Ego

What is ego?

Ego is what I would call our false self, the self which gives us a false sense of individual existence. I call it false because it is dependent on others to give us our sense of existence, our self. Because of this, the ego fears loneliness and the unknown, thus tries to dominate and control the external world(the other) as much as possible, to instill a sense of order around it, a sense of self where the individual would be comfortable in. The ego compulsively thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather than simply knowing itself and the present.

Manifestation of the ego happens at the time we were born. When we were born, we were born almost completely unaware of ourselves. We open our eyes for the first time and we see another's face. The first thing we are aware of is not of ourselves, but that of the other. This is how we grow, we become aware of others first, then through others, we become aware of ourselves. This awareness is a reflected awareness. When we were born, we become aware of our mother first. When she hugs and kisses us to show her love and appreciation for us, we feel good about ourselves, thus the birth of the ego. Through love and appreciation, we feel good, we feel valuable, we feel significance. The opposite happens to us when we feel nobody appreciates us, we feel sad, rejected and inferior. This too is the work of the ego. This is our false self because we do not know us, we only know what others think of us.

Living in society causes our ego to rapidly expand as we meet increasingly higher amounts of people as we grow. Everyone we meet contributes little by little to our ego. When we meet someone new we reflect on who they are and they reflect on who we are. People try to modify your ego to ensure you do not become a problem in society. They are not concerned about you, they are concerned about society. They are concerned that you should become an efficient and productive tool in society. They are trying to give you an ego that fits into society. They teach you morality to help your ego fit into society. If someone does not have certain moral values, then they are a menace to society. This is why they put people into prison, not because they have done anything wrong, but because they have egos which do not fit into society. They are troublemakers. They are misfits of society. One man kills somebody - he is labeled a murderer. The same man kills thousands in wartime - he is then labeled a hero. The society is not bothered by murder, but the murder should be committed for the society - then it is okay. Society is not bothered about morality. There is no morality. When someone speaks of morality, he says: "Murder is wrong.", but what he actually means is "I feel murder is wrong.". There are no absolute morals. When people speak of morality they are actually expressing their feelings about certain 'right' or 'wrong' actions.

Not only the society, other people can also create an ego that can be manipulated and controlled. Everyone needs a self, everyone is unaware of his self. When other people give him his false self and he is convinced that that is his self. A child comes home with his grades - if he came in first in his class, the family is happy, they praise him, offer him rewards, they hug and kiss him. They are strengthening his ego. If the same child comes home a failure, then nobody appreciates him, then the ego feels weak and shaken. Same applies to our interaction with people in everyday life, when we feel that by doing a certain thing or mixing with a certain group it makes us feel good about ourselves then we seek to make this the meaning of our lives, it becomes our 'identity'. And when we feel that others are a threat to this meaning of our lives, it is akin to threatening our survival itself. We band into camps of Us-Vs-Them or Self-Vs-Other and we begin to view them as a threat and hate them with all our hearts. We begin to stereotype and judge them('assessing the threat') every time we lay eyes upon them. Just as a person who has a phobia of spiders is afraid of them regardless of whether they are potentially life-threatening or not, we too tend to attribute properties of what we regard as a threat to everything else that shares the same behavioral characteristics. Through the ego other people are controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then do they appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners,
a code. Only then will they appreciate you, and if it doesn't, you ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are. It is from others that we get an idea of who we are. This is why we like to own and divide things into mine and yours. When we are around things or people which are part of 'us', we feel more comfortable and at ease. That is why we fear loneliness - when we are alone there is nobody to watch us, to give us our identity, and we feel lost. Our ego is afraid of losing things which we are attached to, which are part of 'us', which has given us our 'identity'. Our ego is our false self, and that which is fake is plastic, artificial and dead. However, we are content with a plastic self. Why? Because with a dead self there are many conveniences. One which is dead never dies. It cannot - because it was never alive. The ego fears death, because it is never content, there is always something more it wants to do, something more that it wants to have, and there is! The ego can never be satisfied even if it has conquered the depths of the ocean, or the edge of the universe, because there is still one thing to master, the one place they never looked, the place so closest to us, the place that is within us, the place which holds our real self. Nobody can shape our real self. Our real self is nobody's business. We come with it. We were born with it.

Man is the ego. Without the ego, man would be either an animal or something that transcends man. More on the animal and the 'superman' next post...