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Ego Is a Veneer for Profound Weakness | Ryan Holiday | Big Think

Big Think | September 22, 2025



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The ability to believe in oneself is great, but when that belief is over-asserted or based on delusions, ego, or “the enemy” as author and media strategist Ryan Holiday calls it, arises. Holiday’s newest book Ego is the Enemy is an anthropology of the ego, and it shows that while confidence enables one to strive forward and reach new heights, ego can be detrimental and stunt accomplishment.

Ego can cause people to react emotionally and with reckless abandon when challenged even slightly. Being so arrogant to the point of being unable to receive any feedback, or lacking the empathy needed to care about doing a great job, puts that person at a severe disadvantage; nobody wants to work with someone like that, and when interactions with peers become nearly impossible, the quality of the work decreases.

Take a famous egotist like Steve Jobs. There’s no doubt that Jobs was a genius, but his need for control and compulsion for everything to be exactly the way he wanted it led to his tumultuous relationship with Apple. While Jobs revolutionized personal computing and created an iconic brand, his ego made him so impossible to work with that he was eventually forced out of the Macintosh department, his pride and joy. Apple is a huge success thanks to Jobs’ genius, but his humiliation came at the hands of his ego. Perhaps the common conception is true, that Jobs only succeeded because he was so controlling and aggressive in his vision, but imagine what more he may have achieved had he been an open and pleasant person to work with.

Holiday also points out that this inability to process information rationally leaves caverns of room for dangerous situations. To an egotist, something as simple as an insult can trigger a compulsion for retribution that could quickly spiral out of control, and in a world where arrogance is often mistaken for strength, an egotist in power could have some detrimental ramifications.

Ryan Holiday’s most recent book is Ego is the Enemy.

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The ability to believe in oneself is great, but when that belief is over-asserted or based on delusions, ego, or “the enemy” as author and media strategist Ryan Holiday calls it, arises. Ego Is a Veneer for Profound Weakness
Holiday’s newest book Ego is the Enemy is an anthropology of the ego, and it shows that while confidence enables one to strive forward and reach new heights, ego can be detrimental and stunt accomplishment.

Ego can cause people to react emotionally and with reckless abandon when challenged even slightly. Being so arrogant to the point of being unable to receive any feedback, or lacking the empathy needed to care about doing a great job, puts that person at a severe disadvantage; nobody wants to work with someone like that, and when interactions with peers become nearly impossible, the quality of the work decreases.

Take a famous egotist like Steve Jobs. There’s no doubt that Jobs was a genius, but his need for control and compulsion for everything to be exactly the way he wanted it led to his tumultuous relationship with Apple. While Jobs revolutionized personal computing and created an iconic brand, his ego made him so impossible to work with that he was eventually forced out of the Macintosh department, his pride and joy. Apple is a huge success thanks to Jobs’ genius, but his humiliation came at the hands of his ego. Perhaps the common conception is true, that Jobs only succeeded because he was so controlling and aggressive in his vision, but imagine what more he may have achieved had he been an open and pleasant person to work with.

Holiday also points out that this inability to process information rationally leaves caverns of room for dangerous situations. To an egotist, something as simple as an insult can trigger a compulsion for retribution that could quickly spiral out of control, and in a world where arrogance is often mistaken for strength, an egotist in power could have some detrimental ramifications.

Ryan Holiday’s most recent book is Ego is the Enemy.

TRANSCRIPT :
Ryan Holiday: One of the things that psychologists talk about is threatened egotism, what happens with someone who has a very strong sense of ego is challenged in some fundamental way. So you can take – one of the stories I tell in the book that I think is interesting is there’s this famous encounter between Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin. And in an attempt to intimidate her in a state meeting he had heard that she was afraid of dogs. So he lets a dog come into the room in an attempt at basically to intimidate and to scare her. …

To read the transcript, please go to https://bigthink.com/videos/ryan-holiday-on-the-difference-between-ego-and-confidence

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Comments

This post currently has 39 comments.

  18. @MrSanford65

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    In the wild and in most of humanity , when a man dominates all that's around him , we call him strong . Only in the transvalued west do we refer to that as " weakness ". The Psychiatric industry only serves the purpose of disassembling the American mind

  20. @HammerHeadzzz

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    embrace your ego. if you pursue truth, and then the truth of what is ethically good, and you act as a good and virtous person, you should embrace every bit of your ego and individualism.

  21. @HannesRadke

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    Isn't this a prerequisite to exacting self-control (regulate social interactions) and improve yourself? It seems like a foundation of the motivational system to me.

  28. @Vgpl0

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    "The problem is when your belief in yourself is not based on anything real."

    Literally every new-age subcult, movement, and politician since 2000.

  29. @mastermarkus5307

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    Why are there so many people trying to defend Putin in the comments? Maybe he's not as personally bad as the story makes him out as, but I'd never think of him as someone whom I should root for or defend.

  30. @vincesina9786

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    I was with you all the way up until the last 30 seconds or so.

    The desire to please someone elses criticisms of my creativity would also be ego. I can be creative without having an end goal of pleasing someone in mind. …most great art is done in this manor.

    Creativity doesn't need confirmation

  31. @CharlieGladwell

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    what's even meant by "ego" here, he doesn't seem ot be refering to ego in terms of id, ego, superego, seems he's talking about some random undefined social distinction between arrogance and confidence (with some extra extension, but still fundamentally that), a distinction that is only contextual and thereby only based on opinion in which case this whole speech is pretty pointless. (what i mean by contextual is fully subjective, i.e the distincition of who is arrogant vs confident is entirely based, not in any positive qulatiy of the action but in the contingent reactions of the audience)

  33. @discountconsulting

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    Ego is so widely discussed yet so misunderstood. It is not a thing, but a mode of thinking, feeling, and acting. In Durheimian terms, this makes it a culture. Indeed, self-confidence turns to arrogance or the critical thinking of problem-solving turns into emotional shame of having problems to begin with. This obstructs the ability to solve problems by changing a solution-orientation into a blame and put-down orientation.

    Ego culture even goes beyond personal/mental/emotional behavior and operates as a whole culture of interpretation. Creativity, for example, shifts from being understood as a productive skill to being understood as primarily a positive attribute. People become enculturated to be creative in order to be seen as a creative person instead of for the sake of using creativity for the ends it can achieve. Overall, ego culture is a culture that puts social-validation above any and all other goals, which become subjugated to the ultimate goal of being viewed in a positive light by oneself and others.

    In this way, ego culture is actually a culture of social control. By provoking us into defense of our egos and groups we identity with, the provocateur is really luring us into social submission to the approval of others. Then, instead of pursuing a goal with self-confidence because we are focused on what needs to happen to pursue the goal in question, our focus shifts to ourself as viewed and judged by others. We become objectified in our own eyes instead of being able to act as subjects in a productive relationship with whatever we are working with. In short, ego is self-consciousness as well as being the whole culture of interpreting things in terms of their attributes as objects instead of their functioning relative to other things in the systems in which they operate.

  35. @inneraesthetics

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    Just as Ryan is explaining, like anything in life, we need to balance out extremes. Ego is definitely one of them, and if we're not aware of it creeping up (especially in emotionally intense situations) things can escalate to epic proportions. If we have awareness of our ego acting up, then we can use it to our benefit. Turning the ego up allowing us to go though tough times, and tune it down when we need to learn from others.

  39. @terminalpc

    September 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

    Why do I think this is another hit piece on a certain political character? His ego is just fine, the armchair psychology isn't working on the American population. Thank god we are smarter than this.

Comments are closed.

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