8 ms·

The Benefits of a Quiet Ego

189 points by gull 11y ago

leoh 11y ago
I really liked this — but how to cultivate a quiet ego?
- DougMerritt 11y ago
  Traditionally meditation is said to help.
  - hamhamed 11y ago
    What does meditation not help in these days
    - DougMerritt 11y ago
      I'm not sure what you're driving at. Beyond relaxation, ego-issues are what meditation has always been about, in multiple traditions if not all.
      - hugh4 11y ago
        Given the smugness of many meditation enthusiasts I would worry that meditation would only work to make my ego louder.
        derrida 11y ago
        Bro, do you even Zen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjTN2eYKqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjTN2eYKqQ) Quite sincerely, my understanding of the Soto zen tradition is "Sit & face the wall. Sit sincerely. Just sit." Everything else is extra. Include the new age hippy bullshit ugh. Including this judgment! Including this pride I take in displaying such wonderous knowledges about something as simple as sitting & facing the wall. lol :)
        PavlovsCat 11y ago
        You might enjoy these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92i5m3tV5XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92i5m3tV5XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0l4FlZT-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0l4FlZT-A
        hosh 11y ago
        @hugh4 thats a fair point and that does happen. It means the people involved are still working their way through things. It's been my experience, that if I am practicing correctly, the louder the ego, the more intense the meditation. Meditation isn't about seeking out bliss; it's about letting go the things you cling to and seeking out the things you have aversion to. To allow things to arise and pass on their own. Sometimes the ego will get louder and more resistant as things near towards the breakthrough. (And this isn't a one-time event; I've lost count on the number of things that have come up during my practice). Shame and embarrassment are often one of the first aversions that will come up when it comes time to work with the ego. These are things that you wished you could have said to the other person. These are things that you try to hide from other people, including yourself. Smugness, the "I know something you don't", is also related to shame and embarrassment. This is the social cue and attitude that triggers the shame and insecurity reflex in other people, the shame of not being in the "in" on things. Now, granted, there are people who just go along and do their thing, and other people will still react to them as if they are smug. But I have met meditators who got into that "smug" phase -- hell, I've been through that phase before too. If you have good friends along this journey, they will help you through that smugness phase, and other difficulties along the way. Lastly, working with the ego isn't really about defeating it or annihilating it. At it's core, it's the spiritualization of the ego. It's an incredible journey, and the specifics of that journey will be uniquely yours alone.
      - derrida 11y ago
        In buddhism, it's been about simply finding ones own mind, free of cultural conditioning & habits. To do this, one practices "let it go". This is the similarity in all traditions - in Zen it might be the "Mu" koan.
    - derrida 11y ago
      Meditation is "good for nothing". http://www.tricycle.com/interview/good-nothing http://www.tricycle.com/interview/good-nothing
- zhoujianfu 11y ago
  Sadly, I would say experiencing a great personal tragedy is a "good" way to cultivate it. There really is nothing like the death of a loved one to put everything, including your own place in the world, in perspective.
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - puredemo 11y ago
    That gave me more of a sense of urgency and egoic ambition, not the other way around.
- bittercynic 11y ago
  Acting out of generosity sometimes seems to help. It is important that your are actually being generous, though, as it is very easy to lend a helping hand in a way that feeds the ego.
- stevewilhelm 11y ago
  An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuk http://amzn.com/8087888766 http://amzn.com/8087888766
  - roflchoppa 11y ago
    i have zen mind beginners mind on my phone, read through it time to time, its a good book. http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/ZMBM-Lectures.html http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/ZMBM-Lectures.html
    - derrida 11y ago
      Yes, this book! I don't recall reading a book with such frequency. I think once I read it cover to cover 3 days in a row - it's full of... I don't know! Also, I made this mistake too for awhile, the author of "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind" is S.Suzuki, not D.T. Suzuki - different folks, both responsible for establishing Zen practices in the West.
      - roflchoppa 11y ago
        I find that every time that I read it, i learn something new.
  - federico3 11y ago
    I'm quite amazed that the article does not mention Zen Buddhism, given that it's all about the "quiet ego".
- learning_still 11y ago
  My 2cents: Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" will always hold true. Additionally, many books on business relationships. One that comes to mind is, "What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School." Fake it til you make it is a viable self help strategy. But truthfully, I think the best thing to do is to surround yourself with people who represent the values you want to imitate.
  - realusername 11y ago
    I also highly recommand the Dale Carnegie book. People who are reading this, don't dismiss this book based on its quite bad title, the book is actually really good.
    - Retra 11y ago
      I've read it and I think it's awful. Nothing there that isn't obvious; it will say exactly what you expect it to say.
- blt 11y ago
  Spend time with people much smarter than you.
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - derrida 11y ago
    "smarter than you" this requires an idea of the ego / self & ones smartness - this itself could then be something you take virtue in - like "I am cultivating egolessness by spending time with smarter people" lol :) [1] I think Wittgenstein hit the nail on the head when he said that the most profound philosophical truths can only be told in the form of jokes. This is the origin of humor in happy people. EDIT: [1] A lot of what I find so amusing in the Zen tradition is that it is so good at articulating these jokes/truths in a minimum amount of words & its rejection of philosophical musing, etc.
- kmill 11y ago
