I listened to the first part of this podcast on my 10k run today.
There are many threads running through the podcast, but I will focus on just one thread.
Dr. Alok Kanojia, whom I encountered for the first time today, eloquently explains that the ego is constructed from the labels and definitions we assign to ourselves, making it an inherently comparative entity. When we fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others or copying what we see them pursuing (often driven by external conditioning from social media where we adopt others’ desires as our own) we end up chasing goals that do not align with our true selves. While allowing the ego’s comparative nature to fuel our ambition might lead to worldly success and gratify our desire to prove ourselves, it ultimately comes at the cost of genuine happiness because the ego is never satisfied and continually moves the goalposts. To find true fulfillment, he argues that we must step away from these externally programmed desires and peel back the comparative layers of the ego to tap into our authentic, intrinsic drive.
(As a Girardian of some sort myself, it wasn’t particularly hard for me to see that his analysis is drenching in the language of “Mimesis” and “Metaphysical Desire”)
This quote from the classic epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (published in 1774) by the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, has to be the shortest best thing I have read on this matter at hand.
I urge the reader to read it carefully.
“Since we are so made that we compare everything with ourselves and ourselves with everything, happiness or misery lies in the objects we associate ourselves with. . . . The power of our imagination, driven by nature to elevate itself, nourished by the fantastic images of literature, raises up a series of beings of whom we are the lowest and everything outside ourselves seems more glorious, every other person more perfect. And that happens quite naturally. We feel so often that we are lacking so much, and just what we lack another person often seems to possess, to which we also add everything that we possess, and project a certain ideal contentment on top of it. And thus the other person is made happy, complete, and perfect, a creature of our own making.”
given the times we live in, this extract is even more telling:
“...nourished by the fantastic images of literature, raises up a series of beings of whom we are the lowest and everything outside ourselves seems more glorious, every other person more perfect.”
Literature?!
Talk about Social Media.
If Johann Wolfgang von Goethe could visit us for a day, I wager that he would lose his mind, and so would his compatriots.
I have also published two essays on the subject matter in the past:
We Are All Copycats
Prestige as an Illusion