Defending the ego

Paolozzi's Vulcan (1999), Modern 2, Edinburgh

A friend was my guide to the Paolozzi exhibition in Edinburgh earlier this year.  Paolozzi's 'Vulcan' (1999) dominated the cafe while one of the exhibition designers had had the inspired idea to install complementary works on the ceiling. 

Looking for an image representing defence of the ego I remembered the statue. It was a  man with an indomitable, protective exo-skeleton.  Metaphorically it would stand, literally, for someone who had built a protective shield around their fragile inner core.  I had forgotten who the statue was. 

The story of Vulcan (Hephaestus, to the Greeks) can easily be seen in terms of a series of bruises to his ego and his attempts to remedy these. He suffered a series of terrible early wounds in his lameness, his rejection by his mother and his expulsion by Juno from Olympus.  He becomes skilled in metalwork (boost).  He creates Pandora (boost).  He vengefully traps Juno on a metal throne (remedy). He marries Venus (boost). She is unfaithful (wound), so he ensnares her and her lover Mars in a net (remedy).

This series of ego waves is common in human experience. Vulcan's story is the Buddhist dukkha  personified. Dukkha: suffering and dissatisfaction, often through attachment to the ego.  No matter what he does, Vulcan finds no permanent satisfaction for his ego.  No wonder.  This is the Hindu concept of maya:  that the material world and the ego are illusion.

Overcoming ego is a central concern to both spiritual traditions.  We see it too in stoic philosophy, albeit from a different angle: accepting what you can control and what you cannot.  It appears more recently in modern psychology and mindfulness. 

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In a way it is astonishing that people can and do admit they were wrong because there are so many barriers to this realisation.

If it is so hard for people to admit they are wrong, why is that? 

Cognitive dissonance, as a reason, is perhaps a valid outlier.  It can be disconcerting and troubling to balance two contradictory ideas. Or, on the other hand, the most interesting place for the mind to play:  

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

- F Scotti Fitzgerald (The Crack Up, 1945)

Another reason is genuine fear of punishment. If you are wrong, you may be punished in some cultures.  If you can hide it, you may avoid that consequence.

But many of the other reasons huddle together in a garish group under the banner "Ego".  We should feel compassion for Ego, for its tactics to bolster, heal or protect itself, as we see well illustrated in the story of Hephaestus, are dizzying in number and machiavellian in strategy.  Only some desperate creature would expend such energy.

These reasons we can't admit we were wrong are weapons of Ego in action:  social embarrassment (avoid, because threat), confirmation bias (attempt to bolster), habitual defensiveness (protective act)  perfectionism is an extreme manifestation of control. (ego boost, probably doomed to failure).