Ego

Another section of on independence, looking at that great evil from the perspective of the lonely individual

This is one of the worst things that a single human has, the thing that is one of the greatest defining features of mankind, and more annoyingly something we try to deny. It is the driving force between much that we do in the world, much that we have made in the wider community of the world and as such is the focus of every scale of this essay.

That is because ego precedes man. I wish for you to observe that idea, that in fact rather than people being kind or selfless or group centred, they think of their own advancement. It is also the fact that if you look upon the world as a whole, you will see that the world has an impression of ego before there is any impression of humanity, charity or goodness.

As you look at each person it is the same, you see their attitude and an image that they have intentionally created, personality and statements combining to make a person that will display their own heightened and biased view of themselves. I would not say that the very core of its existence is something that is a positive thing, which can help to make you believe that you are great, that will support your actions and give you the confidence to do what you believe.

It is your own belief, the idea that you are a great person is something that is always going to exist if you are a happy and confident person, but rarely will it stay in the situation that I believe to be a good level of ego. This would be if the person did not force their own opinions of themselves upon the world, and rather than just push themselves to the top with their own strength, there are times when the ego of some will force others down as by having their own faith, they will not be able to see why others should occupy the same place as them, and so the ego that at the beginning was a positive display of your own optimism, can become an ugly thing.

It is one of the strongest barriers that will stop the person from being able to view the world in a neutral way, that the bias of their own ideas of greatness will not be ignored, and so everything that happens in the world will hold your own irrational thought.

Each person that is not you of course, will not contain your idea of what you see as a great person and so they are automatically seen as something that is lower than you, that the further away from your idea of something good, the more you are likely to hold them in low esteem.

This is the reason that you will hold family close, as they are the people that have made you, or though it may look like they are different, are absolutely close to you through genes, and so people that should contain some form of who you are. Thus, unless they do something that acts against what you see as correct, your own views, then this bond would be separated, you would have seen in them something that was against you and so much stronger than those things which are the same.

Anything that comes away from family are those bonds that are made in discovering whether the person is the same as you, in finding if they agree with who you are and so someone who you would want to spend more time with or help out.

That is because something of each of the people that are similar to you is something that is part of your view of greatness, and so in everything you do you are hoping to make people more like yourself, though you will not change what you believe. This can be seen very easily in the wider scale, but as we are focusing on just the person, we can see that in ridicule and in companionship, you are stating what you believe to be great and correct opinions. Each time that you find someone that agrees with what you believe, you will have your own ego boosted; you will see yourself as a higher person.

As you surround yourself with people that believe the same as you, this will continue on, you will be reinforced by the sight of others that think the same as you, which agrees with what you say. Therefore it is a part of you agreeing with, something that almost is like you agreeing with yourself.

You will be selective in this method, that in different circumstances, you will look for specific people, in your pronounced idea of your own greatness, you will not be able to see there being others that have all of the same opinions as you, that therefore are the same as you in the mind. It is the same as thinking that others could look the same to you.

When you agree with someone every time you are going to be able to accept there failings because of the above belief, and so you would see that they have the same political opinions for example, you will be able to overlook the negativities, the deviations from your view of great.

Thus there is confrontation in these differences, in the fact that even though people can hold utterly different opinions and views of the world, we will all see what we believe to be the best ideas. Egos are not rational at all then, they are in fact not things that look to anything actual in the world, but unchangeably will stay attached to the idea of you being the best.

It will excuse anything that scales others above your own rank, forcibly making them seem as less than you in some way. As you think of yourself as constantly worthy of anything that those greater than you have, and so because the higher power as you see it has not let you get to that level, you resent the people that are greater.

Usually this will lead to resentment, jealousy rearing its ugly head, and because you see the level those other people hold as being something you should have, you may go to unhealthy measures to make it happen.

