The word “just” is a dismissive or disqualifying word, implying simplicity or nothing-but. As a phrase, “just do it” implies that whatever it is, it can be done by a simple act of will, if one’s intentions are good and not clouded by phony mind-games driven by elitism. It reflects an underlying fantasy that life is simple if only one’s heart is pure. In fact, though, “it”—whatever needs to be done—is often really rather complex. It’s not at all clear to most people how it should be done, or even where to start.

Now, there are some acts that simply involve a measure of courage, like getting into the water—cold at first, but you get used to it. Or building a simple habit, such as washing one’s hands after using the toilet. But even then there are arguments about the details, especially when it comes to research about degrees of getting relatively free of bacteria or viruses, or how much and in what way doctors should wash between patients. (Alas, they often forget to do this when making hospital rounds, so it is okay for you as a patient in a hospital to ask your visiting doctor to wash his or her hands before they examine you.)

Anyway, doing it is most often not as simple as the words make it out to be. If a given modification is suggested, some distinctions need to be discovered that highlight who would benefit from “it” being done, and recognizing that some might not benefit. Indeed, for some, since different strokes are needed for different folks, who might actually be harmed by it being done? “Just do it” might actually be contra-indicated.

Then there is the problem of dosage. It turns out that for most things that involve doing it, it can be easily done too much or too little. How to find the right dose for which people or situations? Another problem is that it works well for situation A but although situation B seems on the surface to be like situation A, in fact it’s quite different. “It” may not help, and perhaps even hurt. So there needs to be a recognition that most actions have limitations.

Moreover, it often takes years, decades, to begin to get answers to the questions implied above. It is thus anything but “just do it.”

Even the golden rule isn’t simple. The early 20th century playwright George Bernard Shaw once twisted this cliche by saying, “Don’t do unto others as you would have them do unto you; they may not have the same tastes.” Thus, wisdom, judgment, complexity, humility, and other qualities are needed, along with a good deal of knowledge and feedback, in order to know how and when to apply even that on-the-whole benign rule.

On occasion on these blogs I may do a bit of a critique, a gentle rant, if you will, regarding some bit of what tends to pass as “common sense.” My experience has taught me that many simplistic sayings only serve to support the sense of small-minded people that they have something to say that seems wise—but it is misleading. Because it is a common saying, though, it tends to add to the status of the person expressing this view. It appeals to our wish that things be simple, and makes us feel suspicious that who might want us to look a little closer or think a bit more before coming to conclusions are just making things more complex than they are.  But things are often far more complex than the seem at first. An attitude of alertness to bulls**t may help.

Anyway, riffing off the anecdote above, speculating playfully, here’s how it works: Those who have attained truly “higher” wisdom get to be angels. Free of the constraints of material life, they find that there are innumerable levels of oversoul, and that the responsibilities are adjusted to their elevated level of consciousness. But there are multiple levels of elevation. The job to be done is the same, but on their level: How to help make the universe better, how to help God awaken or be born again or evolve more fully. These challenges are considerable. One must maintain a high degree of spiritual equanimity because there is so much folly and limited consciousness among their charges. Oddly enough, angels can “do” very little except practice the arts of subtle spiritual rhetoric: How can we better lure and persuade three-dimensional-plus-time beings to move towards higher consciousness in a million ways?
– we love them and want them to have fun, eat tasty foods, cook well, make wholesome love, enjoy sensuality, nature, play games, and on and on. We’re evolved enough to appreciate the thousand-fold aspects of a diversified life.
– we want to promote further harmonic relations but also just enough friction to stimulate further growth. (Sometimes a kick in the pants can elicit more growth than a pat on the back.)
– we see their potentials and talents more clearly than they (ordinary humans) do: How to get them to discover these talents and abilities? As the King of Siam (Yul Brinner in the movie) in Anna and the King (broadway musical of the 50s) says, “Is a puzzlement.”
… etc. It’s a fun game: If you were an archangel, what would be the job descriptions of the various angels that you supervise?

I was told an anecdote by a friend, who said: “A friend of mine who started out in apocalyptic fundamentalist group, whose leader said there were the only ones who would be in heaven, and the only ones with certain privileges in heaven etc. also had a clairvoyant relationship with his wife.  His wife preceded him in death and has, according to him, been telling him that was all Bulls**t, and everyone in the spirit world is in a very similarly situation as that on earth…. still exploring, still learning, still feeling their way along.  She said there was absolutely nothing “special” about where she ended up, although everyone was very helpful, but that the promises of their prophetic leader was all B.S. So she told him that is what he should expect and not what their Prophet said. My friend then quoted the Zen Master, “Ting,” a Zen Master, said: “Believe what you like. Or make something up.” (But I couldn’t find this quote on Google! So I don’t know yet if I believe that there ever even was a Zen Master Ting.)

