The Withdrawn Nature of The Ego

Ego is alined as a mathematical analysis of reality as much as it is imaginative fantasy, but in both cases The Ego is hidden, and this has an impact.

In “The Ego And Its Hyperstate: A Psychoanalytically Informed Dialectical Analysis of Self-Interest,” I discussed how The Ego and Self-Interest can be understood as a single substance which appears and actually consists of a variety of different forms. Due to the multiplicity of The Ego, much of what humanity creates becomes hidden in both motive and manifestations. I say, “manifestations,” because if a semblance occurs hiding some true mathematically known force, the semblance itself is still historical and actual content of The Ego. Past false manifestations are true, positive force insofar as they exist (although not as astrologers might say, in other ways, which would be a side-note to their quality as semblance).

Ego and Positive Semblance

As Lacan and Freud both note, the signifier has an impact to connect us to ourselves and our pasts, as well as people to each other. This gives another “true” or better understood, “positive” quality to falsity or hidden false posits. This universal can in fact, be the same as something appearing in a form of non-semblance, or what can be known imperfectly as Actual Truth. Structures and institutions can be made from building material of falsity and truth due to the fact that Semblance can connect one to the other, and one to itself.

Together as Myth

I use the term “myth” not to describe a historical narrative, but to describe the reflective recognition of the gap between what appears and what is hidden. When we understand there is a gap based on what appears and what is, we are capable of knowing Myth as Myth.

To know Myth as Myth is not to know truth exactly as such, since Myth as Myth is not the concrete content of Truth. To know actual force we then have to study how truth, falsity, appearance, via different categories connect to each other via actual force, semblance, and the plurality of various dimensions in which The Ego appears. The Ego is not just one’s view of one’s self, but actual, mathematically known force.

“The atomic bomb is the most powerful weapon on earth is a myth.” I could argue against it and say weapons that can be used in actual combat are in truth more powerful, but none the less a mathematical truth of the blast radius and fallout of the atomic bomb come together, perhaps as a reminder mostly to never drop the atomic bomb on anyone. To know Myth as Myth in the case of the atomic bomb is to hystericize a functional Myth which is widely agreed to connect to the “good cause” (another form of The Ego) of not having humanity engage in large scale nuclear conflict/large scale war, etcetera.

Seperated via Truth

Through the analysis of connections, one reflects on the connections in ways which may be not typical. This puts one outside of the connections themselves; in other words, seperated via the very truth of the thing itself.

This is what Zizek describes as the negative quality of the functioning social world. Some Myths must stay Myths in order to have a basic and necessary function, or they risk functional collapse.

The Withdrawn Nature of the Ego

Because things must remain hidden to function, The Ego out of necessity remains withdrawn, in order to not disturb its own objective content and structures. Thus, the pipe dream of the Western Buddhist to destroy The Ego is a misguided one. Not only do they fail in destroying The Ego (rather, they misrecognize what The Ego truly is via their very Ego), but to destroy a structure just to destroy the structure is no “good virtue.”

Decoding for the sake of Decoding is Decoding-for-itself, and Not Decoding-in-and-for-itself which recognizes decoding as a function of the good, or even a function of The Ego. It can never escape that it is always a function of The Ego, so there is not a question of selfishness, but rather of Decoding-for-Enjoyment and its relation to The Good and the social.

For people like me who tend towards Decoding-for-Enjoyment, a small psychological intervention could be to be mindful of word choice (a mythic version of the decoded more accurate statement: be mindful of what is made social).

The Ego is always withdrawn, so the excuse of revealing-as-good is not as solid as it appears prior to analysis. It is decoding-for-enjoyment, or decoding-for-itself, but it is a form which doesn’t take into itself yet its own context withing The Ego, and thus, it does not yet understand The Good and its relationship to The Ego.

Never be fooled, revealing nerds, into thinking your revelry makes you good.