Ego, in non-Freudian terms, is a cunning, deceiving bastard- a psychological conformist of the status quo or the arrogant twin of perception preservation. Ego is rarely turned on its head- a hard-wired machination of cognitive dissonance sitting inside of us. We know this, but why does it exist? Where does the development of our ego stem from? The answer to these questions has pretty simple answers, actually. Development, psychological predisposition, our desires, wants, validations, fears, our surroundings all factor into what constructs our ego. Of course, a myriad of various components makes up our ego. After all, each of us builds it up or knocks it down based on what we’ve experienced. Such is the beauty of self-correction. Yet, finding the mean of self-righteous egoism and its counterpart is a tough line to toe; much more than any other “golden mean” we strive for in our lives. We strive for moderation--a life of balance, yet ego tips the scale more frequently than other key attributions in our lives. Why is this?
The answer to this question lies in the very nature of the ego itself and how we operate as human beings. First, one must consider why such a byproduct of our surroundings, intentions, and upbringings exist in the first place. Ego stems from a much more broad and acceptable form of human interaction, which is our desire for a sense of belonging. Whether that’s belonging to groups or belonging to an idea, hope, personality, or the manifestation of the world we want to see reflected back at us, we shape our ego-based on our wants and desires that we seek from ourselves and the world around us. We fuck, we fight, we overconsume, we choose who to fuck and who to fight and what to overconsume is based on self and other value. What we value individually is held sacred in our network of neurochemicals- it’s a major component of our cognitive schemas we create.
The breaking of the ego required a breakdown of our cognitive schemas. These schemas are, however, vastly different from what we know typical schemas are. A typical schema goes something like this: Imagine for a moment you as a child seeing a dog for the first time. As a matter of fact, it’s the first animal you’ve ever laid your eyes on! WOW! Such splendor and elegance! You carry on in your child-like ways and what do you see? A stray cat! (What a riveting day you’ve had!) You point the cat out to your mother and explain, “Look! A Dog!”. Your mother then corrects you and explains, “No that is not a dog, it’s a cat!” A truly magnificent turn of events when you, in your child-like state, find out that not all dogs are cats, and indeed that’s when you learn of a wild new concept called animals (truly a hero’s journey, if you ask me)!
This is how we learn about things, in its most basic and black and white terms; we learn something and continue to do so through trial and error and corrections of our preconceived notions. At the very best, we challenge ourselves through being proved wrong about certain speculations, and we move on having gained an additional piece of information. However, our schema involving ourselves is lost in this basic schema allegory. Throw in a bit of cognitive dissonance, and suddenly it becomes a lot harder to break down self-serving or self-perception schemas. This is even evident in our political beliefs, our religious beliefs, or lack of them: things that we adhere to personally are a lot tougher to check or break down as they are so deeply vested within us and who we are.
We only know of our own perception, we seldom meet people who remotely think like we do so there is no one to correct our behaviors or our self-perception. And here lies the main problem with ego, it’s an unforgiving and unchecked mental gymnastics which all people must navigate on their own. No telling if it's a dog or cat, no telling if you’re full of yourself or if you’re simply preserving yourself. And much of the presence of the ego is evident to others as well, yet they attribute it to personality and who you are as a person-an ad hominem of sorts- instead of intrinsically acknowledging that they too, tip the scale of ego. But this is indeed human nature. We create a perception of the world and our value based on what the world and our experiences have presented to us if we allow it to.
Mind you, there is no golden mean of ego. There is no perfect balance, there really can’t be. If we think of it in linear terms, as if egoism was on something resembling a political scale, we find that inflated egos are indeed horrible in extremities, and the complete lack of ego turns itself to the same extreme of having an inflated ego. Thus, the “horseshoe” spectrum of ego tends to be more fitting rather than a linear scale. Keep in mind, the ego is both a relationship you have with yourself AND what that relationship is perceived as by others. This is also a fundamental difference in studying the human ego, it’s a battle of internal balance and external perception. Thus, a true mean can’t be attained if counting those two factors.
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