Ego

[Nalaar]

John I'm sure you recognize the main thrust of your argument here is emotional. The words you're using 'Ridicule, mocking, belittling' etc are all an appeal on ones sense of Ego. But when you try to appeal to mine (i.e. "Perhaps you need to have your home broken into, and perhaps all your upcoming wedding presents stolen, or something worse.") You are not understanding that the event, however bad, does not impact on me, only on my ego, and I am able to see that.

Seeing a distinction from conscious experience and Ego doesn't mean that you don't feel good or bad as events happen in your life. It does mean you are not at the mercy of those events.

[johnofgwent]

Surely there is a difference between giving blood or anything else and taking. One is a generous donation, the other theft. I would think that most would think their stolen watch should remain their property and expect it's return in a just world, where as the return of a gift is deemed rude.

See, that's my point too.

I think what nalaar is saying is that those of us who are victims of crime have nobody but ourselves to blame for the sense of profound loss at what is taken from us, and we need to get over that sense of profound loss if we are to progress.

well that might work for him but that sounds rather too close to the islamic belief that a woman who is raped has only herself to blame and should get over it and preferably quietly kill herself so the rest of us donlt have to put up with her making a fuss

Having read and re-read the opening post, i see the problem only too well.

The heartless shitbag who proposed that the victim of the theft is only going to prolong their suffering by continuing to feel attachment to the stolen item and thus has only themselves to blame for the continued suffering at the thought of the loss should be beaten to the point of near senselessness and then thrown off an eleven storey building in a suitable state of awareness to know that they are going to die and it is going ot hurt before they do - as an indication that persons who exhibit such heartless behaviour need to be re-educated in the subject of the feelings of victims of crime.

Because in my case it is only unavenged criminal acts that cause me any emotional issues.  I still feel my blood pressure rising now as i recall not being able to take my driving test because my wallet and driving licence were stolen. I actually got both back after a few months,  but it is the sense of powerlessness caused by that thieving shitbag's actions that make me so emotional.  I stark contrast, about twenty years ago now, if not thirty, some idiot tried to pickpocket my wallet as i stood at a car auction. And I felt them do it. I turned round, saw them with my wallet in their hand, and without hesitatrion kicked the thieving (naughty word) in the balls. He went down like a sack of spuds. All around me a number of people seemed more than slightly concerned at my actions, but a shout of "THAT ****S JUST PICKPOCKETED MY WALLET" combined with the sight of a wallet in his hand open and displaying my work photo-id card in the front was more than enough to have them join in. I'm amazed there were any unbroken bones when the auction security people came, and they were none too gentle with the piece of shit either. I left that auction without the car i had hoped to buy, but well pumped with excitement and enjoyment of handing out a worthy retribution for the criminal act.

Years later I learned the guy was a regular at the place, but had to give up his way of working as the damage I had done to his hand, wrist and forearm meant he could no longer practice his art. So a double result, i turned him from a life of crime and set him on the straight and narrow (for his life, but not his arm which would never straighten again)

[johnofgwent]

I'd consider this an unhealthy level of attachment.

The feeling of belittlement/ridicule is a good example of identifying with the Ego, which is what I have stated is the problem. The fact that the Ego protects its image with feelings of ridicule etc is an unpleasant barrier to break down, but I think a barrier worth breaking down nonetheless.

There are plenty of vivid examples around strong personal feelings that I could elaborate on if you think the ridicule of the Ego argument has not been well made here.

I added some edits to the post above, perhaps that might indicate where I see a difference.

I really so not understand what you are saying here. You seem to think it is my fault that i cannot shed the emotions and feelings that follow as a result of being a victim of crime.

Perhaps you need to have your home broken into, and perhaps all your upcoming wedding presents stolen, or something worse. Then perhaps you will understand why I find your attitude to those who feel a sense of loss after being a victim of crime so utterly, utterly .. there really are no words, reprehensible is just not good enough.

