The Benefits of a Quiet Ego | Hacker News Reader

The Benefits of a Quiet Ego

quietrev.com

189 pointsgull104 comments

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Another humbling aspect is how fragile we are. Even today, there is a number of unpredictable cosmic events outside our control that can destroy humanity and life on Earth very quickly. And every one of us is just a "meat bag" that doesn't know whether it will wake up tomorrow. I find these realizations humbling. Some people get depressed by these thought but they make me appreciate life even more.

"We're significantly insignificant while also being insignificantly significant."

There's no such thing as importance independent of sentient minds. Importance is what we find important; or to put it another way, whatever we find important - is.

I used to think the same thing, but it's not about putting the gold bar in a large empty room. Consider that the our galaxy has a mass of about 6×10^42 kg. The relative abundance of gold is 6×10^-10, so our galaxy has 4×10^33 kg of gold.

The gold bar isn't in a large empty room. It's in a room filled with piles of gold, each more massive than the planet Mercury, for every person on Earth. Amongst those piles, would that single bar still hold value to you?

Edit: Formatting engine didn't like using * for multiplication

>I never really understood how the 'the universe is vast' argument is humbling.

The idea that if there are millions of planets like ours, containing billions and billions of beings like us, on average your "problems" could be a lot worse. I find it humbling imagining the epicness of some of the struggles going on elsewhere in the universe.

I think that it's not about an argument, its a mental simulation and chemical effect. If you hold in your head the feeling of owning your body completely, for a moment, then start to imagine zooming out to a wider perspective, slowly, like a camera you see the whole world then the solar system, etc. As you scale outwards there is usually a noticeable chemical reaction in your brain and body. You literally feel smaller. My guess is you are triggering a predator-is-bigger-than-me reaction in your brain.

"What did your face look like before your parents were born?"

There's a quality in these one-liners from the Zen tradition that I haven't experienced since I was obsessed with physics in high-school.

"that against a cosmic scale of time and space, every human being is minute"

There is a paved road to clinical depression which starts with thoughts like these. I know it because I've taken it.

Life stops having meaning if you take this too seriously - I mean, why do anything or achieve anything if we're just specs in time and space destined to die and be forgotten ?

Besides, this doesn't necessarily imply humility. If it doesn't matter then it doesn't matter - if you've got a small/quiet ego or you're a larger-than-universe egomaniac... because... we're just a minute...

To the universe you are nothing. To history you are probably nothing.

But to a small number of people you can be everything.

'Cause for the world you are someone, but for someone you're the world' ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOlG-H_Pjbg

There's another type of depression that comes from always grasping for (money|acceptance|fame|success|whatever) and never fully attaining it. For people stuck on this treadmill, the long perspective can be a good reminder that none of it is really worth getting too bent out of shape about. On a cosmic timescale, all these things we worry about will be gone and forgotten in the blink of an eye.

The best antidote to avoid swinging the other way, into nihilism, is to simply live in the present as much as possible and enjoy what's there. Things don't need to be permanent and important to be enjoyable. Think about games. We know the outcome doesn't matter in any larger frame of reference, but we still like playing and get wrapped up in them for their own sake. Life is just another game--not ultimately significant, but fun to get wrapped up in if you don't take the outcome overly seriously.

Nihilism is still a form of depression.

Things are not permanent, yes. All things arise and pass, including nihilism and depression.

The folks I know who are truly in equanimity and live in the present, are present in the moment, are among the most vibrant and real people I know. When they laugh, they laugh, when they grieve, they grieve. They are fearless in their love, even knowing that all things will pass.

It might just be that they are positively biased: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

We are minute, yet here we are - the Universe observing itself.

"Why do anything?". Presented with these options, which would you prefer:

A. Live a normal life and be promised that after your death people will fabricate a story of your adventure, heroism and glory?

B. Live a life of adventure, heroism and glory with the promise that when you die nobody will remember you?

The point being, why derive meaning from the notion of being remembered by people you will never know, when the meaning may be found in the experiences our actions produce now?

The heights of human happiness (yeah, misery too) are ours for the taking. Derive meaning from trying to squeeze as much of the former from life as we possibly can.

I'm not disagreeing with you but just feeling like I could look at (A) as be helpful too lots of people and (B) live a selfish life of hedonism. Was that your intent or do you see a different way of defining (A) and (B)?

That sounds like what the article describes as high self-esteem coupled with an uncomfortable threat to that self-esteem (the larger the ego, the more likely it is to run into death anxiety).

Balancing this line defines the human experience in my opinion. Objectively it is true, we are minute. But humanity is in the subjective making of meaning. That opportunity to make your own meaning is an incredible one if you choose to accept it. If you don't, it's not, and depression/nihilism results.

And the funny thing is, those who hone that strongest sense of subjective meaning and well being in how they see the world, are the ones who make an outsized butterfly-effect impact on the world, coming closest to overcoming that objective meaninglessnes.

So basically, imo the answer to why do anything? Is because you believe something is worth doing subjectively/on faith/on instinct. Only then does it have a chance to build toward a more objective answer to why do it, in its impact on people & history.

