I was just wondering about this. While it’s blatantly clear that many common arguments between friends/spouses etc definitely occur because of the ego, is this the same with those intellectual debates where each party brings research to support their evidence?
Personally, I’m starting to think that’s the case as well. No matter how impartial/neutral/respectful or sophisticated each party remains, there’s always a bit of that ego that I can sense.
Discussions on the other hand are not necessarily ego based I think.
I been in the same position of watching these people debating themselves and observe their ideas. And of course they can be egotist as well but as long as you just there to observe and remind yourself in your position. I think it’s a great way to learn something from it. In my opinion. Just make sure they don’t fight lol
Sometimes its like we don’t even care about the topic and our main intent is just to prove how wrong someone else is . I guess those are good examples of ego based debates.
But sometimes we’re just trying to understand something or sharing what we’ve understood(and we aren’t too rigid about it, we’re willing to accept flaws in our understanding to learn more). Such interactions feel less ego based.
I think a number of arguments function as error correcting mechanisms and the issue of ego is secondary (if that.) The “loser” in these cases profits more than the “winner” because what is lost in ego is gained in knowledge. Plus, an incidental deflation of ego is hardly ever a bad thing. Bitter but effective medicine is still good for you.
