"Tom"
comcast.net> wrote in message
news:MaCdnd1HF-eMDlDVnZ2dnUVZ_jadnZ2d@comcast.com...
> It's not simply a "belief". It's a considered judgment.
>
> Please read "How the Mind Works", by Dr. Steven Pinker, Psychology Dept.
> Harvard University, as an introduction to how this judgment arose.
>
>> is the point then that people who are say mentally ill enough to be
>> locked up, are their egos broken, or would they be even more successful
>> if say there were no societal controls that require their lock up
>
> "Mentally ill" covers a wide variety of cognitive, perceptual, emotional,
> and behavioral problems. It's incredibly simplistic to describe all
> people with mental illnesses as having "broken egos".
I didn't say that they all have broken egos, I asked if they did.
Maybe they have more efficient egos and we just don't get it and lock them
up because it interferes with our concept of what egos should be doing.
>
>> I'd think it was a fault and a plus depending on the situation and the
>> strength of the mechanism, the degree to which it was powered on
>
> Many organic survival mechanisms are either a fault or a plus depending on
> the situation.
>
well yeah but that means that you can explain anything with anything with
words.
How come animals didn't develop ego as a survival mechanism, or did they and
we just can't talk good enough to determine that they did?
I can't see well to read for long periods, anymore. But I did make some
inroads into some of Dawkins. He asked some questions in the book that made
me wonder,. He pointed out that alot of mammals survived dinosaur times
because they became nocturnal, and developed eyes that work really well at
night enabling them to hunt better when they aren't so much prey as
predator. I think night vision would have been more useful than ego. If in
fact it is a survival mechanism. So many entities appear to survive just
fine without it.
ego's just a definition of a very vague concept that maybe even doesn't
exist, sorta like god.
I've just started reading about the discovery of bats echolocation. can we
prove there's an ego. no one believed the little bats were using their
ears. will we one day wake up and find there's an ego frequency that we can
measure. I am willing to keep an open mind but I can't believe that it's an
adaptation in the way it is meant. self awareness is often a barrier rather
than a useful tool in survival, it seems to me anyway.
mk5000
"Well I'm sitting on a windowsill, blowing my horn
Nobody's up except the moon and me,
And a lazy old tomcat on a midnight spree
All that you left me was a melody."--Tom Waits, Rosie
