About "Egocentrism"
- I would like you to question yourself right now:
- Is there a way to perceive the world, the Universe, from someone else's perspective? Honestly, is there a way to see the world through someone else's eyes? Feel what she felt, and still does? Breathe as she breathes? Is there a way for you to be someone other than yourself?
No, there is no other experience for the individual than just his own. In that case, putting yourself at the center of all attention is not wrong, because how can it be? If the only way for my “I” to witness the world is through my perspective. In a physiological sense, there is no other way to perceive the world than your own, you are its center, the nexus of all events, learnings, lessons, visions, concepts, etc ...
One can think that its life experience is a new way for the Universe itself to experience itself, each time in a different way, simultaneously, in different periods of time and places. Many would say that "empathy" is a way of breaking with this egocentrism worthy of theater, but I disagree, empathy is nothing more than a tool to project your own ego on others, whether in a positive or negative way, it no longer depends of my person.
The world is watched by different egos at all times, each individual, with its own central system, its “egocentrism”, yet they continue to deny their own existences. This is perverse work, which has been working hand in hand with nihilism, always moving towards the total perishing of its own identity, the ego.
- Is there a way to perceive the world, the Universe, from someone else's perspective? Honestly, is there a way to see the world through someone else's eyes? Feel what she felt, and still does? Breathe as she breathes? Is there a way for you to be someone other than yourself?
No, there is no other experience for the individual than just his own. In that case, putting yourself at the center of all attention is not wrong, because how can it be? If the only way for my “I” to witness the world is through my perspective. In a physiological sense, there is no other way to perceive the world than your own, you are its center, the nexus of all events, learnings, lessons, visions, concepts, etc ...
One can think that its life experience is a new way for the Universe itself to experience itself, each time in a different way, simultaneously, in different periods of time and places. Many would say that "empathy" is a way of breaking with this egocentrism worthy of theater, but I disagree, empathy is nothing more than a tool to project your own ego on others, whether in a positive or negative way, it no longer depends of my person.
The world is watched by different egos at all times, each individual, with its own central system, its “egocentrism”, yet they continue to deny their own existences. This is perverse work, which has been working hand in hand with nihilism, always moving towards the total perishing of its own identity, the ego.
Comments (92)
But this is falling for the Cartesian division in which there is this "self" who represents "the world". So you are taking the self as something that brutely exists. Along with a world that also brutely exists.
A more correct (Kantian, Peircean) psychological view is that self and world are two aspects of the one co-construction.
What brains do is model the world. There is a modelling relation. And that results in a sense of self, a point of view, that stands in contrast as "all that which is not the world".
This is the embodied or enactive story of cognition. You can chew your food without also eating your tongue because you have created a clear sense of self vs not self. And this is something basic to the very possibility of cognition. Even your immune system is making constant self/non-self distinctions at the molecular level.
Then the other side of the coin is that "the world" is not actually the world - the noumenal thing-in-itself - but what semioticians would call your umwelt. Your interpretation. A constructions of signs.
So the world is composed of 3D shapes. Now what would be the true objective experience of a object like a cat? Where should we stand in spacetime to "see it"?
Obviously, we build up our view of the world in terms of being used to seeing the cat at some general distance from one particular angle. We don't see it from all sides at once, at every distance from the other side of the Universe to our nose buried in it fur.
So even in a trivial way, our experience of the world already includes the fact of our embodied viewpoint. We are already in fact experiencing the world as a modelling relationship. We are seeing the cat in terms of a distance and orientation. We are already conscious of how "graspable" it is by "ourselves".
So to get to your point, empathy is completely reasonable for a social animal like a human. Egocentrism would be a failure of neurobiology.
We are evolved to have a consciousness that is "us" in a modelling relationship with a "world" that is full of social significance, and not just physical significance. The world as we are meant to experience it is the one full of cultural and social signs.
A reason for big brains is the need to be able to model our reality in a complex social fashion. Empathy is wired in by greater top-down connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala for instance. We can see it is what we have been designed for (along with the hostility and cold blooded aggression that is also part of our evolved social complexity).
Quoting Gus Lamarch
So I dispute the factual basis of your argument. If you are going to invoke the existence of individual neurobiology, you also have to take account of its species setting.
Science makes the point that any nervous system exists to produce "a self" set against "a world". So nothing really exists as "an egocentric individual" until there develops this state of awareness as an embodied contrast. The self and its world go together as a co-construction.
And then humans have a particular kind of nervous system - one highly evolved for sociality and cultural learning. We also have a whole new kind of self-world making in the semiotics of language. We now speak our worlds - our umwelts - into being.
It doesn't make much sense being "a self" in a world that lacks sociality (with its demand to balance empathy against hostility and other complex judgements).
On the other hand, linguistic culture can indeed construct antisocial and nihilistic worlds for people these days. That is what your post was doing, wasn't it?
So we have now developed that kind of thought freedom. But that doesn't make it good philosophy as it is based on a fundamental failure to understand the actual evolutionary basis of the human mind.
The physical world and the human ego - mind, individual, use the synonym that you prefer - could normaly exist without one another, the point is that on the individual level, it doesn't matter what a- for example - chair is, because it could be - with the individual interpretation - anything that the self wants or needs it to be. We are embarking on the world of pure relativism. You could say, but what isn't pure relativism? Even our scientific knowledge could be completely wrong if the majority of scientists agree that something else is right. What is good, is only good on the egocentric perspective of the person in question, as a simple "gum" is only a gum if the person sees a gum, if not, it is something else but a gum.
Quoting apokrisis
Empathy is only moral because people accept it as something good and that should be encouraged. But empathy - if seen from another point of view - could be simply someone portraiting itself to be good for its own advantage. Ex: A cat is up a tree, someone goes there, saves the cat and deliver it to its owner, and now the owner has a positive view on the savior, but the only purporse of the cat beeing saved was the need of the person that saved it to be seen as someone good, and now beeing seen as good, many benefits will befall the "good person". It isn't always counsciously that people make this kind of acts - of being good only for its need of egoism - but everyone does it unconsciously.
