In Part 2 we discussed the quantum shift that took place when humanity developed the memory of voluntary recall. It broke us out of nature and into desire and discontent with here-now reality. Then we started “improving” on nature.
At the dawn of self-concept, as we developed the memory of voluntary recall, we began accumulating self-images: the ego. Language, thought and ego are closely associated. Behind every thought is the thinker (ego).
The ego (façade self, false self, self-concept) is a compounding program largely passed from generation to generation. There is no genetic foundation for the ego. It is only a cultural phase we are now completing. Like language, the ego is a cultural artifact that varies with family and culture.
This is how the program perpetuates itself: Already in the womb, the fetus has experiences from the mother that don’t fit its genetic blueprint — modern drugs, anger, worry, overwork, smoking, food toxins, radiation, poor sleep, etc. Modern births are also anything but natural.
Babies live in a state of pure awareness for over a year. An infant learns roughly 300 times faster than adults. Our genes have been fine tuned over millions of years to connect with the natural environment and with parents, who instinctively and precisely know how to deal with their young as they grow up. But in an artificial environment, and ego-driven parents, the genetic blueprint of the infant has very little to connect with. Result: frustration.
The more the outer reality does not fit the genetic blueprint, the more frustration. Infants are exceedingly vulnerable … and they receive the full brunt of the parental egos, which are compounding errors passed down for millennia.
The message in crying: “Something is the matter!” Anthropologists repeatedly note that nature-based ethnic children essentially never cry, unless they are actually hurt. “Civilized” babies cry a lot. They are genetic strangers to this strange artificial environment. Their plight is magnified when they start crawling and exploring their new environment. Their exploration is confined, and if they get into something they “shouldn’t,” a parent swoops down and corrects them, either physically, verbally or both. The corrections say: “A lot of your curiosity is not appreciated. You have to repress a lot of your natural instincts and behaviors.”
We “break” our children much as we break a horse or housebreak a pet. The result is great suffering and neurosis. What started out being “something is the matter” now becomes “something is the matter with me” and “I am unworthy of love.” The child’s psyche is split into two: the “bad” is repressed and the “good” is projected out as a façade. Freud’s work was largely about the repressed unconscious.
Duke University did a study showing that an average child receives over 100 corrections per day. Twelve to 16 years of schooling adds another heavy load of should and shouldn’ts to the superego (the internalized parent).
These constant corrections create an obscenely distorted, overgrown superego that is the trademark of the “civilized” adult child: codependency.
The superego is a genetic structure inherited from our social ancestors, and is designed to be outgrown at puberty, when maturity and personal sovereignty take over.
The predicament of the modern adult is to never reach sovereign maturity. However, as we reach the peak of everything and the cascade of crises (see last article), we are being required to give up the make-believe (super)ego and enter our true adult sovereignty.
This is our wake-up call!
• Arius Hopman lives in Hanapepe. This column, part of a series, was adapted from his manuscript “The Ego Empire Exposed.”
