Otis

The public radio show On the Media just did a series on whether NPR was politically biased. They invited on a listener, who claimed that he heard bias, and he gave a couple examples. His examples, however, were not about content or word choice. Instead, they were describing the announcer's tone of voice as he read the news. The listener was sure that the announcer must be biased, because he seemed "happy" about a certain outcome. This kind of bias, of course, is near impossible to prove, but it doesn't stop the listener from making a global assumption (NPR is biased) from very minute evidence (someone's supposed tone of voice). And, of course, the more sure the listener is that the bias is real, the more likely he is going to hear that tone of voice, which supports his bias. This is the process by which the ego makes itself important, not always by telling stories about himself, but by telling stories about the world, in which his perceptions are always the right ones.

Ego may sometimes make the "right" decisions, but it'll always make them for delusional reasons. This is because it is model-based, concept-based, and therefore is always working out its theories on imaginary realities. For example: I'm trying to figure out how X person will react when I say Y. So I run my simulation program for X, and listen to what the fantasy in my head tells me will happen. Maybe I run the program several times, and factor in different variables, like X's mood, the environmental influences, etc., and I create something of an average of responses. Or maybe I do a little statistical analysis, say X is usually in Z mood, so therefore, I think I can count on a Z mood response. Depending on how well I know X, I may actually fantasize a pretty accurate response. From that, I might start to believe in the delusion that I can read X, that I know what's actually happening in X's head (I don't know about y'all, but I have zero knowledge of what's happening in someone else's head). The more certainty I have in "knowing" X, the more likely I am to indulge in delusional decision-making. There may even be a point in which I ask X what he is thinking, only to have my theory disproved by his response. And yet I may choose to believe my theory anyway, and disbelieve what X has told me. X must be lying or fooling himself, because my certainty is so strong. In this way, knowing and certainty increase the power of my ego, increase my delusion, decrease my willingness to listen, and create further levels of separation between me and reality. The simulations are remembered the same way as the experiences, so in my head, X becomes a mash-up of what I've witnessed, and what I've imagined. The only way that I can see X as a full, real human being, is to stop running my simulations of him, to stop reducing him to a fantasy in my head.

The definition of ego that makes the most sense to me: my habits of consciousness. Ego is the conditioned wiring of my brain, which separates, tags, organizes, theorizes, and tries to control phenomena. As such, the ego may be necessary to get started in life in this society, because consensus reality depends on a common language, and many shared assumptions. Education makes sure that we're all on the same delusional page.

This one made me cry just now: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150394422860707 Soldiers coming home from the wars, greeting their loved ones at home.

Agreed! The journey never ends! I can't "attain" and then sit back, and phone it in. I have to be brave enough to face every moment, on its terms, for the rest of my time. As long as I try to escape the negative experiences (or even the boring ones), I won't grow past them. To fully say yes to life is to say yes to (and take responsibility for) every single component of my life, no matter how intense, how painful, how confusing, how mundane.

Another great single-parent-alone-with-child flick is Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, directed by Scorsese. The Woodsman, if you're ready to sympathize with the child molester (Kevin Bacon). Beautifully made.

Agreed! A limit assumed is a trap I put myself into.

Discussions on the ego and self are tricky, because there are not enough pronouns to handle it. When I write, I write from ego. That is what formulates my language, that is the part of me which tries to figure out how someone else will read my words. But then, when I talk about "my body", I am not speaking of a body that belongs to my ego; quite the opposite. I see the ego as being a subsection (or emergent phenomenon) of the brain, which is a subsection of the body. So "I" really belong to my body. "My habits" describes the workings of the ego, but "my intuition", "my emotions", "my imagination", even "my thoughts" all describe other parts of "my" brain, which my ego is vaguely privy to, but not in charge of. The are not "me" (i.e. not part of my ego), but of course, along with my ego (and various other parts), they help make up the greater me (my body).

Yes, that is very much how I approach parkour, (not trying to emulate what I see in youtube videos), but just finding my playful relationship with the physical environment. Glad to hear that your health is turning back around again, Zerostao! Keep it up!

Chan-wook Park's "Old Boy" for revenge films. For straight-ahead dramas, I love Kramer vs. Kramer. The father/son relationship in that moves me! 9/11 films: United 93 and the Hamburg Cell. Just about any Holocaust film, including the Holocaust miniseries. Several Iraq war documentaries. Clockwork Orange (an exhausting film to watch) Reservoir Dogs Just about anything by Mike Leigh or Lars von Triers

Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDaiFfY78a4

Stay a dreamer, friend. I was hoping that you would like the video!

Too bad. He doesn't really start talking about the Tao until maybe 90 seconds in.

I don't think that what the creator of the video is saying is the whole truth. I think what he's offering is a counter-weight offering to the story that society gives as truth: if you don't fit in, it's because of a character flaw. I'm sure we can all recognize some cases in which a person's gift and their liability are one and the same thing. Personally, I think it happens all the time. What's beautiful about the video is that it is full of grace; for it is grace to recognize and make room for greatness in others.