  The four facets described in the article are qualities that can be practiced, especially mindfulness and perspective taking. So long as the practice is done deliberately and evaluated honestly, I think a quiet ego is an unavoidable result. (A hint: look out for spasms of defensiveness or other hypocrisy in yourself, since these are exactly the parts which deserve more attention.[1] Don't miss your responses to noticing these things, either. Also look for exactly what in the world you identify with, and what process is involved in this identification, when you refer to 'I'.) For something more from a particular tradition, "Mindfulness in Plain English" is a reasonably good start. One confusing thing is the use of the word "ego," by the way. A good working definition is "a belief that the self is more than a mental construct," and so "loud ego" refers to putting this belief at the forefront of one's life. Note that this has nothing to do with believing in a self, the construct of self most certainly exists[2] and is useful (though likely not in the way you think it does or is). This is in contrast to Freudian 'ego' which is, as I understand it, the mediator between superego and subconscious. Like, as an analogy, your stomach is an important organ, but it has its rightful place. There's no need for structuring your life around, elevating, and identifying with the stomach as the seat of conscious experience. (Though we do structure our lives around eating. The stomach, digestive system, and body still need food to exist after all...) [1] A related feeling which I'm sure people in the knowledge business would recognize is that unpleasant sensation of coming into contact with something confusing. If the goal is understanding a subject, then this is a good indicator for the things which could use more work, but it is surprising how resistant we can be to realizing it: it's as if confusing things sometimes become invisible! [2] I'm ontologically uncomfortable to be categorically claiming this, but it seems true enough to me.
  - hosh 11y ago
    @kmill on [1] Shame is a curious blend of aversion and ignorance. The dynamic of shame is such that it will actively hide things from you. This "hiding" results in an apparent invisibility (ignorance, that which you ignore). It's possible to strip out the reaction of shame from confusion. At which point, it will feel like a mental block where things just don't have much clarity and things are not connecting, but you're no longer treating it as something to hide from others.
- chnx 11y ago
  Stoic week is coming up in early November. I did it last year and it focuses on fostering virtues very similar to the ideas listed in the article. http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2015/09/12/announcing-stoic-week-2015/ http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2015/09/12/announcin...
- deleted 11y ago
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- littletimmy 11y ago
  Be in control of it. You can do that bit by bit. Everyday, do one thing that you really don't want to do. Everyday, refrain from doing something that you want to do and can do. If you want to go hardcore, expand this circle of do's and don'ts over the course of a month. By the end of the month, you'll be living as an ascetic, and that is when you'll know you have mastery over yourself. Then every year repeat this asceticism for about 1-2 weeks. Withdraw from the world, read and write, eat one meal a day. That way your control over yourself keeps strong.
deleted 11y ago
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rokhayakebe 11y ago
I would pay for a social network/dating app/site for the introverted. I just do not know whether this is an oxymoron or not, but if someone figures this I would pay for it. Gladly.
- hliyan 11y ago
  An 'Anti-social network', so to speak. I too, have thought of this before. The main feature, I suppose, would be that interactions revolve around smaller groups.
  - rokhayakebe 11y ago
    Maximum group size: 2.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    Introversion has nothing to do with being anti-social. An introverted person can be as sociable as an extrovert. The main difference is that the introvert doesn't get energised by being around other people; they need time alone to recharge. An extrovert is the opposite - they're tired by spending time alone but recharge in social situations. Susan Cains book "Quiet" is an exceptional exploration of the field, and well worth reading to breakdown some of the misconceptions about introverts.
    - learning_still 11y ago
      Is there any hard science that supports that you can generalize the entire population into two categories: introverts and extroverts? I find this impossible to believe.
      - onion2k 11y ago
        Introvert and extrovert are the two extremes of a well-defined spectrum which everyone places on somewhere. Those in the middle are called ambiverts.
endgame 11y ago
Started reading, got stupid interstitial popup, left. Has anyone built a blocker for this new breed of pop-up? See also: http://tabcloseddidntread.com/ http://tabcloseddidntread.com/
- doelie_ 11y ago
  Mindfulness might help as well.
hliyan 11y ago
I've come to see ego as just another evolutionary mechanism that can on occasion misfire due to the complexities of modern civilization. It's a mechanism (IMO) in gregarious species meant to maintain or enhance a member's status in the pack/tribe/group, since that status affords survival advantages. But a lot of the times when ego is triggered today have nothing to do with survival advantages or success. Identifying this fact in itself is a first step to quieting down the ego. Identifying a feeling as not valid (just because a feeling is 'natural' doesn't automatically make it valid) can take away a lot of the justification to perpetuate it.
- mjburgess 11y ago
  Anything can be reduced to cheap evolutionary psychology with just-so stories.
  - hliyan 11y ago
    There's no need for condescension (especially on HN). I presented that as an opinion rather than a scientific assertion. In terms of practicality, it is no more valid or invalid than most of the other theories/models of the human mind we entertain. But yes, I share your disdain for evolutionary psychology theories not backed up by data (I suspect these are what you call "cheap").
    - mjburgess 11y ago
      It wasn't condescension. Every word was accurate, intended, and addressed widely with the intention of it being understood by equally competent people. My concision was a reaction to its banality. The problem with evo-psych just-so stories is that they do not discriminate between possible worlds: ie. if men of place A were all angry then the just-so-ers of place A would come up with a story about why men are "evolutionaryily angry". And if men were mellow in place B, we'd get some other story about how men are evolutionarily mellow. Narratives of this kind are not good explanations of anything. And I suspect mostly false anyway, since evoltuion does not provide particular psychologies genetically - genetics provides merely the hardware, not the software.
thetruthseeker1 11y ago
Interesting. I want to make a point that questions the premise of the article. What is wrong if people dont have a quiet ego? What is wrong with the fact that humility is mentioned 43% less. Why is that automatically bad( I am not saying it is good either)? Values of a society change over period of time, many things that were acceptable behavior in the 1900s are not acceptable anymore. In the early 1900s black people were disenfranchised, there were no laws to protect same sex partners. I am sure many of you will agree that you dont miss those laws. Again why do we want to demonize or characterize not having a quiet ego as less superior to having a quiet ego. I do think that if the non-quiet ego is bombastic and misleads people by stating not true statements, that can be a problem.
- learning_still 11y ago
  Let's be honest. The things the article is talking about are largely a reflection of people's demands. The type of people who are looking for self help are clearly not looking for lessons in humility. There is a type of person who would experience problems in their life from not having enough humility. Maybe the number of these people who experience enough personal problems to seek self help has gone down. Perhaps this means that our society has actually become more humble, since there isn't a demand for the value anymore. Or maybe it means that people without humility simply don't experience as many problems anymore? Or maybe a lack of humility would prevent you from seeking self help in the first place. You see these statistics could go many ways depending on how you want to interpret them.
