Death of the Ego
A recent and interesting proxy for my internal monologue I've been thinking about is the notion of the Ego. From the classic acid-trip saying to the Freudian name dropping its very hard to have this word stand on its own and bring up its own points without first being associated with something.
I think what ego means, or how I've heard it referred to lately is as some part of "you" in the general sense which is quite literally your sense of self. The part of you that knows you are you, that thing in our brain that allows us to self identify, and in many ways preserve yourself. it's the part of me that wants to take over, be in control, master my own world and reality.
I've come to realize that I have a particularly strong ego, which is both good and bad. The good in my ego makes me self aware, increases my capacity for compassion and helps deliver leadership and control in my life and in other places where it's needed. The bad in my ego is that it makes me more selfish, consumptive and power-hungry. It tells me that I need to surrender my other notions of free will to it and let the ego take over and run my life, it can be too loud and it holds the rest of me to absurd standards which only the ego itself can fulfill. It's necessary, and is impressed upon me that it's good and important to cultivate and strengthen in the society I live it. After all, we make heroes of these über-mensch characters, idolize doctors and lawyers and geniuses and make holy the singular power and value of "one man against the world".
I guess I've always thought that these caricatures of people as, well, obviously not entirely realistic, but at least grasping at an entire person. Whatever imago I've mocked up of astronauts and doctors and amazing people in the world has always been a tacit remark on potential and possibilities. They're always presented as a wonderful example of what you absolutely can do, and they themselves are more or less a complete, functional version of that possible person within.
Of course no one said that people are perfect, even if they are regularly presented that way, it's been made clear that people always make mistakes and that absolutes only really exist in books. I've never failed to understand that fact, but still persist in an attempt to fulfill it, usually through a similar goal which I feel accounts for the imperfection of people but still holds myself to a high standard. The problem is that more realistic surrogate for a perfect, admirable, famous life isn't actually at all possible to refer to in a word, a sentence, or really at all. It's a more nuanced definition of success which can't be explained or presented, it must be felt or experienced. What it must be, the image of success, the notion of happiness, the ultimate fulfilment of ego that is hinted at in society is actually just being average. Boring, normal, content, positive, small and humble. Unspoken of, unremembered, mild and moderate, mediated and wise. Placid and peaceful.
I know in so many ways how important this idea is, and that's mostly because I've managed to coax out the true toxicity of the alternative image of wild happiness non-stop contentment and satisfaction that we seem to desire. I imagine that part of your manic happy drive is not unlike the unhealthy relationship our mind has with salt, or sugar. It's related greatly to self preservation, and through it to the ego because in some ways, your ego by way of that animal drive to expand and propagate is intimately linked to your drive to succeed, to live on, to be recognized and fulfilled. It's the same basic force that might make a starving man mad or flood your veins with adrenaline to save your mortal coil. It's not exactly the same of course, because instinct is very different from the kind of cerebral self preservation that the ego provides, but the force is similar.
Your ego wants you to be remembered, to be famous and well liked, to measure up to some form of success. The definitions of these things are not invented by the ego or in the mind, but are somewhat tweaked rubrics which you absorb from your surroundings as you age. You take in and recalibrate your idea of a good life, of who you see is happy, who you admire and why, what elements of a day make it worthy and which actions in a day you can take to stamp your foot firmly in the hardening concrete of the world being written around you. The Ego does this, and spits back out a set of guidelines, sometimes requirements, and sometimes suggestions for how it thinks you should conduct yourself to meet this mental status bar of "success" or "contentment". So, dutiful as you are, you would take these internalized signals and use them to steer your ship in the right path, knowing that even if you are fundamentally wrong about this, you are at least being true to the rubric that you personally attained and therefore won't have been completely wasted (of course the very notion that "being true to yourself" is a very individualized one which reinforced the desperate will of the ego again anyway, hence the paradox).
I can see this with increasing clarity, and being able to use verbiage such as ego and thinking about it as though it has a separate agenda from the rest of myself is actually helpful as far as compartmentalising the competing desires and goals which often plague me and others with dissonance and anxiety. I'm left wondering what the "other" part of me is. I've spent so much of my life absorbed in the self-defeating paradigms of ego that even now its hard to imagine finding a sense of progress, or "goodness" I suppose in some milder corner of my mind. I've always placed my high-level mind controlling faculties above all else, believing that no matter what else is stripped away from me in life, the ability to think myself out of something or be in control would not only take precedent, but would serve me better than a more subjective or "less reliable" way of thinking or feeling would. Again, to anthropomorphize it, this is the ego talking, trying to make itself the arbiter of my mind, reality, and happiness. This is good only to a point and for me personally, I know my ego is particularly toxic and abusive and frankly it invents ideas about who I "should" be that lead only to more suffering on my part.
