Ego and Learning

There is a delicate middle ground between ego and actual learning. You have your own network of ideas and knowledge that you think are true. Then someone comes in and introduces an idea that pokes at this giant network. It’s an idea that challenges your current framework so what do you do? Instinct says you reject it. You say no, no, this new idea is false. It doesn’t align with any of my current frameworks and it is probably wrong. This goes back to biology: if you do accept that this new idea is true, that means your current framework is wrong and that means you lose status. If you are a low-status male then you don’t get food, you don’t get priority, you don’t get mates, so that is bad.

However if you maintain this mindset for any new idea, you will never learn. If every idea that ever challenges your current framework is rejected, there is no growth. That leads me to the other side, which is acceptance and good faith. If a challenging idea comes across you, what you must do is look at it in good faith and really analyze it. You’re always going to be biased for your own ideas because you know the reasoning behind it and the evidence. However if there’s a new idea, that’s all it is; it’s just a sentence and you don’t know any of its background. What you must do is remove the ego and look at this idea and analyze it in its strongest form and truly see where it’s coming from and attempt to integrate it into your framework if you think it is good enough.

I think I struggle with this. I think a lot of people struggle with this, being able to openly suppress the ego and approach every new idea in good faith. It is tiresome and requires a lot of energy but it is the right thing to do and today that is what enlightened me.