where lurks knowledge?

What "ego deflation" means to me is the removal of an alien cultural component from my psyche. It is the denial of the puritanical cultural element that is the engine behind so much useless and time-wasting psychological warfare demands in various ways to be "purer than thou", whether in epistemology, degree of intelligence, or in interpretations of personal behaviour and what supposedly lurks behind it.

In contradistinction to all of this empty posturing as the basis for social competitiveness, ego deflation allows for intellectual honesty and skepticism. "You do not have a basis for asserting that my behaviour denotes the kinds of attitudes you are attributing to it, any more than I have a basis for placing your own behaviour within my own invisible moral hierarchy," skepticism asserts. Intellectual honesty rejoins: "We do not know for certain that our experiences are so different from each other's, any more than we know for certain that they are in any way similar. It will take concerted intellectual effort, and much good will and desire to meet each other half way, to find out. However, postures of moral or intellectual purity will certainly get in our way, in terms of this endeavour."

My intellectual pathway to knowledge and improved integrity is possible only through a denial of the posturings of ego -- either within you or within myself. Ego knows much less than it seems to assert, since its end goal is to pat oneself resoundingly on the back, rather than to know what is true and what isn't.