  - jal278 11y ago
    The reduction of 'humility'/'humbleness' was across a broad sample of books, not only the self-help section, and was part of a broader study [1] describing the down-trend in many words associated with virtue. You can indeed interpret these statistics in many ways, but you first need to know the statistics. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254336923_The_cultural_salience_of_moral_character_and_virtue_declined_in_twentieth_century_America https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254336923_The_cultu...
kfk 11y ago
It's funny how most of this ideas are in reality very old concepts of Greek/Roman philosophy. Seneca was a big proponent of "quite ego", for instance (his critic to a strong ego/desire: Tamquam mortales timetis, omnia tamquam immortales concupiscitis). Socrates could be too. I think the common denominator was the understanding that we have no access to the Truth and that we might as well spend the time trying to know ourselves.
- dschiptsov 11y ago
  It is actually Indian philosophy, based on Upanishads, much older that anything Greek/Roman. Basically, they say that it is your "ego" which prevents you, like a veil, from seeing reality as it is, because your mind is constantly busy, preoccupied with petty desires and childish concerns. Think of the ego as a virus processes with results in a high load average load average: 5.38, 5.30, 4.11 The oldest maxim says - let it go (killall -9) and you will find everything (the ultimate reality, which is unity of everything, the state above socially conditioned intellect (which could be called 100% idle), and source of endless joy (due to personal realizations of unity and non-self) which is (and always been) within you. This is, by the way, the basis of Buddhism, which nowadays is ruined by piles upon piles of narcissistic commentaries of so-called teachers.
  - puredemo 11y ago
    The idea of some "ultimate reality" is so annoying to me. There is regular ol' reality which our mind and senses have evolved to perceive as best they can via natural selection over millions of years. The reasons we have a lot of "scripts" running in our mind is because they have historically helped us survive and pass on our genetics. Turning them off doesn't manifest joy but a genetic dead-end, in aggregate.
    - genofon 11y ago
      Not necessarly, now our enviroment evolves much quicker than us, so sometimes our "scripts" don't tell us the best solution to nowadays problems(e.g. overeating because now you have food, tomorrow who knows).
marsay 11y ago
Seems like a rebranding of old ideas. We should be expecting new book soon I guess. All this has been talked about by various western authors and scholars before(Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Carl G. Jung etc.) and as far as I understand them, they all agree on one thing: western people are good at being individuals, having an ego, and it would be mistake to start removing this part of ourselves and think about it as something bad. Of course we should be integrating mindfullness and controlling our narcissistic behaviour, but without antagonizing our ego.
- rukuu001 11y ago
  > All this has been talked about by various western authors and scholars before(Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Carl G. Jung etc.) I'm reading Marcus Aurelius (AD121-180) right now. It's one of the themes he covers over & over again.
jstanley 11y ago
Off topic: site totally unreadable on my phone. The content is in a huge font, wider than the screen, and zoom behaviour is disabled...
carapat_virulat 11y ago
So how is a quiet ego measured? I understand those four facets in the article are supposed to correlate with the quiet ego, so it would be interesting how the loudness of your ego is measured before those 4 questions. Otherwise is seems like imposing your own bias to create a category that fits your per-conceived western Buddhism bias. For example "Facet #1: Detached awareness", I don't really see what "detached" adds to the category of awareness if it only involves those 3 questions mentioned in the article. I can easily imagine people that also score low on those questions but who practice "involved awareness" feeling really attached to what they are doing in a very aware state of mind. Same with the rest of facets, the idea that "Facet #3: Perspective taking" involves quieting your ego is a point of view that is not obvious and you will have to prove somehow. I think for a lot of people empathy intuitively involves feeling the pain of others as your own, which is not a detached feeling at all, and involves a strong involvement of the ego. And I really can not see how the last point of personal growth is supposed to fit with the rest of them. It seems like the typical Western Buddhist marketing, they start speaking about how alienated we are in our consumerist way of life, some love and compassion follow, but the real selling point is that with their help and a little bit of detachment you can even be MORE successful on the consumerist game. All in all I don't buy it unless there's more to it.
- mtreis86 11y ago
  It makes me uncomfortable too. I think they are trying to measure something that is unquantifiable. Life is more complicated, and human interactions exponentially more so. People don't fit into neat little boxes where one group is one way and the other group is another. People are messy.
- cinquemb 11y ago
  >So how is a quiet ego measured? In our lab, we recognize is as deactivation in the PCC, some of our collaborators recognize it as deactivation in the DMN, measurable with both EEG/fMRI. >All in all I don't buy it unless there's more to it. I'd say it's preferable if more people don't feel like they have to "buy" into it… but as you know, there's a burgeoning industry surrounding such, but I'm mostly grateful that I get to be apart of working on the technology which I'd say will be way more useful outside of just meditation and contemplative practices…
ken47 11y ago
What's interesting in these comments is the egos clearly trying to defend themselves. Introspection begins with the question: do you own your ego or does it own you?
- hosh 11y ago
  Heheheheh :-)
icanhackit 11y ago
The gold is at the bottom: “The humble person is probably more aware and accepting of the fact that against a cosmic scale of time and space, every human being is minute.” If there's one thing that will humble you it's trying to fathom the scale of the universe. You think a celebrity matters at these scales? But don't let it make you feel impotent - rejoice at the fact that you're alive, you exist and the world is fucking interesting. Even if you just stare out the window all day, you're a consciousness residing in a stardust body observing the thing that made you.
- Kenji 11y ago
  I never really understood how the 'the universe is vast' argument is humbling. What does size have to do with importance? That's like saying a bar of gold has less value if you store it in a bigger room. There are many humbling things in the universe, like making an off-by-one error in C++ with more than a decade of programming experience, but the vastness of the universe is not one of those things.
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - jacquesm 11y ago