Once I started doing authentic stretch and dance, then the other practices called me to them. Fooling around with an umbrella one day ignited my desire to play with a staff, and from there, to sword-fighting. One day, I decided to take my shoes off on the trail, and I've been barefoot hiking ever since. I found myself climbing on urban features before I heard of parkour. I went from serious fear of injury to doing stunts and riding a motorcycle, in a couple years. I started breakdancing, at 35. I got in front of the camera for the first time at 37, and started making videos about facing my fears. None of these practices even seemed possible to me, just a few years earlier, but once I started letting my body express itself in the ways it wanted to, it led me into all these new directions and more.

I remember when I went to Burning Man for the first time. I felt very alienated at first; what a freak show! It took a mushroom trip for me to realize: "I'm a freak, too!" I am not "normal", nor will I ever be. Nor, really, have I ever wanted to be. So why did I oppose their lack of adhering to an ideal? Since someone else's freakiness isn't like mine, it's easy for me to leave them out in the cold. It's easy for me to draw the line in such a way that includes my gifts/challenges (which are often the same things), but which excludes someone else's. I'm in; they're out. I'm pretty sure that if I lived someone else's life, then I would have a different idea of what was in and out. What if we said: everyone's trying. Let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt, as long as they're not doing serious damage to others or the environment. Let me accept the genius in myself, and accept the genius in everyone else, even if I don't always see either. That's what I think this is about (even though I'm less crazy about the song's 90% exclusion propaganda, but I see that as a marketing tool. People still want to feel special). Truth is: I think pretty much everyone is a freak, in one way or another.

Yeah, whether I make myself into a martyr or a hero, I'm still elevating my importance. I think "loud" is a very good term for it. Loud and fast. The quickest, most insistent internal reaction (the one accompanied by all the alarms going off) to a crisis situation is often the worst response, but it is usually the most compelling one.

Hey Aaron. Great points; I'm in much agreement. A question about this: My question is: if the ego obscures the actual us, does that suggest that the ego is something separate from the actual us? Or is the "actual" self the ego self + all the other parts of self that I don't usually think of as "self"? If it is the latter, then what distinguishes the "actual self" from what there is right now, which is the sum total of all parts? Another way of asking this is: where does the ego go, when you perceive your "actual self"? Feel free to deconstruct!

This is very much how I view ego, as basically my interpretive lens for seeing and interacting with reality. Or, I could say: ego is the action of mistaking my internal simulacrum of reality, for what is actually out there.

Good observation. I notice the same (and freedom emerging when my body moves on its own). IME, moving while in ego is like riding a bike with the brakes always on. From that, I take it that the part of my brain which I refer to as "me" (i.e. the ego) is a language-oriented area, but not a physical movement area. It tries to control the body's movement (because it thinks it's the whole "me" and therefore needs to be in control), but it isn't designed for the job, and so it ends up getting in the body's way. That's why I see authentic movement practices as so important, so "I" (i.e. my ego) can spend time getting out of the way, allowing my body (i.e. the movement areas of my brain & body) to be back in control of the tasks that it's supposed to do.

Yeah, who knows in what ways we are programming ourselves now? I know some people who have grown so dependent on their GPS systems, that they've lost the ability to navigate on their own. Yeah, I think that horror movies, for example, serve a purpose by activating certain systems in the human body that would otherwise go unstimulated. In pre-language humanity, we'd witness (and cause) gruesome death, on a regular basis. We would chase and be chased. Now, we usually only get that emotional charge vicariously, through news and entertainment.

Here's another question for the Bums: Is the "you" that is reading this, who may create a response, is that "you" your ego? Or is that really You? When are you not your ego? Or are "you" always the ego, but within the greater You?

In the beginning, there was the word... I think language gave rise to the ego. Language was this great new technology, that allowed man to work cooperatively, as never before. The problem is: technology has a way of reprogramming the brains of the people who use it. Prior to language, there was the world, without conceptual separation. "You", "me", "good", "bad" did not exist, just life as one stream, with different flavors. Once we had language, then there was separation, there was duality, there were concepts of pursue and avoid, virtue and vice. This technology made us more powerful as a community, and sped up education, but the individual human now was alienated from life. We were taught by language, and formed beliefs made up of language. We began to mistake the concepts for the real thing, to mistake the dualities as describing how life is and/or should be. The further removed we were from experiential education, the more important the conceptual world became, and the less important the actual world. Soon, we started resenting the actual world for not living up to our conceptual world. We blamed life for not being kind enough. We had to create deities to help us control life. We had to create demons to explain suffering. We turned ourselves into a divine species, more important than all others. We retreated from the natural world, further and further into our technologies and belief systems. Eventually, especially in the West, we got so alienated from the natural, that we started seeing natural functions as gross, ungodly, below us. Our purpose was to be rational, to think our way through every problem, to design solutions, rather than find the ones that were already in the world. Our body was to be covered up, as much as possible, and kept removed from the environment, and from each others' eyes. And our body and desires were conceptually sliced up: into useful parts and sinful parts, so we were no longer whole. We were now considered born impure, animalistic, and only conditioning (and the grace of God) could get us to virtue.

Fair point. Virtue is never a fixed line.