ego

Your idea of yourself, as distinct from your Self, which needs no description or formulation. Similar to self-image. The complex of thought patterns and ideas that you consider to be "you."

Problem is, the ego can be observed. It can be looked at, thought about, and manipulated. If this is the case, who is it that is doing the looking, the manipulating? Whoever that is, it must be something other than the ego. Is that you?

With a lash of my tongue
your ego shatters and falls to the floor, a broken dream
You quickly stoop to clean it up
hurridly gathering up the remnants of its once grand stature
I stand over you
Watching you fumble in your moment of weakness
Finding all the pieces is impossible
Some are lost forever, wedged tightly inside the crevaces of your soul
You stand up and face me with a facade of confidence
You're not who you once were
Now battered and bruised on the inside, you try to hide the loss
and once I am gone, you will mourn its untimely death
But still you pretend, acting as if all is well with the world
You are a fool.

Since the majority of the human experience involves making sense of our experiences and manipulating abstract symbols in pretty ways, that a great deal of problems seem to stem from defending the mental conception of self (the ego) is not surprising.

In animals whose experience of the world is more centered in their sensory input, a simpler life is achieved. Energy is devoted to the preservation and maintenance of the physical existence.

Humans, however, get the wonderful thrill of mixing symbols and mashing up postulates and assumptions, flashing signs and flaunting language in the effort to preserve the center of their existence: the ego.

After the hairless bipeds have worked out the various controls of their orifices, the urge to achieve ends through using those openings for expression sets in and the vast world of the intangible and irritating ideas can really be explored. All the words they ever use are learned within the first few years, the rest are simply variations and ways of disguising 'I, me, my', the various positions those may take ('want, have, like') in reference to the three things the world is composed of: 'food, sex, and sleep'.

To utter anything is to defend the ego. To place a metaphorical toe in the stream of symbols is to say 'I exist and I matter and I probably want sex or a sandwich,'. The act of asking a question implies the worth of the inquirer of receiving an answer. Even degrading or denying the ego, asserts its existence and the value of the source of the scathing and/or negative comments (the ego).

The ego is volunteered to order the often nonsensical sets of symbols it sees and organize appropriate reactions to the world based on previous and probably misunderstood information. So, otherwise rational minds are set to the insane task of defending an ever changing, intimidated, and fragile thing, the existence of which is often denied, in a game which no one referees and rules are made up and ignored to suit whatever whim a player stubborn enough to disregard the other players' protests can hit upon.

E"go (?), n. [L., I.] Met.

The conscious and permanent subject of all psychical experiences, whether held to be directly known or the product of reflective thought; -- opposed to non-ego.

 

© Webster 1913.