Ego and Meaning (and Reality)

                                                                   Devil's Lake (Teufelssee)

The Ego-Drama. The thing that blurs our access to reality the most is the ego-drama, our little drama, the drama of our ‘self’ – I (my ego) produce it, write it, direct it, and of course star in it. It occupies most of us non-saints constantly. I make it up, this film, according to my own lights for my own purposes. (Facebook, Instagram, etc. did not invent the Ego; they merely amplify and empower it – pouring gasoline in its fire. Not that I would reduce all uses of such platforms to the ego drama.) The terrible irony is: while in this mostly extremely sentimental, and to an objective observer, an extremely boring low budget movie, we don’t even know who in the Hell we are. Until I break out, unplug myself; until something else becomes real, good, beautiful, lovable, joyful (or their opposites), as ego-centered I have no life. I think a big part of our culture is based on this. I accept you (your film, your spin on yourself); you accept me. There is nothing ‘out there’ to judge our pathetic little films to. 

       Now, this is very precisely described as the deadly sin of sloth: a lack of zeal for the life of the spirit-mind; an apathetic attitude toward truth; an indifference to others, your relationships to others and to the community, to nature, to myself. Thus the ego-drama is not only inherently uninteresting; it is downright bad for me. What gives a river purpose, energy, and a direction is the firmness of its banks (John Henry Newman). In a world of ego-dramatists, there is a placid, oxygen-poor swamp, or a kind of Devil’s lake, as we have here in Brandenburg – bodies of water without movement, going nowhere. I write this here because though someone otherwise starring in nothing but his ego-drama can maybe do some science or program a computer, it is impossible for that purpose to every connect with reality, to ever achieve even a modest measure of truth, understanding, wisdom. 

      All real religion and philosophy get you out of the ego-drama so that you can encounter in some way the real. A step before religion or philosophy, because it also requires suspension of the ego-drama, is to learn something: a foreign language, the piano, math – things which are real, that cannot be reduced to ego, that force you conform yourself to them. Even higher: love someone. What does the real good of my children, being the individuals they are, require from me as a father – a very demanding task of understanding! (“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” – C. S. Lewis) Of course, acknowledging these criteria external to my ego do make demands on me, sets me up for failure. It does take courage, too.

     To understand anything or anybody requires the suspension of the ego-drama. God save me from “the clean, well-lighted space” of my own little ego" (Hemingway)! How joyful, in contrast, to discover something objectively wonderful! And there is nothing more objectively wonderful than my children.