Anyway, riffing off the anecdote above, speculating playfully, here’s how it works: Those who have attained truly “higher” wisdom get to be angels. Free of the constraints of material life, they find that there are innumerable levels of oversoul, and that the responsibilities are adjusted to their elevated level of consciousness. But there are multiple levels of elevation. The job to be done is the same, but on their level: How to help make the universe better, how to help God awaken or be born again or evolve more fully. These challenges are considerable. One must maintain a high degree of spiritual equanimity because there is so much folly and limited consciousness among their charges. Oddly enough, angels can “do” very little except practice the arts of subtle spiritual rhetoric: How can we better lure and persuade three-dimensional-plus-time beings to move towards higher consciousness in a million ways?
– we love them and want them to have fun, eat tasty foods, cook well, make wholesome love, enjoy sensuality, nature, play games, and on and on. We’re evolved enough to appreciate the thousand-fold aspects of a diversified life.
– we want to promote further harmonic relations but also just enough friction to stimulate further growth. (Sometimes a kick in the pants can elicit more growth than a pat on the back.)
– we see their potentials and talents more clearly than they (ordinary humans) do: How to get them to discover these talents and abilities? As the King of Siam (Yul Brinner in the movie) in Anna and the King (broadway musical of the 50s) says, “Is a puzzlement.”
… etc. It’s a fun game: If you were an archangel, what would be the job descriptions of the various angels that you supervise?

Now in our ordinary words, fast, very fast, and incredibly fast still operate for most things in realms that are hardly close to the speed of light. What I’m getting at is that for most situations, good, very good, and very, very good are still far from perfect.

What, you may ask, is the problem? This essay is a challenge to all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo or political exhortation that uses superlatives. Too many sham self-proclaimed spiritual teachers suggest that unless you’re fully, completely pure, absolutely divorced from your ego, completely surrendered to the guru, and in other ways superlatively sacrificed, you don’t get to be saved, enlightened, whatever. I consider such talk to be a con job, a scam, a verbal bit of flibberty-flab that lures you with one hand and tosses you away when you’ve run out of money. After all, how would anyone know if you’re fully, absolutely, genuinely, sincerely, truly, devoted? Free of doubt and ego? And unless you are, they get to promise you the moon! If you’re superlatively whatever, you get it—but if you fail, if you’re only 98.3% self-sacrificing, they have a back door, they get to keep your money and say you didn’t try hard enough.

So I’m allergic to any talk that uses such words. If I concede that the person is ethical and sincere, I then must question that speaker’s level of critical thinking. I consider this type of superlative-osity as careless thought, mental-short cuts that prop up illusions. They feed unrealistic expectations (see blog on dingle-derry complex.)

“Getting” enlightenment or “having” wisdom seem to me to be related in this semantic obfuscation. The illusion of possession, of achieving full whatever, attaining permanent guaranteed holiness or cosmic awareness—these treat such abstractions as if they were permanent stages of mind-body knowing. (There are some skills that tend to be more like that, like swimming, riding a bicycle—once you get the “knack” you don’t forget in the way you might forget some remembered fact.)  I recognize that there are spiritual teachers who do not make such claims, but say intead that disciplined spiritual practice may generate variably higher degrees of peace of mind or subtle pleasure, related to a less distracted capacity of enjoying the moment. There may even be breakthroughs of deep insight and a sense of more vivid “reality.” But it comes and goes, for most people, and at this point in our understanding, such states of mind are rarely continuous.

I am wary about any implication that wisdom or equanimity is attainable once and for all. I think it’s a practice. You can start with the turbulence of a child’s mind, perhaps at 10 - 20%—the higher numbers if your life isn’t too stressful—but as you expand, even with optimal learning of life’s lessons, your life may become nicely balanced, quite wise, but how perfect can it get, given the vicissitudes of age, health, culture, relationships, and so forth?

Let’s say you get to (I’m making this up), say, 80%. You’re pretty happy, content, successful. Does that mean you won’t be tempted to give in to unworthy motivations? And say you’re pretty good at recognizing temptations and overcoming them—does that mean 80% or 90% of the time? What if no one gets to 100% on anything?; or if they do, it’s just a passing whatever.

So, as with the misleading ideals about perfection or words like “fully,” we need to penetrate the semantics of possession: Too many people have the idea that it is possible to get there, achieve it, have it, hold on to it, harvest the benefits of having established yourself. You’ve studied, you get a diploma, people think you’re smart, and you take a job that requires a diploma, and you do the job as is needed, routinely. You lose your passion, your real interests are your family and your hobbies, but you still have the illusion because of the degree that you belong to the intelligentsia, that you are an intellectual. You’ve proven it. What if it’s not that way at all in life, it’s just the way fools have set up various human social organizations? (They haven’t improved the way they do this setting-up because they don’t know how to do it better. Remember, this is only the 21st century, not the 67th century!)

How can one discern whether another person—or even themselves—are “fully” anything? I mean, what if compared to last month, you’ve advanced from 30% to 50% along the way. Maybe that jump in skill or competence may feel as if you’ve “gotten it,”—at least compared to what a clod you had been before. I hear the adolescent line, “I totally get it!” when in fact there’s just been a discernable advance—or, worse, a blip that is inflated by arrogance.