Quoting apokrisis
The mind that was evolved with humanity was lost when we began living sedentarily and in not-nomads societies. The current human consciousness is a construct of millenium of doctrines being stamped unto us from people high on the hiearchy. Ex: Pharao's worship, Heavenly Rulership, Mesopotamia's god fearing, Christianity, Confuscionism, etc... The only thing that survived from the nomad period of humanity is power. - Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
Quoting apokrisis
I'm not saying that empathy, altruism, goodness, compassion, etc... isn't necessary, i'm saying that it is only beeing done because we are egoists that are egocentric.
Quoting apokrisis
If you don't agree with me, ok, but I don't see the need to eventually attack my person.
Quoting apokrisis
Read the answer to the second quote.
You’ve not said anything to rebut my points, just restated your faulty conclusion.
It seems to me that you haven't been able to read my entire answer. Have a nice day / good night
So by this understanding or fact, the entire OP is something of an autobiography. How could it not be? Hm?
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Well... I dunno stop doing that and actually care for others for a minute lol :grin:
And what philosophy, deep down, is nothing more than a mere internal projection to others?
Quoting Outlander
The cynicism and lack of respect here is really impressive. Have a nice day / good night
But this is wrong already. Sensory deprivation experiments demonstrate how depersonalisation sets in once the active relation between self and world is severed.
What I am objecting to is the lack of scientific support for your basic position. That is what you would need to respond to.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Science isn't right because a bunch of egotists agreed. It is right if a bunch of people find they can use a perspective to control their reality in a shared pragmatic fashion. It is right to the degree that it is a model which achieves "real world" purposes.
Pragmatism isn't relativism. Pragmatism focuses on the modelling relation in which "selves" and "their world" are co-creations - the two ends of the same deal.
That is the evidence-based view that kneecaps your egocentric musings here.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Not if people have to live in a shared social and cultural reality.
Feral children (reared by wolves, etc) would be your truest egocentrics. But I don't think you would envy them.
For us normal humans, everything about "us" comes by way of our evolutionary history and current cultural circumstances. Even this Romantic notion of the "ego" that is so fashionable.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I wasn't making any argument that empathy was "good" - some kind of abstract moral judgement. I was saying it is functional in obvious evolutionary ways. It is a large part of our basis as social creatures.
So trying to argue about whether it is good or merely self-interested is to miss the point in two ways. My argument is based on empathy being "self-interested" as a fact of being a social creature.
Although to forestall further strawmanning, part of the complexity of being a social creature is to also to be able to make "egocentric" calculations as to self-advantage vs group advantage.
So we have some deep-rooted pro-social instincts that are functional, even if apparently contradictory. It is of evolutionary value to both be empathetic and hostile - as a group behaviour. That is, as individual interest groups we can compete with outside interest groups while also, by definition, cooperating as a group.
And then - as we became really complex social animals with our linguistic overlay of symbolic culture - we could really crank up the intricacy of our social relations. We could make the kind of self-interested calculations about personal advantage that you cite - especially as part of that modern creed of individualisation and self-actualisation that is so central to being .... a cog in the modern economic machine with its atomisation of society. :grin:
Congrats if you think that is the right outcome for egocentric Romanticism as an ideology.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Nope. The neurobiology and its functionality are still there inside every head.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Yep. The good old Romanticism schtick. Surely this cod Nietzscherism is getting old. We now have a century of social biology to tell us what actually goes on.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
If it is necessary, it is necessary because it is basic to humans as social and cultural creatures. Any selfhood we have arises out of that.
So your individual notion of "self" is secondary to the general socio-cultural model of selfhood prevalent in your neck of the woods. This "you" you claim to be primary is just a member of some crowd. It needs that crowd to exist.
Of course, this crowd may be defined by sharing the same Romantic trope. And it may be functional only in the context of the modern consumer society where "be yourself" is what Apple, Nike and every other expensive crap peddler will empathetically sell you as society's core message.
Or at least that is my argument based on the sociological evidence - the position you are not countering.
My god man, you live in a Matrix of one. Fella finds a formula to justify the pathology of his egosyntonicness, then labels it as intelligence.
All people, excepting the delusional and those who're hallucinating, are in agreement on what it is that they perceive through the senses - no grounds there for any uniqueness in experience that could define an individual ego.
Then comes the matter of beliefs - there too people behave like birds of the same feather, they flock together.
That exhausts, in my opinion, all that could've defined an individual ego, distinct from another - there can be no such thing as an singular individual distinguishable from the rest. If so egocentrism is an empty concept unless you want to base it on physical features like the contours of your face and body.
How so? If the argument you'll use is that what is good and evil is decided not by the individual but from the group that said person lives in, this is wrong. The "absolute" truth is only real because it was constructed by the individuals truths of the people. It is a joint of egoists.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't see the point of using people who have had no contact with a society to try and contradict my point that the world is infinitely individual. There is no hypothesis, theory, opinion, agreement, decision, etc ... that proves that I can put myself in your shoes and see the world through your eyes. With that point in place, the Universe can only exist to my point of view, my experiences, myself, me - again I affirm the point that this does not apply only to me, but to all individuals, you, my dog, your friend, etc ... - .
Quoting apokrisis
I still disagree. Our minds could still be the same product of our past nomad ancestry, but through the mending of cultures, new inventions like religion, ideology, and even philosophy, our minds work in a completely different way than the ones from our ancestors.
Quoting apokrisis
Humanity is naturally egoistic, good and evil, are just ways of projecting this egoism to the world.
Quoting apokrisis
Not so modern, we already experienced these "creed" of "individualisation" and "self-actualisation" at least 3 times during recorded human history: Bronze Age - 3.000 BC to 1100 BC - Classical Age - 900 BC to 476 AD - and our "modern" period - 1453 to present -. People forget how lucky we are from living in a period where you and I can chat about different opinions without being killed our being exiled - although we are beginning to see the symptoms of the end -. Individualisation is ending by becoming mundane, the ego is again being misrepresented. And if the point of this comment was to try to somehow denigrate my thinking by putting it as something "created by the consumer industry", I saw it, and it didn't work. - Just to make it clear -
Quoting apokrisis
Read the answer to the third quote.
Quoting apokrisis
Its only necessary because we created this necessity. Think about it.
Quoting apokrisis
The crowd only exists because the individual exists, without it the crowd is nothing but a concept. The individual - so, the ego - is the core of human society. We wouldn't create complex concepts, inventions, technologies if we didn't need them for doing something that would realize ourselves individually.
