Supplemental Essay: Socially-validated
Ego Expansion

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In the main essay I said that it's possible to engage in ego expansion via a socially-validated role or persona or career or narrative: The individual can utilize those socially-validated roles as "scripts" that allow for easy ego expansion. I suggested four such paths; what follows is an expansion on the material in the main essay.

Offices and titles: Career paths, offices, and titles provide convenient channels for ego expansion. In many instances, individuals can attend colleges or corporate training to help learn a position or advance to a higher title within a career. And once installed in a socially-validated management or leadership position, individuals have society's backing to exercise a degree of power--sometimes great power--over their immediate environment. The result is socially-validated ego expansion.

The danger of ego expansion, however, is that it can turn into over-expansion leading to parental castration. Society sets explicit limits on the power of jobs and titles, but inevitably some individuals will let power go to their heads and use the power of their office in service of an unauthorized personal agenda, resulting in fraud or corruption.

Another example of over-expansion of the ego in a job situation (albeit more lawful and even socially-validated) is that people may over-identify with an office or title with the result that they spend down all their time and energy on their jobs and have nothing left over for personal development. Parental castration occurs when they adopt the job as their persona and it comes to take over their life. Examples of this can be anything from a corporate executive who is a workaholic to a rock star who lives a self-destructive life of hedonism and excess in order to cultivate and maintain a certain image with his fans. In his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, psychologist Carl Jung calls it a kind of "possession." He says, "Every calling or profession, for example, has its own characteristic persona [...] and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations. The danger is that they become identical with their personas. [...] [T]he persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is. In any case the temptation to be what one seems to be is great, because the persona is usually rewarded in cash."[1]

Hero narratives: As part of its cultural canon society teaches sentimental narratives (myths, legends, histories) as instruction on how to handle certain situations or lead one's life in general. Such narratives can provide people with ready-made "scripts" for maintaining ego expansion even under the pressure of conflict and push-back from others. Tragedies and stories of hubris punished can also serve as negative examples in much the same fashion, for example by pointing out pitfalls and common errors.

As in the previous case, over-identification with such stories may result in over-expansion of one's ego in real life. The influence of mass media can be so strong that people sometimes profess to like favorite characters on a soap opera more than they like members of their own family. There is an active debate concerning how much the public might be affected by a steady diet of violent narratives about criminal anti-heroes in mass media; most people can usually sort out the difference between two-dimensional fictional characters in the media and three-dimensional reality. Nonetheless, hero narratives have long served a teaching function in society for purposes of supporting socially-validated ego expansion, and anti-hero narratives can be just as persuasive as instructive narratives about positive heroes.

Religion: Religion can serve a number of functions. For example, it can operate as a hero narrative: Christians may be counseled to ask themselves "What would Jesus do?" as a means of finding guidance through difficult situations. Alternatively, participation in a religious rite or ritual may result in a transformative experience: In primitive totemism, the participant killed and ate the object of worship with the goal of imbibing its powers; more modern religious ceremonies may aim at washing away sins and restoring the participant to a state of innocence and purity.

One particular attraction of religion lies in a sense of immersion in a larger community and its traditions; a millennium or two of history lends a religion an extra degree of gravitas. The participant may legitimately believe that the religious experience gives either him or the religious leaders some magical powers or insight. From this, people may engage in over-expansion based on false assumptions about the efficacy of the religious experience. Parental castration occurs when they become so "possessed" by their religion that they become zealots willing to kill or die for it.

But as in the previous case, most people recognize the limits of the religious experience and compartmentalize the magical experience of the religious ritual as separate from the realities of everyday life. Children routinely test the efficacy of prayer and find out pretty quickly its limitations. As I said in my supplemental essay on religion (linked in the Sensing chapter): 

In The Origins and History of Consciousness Erich Neumann says that the power of prayer doesn't reside primarily in projecting a wish outward in order to influence the objective world. He says that the ancients knew the crops would grow with or without prayers and sacrifices, just as the prayers of modern believers aren't generally about rewriting reality. He says that the real power of magic or religion lies in identifying with a Founding Father and God and generating narratives to be used by the believer as guidance to increase the odds of success in endeavors. In other words, narratives from the Cultural canon are studied, learned, and thus "introjected" and stored for future use. Neumann says, "The magical rite, like all magic and indeed every higher intention, including those of religion, acts upon the subject who practices the magic or the religion, by altering and enhancing his own ability to act."[2]

In that sense religion can be viewed as a meditative experience for assimilating socially-validated narratives for purposes of socially-approved ego expansion. And presumably, other than in cases of over-expansion into extreme religious fanaticism, practitioners generally recognize realistic limits of ego expansion based on religious beliefs.

Politics: Political participation allows individuals to engage in ego expansion by expressing opinions and lobbying for personal needs within the setting of a mass movement; individuals can choose among different parties for a political platform or "script" that best serves their own needs. In modern times, however, mass-media politics may be the most problematic narratives of all in terms of its potential for over-expansion and parental castration. I will just mention three problems: 1) One-sidedness, 2) Immersion in a mass movement, and 3) Daemonism:

1) One-sidedness: As disseminated in the mass media, political views tend to be one-sided, simplistic, and sentimental. Most people don't have the time and attention to become experts in political issues or school themselves on all the nuances, so the political "scripts" which tend to have the widest dissemination and get the most traction are those that are boiled down to simple bumper-sticker formulas and that are quickly grasped and generate interest or outrage.

For the average member of the public, this sort of simplistic, one-sided political indoctrination is sufficient for identification with a mass movement. From there, the simplistic cause becomes a channel for expressing adrenaline and emotional affect on social media or at political rallies. But there isn't any deeper personal instruction or transformation as would be the case in hero narratives or religion. In social media in particular, social outrage alights briefly upon a cause or narrative and then quickly moves on to the next. 

