By:  Robert E. McMillan

As I write this, the newspaper carries two stories, seemingly unrelated. One has to do with a man who strangled a woman because she went to sleep while he was talking to her; the other has to do with a 15 year old boy who, with two other companions, robbed a service station. The 15 year-old was afflicted with buck-teeth and admitted that he had not wanted to rob, but all his life other boys had poked fun at him and he merely wanted to prove to them that he was a "man."

Both of these stories point out the extremes to which people will go to defend a wounded ego. You can damage a man physically, you can steal his goods, and you can damage him in all sorts of ways and get away with it. But, the one unforgivable sin, as far as human relations are concerned, is to trample on another person's ego. The minute you detract from another's dignity as a human being, you are in for trouble.

Because the human ego is such a precious thing to its possessor and because a person will go to such extremes to defend what he thinks are threats to his ego the word "egotism" has become a bad word.

Let's take a look at the other side of egotism. If egotism can admittedly cause people to do silly and irrational and destructive things, it can also cause them to act nobly and heroically.

What the world calls ego and conceit is really "a divine spark" planted in man and only those men and women who had "lit the divine spark within themselves" ever did great things.

Whatever name you want to give it, "human dignity," "personality," or whatever, there is something deep in the heart of every man and woman that is important and demands respect. Every human being is a unique individual personality and the most powerful drive in any person is to maintain this individuality, to defend this important "something," against all enemies.

This is why you cannot treat people as machines, as numbers on a register, or as "masses" and get away with it. Every effort that has been made to deprive human beings of this individual worth has failed. It is more powerful that armies and prison camps. It proved more powerful than the feudal lords who tried to turn people into serfs. It proved more powerful than Hitler's armies. It set the stage for our own way of life and the freedom we, as individuals, all cherish today. Not certain rights for a certain group of men and women, but the fact that we have certain rights for all men and all women.

We are all egotists, four facts of life. If you are going to deal with people, regardless of who they are; children, wives, husbands, neighbors, bosses, workers, friends, prospective customers, or past customers, you would do well to imprint the following indelibly on your mind and act accordingly:

1.    We are all egotists

2.    We are all more interested in ourselves than in anything else in the world.

3.    Every person you meet wants to feel important and to "amount to something."

4.    There is a craving in every human being for the approval of others so that he can approve of himself.