Where there is Ego there is fear
Ego: the position of conflict
It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what your background is, your social status or 'position' in life, your Ego, identity, personality or self-image is a compromise in a long standing conflict between self and other, between how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself, and what other people think and feel about you. Ego arises out of separateness, something which you assumed very very early in childhood when you were figuring out "This is me" and "This is not me". You couldn't have been much more than a year or 18 months old.
This assumption, which is arguably the very first belief you developed in life out of your conscious awareness, has been reinforced in so many different ways, by your parents, teachers and others in a lengthy process of socialization, and social and mental conditioning. Your mind, or psyche, or whatever needs security, stability and a certain rhythm, pattern or ritual to be able to function properly. But see your Ego is a concept based on insecurity, because it's always a compromise between how you see yourself and how others perceive you. So it's inevitable that whenever you're dealing with Ego you're going to experience insecurity, anxiety and fear.
You see the only security you have when it comes to using your Ego is the Social Contract or Social Game. There's one rule and the rule is fairly simple:
- I will accept you for who you think you are and believe what you tell me about yourself if you accept me for who I think I am and believe what I tell you about myself.
When it comes to your Ego this is the only security you can hope for. It's a constant lifelong struggle for self-esteem - when both sides of this social contract are met, because each and every person you meet forms a different impression of you as a person. You see developing an Ego is not just about the image or concept you develop about yourself, it's also very much about the image or concept of you that you can create in the minds of other people. Every single person you have ever met has created an image of you in their minds. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of different images of you out there in the minds of not just those people who know you, but also every stranger you've walked past in the street and all those people who stood with you in a queue.
But see, not everybody is going to accept you, or even like you, and for the vast majority of people you meet in life you're not important, not significant, and are easily forgotten. This is why loneliness and social exclusion is incredibly damaging to your psyche, because each such experience is telling you that your Ego isn't working and is not getting you the self-esteem, attention, recognition and acceptance you need to live.
Fear is the basis of identity
It's important to understand the predicament we all find ourselves in. In my previous post 'Home by the sea' I stated that you created your Ego by introducing separateness into your perception when you figured out 'This is me', contrasted with 'This is not me'. This was very early in your childhood, perhaps when you were a year old, maybe eighteen months. That's one side of the predicament. But the other side of the predicament is that this basic assumption of separateness, out of which you created your Ego, has been reinforced over and over and over again by your parents and throughout school. You don't get a choice whether you create an Ego or not, because it's impossible to reach adulthood without an Ego.
Think about what you were taught at school. You were not taught anything to do with your physical body or it's functioning. You were taught how to use language, how to use numbers and work with them, you were probably taught PE or physical exercise and some sports, you were perhaps taught art, drama, music, you were taught history, geography, and other subjects. Education is a two edged sword, because you were taught how to function in society, how to think to some degree, how to perceive and what to look for. But you were also taught what to think, how to behave, how to follow rules, how to submit to external authority, how to conform, and how to fit in.
But also what you're taught at school is your social position and class, and what is expected of you in terms of how you behave in society and what roles you're expected to perform. School is where you learn about societal expectations, but what you might not know or be aware of is how education differs from school to school. I went to an inner city middle school in Bradford and a 'posher' middle class suburban comprehensive (grammar) school. The experience of both schools was radically different. I also qualified through an 11 plus for Batley Grammar through my academic record, but there was no follow through. When I went to school there were streams; A B and C. I was in the A stream but weak in mathematics and sciences, so I also got relegated to B classes, where I was top of the class.
It's important to understand the process of Ego development. You developed your Ego off the basis of fear motivation and the fear of missing out, being excluded, being punished, or losing something. You had no other choice but to conform to the rules and to authority. You had to fit in. I went to school in the final years where you could 'get some stick' - the colloquialism for a caning. I never received the cane at school, but I spent a lot of time writing lines and in detention, punished primarily for my non-conformity. I also missed out on school trips. But see probably by the end of school your childhood sense of curiosity and wonder was stifled, your creativity dulled, and you might have had some well developed fears, such as fear of punishment, fear of being singled out, fear of what other people might think of you, and fear of taking a stand.
The Steeplechase School of Aspiration
The fear motivation of social conditioning is ramped up even further by creating certain milestones throughout your life or achievements which you are expected to aspire to, so as to reaffirm or reinforce your identity. First you go to nursery or kindergarten, then you go to school, and then once you're in school you have to progress through the years or, if you're an American, grades - 2nd grade, third grade and so on right through to 12th grade, or sixth form in the UK, then you get the chance to graduate and go into higher education. You graduate high school in the states, but in the UK you graduate from college or university. then you have the other aspirations, out in what we understand to be the Real World, you get a Job, you get a Partner, then you buy or rent a Home, then you Get Married, and then you Start a Family. I call these the badges of Good Model Citizenry or Widespread Social Respectability. These are the hoops you have to jump through to become a Somebody.
