Social-ego Death
A week ago, I went to Rome with a couple of friends that I have met here in Bologna. It was a good little journey, although I must say one needs more time in Rome to experience it more extensively. I did really like it however. It's the kind of city I admire: characteristic in its own right (i.e. emblematic of the country or itself), but still large enough to feel like a city, to have hustle and bustle, to have much variety and life. It's up there in my list of preferred cities. However, that's not the point of this post.
My friends and I somehow found ourselves talking about societal expectations on the way back from Rome. It started with my friend disparaging women for feeling as though they need to wear make-up, and by me offering the defence that wearing make-up is a historico-cultural practice that holds its own value and that women either feel some sense of pressure to conform to or feel as though they truly enjoy doing. My defence may not have been great, but in any case, our conversation led to the wider themes underlying what we were talking about: conformity, confidence, loneliness. These are just a few of my favourite themes, so I thought I'd like to note the outcome of that conversation here.
My friend has an interesting point of view regarding society: he says we put humans at the centre of everything too much. This of course sounds odd initially -- of course we do, we're humans, we live for other humans, what else would we do? But no, after digging into it a little, I found that I agree. Of course there is a natural extent to which humans must factor into the life of other human beings, but I believe that in our age we've reached the point where we pathologically centre other people into our lives and thoughts. Social media is the shining beacon of evidence for this. I wake up every day to check my social media accounts and to hope that I have received some kind of communication, and when I haven't, I feel a small pang of neglect. Then I go on to scroll through the 'feeds' of these social media sites to see and evaluate what other people have been doing. I suppose at heart it's to provide a sense of constant community, but the continuous, permanent centring of other people like this feeds neuroses by creating an image mandated by external forces of what your life should look like. And when your life does not look like it, you feel separated, secluded, sad. Checking social media in this way serves to reinforce a sense of social conformity, a placidity with the status quo of being. When other people's lives are the touchstone for the quality of your own life, you do two things: you do not urge yourself to develop on your own terms, outside of what is transmitted to you (thus living more like a sheep or a robot), and you put yourself in a constant state of comparison, making you simply more unhappy.
My friend said he doesn't like the concept of confidence because it makes other people the object of how you feel about yourself. He believes you're waging a losing battle if you begin that way. He believes that confidence isn't a virtue and that you shouldn't care whether you seem confident or diffident in the eyes of others; he believes that you shouldn't have been valuing yourself in the eyes of others in the first place.
I'm never convinced that people can detach themselves entirely from what others think of them, but I do agree with the main thrust of his point. There is probably a continuum on how much importance you put on other people's thoughts, and in our society I think a lot of us land somewhere on the higher end of the continuum. But it's not innate; we can by degrees train ourselves to land lower down on that continuum.
But how can we train ourselves this way? My friends suggested they can melt away the constant buzz of society through natural sports, like surfing or skiing. And I said, but what happens when you're not doing the sport, surely it all comes rushing back again? The expectations, the comparisons, the need to be esteemed. My friend, who surfs, said no, there's a sense in which the way you think is permanently altered by continuously doing natural sports. So perhaps one day I'll get into this. But I think there are other ways too. For example, I think writing, creating worlds, helps to take you out of it. This may sound like escapism, but perhaps your creation might help somebody in the end. Similarly, reading can help take you out of it, if you read for wisdom and not simply for vicarious living. Also, perhaps, engaging with people in such a way that you're not thinking about how you come across, but rather who they are as living creatures.
I think, the goal, rather than to distance yourself from society is to diminish your ego. To derive pleasure from things in and of themselves rather than from their relation to you-as-a-social-being. So rather than the Buddhists' general search for ego death, what we need is more a social-ego death. Because we still need some sense of ego, some desires, to propel us forward. But the desires must be about the good of things in and of themselves, how they help you to flourish as an individual and not as a social-being.
