Beyond Ego

Three Principles for Revolutionizing Everything

Here’s a striking feature of modern life. We’re more likely to trade pics of celebrity butts to make thousands of fake friends to make us feel better about the fact that the planet’s melting, the economy’s broken, democracy’s burning, and the future’s gone into reverse than to do anything about those facts.

Modern life is a narcissism machine. You know it and I know it. But we don’t often examine what it really means. That’s what. Let’s put it a little more accurately.

Our egos are inflated to make us feel better. As a cheap fix for not fixing the world. Our egos inflate at the price of our worlds, lives, selves, and possibilities. Our bodies are pumped, our possessions get accumulated, our fake digital friends smile, our pics of it all gleam. But it’s all artifice, cosmetics, pantomime, performance, bullshit. Bought too dear at a loansharked 4000% APR of the human spirit that ends up costing us our dignity, purpose, freedom, potential.

Inflating our egos instead of actually improving our lives is a cheap fix. It’s like taking a drug to numb the pain instead of curing the disease. And so narcissism as a way of life turns the sting of the scorpion’s tail into the needle delivering the fix. After a while, we’ll do anything to get our ego fixes, whether selling out our neighbors or melting down the planet. Ego gratification doesn’t just make us dumb, numb, and cruel — it makes us believe being dumb, numb, and cruel is kind, wise, and necessary.

And so we desperately need a better way. Of producing, consuming, working, living, relating, being.

If we really want to change the world, then we probably have to create something better, capable of radically more impact, than narcissism as a way of life.

So here are three tiny principles for sparking your own tiny revolution.

Suchness

Buddhism has a beautiful and profound concept called Tathata, or suchness. It means something like “to savor what is”. Let me explain what I mean by it here thus. When I go to my favorite hipster cafe, a tiny miracle happens. No, not the inevitable hipster racism, where the bearded white guys stare at me like I’m the terrorist. I get coffee that’s got more suchness. It’s not just better coffee than at Starbucks — it’s truer coffee. It’s truer to the idea, point, form, purpose of “coffee”. I could try to tell you how it tastes — nuttier, fruitier, sharper. I could quantify its viscosity and color. But these are just descriptions, which don’t actually help us live it. So the point of suchness is richness of life. I experience more suchness at my favorite cafe than at Starbucks — my life’s a little experientially richer.

Suchness is a hard concept to put into words, because the whole point of it is about going beyond the narrow confines of concepts, ideas, words, thought. Let me simply say this: it’s about discovering, revealing, and savoring the essences of things. In all their subtlety and richness and beauty and sharpness. Craft beer isn’t just better beer — it’s truer beer. Finely crafted chocolate isn’t better, in nutritional terms — it’s truer, wholer, subtler. The Brooklynization of everything from all the above to books to flicks to shoes — it’s about putting the suchness back into things.

And it’s about time, too.

We live in a world without much suchness. Think about it. We don’t eat food as much as food-like-products, designed to look, feel, and taste like food. The same is true for almost every industry. Banks blow up our economies, pharmaceuticals cost us healthcare, “news” misinforms us, and so on. What’s the world really lacking? Suchness. The world we’ve built has little to no suchness — even at the trivial level of materiality. And so the suchness of our lives has been diminished. They feel empty, hollow, lacking, because they are.

Here’s the logic of the ego. Give me a Venti-Soy-Mocha-Latte with three extra shots of self-gratification, barista!! Coming right up! Mmmm. This drink is mine. It was made just for me. See how pampered I am? I must be worth something! In other words, things with little suchness are traps for the ego. They offer us the simulation of a rich, well lived life at little cost. They make us feel for a few brief moments, indulged, pampered, spoiled. And so our egos, little children, feel safe, secure, relieved. But just like little children, our relief and delight doesn’t last long. A few minutes later, the ego says: where’s my next indulgence? Am I worthless? Am I not loved? And so the vicious cycle of ego-gratification leads us nowhere, as human beings, in search of happiness, meaning, love, grace, rebellion, respect, truth. Unless our worlds have suchness, our lives are unlikely to feel worth living.