What if in my meditaton, prayer, and selfless service (or maybe cult-brainwashed-exploited) I develop the illusion or delusion of having become enlightened? How would I or anyone else know different? . Or worse, what If, because what if I can achieve only 78% of the requisite quality, or only 99% –are all bets off if I haven’t completely done whatever? This kind of linguistic “catch” is common in spiritual discourse and allows false gurus to say, “Well, you haven’t “really” done it, so my guarantees that you’ll get your heavenly pay-off doesn’t apply”—or expressed in equivalent ways.

Are there any ways a truly enlightened teacher can be sure he or she is really enlightened and not just self-hypnotizing himself? Can you be 90% enlightened and it will seem like 100% but in fact there are some essential components you haven’t learned or mastered?   Or 99%? Or 70% And how can a potential disciple tell?

Can a guru, sage, or teacher be such in some respects but clueless about politics, economics, how to manage a spiritual center, maintain a business, or ensure that her disciples don’t end up acting as foolish as people in other religions? How is any religion substantially different from the cult presented in the satirical newspaper, The Onion?

The terms, “sacred,” “sanctity,” “holy,” and the like are equally vague, applicable to many situations, entirely arguable. Are there some activities that are more sacred than others and how can one discern this? Is contemplating a mountain more sacred than studying the sacred literature of another’s religion? Is studying a non infallable but stimulating religious book less holy than trying to study an officially designated holy (but boring) text? Can the study of embryology or history be sacred?

I’m really very open to a certain kind of spiritual sensitivity, reverence, awe, mystery, passion for understanding, and such, but as soon as I encounter words I am a bit sensitive to how easily they can be distorted, used to manipulate, and obscure thinking itself. So let’s remember that words are human connections and thereby subject to the limitations of human mentality.

My dear mother-in-law says that she makes a game out of figuring out how best to get around to do what she needs to do to stay semi-independent at 95. It’s not easy. And as I see friends not just dying—that part is easy—but having to live on when dear ones have died; or struggling with various disabilities and pains and symptoms from one’s own body or one’s beloved—the mottos I realize for this era is “courage” and “discipline.”

What ever happened to getting “over the hill” and “coasting”? Illusions of youth, stereotypes of a time of achievement, as if once having achieved, one doesn’t fall into not only other challenges, but also requests or the awareness that more yet is needed to sustain one’s community, extended family, closer family, personal and financial health, home maintenance, and on and on.

The challenges of elderhood are intriguing: I see a successful early life as developing a firm-stemmed growing plant, to blossom in love and family, and begin to give fruit and seeds. But in later life the flower itself becomes the fruit—or in my case, a fruity-nut, or a nutty-fruit—but juicy, rich in nutrients. It takes all our wisdom, faith, responsibility, love, and stuff like that to generate the best fruity-nuts, and the process can go for years. In some trees, the tenth year fruit is definitely better than the first or second-year fruit.

In other words, the last psycho-social stage described by the psychoanalyst-thinker Erik H. Erikson extended not only depth psychology to way past childhood and early adulthood to include the full life cycle, but also Erikson wove in the interplay with social influences and involvements. He said that the last stage was “integration,” but I don’t know if he realized how many sub-stages and aspects that dynamic involves. I foresee further maturation through many sub-stages for the next thirty years, though I can’t tell you yet all about these.

Partly, I think, this reflects my simple ignorance, and partly it reflects the changes that are happening in technology, politics, the culture, the advance of history, etc. Kids today! What will they come up with next!?! I suspect I’ll say this in twenty years if I live that long, but I hope the mild annoyance will be overbalanced by a smile of philosophical amusement. Another part recognizes that we continue to differentiate, which means our special interests and preferences continue to unfold, and old preferences become dulled with the “been there, done that” dynamic. The trajectory for vital involvement in the elder years becomes more individuated.

In a way, I’m witnessing to a positive future to imagine for those of you who are younger and wonder what elderhood might be about. It’s a protest against the prevalence of subtle age-ism. We need not to say, “young at heart,” (although I do love the lyrics of that song) but rather, simply, “vital.” As I grow older I may become less able to do some things, but perhaps more able to do other things few younger people attempt.

The main challenge is what I used to downplay in the past: Spiritual development. This may or not be associated with a particular denomination or religion, but it does involve varying degrees of awareness that certain involvements are more or less in harmony with the Great Creative Advance. This journey becomes ever more subtle and multi-faceted in proportion to the levels of development reached. It’s sort of like one of those video games that keep stretching the frontiers of your skll level, presenting you with ever-more interesting challenges in proportion to your skill at mastering the responses to that level’s challenges.

In my faith system, though, it’s okay. I get to serve the Great Becoming-ness with more consciousness! 99.9999…% of the cosmos doesn’t have a choice, nor is it able to reflect on the grand emergence. So I feel very privileged and grateful and if I can give back a bit and help the world be a better place (according to many different criteria for “better”), well, then, all the better. (Ha ha!)

I think of the dynamic of bonding as central in spirituality, at a depth psychology level. While I don’t like much of Freudian doctrine, I find the general enterprise of depth psychology most fruitful. Here is a summary of my thoughts, evoked from that conversation:

I think spirituality relates to bonding, and represents a very deep and basic aspect of psychology— the type that goes on unconsciously, for the most part. I don’t think we’ve come to fully appreciating all aspects of this process, and that it includes body-knowing, mind-body interactions, interpersonal sensitivity, how well parents attune with their infants, and so forth. With that disclaimer of what we probably don’t know yet, I think we can make some important observations.

