Ego is NOT the enemy
You are your ego. How can it be your enemy?
The Ego is the psychological manifestation of our individuality and identity.
Whether it was given to us by God, or has emerged from the depths of the evolutionary process of the universe (choose what you want to believe), it’s been a key constituent in the emergence of the most advanced, social species on this planet. It has enabled us to proliferate and transform chaos into order over millennia, on a blue rock floating around a big raging nuclear furnace.
And here come the “pHiLoSoPhErs” like Ryan Holiday proclaiming its death?
Bahahahahahaha
Oh the arrogance and ignorance.
I hope this short essay serves as a wake up call.
Ego is NOT the enemy.
That and “Ego Death” are some of the most ridiculously stupid, immature and disrespectful new-age ideas floating around today. Let us now dispel them.
The Ego Is…
A well forged Ego is at the heart of the Individual. It is their personality and their identity. It differentiates them from everyone else and forms the very basis of the subjective nature of value, culture, personality, character and colour.
Ego is also the basis of structure and order. It takes the infinite input from the world around us and transforms it into something identifiable, discernible and useful. It gives the formless form.
Without Ego, you are a merely the wind. Or a plant. Or perhaps just dust.
Ego is what makes you human in this realm, and irrespective of what comes ‘next’, it is of egregious negligence to disrespect this conscious construct and who you are in this chapter of your existence.
Ego is so much more than the false prophets of modernity want you to believe it is.
Ego is reality.
Ego is Order.
Ego is Structure.
Ego is Boundary and Delineation
Ego is Private Property
Ego is Civilisation
Ego is Standing up
Ego is Standing out
Ego is Greatness
Ego is Excellence
Ego is Frame
Ego is Dignity
Ego is Responsibility
Ego is Masculinity
Ego is all of these things and more, but I want to hone in on the latter of the descriptions.
Ego, being a psychological construct that defines, separates and delineates is a restraint of sorts. Without restraints, we can have no form.
The Ego gives Freedom a form. Well developed, it gives Freedom a bound, or a responsible restraint.
Without Responsibility, Freedom is meaningless.
In fact, I’ve come to believe that unhinged Freedom is a vice.
And if you look around the world today, and truly examine the issues, what do you see lacking?
We are of course lacking Individual Responsibility; the most important incarnation which is a strong Masculine Frame.
We are lacking fathers and a strong, responsible Patriarchy.
We are lacking people who aspire toward greatness and excellence. Those who have the courage and aspiration to be OutStanding.
We are lacking strong boundaries and private property rights.
In other words, we are lacking well forged Ego’s, and people who have constructed themselves with deep roots and strong foundations.
All we have are spineless, emasculated lemmings running around with no ambition and underdeveloped, malformed Egos, ready to lash out like infants or tyrannical women when they don’t get what they want.
They spend their entire lives “reinventing” themselves to the point they don’t know who they are. Just empty vessels, ready to be filled by whatever influence comes along.
We don’t need any more of that.
The world needs Frame. h/t; Jerr.
The Ego Forms
The Ego forms around the age of two, when the child who had heretofore not known how to differentiate itself from the flood of existence, begins to discover itself.
It transcends the realm of ‘everything and nothing’, and begins to forge an “I”. It begins to develop boundaries and a relationship with ‘other’.
It ascends to a higher plane of being. It finds refuge from the deluge of sensory input that the unformed conscious mind allows to enter directly into the subconscious.
It is literally where a higher order consciousness begins to emerge. Not that the sub or unconscious is to be ignored, but there is no way to live in the here and now unconsciously. It’s in the name!
For a human to grow beyond the stage of infant, it must find and develop Ego. It must learn who and what it is.
“I am” are literally two of the most powerful words and incantations a person can utter, and they are the linguistic expression of the strongest force in the human psyche. The Identity. The Self. The Ego.
People who run around proclaiming “Ego Death” are literally advocating a regression to an infant-like state, or a metaphorical re-entry into the womb.
Wow. Much Mature. Much courage.
Totally Absurd.
Ego and Civilisation
We can have no civilisation without Ego.
Ego is the basis of the individual persona, which in turn is the basis for the subjective nature of value, and of diverse thought, action and behaviour.
Therefore…
Without the Ego, we can have no Subjective Value, nor Division of Labour.
Without division of labour, we can have no cooperation. Without cooperation we can have no complexity and thus no civilisation.
Ego is what gives us the diversity necessary for Civilisation.
Diversity of thought and diversity of culture.
Diversity of belief and diversity of approach.
Without it there can be no nuance nor differentiation.
There can be no flavour, taste or preference.
In fact, I wouldd argue that Ego must exist for there to be Conscious, directed innovation, or in other words; Capitalism.
Ego-Death advocates are therefore in effect Communists, or advocating communist-like ideas — and they don’t even realise it!
Ego is a Judge
Ego is that which bears responsibility.
Ego is that which discerns.
Ego is that which defines.
Ego is Judge and Judgement.
And don’t you dare say “judgement” is a bad thing, for you judge every moment of the day. In the absence of judgement there is indecision and paralysis. Judgement is evaluation. It is the process the conscious and subconscious minds perform all of the time.
The absence of Judgement is simply the void.
Therefore the real question one should be asking is not how to avoid judgement or kill Ego, but the following;
“Is your Ego mature and well forged enough to Judge accurately, morally and justly”?
Or, “Are you a child, who cannot restrain itself and is a slave to a poorly forged, environmentally conditioned, at-effect form of fragile Ego” ?