So those who want to make the world better are going to have to put some suchness back into it. The Egoconomy offers us endless delights to please our egos. But they’re like candy apples with rotten cores: they’re artifice, not suchness. And without suchness, our lives are never really rich in experience, beauty, passion, awareness to begin with. So as we grow impoverished in suchness, we treat the world around us, and ultimately ourselves, like disposable craptastic commodities.

You can munch endless Doritos (and sometimes I do). But the truth is that they’re not made with love, eaten with respect for suchness— they’re just consumed mindlessly, and you feel kind of gross afterwards. And so you’re pretty unlikely to find a soul brimming over with happiness and meaning also covered in Dorito dust. Suchness, the truth of things, is the foundation of happiness, meaning, purpose, respect, love. If you doubt me, go ahead and ask yourself how much you’d love someone if they had no suchness…if they were all artifice and no core…or how much they’d love you.

So if we’re going to go beyond ego-gratification, we have to begin putting the suchness back into the world around us, so our lives aren’t just wasted on artifice, surface, triviality — but are invested in richer, deeper, and truer ways, which can yield us happiness, meaning, fulfillment.

Enoughness

The way we designed the consumerist economy of financial hypercapitalism was this: nothing was ever enough. Always Have More. Because more was better. Five bedroom McMansion? Upgrade to twelve. Luxury SUV? Swap it in for a turbo. And so on.

Always Have More. That’s how to please the ego, right? The ego is a greedy master. It wants everything for itself. Why? Because that is how it knows it’s superior, safe, secure. When it has everything for itself, the ego can finally rest in peace, comfort, relax.

But that’s exactly why the bitter fruit of success is usually alienation, isolation, unhappiness, futility. We can none of us have everything in the world. Hence, metamodern life feels so anxiety ridden, insecure, conflicted. Not just because our quality of life is declining, though indeed it is. But because without enoughness in the first place, the anxiety and conflict of having less is doubly threatening. It’s one thing to struggle — it’s another to struggle needlessly for too much.

Psychology and econ tell us: happiness and meaning aren’t a function of having the most. They’re sparked by having enough. Without the anxiety and dread and self-loathing of feeling that you never have enough. In other words, knowing, appreciating, respecting enoughness. The truth is that the ego is a child. It is when we please it that we are unhappy, afraid, empty, hollow. To gain the happiness and meaning we seek, we can’t just please the ego, the little grasping self in us. We must transcend it.

So we must learn to design for enoughness. Our systems and institutions, from small to large, whether they are chatbots or startups or governments, must help people step closer to enoughness. I don’t mean: let the paupers eat cake! That the poor should stay poor. But that happiness comes from enough, which is often less — not more.

So the systems that we build are going to have to help people not just decide, but choose. Decision is fifty thousand flavors of $500 designer jeans in a department store. Choice is being able to walk away if the truth is another one won’t add anything to the richness of your life. Decision is “which status update should I send next? It’s been a whole five minutes since the last one!!”. Choice is walking away and spending some time in the park reflecting and savoring life instead.

That is, we are going to have to design systems that help people choose enough over not enough. How can we do that? We can use cognitive tricks, like nudges. We can use emotional reminders, like reality checks. We can use social mechanisms, like support. And so on. My job isn’t to figure it out for you — but to guide you to the principle. Which is that the systems that make our lives better are going to have to help us understand when, know that, choose that, enough is enough. So we can redirect our scarce resources, whether money, time, attention, to things that truly matter.

Permanence

We can’t design for enoughness and suchness without permanence. Let me explain it thus. I wear leather jackets all the time, because the light can kill me (insert vampire joke (yes, they’re all true)). But I don’t want to buy a new fashionable leather jacket every season. I want one that lasts a lifetime.

Why? Because I want it to grow with me. I want it to become a part of my life, my days, my surroundings, natural and reliable and true. I don’t want to waste my time, money, attention, on something that will last for a few months…and then ends up in the landfill…over and over again. Why should I? It’s a waste of…everything…including me.

