Ego Death
krisnova.net
krisnova.net
Just how it feels to me, anyway. It's very overwrought.
Eg, the first sentence:
> As I begin settling into a new flow of my life I find myself finding tremendous sanctuary and peace with myself.
2 * "I", 2 * "myself", 1 * "my life" and a claim that this person has found "tremendous sanctuary and peace".
> I notice this internal tranquility seems to be related to my exodus of social media.
In the second sentence we read that they have peace because of their absence from social media. Great, but then why write a blog post about it all?
It seems like an egoic attempt to try to claim moral high ground to castigate others, while failing to address the crimes others commit in oneself. Do as I say..
As far as I can tell, from observations in myself, and of others, the ego is only something you can manage. You can experience moments of freedom (most reliably through psychedelics in my experience) that give you a taste of something beautiful and relieving. But the ego is just sleeping.
The tentacles of the ego are attached to the very nature of your life itself - to very basic metabolic processes. It’ll always be with you - your existence and your ego’s existence are hopelessly intertwined.
I would say, that one can educate the ego so that it is working with you not against you - one can try to align it with one's principles and remove the multiple incompatible desires in oneself. This involves internal reflection, awareness of one's emotions, acknowledgement of one's shadow self, love of honesty, endurance - and hopefully, at the end of the process you have emotions, thought and actions all working in an aligned, non-dissonant way.
Even then, who is to say if the monks starving to death sitting on the floor aren’t smug in their achievement lol.
Still, for those looking to reduce the role of ego in their life, it is a potential path.
Ego reduction is a sufficient and useful goal for many people.
Shutting up for a long time is a pretty good way to test your comfort level with suppressing an inflated concept/value of self. Extending the shutting up to internal chatter, even more so.
There's also a pretty popular book that claims existence started with the word.
She recently suddenly passed away (climbing accident), which is pretty weird considering this article and how it ends.
If the authors earnest blog post strikes you as ego-y maybe stop for a second check your own ego.
Your cynical response to someone practicing vulnerability is disgusting.
Disgusting tends to directly describe an individual rather than an act. I think that makes it much less useful in teaching and discourse, since it strongly evokes ad-hominem vibes.
I think we might all be better off to carefully consider the (mis)use of the term when our goal is to educate, enlighten, correct, or lead.
It’s a great term to use when the goal is to shame, diminish, or discredit an individual, but should we be doing that except in cases where a person has revealed themselves to be beyond a desire to improve or any hope of redemption?
I’m afraid that the attention economy has made us all meaner in our words when we should be kinder.
Yeah, it feels like most of social media is now shit-flinging and calling the "outside group" stupid so one can feel "At least I'm not a stupid horrible person like that idiot!".
I notice on Instagram you can "like" comments but not dislike them, to disagree with someone you have to put in more effort and type a rebuttal. This "oh we prefer positivity" behavior also means reinforcement of ignorant behavior, by the many likes people see that they get for their hateful comments.
We all have some anger in us too. But we're not all frequently beating up or even killing people in powerful fits of anger. Something that "simply amplifies" pre-existing violent tendencies can have a dramatic detrimental effect on society.
Human beings have many potentialities. Amplifying some of them as opposed to others, is enough to change major parts of our behavior, personality, and even society.
It's not a genuine interaction, at all. It's a town hall full of shit posters, some of which you went to school with or just happen to be related to. There are literal families divided right now because Becky went full "nobody asked, stay off my profile" mode on her Uncle Steve. Which is just nuts.
Really makes me worry about where we'll be in 20-30 years, socially speaking.
You are ignoring how peoples diet have changed over the decades. Life activities were more directed towards survival, even things like growing vegetables in the back garden or allotment were hobbies to help put the icing on the cake for an otherwise functional world.
Today, with food aplenty and technological gains like mobile phones, the internet, not just social media, is perhaps best seen as a mirror of the human psyche, a mirror of the regional, national and global collective ego's.
This may well be a golden age for the advancement of psychology.
I saw myself in both your quote and the one you responded to.
For the past year, I've participated in calling out Unstoppable Domains for their bullying tactics[1], shady behavior[2], &c. I've delighted in catching their employees off-guard in obvious lies. I've made ample use of the #StoppableDomains hashtag to further expose how they're a Web2 company masquerading as Web3. All this for Twitter to indefinitely ban my account for "platform misuse."
Was it worth it? My previous data export was almost a year ago so, unfortunately not. Losing a decade plus of memories hurts but it further illuminates the need to own your content (and that's a rant for another day).
I do think that holding people and corporations accountable is important. At this point though, I don't care to continue putting energy into platforms and not really getting much back from them (if anything).
