Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Religious people.. less intelligent than atheists

By your definition it is probably ego because your definition is wishy washy touchie feely to me and could basically be anything. It reminds me of trying to read the mumbo jumbo of Sigmund Freud.

Personality is a lot more than ego if you let me bring my scientific and ancestral beliefs to bear on it.

As a basic example if you let me beat you enough with a stick I bet you will flinch when I lift a stick and avoid me. So you will have personality traits which have nothing to do with ego as I would define it.

Within my homeland beliefs we have several personality splinters I will list a few of them as best I can

Identification: That is a sense of belonging to community/family etc. That is not something one decides consciously certain people have it in different amounts hence some people get home sick etc you don't consciously decide such things.

Repulsion: The sense of repulsion from things acts and events with no conscious reason. In my homeland it is usually but not exclusively around things like animal cruelty and sort of not obvious morality issues. A child seeing an animal killed may cry for example even though they are told the animal is being killed to eat and the death is not frowned upon by society.

Conditioning: That is the beating with stick trick above. Your parents may try and give you certain behavior if you are a little naughty and society or mistreatment may impose such personality traits.

Cultural: That is doing things that feel right for historic or cultural reasons again usually without really thinking about them and reasoning. They are rare and in my culture often equated to the ancestors showing you the right way ... mystical if you like.

Stimuli: Certain things are attractive for unknown reasons to certain people. This is the why certain breeds of dog chase cars effect because it seems to be inbuilt in their DNA. So we say some people seem to exhibit the same sort of problems.

Risk: Two siblings with identical upbringing exhibit totally different risk strategies. Our belief is some are born as risk takers others are not and it is not a conscious decision that is necessarily in your control.

Unknown fear: Some sense fear of things they don't understand or have never seen some do not. Given a situation or experience a person has never seen and has no base to make a judgement they react totally different. Peoples fight/flight reactions to being startled are an example of this.


This is getting long so I will leave it there but I view personality as a mixture of DNA and Environment as well as things one sub consciously and consciously decides.

To me ego is those you consciously decide the rest as far as I am concerned are practically outside your control unless you deliberately set about trying to fix them.

I believe you can override personality traits by using conscious decision (ego) or conditioning.

So there you have it for me ego and personality are vastly different things and hence we will never agree I am afraid.