"That opportunity to make your own meaning is an incredible one if you choose to accept it. If you don't, it's not, and depression/nihilism results."

This is not true. There are meditative practices where you end up passing through depression and nihilism, but those are still forms of the ego trying make itself known, clinging to it's existence. This is similar to the Five Stages of Grief, where you are not yet at acceptance and equanimity.

That's the feeling of "insignificance", the lack of agency, and seeing the pointlessness. None of those are humility.

When I contemplate the vast cosmic scale and look up in the stores, my jaws drop open like a kid, and I go "whoa..." That's the sense of awe and profoundness. It doesn't have to be about humility or about insignificance.

You can conclude that in the greater scale of things, you may not have much impact and still enjoy life.

Because being aware that your actions in the greater scale of things mean less, make it easier for you to appreciate the moment and what you can do for those who will be around when you are.

When nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.

I think there's only danger in taking the cosmic scale of the universe seriously if you also take your selfhood seriously.

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Minuteness is a problem when you feel like an outsider 'brought into' the world to 'confront' it, but is less problematic if you feel like part of a greater whole.

When I do that, I open up to the sense of awe and wonder, but not necessarily humility.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Heheheheh :-)

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.

> 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.

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.

Anything can be reduced to cheap evolutionary psychology with just-so stories.

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").

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.

> since evoltuion does not provide particular psychologies genetically - genetics provides merely the hardware, not the software.

I'd venture to say that's an unsupported assertion.

> genetics provides merely the hardware, not the software

Much like code and data, there has never really been a fixed bright line between hardware and software, even in systems where we intentionally engineer that distinction (whence came the term "firmware" and the closely related concept of "microcode").

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.

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.

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.

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).

Your mind can go off-rails, being able to slow things down (if it's more than imaginary feeling of my self) is good. You don't need everything on every time to survive. Like sleep.

We evolved to spread our genes better, yes, but how does perceiving reality as best as we can follow from that? Both things are kinda orthogonal I'd say.

> Turning them off doesn't manifest joy but a genetic dead-end, in aggregate.

Everything ends, anyway. So at worst it'd be a dead end just like everything else :P And concepts like "chair" or "puredemo" or anything we talk or think about are really more concepts than tangible, discrete entities, you might also say they're made up. They can be useful shorthands, but when they take on a life of their own in our minds, when we think the symbol is the thing, that's where things get kinda pathetic, and not rarely it turns into a sort of pyramid scheme where we have to make up more shit to defend the delusions we already are invested in. Considering neuroscience, I'd even say we are willfully overriding what we discover because we like the delusion of ego better.

And considering what humanity "in aggregate" is up to, how we pollute and destroy, I would say the latest word in the effectiveness of ego to "survive" isn't spoken yet. It's not like there is this alternate Earth where people pay attention to people like Buddha or Erich Fromm we can compare ours to.

To me saying "we" have evolved to be this way for obvious reaons is like saying "this person is a heroin addict because that's obviously the best way get them going each day", without comparing them to a non-junkie in earnest. If you think not being possessed by ego means just meditating all day or doing nothing, you're wrong, from what I understand and experienced it just means doing and being without having a fake narrative in your head about it you consider to be real and super cereal. Being deeply content and at peace feels great, too, and compared to that short bursts of "ego-based" happiness seem very flimsy.

Let's say that it is an "intuitive" way to reach the same conclusions one reaches after excessive study of religions, philosophy, physics, and then social psychology to explain religions and social conditioning.

Ultimate reality is realization (a glimpse of) the fact, that the ego is not the self, and even intellect is not the self, that most of our perceptions are socially/culturally conditioned, beginning with our spoken language in the first place, and that there is no self apart from that conditioning.

Our senses does not try to perceive "regular ol' reality" precisely most of the time. As you say: our mind and senses have evolved to perceive as best they can via natural selection, but what that selects for is not precise determination of "regular ol' reality" but a narrative that is severely biased because it is economical and safer than trying to be precise.

Here are some thoughts for you:

- Have you ever walked through an area and looked at everything with fresh eyes, only to walk through it again later and have it look and feel entirely different? On second observation, you are relying severely on patterns and actually precisely observing what your eyes see as opposed to what you expect becomes harder with each repetition. You will walk the path, and afterwards insist that you did see x,y, and z, even though you may not even have looked in their direction. If you try to pay close attention, you will often notice the shortcuts: Things look different again. Unfamiliar. Details appear that you never noticed.

- Have you ever tried to draw an object from memory, and then put the same object in front of you and study each line and draw it again? Often you will see people totally change drawing style from various degree of stylized, abstracted shapes that can very well represent a quite accurate outcome, but idealized, with lines way too straight and clean compared to real life, to chaotic lines and patterns that give a far more accurate impression despite less precision. But the first view is often closer to how we see the world when we don't purposefully pay close attention to the details.

