Fine, Scott, I’m content to let it rest, and I’m glad I spent my 2 hours on the search and analysis rather than on a drawn-out back-and-forth with you. That seems to be Bonita’s thing.
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What is the Ego
43 posts · 5 participants · started Aug 14, 2014, 1:58 AM
Scott, I think I was a bit too curt there. Please know that I am reconciled to the fact that our revelation affords me no textual authority to use this word ‘ego’ in the one sense which to me is most rich with meaning.
I grew up in the 1960s, when the earlier, clinical meaning of the word (current during the time of our revelation) was already morphing into a more negative reference. And that negative meaning still connects with me. And I have no real reason to give up the word ‘self’ and substitute the word ‘ego’ if I feel sincere in my need to get two meanings from two words instead of one meaning alone.
Be aware that references to “national ego,” “racial ego,” and “male ego” in the UB stand as challenges to any one-sided interpretation. Give the revelators freedom to use English as best they see fit in any context.
There is no reference to the word ‘ego’ in Part I of our text, and only one author of Part II (an archangel) has availed himself of the term in an attempt to portray the ego-release mechanism of humor and reversion. In Part IV the reference is to a ‘religious ego’ which is said not to have functioned in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth.
So I’m fine with using the word as I choose without the sanction of our text.
-Reader
I grew up in the 1960s, when the earlier, clinical meaning of the word (current during the time of our revelation) was already morphing into a more negative reference.
This is a good point. The book was written in a time when this morphing of the word ego had not happened yet I am guessing. There are quite a few other words in the book that now carry a very negative connotation that didn’t back in the early 1930s when the book was written. Eugenics is one example of this.
