Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 06:49:13 +0100

To: ken-wilber-l@listserv.azstarnet.com

From: Thomas Jordan <Thomas.Jordan@redcap.econ.gu.se>

Subject: How to catch the ego: Part 3

How to catch the ego by the tail - some hints: Part 3

Thanks for positive feedback, it makes a difference :-).

As in the two previous examples, the third one also deals with "strategies" the ego uses to conserve its own coherence, and to strenghten its feeling of having the situation in a firm grasp.

Control strategy 3: Evaluations. Rapid judging of others’ personalities, behaviours, values. Dissociation and devaluation. Refusal to stay in touch.

Assigning values to events and persons comes quickly in conflicts. It is a defence mechanism when immediate and unreflected assignment of negative value is used to create an emotional distance to persons or phenomena. This also serves the ego’s drive for avoiding ambiguity and achieving a sense of having the situation under control. The ego feverishly tries to reduce the number of unknowns in its environment, and putting value judgements on persons, behaviours and things is one way of doing this. When a person or a thing has been assigned a judgement, one no longer has to spend much effort and attention for evaluating information about the entity. A judgement provides a kind of paradigm offering a convenient and rapid instruction to the mind about how to evaluate new information about a person or a thing. Of course, it therefore means a vastly reduced openness to learning, to reevaluation, to new experiences, to depth, and to relationship.

In conflicts spontaneous feelings of discomfort, irritation and dislike often lead to moral condemnation: it is no longer a question of antipathy, but of badness, i.e. a moral quality. With growing awareness of the semi-automatic operations of the ego, one learns to differentiate spontaneous feelings and emotions from value judgements. One can accept the presence of dislike, for example, without also using the feeling of dislike as evidence that a person is bad.

Thomas

P.S. I would appreciate if you comment or contradict these theses, based on your own experience or different discourse.