In an attempt to explore this a little further - because i really do not understand how you can be such a heartless bastard mocking those who feel profound loss following criminal acts - perhaps another less emotion-laden example ? The pair of spectacles I referred to in my earlier post were in fact replaced once, with an identical pair, after I nearly fell overboard from a cross channel ferry that pitched violently in a storm, throwing me through a door onto the deck. At almost the last moment I saw an upright railing support fixed very sturdily to the deck and the roof of the deck above. I threw myself at it, grabbed it with both hands and the carrier bag with my duty free and my glasses both went into the sea.

I got a replacement set of glasses within a fortnight and thought no more of it.

By the same token there is a rather old (gingerbread) android phone sitting on the sea bed off plymouth. It went over the side in one of my last scuba dives. I feel no sense of loss over that. Should I ??

[Nalaar]

I  do indeed.

I'd consider this an unhealthy level of attachment.

To put my objection in more measured tones, as a victim of several muggings, a couple of burglaries, one successful pickpocketing and one not so successful your post belittles and ridicules victims of crime for feeling a sense of loss. 

The feeling of belittlement/ridicule is a good example of identifying with the Ego, which is what I have stated is the problem. The fact that the Ego protects its image with feelings of ridicule etc is an unpleasant barrier to break down, but I think a barrier worth breaking down nonetheless.

There are plenty of vivid examples around strong personal feelings that I could elaborate on if you think the ridicule of the Ego argument has not been well made here.

[johnofgwent]

Do you still consider the wallet yours 44 years on?

I  do indeed.

To put my objection in more measured tones, as a victim of several muggings, a couple of burglaries, one successful pickpocketing and one not so successful your post belittles and ridicules victims of crime for feeling a sense of loss. 

At the age of eight, my mother bought me a pair of Clarks Shoes. They were very expensive. In a crush crossing the road in Cardiff's queen street in the days before it was pedestrianised, I dropped the bag when someone bumped into me. By the time the lights had changed and it was safe to cross back, some thieving (c word) had picked up the shoes and ran off with them. So for several months i got wet feet in the rain coming home from school as we could not afford another pair.

At the age of eighteen, i spent two weeks of my school summer holiday in between the lower sixth and upper sixth years taking a course in photography at a cardiff arts centre. armed with a manual SLR and Ilford film, I went out into the street, partnered with a girl i had only recently met who would become my first "serious" girlfriend over the next 18 months, and took some photographs of the area and the people. I still have those photographs. we walked down Queen Street, photographing all sorts, and as I stood at the zebra crossing by C&A / Mackross (Allders it might have been by then) the memory of being that eight year old who lost the shoes his mother had just spent the best part of three day's wages came flooding back.

I still have to fight back a tear when i walk past the BT phone junction box where that crossing was even though it is long pedestrianised.

Perhaps in thirty or forty years time you should ask your new fiancee whether she still considers the dress she will I presume wear, along with a whole raft of emotion, once only and for a few hours at most, still "hers" and still a key part of who "she" is.

Perhaps you should ridicule her for feeling a sense of attachment and identity to it.

You know what, it would be worth living to 93 or 103 just to be there with a bag of popcorn when you try that ..... but take my advice, buy yourself a decent roomy dog kennel first.

As with most of your psychobabble playtime head shrink posts, i have absolutely no f**king idea what the f**k you are trying to say in this thread. I started reading it but i just don't get it.

I might, however, be on to something if you perhaps take an item that was once key to my identity and now of no use to me for another reason.

The forum's avatar description called me The Forum's Joe 90 because at the age of 14 a new optician finally found out what the hell was wrong with my eyesight and prescribed me new glasses to fit it. After a number of accidents in games and science classes caused the frames to break, he suggested i try a radically new tyoe of frame, and glass. The frame was a plastic composite that was so flexible it would bend and ejectthe triple laminated lenses without breakage. But they looke dthe spittingimage of the pair of glasses worn by Gerry Anderson's puppet, and when it became noticeable that I was making significant improvement in class (as a result of being able to see the bloody blackboard IN PROPER FOCUS!!) the nickname awarded in the finest tradition of humiliating bullying stuck.

