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Norway, Constitution Day

EgoFeature

Hypothesis: It’s not an EgoBug, it’s an EgoFeature.

Motivation

Ego, the “self”, the ability to observe, awareness, … these are rather recent aspects of life, not restricted to but concentrated in our human experience. Whether we explain life scientifically or religiously, anyway, we assume that this evolution makes sense.

The "self" and the "ego"

Words like “self”, “ego”, “soul”, “mind”, “awareness” are fuzzy in meaning and hard to define. We experience humans and our own self as examples of these phenomena. What is at the core of it? What are the advantages and the problems?

What is Life?

I’m sure we do not know. We experience life as a very rich process that produces an incredible richness of forms and species, and we are part of it. If we use the terms of physics - there is no movement without a cause or a force - we can assume a “force of life” that is behind the process, although we can’t be sure how to name this force, religiously, philosophically or scientifically.

Anyway, we observe that life is not causal, like physical processes. You can’t predict how the leaves of a tree will grow or what your child will say, when she comes home from school. There is more freedom in the actions of life than in the movement of lifeless matter. Life adapts to it’s environment, it learns genetically or through some kind of “mind”, it is able to make choices. Contrary to physics, life is not about “following present forces” but it acts with the future in mind, too.

Struggle and Cooperation

We also perceive life as a constant struggle for individual advantages, although there are numerous frameworks of cooperation that are always visible, too. Phenomena like “awareness” and “mind” have increased the sophistication of struggle and cooperation incredibly. The human race has become powerful enough to destroy itself or the global biosphere. To reduce this risk, the development of more “global awareness”, whether motivated politically or religiously, is necessary.

The Human Mind, Self, Ego

The human mind plays a key role. Rational thinking has proven a powerful tool, freeing humans from being biologically determined. A lot of religious and philosophical arguments are in favour of rational thinking, viewing “true freedom” first and above all as a “freedom of the soul from the body”, idealizing thinking and the idea of an objective abstract truth. EgoBug is also of that kind.

Today the main problem is not to empower rational thinking, but to tame rational thinking, that has found a mixture of “materialism”, “constructivism” and “relativism” to implement a “rational egotism” that hides “personal advantages” as “common good” and is growing out of bounds especially in the global economy and economical growth ideology. The amount of irrational greed involved is insane and can’t be observed in other parts of nature.

The solution is not in rational thinking, because there are so many different kinds of rationality. Everyone can find one kind of rational thinking that fits his purpose. There is no chance to agree on a unifying “truth” nowadays, because the “truth” has been misused too often to hide personal interests or claim of leadership.

A solution?

Rational thinking has been overestimated during the last few hundred years. In the form of ideologies it has been misused to exert power, to impose schemes of acting upon people. In the course of “giving freedom” it has seemed natural to take away the freedom from the people at the same moment by providing “the truth” as the way to think and act. But rational thinking seems to have a different function: it should empower the individual in the decision process, to see various alternatives and options and their social (future) implications. Their individual advantages and bodily needs are aspects of the decision process they need not deny, but the overall impact on the surrounding environment, family, society, …, is also important - maybe more, maybe less - depending on the situation. People should be encouraged to trust their heart in making decisions - more than experts or ideologies, more than words - to be self-confident and to identify and to feel responsible for what they do.

Life is not something that develops according to a big plan (a truth), it is a process of unfolding in small, individual steps and decisions, each urging to make sense. Being part of this process of life, it’s on us “to unfold and help to unfold”.

Helmut, I’ve reread this several times and would like to pursue it further. I’m going to try a paraphrase in terms that are evocative for me. Hopefully my efforts will help each of us move toward greater clarity in our own thoughts. Please let me know if the following list is a fair (even though partial) representation of what you are saying.

  • Awareness is not binary, nor concentrated along a single axis. Different organisms have different sorts of awareness. To date, awareness seems to manifest most intensely in human organisms. (Do you agree that there are greater and lesser degrees of awareness?)
  • I experience myself and others, but it is difficult to pin down what “I” means in this sentence. Self, ego, awareness, mind, and soul are all useful but imprecise terms that seek to define “I”.
  • Life is something that we can recognize when we see it, but to pin down what it is exactly is difficult. There seems to be a “force of life” that pushes evolution toward ever more complex and in some meaningful sense “more alive” organisms. While the constituents of “life” obey the laws of physical systems, living organisms (life itself) seem to obtain some measure of freedom from those laws. Life stores up energy in order to be free from “following present forces” and to act with the future in mind.

Brandon, I try to give the feedback you expect without making it more complicated. I agree with your summaries about awareness (1) and life (3). With respect to (2) I think that language is a good tool to name and describe experiences, but a bad tool if we use it outside experience for rational constructions. It’s good to talk: “look at this tree, it’s old, gives us shadow, birds build their nests in it and the winds create very specific sounds going through its leaves”. It’s a potential problem to define: “a tree is a plant that has roots in the soil, a stem, branches and leaves”. Definitions are always faulty and one can only decide on them with respect to their use.

For example we can define what “human” is, philosophically maybe an “observing, reflecting self” and also talk about the “protection of human life” in a different context. But what happens, when a human looses his ability to observe and reflect? Suddenly our definition of “human” may create a problem, that we can’t rationally resolve. At that point we must feel that our definition and rationality have lost track and correct them. Rationality is not the final tool to handle reality, it’s just one special tool out of a box of tools. It’s more important to feel as a part of the whole process of life and to identify with the phenomena we meet and the situations we come in. Our individuality needn’t be a hindrance, it can be a vehicle on that way.

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