    The base of that goes back to a very simple realization: On a cosmic scale nothing that we do is of great importance. This planet likely is not as special as we would like to think it is and we are not as special as we like to think we are. We are to the universe as a single bacterium is to us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 Is a nice recap of just how vast the universe really is and how utterly insignificant we are within it, in spite of all we're figured out and have achieved collectively. It certainly humbles me.
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      I can just as easily extract the opposite conclusion, and say that we must be incredibly special if it took an universe that big to create us. And it's as good as a conclusion until we discover if intelligent is common or not. I'd side with it not being a good argument.
deleted 11y ago
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andor 11y ago
While there might be some benefits, the biggest disadvantage of humbleness is that many people are not prepared for it. It's not how the role models on TV act, therefore it's weird. People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Humbleness doesn't mix well with assertiveness. Assertive people need to be humble around humble people, and the other way around. With just two persons it might work, add more and you get interesting group dynamics.
- qb45 11y ago
  People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Once me and colleagues were discussing some technical issue with our customer. At one point I suggested a solution which I wasn't really confident in, but I liked to hear his opinion anyway. The guy listened to me and then, in split second, resumed the previous thread of conversation as if exactly nothing had happened. I didn't even feel offended, just spent the next minute silently amazed by this weird glitch in human psychology. His reaction looked so automatic that I felt he wouldn't even be able to consciously recall this event afterwards.
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  It's perfectly possible to be both humble and assertive. Assertiveness is about having clear boundaries and enforcing them. You can be humble about your place in the wider scheme of things and very assertive within that place. Humility doesn't mean letting people walk all over you, it means not thinking you're the most important person in the room. Mr Myagee (sp?) from Karate Kid was both humble and assertive.
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  It's perfectly possible to be both humble and assertive. Assertiveness is about having clear boundaries and enforcing them. You can be humble about your place in the wider scheme of things and very assertive within that place. Humility doesn't mean letting people walk all over you, it means not thinking you're the most important person in the room. Mr Myagee (sp?) from Karate Kid was both humble and assertive.
nathan_f77 11y ago
I don't want to lose any anxiety about death. I'm hoping that organizations such as sens and calico can solve aging within my lifetime, and that I'll be able to afford the treatments. This goal definitely requires a strong ego. It takes pride to say that I deserve to live longer, instead of donating that money to save other people's lives. I've come to the conclusion that I would like to extend my life indefinitely, and I'll have plenty of time to help the poor after that. Of course, I'm probably going to die pretty soon (relatively speaking), and I've come to terms with that, but you should question the inevitability of death.
- hosh 11y ago
  The anxiety of death isn't just about the death of the body. It is rooted deeper into the anxiety about change. This is change happening at the microscopic scale all the way to the macroscopic scale: the death of a thought, the death of an emotion, the death of an idea, the death of an ideal, the death of a pet, the death of a person, the death of a group, the death of a startup, the death of a community, the death of a nation, the death of a civilization, the death of a star, the death of a galaxy, the death of the universe. Real change does not happen without the death of the old. Change is inherent. Changes happen with or without you. Resisting change makes from some incredible drama, but it doesn't have to be a struggle. You could find longevity treatments so that your body does not die, but I think people will ultimately find the whole thing fruitless even if it works.
hosh 11y ago
I think this really depends on someone's stage of development for a particular issue. I'm coming from the frame that, there is no "standard" maturity for an "average" person. Each of us have pieces of ourselves that are in different stages of growth, and not necessarily because some of them got "stuck" somewhere. It is what it is. For some people, on some issues, there is a need to assert themselves. I've met people for whom, some issue, left them feeling victimized, helpless, and hopeless. There's a shift that happens when, such a person drops that sense of victimization, and develops the sense of the initiative, of agency, of being able to make choices. For a lot of people, this idea that you can make choices (as opposed to merely taking options presented in front of you) is life-altering. Likewise, when you are used to making choices and having an effect on the world, all sorts of things now come up. This includes the asshole (someone acting from entitled superiority), the jerk, (someone acting as if surrounded by idiots), and so forth. As one of my friends put it, the "ego" -- and by that, I speak of "the acquired self", or "the conditioned self" -- likes to take credit for everything even if it is not the source of everything. That means that even humility, modesty, charity, mercy can get hijacked by the ego. I've met people, even meditators, for whom, the ego hijacks the spiritual development that comes out of their practices. One of the things the ego can hijack is that very capability of making choices (real choice, not just taking one of the options). We have long associated the acquired self with this idea of making choices, but making real Choice ... the ego actually shies away from it. It's similar to how most people don't actually want real Change. Real change has much more to do with death. People tend to seek out novelty, instead -- apparent change that doesn't really change anything deep down. One of the things I've been working on in the past week or so in my meditation is the relationship between posturing and posture. Posturing happens as a result of clashing egos. In some cases, maybe it is just one person thinking they need to posture, while no one else is participating. The noun "posture", though, is neutral, associated with "martial arts stance", or "yoga asana". I've found through martial arts, there is a particular feeling that comes from wanting to win and overcome the other person, which leads to becoming physically unbalanced, and then the other person exploits that. My desire to win and submit the the other person is the seed of defeat. A lot of work went into being sensitive to balance and imbalance ... to seek out balance within myself, to upset the balance in my opponent, to correct postures and structure of the body, to learn how to break all of that. It's only in the last week that it dawned on me that posturing is accompanied with the same kind of imbalance in the emotional and social dimension, and that by simply by dropping things to the ground, the desire to win an argument disappears.