The shithead who gave me that name was the same one who i put in hospital with a fractured skull, and few people called me it to my face after that for fear of following Geoffrey to Casualty, but I was marrried wearing those glasses, i graduated wearing those glasses, and they accompanied me everywhere. They were an essential part of my identity.

It was not until my mid fifties that I finally set them aside. In due course my sight changed to the point the newest lenses (which i long ago had stopped having in the laminated form for industrial protection) were actually too strong, and I opted for anew pair of frames. I threw the joe90 glasses in the skip the day I had the all clear from the second emergency vitrectomy, and knew that henceforth until the day i die my eyesight prescription will no longer be L-10 R-6 but L+1.5 R+1

Although I look back with fondness at the various pictures taken of me in the thirty years i wore those glasses, i feel no sense of loss or loss of identity  now they are gone, but then again, I suppose that is becaue i willingly cast them off knowing I had no further use of them. Perhaps I should do the same for the twenty eight inch waist twenty four inch flare bottom trousers i was wearing inthe most seminal of those photographs, showing the newly graduated me standing atop university college cardiff's student union measuring the efficiency of solar water heaters.... but the trousers have not yet been thrown out.

Maybe i will have a use for them when i go the same way as dad with prostate cancer and shed ten stone in weight and twenty two inches girth.

[Borg Refinery]

It just shows how stupid humans really are.

I don't think it's a sign of stupidity at all, these are deeply unintuitive processes.

It shows how we have zero awareness of ourselves and seem to unintuitively stumble from one thing to the next in this life, whether semi knowingly or totally unknowingly.

[Nalaar]

It just shows how stupid humans really are.

I don't think it's a sign of stupidity at all, these are deeply unintuitive processes.

[Borg Refinery]

Just watching brain surgery at the moment and wondered how the patients would see this thread.
We are what we are because of what our brain reports, commands, computes and senses. When that process is interrupted for any reason including surgery, there is a change in function which must affect our ego, not to mention our sense of right and wrong.
I won't even go into the spiritual aspect, as that must be down to a particular area of the brain.
We are terrifically complex. Anyone who thinks that the human body happened by chance is off the wall, IMO.

There are some remarkable stories of being able to spilt Egos via medical surgery. Cases of 'split brain' were originally pioneered to help people with sever epilepsy, and it had the unintended consequence of of effectively creating 2 separate identities, and world experiences.
Examples along the lines of the difference in verbal and written communication - If you ask someone with Spilt Brain what they want to drink, tea or coffee, their oral response could be Tea, but their written response Coffee, so which do they want?

The split brain makes a mockery of the idea of Ego and I, the indivisible self.

It just shows how stupid humans really are.

[Nalaar]

Just watching brain surgery at the moment and wondered how the patients would see this thread.
We are what we are because of what our brain reports, commands, computes and senses. When that process is interrupted for any reason including surgery, there is a change in function which must affect our ego, not to mention our sense of right and wrong.
I won't even go into the spiritual aspect, as that must be down to a particular area of the brain.
We are terrifically complex. Anyone who thinks that the human body happened by chance is off the wall, IMO.

There are some remarkable stories of being able to spilt Egos via medical surgery. Cases of 'split brain' were originally pioneered to help people with sever epilepsy, and it had the unintended consequence of of effectively creating 2 separate identities, and world experiences.
Examples along the lines of the difference in verbal and written communication - If you ask someone with Spilt Brain what they want to drink, tea or coffee, their oral response could be Tea, but their written response Coffee, so which do they want?

The split brain makes a mockery of the idea of Ego and I, the indivisible self.

[Nalaar]

Do you consider it possible to understand the concept of Ego on a purely cerebral level?

If I'm understanding your question correctly, then yes. We can only ever understand something cerebrally.

