Not now, but before now, we could think that a beginner’s mind was possible. Drawing on our autonomy, we could empty our minds. Get ahead of the rails we ride. Listen up. And approach new ideas without preconceptions or false posits. Now we know better. We know too much about biology, history and language. The great mass of intelligences that keep us humming can’t easily be set aside. We’re already in deep, real deep. Patterned. Habituated.
Still, stopped short by the crisis-at-hand and by the certainties it felled, a new vantage point—a new discipline—may appeal, enlighten, inspire. Such a discipline would address the demands of autonomy, and the place that it has in our lives.
Said another way, it would address fighting the good fight.
When we meet the demands of autonomy aren’t we creating the substance–-the very backbone—of personhood? Think about it. Don’t we now recognize that what was absent from the nation’s balance sheets was the substantive breadth and depth of such persons? Can’t we now see that a humane responsibility, prudence and integrity were missing from how much of the nation’s corporate business and political oversight was conducted?
Don’t we now understand that wealth and status do not substitute for substance, for the call on conscience, for the exchange of equivalent value or for the desire and determination to avoid corruption? In fact, isn’t it now obvious that we need a profound and striking change in being and direction—in how we go about being human?
So what’s in the way of this striking change in being and direction? We are! Aside from scramble-for-life street wits instantly acquired in the face of danger, a new idea or new body of intelligence must go mano a mano with the way we already are. Oh, maybe not—if the discipline is chemistry or math, whose principles and premises don’t compete with our mindsets. But when the topic on the table argues with our self-image, we hunker down.
Real substance—real depth—is hard-won because our subjectivity must struggle against inborn resistances as well as prevailing attitudes. Intellectual integrity and moral resource must be pioneered and their claim staked in an environment already embellished by bling, compromised by false fronts and pocked by corruptions of meaning and purpose. Plus, this suspect territory is guarded by a watchful but thoroughly untrustworthy and benighted ego-protection program.
Let me explain what I mean.
Our subjective traditions reflect an extraordinary capacity that, among other virtues, allows us to seemingly distance ourselves, if only momentarily, from happenstance. However, this subjective advantage is now commonly misdirected toward an overblown egoism whose superficial understanding of what constitutes self-worth and respectability hides from us the authentic character-building demands of autonomy. And it is to this false autonomy, to this lopsided egoism, that we retreat for reference, evaluation, comparison and authority. I call this subjective turn away from the demands of autonomy the ego-protection program.
Ego-tripping is not reserved for the pompous or arrogant. Largely human-made, the ego-protection program is also a piece of our shared inheritance. And when we are located in the ego-protection program, mistakenly convinced that we already have it all together and don’t need to rock the boat, we hide our egos from the demands of autonomy. All of us can see how others give themselves credit for virtues they don’t have. But few of us can see where we lack autonomy or the distressing price we pay for its absence. For example, we don’t equate our own ego-orientation with our disappointment in how the world is, do we?
A simple ego, even if vigilantly protected, is no match for the hard knocks of life. Though egoism gone awry assumes that we have an innate autonomy ready-to-hand, the assumption is a mistake. The rugged resourceful spirit that characterizes autonomy is incrementally and diligently earned, as we acquire our mettle and turn this self-reliance to good use while life gets right up in our face.
In addition, the ego-protection program is a fantasy world that can somehow make sense of or justify whatever we think, say or do. Under its aegis, thinking that the troubled and unfair world is the source of our dissatisfaction, we permit all sorts of bad faith or ill-advised means in order to achieve the end—the life we really wanted.
In sum, the ego protection works something like this: In our minds, with the acrobatic reach of subjectivity put to ill-use and with solipsistic rationalization, we except ourselves from the struggle to meet the personal imperatives inherited from our common history. Mentally excusing ourselves from the demand that we become fully human in this manner, the demand that we choose wisdom, kindness, contribution and fair play in our efforts to perfect personhood, we avoid the hard work and sweat of acquiring authenticity and real self-control, and of making tough humane, compassionate decisions.
Yes, the ego-protection program does have its eye on Scoreboard’s take on what constitutes the appearance of substance and insists that we put together an image of respectability, image being the operative word. However, Scoreboard willfully ignores the fact that the substantive dimension of life—the character on which moral imagination and resource is built—requires discipline and acting in good faith. Nothing in the ego-protection program drives us to author control of our rivalrous instincts for status and social identity; of our overwhelming all-too-often greedy immediacy; and of our counterproductive and high-maintenance emotional dependencies.
And, without such control—at the heart and soul of personhood, i.e., of what it means to be fully human—we have no bearings, no moral compass. As a result, we are easily pressured by the ego-protection program to jump on the bandwagon of what everyone else is doing, however shifty and unstable.
In the recent past, we were swept into the material-success-at-any-price zeitgeist. As such, we had to leave behind certain demands of autonomy; for example, that we practice good sense and personal responsibility in the light of a larger purpose to our lives. Still, we went along, fearful of being marginalized if we didn’t appear successful by Scoreboard’s ever-escalating standards. But however much this corruption of purpose served our image, we settled for a lesser inner life. An impoverished life whose vitality was sapped by tired, timid and complicit repetition of bubble-driven choices and pieties, not to mention waffling moral obligation and stress.
The promised existence, the achievement of a personally rewarding life that contributes to a less troubled, more compassionate world, awaits the individual who fights the good fight. We fight the good fight when we shoulder the burden of our condition and circumstance. We fight the good fight when we gain creative control over our way of being in the world, when we exit the ego-protection program and work to satisfy the demands of autonomy. Indeed, our subjective egos don’t need protection when who we are is autonomous—a model of stability built of self-control, self-determination, creative intelligence, moral resource and practical competence.
Humanity’s gradual recognition of this truth over the millennia is a remarkable achievement, built upon layers and layers of effort on its behalf.
For two additional looks at how unexamined beliefs and mindsets can get in the way of our moral identity, please see Bigger truth, bigger life and Meet the invisible self.