I think this really depends on someone's stage of development for a particular issue. I'm coming from the frame that, there is no "standard" maturity for an "average" person. Each of us have pieces of ourselves that are in different stages of growth, and not necessarily because some of them got "stuck" somewhere. It is what it is.<p>For some people, on some issues, there is a need to assert themselves. I've met people for whom, some issue, left them feeling victimized, helpless, and hopeless. There's a shift that happens when, such a person drops that sense of victimization, and develops the sense of the initiative, of agency, of being able to make choices. For a lot of people, this idea that you can make choices (as opposed to merely taking options presented in front of you) is life-altering.<p>Likewise, when you are used to making choices and having an effect on the world, all sorts of things now come up. This includes the asshole (someone acting from entitled superiority), the jerk, (someone acting as if surrounded by idiots), and so forth.<p>As one of my friends put it, the "ego" -- and by that, I speak of "the acquired self", or "the conditioned self" -- likes to take credit for everything even if it is not the source of everything. That means that even humility, modesty, charity, mercy can get hijacked by the ego. I've met people, even meditators, for whom, the ego hijacks the spiritual development that comes out of their practices.<p>One of the things the ego can hijack is that very capability of making choices (real choice, not just taking one of the options). We have long associated the acquired self with this idea of making choices, but making real Choice ... the ego actually shies away from it.<p>It's similar to how most people don't actually want real Change. Real change has much more to do with death. People tend to seek out novelty, instead -- apparent change that doesn't really change anything deep down.<p>One of the things I've been working on in the past week or so in my meditation is the relationship between posturing and posture. Posturing happens as a result of clashing egos. In some cases, maybe it is just one person thinking they need to posture, while no one else is participating. The noun "posture", though, is neutral, associated with "martial arts stance", or "yoga asana". I've found through martial arts, there is a particular feeling that comes from wanting to win and overcome the other person, which leads to becoming physically unbalanced, and then the other person exploits that. My desire to win and submit the the other person is the seed of defeat. A lot of work went into being sensitive to balance and imbalance ... to seek out balance within myself, to upset the balance in my opponent, to correct postures and structure of the body, to learn how to break all of that. It's only in the last week that it dawned on me that posturing is accompanied with the same kind of imbalance in the emotional and social dimension, and that by simply by dropping things to the ground, the desire to win an argument disappears.