Spirituality is a sub-type of bonding, of feeling the presence and relevance of the whole of nature, and it can begin to constellate in the psyche in early childhood. Bonding is in some ways like gravity in that the further away another body is, the less attraction it holds. That’s only partly true for the realm of mind. We bond to others depending on our emotional investment in them. Early on it’s mainly with family—although it can be easily grafted onto a nanny or caretaker—; then over the next few years, bonding extends in a widening circle to siblings, friends, neighbors, clubs, usually becoming weaker with these extensions, but not always.

Bonding can be strengthened with the rather peripheral and symbolic category of “our country” in a time of war. The degrees of unanimity, morale building, the celebration of patriotism, the imminence of danger—these and other variables intensify this emotional investment. It is not a shallow feeling: Bonding to one’s buddies, unit, and national purpose can to varying degrees generate acts of self-sacrificing herois.

Bonding extends to all manner of social allegiances and identifications. We bond with other things more or less depending on our cathexis—a Freudian term referring to the quality and strength of emotional investment. Some folks bond strongly to the religion of their childhood, others weakly, or even develop a repulsion to it. (These dynamics also overlap to the feelings associated with relationships as viewed through the lens of sociometry.)

Some people bond to other role categories. Some women (and the occasional man) are very bonded to their own gender’s political and social issues, some not. Race, religion, profession, sexual orientation, etc.—all gather different levels of allegiance and/or identification. To some degree bonding generates identification, the feeling that “We are that,”  and we feel caught up in that status whether it is respected or despised, wins or loses.

Spirituality involves the wholeness of existence. We can get to that. If the aliens from Mars were to attack (as portrayed in science fiction magazines and movies in the early 20th centuries, we might well bond to those other earth-people who had previously been “enemies.” Now they’re needed allies—even if we don’t know or particularly like many or most of ‘em.

Here’s another scenario: The earth is going to be struck by a meteor or an asteroid. We have to marshal all our efforts, collaborate to build whatever science comes up with to deflect that asteroid. We bond with not just humans, but other life-species on earth. In other words, I’m noting that the psychology of bonding can reach out indefinitely into space.

The dynamic of idealization is also part of this deep emotional connection—a connection that merges with the psychology of spirituality. In idealization we attribute virtues not-demonstrated to someone or something because it has a few well-demonstrated virtues. Daddy is bigger, so he must know everything.

One of the problems with religion today is that, as has been written about, many of us sustain concepts of god that are too “small” for a universe that has grown to be larger in multiple directions and by many orders of magnitude. For many people, the traditional idea of God cannot hold the allegiance of people who want their spirituality to be for the most part pretty rational.

There’s also a problem is that we also idealize rationality: I think that rationality is better than irrationality 87.3% — but why not 100%   Because irrationality in love, nurturance, faith, music, dancing, play, silliness, etc. constitutes the juice of life. Less than 12.7% non-rationality and you become dry and overly serious. Therefore, I’ve written a number of papers on religion on my website, as well as papers on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (Process Philosophy), on creative mythmaking and meaning-making.

I think there’s a deep instinct to make sense of life, and that everyone develops an unconscious philosophy. Interestingly, this philosophy can be a compilation of platitudes and other images and ideas that roughly come together to seem sensible. Dream images can be like that, too—it all seems plausible during the time you’re “in” the dream.

But any degree of conscious critical thinking begins to unravel those casual constructions. For many people—probably most—-this semi-conscious collage of ideas feels sufficient, does the job of offering an adequate sense of meaning to life. Alas, under stress, confronted by tragedy or paradox, these systems tend to crumble. There’s a whole side theme here about how people redouble their efforts to “believe” or maintain their “faith” in the postmodern era that has its parallels to the several levels and years of redoubled defensive maneuvers people use to maintain the basic themes of their character structure or neurosis.

There is an alternative, I’m happy to say. In the last several decades a variety of metaphysical, philosophical, spiritual systems have been evolving that offer a more rational approach. They’re not 100% rational, but as I say, that has its advantages. I’ve found that thoughtful people can find spiritual paths that are between 8 - 24% non-rational and they do well, these systems are pretty resilient.  (As you might guess, the criterion of practicality, emotional effectiveness, adaptation, etc., is an important one.)

Few people know about these alternatives because the mainstream currents highlight the polarized extremes: Believe in our religion with all of its crazy doctrine or believe in that religion with all of those other crazy doctrines—or believe in nothing, and celebrate your rejection, your nihilism, you cynicism. I did that in my early-mid adulthood—prideful atheism. It was great—sort of standing on a windswept hill with the wind blowing through my hair (I still had hair then), facing down the forces of rank superstition!  But once I established that position and the forces of reaction were weak, I found it dry and dull. The Beckett play, “Waiting for Godot” seemed an apt expression of the dead-end-ness of this position.

