So, I'm returning to the realm of unenlightened teachers and theoretical practicality. I can't say I'm not happy to be back there, though I also can't truthfully say that such feelings arise purely from the merit of established education. It's more that I have now a chance to escape one more form the "real world", and hide among people whose lives are filled with thoughts of transience and non-commitment to the great people-machine. That's not to say that there aren't people in university who want to be a gear in this thing they call society, but that these are not the people among whom I will hide.
It's not that I fear society, more that I do not associate with it, and see no reason to be a part of the monumental bureaucracy. Ironic, perhaps, that I hide from one bureaucracy inside another. I'm not sure why I prefer this one. Perhaps is is simply that I can continue the considerations that have recently come to me more easily here than "outside".
There is also no reason to assume that I'm doing this for the qualifications. A bit of paper to tell me that some authoritative group somewhere in the ethereal tangle of papers has deemed me worthy of intellectual gratification? Pah! OK, so clearly there is some delusion left in me still, for I have clearly stated, to many people, on many occasions, that six years of my life in this "place of learning" is too many to come away with anything less than a First. I justify it that I will come away proving to potential employers that I can do whatever the hell they need me to do. But, then again, I'm not sure that was ever in doubt. Ability does not equal willingness. And since I don't really care about potential employers, that argument crumbles on multiple fronts. And so the ego still works its vile magic over me...
Ah, the ego. Don't think I'm talking of prideful behaviour, of the loud and arrogant voices of those that you may look at and understand that they are full of ego. Instead I speak of that which makes us all want to be stronger, cleverer, faster, more efficient, BETTER than those around us. That which seeks to subsume the world into itself. It sees those around us that are better than us at this or that, and it seeks to make them a part of itself, to say they are "MY friend", "MY child", "MY student" or so on. And when it cannot do this, it seeks to discredit those people, so that it may still appear better than them. When this fails it still wished to be different to others. It doesn't truly care if it is better or worse, so long as it is different. And so those who appear to have no ego, do, in fact, have a NEGATIVE ego. Their ego tells them how worthless they are, how poor they are, how little they can do. In this way it can feel different and special. And, of course, the whole paradox is that by subsuming the world it ceases to be different, and so is not satisfied, and must then seek more resistance. Only when it is resisted does it feel different enough to stop growing. But it will not be satisfied for long. It will soon start to grow again. It cannot accept that one person is this way, and I am another. It cannot accept what is.
Do I hate the ego? Of course. But in hating it I make it stronger, provide it with the resistance it needs to feel special. I know this, and yet... still I hate it. There is not much I hate, not much at all, except this, the ego, the desires and drives of the virus that has plagued humanity since fist they thought. And yet, do you hate the flu virus? Of course not! You might not like that you are ill, but hating a virus is irrational, unproductive and harmful to yourself and others around you. So it is with the ego. And so by hating my own ego, and hate it also in others. The old adage (from Aristotle, I think), "We hate most in other what we see in ourselves," applies here so well. I seek so hard to undo my ego that I have lost sight of what is. I have to accept that my ego is, and I am, and that so it is with others. Thus may I find peace and enjoy the company of all.
So, why do I dislike society? For it little more that a vast elaborate collective ego. It does not know how to accept what is, how to look beyond its own ego, the ego of those within it, and the ego of other societies. It gets caught up its pain, in the wrongdoings done to it, in the past and future and forgets Now. Now is not wrong, nor is it right, it is not good, nor is it bad. It just Is.
And still the paradox goes on, for at each step of the way, I find a reason to dislike one example or another of the ego, of the pain that we all carry and cannot see past. At each step of the way, the ego uses my displeasure as way to reassert itself. The Wheel turns ever onward.
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