2018-02-08
21 分钟Okay, so here's my question.
Is ego a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing?
Well, this came up in a bit of an odd way, actually, during a Super bowl commercial this year that turned into a bit of a controversial commercial.
It was something that was drawing a passage from a famous sermon from doctor Martin Luther King Junior about something called the drum major instinct.
And I got curious, not just about the small kerfuffle, but the actual sermon.
And I went back and read it, and there's some really powerful thoughts, and I wanted to actually share a bit of that and a bit of my experience with this whole idea of the role of ego in doing good, doing bad, motivating us, shutting us down, and how it relates to this idea of the drum major instinct.
Along with that, in our good life science update today, really fascinating new research on over the counter pain medication, like the things that you can buy in a local pharmacy, and how it affects, how it potentially dulls not just the pain that we're taking it for, but it may also dull our thinking, thinking and our emotions, our feelings at the same time.
More on all of this in just a moment.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
And we're back with thoughts on this thing called ego and the need for praise and the drum major instinct.
Almost 50 years ago, in February 1968, doctor Martin Luther King junior gave a sermon titled the drum major Instinct.
And that was based partly on a homily that was given about 1516 years earlier, created by J.
Wallace Hamilton.
And in this, King identified sort of an alternative definition for greatness, which he built around service and offered his idea of how this instinct can mess with our definition and pursuit of greatness in the world.
Now, what did he mean by the drum major instinct?
Well, when you read the sermon, it becomes pretty crystal clear pretty quickly that what we're talking about here is the sort of innate human impulse to seek praise, to seek recognition, to a certain extent, to seek fame.
And he acknowledged that this actually is a part of all of us, as I think we can probably all go along with that.
I know I'm raising my hand right here saying, yeah, I mean, it'd be kind of cool if that wasn't a part of me.
But truth is, it is.
But what happened next was rather than him saying, this is a bad thing, you need to extinguish it from who you are, because it's all about ego gratification.