Quoting apokrisis
"Be yourself", and everyone looks the same boring gray. I don't know why you compared me - or at least thought about comparing - to that type of person. I tell people to be selfish, not decadent, rotten hypocritical consumers who embrace the status quo.
Attacking a person you don't even know is your way of presenting your arguments to me? Well, welcome!
Just the fact that no other individual can feel and witness what another individual feels and witnesses. What we have are just theories, but there is no way I can feel what you felt 20 years ago, or are feeling now reading this. The individual is the ego, is unique in its experience.
Quoting TheMadFool
The flock only exist because of the individual, without it the crowd, flock, pack, etc... is a empty concept.
Quoting TheMadFool
Finally a person that didn't attack me in the first comment. Thank you for your cordiality.
What constitutes the uniqueness of my experience if not as one filtered through my beliefs and no one has a monoply on beliefs, right? You and I could have the same beliefs and if we do, my experience and your experience will not differ to such an extent that the two of us could be distinguished and seen as two and not one individual.
The notion of a unique ego or self has to contend with the fact that beliefs and circumstances go hand in hand in shaping our experience of the world and both beliefs and circumstances are not unique to a single individual but constitute a shared universe and being so, there'll always be more than one individual with the exact same sense of self/ego which is to say egocentrism understood as an individual thinking of him/herself as distinct from everybody else is an impossibility.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
How so? The flock/pack/crowd is only possible if attributes are shared i.e. no single individual can stake a claim on the attributes in question as their own personal possession.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
:smile:
I still cannot see how would you perceive the universe in another shoes. You could compare your experiences, feelings, etc... with other people, but that would not make you less unique. You would still be the only one to be you, see as you do, be your own self.
Quoting TheMadFool
Can I share the feeling of my leg to you? Can you feel it as I do, can you touch it as I do? I think not. I can't "share" myself with anyone but myself.
Ok. Let's do a survey of "individuals" to get a handle on the issue. Isaac Newton developed the theory of gravity and many other scientists and ordinary people too followed in his footsteps, up until Einstien that is, and believed it too. The purported distinguishing feature that defined Newton was then not unique to Newton, right? How can Newton claim a unique sense of identity when many others believed the exact same thing - gravity - as he did? That's the mental aspect of the matter.
Now come to the physical. You and I both would cry out in pain if we fell from a high enough place due to gravity, no? In other words, in the physical sense, our perceptions are identical and shared between us and with other people. Where's the unique identity that differentiates you, I and others in this?
I guess what I'm saying is that there are only so many shoemakers in town and sooner or later you'll meet someone wearing the same shoes as you are and in that we lose our uniqueness, our identity - egocentrism has no leg to stand on.
My perspective is based on the dynamic of competition~cooperation. So it recognises “egotism” over many scales of social organisation without lapsing into claims that self interest is purely a matter of individual psychology.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
The point is that your “individuality” only exists in opposition to “sociality”. You could never have come to your views unless they were already widely entrenched as a cultural meme that you could learn and pretend to be implementing.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
But I already say that we have become culturally very different. However the neurology underpinning empathy still exists.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Sure. Culture evolves. Ancient Greece was especially important for shaping the modern cultural notion of the rational and democratic polis.
Out of curiosity, what were you thinking of as a Bronze Age step towards the social invention of individuality? [Edit: Gilgamesh?]
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Again my own position is based on the interaction between the individual and the social group. I just say that societies need to create the right kind of individuals if they are going to persist. So the causality is switched around here. The individual only exist to the degree that “the crowd” supports that as a functional concept. (Or to the degree the crowd can afford to be indifferent to individual variety.)
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I was pointing out why the slogans “be yourself”, “because you are worth it”, “stand out from the crowd”, “feel the power”, and a thousand other ad punchlines push the same social message.
What is the right way to be individual? That might have a lot to do with traditional ideas around stoicism, rationalism, personal responsibility and other pro-social cultural attitudes.
But when is “be selfish” ever a recipe for success? Maybe you can explain.
And again, my own position - based on social systems theory - is that individually it is perfectly fine to be making rational calculations of personal good vs collective good. The intelligence of the system as a whole is founded on a capacity for such trade offs.
So what I have objected to is just a one sided stance of “be selfish” that speaks to half the story.
What I said was based on your own premises. You are, by far, the worst person I have ever encountered on this forum. You are a raving narcissist, completely ignorant of the fact that any quality you possess came through the medium of a social process. I hope you continue to get crushed on here. TheMadFool has already demonstrated gigantic gaps in your dogmatism. Woe to those who fall across your path; woe to those who consider you a guide! Self-assertion is not the same as intelligence.
Isn’t that what empathy is? The web definition is ‘ the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.’ Certainly everyone is different, but difference does not necessarily mean division.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Oh, poor me. Something which is not dependent on me. Let’s kill it.
Ok, i want you to blank out your mind and let go of your determination to defend your original idea. Done that? Good.
Now, in order in this paragraph, you use the words people, something good, seen from another point of view, cat, tree, the owner has a positive view, purpose, cat being saved, need of the person that saved it, be seen as someone good, being seen as good, many benefits befall the "good person". Literally every one of those concepts is fully constructed on your personal belief in the existence of a physical world that you share with other minds and beings. You even constructed a little society of two people and a cat.
So to paraphrase your last sentence, some people consciously attempt to deny anything but their own ego, but unconsciously every one if them knows they are wrong.
I, again affirm: - There is no way in reality that you could feel, perceive, live, etc ... as someone else, just compare your experiences and accept - in a way - that both are equal, however, nothing can be me except me. Individuality - or the ego, as I put it - is born and dies with its own.
"Egotism" is not the same as "egoism". "Egotism" is bad, "egoism" is the nature of the human being..
Quoting apokrisis
Sociability is a creation of the human ego itself. To benefit- and also benefit those closest to me - remembering that selfishness can also be used to benefit others - - I participate in a community with other entities similar to me, and they all work together - in the matter of society -. My point of view was not born through memes, but through a research base in existentialist philosophies. Memes don't build thoughts - even though most people today take them seriously -.
Quoting apokrisis
The first point that we can claim to have had a "globalized" society was during the Akkadian Empire - 2334 BC to 2154 BC - where the whole known world - practicaly mesopotamia at the time - was under one state and a free person could travel and make business through cities like Ur to all the way up to Assur, and bilingualism became widespread with the use of both Sumer and Akkadian.
