The exaggerated emphasis on ego

Professor Z and I are discussing the kind of cultural matrix wherein the only attitudes that are considered possible are those produced by either ego-inflation or ego-deflation. These states seem to correspond to particular moral positions. The desire to represent leadership might be expressed as ego-inflated posturing, whereas the desire to represent willing servitude or to embrace "reality" might be expressed though ego-deflation. In the first case, one proclaims that one knows exactly who one is, and that this is self-evidently and clearly defined. One expects that others will have no choice but to recognise it, too. In the second case, one does not know who one is, or what one is. One knows that one has certain feelings, but one waits for orders.

Organising or interpreting those feelings, or allowing them to press one towards any goal of one's own is certainly beyond one's capabilities. Whether one accepts the former or the latter attitude is related to "creating a balance" between oneself and one's world. Presumably, one senses the presence of other egos as "forces", and one makes corresponding compromises with oneself, one the basis of one's overall feelings.

Professor Z tells me that this exaggerated ego-emphasised approach to life may not be so quintessentially "Western", as I had suspected, but may perhaps be better understood as the product of a confluence of patriarchal and capitalist forces. Quite probably, one adapts best to late capitalism by assimilating oneself to this ego-oriented way of experiencing the world. At the same time, there may be a more meaningful layer of culture hidden underneath all of this, which the ego-emphasised attitudes tend to obscure somewhat. A genuine "America" and a genuine "Australia" may yet exist, if capitalist and patriarchal attitudes are put aside.

If one considers an ego-emphasized approach to life as a kind of yeasty growth on the surface of more authentic layers of culture, then it becomes clear that the issue at hand is not to be understood so much in appraising the peculiar qualities of any particular culture, but rather in terms of measuring the quantity of this pathological growth that is afflicting it.

What suffers most, within a cultural matrix where an ego-based approach is emphasised, is genuine epistemological enquiry. It is logical and automatic that this should be so, since a limitedly ego-based approach to life does not consider the individual and her needs apart from narrowly, in terms of ego.

A human being intrinsically craves knowledge of his environment, and a sense of identity that is based on something more profound than one's own self-assertion. Yet, even the possibility of having such a need is denied by the overemphasised ego-based philosophy. Rather, undisguised cynicism comes into play: "You just want 'knowledge' so you can have power over others!"

Under such a system of anti-intellectual tyranny, the worst statement you can possibly make is to imply you feel that you are "different" in some way, from those around you. In fact, there is no room for any genuine cultural, intellectual, or experiential differences within the closed system of ego-based philosophising. So such a statement concerning "difference" throws the computer-mind of ego-based assumptions into a state of panic. The potential complexities implied in the use of the term "difference" must immediately be reduced to the product of binary thinking: An assertion of "difference" must be interpreted to imply an assertion that one is either "better" or "worse" than everybody else.

An assertion of "difference" thereby automatically becomes a minor league crime, something that suggests either overweening arrogance, or alternatively, acknowledgement of a failure to match up to others' expectations. To be innocently "different" is viewed as being a road to nowhere, when in fact it could just as easily be a road to somewhere useful -- to discovering the innocent differences that reside in all of us, perhaps.

The narrowly ego-based approach to life is fundamentally and militantly anti-epistemological, however. It doesn't trust individuals to search for, and find, their own answers and meanings. It acts as if such searching is, at best, useless activity. At worst, it is some kind of evil; some expression of a will to sin.

This way in which sin and a search for knowledge are made equivalent, suggests that there is also something deeply Christian about it. After all, Christianity associates the possession of knowledge with the eating of forbidden fruit.