Post
by afinn » Tue Feb 12, 2019 8:16 pm
Yes and no to the above David.
There are many driving forces and instincts which propel us through life including, but not exclusively the Ego. The ego is a drive in a roundabout sort of way.
Many or most people do go into whatever past time and live their life as a result of ego but it is a poor master. We ought not to be ruled by it but most are. This is difficult to explain in a short time, we are ruled basically by our unconcious, It decides who we are, our ego,through or formed by our ucs, then decides how we behave and this then is for humans the start of all lifes troubles. Ego is the "I" we call ourselves.But we do not know this "I", most people if not all have no clue who they really are.
As Yeats put it "I'm looking for the face I had before the world made" an interpretation of this is that he is looking to find who he is, because he does not know. The Beatles in Eleanor Rigby have a line "Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door" referring to the fact that as most people do not know who they are they "wear" a "face" that they present to the outside world, believe me it is all too true, Skakespeare writes fairly frequently about it also.
Why is this?
A person is born and then the world acts upon that person, if you are for example the product of dysfunctional parents (who isnt, some worse than others)then you also will be dysfunctional. So your ego will form from a dysfunctional background thus making you dysfunctional in some way shape or form (please remember that this is a very short account of a very very complex human mind)and will remain so all of your life. So, you may or may not take up kayaking due to your ego, it depends. It depends on who you think you are.
If someone comes to see me with a problem, as well as looking at the problem I will try to fine out about WHY they have the problem, what underlies it, and something, something of which the person has no knowledge, ALWAYS underlies the problem,so, I try to change their perception of themselves by shining a light on the real problem, normally their parents, in doing so their view of them selves, or their "I" changes and the problem lessens or disappeares completely. Their really ought to be, in an advanced practitioner/therapist be no "I"...the concept of "I" is always skewed in a persons mind unless they look at it......
as Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"
That is why trainee Psychotherapist, I also had to do it, have to undertake hundreds of hours of therapy and lifes examinations, including ones childhood etc.to arrive at a better understanding of who they are. Psychology students do not necessarily have to do this,Psychology is very Psychometrically driven now. "I"/slash Ego is a major problem for people. A river flows, it meanders and gushes and goes around rocks and other obstacles, it just flows,like life, then we put the boat of "I" onto the river and we have a problem, it hits rocks and does all sorts of starnge things,"I" has a problem. Ego has a problem.
So ego isa poor and dangerous master............
Generic,
there are many generic terms, Swets, Cars etc the list goes on and on
Then there are generic terms like Gobshite, or Thick, or Moron which are derogatory generic terms, Babble is one of those derogatory generic terms, my Collins dictionary tells me that it derives from the word Babalus, latin for fool, and is generally considered to be derogatory.
AF