Gradually I explored. I didn’t have to, no pressure. But curious, I read widely, finally finding a number of ideas that restored not the faith I had as a child—I still find those beliefs untenable— but a bonding to the world, to history, to nature, to the cosmos, a sense of resonance with those who can feel the awe, reverence, mystery, and delight of deep life. Spirituality can be free like this, and great fun!  I don’t think most folks know this.

So I hope this is stimulating to the reader. Consider the project of wisdom-ing as one of the agendas in your life. I don’t presume that my answers are ultimately right or will work for you, but perhaps a few of the ideas I’ve noted might at least stimulate your own creative journey. So continue to playfully explore, try out ideas, don’t give up. There’s a very high probability you can discover and co-create a schema that will allow you to feel bonded to the universe, to birth, life, and death, to mystery and the opening of the cosmos.

Finally, all this fits also with what the psychoanalyst and theoretician Erik Erikson wrote about in the 1950s, especially about as the final (later-life) psychosocial stage of integrity.

Moreno called the method of assessing gradients of interpersonal preference “sociometry,” and in time this became the name of the field that contemplates this dimension. So far it’s not widely appreciated, though it’s been written about extensively in the professional literature. I’d like to see it become a part of what everyone needs to know, a part of popular psychology.

The trouble with sociometry is that it’s still a young field and there’s much yet to be learned. More pointedly, though, the theme addresses feelings that are generally felt to be extremely personal, extremely emotionally loaded. I think that a consideration of the dynamics of preference and rapport is every bit as relevant in psychological and interpersonal understanding as anything Freud came up with. But what we’re talking about here is the deep feelings that got stirred up when you:
– wanted to play with Billy but he seemed to be having more fun with Johnny;
– wanted your mom’s attention but she seemed to be giving more attention to your baby brother
– wanted your dad’s attention but he seemed more proud of your older sister
– wanted to play with Billy and Johnny wanted to play, too, but you didn’t want him to play, and you also didn’t want to hurt his feelings
– didn’t want to kiss Aunt Suzy (because she kissed wet—or that’s what you said), although you couldn’t get enough of Aunt Jennie
– discovered as a parent that although you really tried not to play favorites in truth you felt more fascination or affection toward one of your kids over the other one;
. . . and so forth.

This is emotionally loaded material, and yet we live in an era that recognizes that avoiding problems, trying to stifle them or sweep them under the figurative carpet, just doesn’t work. It all leaks out somehow. (That’s the basic lesson of psychoanalysis summed up in a sentence!) So you might as well find out what the situation is about so you can deal with it more consciously, find a way to work out the mixed feelings in a constructive fashion. Sociometry says that this needs to apply not only in working out conflicts among the different roles or parts of your own mind, but in relationships, families, groups, organizations, and in the culture!

We also need to look at the dynamics of social preferences at the cultural level. While we may be seeking to be egalitarian in general social and legal policy, the truth is that we cannot escape the dynamic of preferring people who share our values—and these may be aesthetic, political, and so forth. One might make an argument that class is more important than race, though the whole topic is generally avoided. The point to be made is that people really cannot help the feelings of preference, though they may be able to take responsibility for how they act on such feelings.

(The accusation of “racism” is an over-generalization. People cannot help feeling certain affinities with certain people and ethnic or cultural or racial elements may be part of this; affinities often cross racial lines, too! Problems arise when people allow those intuitive feelings to become the major factor in their behavior. Our job as adults is to become aware of our feelings and intuitions and to choose how they are played out in real life—but we can’t make ourselves feel this or that way by an act of will.)

There is much I’ve written on my website and elsewhere about sociometry, and much, much more that others have written (see my bibliography). I hope you’ll get interested and pursue this.

First, the word is Latin for “I” and is attributed by the English translators of Freud’s writings to that part of the psyche that mediates between the impulse-driven “id”and the social conscience-driven “super-ego.” Continued explorations of the nuances of the sense of self, though, reveals further sub-divisions.

George Herbert Mead, a philosopher writing and teaching about social psychology around the 1920s and 1930s drew a differentiation between the essential subjective observer as the I and that which is observed, the object, as the “me.” The point to make here is that the observation of the self is mediated by interpretation and bias, so that there’s a tendency to select out certain elements and leave others. Sometimes this is more negative—our tendency to over-estimate the significance of our blunders or weakness; and sometimes it’s more positive—out tendency to over-estimate our strengths, accomplishments, skill, intelligence, and so forth. Some over-estimate their impact on others, others tend to under-estimate this impact. (See my paper on the nature of the “self” on my website.)

Another key element in the sense of “ego” involves the dynamic of identification, which refers to the way we tend to think of certain qualities as part of us or describing us, while other qualities (we think) do not refer to us. There’s room for repression and denial here, so some qualities that are more obvious to others may be unknown to us. This is the meaning of the saying by Jesus that we should remove the stick (or beam) in our own eye (vision field) before we criticize the tiny splinter (or mote) in the other person’s eye.

Ego is also applied as a synonym for self, so that egocentric and self-centered-ness seem to be the same things. Ego in this sense may be imagined as a sensitivity about such things as “how am I doing? Do you like me? Do you think I’m attractive? Do you find me interesting?” Some of this is okay for assessing one’s status and the harmony of social membership, even if it’s never spelled out. Some people, though, make this concern more central to a wider range of operations, in which case they may be labeled as excessively egocentric or “narcissistic.”