I ask this because looking so deeply within ourselves for me reveals a depth that confirms a Spiritual self. Your comment about being taught as against learning from Scripture  makes me wonder how you align that comprehension with a concept of no future existence or no Spiritual being. (I use the term you loosely here)

I don't see the incompatibility that wouldn't allow me to align with concepts of no-afterlife etc.

More-over I think we would both use the term spiritual differently. I think a spiritual experience is a self witnessing conscious experience, and has no positive or negative associations with theology.

[Nalaar]

Forty four years ago someone pickpocketed my wallet while I stood in a queue of wannabe lawyers.

That was my money, my loss, my opportunity stolen from me and there will never be a millisecond when that will not be my loss.

Do you still consider the wallet yours 44 years on?

[Barry]

Just watching brain surgery at the moment and wondered how the patients would see this thread.
We are what we are because of what our brain reports, commands, computes and senses. When that process is interrupted for any reason including surgery, there is a change in function which must affect our ego, not to mention our sense of right and wrong.
I won't even go into the spiritual aspect, as that must be down to a particular area of the brain.
We are terrifically complex. Anyone who thinks that the human body happened by chance is off the wall, IMO.

[T00ts]

I understand that most people when they really examine themselves and their thoughts are not that enamoured with what they see. Some people find that they don't really like themselves. MY mind and thoughts etc.
On the spiritual level, Christianity asks that we die to self and live in Christ, which turns the whole idea of needing to know ourselves better upside down.

I don't think I understand quite what you mean there. How can we repent if we don't recognise ourselves and our failings? Surely we need more self knowledge rather than less to live as Christ expects?

I'm referring mostly to Galatians 2:20 but there's quite a bit about it here:
https://www.gotquestions.org/dying-to-self.html
To be saved you only have to repent once, then it becomes a lifestyle in the Spirit. I am veering a bit off the ego topic.
I think "Ego" is a negative thing. Liiving in the Spirit is a positive one.

I do struggle with taking solitary verses of the scriptures I try to put them in context, so there was a problem on two fronts at that time. One was that revelation was given that Gentiles should receive the Gospel and some Jews - the circumcised - were unhappy with that development. The other was that Jesus was the fulfilment of Moses law and those Jews who wanted the join Christ's Church struggled with the change in the law as they saw it. As for Repentance - at Baptism all past sins are forgiven and we are washed clean. To be baptised there must be full repentance and it only happened once. However, we are all fallible and to expect  us to live without sin for the rest of our earthly lives would not be reasonable or achievable. We are told to pray often and in the guidance given we ask for forgiveness. So to live in Christ is to live in constant search of perfection and recognising the need to repent for the regular slip ups we make each day. To do our best and believe with all our hearts until the end.

Looking at that above it seems to me that ego - the ability to see in entirety - to be able to recognise the good and evil in this world, to see our own faults as well as our efforts to improve is essential. That for me is why we have this life at all.

[Barry]

I understand that most people when they really examine themselves and their thoughts are not that enamoured with what they see. Some people find that they don't really like themselves. MY mind and thoughts etc.
On the spiritual level, Christianity asks that we die to self and live in Christ, which turns the whole idea of needing to know ourselves better upside down.

I don't think I understand quite what you mean there. How can we repent if we don't recognise ourselves and our failings? Surely we need more self knowledge rather than less to live as Christ expects?

I'm referring mostly to Galatians 2:20 but there's quite a bit about it here:
https://www.gotquestions.org/dying-to-self.html
To be saved you only have to repent once, then it becomes a lifestyle in the Spirit. I am veering a bit off the ego topic.
I think "Ego" is a negative thing. Liiving in the Spirit is a positive one.

[T00ts]

I understand that most people when they really examine themselves and their thoughts are not that enamoured with what they see. Some people find that they don't really like themselves. MY mind and thoughts etc.
On the spiritual level, Christianity asks that we die to self and live in Christ, which turns the whole idea of needing to know ourselves better upside down.

I don't think I understand quite what you mean there. How can we repent if we don't recognise ourselves and our failings? Surely we need more self knowledge rather than less to live as Christ expects?