Quoting apokrisis
Of course, a society may well develop the right individuals so that it becomes eternal, however, one of the consequences of this individualization is the creation of individuals aware of themselves and their surroundings, individuals who would no longer seek the realization of society through their actions, but the realization of their individual purposes. Civilization in a way - to function perfectly - kills this natural selfishness of the human being. The human being is naturally egocentric, selfish, and that is not a bad thing, it is something that makes him even richer, and is the engine of our entire existence. We exist to be.
Quoting apokrisis
I can give you an example of that:
You are poor, or even miserable; empathy, humbleness, and other of these "virtues" would not help you out of this state at all. What would benefit you most would be the act of focusing on yourself, getting a job in some way, doing things that otherwise would be seen with evil eyes - like leaving your family, your friends aside, but not because you are evil, and yes because the purpose of getting out of this miserable state is greater -. You work, you even change your personality - in a way, all the people you have a good relationship with today only have that kind of relationship with you because you are what you are, a drastic change in thinking, way of acting, can make that many will not be ble to cope with this breach of comfort - and eventually - over days, months, years, etc ... - manage to turn the corner and become a very successful person, financially stable, etc... This person's act of selfishness was to focus only on what he needed at the moment, now, having realized his needs - in a way - that person could very well be an empathic, charitable, kind person, but only because he can and not because it's the rule. Also, all these virtuous acts - unconsciously, or consciously - are done selfishly - you help others not because you love them, but because seeing them well accomplishes you individually -.
Egoism is the nature of humanity. You'd not have come here to say this, if it wasn't fulfiling you individually.
I'm not saying this, but ok.
The point is that you cannot be the cat, or the tree, or the street, but only yourself. I can't feel what you're feeling, as you can't feel what I'm feeling right now. From your point of view, the world spins around you, as it does to me.
You here deny the reality of love. I think I can see why. Love as a pure ideal is an unadulterated selflessness of being, is being sans ego; and, in practice, the degree of love one holds for other(s) will in due measure make one less selfish and more selfless in respect to those loved. I’m not here talking about having the hots for another, nor about love of inanimate objects like money or ice cream. I’m talking about compassion, valuing of another not as an instrument toward one’s own selfish interests but for their own sake as fellow beings, and the like. When we willingly risk and sometimes sacrifice the welfare of our own self for some other solely out of a desire that they are not harmed, this is the effect of love in dire times. And with love comes first an openness and then a craving to see the world through someone else’s eyes. When mutually shared, love binds egos into a greater self. Such that when one’s loved child, parent, lover, or friend dies so too dies a part of one’s own self.
In short, you’re denying the reality of love because love is the destroyer of ego in beings that yet are. And this runs counter to the thesis you’re presenting.
Do correct me if I’m wrong regarding your stance on love.
Ps. I say this without denying that first-person points of view are just that. But when we close our eyes and stop focusing on specific percepts of the external world, we can find ourselves being of the same (or nearly the same) first person point of view as others in terms of the values and beliefs which define what might well be our core identity.
Perhaps it is the nature of your humanity.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I believe what is truly good for the individual is also good for the whole.
Loving is the act of using - and being used - as an object by another selfish individual other than yours; the unique existence cries out for the experience of others and for the tear in the factory of the universe that makes you "owner of your self" and, at the same time, to be able - in prolonged moments of conscience - to tolerate - and to be tolerated - and to understand - and be understood - that the other is not and cannot be part of what makes you unique and be able to deal with that fact.
So we disagree. Great!
This is diametrically opposite to that which I'm referring to. Language can be a funny thing. Cats can be termed dogs and dogs cats if there is common consensus. But we two so far have no common consensus on what the term love references. So, you are denying the reality of that which I described in my previous post, yes?
Quoting Gus Lamarch
"Unique" can be a vacuous term when it comes to identity. No two sunrises have ever been exactly the same - some stand out, others don't; some are tumultuous, others are tranquil; etc. - and so each sunrise in the history of sentience on this planet has been unique. Notwithstanding, all sunrises are exactly the same in being just that, sunrises. Same can be said of romantic love affairs, or of parental love, and so forth.
What makes you you? The you of four minutes past was a unique constituency (be it of givens such as intentions and percepts or of brain and bodily states, take your pick if needed) that is not the same you of the present moment. Yet you are the same, quote-unquote, unique you. How so?
Yes. Love is too, an act of egoism.
Quoting javra
I can be a different person with each passing second, however, the death of my cells and the creation of new ones does not negate the fact that my "I" is the only one to witness these changes. No other being in existence can feel, and experience my existence in transition through time.
This is a false metaphysical statement. Ego is only part of the human psychological system.
This is still a one sided reading of the story. A complex adaptive system like a society is the product of a local~global dynamic. Nature harnesses the complementary forces of competition and cooperation to strike balances.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
So yep. Not science but the meme factory of Romanticism.
You are ignoring the fact that I have already stated that all this dynamic that creates the organism of society is based on the human nature of wanting to be fulfilled individually - selfishness -. Commercial relations only happen because both sides - individually - want something to fulfill their wishes.
Quoting apokrisis
It is complicated to debate when people already come with the purpose of disagreeing. Not enough, they resort to verbal aggression tactics. I expected nothing less to speak the truth. Have a nice day/evening
Thank you for the honest reply. So, the more one loves, the more egoistic one becomes?
Quoting Gus Lamarch
You are a different person, a different "I", with each miliisecond as well. But this does not address why or how you nevertheless remain the same person, the same "I", throughout. Not such if you're understanding what I'm here addressing, so I'll drop it for the time being.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Not when it comes to many of the details regarding these experiences, but these details can well be argued accidental and not essential to that which is you (as an "I") through time. When it, for example, comes to things such as belief that cats are termed cats in English, or to the very experiencing of being as a being, we both feel/experience the exact same thing. In the latter two cases, my experiences are identical to yours, and yours to mine. No uniqueness whatsoever. Uniqueness only presents itself in the differences, which then divide, or ration, or give boundary to, some given from some other.
Experiences can be shared. And some experiences are universal to all beings by sheer virtue of such being beings. How would you disagree with this, if you do disagree?
You can feel what I'm feeling. Irritation, maybe annoyance that you are dodging people's responses instead of confronting them. I can feel what you're feeling. Smug satisfaction, a little perverse joy that all these suckers have taken the bait and are responding to you at all. You are correct that your motivation is extremely selfish, but the reason the rest of us are responding is exactly because we are not solely motivated by selfishness.