Ego concerns operate when people are consciously or unconsciously expending a fair amount of energy of determining such things as “how well am I doing? Am I getting enough attention? Do I want (or even deserve) attention?  Do I feel proud of myself or ashamed? Am I being given enough or does my sibling or neighbor get more, is it fair?”—”self-conscious” things  like that. When it interferes with the capacity for relating in a more matter-of-fact way on a task, then the egotism edges over into mild or not-so-mild range of being problematic..

Egocentricity is another aspect of this word, “ego,” and refers to the tendency to measure other phenomena in terms of what one knows: “Well, doesn’t everyone? Isn’t everyone like me? If I like chocolate, how can you not like chocolate?”  It takes a bit of maturation to get past this, and it’s possible to get past it in some ways and hold on to it in others. (Indignantly) “What do you mean you don’t want to do this? What’s wrong with it?” (Egocentric people perceive others who don’t share their preferences or beliefs or religion, etc., as thereby criticizing their own choices. Egocentric people have difficulty conceiving of the very idea that someone simply has different preferences, or resonates with a different set of symbolic images or ideas, but others are not necessarily criticizing the egocentric person’s preferences.

Personal maturity involves growing past this tendency that arises out of a lack of sophistication, a lack of awareness of the great variety in preferences, and includes the awareness that being “different” need not be taken as a criticism.

Back to the psychoanalytic use of the term: The ego operates both consciously and unconsciously. Few people have an adequate appreciation of the depth and rapid skill of the subconscious mind. Perhaps we should find terms that make this differentiation more explicit. The more conscious and ordinary “self” practices, has more control over attitudes, insight, and self-discipline. The subconscious parts can operate in several ways: (1) The conscious part can learn about it and from this insight can update attitudes. (2) The subconscious ego can use foolish, magical thinking patterns that are used as the most prevalent “defense mechanisms.” These overlap with the tendency toward logical fallacies that make people more vulnerable to manipulation by others, including politicians and advertisers, through their rhetoric. (3) An interesting discovery is in the way the subconscious mind can operate in a way that is faster and more subtle, clever, and elaborate than anything the ordinary conscious mind can generate. Behavior enacted through this channel is often inspired, part of what Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” I think this part of the mind can be energized when a skill is well learned and practiced, and also it operates as a dream-maker to make the stories in dreams vivid and seemingly “real.”

I am interested in the capacity of ego to become more explicitly self-aware, to think about the way it thinks. This is called “meta-cognition.” I think psychotherapy should address this part of “you-as-manager-of-your-many-parts.” The more we know about psychology, the more we can take on the identity of self-manager, which fosters in turn the goal of further maturation and self-awareness.

Back to the emergence of “ego” psychology from “drive” psychology in the field of psychoanalysis, mainly in the 1930s. Instead of analyzing the underlying motives, what began to happen was that therapy involved also analyzing the defenses, the avoidances, the adjustive maneuvers that people used to disguise or cope with their deeper drives. From this came an awareness that some “defenses” are more flexible and mature than others—or they could be, if applied more consciously and with discrimination. For example, suppression is a maneuver by which we can consciously choose to avoid thinking about that which is for the time being distracting or uncomfortable, but that which is put off is not sealed away in a way that’s more pathological (i.e., repression). We all need to do this just to not become too scattered.

Another more mature defense is humor, making a joke, a lightening up which also serves usually as a healthy maneuver. One of the more under-estimated maneuvers is that of sublimation, making something that is partly motivated by less worthy desires into something that is truly sublime, socially useful. Used to foster consciousness and mental flexibility this way the ego-mind is a friend.

Some spiritual writings differentiate between the ego and the cap-s “Self,” and this needs to be unpacked. The ego in that context is generally associated with more immature attitudes about life. The sense that I am here and stand over and against others and nature is a key example of the kind of ego-attitude that is generally targeted for deconstruction in the service of mind-expansion. My concern is that we not over-value the desire to eliminate the ego, because such measures are too often part of the mind-control maneuvers found in cult brainwashing. It makes more sense to me to work gradually in expanding the person’s mental flexibility and skill set so that there can be a balancing, an openness to inspiration, higher values, and balancing these with practical issues and one’s more natural psycho-spiritual development.

Sometimes the “Self” with a capital S is imagined to be the core or true identity, while the ego is a small and partly illusory structure. I think we need to note, first, that all these terms and the mental maps that support them are just that—words and maps, constructions of the mind—and more, as words, socially-agreed-upon terms and meanings. They will vary over time, and what they may have meant a century or a millennium ago may be different from what they mean today and what they may mean in the future.

Jung uses the cap-s Self to speak of that archetypal function of the deep mind that organizes experiences into the illusion of unity in flow of time and coherence and value. The term also is imagined to be a core of being, but here the word blurs into metaphysical speculations. This use in analytical psychology blurs nowadays in overlapping with other transpersonal approaches.