189 points by gull 11y ago

leoh 11y ago

I really liked this — but how to cultivate a quiet ego?

DougMerritt 11y ago
Traditionally meditation is said to help.
- hamhamed 11y ago
  What does meditation not help in these days
  - DougMerritt 11y ago
    I'm not sure what you're driving at. Beyond relaxation, ego-issues are what meditation has always been about, in multiple traditions if not all.
    - hugh4 11y ago
      Given the smugness of many meditation enthusiasts I would worry that meditation would only work to make my ego louder.
      - derrida 11y ago
        Bro, do you even Zen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjTN2eYKqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjTN2eYKqQ) Quite sincerely, my understanding of the Soto zen tradition is "Sit & face the wall. Sit sincerely. Just sit." Everything else is extra. Include the new age hippy bullshit ugh. Including this judgment! Including this pride I take in displaying such wonderous knowledges about something as simple as sitting & facing the wall. lol :)
      - PavlovsCat 11y ago
        You might enjoy these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92i5m3tV5XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92i5m3tV5XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0l4FlZT-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0l4FlZT-A
      - hosh 11y ago
        @hugh4 thats a fair point and that does happen. It means the people involved are still working their way through things. It's been my experience, that if I am practicing correctly, the louder the ego, the more intense the meditation. Meditation isn't about seeking out bliss; it's about letting go the things you cling to and seeking out the things you have aversion to. To allow things to arise and pass on their own. Sometimes the ego will get louder and more resistant as things near towards the breakthrough. (And this isn't a one-time event; I've lost count on the number of things that have come up during my practice). Shame and embarrassment are often one of the first aversions that will come up when it comes time to work with the ego. These are things that you wished you could have said to the other person. These are things that you try to hide from other people, including yourself. Smugness, the "I know something you don't", is also related to shame and embarrassment. This is the social cue and attitude that triggers the shame and insecurity reflex in other people, the shame of not being in the "in" on things. Now, granted, there are people who just go along and do their thing, and other people will still react to them as if they are smug. But I have met meditators who got into that "smug" phase -- hell, I've been through that phase before too. If you have good friends along this journey, they will help you through that smugness phase, and other difficulties along the way. Lastly, working with the ego isn't really about defeating it or annihilating it. At it's core, it's the spiritualization of the ego. It's an incredible journey, and the specifics of that journey will be uniquely yours alone.
    - derrida 11y ago
      In buddhism, it's been about simply finding ones own mind, free of cultural conditioning & habits. To do this, one practices "let it go". This is the similarity in all traditions - in Zen it might be the "Mu" koan.
  - derrida 11y ago
    Meditation is "good for nothing". http://www.tricycle.com/interview/good-nothing http://www.tricycle.com/interview/good-nothing
zhoujianfu 11y ago
Sadly, I would say experiencing a great personal tragedy is a "good" way to cultivate it. There really is nothing like the death of a loved one to put everything, including your own place in the world, in perspective.
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- puredemo 11y ago
  That gave me more of a sense of urgency and egoic ambition, not the other way around.
bittercynic 11y ago
Acting out of generosity sometimes seems to help. It is important that your are actually being generous, though, as it is very easy to lend a helping hand in a way that feeds the ego.
stevewilhelm 11y ago
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuk http://amzn.com/8087888766 http://amzn.com/8087888766
- roflchoppa 11y ago
  i have zen mind beginners mind on my phone, read through it time to time, its a good book. http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/ZMBM-Lectures.html http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/ZMBM-Lectures.html
  - derrida 11y ago
    Yes, this book! I don't recall reading a book with such frequency. I think once I read it cover to cover 3 days in a row - it's full of... I don't know! Also, I made this mistake too for awhile, the author of "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind" is S.Suzuki, not D.T. Suzuki - different folks, both responsible for establishing Zen practices in the West.
    - roflchoppa 11y ago
      I find that every time that I read it, i learn something new.
- federico3 11y ago
  I'm quite amazed that the article does not mention Zen Buddhism, given that it's all about the "quiet ego".
learning_still 11y ago
My 2cents: Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" will always hold true. Additionally, many books on business relationships. One that comes to mind is, "What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School." Fake it til you make it is a viable self help strategy. But truthfully, I think the best thing to do is to surround yourself with people who represent the values you want to imitate.
- realusername 11y ago
  I also highly recommand the Dale Carnegie book. People who are reading this, don't dismiss this book based on its quite bad title, the book is actually really good.
  - Retra 11y ago
    I've read it and I think it's awful. Nothing there that isn't obvious; it will say exactly what you expect it to say.
blt 11y ago
Spend time with people much smarter than you.
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- derrida 11y ago
  "smarter than you" this requires an idea of the ego / self & ones smartness - this itself could then be something you take virtue in - like "I am cultivating egolessness by spending time with smarter people" lol :) [1] I think Wittgenstein hit the nail on the head when he said that the most profound philosophical truths can only be told in the form of jokes. This is the origin of humor in happy people. EDIT: [1] A lot of what I find so amusing in the Zen tradition is that it is so good at articulating these jokes/truths in a minimum amount of words & its rejection of philosophical musing, etc.
kmill 11y ago
The four facets described in the article are qualities that can be practiced, especially mindfulness and perspective taking. So long as the practice is done deliberately and evaluated honestly, I think a quiet ego is an unavoidable result. (A hint: look out for spasms of defensiveness or other hypocrisy in yourself, since these are exactly the parts which deserve more attention.[1] Don't miss your responses to noticing these things, either. Also look for exactly what in the world you identify with, and what process is involved in this identification, when you refer to 'I'.) For something more from a particular tradition, "Mindfulness in Plain English" is a reasonably good start. One confusing thing is the use of the word "ego," by the way. A good working definition is "a belief that the self is more than a mental construct," and so "loud ego" refers to putting this belief at the forefront of one's life. Note that this has nothing to do with believing in a self, the construct of self most certainly exists[2] and is useful (though likely not in the way you think it does or is). This is in contrast to Freudian 'ego' which is, as I understand it, the mediator between superego and subconscious. Like, as an analogy, your stomach is an important organ, but it has its rightful place. There's no need for structuring your life around, elevating, and identifying with the stomach as the seat of conscious experience. (Though we do structure our lives around eating. The stomach, digestive system, and body still need food to exist after all...) [1] A related feeling which I'm sure people in the knowledge business would recognize is that unpleasant sensation of coming into contact with something confusing. If the goal is understanding a subject, then this is a good indicator for the things which could use more work, but it is surprising how resistant we can be to realizing it: it's as if confusing things sometimes become invisible! [2] I'm ontologically uncomfortable to be categorically claiming this, but it seems true enough to me.
- hosh 11y ago
  @kmill on [1] Shame is a curious blend of aversion and ignorance. The dynamic of shame is such that it will actively hide things from you. This "hiding" results in an apparent invisibility (ignorance, that which you ignore). It's possible to strip out the reaction of shame from confusion. At which point, it will feel like a mental block where things just don't have much clarity and things are not connecting, but you're no longer treating it as something to hide from others.
chnx 11y ago
Stoic week is coming up in early November. I did it last year and it focuses on fostering virtues very similar to the ideas listed in the article. http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2015/09/12/announcing-stoic-week-2015/ http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2015/09/12/announcin...
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littletimmy 11y ago
Be in control of it. You can do that bit by bit. Everyday, do one thing that you really don't want to do. Everyday, refrain from doing something that you want to do and can do. If you want to go hardcore, expand this circle of do's and don'ts over the course of a month. By the end of the month, you'll be living as an ascetic, and that is when you'll know you have mastery over yourself. Then every year repeat this asceticism for about 1-2 weeks. Withdraw from the world, read and write, eat one meal a day. That way your control over yourself keeps strong.

