Ego blinds you to the darkness and weakness of yourself. We lie to ourselves to create a delusion that keeps.us moving forward.
That alone doesn't tell much, you can still judge the value of any trait independently of natural selection.
Evolution didn't keep up with technology during the last decades. We don't live in small communities with strong bonds, sleep in huts, hunt, &c. anymore.
If you say "we evolved to be like this" and "everything evolved is right" there is no place for any kind of argument to be made.
Sure I still need to sleep and eat, but that's about it. We're talking million of years of slow and incremental changes dictated by environmental constraints VS 200 years of exponential technological almost entirely tweaked for convenience.
Look at obesity, diabetes, back pain epidemics ... clearly most people diets / lifestyles are not matching what evolution engineered them for.
> Per your example we still need a community with strong bonds, a diet of lean proteins and greens, and a dusk till dawn sleeping pattern to function optimally.
To "function optimally" yes, but even without that you can live very long, reproduce &c. A few thousands of years ago you'd just die.
None of these arguments prove that Ego is an ineffective or negative trait.
First off people need to list examples about how a big Ego can be a neutral trait or an outdated trait as a supporting argument. If the ego is outdated at some point in time it must have been a positive trait, how can this be? If the ego is a neutral trait there should be an example about how a big ego can be inconsequential to the overall group or positive to the individual. Of course we are talking in terms of possibilities but the absence of examples of the above possibilities makes for weak arguments in my humble opinion.
My argument offers that the ego exists because humans need self delusion. They need to lie to themselves and see their existence as consequential in order to be happy.
Why has everyone ignored this statement? No argument is completely effective until every point is addressed. Perhaps it's because none of you could come up with a counter retort to the self-delusion argument so you chose to ignore it. Isn't that a form of self delusion? Are we all participating in an argument or are we just trying to win? Perhaps the participants in this argument is not us per se, but our egos. Perhaps all arguments are a meeting of egos.
How about self-destructive behavior?
What might help the individual survive in small does is not the same in large does.
What might help the individual survive in the jungle/caves is not necessary that it works well within a civilization.
Lastly, what helped us survive as a species is not necessarily to help the individual survive.
Evolution is not a monotonically compounding collection of good traits.
As the environment changes, certain traits become invalid or even actively harmful, and others might be needed.
Add to the mix the incredible speed by which we alter our environment (with technology, culture, and so on), and the very slow speed by which evolution operates in comparison....
Humans have the unique and wonderful ability to deliberately alter some of our traits on an individual level--which itself is a trait well-adapted to many environments.