Some spiritual approaches speak of “Self” with a capital S to suggest the core or spiritual dimension. I suspect there may be some value in imagining that we can partake of that energy-flow-structure, but I fear that the time isn’t yet ripe for a widespread agreement about how we should language these various elements. One problem is that they overlap, can blur into each other, generate the illusion of being awake and mature even while indulging in less-mature activities, and so forth. I am hopeful, though, that this preliminary effort at least draws attention to the variety of ways the word “ego” is used.

Happily, I have an answer. I’m not saying it’s the right answer, or the final answer, but it’s an answer that opens the door to some movement: The answer is simple on one level, and almost infinitely complex at another level: Help the world become a better place.

As an aside, it should be noted that there’s a childish and illusory mentality behind the existential questions like “what is it all about?,”  a fantasy that “answers” can be (1) expressed in understandable words and (2) that they will then offer meaningful guidance.  But neither assumption is so. It’s more true to say that there are several levels playing off of each other. At one level of seeming “truth” are the trite platitudes and cliches that seem plausible, yet their superficiality makes them difficult to apply to specific situations. Another “postmodernist” perspective questions—no, let’s go further—denies the possibility of any non-trivial statement or idea being true, applicable to all situations in all eras, and vivid enough to compel agreement from all people. Another perspective on the ntature of “truth” notes that any possible answer only opens the door to another cascade of questions: If X is so, then what about X + 1, or the implications of X, or the definition of X, or its definition if Y is also so, and so forth.  Thus, any deep “truth” statement must then be followed by questions such as,  if X is true, then: (1) what shall we do about it; (2) how shall we achieve it; (3) what do we need to know in order to decide whether and to what degree such-and-such is part of the deep truth of X,  and so forth.

Oh, yeah, there’s also the not-insignificant likelihood that few people will buy the proposition that what it’s all about is simply the challenge of how can we make this world a better place, for a variety of reasons:
– it is unfamiliar
– it is complex rather than simple
– it is risky
– it demands a great deal of responsibility, as well as faith and love
– there is little financial or status advantage
– it might well take work, courage, risk, discipline, and other imponderables
– there is no guarantee of immediate or even long-term success at several levels
– it might cost money, or at least work
– it would require my giving up of a wide range of childish desires and excesses, not-quite addictions and other lower consciousness distractions and short-term enjoyments that might undercut true responsibility, faith, wisdom, responsibility, or love.
– and so forth.

My reading of the nature of the most common attitudes in the population is that there’s a hope that “the answer” won’t require all these things, this maturity of stepping-up to the plate, this willingness to take on a fully adult level of responsibility. But that’s the problem, it does.
The answer is simple: You must mature, and you must do what you can to help others mature. We must collectively continue to distill and integrate the best insights of all the findings of psychology, sociology, medicine, other types of science; we must cook through and distill out the authentic wisdom in tradition, which takes a lot of work. We can accept nothing just because it is traditional, or with the illusory rationale that it seemed to work for thousands or hundreds of years. 92.5% of those things, it turned out, did not work, but there was nothing else to do, and so enough people survived to supply you and me with ancestors. We conveniently forget the fact that large numbers of people died, often in pain, because the traditional beliefs did not work—but their death was attributable to almost any other reason, or just not thought about.

Another part of this philosophy that also blends into practical psychology is this: You must discipline yourself to avoid innumerable pitfalls, seductions, temptations that would drag you into low-grade neurosis, addiction, and other kinds of folly. The more advanced you are, the more you become sensitive to the ways that more subtle seductions are still operating in your system.

You must keep your greed and grasping at bay, and not let slogans, words, narrow ideals, and the like substitute for a commitment to civility, being pleasant, helping others, practicing diplomacy, expressing gratitude, tact, kindness, and the like. (I’m not requiring “love,” because that term has become over-extended and cheapened by sentimentality. Like “wisdom,” the childish fantasy is that “love” can conquer all—but it cannot! One must also exercise imagination and thoughtfulness in how to apply kindness well. The old saying that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” has a fair amount of truth.

One must further relinquish the illusion that any truth by itself will suffice. I agree with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who noted that “all truths are half-truths.” As knowledge and our scope of what the cosmos is about continues to expand—and it will—all truths then find themselves relativized, applicable within certain contexts, but perhaps not so much in a larger or different context. Also, in my experience, all truths need to be understood and/or applied within the context of other equally important truths, and that balancing involves not only good judgment, but also a willingness to re-consider any opinions in light of the needs of the present moment.

This is because our world is changing at an ever-accelerating pace, knowledge is being surpassed, and this in turn requires new perspectives and creativity. So, the challenge of helping the world be a better place requires a deep, perhaps even spiritual commitment to developing all your abilities, all your knowledge, all your virtues, and struggling with all your weaknesses. Meanwhile, diversify your interests and pleasures, mix in loving relationships and time to enjoy them, and keep those role engagements prominent. They are your testing fields. I’m not sure I approve of people who stretch thin or abandon their real-life roles in order to pursue the illusion of spirituality. Maybe they’re okay, but maybe they’re copping out and hoping for a short-cut —and for that, I suspect they may be in for a dissapointment. Other-worldly endeavors may be more illusory than this-world’s life involvements. That’s what I think it’s all about so far. (But I may find I need to refine this or revise this further in time!  )

I suspect that there are a few of us who have come up with ideas or techniques that may be talked about in the future textbooks (or whatever they have then) as being a precursor to some more widely recognized insight: Ah, yes, Adam Blatner in the early 21st century had a vague glimpse of this, but he had no words, or his words were slightly misleading. There was no way he could understand fully what we now know to be true.