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[1]: https://domainnamewire.com/2023/06/26/court-handshake-wallet...
> select * from posts where author_id in $following order by posted_date desc
No more gaming engagement or viral rage.
Surely you must willingly follow people who post this kind of content, or inflammatory tags? Because I think it's the only way this content can reach you.
Really? Right now, if I go to mastodon.social, I'm redirected to https://mastodon.social/explore and 3 out of the first 4 posts are people fulminating about "red states", "anti-racism" and "Twitter" respectively.
As far as I know my experience would be the same with any other instance, nobody has to read random posts by people who just happen to be on the same instance.
The strictly chronological approach seems to work fairly well as long as you only follow a few people but it doesn't scale very well.
The founding generation of Mastodon roughly overlaps with people who believe that everything in life is political. Moreover, that group roughly overlaps with people who believe that attempting to escape strident political rhetoric is itself a political action directed against whatever groups they are passionate about. Founding-generation Mastodon users have expressed concern about the Mastodon ecosystem eventually evolving out of the kind of concerns and way of writing that they have, to something more representative of the broader public.
Which ones are less political? I went to a supposedly global and tech focused instance only to find US political slogans in the "About" page itself.
> If you actually create an account you will be able to pick and choose whose posts you want to see.
That didn't work on Twitter and I doubt it'll work on Mastodon. Neither of them have a way of categorising posts into topics. There's no way to follow someone to get updates about their work without being subjected to whatever political digressions they chose to share.
Well that's a weakness inherent to microblogging, some people like it evidently (as seen by the success of Twitter). I don't and only got a Mastodon account because I need it to follow some work I'm interested in, and indeed I need to ignore posts I don't care about.
Following and ignoring tags helps, but it's not perfect. But it works better than on Twitter.
Of course there’s always has been and always will be toxic content but to me it feels like society is breaking down in a way that is unlike what was happening before and it seems largely driven by social media interactions.
Edit: I think I misunderstood what you were suggesting (just a chronological timeline?).
Like the folks here on HN in this very thread flinging shit and calling those horrible social media users idiots, you mean? The irony in your comment is just too much. Yikes.
Just stop. People are people. In-group/out-group abuse and hate has been a fact of life for as long as we've been a species. You treat that, as Nova did, with understanding and empathy, not with more hate.
As long as you (and you're hardly alone in this topic!) walk around with that chip on your shoulder you are guaranteeing never to escape your personal in-group prison, nor to ever make peace with the out-groups you're yelling about.
I've watched it destroy relationships, including some of mine, and turn people into psychopaths. When I meet someone new I can observe a pretty consistent correlation between how heavily they use the major social media platforms and how awful of a human being they are.
It is not a thing you want in your life, full stop.
Not everyone's social media experience is the same.
The author was participating in the noise, stuck in the culture of substance abuse.
Their experience is that this is the only experience.
To the most casual observer this is clearly untrue.
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Anyone paying attention to the science on social media is aware there are people stuck in this cycle.
It's cool that this person woke to it but there is nothing larger here and there is no indication their habits are going to change longer term. They are determined to continue to participate in something they admit harms them.
Self worth comes from yourself. If you’re getting your worth from an outside source, that’s external validation, which is a wholly unsatisfying strategy. You’re always going to be chasing it. Not everybody has that problem.
Sure, regulations change (like the push for legalizing marijuana), but I doubt anyone is seriously advocating to make everything addictive completely freely available.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, or the author for that matter, but I can't quite entirely tease apart why one would apply to the one and not the other.
Gathering 'likes' was addictive, and because of the low effort required to 'like' things, it created the false impression of being connected to people. Suddenly, reacting to EVERYTHING became an expectation. Of course, this is what Facebook wanted, but it is overwhelming to react meaningfully to everything every one of the 338 friends an average Facebook user has.
There's also the receiving side of likes - the Variable Ratio Schedule which means the more you post, the more likely you are to receive a 'like' - but there's not a direct correlation. Skinner (the father of operant conditioning) identified this as the most effective reward mechanism to condition behaviour.
I believe (quite strongly) that the 'like' button is directly or indirectly responsible for most of the mental health damage being done by Facebook and Instagram.
Why would there be correlation? Do you mean in your own mind, or decided by others?
> test ideas
I don't understand. You post things you don't necessarily believe, to see how people react? This is not a healthy approach for you or the platform. You could instead use one account and simply say you're not sure about this or that idea, or on the fence about particular issues.
If I had a reputation then people would consciously or not evaluate the truth of my statements at least in part based on my reputation. I often fail, but I try to write the truth as I see it and let it stand without being tied up in my identity.
