Our Ego is Tyranny's Friend, Democracy's Enemy (copyright 2005)

Where is our poet laureate? We need an ode to ego. Oh, glorious ego, magnificent avoucher for my importance, protector of my image, loyal denier of reality, how could I raise myself abed, without the blandishments you’ve said?

Seriously though, I’m wearying of my ragged old ego. Like a tight sweater or cocoon, it’s refusing to be removed. My head is too big for its shrunken collar.

Ken Wilber, a scholar of consciousness, says that ego is a magical substitute for God, an inner construct of illusionary immortality in flight from death. Our mental-egotistic state, which he estimates to be about 4,000 years old, needs to be upgraded like a better software package, traded in for a personal and worldview that is more inclusive and compassionate, less paranoid and fearful.

Ego is a bit like the atom, is it not? Both are invisible to the eye and hard to shatter. I personally think the ego, or at least my ego, is bigger than an atom. Nevertheless, we’ve shattered (or is it split?) the atom, and now we also have to shatter the ego, since the ego, more so than enriched uranium, is a menace to the world’s peace, harmony, and continuance.

Ego is not evil in itself—it is delusional, perhaps even hallucinatory—but it leads us into evil. Who can fail to see the egotism in Hitler and Saddam Hussein, or, at the movies, in Darth Vader, Gollum, and the Joker? The egotism in the scientists who strive to be on the cutting edge of weapons technology is there, too, hiding in the laboratory of their psyche, perhaps babbling to itself, “I am a great patriot—see what I do for my country,” or “I have a wonderful brain and, with the blessing of my government, I can do what I want with it.”

The ego doesn’t want equality and democracy. It wants superiority, separation, security, safety, and other safeguards against recognition of reality. Ego votes for power and control and against compassion. It favors individuality at the expense of commonality, and it is the spokesperson for a narcissistic culture.

I come across footprints of ego in myself, and see the scat it leaves in its meanderings through my psyche. In a dream recently, I was sitting in at a corporate meeting, on a stage with company bigwigs facing lower-level workers in a chamber, when someone approached me and required that I move off the stage to sit in the front row. Regretfully acknowledging my reduced status, I noticed my fly was open. As I surreptitiously zipped it up, I saw a narcissistic character enter the room and try to commandeer the place of honor on stage. He realized that seat was taken (by a humble old lady), and he persuaded a child in the next seat to turn it over to him. Observing this, I felt considerable scorn for the usurper. Upon awakening, I realized I was projecting my own egotism onto this person. He represented a part of me I was reluctant to acknowledge.

The night before, watching the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, I had been triggered by a swellheaded athlete and wished he would lose. That resentment of mine is called projection, where we see and dislike in others what we decline to recognize in ourselves. I remember, as well, a few other occurrences earlier that day that were signs of my ego’s pertinacity. But, I’m proud to say, I’m cutting my ego down to size: Once an imperious grizzly bear, it’s now a wicked wolverine. Next stage: a smelly rat.

I’ve tried various techniques to rid myself of ego, including writing poetry:

Ego, oh ego, I’ll repeat what I read,

It’s not so unpleasant to wake up dead.

Ego, oh ego, I understand your pride,

And I wish you a speedy fratricide.

Ego, oh ego, I’ll give you a nice hug,

If only you’ll step by my foot as a bug.

That’s the trouble with our ego: Calling it a rat, wishing it dead, or writing bad poetry doesn’t faze it (although the latter comes the closest). However, there is something that works. Often our ego is sustained through our preoccupation with how we think we are being scrutinized by others. We can be quietly obsessed with the impression we are making on others. We do this because we are emotionally attached to the conviction that they will see us in a negative light. Usually, this attachment is unconscious. All we are conscious of is our attempt to look good to them and to ourselves. This psychological conflict throws us into self-centeredness and causes us to experience situations through our ego. The challenge is to understand that we use our ego as protection against our unresolved self-doubt. When we connect more deeply with our truth and value, and discover a richer sense of sovereignty, ego becomes irrelevant.