This 'steeplechase' school of aspiration is very similar to the Grand National Steeplechase in 1967 which was won by Foinavon after a pile up at one of the fences. This is how social conditioning works in a Western country.
Now if this was a system genuinely based on human aspiration and care of being for the individual member of society, then surely there would be social mobility. There would be opportunities to go back and pass through the various different milestones that you might have missed. There would be no problem if you wanted to 'check out' and not participate in society or the economy for whatever reason. But you know just as I know that it's not like that, is it?
It's a socio-economic system which benefits only those who find themselves at the top of the social hierarchy and structural class system. For most people the system is exploitative and somewhat abusive. Those who are at the top are not interested in society or the environment, but are only interested in maintaining the hierarchy of social, economic and political power and also only developing the culture and science that confirms their ideologies and belief systems.
Notice how everything in the adult world and society is structured along the same lines as a school. Politicians, especially from mainstream political parties, perform the role of teachers. Politicians make decisions on what is allowed and what is not allowed, and also what you can have and what you can't have. If you get any form of assistance from the Government then you have to follow the rules and if you are working age it can be taken away from you at any time.
Inadequacy and the hoax of self-improvement
So now that we understand that fear arises out of ego and is the basis of identity, and is something that's imprinted or implanted in us through the process of socialization and social and mental conditioning, we can begin to understand what fear actually is. Fear is a sensation which makes us aware of a boundary or division of some sort. There is a natural, biological basis for fear and this is replicated through social conditioning to have social and cultural aspects.
In natural or purely biological terms the way we experience fear isn't exclusively human, because it's primate behaviour. Likewise the way we experience and express empathy and compassion is also characteristic of primates. Likewise hierarchy and domination culture is also primate behaviour. If we can think of the brain as having three tiers (which it hasn't, it's massively more complex, but to massively over-simplify things...) fear arises out of the second tier limbic system together with other emotions. This is the part of the brain which also contains the insular cortex. Now let's say you bite into food which is toxic, rotten, fetid, the insular cortex comes into play and you spit out the food, you gag, possibly vomit, and learn not to eat the food.
Where we are unique as humans is our heavy use of symbolism, mythology, our ability to conceptualize, create new culture, new ideas, new concepts and connect through art, music and sciences. But the thing is, we're not very good with either symbolism or mythology and Exhibit A - in my opinion - is the traumatic and dysfunctional socialization process we are put through in Western society and have been put through for centuries. This is a very major social issue, because it affects pretty much everyone in some way. See if you got through the socialization process relatively unscathed, i.e. you grew up with a close relationship with your family and parents, you received an excellent education, and you got to do exactly what you wanted to do as an adult then you can consider yourself to be extremely lucky. For most people the socialization process involves some degree of trauma and creates a significant amount of emotional baggage.
One of the biggest issues is that with the fear motivation involved in Ego development, and the competitiveness involved in structuring a social class system, it tends to train people to see themselves and others in terms of better and worse, stronger and weaker, and out of this we get either feelings of inadequacy or failure, or a fear of being perceived as inadequate or failing. So what do you do if you feel inadequate or feel that you're a failure? Well you either use your life experiences to try and somehow compensate or you do what I have done and discount. But see the feelings of inadequacy and failure, motivated by feelings of fear, skew the mind even further and carry with them even more profound consequences, a loss of confidence and self-esteem, social divisionism, resentment, and a culture of personal responsibility, blame, fault finding, and stigma.
This leads you into the hoax of self-improvement, 'working on yourself' and even therapy and life coaching. You end up caught up in the exact same shell game and hamster wheel as with yoga and Buddhism. You're trying to live differently and create a different sort of karma without actually going through the karma and having it in memory. All you're doing is trying to fix issues with your Ego, trying to find solutions, not understanding that the human mind cannot solve problems other than by creating new problems. You see your desire for self-improvement and to be a better person can only come from the truth that you're not that better person, and often no matter how you dress it up you're trying to be someone you're not. So you end up trying to be a better person, trying to live differently and you only end up digging yourself deeper and deeper into the hole.
