We can’t grow, develop without the ego constantly comparing ourselves to others
Opinion from the Internet about the egotistic comparison to others:
“Comparison, in my opinion, is the enemy of contentment & inner peace.
Once you stop comparing yourself against other people, then you can learn how to be content with what you have.
If you think about it, most of your desires are there because you saw other people doing those things in the first place. Unfulfilled desires cause great pain & dissatisfaction. You try and be content with what you have, but then you see your neighbor with a brand new expensive car and you compare your old car against theirs’ and you aren’t content with your car.
But once you realize that you do have a means of transportation, which not all people do, and if you don’t compare with others better off than yourself, then you can be content with whatever you already have.”
I understand that this is a view that many Eastern teachings support. And let us assume there are still a few unique people, who are so pure, that they can achieve contentment, inner peace without the egotistic self as their ego is so small.
But it is not true to most - I would say over 99% of people - who have our modern, well-developed, selfish, and individualistic egos.
And this modern, selfish, individualistic ego constantly compares itself to others, as it always wants to be the best, strongest, wealthiest, most clever, etc. Without such comparisons, without envy, jealousy we couldn’t develop, grow.
And as we know from historical and personal experience we can’t suppress or erase the instinctive ego, when we try it just rebounds even stronger, causing even greater damage.
So we need to learn how to work with it, use it. In unique environments we can even use envy, jealousy, desire for respect, desire for more in a positive, constructive, purposeful way towards common goals, each person in the environment pulling, pushing each other towards that goal. The ego then becomes the engine we just need to steer towards the right direction.
Our purpose is not to compress, reduce ourselves to the level of plants, simply existing without growth, movement. Our Human purpose is to research and attain reality in its utter completeness, perfection from one extreme to the other. And that requires an “infinite” contrast between two extremes, that is provided by an infinitely great ego that is hidden in us, and against it and infinite great positive, altruistic, loving force, a quality we can attain, build on top of the ego.
Finally, if we didn’t have the “dark, negative” background, contrast the selfish ego provides, how would we truly know when we’ve reached altruism, true love of others, special, spiritual contentment, attainment?!
I can easily deceive myself and imagine that I am already in a perfect, tranquil state, I am beautiful and have nothing to change, correct in me since through our inherently egocentric, subjective perception it is very easy to justify, convince ourselves about our own “enlightenment”.
But when we reach personal correction, true changes against the ego and we can sense, hold onto the contrast - especially in the above mentioned purposeful, methodical environment - them we can be certain that the perfection we reached is true, it is verified against the ego!