Having a strong ego is not necessarily a wholly bad characteristic, as long as people are (1) capable of turning it off and (2) know when to turn it off.
One likely advantage throughout human history is that those with strong egos are more likely to survive extremely difficult challenges - they might keep going when others lay down to die. If this concept of ego is expanded to an entire society, then a shared sense of identity is also a kind of 'community ego' which leads to social cohesiveness, the willingness to help other members of the group with their problems, leading to overall group success. This is often called the utilitarian argument for religious faith (but not for multicultural mixed religion, which is said to cause schisms in the group).
In evolutionary terms, this might be called 'group selection'- although many religious people don't like to talk about evolution. For some reason, common heredity with 'the lower animals' upsets them deeply - a concept I've never been able to understand myself. This is't true of all religions of course, it seems more a hallmark of the Abrahamic traditions (Judeo-Christian-Islamic). I guess it's really about replacement of religious authority with scientific authority when it comes to origin stories, genesis, etc.?
Where the inability to turn off the ego causes problems is in social interactions. Every academic department, for example, tends to have at least a few narcissitic Napoleon types who view every interaction with others as a winner/loser competition, in which one party is dominant and the other submissive (rather like chimpanzees really). If they don't come out on top, they show 'wounded ego' syndrome, which requires future retaliation of some sort against the other party to restore their dominant position. Generally such people are described as 'a real piece of work' and everyone dreads interacting with them. Typically they try to control and abuse their staff and students as well (look up UC Berkeley professor abuse scandal for about half a dozen recent examples).
Incidentally, this academic phenomenon shows that 'Scientism' isn't any better than 'Religionism' at moderating the negative aspects of ego. It seems to be something some people learn how to do, and others don't. There don't seem to be any guaranteed routes to learning this either - some people say prayer and meditation, some people say psychedelic drugs, some people say extreme physical exercise. I often wonder if it's actually somewhat genetic in nature, a sort of narcissistic gene issue, perhaps an inability to feel empathy for others? Go figure.
One likely advantage throughout human history is that those with strong egos are more likely to survive extremely difficult challenges - they might keep going when others lay down to die. If this concept of ego is expanded to an entire society, then a shared sense of identity is also a kind of 'community ego' which leads to social cohesiveness, the willingness to help other members of the group with their problems, leading to overall group success. This is often called the utilitarian argument for religious faith (but not for multicultural mixed religion, which is said to cause schisms in the group).
In evolutionary terms, this might be called 'group selection'- although many religious people don't like to talk about evolution. For some reason, common heredity with 'the lower animals' upsets them deeply - a concept I've never been able to understand myself. This is't true of all religions of course, it seems more a hallmark of the Abrahamic traditions (Judeo-Christian-Islamic). I guess it's really about replacement of religious authority with scientific authority when it comes to origin stories, genesis, etc.?
Where the inability to turn off the ego causes problems is in social interactions. Every academic department, for example, tends to have at least a few narcissitic Napoleon types who view every interaction with others as a winner/loser competition, in which one party is dominant and the other submissive (rather like chimpanzees really). If they don't come out on top, they show 'wounded ego' syndrome, which requires future retaliation of some sort against the other party to restore their dominant position. Generally such people are described as 'a real piece of work' and everyone dreads interacting with them. Typically they try to control and abuse their staff and students as well (look up UC Berkeley professor abuse scandal for about half a dozen recent examples).
Incidentally, this academic phenomenon shows that 'Scientism' isn't any better than 'Religionism' at moderating the negative aspects of ego. It seems to be something some people learn how to do, and others don't. There don't seem to be any guaranteed routes to learning this either - some people say prayer and meditation, some people say psychedelic drugs, some people say extreme physical exercise. I often wonder if it's actually somewhat genetic in nature, a sort of narcissistic gene issue, perhaps an inability to feel empathy for others? Go figure.