Ego as effort

I’ve said that values are an effort, which if recognised are raised as virtues — it is important to realise that many efforts are not perceived, not even taken for granted, and even if perceived, may not be seen as an effort, where efforts are not (allowed to be) recognised (among us).

As we self the world among others doing the same.

In such worlds where there is an outcome a society recognises, even without potentially naming one of these efforts as the “social institution of the individual” one of these efforts is the “ego”.

Now while some, or many, of us see that there is more effort in not being egotistical, this over-reach misses the success of a point-of-view as a partiality of the world, at least in evolutionary terms as point of survival, or at least its ancient selection, natural, self-domesticating, or otherwise.

Being egotistical is an indulgence which is only possible because of the effort to be a point-of-view in the first place, again, however natural or domesticated this may be. I.E. Just because you are lucky enough to not notice every heartbeat you live… — every heartbeat is an effort. Being able to criticise it as egotistical is a blessing.

I say effort here, and forwards, and not labour because that would make our success a curse, and a god who would do that is emotionally lazy and best avoided. The world is bigger than that.

In addition, even if, and even as… we fawn or fault this ‘ego’ we often fail to percieve and so recognise the world it selfs among (tunnel vision). The world is also an effort, even if the egotistical lack it altogether, and can only perceive it as a conspiracy against themselves.

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Crosposted at substack.com

Postscript: 

Postscript: One could map the terms id, ego, superego to all that “ego as effort” handwaving… where values when ‘recognised’ become virtue, but those nouns greatly misled us.

Analysis into categories effaces/represses more than it activates. What is lost is the aspect of social learning that carries us through life, that which we copy from, learn through, and individuate our persons within… the world —among others doing the selfsame thing.

Meetings make us human, copying make us individually human, most of morality is about setting all that to rights. It's a mess of intentions. That is a good thing. You can feel alone in a crowd, but you’ll likely die in the dark wood.

“Hello” I wave.

Hello?