The Art Of Ethical Ego-Feeding: Jenny Wood And Dr. Preston Cherry On JUST PRESS RECORD
August 27, 2025·0 comments·zg
Everyone has an ego that needs feeding. That's not controversial - that's human nature. What's controversial is admitting we should learn to work with it instead of pretending it doesn't exist.
I sort of want to blame Ryan Holiday for telling us that ego is an enemy. I mostly want to blame Megadeth for putting that idea in his head.* I know the truth is more nuanced, and I think about this stuff a lot.
Ego comes from the Latin "I” - effectively meaning, your core sense of self. Freud made it weird from there. But the sense of self and identity refers to a basic self-awareness, not any form of arrogance.
Here’s a universal truth, i.e. it’s true whether you bombed 7th grade Latin or successfully avoided it: Everyone has an ego that needs feeding, a sense of self-awareness that requires finding, and an arrogance-line worth learning to exist above.
Ego comes from the Latin "I” - effectively meaning, your core sense of self. Freud made it weird from there. But the sense of self and identity refers to a basic self-awareness, not any form of arrogance.
Here’s a universal truth, i.e. it’s true whether you bombed 7th grade Latin or successfully avoided it: Everyone has an ego that needs feeding, a sense of self-awareness that requires finding, and an arrogance-line worth learning to exist above.
When Dr. Preston Cherry casually tossed out this Martin Luther King Jr. quote on Just Press Record, it pushed that idea into my mind, big time.
Dr. King said... everybody has an ego... It's how you feed that ego, you know, how do you use that ego to do, to do life's works for the greater good?
Preston Cherry, Just Press Record on Cultish Creative YouTub
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