ego

[My Big TOE Definition]

Ego expresses awareness in service to fear.

Ego is not simply self-awareness – a sense of self, a sense of one’s own existence, is both necessary and good, otherwise there could be no collective experience or learning. While love expresses awareness in service to others, ego expresses awareness in service to fear – thus, ego is the result of awareness acting on a fear-based intent.

Ego resides at both the intellectual level and the being level.

Because fear is all about self, ego often manifests as selfish behavior, which is the common definition of egotism. Typical examples include:
• keeping things for oneself instead of sharing them
• refusing to help, share or cooperate with others
• preventing others from succeeding
• rejoicing in others’ misery

Ego is also closely linked to belief. To deal with the fear of not being good enough, for example, we might tell ourselves stories about:
• how we are right and others are wrong
• why others deserve their misfortune
• why the nation, race, religion, culture, community, profession or club we belong to is supposedly superior to others

Complaining, fault-finding, diminishing and looking down on others are typical expressions of ego. They also serve, in turn, to justify egotistical behavior.

Differences and similarities with Freud’s model of ego

“Ego”, as defined from the more theoretical My Big TOE point of view, might seem to be quite different than the usual Freudian definition. However, from a practical point of view, My Big TOE’s “ego” and Freud’s “ego” are almost identical.

Freud observed ego and its dynamics in the people he studied. His model is empirical, based on his observations – a practical model. The people he studied were almost entirely driven by fear and lived in a society driven by fear – just like almost everyone on our planet.

The ego he observed and assessed was self-awareness driven by fear, which is exactly the same as how My Big TOE defines ego. Because such an ego was normal to himself and others who seemed to be comparatively healthy and doing well within their dominantly fear-based society, Freud defined ego to be a necessary and healthy part of an individual.

From the warped perspective of fearful individuals within a fear-based society, having no ego would appear to be dysfunctional. However, Freud did notice something within the capacity of human awareness that remained outside of the normal, dominant, fear-based pathological self-awareness (ego) – he called that “super ego”.

Freud did not make the connection that super-ego (what My Big TOE calls love) was a characteristic of healthy low-entropy (more highly evolved) consciousness, while ego was a characteristic of dysfunctional high-entropy (less evolved) consciousness. If he had made that connection, he would have had to place most all of humanity as well as himself and most, if not all, of his associates and potential supporters in the “dysfunctional” or “pathological” category. That theory wouldn’t have gone far or become popular – such an idea (choice) was probably unthinkable and thus, not in his decision space.

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