The truth is that in a declining world, we’re all going to have to prioritize the logic of permanence. No longer can we waste either society’s resources, or people’s resources, on things that last maybe a few months, and then get dumped into the nearest landfill, trash bin, shredder, crusher. Consume and forget is a weaponized way of life. Nobody has the time or money for such a wasteful way of life anymore. No, not even the billionaires — because try as they might, ultimately, they’re part of society too, and they’re already bearing the costs of a needlessly wasteful way of life.

The fact is that the dark heart of financial hypercapitalism was about transience, not permanence. Planned obsolescence. Innovation!! Translation: a different color next month!!

Novelty is the soil in which ego-thinking grows into the bitter harvest of unhappiness and futility. The ego is insatiable, remember? And so the very idea of novelty fuels ego-thinking. If it comes in a different flavor next month, the ego’s thrilled, delighted, licking its chops in anticipation, because it’s ever hungry for more. That’s how it maintains its sense of integrity, worth, and value — by getting that newer, shinier, pricier. But the price is our own happiness, meaning, and purpose. Because we usually just throw it away.

And so. We spend our lives, billions of person hours, working on things that please other people’s egos…for a few minutes…and then get trashed, forgotten, as if they never existed at all. Is it any wonder that the work we do feels so meaningless? It is! We spend our lives chasing, billions of dollars, minutes, desires, things that give us minor relief from the demands of our egos, for a few minutes…and then our egos go right back to telling us we’re not good enough, rich enough, smart enough, pretty enough. Is it any wonder our lives feel so empty? They are!

It’s through permanence that the problems of the Egoconomy — waste, self-destructiveness, anger, unhappiness, isolation, alienation — have a chance to begin dissipating. When we design things that are built to last, perhaps not just for a lifetimes, but for lifetimes, then we have to put more meaning into them. We have to consider our work more carefully. When we buy things that are built to last, perhaps for lifetimes, then we have to put more thought into them. We cannot merely be titillated and thrilled by them. And so on. Because our cognitive and emotional investment is greater, so the rewards of happiness and meaning are too.

Revolution, not Renovation

Here’s what “problems” really mean. The economy produces too little impact for every dollar spent, invested, or saved. It wastes most of the resources it has, whether effort, imagination, time, attention, or money, on stuff of zero, or even negative, real return. The question is: why? The only realistic answer is: narcissist chasing their own instant gratification are too self-absorbed, even if in their own tiny struggles and dramas, to care much about what really matters.

Here’s the problem with the Egoconomy. We’re not just our egos. And if that’s all we are — rewarded by, incentivized for, programmed by, punished with — then we’ll never grow into who we should be. As pure ego, neediness, we can never cultivate qualities, like imagination, rebellion, creativity, love, truth. We can’t live much that matters. Think about it. I didn’t think so. The simple fact, as the great humanist psychologists understood, is: the more we reduce our selves to our egos, the more we waste our lives diminishing our chances at fulfillment. The Egoconomy uses the talent, effort, imagination, money, potential, of the world to gratify our desperate, needy egos — but the price is increasingly our lives, selves, societies, possibilities.

I think that if we’re going to fix the mess we’re in, we probably have to design an economy for the truer, deeper, and wholer parts of us — let’s simply call them our highest selves. We’re not just our egos, right? And if all we are is our egos, then we never truly develop, blossom, grow into who we should be. Beings capable of defiance, imagination, creativity, mercy, truth, nobility, grace, love, and who can thus earn lives which matter.

The truth is that we can probably repair a broken system. We can amp up the ego rewards it dishes out to us, so we feel the pain of our stifled potential a little less. We can juice up the levels of titillation, delight, and mockery it serves up to our egos, and we’ll be pacified. Think the Kardashian-Trump Reality Show. Giggle!! But we’ll only be pacified for today. Because tomorrow, we’ll still have to wake up and know the bitter truth: our lives never became what they could and should have.

So the true challenge isn’t just repairing a broken system. It’s designing a better one. One in which the center which everything orbits around isn’t the fragile, needy ego. But the tiny miracle of life itself.

Umair
London
April 2016