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rokhayakebe 11y ago

I would pay for a social network/dating app/site for the introverted. I just do not know whether this is an oxymoron or not, but if someone figures this I would pay for it. Gladly.

hliyan 11y ago
An 'Anti-social network', so to speak. I too, have thought of this before. The main feature, I suppose, would be that interactions revolve around smaller groups.
- rokhayakebe 11y ago
  Maximum group size: 2.
- onion2k 11y ago
  Introversion has nothing to do with being anti-social. An introverted person can be as sociable as an extrovert. The main difference is that the introvert doesn't get energised by being around other people; they need time alone to recharge. An extrovert is the opposite - they're tired by spending time alone but recharge in social situations. Susan Cains book "Quiet" is an exceptional exploration of the field, and well worth reading to breakdown some of the misconceptions about introverts.
  - learning_still 11y ago
    Is there any hard science that supports that you can generalize the entire population into two categories: introverts and extroverts? I find this impossible to believe.
    - onion2k 11y ago
      Introvert and extrovert are the two extremes of a well-defined spectrum which everyone places on somewhere. Those in the middle are called ambiverts.

endgame 11y ago

Started reading, got stupid interstitial popup, left. Has anyone built a blocker for this new breed of pop-up? See also: http://tabcloseddidntread.com/ http://tabcloseddidntread.com/

doelie_ 11y ago
Mindfulness might help as well.

hliyan 11y ago

I've come to see ego as just another evolutionary mechanism that can on occasion misfire due to the complexities of modern civilization. It's a mechanism (IMO) in gregarious species meant to maintain or enhance a member's status in the pack/tribe/group, since that status affords survival advantages. But a lot of the times when ego is triggered today have nothing to do with survival advantages or success. Identifying this fact in itself is a first step to quieting down the ego. Identifying a feeling as not valid (just because a feeling is 'natural' doesn't automatically make it valid) can take away a lot of the justification to perpetuate it.

mjburgess 11y ago
Anything can be reduced to cheap evolutionary psychology with just-so stories.
- hliyan 11y ago
  There's no need for condescension (especially on HN). I presented that as an opinion rather than a scientific assertion. In terms of practicality, it is no more valid or invalid than most of the other theories/models of the human mind we entertain. But yes, I share your disdain for evolutionary psychology theories not backed up by data (I suspect these are what you call "cheap").
  - mjburgess 11y ago
    It wasn't condescension. Every word was accurate, intended, and addressed widely with the intention of it being understood by equally competent people. My concision was a reaction to its banality. The problem with evo-psych just-so stories is that they do not discriminate between possible worlds: ie. if men of place A were all angry then the just-so-ers of place A would come up with a story about why men are "evolutionaryily angry". And if men were mellow in place B, we'd get some other story about how men are evolutionarily mellow. Narratives of this kind are not good explanations of anything. And I suspect mostly false anyway, since evoltuion does not provide particular psychologies genetically - genetics provides merely the hardware, not the software.

thetruthseeker1 11y ago

Interesting. I want to make a point that questions the premise of the article. What is wrong if people dont have a quiet ego? What is wrong with the fact that humility is mentioned 43% less. Why is that automatically bad( I am not saying it is good either)? Values of a society change over period of time, many things that were acceptable behavior in the 1900s are not acceptable anymore. In the early 1900s black people were disenfranchised, there were no laws to protect same sex partners. I am sure many of you will agree that you dont miss those laws. Again why do we want to demonize or characterize not having a quiet ego as less superior to having a quiet ego. I do think that if the non-quiet ego is bombastic and misleads people by stating not true statements, that can be a problem.