Look, your philosophical assertion has been eviscerated and swept aside by every response here. Even if you were just an ego, you are still capable of reason, and reason soundly extinguishes your position.
I suppose your feelings may be somewhat accurate if you are a sociopath, and maybe you are. But that is a condition specific to you, not the general experience of everyone.
:up: :up: :up:
But you are making claims about the nature of societies that don’t fit the facts. It is essential to a complex system that it optimises a balance of the selfish and the cooperative.
So to the degree that we egocentrically make society, we have to be skilled at striking this particular balance.
You can call that calculation self-interested - because we “follow the rules” only because we believe in some general collective benefit. But to say we are unselfish for selfish reasons becomes a rather contorted description of what is going on.
It leaves you arguing that “being selfish” is the primary fact and the ultimate good when the ability to intelligently and sharply switch behaviour is what is central to forming modern scalefree networks of competition and cooperation. Societies as functional collections of interest groups.
Your approach embodies the confusion of Romanticism. It makes it arbitrary whether you choose to be selfish or altruistic in any social situation. If you ask yourself, “how should I behave?”, the only answer is “well, how do I feel?”. And how you feel turns out to be some confused mix of your social conditioning and neurobiology. Or worse, you may have some highly stereotyped and inflexible ideology about “what’s right”.
Humans work well when they are able to make clear in the moment choices that are flexible and adaptive. When they are supple rather than rigid.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Hah. Yes life is complicated like that. Intellectual discussions are dialectical as every thesis presents its antithesis.
One can either stick rigidly to one’s precepts or follow that two sided flow of ideas to discover where it goes.
Yes I agree. The development of the feeling of love for a being other than yours, the egoism- here, referring it only to the love for another person - grows and gets stronger and stronger - if it is an exemplary relationship, something utopian, of course -. And it is to be believed that your partner also has his selfishness exacerbated if he feels in the same dose as you.
Quoting javra
Your perception remains the same through the movement through time. You - here understand as your ego, conscience, individuality - remains you intact through the change of "form". You do not have lapses of mileseconds of different personalities, ways of being, etc ... because time passes and with it you change, no, what makes you an "I" remains fixed.
Quoting javra
The point is that there is no scientific, philosophical, theoretical, etc ... evidence that you - your self - can somehow come and take my place in space within the Universe. There is no way for you to experience what "I" feel. Ex: - We can smell the same smell of something, however, it will never be the same, because it was detected in one way by you, and in another way by me. Can they be compared? Sure, but they are not felt - or rather, experienced - in the same way.
Quoting javra
I thank you for taking the time to debate with me respectfully.
Yes, you could say that the balance is needed. But the balance only exists and is created by our egoistic wills.
Quoting apokrisis
In my view, it is not a distorted point of view because the human being really is evil. The view that the human being only acts the way he does because his whole base is born from an internal force that makes him look for - and also creates - things to be done individually, and that the whole concept of what is good and bad also comes from this need, seems to me a very convincing and real proposition, just look around you. You may even think that it is a pessimistic thought, but humanity is not a species of angels, but beings that act in good and bad ways just because they want something individually.
Quoting apokrisis
The problem is when the lack of respect becomes present.
Again, the problem lies with this Romantic psychology. It may be "existential philosophy", but it isn't credible as psychological science.
If I ask you for the evidence behind your claim, where is it ... except in literary sources?
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I guess it is consistent with your egoism that you would want respect? That you could demand it rather than earn it?
Sorry. I respect arguments clearly put and backed up by suitable evidence. I was interested to see if you could mount a more spirited defence. That hasn't happened. So we can move on.
Then we have a misunderstanding here. I never said that I was an expert at psychological science and neither did I say that this was about science at all. I'm talking about philosophy and "only" philosophy - That's why I putted this discussion under the "Philosophy of Mind" segment -.
Quoting apokrisis
In the deep analysis of human history, its development in society in the passing of the years and how the State organism - here ignoring any ideology or government method - works during the passage of time with the direct human influence.
Quoting apokrisis
Both are true ways of getting respect - if doing an in depth analysis of your commentary -.
Quoting apokrisis
Again, I think we had a misunderstanding from the beggining. Please, read the answer to the first quote. Good day/night
I get the feeling you're conflating esteem and heightened well-being with selfishness.
How then do you account for altruism (such as in cases where love is to be found)? Does one willfully sacrifice one’s being out of an interest to optimally preserve the very same being one sacrifices?
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Difference and sameness are for me not as simple as you present them to be. Yes, we remain the same over time, granted, but in which way? Most everything about us changes over time, and no two moments we experience are identical in their details.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
In using terms such as “evidence”, by which I take to mean modern understandings of empirical evidence, you are setting up the goal post in a way that necessarily leads to the conclusion you want. The same tree cannot be seen in the same way by you or me due to our different bodily locations in space. But sensory information does not exhaust the spectrum of givens which are termed experiences. The faculty of understanding is one such example. To understand the theory of evolution, for example, is neither to see it, smell it, touch it, taste it, nor hear it. That said, how can you demonstrate that your understanding of tree is not an identical experience to my own? I presume you can’t. And if our experienced understanding of tree were to in fact be completely unique to each of us, we could not then be referencing the same thing by this empirically apprehended term.
Same applies to what we term feelings. The more complex ones, such as sweet sorrow, are shared by fewer. But the more basic feelings, such as that of pleasure, are universally shared by all. Pleasure in response to what stimuli will differ among individuals, as will its nuances, but all individuals will feel the same thing in terms of what we term pleasure as a state of conscious being.
If one were to solely focus on the differences to each instantiation of pleasure, the concept of pleasure would lose all meaning.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
You’ve so far been neither rude nor insulting. Simply replying in kind … and starting off by presuming a better case scenario rather than a worse one.
You want to convince as many people of things you believe will help them/others sure. But unless you're doing so politically/religiously that's not of utmost importance. It's about discovering a higher truth for yourself, granted usually with a purpose of helping others, if not just people you deem worthy.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
That's not quite how philosophical judo works. You can't suddenly one day redefine thousands of years of true, selfless empathy on a whim because you may or may not do so solely out of indifference or as you say as "a tool to project your own ego". I don't know you or anyone here personally, I'm berating an idea/attitude not a person. Separate the art from artist.
