A friend of mine and I were talking about the ego, and I was telling her that it’s built into us, it’s in our DNA and the best way to solve the problems of humanity’s destructive nature is to funnel our conquering desires into innovative practices like space travel and colonization of other planets. Her view was more Buddhist I think. She believed we should find our zen-cores and remove our ourselves from our egos. She believes (and I’m sure she’ll call me upon reading this to set the record straight on how I butchered her point), that the ego is a destructive trait we developed through societal nurturing. That if we could all live for today and forget about the past, then mankind would halt its unsustainable and violent trajectory.
My understanding is the ego is an identity trait hardwired into our brains. It is our ‘self’ and desire to leave a mark on the world. In essence it is a psychological characteristic of who we are, not something fabricated, and certainly not something inherently bad at all. Our ego drives us to create, to aspire to greatness, to create a bigger and better life. In a world of limited resources that grows increasingly unsustainable as our population and life expectancy out-pace nature’s ability to cope with it, it’s the people with strong and pronounced egos who drive the innovation that keeps us alive.
I told my friend that we should find inner peace, but understand the need to balance it with strength. You cannot move with all the motions of the universe. There are real challenges to face, and things that we do need to fight in order to survive.
You can accept most, and some people do work themselves into entirely too much conflict. But part of the necessary balancing act of life is knowing what to fight against and what to accept. In the actual world we live in today, if you completely disregard your ego and fight for nothing you set yourself up to be the victim of others and create a life of abject mediocrity.
We cannot accept everything as it is.
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“But part of the necessary balancing act of life is knowing what to fight against and what to accept.”
This is so true and probably one of the hardest lessons to learn. It is difficult when you are in the thick of conflict to separate your initial emotional response and think, is this really important in the larger scheme of things?