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For me, this is still a very good question and I am continuing to search for answers. We may need to transcend our egos, but for most people this is difficult. Without love of ourselves, how to we learn to love and value others? Perhaps egoism is simply an important step along the journey. I often marvel at how ants, bees, and slime molds seem to be doing a much better job of connection than we are. Society today strikes me as being the opposite of emergence and coming together – every day, things seem to be falling apart more and more.
I’m Tracey from Vancouver. I’ve taken some short courses before this one, and I am happy to be here, learning some more, with all of you.
I, too, am a teacher. In my undergraduate classes, I always feel as though I am trying to strike a balance – if I am too soft, then students do not complete their assigned tasks or do as well; if I am too tough, I start to feel like a guard in the SPE. One can never go too far in one direction or the other, else we risk getting out of balance. One thing we learn from the SPE is that we need oversight from many different persons with different points of view. It was only when ‘outsiders’ came and had a look at what was going on at Stanford, that Phil Zimbardo realized that he had gone too far and that he needed to stop the experiment. These are two good lessons we can learn form the SPE: always be seeking balance, and always seek out and value different – even opposing – points of view.
I have a very strong sense that narcissism and egoism are increasing. Much research into narcissism also shows that narcissism is more prevalent in some cultures – no surprise that the culture that produces the most narcissists is modern, western, culture – and that narcissistic personality disorder (the most extreme form of narcissism) has been rising steadily in recent years. I see this in my own life as well, in terms of how certain people close to me have treated me, which has been personally very painful.