The person in question that would sacrifice itself could have been "rightful" on his motives to do it - as being certain that he was doing something that was not egoist - but in the end - unconsciously - the only motive for his actions was one of egoism - maybe eternalizing his person forever to the one saved? Maybe to righ something he had done wrong for someone that the person he was saving knew, etc... the possibilities are endless -. Understand: - I am not saying that people cannot or should not be altruistic, empathetic, humble, etc ... I am just saying that indirectly, these same actions are the result of the individual's selfish will, even if they do not know that and are acting as if they were virtuous, and seen by society as good people.
Quoting javra
We could say that through the term "tree" we would both be talking about the same concept - a tree - and the same object - the tree itself, as being in the universe - however that would be pure speculation by comparison. The fact that we can only "compare" already shows that it is not something complete, something that demonstrates the experience of observing the same object through the same observer, therefore, my opinion still holds. The unique is unique and indivisible by experience because he cannot be experienced by anything but itself.
True, I just answered what at the time seemed to be the most conducive to the questioning whether my thoughts are an autobiography - which are not, however, as I said in my answer that you answered here, all philosophy is an internal projection to others -.
Or one could sacrifice one's ego for the benefit of a whole of which one's ego is but one constituent of. Some soldiers have been known to do this. Sometime for love of one's country. Sometime for the love of some ideal, such as that of democracy. The ego here holds part of its identity as that which inheres into something greater than itself ... and can willfully sacrifice its own life for it.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
The example I just tried to illustrate depicts what is commonly appraised as virtue. Not a mere acting as if one were.
I'm not yet certain, but, from one vantage, I think I can get what you mean. As egos we are at the center of the world we experience. Hence, your use of the term "egocentrism". Even so, altruism, empathy, humility are commonly described as selfless endeavors. This being shorthand for "less selfish than those endeavors that are the opposite" or something to the like.
There's a difference between, for example, being empathetic and pretending to be. The first is deemed to be a virtue in most cases, the second not. The first is commonly deemed a selfless endeavor, the second a selfish endeavor.
If you endorse things such as altruism and empathy, are you confident that you use of selfishness is an accurate description of what you want to present?
To me, and doubtless to many others, your use of selfish to describe things such as altruism and empathy makes no sense. Selfishness describes the opposite of these things.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I feel you've overlooked my argument. For starters, we could not converse were we to not hold many of the same experienced understandings, for instance, regarding what a majority of these terms mean. But so be it.
Of course, if the individual thinks and accepts as true for himself, the fact that sacrificing himself for a nation, or for a greater number of people - with the moral that a life is worth less than many - will accomplish it individually - selfishly -; There is nothing wrong with that. I respect those who are able to act that way, and I would respect them even more if they were able to understand that they only do it out of selfishness.
Quoting javra
You're on right track, but not there yet.
Quoting javra
My point is that people who are "truly" empathetic are nothing more than negative-egoists. They are internally, and their unconscious know it, however the conscious person does not. There is nothing wrong with being an unconscious selfish, I just think that if you became aware of that fact, and accepted your nature, you would be a better person.
Quoting javra
I'm pretty sure that it's accurate.
Quoting javra
There we got to another point that I don't know if this discussion would be the right place, but it is the fact that selfishness had been a virtue that we - humans - have distorted so much to the point of becoming a concept seen as evil. It is a good start to have discussed with me and to let yourself try to understand what I say. Many here do not try to do it.
OK. So how do you find that everyone’s increased selfishness will lead to improved conditions for selves?
FYI, survival of the most selfishly powerful as being those most fit – this at everyone else’s expense - easily comes to mind. Sadism could fit the bill nicely. Still, I’m open to being surprised by your answer.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Please don’t misunderstand. Trying to better understand your point of view does not equate to me agreeing with it.
I can give you an example of that:
You are poor, or even miserable; empathy, humbleness, and other of these "virtues" would not help you out of this state at all. What would benefit you most would be the act of focusing on yourself, getting a job in some way, doing things that otherwise would be seen with evil eyes - like leaving your family, your friends aside, but not because you are evil, and yes because the purpose of getting out of this miserable state is greater -. You work, you even change your personality - in a way, all the people you have a good relationship with today only have that kind of relationship with you because you are what you are, a drastic change in thinking, way of acting, can make that many will not be ble to cope with this breach of comfort - and eventually - over days, months, years, etc ... - manage to turn the corner and become a very successful person, financially stable, etc... This person's act of selfishness was to focus only on what he needed at the moment, now, having realized his needs - in a way - that person could very well be an empathic, charitable, kind person, but only because he can and not because it's the rule.
If everyone was concerned with resolving only their lives, their personal, individual interests, they would gradually change the whole of society. The individual makes up the community, and society is a pure reflection of the community that is made up of the individual. Egoism is at the core of it all. If people were more true to themselves about their true desires and purposes, their lives would be much more satisfying and graceful - accept that you're an egoist, with now with that in mind, go change your life -.
Quoting javra
I'm in no way mistaken, i'm quite sure that this is just a discussion - and one that continues until now, productive -.
I'm sorry, but I didn't quite got the point of your question. Could you expatiate more about why the concepts of extrovert and introvert would fit into this discussion?
Think I've read this before. It does not address the question posed, but gives one specific hypothetical where, it would so seem, being a merciless and arrogant person are endorsed. Why wouldn't empathy and humility greatly assist in getting hired at the job interview if one is poor, for one example. Or in getting others' assistance if one is miserable.
As it is, I'll take a break from this conversation.
From the OP:
- Is there a way to perceive the world, the Universe, from someone else's perspective? Honestly, is there a way to see the world through someone else's eyes?
Well those bloody mirror neurons help, and som got those working by birth and some not.
(Btw pretty new in this forum - how to inlude the text you want to reply to? Normally, forums do inlude that text automatically)
Proper philosophy depends on overcoming egotism, although your OP equates that with 'nihilism'. But many of the classical philosophies, East and West, see the task of philosophy as being able to rise above the ego. That doesn't amount to 'nihilism', nihilism is the attitude that nothing matters or that nothing is real.
Highlight the text, a small floating 'quote' will come up, click it.