I want to begin my journey towards social-ego death, but I think you can only begin it in an emotionally stable position. I need to set up stations in my life from which I derive a sense of personal fulfilment. Only then can I radically reduce my social media site usage (first step to ego-death). I'm not sure if I can do this while I'm in Bologna. But I'll keep it in mind.
My friends and I somehow found ourselves talking about societal expectations on the way back from Rome. It started with my friend disparaging women for feeling as though they need to wear make-up, and by me offering the defence that wearing make-up is a historico-cultural practice that holds its own value and that women either feel some sense of pressure to conform to or feel as though they truly enjoy doing. My defence may not have been great, but in any case, our conversation led to the wider themes underlying what we were talking about: conformity, confidence, loneliness. These are just a few of my favourite themes, so I thought I'd like to note the outcome of that conversation here.
My friend has an interesting point of view regarding society: he says we put humans at the centre of everything too much. This of course sounds odd initially -- of course we do, we're humans, we live for other humans, what else would we do? But no, after digging into it a little, I found that I agree. Of course there is a natural extent to which humans must factor into the life of other human beings, but I believe that in our age we've reached the point where we pathologically centre other people into our lives and thoughts. Social media is the shining beacon of evidence for this. I wake up every day to check my social media accounts and to hope that I have received some kind of communication, and when I haven't, I feel a small pang of neglect. Then I go on to scroll through the 'feeds' of these social media sites to see and evaluate what other people have been doing. I suppose at heart it's to provide a sense of constant community, but the continuous, permanent centring of other people like this feeds neuroses by creating an image mandated by external forces of what your life should look like. And when your life does not look like it, you feel separated, secluded, sad. Checking social media in this way serves to reinforce a sense of social conformity, a placidity with the status quo of being. When other people's lives are the touchstone for the quality of your own life, you do two things: you do not urge yourself to develop on your own terms, outside of what is transmitted to you (thus living more like a sheep or a robot), and you put yourself in a constant state of comparison, making you simply more unhappy.
My friend said he doesn't like the concept of confidence because it makes other people the object of how you feel about yourself. He believes you're waging a losing battle if you begin that way. He believes that confidence isn't a virtue and that you shouldn't care whether you seem confident or diffident in the eyes of others; he believes that you shouldn't have been valuing yourself in the eyes of others in the first place.
I'm never convinced that people can detach themselves entirely from what others think of them, but I do agree with the main thrust of his point. There is probably a continuum on how much importance you put on other people's thoughts, and in our society I think a lot of us land somewhere on the higher end of the continuum. But it's not innate; we can by degrees train ourselves to land lower down on that continuum.
But how can we train ourselves this way? My friends suggested they can melt away the constant buzz of society through natural sports, like surfing or skiing. And I said, but what happens when you're not doing the sport, surely it all comes rushing back again? The expectations, the comparisons, the need to be esteemed. My friend, who surfs, said no, there's a sense in which the way you think is permanently altered by continuously doing natural sports. So perhaps one day I'll get into this. But I think there are other ways too. For example, I think writing, creating worlds, helps to take you out of it. This may sound like escapism, but perhaps your creation might help somebody in the end. Similarly, reading can help take you out of it, if you read for wisdom and not simply for vicarious living. Also, perhaps, engaging with people in such a way that you're not thinking about how you come across, but rather who they are as living creatures.
I think, the goal, rather than to distance yourself from society is to diminish your ego. To derive pleasure from things in and of themselves rather than from their relation to you-as-a-social-being. So rather than the Buddhists' general search for ego death, what we need is more a social-ego death. Because we still need some sense of ego, some desires, to propel us forward. But the desires must be about the good of things in and of themselves, how they help you to flourish as an individual and not as a social-being.
I want to begin my journey towards social-ego death, but I think you can only begin it in an emotionally stable position. I need to set up stations in my life from which I derive a sense of personal fulfilment. Only then can I radically reduce my social media site usage (first step to ego-death). I'm not sure if I can do this while I'm in Bologna. But I'll keep it in mind.
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