learning_still 11y ago
Let's be honest. The things the article is talking about are largely a reflection of people's demands. The type of people who are looking for self help are clearly not looking for lessons in humility. There is a type of person who would experience problems in their life from not having enough humility. Maybe the number of these people who experience enough personal problems to seek self help has gone down. Perhaps this means that our society has actually become more humble, since there isn't a demand for the value anymore. Or maybe it means that people without humility simply don't experience as many problems anymore? Or maybe a lack of humility would prevent you from seeking self help in the first place. You see these statistics could go many ways depending on how you want to interpret them.
- jal278 11y ago
  The reduction of 'humility'/'humbleness' was across a broad sample of books, not only the self-help section, and was part of a broader study [1] describing the down-trend in many words associated with virtue. You can indeed interpret these statistics in many ways, but you first need to know the statistics. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254336923_The_cultural_salience_of_moral_character_and_virtue_declined_in_twentieth_century_America https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254336923_The_cultu...

kfk 11y ago

It's funny how most of this ideas are in reality very old concepts of Greek/Roman philosophy. Seneca was a big proponent of "quite ego", for instance (his critic to a strong ego/desire: Tamquam mortales timetis, omnia tamquam immortales concupiscitis). Socrates could be too. I think the common denominator was the understanding that we have no access to the Truth and that we might as well spend the time trying to know ourselves.

dschiptsov 11y ago
It is actually Indian philosophy, based on Upanishads, much older that anything Greek/Roman. Basically, they say that it is your "ego" which prevents you, like a veil, from seeing reality as it is, because your mind is constantly busy, preoccupied with petty desires and childish concerns. Think of the ego as a virus processes with results in a high load average load average: 5.38, 5.30, 4.11 The oldest maxim says - let it go (killall -9) and you will find everything (the ultimate reality, which is unity of everything, the state above socially conditioned intellect (which could be called 100% idle), and source of endless joy (due to personal realizations of unity and non-self) which is (and always been) within you. This is, by the way, the basis of Buddhism, which nowadays is ruined by piles upon piles of narcissistic commentaries of so-called teachers.
- puredemo 11y ago
  The idea of some "ultimate reality" is so annoying to me. There is regular ol' reality which our mind and senses have evolved to perceive as best they can via natural selection over millions of years. The reasons we have a lot of "scripts" running in our mind is because they have historically helped us survive and pass on our genetics. Turning them off doesn't manifest joy but a genetic dead-end, in aggregate.
  - genofon 11y ago
    Not necessarly, now our enviroment evolves much quicker than us, so sometimes our "scripts" don't tell us the best solution to nowadays problems(e.g. overeating because now you have food, tomorrow who knows).

marsay 11y ago

Seems like a rebranding of old ideas. We should be expecting new book soon I guess. All this has been talked about by various western authors and scholars before(Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Carl G. Jung etc.) and as far as I understand them, they all agree on one thing: western people are good at being individuals, having an ego, and it would be mistake to start removing this part of ourselves and think about it as something bad. Of course we should be integrating mindfullness and controlling our narcissistic behaviour, but without antagonizing our ego.

rukuu001 11y ago
> All this has been talked about by various western authors and scholars before(Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Carl G. Jung etc.) I'm reading Marcus Aurelius (AD121-180) right now. It's one of the themes he covers over & over again.

jstanley 11y ago

Off topic: site totally unreadable on my phone. The content is in a huge font, wider than the screen, and zoom behaviour is disabled...

carapat_virulat 11y ago

So how is a quiet ego measured? I understand those four facets in the article are supposed to correlate with the quiet ego, so it would be interesting how the loudness of your ego is measured before those 4 questions. Otherwise is seems like imposing your own bias to create a category that fits your per-conceived western Buddhism bias. For example "Facet #1: Detached awareness", I don't really see what "detached" adds to the category of awareness if it only involves those 3 questions mentioned in the article. I can easily imagine people that also score low on those questions but who practice "involved awareness" feeling really attached to what they are doing in a very aware state of mind. Same with the rest of facets, the idea that "Facet #3: Perspective taking" involves quieting your ego is a point of view that is not obvious and you will have to prove somehow. I think for a lot of people empathy intuitively involves feeling the pain of others as your own, which is not a detached feeling at all, and involves a strong involvement of the ego. And I really can not see how the last point of personal growth is supposed to fit with the rest of them. It seems like the typical Western Buddhist marketing, they start speaking about how alienated we are in our consumerist way of life, some love and compassion follow, but the real selling point is that with their help and a little bit of detachment you can even be MORE successful on the consumerist game. All in all I don't buy it unless there's more to it.

mtreis86 11y ago
It makes me uncomfortable too. I think they are trying to measure something that is unquantifiable. Life is more complicated, and human interactions exponentially more so. People don't fit into neat little boxes where one group is one way and the other group is another. People are messy.
cinquemb 11y ago
>So how is a quiet ego measured? In our lab, we recognize is as deactivation in the PCC, some of our collaborators recognize it as deactivation in the DMN, measurable with both EEG/fMRI. >All in all I don't buy it unless there's more to it. I'd say it's preferable if more people don't feel like they have to "buy" into it… but as you know, there's a burgeoning industry surrounding such, but I'm mostly grateful that I get to be apart of working on the technology which I'd say will be way more useful outside of just meditation and contemplative practices…

ken47 11y ago

What's interesting in these comments is the egos clearly trying to defend themselves. Introspection begins with the question: do you own your ego or does it own you?

hosh 11y ago
Heheheheh :-)

icanhackit 11y ago

The gold is at the bottom: “The humble person is probably more aware and accepting of the fact that against a cosmic scale of time and space, every human being is minute.” If there's one thing that will humble you it's trying to fathom the scale of the universe. You think a celebrity matters at these scales? But don't let it make you feel impotent - rejoice at the fact that you're alive, you exist and the world is fucking interesting. Even if you just stare out the window all day, you're a consciousness residing in a stardust body observing the thing that made you.