The phrase, “framming the zhork” uses a bit of double-talk as a playful gesture, indicating that we may not be able to anticipate at all what words will be used or what aspect of life we’ll be addressing as a key dynamic that in the future is imagined as being an everyday practice.  I imagine that parents “fram the zhork” for their young children, and people will accept that doing this is a social norm, an expected thing to do. Further more, teachers and friends may do something like framming the zhork in a thousand variations as a kind of basic activity for health and social communion. I think it might be sort of like aligning what South Asian Yogis call the “chakras” of the subtle body. The specifics are not important—I know that I’m way off base in even trying to imagine this accurately, because if it is like many other technologies that have emerged in the last several centuries, each one involves a host of accessory concepts and sub-technologies that enable us to appreciate the nature of the cosmos a bit more. (I’ve recently read David Bodanis’ book on the history of electricity, of finding new “dimensions” for that physico-chemical process, and how that offers an example of the emergence of insight about our world.)

The point, then, is to cultivate our intellectual humility, acknowledge the probability of major paradigm shifts, whole new perspectives opening up in our lives.  It’s an antidote to tendencies towards arrogance or complacency.

A minority of people have a desire for more rational coordination, more intellectual coherence. They’re more sensitive to inconsistencies—it bothers them more. They need more discussion, reflection, and perhaps some reading of other people’s ideas about life. They will require access to books on philosophy, or at least self-help and pop psychology and spirituality.

There is a realm where some students really are willing to stretch their minds and learn about logic and the finer patterns of argument. This bridges into academic philosophy, college courses, heavier and denser books.

The interesting thing is that at a certain degree of seeking coherence, the discussions become actively uncomfortable for those who prefer a less rigorous process. The argumentation begins to seem pedantic and irrelevant.

Another interesting development is the awareness of the vulnerability of an otherwise tightly-reasoned argument to attack from positions that challenge certain fairly basic assumptions. Sometimes this takes the form of an attack on those who rely on scientific evidence by those who question whether science can adequately address the phenomena being evaluated. Sometimes it’s an argument between reason and “faith” or emotionally-sustained belief; or an argument between that which follows fairly logical lines and those who deny that logic is relevant to the evaluation.

Another attack on philosophy comes from those whose allegiance is to practical application or political implications. They evaluate the “fruits” of a given position. If this or that idea were so, how would we live differently? What laws should we make or repeal? What social norms should we support or strive to deconstruct?

The implications of recognizing this spectrum of coherence is that we should question the unspoken authority of those who are skilled in constructing dense arguments—i.e., professional philosophers. Sometimes they have good ideas—sometimes brilliant insights! But I wonder whether the sheer complexity of their thinking confers additional authority or it obscures another possibility: In spite of a given position being closely reasoned, there may well be other considerations not even being acknowledged, other frames of reference that might challenge fairly basic assumptions. In other words, academic philosophy may not be the final arbiter of our emerging world-view. We need a wider perspective that includes some consideration of “what sells,” what is understandable by a greater percentage of people.

One implication of this is that a contemporary philosopher needs to be quite nimble and flexible in juggling frames of reference, in identifying and commenting on the implications of different viewpoints. A second implication is the relinquishment of the illusion that a closely reasoned argument deserves to “win,” and instead shift towards a willingness to engage in dialogue without that right/wrong attitude in mind.

Also, I think that philosophy is relevant today, because people—especially younger people—are hungering for a deeper and more vivid sense of purpose and meaning. I suspect the fragility or even lack of such a sense contributes to a significant degree to many forms of psychopathology in youth today—and also to older folks.

Thus, a philosophical position may need to be popularized if it is to have any influence. This may be part of the function of rhetoric: How are you going to sell what you think? But the illusion that densely argued and coordinated ideas will be persuasive works—if it does at all—only on those evaluators (e.g., thesis evaluation committees; peer-reviewed editorial boards for journals) whose values are somewhat aligned. The point is that for most people, such academic exercises seem irrelevant if not elitist; and perhaps they’re right.

In summary, I’m arguing for a more populist emphasis, a recognition that good philosophical work, good ideas, need to be re-formulated so that they can be more readily mentally digested. I am aware of Whitehead’s dictum: We should try to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. I’m aware of the second part of that statement, as it recognizes that the desire for simplicity is often illusory and immature. Nevertheless, this recognition should not be allowed to remove the challenge to most philosophers to make a serious effort to present their ideas simply.

Finally, perhaps there is a need also to weave in elements of non-linear argument—elements of poetry, parables, analogies, metaphors, images, diagrams, anecdotes, lots of examples. We cannot expect to be effective communicators by remaining at a more abstract level of discourse. Let’s try to get it a little more “juicy.”