As I move forward I'm looking forward to refining which parts of my ego are allowed to get through and which parts are better left ignored.
I've come to realize that I have a particularly strong ego, which is both good and bad. The good in my ego makes me self aware, increases my capacity for compassion and helps deliver leadership and control in my life and in other places where it's needed. The bad in my ego is that it makes me more selfish, consumptive and power-hungry. It tells me that I need to surrender my other notions of free will to it and let the ego take over and run my life, it can be too loud and it holds the rest of me to absurd standards which only the ego itself can fulfill. It's necessary, and is impressed upon me that it's good and important to cultivate and strengthen in the society I live it. After all, we make heroes of these über-mensch characters, idolize doctors and lawyers and geniuses and make holy the singular power and value of "one man against the world".
I guess I've always thought that these caricatures of people as, well, obviously not entirely realistic, but at least grasping at an entire person. Whatever imago I've mocked up of astronauts and doctors and amazing people in the world has always been a tacit remark on potential and possibilities. They're always presented as a wonderful example of what you absolutely can do, and they themselves are more or less a complete, functional version of that possible person within.
Of course no one said that people are perfect, even if they are regularly presented that way, it's been made clear that people always make mistakes and that absolutes only really exist in books. I've never failed to understand that fact, but still persist in an attempt to fulfill it, usually through a similar goal which I feel accounts for the imperfection of people but still holds myself to a high standard. The problem is that more realistic surrogate for a perfect, admirable, famous life isn't actually at all possible to refer to in a word, a sentence, or really at all. It's a more nuanced definition of success which can't be explained or presented, it must be felt or experienced. What it must be, the image of success, the notion of happiness, the ultimate fulfilment of ego that is hinted at in society is actually just being average. Boring, normal, content, positive, small and humble. Unspoken of, unremembered, mild and moderate, mediated and wise. Placid and peaceful.
I know in so many ways how important this idea is, and that's mostly because I've managed to coax out the true toxicity of the alternative image of wild happiness non-stop contentment and satisfaction that we seem to desire. I imagine that part of your manic happy drive is not unlike the unhealthy relationship our mind has with salt, or sugar. It's related greatly to self preservation, and through it to the ego because in some ways, your ego by way of that animal drive to expand and propagate is intimately linked to your drive to succeed, to live on, to be recognized and fulfilled. It's the same basic force that might make a starving man mad or flood your veins with adrenaline to save your mortal coil. It's not exactly the same of course, because instinct is very different from the kind of cerebral self preservation that the ego provides, but the force is similar.
Your ego wants you to be remembered, to be famous and well liked, to measure up to some form of success. The definitions of these things are not invented by the ego or in the mind, but are somewhat tweaked rubrics which you absorb from your surroundings as you age. You take in and recalibrate your idea of a good life, of who you see is happy, who you admire and why, what elements of a day make it worthy and which actions in a day you can take to stamp your foot firmly in the hardening concrete of the world being written around you. The Ego does this, and spits back out a set of guidelines, sometimes requirements, and sometimes suggestions for how it thinks you should conduct yourself to meet this mental status bar of "success" or "contentment". So, dutiful as you are, you would take these internalized signals and use them to steer your ship in the right path, knowing that even if you are fundamentally wrong about this, you are at least being true to the rubric that you personally attained and therefore won't have been completely wasted (of course the very notion that "being true to yourself" is a very individualized one which reinforced the desperate will of the ego again anyway, hence the paradox).
I can see this with increasing clarity, and being able to use verbiage such as ego and thinking about it as though it has a separate agenda from the rest of myself is actually helpful as far as compartmentalising the competing desires and goals which often plague me and others with dissonance and anxiety. I'm left wondering what the "other" part of me is. I've spent so much of my life absorbed in the self-defeating paradigms of ego that even now its hard to imagine finding a sense of progress, or "goodness" I suppose in some milder corner of my mind. I've always placed my high-level mind controlling faculties above all else, believing that no matter what else is stripped away from me in life, the ability to think myself out of something or be in control would not only take precedent, but would serve me better than a more subjective or "less reliable" way of thinking or feeling would. Again, to anthropomorphize it, this is the ego talking, trying to make itself the arbiter of my mind, reality, and happiness. This is good only to a point and for me personally, I know my ego is particularly toxic and abusive and frankly it invents ideas about who I "should" be that lead only to more suffering on my part.
As I move forward I'm looking forward to refining which parts of my ego are allowed to get through and which parts are better left ignored.
Comments
Post a Comment