Kenji 11y ago
I never really understood how the 'the universe is vast' argument is humbling. What does size have to do with importance? That's like saying a bar of gold has less value if you store it in a bigger room. There are many humbling things in the universe, like making an off-by-one error in C++ with more than a decade of programming experience, but the vastness of the universe is not one of those things.
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- jacquesm 11y ago
  The base of that goes back to a very simple realization: On a cosmic scale nothing that we do is of great importance. This planet likely is not as special as we would like to think it is and we are not as special as we like to think we are. We are to the universe as a single bacterium is to us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 Is a nice recap of just how vast the universe really is and how utterly insignificant we are within it, in spite of all we're figured out and have achieved collectively. It certainly humbles me.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    I can just as easily extract the opposite conclusion, and say that we must be incredibly special if it took an universe that big to create us. And it's as good as a conclusion until we discover if intelligent is common or not. I'd side with it not being a good argument.

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andor 11y ago

While there might be some benefits, the biggest disadvantage of humbleness is that many people are not prepared for it. It's not how the role models on TV act, therefore it's weird. People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Humbleness doesn't mix well with assertiveness. Assertive people need to be humble around humble people, and the other way around. With just two persons it might work, add more and you get interesting group dynamics.

qb45 11y ago
People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Once me and colleagues were discussing some technical issue with our customer. At one point I suggested a solution which I wasn't really confident in, but I liked to hear his opinion anyway. The guy listened to me and then, in split second, resumed the previous thread of conversation as if exactly nothing had happened. I didn't even feel offended, just spent the next minute silently amazed by this weird glitch in human psychology. His reaction looked so automatic that I felt he wouldn't even be able to consciously recall this event afterwards.
marcus_holmes 11y ago
It's perfectly possible to be both humble and assertive. Assertiveness is about having clear boundaries and enforcing them. You can be humble about your place in the wider scheme of things and very assertive within that place. Humility doesn't mean letting people walk all over you, it means not thinking you're the most important person in the room. Mr Myagee (sp?) from Karate Kid was both humble and assertive.
marcus_holmes 11y ago
It's perfectly possible to be both humble and assertive. Assertiveness is about having clear boundaries and enforcing them. You can be humble about your place in the wider scheme of things and very assertive within that place. Humility doesn't mean letting people walk all over you, it means not thinking you're the most important person in the room. Mr Myagee (sp?) from Karate Kid was both humble and assertive.

nathan_f77 11y ago

I don't want to lose any anxiety about death. I'm hoping that organizations such as sens and calico can solve aging within my lifetime, and that I'll be able to afford the treatments. This goal definitely requires a strong ego. It takes pride to say that I deserve to live longer, instead of donating that money to save other people's lives. I've come to the conclusion that I would like to extend my life indefinitely, and I'll have plenty of time to help the poor after that. Of course, I'm probably going to die pretty soon (relatively speaking), and I've come to terms with that, but you should question the inevitability of death.

hosh 11y ago
The anxiety of death isn't just about the death of the body. It is rooted deeper into the anxiety about change. This is change happening at the microscopic scale all the way to the macroscopic scale: the death of a thought, the death of an emotion, the death of an idea, the death of an ideal, the death of a pet, the death of a person, the death of a group, the death of a startup, the death of a community, the death of a nation, the death of a civilization, the death of a star, the death of a galaxy, the death of the universe. Real change does not happen without the death of the old. Change is inherent. Changes happen with or without you. Resisting change makes from some incredible drama, but it doesn't have to be a struggle. You could find longevity treatments so that your body does not die, but I think people will ultimately find the whole thing fruitless even if it works.

hosh 11y ago

I think this really depends on someone's stage of development for a particular issue. I'm coming from the frame that, there is no "standard" maturity for an "average" person. Each of us have pieces of ourselves that are in different stages of growth, and not necessarily because some of them got "stuck" somewhere. It is what it is. For some people, on some issues, there is a need to assert themselves. I've met people for whom, some issue, left them feeling victimized, helpless, and hopeless. There's a shift that happens when, such a person drops that sense of victimization, and develops the sense of the initiative, of agency, of being able to make choices. For a lot of people, this idea that you can make choices (as opposed to merely taking options presented in front of you) is life-altering. Likewise, when you are used to making choices and having an effect on the world, all sorts of things now come up. This includes the asshole (someone acting from entitled superiority), the jerk, (someone acting as if surrounded by idiots), and so forth. As one of my friends put it, the "ego" -- and by that, I speak of "the acquired self", or "the conditioned self" -- likes to take credit for everything even if it is not the source of everything. That means that even humility, modesty, charity, mercy can get hijacked by the ego. I've met people, even meditators, for whom, the ego hijacks the spiritual development that comes out of their practices. One of the things the ego can hijack is that very capability of making choices (real choice, not just taking one of the options). We have long associated the acquired self with this idea of making choices, but making real Choice ... the ego actually shies away from it. It's similar to how most people don't actually want real Change. Real change has much more to do with death. People tend to seek out novelty, instead -- apparent change that doesn't really change anything deep down. One of the things I've been working on in the past week or so in my meditation is the relationship between posturing and posture. Posturing happens as a result of clashing egos. In some cases, maybe it is just one person thinking they need to posture, while no one else is participating. The noun "posture", though, is neutral, associated with "martial arts stance", or "yoga asana". I've found through martial arts, there is a particular feeling that comes from wanting to win and overcome the other person, which leads to becoming physically unbalanced, and then the other person exploits that. My desire to win and submit the the other person is the seed of defeat. A lot of work went into being sensitive to balance and imbalance ... to seek out balance within myself, to upset the balance in my opponent, to correct postures and structure of the body, to learn how to break all of that. It's only in the last week that it dawned on me that posturing is accompanied with the same kind of imbalance in the emotional and social dimension, and that by simply by dropping things to the ground, the desire to win an argument disappears.