The concept of ego has been a motif recurring in my life at different intervals for a couple years now. After several episodes during which I found myself getting unnecessarily defensive when certain topics came up or my emotions changing irrationally at the whims of my pride, I decided it was time for some self-reflection. I’ve always known what the problem was: my ego. Unfortunately, just knowing the culprit hasn’t made the solution easy to implement. It is incredibly frustrating to recognize in real time when ego is fomenting irrationality and being able to do little to reign it in. In my apparent helplessness, I looked to external guidance for a solution.

I did what I often do in moments like these: I looked for literature. I had remembered reading about the concept of “ego death” as something related to the use of psychedelic drugs. While what ego death truly means in practice — a complete loss of subjective self-identity — is a bit more extreme than the end I had in mind, I latched onto the phrase. Unfortunately, I had difficulty finding any books that weren’t “self-helpy,” but I eventually found a book that shares the title with this article by Ryan Holiday. The book fit my basic reading criteria: more than 4 stars on GoodReads, historical in nature, and based on the subject I wanted to learn. Unfortunately, after Holiday began talking about his trendy arm tattoos within the first 10 pages, I realized that his book would not have the answers that I desired.

Seeing as the concept that I seek doesn’t seem readily accessible, I am going to attempt to articulate it myself, using a few examples from my life, and interesting tidbits I’ve coincidentally extrapolated from other bits of media. As was the case with my personal life, I don’t have a great solution for the societal problem of ego. What I do have, though, is the diagnosis — ego is the enemy.

I’ll draw the first example from my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). My cohort (group of PCVs that come to country together) has a staggering female majority. PCVs being PCVs, they’re also quite liberal. I would consider myself quite liberal as well; however, I’ve had to grapple with a phrase my fellow PCVs often say.

Men are trash.

Though there is definitely a genuine undertone of seriousness, the comment is usually made in jest. And while I have never felt overtly offended by the phrase, something about it definitely stung a bit at first. “Men are trash.” Well, I’m a man. The statement is absolute in it’s declaration. It’s not “some men are trash” or “most men are trash.” It’s just “men are trash.” On the surface, it seems to imply that all men are trash. I’m not alone in this initial reaction, as is evident from the “not all men” response to contemporary feminist movements. I even wrote in my journal at one point about the frustrations of being a white, liberal man, as one essentially has to accept that their own category of human is the enemy, the oppressor.

I eventually had a thought, though, that made the comment “men are trash” much easier to swallow.

It’s not about me.

Now, the “it” in this thought is not the statement “men are trash,” though that is included. The “it” is much more existential. “It” is everything. Everything is not about me, which includes the aforementioned statement “men are trash.” When my fellow volunteers state that men are trash, they are not referring to specific men (unless they are); they are referring to the system that is men, the patriarchy, a system of trash. They are not specifically referring to me as trash when they say that men are trash, unless I am actively doing something in line with or in support of that system. The offense was never given to me, until I chose to take it. I made the statement about myself, and for that reason I got defensive. Ego is the enemy.

I consider having reached this moment a major milestone in my own version of ego death, a concept I reiterated recently to my father when we met up for dinner. As the meal went on, we began to broach the topic of modern politics (of course) and within that topic, the topic of social justice. We covered the topic already mentioned here, with him mentioning that he wished more “good men” were celebrated rather than the sole denunciation of bad men (this is the line of thinking that got Matt Damon in trouble). More interesting, I thought, was a later comment he made about how fervently he wanted it to be known that he was an anti-sexist/anti-racist. He went so far as to say that he wants people of color (POC) to know that he would be comfortable retaliating physically on their behalf in the face of racism.

I think this desire to be recognized as a good guy is at the heart of many of these unsavory white, male reactions to social movements, and I honestly think they come from a good place. Many white men want to be vocal allies, but they also want recognition for doing so, and therein lies the problem.

I’m reminded of a comment made by James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro about how POC are socialized into seeing white people as protagonists in the media. Upon reaching maturity, POC realize that they are not in fact the white protagonist. They are the antagonist or (more likely) not represented at all.

Contrary to this socialization , the white man has always seen himself as the protagonist. In every movie, show, book, or comic he’s ever consumed, he has been able to place himself squarely in the shoes of the hero of the story. Therefore, when the liberal white man thinks of social justice, he has trouble imagining the narrative without him being the principal actor fighting against oppression, even if it may not be his fight. My dad may be perfectly justified in standing up for a POC if that person wants him to. He may also be taking up a fight that isn’t his, and yet again robbing the POC of the protagonist role of which they’ve always been denied.

The problem with my dad’s line of thinking (and that of many, many white men) is that it supplants the role of the POC, woman, etc. as the protagonist of their own fight against oppression. It is difficult for the white man to see himself as the sidekick, or the love interest, or the ally because he has always been the main event. The white man has difficulty envisioning a future of social justice where he is not the one driving it forward. Ego is the enemy.

By the end of the conversation, my dad did what many white men do not do when they have this conversation. He digested what I was saying, and reacted with intrigue rather than defensive rationalizations. This sounds like good news, but it’s not. My dad is a very open-minded man with a good heart. I would likewise consider myself to be at least somewhat skilled at articulating complex concepts. With this killer combo, it still took a mentally tolling 2-hour conversation to reach this ideal conclusion. My personal transformation has taken much longer. Now imagine the raging cesspool that is modern debate. We’re in trouble.

There needs to be a way to identify social problems without this intrinsic placement of the self (the ego) at the center of it all. On a recent podcast episode, Ezra Klein makes a similar comment when discussing the defensiveness of Carnists in the face of Vegetarians. He states:

Part of the difficulty of this conversation is that when you talk about the cruelty in our current system, people experience it as an indictment of their choices, and reject it for that reason. But when I talk about the cruelty here, what I’m saying is that the reality is cruel to the animals that experience it. It feels like a language problem that harms a lot of our discussions. We almost need a tense where we can make clear we’re describing, like, an outcome not a motivation.

Klein’s point is quite pertinent to the ego problem that we’re describing here. I’m unsure if it’s something inherent to human nature, the English language, or the individualism of American culture, but there is definitely this tendency to personalize larger movements and make them about individuals. In the case of Veg*anism, the very presence of someone that abstains from meat or animal products is often interpreted by Carnists as a direct attack on their moral character when in reality it is more of a political denunciation of the system as a whole. The same might be said about the aforementioned comment “men are trash” or the #MeToo movement.

This individualization of social causes leads us to defensively push back at the possibility of being part of the problem, overemphasize our role in the solution, and prioritize our individual importance over societal progress. We need to realize that these movements are bigger than us as individuals. It’s not about us.

I don’t necessarily know the solution to this societal misinterpretation. As someone who is not personally victimized by these issues, perhaps it is not my place to propose one. As was the case for my personal life, I know the ailment, but not the remedy. For my personal ego problem, repeated exposure to varying perspectives over the course of several years has enabled me to somewhat internalize this problem of ego, and I still have progress to make. If that’s what it takes for one person, then society has a lot of work to do. I’m not sure of a larger-scale solution, but I am sure of the problem — ego is the enemy.