Social and cultural values
A necessary part of the social contract are the social and cultural values we are conditioned to accept or embrace. You see the whole point of the socialization process is to learn how to be, how to live and how to perceive in society. There has to be a starting point and a point of reference and all this comes out of culture. Culture is essentially shared conscious awareness between different human beings and social groups which is based on symbolism, mythology and tradition. As culture exists on so many different levels and is dependent on social relationships and bonds as well as language and also role attachments.
But generally you're taught a set of social and cultural values against a social standard. Nobody knows exactly what the social standard is, because see all social and cultural values are based on individualism. How it works is very simple once you understand the basis of how it's put together. You are taught to believe that you are free to do as you wish, provided you meet certain conditions, i.e. you complete an education, you get qualifications, you are gainfully employed, you are paying into the system, and so on. But see you're placed in a predicament which you cannot get out of. You're told that you are free to do stuff voluntarily on the one hand, but on the other you're also taught to believe that you must do certain things and are obliged to do certain things. So you are essentially 'free' but in reality you have been coerced and somewhat forced to do things under the threat of loss, punishment or social stigma.
So where does the individualism come into it? Okay so let's assume that for whatever reason you don't make it, or something that doesn't work out in your life. Generally speaking this is a 'you' problem. Let's not pay too much attention to the fact that you've been lied to, misled, misinformed, bamboozled with irrelevant and outdated information, taught irrational beliefs and through layer upon layer of fear motivation transformed into a somewhat neurotic and semi-dysfunctional mess. John Lennon's 'Working Class Hero' is specifically about the socialization process. See for yourself (button below opens in a new tab or window)
John Lennon 'Working Class Hero' (with lyrics on screen)
Do you see now how this all works? You cannot blame anyone because there is nobody to blame and besides, because everyone is conditioned to accept the system you face an uphill struggle to get any traction anywhere with anyone. There's nothing to stop you trying, many people do try, but all too often trying to seek social justice or right the wrong will either turn into another shell game or you will be forced to compromise somewhere down the line.
Let's also not forget the spiritual and mindfulness shell games that also arise out of culture, which 'sell' you the notion that you can 'achieve' higher spiritual values. This is an extension of religion and church, and I'm referring to the culture of eastern religions and philosophies in Western society, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, various forms of yoga, and so on. There's the notion that spiritual values are more important than material values, but it's just another shell game. You can reject material or financial values if you claim to be motivated to be pursuing some higher spiritual values but see, thought is physical and material (based on matter) so it's often pursuing material objectives another way. So you open a yoga studio for what reason? Is it not to make money? You go to church and pray to God? For what? Material and physical things? Some of the most material people I have come across were all giving it the 'we are all one', peace and love and namaste to all bullshit.
You see it makes no difference to me whether you're making millions of dollars or following a spiritual path and trying to collect millions of followers. It's all fake, it's feel good, it all makes you feel superior in your own grandiose Ego trip. You're still misusing your energies for personal individual benefit at the expense of other people.
The importance of being real
The only thing you can do is also the only way you can 'beat' the system and that is by being real. What do I mean by being real? What I mean here is by walking your walk, talking your talk and actually living your truth. When you can match up what you think and feel to what you do, and what you say, and the message you put out there, then you not only project out your individual integrity and authenticity, but you add that other dimension to your being which mitigates a lot of fear and anxiety and insecurity.
You see when you're in Ego mode you're doing role play, and when you're doing role play you're performing. You're playing a character, you're performing, and when you're doing all these things you're not coming across as being natural. There's a lot to be said about being 'raw', natural, physically imperfect, flawed and vulnerable. Or if you prefer unfiltered. Please keep in mind unfiltered here doesn't mean being blunt, uncouth or refusing to 'sugar-coat' stuff.
If I offered you the choice between a red apple and say a crab apple or a cooking apple, which would you choose? Empathy is sweetness and whether you like it or not empathy is the 'glue' which is holding your life together. This is why all fruits and berries are sweet. The trees and bushes really want you to eat their fruit simply because as a beings that can move around we - like other animals - were evolved to distribute seeds all over the planet.
But getting back to this post and the takeaway from this post, please consider the following.. You don't have a choice whether you have an Ego or not. Maintaining and developing an Ego of some sorts is necessary to be able to function in society. But see your Ego is an act, an illusion, a role play, and it's never intended for it to be the basis of your identity. You get to choose when you are real and when you are performing in your Ego. This is about as far as your actual freedom in society extends. But you need to create that alternative for you to have some choice. But to be able to do that you need to wrap your mind around the concept that your Ego, identity, personality, self-image, whatever, has got very little to do with the reality of you as a human being.