Transcend the superEGO

transcend the superego - the agony of the media
transcend the superego – the agony of the media – fig. 1

This article is about interpersonal relations, our limited capacities to communicate and our creativity to manipulate somebody. It is about the question whether a weak community with powerful members is more sustainable as a powerful community with weak members. It is about our view on ourselves and our group as well as on the others.

Jubilees video podcast – about community building

Again it is motivated by a weekly video podcast of Jubilee and the upcoming question What is the relation between me and a member of my community and between me and my community as an entity?

Before we go into details we should be aware about which tool we use to understand the topic and what it means for any possible outcome of this thought experiment. Even posting an article in social media is such a thought experiment. It is writing against – or for – a projection, limited by resources and the choice of means.

As visualized in the first image, i could choose between son, brother, father, man, driver, or community member for my simulation of you and i pick one of these simulations to address my message to you. Maybe i got it right or wrong, i never know if i picked the right simulation, not only because it is just my simulation, also because i have no idea in with mode you are when you receive my message.

transcend the superego - the winner takes it all
transcend the superego – the winner takes it all – fig 2

When you are looking to a 4 year old child playing with toys you see the kid playing in different roles, at one moment a doctor, a fireworker, a father, a police man and a few seconds later as a kid inside the created scene. No border to cross, no inconsistence to take over the little child and move it from on to another role.

We are all populated by various personalities and we like to experience these personalities from the beginning by inventing sets and roles to explore the values and advantages of each.

Growing up one will be the winner, based on our childhood, our history and the history of our ancestors. One personality will take over our body, and: the winner takes it all.

In these battles in our heads we sozialize and we learn to establish an image of ourselves and of others around us. We learn how efficiant it is to be focused on one personality. We loose the flexibility in this take over but we earn a kind of peace. Also we pay a high price, we are owned by the winner.

As much as you kept your creativity you might choose a profession like actor or artist – or spy – to be excused to slip into other roles from time to time.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me

The first commandment

So far so good. Passing your adolescence you become aware about the fact that it make sense to show in different situations different aspects of your personality, or, motivated by joy – spy – or by violence – victim – even different personalities at all (ICD/DSM).

I do not want to dive deeper into any personality disorder. All this preludium was only to regognize the roots of our media (body, mindest), used to discover more about relations and consequences between members in and members towards a community.

transcend the superego - personal interaction
transcend the superego – personal interaction – fig 3

To establish a relation with another person is a complex process. First of all you need to be aware about the probability that there is a real person behind your simulation and you might calculate the advantage of spending energy in developing this relation.

Also you choose set, environment and the peronality / role you want to approach.

If you look at the image (fig 3) it looks more like a comunity talking to another community and there is a big truth in this observation.

However, we establish relations between our own favorite image (as a representative of our physical manifestation and as well as a speaker for all the other hidden campions in our personality group) and the simulated image of a targeted person. With techniques of non-violent communication, awareness and supervision we might limit the colateral damage but we are trapped in this setting and we have to be aware about it.

transcend the superego - The invention of the higher authority
transcend the superego – The invention of the higher authority – fig 4

The investment in a relation could be motivated by a desired result: the date, the dinner, the job, the money, the protection, the capture. If its not about size or testosteron we like to invent a higher reason for moving the other to a desired behavior.

Name it religion, ethics, a moral instance or science. We invent or use an acceptable authority to underline the evidence of our argument. With this trick we gain sovereignty of interpretation, we safeguard ourselves against responsibility and we demand submission to the obvious, because it is obvious. If the other accept this authority we can expand the impact of this tool while developing the relation.

We tend towards this behavior because we basically only repeat what we ourselves have experienced in the personal struggle for dominance over our bodies. To manipulate a single other person we invent or use narratives around these authorities. We invent rituals and routines, framed in such stories and established and delivered in rhythms.

transcend the superego - the message of announcement
transcend the superego – the message of announcement – fig 5

In our approach to charge our message with weight and validity we like to show ourselves as a speaker for this authority.

We politicians cannot determine what happens, our job is to determine what it means.

Gerhard Schröder, former prime minister (GER)

If we are able to move the favorite representation of our personality in the position of such a speaker of this authority – and we are able to convince the other about this status – we re-route and control also the whole communication in the future. This even allows us to display our own opinion that differs from the authority.

So far, so good. You might ask yourself, where is now community in this picture and how it leads to the answer to our question, if a weak community with powerful members is more sustainable as a powerful community with weak members.

In one moral or ethic believe you might share a vision and based on your qualification you try to speak in the name of...

If you own this believe, you will control it as well as you certify the speaker of it and you might name it company or enterprise.

transcend the superego - The institutionalization of belief
transcend the superego – The institutionalization of belief – fig 6

The legal equality of a company with an underage person gives the owner the opportunity to delegate responsibility, to select recruits, to define the purpose of the company and to have interests asserted by others (CEO…).

The boundary between good and evil does not run between people’s heads, but inside of these heads.

Juan Petry, artist

This allows the owner of a weapon manufacturer to act privately as a philanthropist and cognitive dissonance can be subdued in the ranks of employees at the yearly company party.

Game A – driven societies are in favor with entities like associations, foundations, companies, enterprises. The invention of the personified authorities forms the basis for the success of the neoliberal economic system. The ambassador becomes the message. The message becomes a commodity. The commodity becomes the truth.

Like every belief system there is a dogma in the established narrative: something which can not be transcended into commodity can not be truth.

The underage person as a company needs the advocate. This company creates roles (like CEO). People choose these roles because they are associated with validity and status. This validity is necessary for a person to stabilize the personality that had gained the upper hand in becoming this person.

When people fall in love with a house, a car, with something, we speak in pronounced cases of a personality disorder. The fetish becomes a god. Worship lies in submission, just as submission lies in worship.

If you see a community as a company, if you create a narrative and you like to gather followers, you become the guru, or the advocate of a belief system. In the best case you end up with disciples convinced in the same faith in a competition about leadership. If you own the idea, you might achieve total control.

In the process of building a community people gather and exchange ideas and narratives. If a core group of people are able to identify similar thoughts in their projections of the others they might to establish relations. Based on this relations they are able to form a group, a clan, a family, linked together in a belief system.

To establish this entity and to manage the inner relations the group is forced to explain it’s view from inside and outside. This force is delivered by the society and at the latest when the first car is bought, the first house is built, the first tree is planted, the question of ownership arises.

And ownership itself is a narrative, an authority and if the members of the group agree on this idea of property, at least externally, they submit to this idea. In this they form the interface to the society. It is the interface this society wish to encounter, for the purpose to delegate responsibility.

Most communities distrust their members and choose to put ownership in the hands of an association. This association, however, as a minor, needs a guardian. It is chosen from it’s own ranks. And with that, the equality of the members is abolished.

Entities like association or company may sustaine on a short term. In finite games they can act much more agressive and overcome moral or ethic handicaps. On a long term in an infinite game they become useless.

Democracy is only conceivable among equals. A community under the open sky that finds itself in order to develop a social place for personal happiness, that has more advocates than members, that gives no rights and takes no toll, could be created and recognized. Nobody could build a realistic relationship with this entity. It throws everybody back on the simulation of himself.