Ego leads to competition and to inequality, that though you may already have a level that is above other people, you will push upward more than you should, so that rather than just being successful and allowing others to be as well, you would stand in the way of them, force the world to give you more and more, your ego always looking up and never satisfied.

For those that were not able to get into the ideas that you believe, that would not allow you to take the most and join your company or ideas of law will not be able to go up, they will stay at the bottom. Seeing how much you have, how easy it would be to get some of those themselves, there resentment will grow, and the pull of getting there, of seeing you as lower than they did because of your miserly ways.

The evil to overtake them in less legitimate ways, because for some sets of people it is not possible, will have much stronger persuasion than the thought of staying good, in another way better than those richer. You will see the wider system that has allowed this power distribution, the higher powers this time being something that you can actually grab, and so the rebellion against it will be in the end a just cause.

Therefore you will look to commit something that in the higher ideas is evil but for you will be the opposite, and so empowered by your ego, you will overthrow the wider ideals of good and evil. This is really something to be argued in the later subjects, but it is here that I need to look more into the evils of our ego, though revolution is not one of them.

 

Most of the time when people have too much ego, it is called arrogance, but really as ego is omnipresent, it is not something that can only select the few, it is the cause of many evils in the world, such as excess and cruelty.

This is because the ego is something that is never full, and so though you could be just a little better off than some, or even holds some riches, but with the ability for all people to have some, you choose to take as much as you can. You do not wish for others to be able to get near to the height you occupy, and so you constantly work to be better and better off than before, simply because it means that you are constantly bettering another person, more and more.

It is not enough to just go up though, as even if you are as high as you can be, that will only be on one scale of thinking, you may be lower than the other person in looks or health, even if you have more money than them. This then opens up the possibility of the person thinking that you need to be pushed down because there are some things they can’t change about the other person, and so rather than accepting the person could be above you, you wish to force an impression of that attribute being a bad thing.

This is in the hopes that not only will that person be below you, but will either accept it as they accept themselves as someone that is worthy of being so low, they may even fall lower than they already are and so, in relation, you will move up. It is a healthy display of how we view other people, that though they may be negatively affected by the way we treat them; you see their below-ness as being worthy of whatever hurt it has to make them that low.

For those that accept your overbearing negativity, the loss of their own ability to stand up against is something that is fascinating and as such something that more people will cling onto. In competition, every person is being tested all of the time, in how they act and how they look, and so by not being able to stand up against others, you are showing a weakness that others cannot take for granted and pass over.

People will always have some form of ego though, and for the meek and the introvert, as I am, they will find that from their own view, and the view of those close to them, they are better than the loud person because of their softness and the fact that they would not think of attacking someone like the bully is. To be bullied is to say in a way that you cannot fight against the other person, but also that you do not choose to, that the arguments they are using to ridicule you are ridiculous and have no real affect, and that by not reacting you are showing that you are superior to them, that you do not feel the need to quantify your greatness, it should be plain for everyone to see. If they can’t you do not care.

 

Ego is a high acceptance of self, and though it may seem as if it is something that is healthy, this idea that what you do is correct can lead to very negative things when many people who all believe they are correct and agree on one thing get together. As you will see with most of the negatives, in groups it is much worse than when it is only one person that feels that way.

When people look around them and up into the groups that they wish to be part of though, there is in experience, the need for other people, a kind of inferiority complex, but one that everyone feels that is engaged toward the world around them rather than another person.

This of course is not the only part of what makes a human a human, it would not be possible to say that we are only things that believe themselves to be the greatest people, but that there is a compromise and a control to it, which as you will see later is a part of other innate attributes that people have, an inferiority complex.

 

It is an impossible thing to not have though, as any person without self-belief is not going to be able to accomplish anything, you would not have confidence and the attitude to face things. Ego is something that is always going to be present, but it is when it is laid about and too powerful that it can fall apart.

This is a great thing also because it can help to keep you strong against other people, and when there is adversity, you will be able to support yourself even if no-one else is.