Ego

[Mr. Tea]

Tbf to myself I've never engaged in ego death rhetoric and I've never trusted it. It's always seemed dangerously self deceiving to me.

Fair enough, that is a consistent stance that I can respect.

Also, there's this famous quote:

Acid is not for every brain .... Only the healthy, happy, wholesome, handsome, hopeful, humorous, high-velocity should seek these experiences. This elitism is totally self-determined. Unless you are self-confident, self-directed, self-selected, please abstain.

which is at odds with the 'ego death' stuff, too.

Psychedelics in Aztec society were the preserve of the imperial family, select nobility and high priests, and not used by the hoi-poloi, I think.

 

[luka]

But obviously as you can tell my assumption has always been that my approach is the safest, healthiest and most honest. That's why it's my approach.

London is the one place (probably along with Manchester) in Britain that doesn't place an onus on 'modesty'. Pull your neck in. Don't stand out. That morality. Don't get ideas above your station. That policing of the social body.

 

[luka]

Good old Aztecs!

 

[DannyL]

So no one here has ever had those moments where you see through yourself and your own bullshit? You realise how much you can just sidestep and uninvolve yourself from your own crap? That's what I think of when I think of "ego death". The problem is, is that then a kind of narcissism creeps in about how "liberated" you actually are which starts the cycle all over again. Choygam Trungpa writes about this very clearly in the classic "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism". (And was apparently proof how difficult it is to live these values being a bit of an abusive alcoholic at times).

We are never gong to be without egos but I do think some practices, therapy etc can sand off some of the worst edges. I was reading a bit of Buddhist material yesterday (instructions for a 7 day retreat that was being suggested as something to do in these COVID times) and that material is overflowing with attitudinal suggestions and values that decentre the big "I am" and encourage you to put others first.

I think doing a lot of meditation long term unmoors this stuff, decentres the self a bit.

 

[luka]

Well weed does that doesn't it. That's why it can unmoor people psychologically. Because they can't trust their own instincts anymore. And this again is one of those very difficult things. To what extent to trust your instincts, when to trust your instincts, when to interrogate them. We were talking about this on some music thread can't remember the title

 

[luka]

"Teach me about"

Obviously there is a tension here, one I've never been able to adequately resolve , between, I guess, the notion of a core self, our 'true being' the one that does not and will never like jaco pastorious, and the notion of self as sphincter, which clenches the orifice to resist the experience.

From my own experience there is a danger in assuming your first 'instinctive' reaction to something is reflective of some inner truth or whatever. One of the reasons it is so important to smoke a lot of weed as a teenager while your brain is still developing is that it allows you, as a listener, to move around the sonic object, unweave the layers, hear different aspects of it in turn, isolate drum or bass or voice, uncover emotional resonances, discover patterns, in short, to discover how inadequate our everyday perceptions are in regard to experience itself

 

[droid]

Ego death has nothing to do with 'ego' as in the topic of the thread. Ego death is the total annihilation of the self as an executive mechanism. It goes deep into the structure of consciousness and severs the trunk.

Ego as it is being described here is just a sense of excessive self esteem, or a manifestation of narcissism, one minor manifestation of the self.

 

[luka]

So there are different ways to conceptualise this. It's tricky ground. We have to be able to trust and affirm our instincts in order to act but we also have to accept that our instincts can be off and lead us into trouble. That an ugly instinct can disguise itself as a pure one that a mean instinct can disguise itself as a generous one and so on and so forth.

And that's not even taking into consideration the various different ways any act or utterance can be interpreted by those around you.

 

[luka]

As Danny says, the cycle always starts again. That is one of the themes of Finnegans Wake. "The fall of a once wallstrait old pa"

 

[luka]

There are instincts such as the pile on instinct the natural human urge to put the boot in when someone's down. There is the top dog instinct, the instinct to sieze dominance and protect it. Instincts which are bound up inextricably with actual or symbolic violence. And to what extent these need to be either renounced or sublimated or managed, you know, that's what it's all about. Trying to figure out how to live with other people. How to be.

 

[luka]

And the question to of what 'instinct' might mean. Which becomes ideological. And it's sensible to ask whether your beliefs on these matters are merely self serving. Or to ask if they make you a puppet of power.

What is inculcated socially? Does this serve power rather than community? Is this really just a value free inheritance of the DNA or is it something else?

 

[luka]

I want to see people in high spirits, exuberant and showing off. That's joyous. People trusting themselves and their instincts and celebrating themselves.

So, what I tell myself, and you can tell me this is self serving and delusional, is that acting the way I do is a way to give permission to other people to behave in the same way. Do this. This is better. And the way we all act is, surely, a way of telling other people how they should act. It sets an example.

 

[luka]

pretty good survival tool in this doggy dogg world

This for me was a crucial insight once I realised exactly how some self styled alpha types were trying to put it over me I worked out the ways to disable and override it. So you're not shrinking in the face of it, you're matching it and undermining it.

You know, don't let em get away with that nonsense.

 

[shiels]

I think that can be true, there can be a generosity to it. I certainly feel that friends and family get more value from me when I’m loving and enjoying myself, expressing myself with conviction. When I ruminate it sucks the life out of others too

 

[luka]

The TV show 'Pose' - about 1980s Ball culture in New York - is pretty amazing on all this; even if it's not explicitly articulated, it's very present in the script.

How racialisation/racism, homophobia/transphobia, sexism etc depend upon the creation (and daily recreation) of shame for their perpetuation, and so narcissism can be employed as a defence against this. (I mean this descriptively and not as a prescriptive judgment, obvs).

This is useful too. You know, in terms of, 20 people strutting down the street but the strut means different things and is interpreted in different ways depending on the person and their relationship with society at large etc. What the same clothes mean on different people etc etc etc.

 

[shiels]

I think you’re a good poster on here because of that conviction, it’s energising

 

[luka]

I think that can be true, there can be a generosity to it. I certainly feel that friends and family get more value from me when I’m loving and enjoying myself, expressing myself with conviction. When I ruminate it sucks the life out of others too

It's like when my dad had had the right amount of drink at the dinner table and the whole mood lifted and everyone was able to enjoy themselves instead of labouring under this dark leaden cloud or twitching with fear

 

[luka]

Thank you Shiels that's a nice thing to say. That's the reason I do it this way. Barty was the first person to take it in that way. As an invitation to do the same thing, not as an invitation to worship and adore and genuflect. That's why I love Barty and am eternally grateful to him.

 

[luka]

What I've come to believe is that you have to trust other people. Which is not to say other people are always, always right, or can never misunderstand you but other people are the crucial feedback in terms of where to trust yourself and where to question yourself.

That's why having yes men around you is supposed to be bad isn't it. You lose the crucial feedback channels. You become information poor.

 

[luka]

But tricky, very tricky. There's a rhythm in my life, my own boom and bust cycle, which I've talked about before a few times, of starting from the ruins and rubble and building up till I'm very good and people like me and appreciate me then I get too overinflated and something else creeps in and I realise I am a cunt and etc. The fall of a once wallstrait oldparr.