The ego
Ego stands for “I”. It represents the unique, living physical identity of a single living being. This ego becomes relevant in a dynamic environment where it needs to interact with the surrounding to survive, liveand develop itself. When interacting with other ego’s it becomes the “I am”, a self reflective revelation of self awareness. This “being” than becomes gradually aware of talents and skills which it needs to shown off to its surroundings in order to establish valued reconition with a social group order and potential hierarchy.
Frozen ego’s
Modern group dynamics of human beings have evolved into the type of robotics described in the previous blog. Institutionalized tasks are being populated by human beings who are serving the institutional objectives by performing specific predefined tasks without competition or open interaction. The interaction is predetermined by the hierarchy of the establishment. Such structural organization can be compared with the solidification of liquid or gassy elements. The molecules slow down their vibrating rhythm and take a static position within a fixed structure, connecting in a specific format with their neighboring molecules. They become frozen in rock like objects. That tends to happen with people in hierarchical organizations.
From a human point of view the “I am” is being largely eliminated and so is the dynamic development of the ego. The ego itself becomes frozen in a predefined fitting within a frozen context. Only the “I” counts as functional pupet in a puppetering theartre. The ego is surrounded by dogma’s that he or she adopts as truthful indisputable reality in order to remain in the structure. The surrounding enhances this by imposing the dogma’s formally by asking for loyalty in exchange. The group structure lacks flexibility and dynamics in exchange for control and predictability. The human being is not challenged to evolve, just to perform automated tasks within fixed patterns. People who manage such rock like structures tend to have frozen ego too as they fragment human abilities into functional routines without accounting for universal laws of chaos and evolutionary interaction.
A business or government hierarchy becomes an artificial being composed of many frozen egos. The people involved in such environment get disconnected from the universal reality and become dependent of the overall structure of the institution to provide certain securities. Those would otherwise have been found in a much more complex competitive interaction with other ego’s and nature. Frozen ego’s tend to adore the state of rest and lack of certain worries. Ego’s may learn rationalized patterns but lack the development of spiritual, physical and emotional awareness delaying the true evolution of the adulthood of each individual.
When society gets over-organized through bureaucracy the frozen ego’s remain frozen also in a structured environment full of rules and control systems.
Liquid ego’s
A human being is in essence as volatile as gas, a unique complex element in a highly dynamic universe. We are excited by our surroundings and interact with it through multi-level communication in search for harmony and safety. We do not only interact with other ego’s, we also need to interact with nature to feed ourselves with energy and material composites that are life supportive and enhancing. Other species depend on us and interact with us in a similar way of interdependence and evolutionary dynamics. Human egos connect to each other for co-creation of off spring (establishment of families) and safety (cooperations), by organizing communities of self supporting groups of individuals.
The dynamics is based on open interaction and flexibility giving the community a liquid like behavior that adapts itself in shape and interaction with the environment with great ease and transparency. The ego’s in such liquid state are challenged to find and redefine harmony continuously becoming liquid also in the learning process. The inner competition is functional to the mode of self sufficiency of the group. Talents and skills are challenged to change, evolve and interact using the wisdom of adults with the volatile, explosive creativity of the younger generations. Purpose and learning become a natural process that enrich all involved in a process of sustainable adaptiveness with the environment. People who get accustomed to doing this like the excitement and challenge of change.
Education
A child develops and discovers the ego through trial and error experimenting with its physical capabilities, often under protective guidance of the parents. Through comparison with the abilities of others in one’s surroundings it enhances and challenges itself further, often asking for attention “look what I can do”. They play games that stimulate the mind and body in every possible way. This young ego can be seen as a vibrant growing and learning molecule in a huge human sea of alike molecules, each a different complex ego.
The continuous open demonstration of the ego at the growing up and competitive phases of a person are necessary to distinguish and position itself in the complex group dynamics of human beings. “Adult” in this sense has nothing to do with the physical full-grown state of a human body. That was just the protected growing up phase when the real competition starts and other types of adulthood are obtained: the emotional, rational and spiritual aging, up to the state of higher awareness. That is when an ego is in perfect harmony with its surroundings and needs not continuously expose itself anymore for recognition.
When we look at education in the societies of frozen or liquid ego’s we see big differences. The young ego’s in a frozen environment are taught (indoctrinated) to behave in a frozen state, learning certain rationalized tricks to fit into a preprogrammed format of societal evolution. In a more liquid environment we see that education evolves in a dynamic way, connecting the young rising ego’s directly with the dynamics of a changing environment. They learn to interact in a competitive way through the adventure of experimentation and feedback. In a liquid state we develop fully to the adult state of higher awareness, something that is much more difficult to reach in a solid frozen environment.
Current societies
Most societies today have evolved into frozen structures trying to control ego’s in a prefixed format. Those formats have become so rigid that they lack all flexibility to interact with a very liquid, ever changing universe. We see then that such structures break up, exposing the frozen ego to an environment that is fearfully liquid for them. Many frozen ego’s on the other hand have become aware of the unnatural state of their ego and search fearfully for a more liquid interaction with their environment.
They break loose and become the small flexible streams of new communities that further break the solid environment apart. We see this happening all over the world despite the powerful intentions of those who have interests in maintaining the solid state of control. We see the development of all kind of disorders by the blockage of the natural evolution of the ego. Without even being aware, the psychological, physical and emotional disorders produce severe instability in the solid frozen communities. People are wanting to break loose, sometimes not even knowing why, because of the sense of entrapment. The human nature is too complex and active to be locked up for a long period of time. The predominant state for sustainable progress of humankind is the one of liquid ego’s. We see different cultures, business enterprises and cooperative entities that show various degrees of frozen, liquid and gas like structures.
Transformation
We are entering a natural phase of transforming from a predominant state of frozen ego’s into a new state of liquid communities. This is necessary to attend our underestimated relationship with the ever changing universe. We are part of that universe which predominantly is liquid, evolving in a spiral dynamic process that challenges new connections to appear and old ones to disappear. Our human awareness is an excellent evolutionary instrument for self protection through adaptiveness. When we block this we eliminate our adaptability and make ourselves vulnerable to unexpected circumstances.
The frozen state of human ego’s has however taught us many things too. It helped us to reach an average age expectancy that allows many to experiment life within the safe dynamics of singular gassy adventurous life styles, liquid adaptive communities and specialized frozen ego formats for highly specialized complex tasks. We have learned now that the human universe should consist of all three states that interact also dynamically. To achieve this we need to develop confidence in new societal formats where the logic of all states is acknowledged and supported. Like that we can create slowly a stable global human community based on safety, health, universal ethics and sustainable progress.
Sustainocracy is a first serious attempt to achieve such awareness and guide the frozen structures into liquid dynamics. AiREAS is a multidisciplinary community that combines structures of frozen ego’s with free individuals in a gas state of volatile interaction, creating a semi-liquid, purpose driven organization of thousands of people without any hierarchy or prefixed structure.