Insufferable incompetent! What man would benefit most from was changing the system that imposes his oppression in the first place. Here intelligence is required as opposed to a delusion of the will.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Did you make the clothes you wear? Did you grow all the food you eat? Silence, contingent and ignorant one, your quality is bound up in the labor of others! You would not go without it, you are oblivious to your own hypocrisy.
Ok. Provide me with a definition of you, Gus Lamarch and I'll show you you're not unique enough to be different from all of us.
Empathy/love/compassion is to understand and value something beyond the ego. It is spiritual maturity.
Not necessarily. Love may be pure in the beginning but the ego is an opportunistic leech; it tries to appropriate everything, even love, to itself. What begins in innocence becomes corrupt by the ego.
I don't see the OP as being the worst person on the board at all. On the contrary, extolling the virtues of the crowd is also to ignore the nastiness of it too. My nastiest moments were being part of a crowd. Those were as a child though before "I" developed my mind. I have no clue how grown adults can partake in "callout culture" or cancel culture as it is now known.
It's always nice to find 2 individuals thinking the same conscious thought - especially when their very agreement proves them wrong. :rofl:
Egotism, in fact, is a negative thing- in both contexts, individual and collective - but what the overwhelming majority of people have forgotten is that "egoism" and "egotism" are not the same thing, and end up using both terms interchangeably, which makes the concept of both also blend. Current knowledge about "egoism" is a poor corruption of itself. Egotism is the drive to enhancement in the degradation of others. Egoism is the theory that treats self-interests as the nature of humanity.
Quoting Wayfarer
And many of those who tried to idealize a world beyond the ego, only collaborated with the detriment of humanity itself in favor of a "greater good". I do not preach anything like a "higher purpose". I don't even want a "greater good" to exist to indoctrinate the people. If a "higher purpose" does indeed exist, let it be achieved indirectly by realizing the individual wills of each ego. Only true monsters disguise themselves as holy saviors.
The problem is that you are trying to contextualize my concept of "unique" as a philosophical principle. - Where is the ego in the Universe? What can you compare it to? Is it something based on a physical world? None of these questions will give you an answer that satisfies you, and the reason is simple: - The individual is enough for itself. The ego, when embraced as part of you - or me - opens up as a field of infinite decisions, without moral, ethical, or metaphysical restrictions; Life is an eternal process of the satiation of the eternal hunger of the egoism, a hunger that if satiated, will also satisfy yourself.
Empathy, love and compassion are just unconscious methods of proclaiming your egoism towards others. Negative-egoists, by denying their nature, practice actions that they consider as being of external characteristic - of benefit to another - but little do they know that they are only fulfilling their own desires, their egos, indirectly. Again I repeat, being altruistic is not a bad thing, but it is just a more "cordial" way of projecting your egoistic accomplishments on others.
The "virtues" of the crowd are only considered "virtues" because they are a part of the crowd. At the level of the individual, these same virtues become void.
Quoting Forgottenticket
If an action is inflated to the extreme, it no longer draws attention, as it is now part of the "mass consciousness". Don't get me wrong, selfishness is still there, but totally deformed and corrupted, a shadow of its former self.
Quoting Forgottenticket
Thank you.
It's "really" interesting the arguments presented here. Thank you for your deep contribution to the discussion.
Honestly, I am not entirely sure what your position is but I don't think that people are escaping their own perspective using empathy. The way we do it is through understanding causation, interactions and so on. So you can understand economics without empathy, you can view the world through economic theory without empathy and so on. You can't learn much by just looking out of your own eyes, it's all intellectual right?
There would be no fool's gold if there were no gold.
Now you've changed tack, gone off in an entirely different direction.
How so?
This is seriously deluded. Life is not an eternal process.
I don't get the point of coming, throwing information with no context behind it, just hoping that the receiver understands your thinking ... Want to discuss? Contextualize!
There would be no point according to your egoism, that would assume something could be gained from it, but how can an ego be great if it is not complete? How can it be great if it needs something from the outside? You cannot even justify this thread.
Hopefully you are just a young person that grew up without guidance, searching for some kind of meaning, and you landed on Ayn Rand. If that is the case I'm here to tell you that you got duped. If you are seriously interested in reading outside your ego you might start with sociology or social psychology. Try to account for the word ego without making reference to society.
Well, you were talking about individuals, people, and suddenly you switched to the universe's ego.
That argument asserts that there is nothing outside the ego that has any intrinsic value in itself: that only by way of satisfying the ego does it have any value. This is demonstrably false since there are many things that can be loved purely because they have intrinsic value. The love of science, mathematics, art, literature, another being, nature, life itself...egoism is a denial of the good.
The logical end of egoism is insanity; left to its own devices, unbridled, it becomes megalomania, tyranny, pathology and ultimately evil. The psychopath thinks the whole world is there to satisfy his ego: nothing has any value unless it serves his grotesque selfishness. The psychopath is a complete narcissistic failure who fails to recognize the intrinsic value of life.
I don't see why we need an ego to value anything outside the ego.
:100:
Your "arguments" are based on personal attacks without any depth on the subject and the discussion in question. I have not seen - until now - any answer from you to my questions about the ego, without any personal opinion or attacks on me. If the purpose of your philosophy is controversy, you are doing a terrible job, because you are simply managing to look bad. Good Day/Good Evening.
Your argument fails where you claim that "egoism is the denial of what is good". Good is simply a projection of the egoism itself, as much as evil is also. You can make good deeds, have altruistic views on life, and that doesn't make you less or more egoist, as having negative or evil attitudes doesn't make you more or less egoist. You are egoist. It is the human nature.
I admit there is some truth to this, I consciously have chosen to approach a person like yourself with your dogma, from a different perspective. It's hard to offer a serious reply to something that is not serious to begin with. I did in fact make important and valid objections to your position multiple times. You don't even comprehend the presuppositions of your own premises and you are complaining about a lack of depth, how can one go deep with ignorance?
For someone who says that they place their "duty" over their real interests on philosophy, and are against - and here I quote you - "intellectual responsibility, objectivity, and self-interest", is very easy to see why you did not try to answer my questions in depth in this discussion. You are - and realized that you are - a egoist, and a negative one! It is amazing how those who say they are most concerned about everyone, are the ones who care most about only themselves. Hypocrites using hypocrisy to their advantage - Doublethink! -.
