The concept of ego - you'll get the irony of this
in the end I hope - is something I've been worrying at like a dog with a
bone. This was triggered after I read
Ryan Holiday's book, "Ego is the enemy"; the demonization of the ego
felt very, very wrong. There is no
argument that an unhealthy ego is dangerous to us and those around us, but what
makes a healthy ego? More importantly,
what is it and why do we have one?
Before we have a sense of self (see the "mirror
test") we are directly connected to the world and our
"machinery" (bodies). This is
an intensely intimate state that is powerful and is highly sought after for
peak performance. Flow, as detailed in
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience" articulates the attributes of suppressing the "self"
for a time. If the suppression of self
is so wonderful, why do we have one? The
positive and negative space of flow explains this:
|
Flow (self-less)
|
Consciousness (self-aware)
|
|
Focus on present
|
Focus on the past and future (planning)
|
|
Merging of action and awareness
|
Space between stimulus and response (growth)
|
|
Loss of self consciousness
|
Awareness of social dynamics
|
|
Sense of control
|
Awareness of how little we control
|
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Limited, or no sense of time
|
Temporal awareness
|
When we are in flow, or an id state, it looks like
we function purely on our procedural
memory - reacting to stimulus as it arrives. If you have a well developed and appropriate
procedural memory, this is a fast, tactical system without peer. This raises three obvious issues;
·
How are sophisticated
procedural memories built?
·
How can we operate
effectively in a social environment?
·
If we are
"stuck" in the present, how can we plan for the future based on our
past?
The way only way to do these is to
"separate" from the now. This
is a really hard thing to do, but it gives us two new super powers: awareness
of others and the awareness of time. The
hard part is the illusion of separating from our body's "now"
machinery. And this is the paradox of
the self; it is both real and an illusion.
It is real in that the self is layered on top of the "now"
machinery in the brain, but it is also an illusion because the self pretends
that the now isn't.
This explains mysticism's focus on connecting the "self" back
to the "now"
When we separate from the now we move into a binary
world of "is" and "is not". The first, and hardest, binary is what is me
and what is not. Binary is the most
effective (see information theory) way to store information, but it relies on
context or "categories". And
this is where the fun begins because each category is arbitrary. And then we use these categories to build
models - some call them dreams - of how the world works (I'll talk about this
more another time).
A danger in the early transition period from now to self is grandiosity:
"I am responsible for all outcomes".
This means when bad things happen, we believe we are to blame and this
creates toxic models in our "self".
At a fundamental level, we suffer from binary
tension because we know that these binary categories are approximations and yet
we act on them as if they were "true". Now we can argue that the ego is really the
self, but for the purposes of this discussion let's restrict it to its function
as an emotional buffer system; normalizing our highs and
lows. The normalization of our emotional
response is critical for two reasons; first we use the body's survival
machinery and second, we drop back into procedural memory ("now")
when we get overwhelmed or "flooded".
We use our foundational fight, flight and freeze
system when we project ourselves in time and relationships. This explains why we feel "like we could
die" when we suffer a faux pas. It
is also why when we look into the future, we can become very distressed as all
possibilities can feel "real".
This can create some very strange patterns of behaviour!
Protecting ourselves from getting into an
overwhelmed state is critical function of our ego; we often make tactically
sound decisions that are strategically disastrous. The way we normalize or regulate our
emotional state is equally vital as the wrong strategy may result in a spiral
of doom. We have a lot of lore about
this from "desire is suffering" to the "seven deadly" sins.
In a funny way, I think Scott Adams encapsulates
the heart of "desire is suffering" beautifully,
"…you will spend every moment until you reach the goal— if you reach it at all— feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game.",
Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 32). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
And
"If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure."
Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 32). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
My experience of goals, outside
"day-tight" compartments, is that they are an emotionally ineffective
way of making progress. Systems, on the
other hand help us to relax in our journey,
"A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal."
Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 33). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The seven deadly sins speak to what is (un)healthy,
individually and in groups, to strive for.
As Covey points out,
"It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy—very busy—without being very effective."
Covey, Stephen R.. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (25th Anniversary Edition) (Kindle Locations 1921-1923). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
There are really three categories in the seven
deadly sins;
·
Don't let the
overwhelm (fight, flight & freeze) states rule you: Sloth & Wrath
·
Don’t over or
underestimate yourself or others: Envy and Pride
·
Don't set goals for
(excessively) more than you need: Lust, Gluttony and Greed.
The negative space view of the sins guides us to
what we should be aiming for:
·
Exercise within our
window of tolerance: Patience & Diligence
·
Be honest with
yourself, no matter how frightening it is: Humility & Kindness
·
Use systems and grow
at a healthy rate: Temperance, Generosity & Chastity.
Finally, our ego is like a muscle,
"It is not enough to know how to do it; one must do it, consistently, in the same way as athletes or musicians who must keep practicing what they know in theory."
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) (p. 21). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
What I think Ryan was talking about in his book
"the ego is the enemy" is when we build broken models to comfort
ourselves. The ego isn't the problem nor
are the models - it is that the models are misaligned, and we believe them
real.
I'll finish with two quotes I really like about
ego,
"I also recommend exercising your ego the way you’d exercise any other muscle. Try putting yourself in situations that will surely embarrass you if things go wrong, or maybe even if they don’t."
Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 130). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
And
"'is-not', is not, 'not-is'"
The Great Time Machine Hoax by Kieth Laumer, 1964
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