This will define whether you are a mature, deep, regal and worthwhile individual, or if you’re just some punk.
In this sense, a Greater Ego may need to destroy your childish Ego and burn off all that is a hindrance to the forging of your Greater and Stronger Self.
But make no mistake..Ego is not the enemy, nor is Ego going to die just because you said so.
Ego will always be there. It is fundamental. It is the identity, personality and the character you forge. It is YOU.
The end goal is to forge a moral, just and powerful Ego, while you have the opportunity to live this life.
As Tony Robbins would say; Identity is the strongest force in the human psyche, and the need to stay consistent with your identity will prevail above all others.
Ego is identity.
But “eGo iS tHe EnEmY”
Let’s have a look at who thinks Ego is the enemy.
Exhibit A. Mr Ryan Holiday. The bRaVe man behind the mask, regurgitating other people’s work, and pretending like he’s some paragon of virtue while hiding beneath his books.
He literally wrote the book: “Ego is the enemy”.
Of course…
Who else thinks we should dissolve all Ego because we’re “all in this together”.
I’ll let the following collage speak for itself.
Each of these people believe that the individual is not important, that the self (Ego) is just an illusory construct, and that the “Collective” is all there is.
“Sacrifice yourself for the Greater Good”
They don’t want you to have an Ego, because they don’t want you to stand up and stand out. That would be inconvenient.
They want you to conform. They want Ego-less automatons who have no opinion, no backbone and no spirit to follow their orders for the “good of all”.
And the worst part?
Useful idiots go out and buy books by charlatans like Ryan Holiday, lap that garbage up, go to a Yoga class, listen to some homeless Eastern Mystic or unshaven hippie preach “unity”, and run with it!
It’s insane. But I get it.
They cling so strongly to this idea of “Ego Death” because they had mal-formed Ego’s in the first place. All it took for them to abandon themselves was a little wishy washy, first-order-nice-sounding platitudes, and off they went.
They have no idea that they’re walking themselves right into gulags of their own making.
But what about the mOnKs?!?!?!?
If you want to go out and live in a cave somewhere, meditate all day, castrate yourself, live off the donations of others, never procreate and be attached to nothing….then by all means, strip away the Ego.
In this case, perhaps Ego dissolution does make sense.
But….
This is not the path toward Civilisation or Progress.
It is not the path of Greatness or Excellence.
It’s not how Great Structures or Monuments are built.
Of course there is much to be learned from the Eastern and more mystic teachings. There is a time and place for detachment and there is a time and place for the Ego to take a back seat. There is even a time and place for Ego dissolution on the journey toward some personal transformation. There are parts of you which must be burnt off and discarded.
But….As with all such things, wisdom is in knowing when to apply what.
Cheering the death of your Ego tells me you have neither wisdom nor respect for yourself or the grand intelligence of Life.
You’re like a child who does not know itself. Succoured in by the marketing of cheap magazines at the Grocery store.
“No Self & No Suffering” ↑
“Own Nothing and Be Happy”. ↓
It’s the same mindless message.
I don’t know what fairytail land these subhumans are living in, but Life involves suffering. A life worth living involves trials and tribulations!
Life is challenge. Life is Beauty. Life is Love, Passion, War, Glory, Power, Pleasure and Pain.
It’s all of these things. Along the way we WILL suffer. We are not perfect. We make mistakes and in order to grow and mature as a human being, you MUST suffer. It is the ONLY valid rite of passage. This is how you earn Self.
Without it, you are a ghost. A non-being.
So…
Have some respect for God’s sake. You’re alive. Save that being a ghost part for the afterlife. You were blessed with a physical, temporal, tangible existence. Don’t squander it.
In Closing
The Ego is effectively the Conscious mind. It is the Self.
It is an emergent construct of nature, of God, and the Universe.
It is by definition ‘Divine’.
It was designed for spatial awareness and the differentiation necessary for Relationships and Civilisation to exist.
Can the body live, and the spirit act without the mind?
If not, they cannot live or act without the Ego.
The pursuit or glorification of “Ego death” is the most nonsensical garbage invented and on par with “we’re all in this together”.
The ultimate question is whether YOU forge your Ego, your identity, character and personality, or whether you’re the victim who’s Ego is formed and defined by the environment ?
Do you own and integrate your Ego?
Or are you a slave to it, while it remains a slave to the environment?
If the latter, then your own character or Soul is the enemy for it has chosen to be an NPC, instead of drawing the courage to forge an Ego and a stance worth living and dying for.
We want strong, hard, framed, mature Egos.
Not weak, small, fragile Egos.
People that get offended easily, the peasantry, the parasites, the Vitalik’s, Ver’s and similar of the world, are holders of such small, fragile Egos.
Petty children, unformed, unframed and immature throwing tantrums when things don’t go their way.
They are the weak men of the cycle.
The strong men have Ego’s of greatness.
They build monuments to the Gods.
They reach for the stars.
They have the maturity to know when to hold, acquire and cede territory, power and control.
This is a well forged Ego.
This is wisdom.
“No Self” + “Ego death” = “We’re all in this together” + “Own nothing and be happy”.
They are all variations on the same. It’s why you will see these so called ‘messages of enlightenment’ everywhere in the mainstream.
Reject this brainwashing.
Reject this erosion of Consciousness.
Reject this attack on Self and Responsibility.
Enhance your Perspective
Establish your Identity.
Forge your Frame.
Build your Self.
Own your Ego.
It is You.
Thankyou for reading, and I sincerely hope you found value in trading your time for it. There will be loads more to come.
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By Aleks Svetski
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