(one of my favourite examples of how poorly people pay attention, is to get a group of people to draw a sunset over the sea, and see whether the let the reflected rays of the sun start wide near the horizon and narrow, stay the same width, or start narrow and widen; "everyone" has seen sunsets with reflected light yet people so often get it wrong if they have not paid close attention to it before drawing it)

- Most of us have falsely recognised motion; believed we saw someone. Our perception is highly targeted at pattern recognition: It is safer to see a predator too much than a predator too little. So we see predators that are not there.

- How often do you notice your blind spot? We rarely do, because it gets "filled in", or "closed" in a way that means it takes close attention to notice that our apparent unobstructed field of view has a big empty spot.

- What do you physically sense right now? How long is your "now"? The shorter "gap" you try to sense, the more you will notice your sensations flitting back and forth, flickering, as you scan your "inputs" or not, rather than present some unified, lasting view. The longer the gap, the more your sensations blur into eachother. Suddenly we "feel cold" rather than observe that our toes are cold and there's a cold wind hitting our face, but our torso actually feels warm, for example.

This is what seeing reality is about: Paying attention and at least occasionally seeing past the distortions our mind adds when we're not really paying attention. We abstract, interpret, reinterpret, extrapolate, and outright invent stuff all the time that we carelessly accept as "reality" most of the day.

Some take it further and believe they can beyond our ordinary physical reality; I don't believe in that. But the inaccuracy of our perception is pretty much undeniable, and the sensations and experiences achievable just by spending time actually trying to glimpse our actual physical reality, and poking at the boundaries of our ordinary perception, are profound.

This unfortunately reads like Deepak Chopra to me. The idea of Endless Joy/Nirvana is quite nice, but there is no documented evidence of anyone attaining it. We can supposedly only journey towards it, but never reach. Or, there's a dragon in my garage.

We're also talking about 'ego' as if there is one universal definition we all agree to. It can mean self-centredness and haughtiness, or it can mean the continuous self that one person goes through from birth to death - essentially our memory. It can be many things to many people, and different thing to the same person, at different times.

But within the context of Upanishads that you've quoted, ego is all that is negative about ourselves. But then - letting go of all that is bad is very logical, although not original.

This little book describes that concisely, I believe. http://albigen.com/uarelove/most_rapid/contents.htm

Indeed.

The most important realisation with Buddhism I had was the idea that you can't know the truth but you can be it. That changed everything for me.

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.

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.

>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…

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.

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.

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_cultu...

Thank you for pointing this out.

The article doesn't demonize anyone, or say anyone is "automatically bad". Nor did the author suggest that people should avoid change. In fact, he's proposing an alternative view, not a traditional view.

He's also not making statements about the superiority of anyone. I think he's trying to encourage less focus on superiority in the first place.

What's really bothering you about this article? You seem really frustrated.

Also in 1900s people had less stuff in their houses, even the middle/upper class ones. I think a big change in 'industrial' countries since then has been mass production and the proliferation of things, so most people now are surrounded by new stuff. I think this must have altered our sense of ourselves in some way.

Social change has occured as well of course, hugely, the availability of information about other countries and other ways of living have contributed to that.

I understand what you are trying to say. But the author does point out that having a quiet ego is associated with many positive life outcomes. He links to this paper - http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2003_BrownR...

I haven't gone through the referenced paper but I think it should answer your question to an extent. Also, I feel that the author has been quite diligent has linked to multiple papers to back up his points.

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

Traditionally meditation is said to help.

What does meditation not help in these days

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.

Given the smugness of many meditation enthusiasts I would worry that meditation would only work to make my ego louder.

Bro, do you even Zen?

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 :)

You might enjoy these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92i5m3tV5XY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0l4FlZT-A

@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.

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.

Meditation is "good for nothing". http://www.tricycle.com/interview/good-nothing

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.

That gave me more of a sense of urgency and egoic ambition, not the other way around.

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.

An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuk http://amzn.com/8087888766

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

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.

I find that every time that I read it, i learn something new.

I'm quite amazed that the article does not mention Zen Buddhism, given that it's all about the "quiet ego".

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.

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.

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.

Spend time with people much smarter than you.

"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.

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.

@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.

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/announcin...

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.

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.

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.

Maximum group size: 2.

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.

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.

Introvert and extrovert are the two extremes of a well-defined spectrum which everyone places on somewhere. Those in the middle are called ambiverts.

Why would there even be a spectrum? Maybe a 2 dimensional spectrum. I'm sure someone can be both an extreme introvert and an extreme extrovert. Honestly, I think the idea is ludicrous. People aren't so different. But if there is hard science to back it up, I'd be willing to have my mind changed.

Look at the work of Harvard Professor Jerome Kagan, or the fRMI work of Carl Schwartz at MA General Hospital. People are different, and the differences are measurable, both behaviorally and in brain structure.. It's not as simple as introversion-extroversion, but its also not a useless way of thinking about it.

Anyway, somebody offered you a book to read. You chose to call the ideas in it ludicrous without reading it. Not sure why.

There are also ambiverts :)

Would probably turn into another Ashley Madison scam lol.

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

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.

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.

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.

Started reading, got stupid interstitial popup, left. Has anyone built a blocker for this new breed of pop-up?

Mindfulness might help as well.

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