I'm just talking about the individual egoism of each human being. At no time did I try - or am I trying - to transform it into something that encompasses more things than the individual. I have the slight impression that you are not trying to understand, as you do not agree with my perspectives. No problems, good day/good night.
It's likely that I misunderstood you. Sorry. :smile:
Beauty is part of the good. Surely it does not need egoism to exist? Surely things have value in themselves. How could they need someone's ego to confer value upon them? The good involves recognizing that things in themselves have value. We can love the beauty of the stars without egoism. Love is, in fact, the opposite to egoism.
Another point is that if someone values themselves - egocentrically or otherwise - then why does another person not have value also? Are we to say that the only person who has value is the ego and nobody else has value?
Life is a communication between minds. To be alive the ego must go beyond itself. Life and the love of life, is beyond ego and does not depend on egoism. In fact ego is corrosive of life and love because life looks outward, ego looks inward. Ego is the beginning of evil.
I read a bit about Ayn Rand. I think her philosophy is nothing more than simple psychoanalysis: made up stuff that is easily refuted.
The dynamic between the love of something for its own sake and egoism is at the heart of the human condition. Some things are so sublime they almost command our admiration with no reference to the ego.
But as I said, the ego attaches itself to almost everything we love purely.
The scientist begins with the love of science, but the temptation towards fame and vanity insinuates itself and the scientist is distracted by worldly fame. Likewise the artist begins with a passion for art but the personality insinuates itself; fame beckons. But fame and fortune are not science nor are they art. They are of the personality and the world. They are ego.
The ego wants to take possession of the object of love. This is a problem.
Also, there is the force of necessity acting on us. We need to eat and have a home and survive and these necessary pressures force us back to number one, ourselves, because we must preserve ourselves and survive. Even the most egoless person must survive and look after number one, out of pure necessity. This is also a problem. We are driven.
The ego is insecure and fear driven; it wants to take and posses things that should be free. Life should be free of all bondages but the ego wants to take possession. This is what the ego is, a desire to possess. But every ego knows it will eventually fail.
There is no such thing as "no reference to the ego". Admiration for beauty - love for something other than yourself - is born out of the very human nature of wanting to fulfill your egoism. Admiration is nothing more than one of the infinite possibilities that we - individuals driven by egoism - have and use to make us achieve our purposes. Things exist, and only start to make sense at the level of the individual - in the ego - and that eventually, through communion between egos, creates concepts and comparisons that will be projected as absolute truths to the external world. To say that "something can be sublime to the point of commanding our admiration with no reference to the ego" is the same thing as saying that the physical world can be witnessed through vision to an individual who has never seen and does not even understand the concept of "seeing ". Both would project an inconclusive existence, as they would be imperfect.
Quoting EnPassant
This sentence doesn't make sense because you ignored my argument in a previous answer, that love is also born out of the human ego.
Quoting EnPassant
Human egoism cannot have characteristics that only arise from its own use by us - individuals -. Good and bad, security and insecurity, happiness and sadness, all of these and other more characteristics are born from the use of the ego. How egoism will be projected depends on the will of each being, however, I agree on the questions of what the monstrous masses are, what I call as "negative-egoists". People who uncousciously - or consciously - make evil decisions about how to use their egoism.
But this ignores my contention that it can easily be verified that there are things that are beautiful and of value and our admiration of them is simply a recognition of their value. You are saying that nothing has intrinsic beauty or value unless the ego can get something out of it. I disagree.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I think it is more correct to say that the ego attaches itself to the things we love: this is what possessiveness means: the ego wants to possess what should simply be loved. I don't disagree with you in the sense that the ego insinuates itself and looks for food. But this insinuation is not necessary to appreciate beauty or value.
It is not just the fact that the ego wants something of it. "Intrinsic" beauty exists only if the individual - or in the case of the crowd, the individuals - and his ego decides that it has intrinsic value. That same being may not want anything concluding that "something" must have a natural value. For something to be beautiful, egoism has to find it beautiful, but it does not necessarily have to want something of the same beauty.
Quoting EnPassant
This vision of yours is tied to the prejudice attributed to egoism, so maybe you see the ego as a cancer, a parasite that destroys everything it touches; the ego is seen as something "evil", dark, which brings disgrace, and removing that layer of prejudice is my goal. Egoism was never a monster, but it was transformed into one by the same "negative-egoists" that I mentioned earlier.
Quoting EnPassant
Again, the stigma that was stuck with egoism. If we exchange "food" for "purpose" and transform egoism into a motivating and potential force to covet not only the complete change of the individual life that each of us has, but also of eventually, indirectly completely change the perspective of life from all over the world, egoism reveals itself as one of the greatest virtues that man allowed himself to lost. You don't change the world by proejecting the change into others, you don't even change the world! You have only the potencial and purpose of fulfilling your individual life, and that's great, because the world changes only when its people change themselves.
In that case there is, in your opinion, no objective value in anything. That is what I disagree with.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I don't think ego is always bad. And I do agree that it can be a motivating force but it can become bad. But it is not the only motivating force. I believe values exist beyond the ego and beauty is not something that depends on the ego to exist. Otherwise only ego-centered people could appreciate beauty.
Some of what you say is true. Ego can be a motivating force but so can greed, hatred, love, fear...
You will find many examples that seem to support your view but I can see many examples that support my view; namely that external values can be a motivating force.
The ego is only a point of view of the world. It is not a thing in itself. It is a focal point. And the only values it can be associated with are those values it has appropriated for itself. But those values exist independently of the ego, otherwise it could not appropriate them.
For example a rich and successful man may take great pride in his riches. But he is not rich because he is great although his ego may tell him he is. He is rich because riches exist independently of him. For the most part, he just got lucky. He appropriated riches to himself and imagines he has them because he is great.
A beautiful woman thinks she is beautiful: she thinks she is beautiful. But that is not her. It is natural physical beauty that she is associated with, again by luck and chance and no greatness of her own. But she is vain. Her ego tells her she and her physical beauty are the same thing. This is illusion. All vanities and ego-centered thinking is illusion. And yes, there is something parasitical about it because the ego cannot have value on its own merits. The ego is desire: a desire to possess. The man says "These riches are mine" the woman says "This beauty is mine. It is me." But all that is really happening is that these people are in a fleeting relationship with values, riches and beauty that exist independently of them.
One thing is for sure: - We can agree to disagree. :smile: