Monday, November 15, 2010
Self-Esteem or Ego?
okay, so I'm reading this book called a Seperate Peace. The guy....we'll call him...Dan. anyway he has a best friend named Phineas who is crazy athletic and popular. However, he is also a really great guy. Anyway Dan gets it into his head that Phineas is trying to make him (dan) fail his class so that he (Phineas) can be more accomplished. Later on Dan finds out that that wasn't Phineas' intention at all. He just wanted to hang out w/ him (dan) b/c he was his best friend. So my question is....Do we create silent competitions w/ someone b/c we think they want to be better than us and we're trying to boost our self esteem? Or, do we create silent competitions w/ someone b/c we think we are just that awesome that someone would Want to Try to be better than us? Is it our self-esteem or ego?
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Both, depending on the person
ReplyDeleteWell, first of all, how hard is it to write with and because? Sorry, that just bothered me. How come we have to call him Dan? What's his real name? And to answer your question, I would say that they are both the same thing essentially. Selfishness is basically the root of almost all human action, and ego is really just a manifestation of selfishness. Self esteem is a different word for ego, but it has a different connotation. I agree with Spencer that it depends on the person which word best describes the motivation, but they are fundamentally the same.
ReplyDeleteI think that people try to boost their self esteems and their egos. Self esteem because people not only want to prove to others that they are better then someone else, but they also want to prove it to themselves. Ego because most of the time people who feel insure of themselves often have to beat someone else in something to make themselves feel better. So in a way it can be a combination of both.
ReplyDeleteFrom my own point of view, simply being a football player and a kind of intelligent person, it's a little bit of both. It's good to be a little "cocky" or however you want to put it and sometimes it's good to know you're not "all that and a bag of chips." I say if you're going to have a competition with someone voice it, don't be a pansy.
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