So purveyors of political opinions have to keep their narratives simplistic and one-sided in order to attract public attention. It's a vicious cycle of media manipulating facts in order to secure attention, and the public exhibiting the attention of a fruit fly and jumping from outrage to outrage because the facts seem so simple and one-sided that no further investigation seems necessary.

2) Immersion in a mass movement: In the context of religion I said that one particular attraction lies in a sense of immersion in a larger community; politics shares that sense of immersion. If a thousand or a hundred thousand or a million fellow citizens share an opinion with you, then that opinion becomes a channel for venting some frustration or rage; there is safety in numbers. 

Psychologist Carl Jung says that identification with a group is a type of participation mystique (see the Intuition chapter for more on that subject). Jung says that the group experience is much easier to achieve than a personal one, "because the presence of so many people together exerts great suggestive force. The individual in a crowd easily becomes the victim of his own suggestibility. It is only necessary for something to happen, for instance a proposal backed by the whole crowd, and we too are all for it, even if the proposal is immoral. In the crowd one feels no responsibility, but also no fear". [...] Since this is such an easy and convenient way of raising one's personality to a more exalted rank, mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation--often of an ecstatic nature--possible."[3]

Again, though, the problem with political groups is that there usually isn't any deeper personal instruction or transformation as would be the case in hero narratives or religion. Political groups are often about confirmation bias (seeking support for our pre-existing opinions and biases), and suggestibility: collectivist experiences that do little more than provide scripts and opportunities for a quick burst of ego expansion. In reality you're little more than a drop of water in a tidal wave of outrage; but in your mind you identify with the tidal wave and can claim to exercise the power associated with it. Hence the satisfaction of participating in a social media mob and cancelling someone who professes an opinion different from yours.

3) Daemonism: I have noted in a number of other contexts in this blog the action of the daemonic. As I said above, politics tend toward one-sidedness. The more a political platform leans in one direction, the more the repressed dichotomous opposite will pop up as daemonic fears. (See the Supplemental Essay on Freedom and Anxiety for a discussion on how daemonic fears arise.) Those daemonic fears get projected onto one's political opponents, resulting in political polarization: Your political opponents become the face of evil in the world, in other words the representation of your private fears.

To break it down:

Politics are tailor-made for generating large amounts of emotional affect. Modern politics are called "the politics of outrage," and politicians urge their followers to get out on the streets, march, and agitate for change like some giant army. With no limits on our capacity to be outraged, it's easy for individuals to over-expand on a wave of righteous outrage into a state of parental castration (typically matriarchal castration for extraverts and patriarchal castration for introverts).

Also, when we persist in our original conventional one-sided narratives, daemonic fears of persecution and punishment are increasingly likely to arise and reinforce our original one-sided narratives: We project those daemonic fears onto our opponents. Our sanitized, whitewashed conventional matriarchal or patriarchal narratives increasingly seem good and worth defending in our eyes, and those political opponents who disagree with our narratives become the daemonic "others" on the other side of the conflict from whom evil proceeds. We believe that goodness is inherent in our own one-sided projection of things, and evil comes from outside (the daemonic "other") rather than from our own increasing neuroticism and extreme one-sidedness.

Thus our daemonic fears cause us to elevate mundane conflicts into some kind of good-versus-evil confrontation. From this comes our ideas of the perfectibility of humankind: In other words, humankind could achieve peace and perfection if everyone would simply see the light and live according to our own conventional one-sided narratives just as we do. If only we could defeat our opponents and eradicate their pernicious beliefs from the world once and for all...

This becomes the downside of sticking with our conventional narratives in the event of increased conflict: They tend to infantilize us. They remove any agency on our part with regard to creating the situation or addressing the problems that arise. The two sides just seem too far apart. So we choose conflict over compromise.

In this manner over-expansion turns into parental castration. Conflict and doubling down often seem vastly preferable to reversing course and embracing the dichotomous opposite. The dichotomous opposite is typically unfamiliar territory and thus also represents a source of anxiety, especially as we become more one-sided and the dichotomous opposite starts showing up as a daemonic voice. Conflict in defense of the known is often preferable to facing and embracing an unknown.

To sum up: Modern politics are plagued with divisiveness and vitriol. Social media provide the forum and the convenient "script" for ego expansion, and we project our daemonic fears onto our political opponents. With a steady feed of such "scripts" from social media, we can live in this black-and-white world of political good versus evil for a lifetime.

Fixes for politics

Generally speaking, politics serve a useful purpose: Civic engagement leads to the election of good leaders, and good leaders ensure that government is administered wisely. But mass media and social media bring out the worst aspects by virtue of their scope and instant availability. 

Ideally the focus of politics should be on issues rather than personalities, and the presentation of issues should include pros and cons and nuances rather than stoke the fires of one-sidedness and outrage. 

Attempts to delegitimize an election of an opposing party or administration should be considered an attack on the idea of democracy itself: If representatives of an opposing party win elections, that alone should be proof of their legitimacy and a need for their representation in government. One administration may lean toward socialism, the following administration may lean toward authoritarianism, and the next may lean toward libertarianism; but if they were all elected in free and fair elections and are complying with the checks and balances established by the country's constitution, then the legitimacy of any of those administrations shouldn't be in question. 

The principles of centroversion talk about standing your ground while also recognizing your opponent's right to stand their ground as well. Domestic politics in particular should be about negotiation, not delegitimizing the other side and trying to bar them from power.

Link: Return to Thinking (T)

~Posted September 23, 2025

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