I'm embarrassed to have to admit how much of everything I've done in this lifetime - up to and including writing this blog - has been in the service of a story I was telling myself in which I had to train to become a PERFECT GENIUS SUPERHERO - Noam Chomsky crossed with Frank Zappa crossed with Xena Warrior Princess - or my life would be a complete waste of time. That the world was doomed if I didn't hone my gifts and skills to be able to save it.
Wow, it sounds far less convincing outside my head. And then I come on here and rant about "don't get trapped by identities" and "don't let fantasy be the enemy of making something happen right here right now". I think the word we're looking for is "facepalm". Robert Fripp says that the course he was on at Sherborne House in 1975 was full of people who thought something very similar, and the purpose of the course was to beat that out of them.
If not that, what then?
ReplyDeleteIf we don´t think we should do something, what will keep us moving?
Now that you realize this, will you stop writing? If not, will you still be writing trapped in your identity? How could you not be?
As I've said many times here - but perhaps never applied it fully to myself - the issue is not that people get involved in the fight for justice or social transformation because of ego. That can't be avoided and can be a good thing. The problem is that the ego warps everything it touches, and twists good works into serving its own, disavowed agenda. A glance at the actually-existing radical left will show you how activists and the organisations they belong to end up mistaking their own selfish needs for the needs of the movement.
ReplyDeleteTo use a metaphor: I'm riding a horse and I just realised that the horse has been making most of the decisions on which way to go for most of my life. And I wondered why I wasn't getting anywhere.