I would expect the same of readers of my posts... I highly doubt anyone is digging through my old posts. Who has the time? For what purpose?
The exception is maybe a big claim you make. Perhaps a controversial claim which is hard to verify, and people may then look at your past comments. But if you're not making any big bold claims, or leaking juicy gossip, or dropping any unbelievable truth bombs....
I think your account churn is motivated by something else. It's your business, it's all good, but your HN account reputation wouldn't be used against you. Every day is a new day, and people gravitate towards good faith discussion, don't they? Your spicy post from the other day is forgiven! (to be clear, I am not aware of any spicy posts you wrote). Good luck.
It's good in some ways because it drives behavior I would consider healthy in a community--thoughtfully reviewing a post before hitting 'reply,' respectful discourse, and thorough fact-checking.
But I also find that same pressure convincing me not to post, especially if I'm a novice in an area or need help. I understand this is egotistical in many ways, and managing it by "staying anonymous via a new stage name" is a really interesting idea.
Do you imbue reach handle with its own persona (presumably a fragment of yours, writ whole)?
Or is it basically just a cover for whatever you feel like writing in each moment?
—The Buddha
My current understanding is that purpose of the ego is to maintain the world view. In other words, it provides resistane to change to the current world view.
It is supposed to work like soil works for seed -- provides some initial resistance to facilitate growth and make it possible for the plant to survie after it breaks through the surface.
Therefore, ego is absolutely necessary part of humans. Killing it is not possible and even trying to kill it is not a useful aim. (I know, I have tried.)
That said, there may be many problems related to oversized egos and learning to work with your ego is worthwhile.
:(
> Over the past months I have began mountain climbing again, and in many cases I have rediscovered a sense of self-respect for my ability to accomplish my goals when nobody is watching.
Ouch... I hope it wasn't a seeking of this feeling that lead to her fatal accident.
If I'm active in a community and suddenly stop showing up, I may make an announcement too.
Perhaps its purpose is simply to notify any followers why things might get quieter.
Though, of course, she probably should’ve taken account of your… feelings about potentially being exposed to her blog someday. The utter nerve, apparently. After all, you’re the main character, and people must only have motivations insofar as they apply to you, right?
This was especially ironic:
> "I want to kill my ego, or at least substantially break it"
It seems to me that those criticising the OP for using too many “I”s are behaving like crabs in a bucket. Let us look beyond mere words and into what OP is actually trying to communicate.
Look at these quotes:
> You can’t tweet your way to self-respect.
> How can anyone farming a void on emptiness internally enact change?
> I see millions of empty users crying out for more validation
The author is web buddha and just achieved nirvana, others are just validation-seeking, void-farmer, self-disrespectful egotistical losers (I'm exaggerating, of course, but that's the gist of it).
I mean, I get it. First step to solve a problem is to recognize you have a problem. But does the text really does this, or just shifts it to a more generic, "it's everyone and not just me" problem?
Please stop doing this and just write like you talk. Unless that's also how you talk, in which case please just don't do that.
Just my $0.02
It's how I write most of my communication, like statements are lines of code.
> doom and horror
I don't think lumping everyone into this bleak conclusion is fair or accurate. Perhaps it's a method to excuse yourself from your own use of social media: the "system" is to blame, and everyone else is just as bad?
> "Everyone wants to slow to gawk at the carnage – nobody wants to stop and lend a hand."
Not true. Some would lend a hand if they thought they wouldn't get in the way. Some slow down to assess the situation to determine whether they could help. Not everyone is an unhelpful gawker.
>I want to kill my ego, or at least substantially break it.
So not that they have had an ego death, but rather had a goal of it.
This is very much akin to Echart Tolle in his ego death. He was literally suicidal and then realized his ego is his problem. Thus avoiding an actual suicide.
Well I don't. And this belief isn't any more valid or invalid than mine, or anyone else's. Regardless of the flimsy definition of virtuousness, there are people out there who are hellbent on causing harm, and some are petty killers who are caught easily for tormenting and murdering their own little children, while others are in positions of serious power and leverage over nations who start wars and worse. Are there good people? Yes. Is everyone after peace, joy, safety and comfort? No Master Wayne, some people just want to watch the world burn.
The people in charge of Social Media aren't good people.
And it becomes even more vague on a societal size - if I had a button that when pressed would take one dollar from everyone in the USA and give it to me, would I press the button? $350 million versus large amounts of people only out a dollar …
(* Is this just at the CEO level, so a handful of people? Or like, their immediate underlings, so a few dozens of people? Or middle management, so hundreds? Are they all not good people?)
WUPHF?