The Servant of Ego

In A Primer for Forgetting,ª Lewis Hyde quotes the artist Agnes Martin regarding a problem of the intellect: It’s “the servant of ego,” she says, and “everybody’s born 100% ego; after that it’s just adjustment.” Martin eschews facts and ideas to cultivate a quiet, empty mind primed for inspiration.

Nice for an artist, you may think. But what about “knowledge workers”? Don’t we need facts and ideas to solve our problems?

Well yes, but what happens if we share those facts and ideas with others, who will undoubtedly see them differently? If we’re lucky, they’ll critique those facts and ideas, saving us the trouble of bad ones, making good ones better, or perhaps just adjusting our egos (hopefully with some good humor).

And what if we disengaged from ego even more by leading with curiosity about others’ ideas before sharing your own?

ª https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374237219