involved a creator. Much more a realization that there is no time, no place, just a roaring hubbub cycling round and round because it's just so fun to spin.
- resource0x 8y ago
  > It seems trivial to me to prove that there can be no start or end to reality, ergo no creator. Logically, there's no "ergo" here. We may still have OUR creator. As for who HIS creator is - it's for HIM to care, not for us :)
  - unmole 8y ago
    > As for who HIS creator is - it's for HIM to care, not for us :) Why should we only care about one level of indirection? Or, taking the lazier approach, why should we even care about our hypothetical creator?
    - resource0x 8y ago
      Because it's interesting! Other levels of indirection will become interesting too, as soon as we manage to do even the first step. BTW, the idea that there are several levels of indirection out there is not even controversial, if you use the analogy with programming concepts consistently.

throwaway30193 8y ago

The majority of those talking points are solidly rooted in Buddhism, and especially Zen Buddhism. Perhaps that sounds too "hippy" to their readers, but doing a bit of research and quoting the original sources would be nice.

eplanit 8y ago

2 articles on the HN front page have "toxic" in the title. Indeed, "toxic" was the Oxford dictionary's 2018 word of the year[1]. We're sheep. [1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2018 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-t...

elefanten 8y ago
Why stop there... we all speak a common language to begin with! How mindless and desperate.

motohagiography 8y ago

The article includes this tendency to equate ego with what is essentially a secular state of sin, instead of looking behind what ego might be. The view reinforces the just world fallacy that good things happen to good people, if only they could be without ego - and failure can be attributed to said ego's conceits. It's too much to unwrap in a comment, but suffice it to say, while some of this can be helpful to someone in need of it, one would not be alone if they found it cynical and trite.

tracker1 8y ago
Thank you... wanted to say much of the same. I think it is all part of the PC movement to virtually castrate all aggression (mostly in men, in women it's fine). You need a certain amount of ego in order to lead. And yeah, confidence is not the same as ego but they are definitively interconnected. You need to display confidence to convince people to follow you, and you need a bit of ego to secure that confidence. And some may say, but that's not the point where it is "toxic" but several of the samples in TFA are not counter or even in demonstration of where it might or might not be a toxic level. Even in communist/socialist societies the successful demonstrate an amount of aggression, ego and confidence. It's human nature. When it coincides with competence all the better.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dwaltrip 8y ago
Are you familiar with the concepts of mindfulness, awareness, and equanimity that have been imported from Buddhist (and other) practices? Perhaps I am biased, but under that lens much (but not all) of the advice in the article becomes much less trite.

HellDunkel 8y ago

constantly worrying about improving and optimizing yourself. is this feeding or fighting the toxic ego?

debt 8y ago

Ego flourishes in situations that have room for it. In dire situations and extreme circumstances, ego really is a killer because time is precious and is wasted by ego. Thus killing not only your ego, but also the project itself, other people’s ego, careers etc. Ego in a dire situation is like a pressure cooker. So the best way to kill the ego is get yourself into extreme circumstances; BASE jumping or insanely unrealistic project deadlines etc.

Zecar 8y ago

> The artist Marina Abramović has said that the moment we begin to believe in our own greatness, that we kill our ability to be truly creative That's the spirit cooking lady, right?