Q: I choose the ups and downs of egotistic life, what right have you to try and change me?
A: Choose all you like, you will not stop the man of Truth from managing his own affairs. He regards you as his own self and will try to stop you from destroying yourself along with all humankind.
Q: But you cannot change the way I think!
A: This conversation is changing the way you think whether you like it or not. Do you really think you are independent from me? You breathe in the air I breathe out! All things in this Universe are interconnected, and our minds too are physically connected. How can I not change the way you think?
Q: I can see that your mind has an effect on mine, as does mine on yours, but you have yet to change my mind in the way you want to. Many of your ideas bother me deeply. You are against all attachments, yet clearly not all attachments are bad: it is a surely a noble thing to cultivate good attachments.
A: There is no such thing as a "good attachment". An attachment may not cause immediate harm, in your eyes, but all attachments hold within them the seeds of destruction that even you may learn to recognize. Parents may bring a child up to love sport, music, and reading - yet the child becomes a mass murderer - why? Of course it is because of upbringing. All things have causes, and there are no causes other than upbringing, whether they be genetic or environmental.
The child was reared to be an egotist, that is, without wisdom, so the child became an egotist. Once you have an ego you are no longer in control of your own life. Your precious life becomes a struggle for survival, to avoid pain. And you don't have the luxury of being able to choose just how to avoid that pain, but will make full use of whatever opportunity presents itself. Nor is there time to consider the consequences of your actions. From the perspective of every ego, living is a case of "kill or be killed".