The Great Divide

Why are we so divisive as a species?

You can either read my exploration here or listen to my podcast

In the spring, in the northern hemisphere every year, there is a confluence of celebrations of the great religions. There’s both Orthodox and non-Orthodox Easter, the month of Ramadan, Passover, the Hindu celebration of the birth of Lord Vishnu and New Year as marked by Theravada Buddhists.?

This great big estuary of religious observances got me thinking about what do they have in common at their core??

At about the same time, I read an article by David French in the New York Times in which he proposed that Easter “rebukes”, as he put it, “the Christian will to power”. French says that, although Jesus consistently rejected material power, the people mistook him as their saviour from material oppression - from Roman subjugation - and, indeed, hailed him as such on Palm Sunday. When they realised that wasn’t his mission at all, they gave him up for crucifixion and saved Barabbas, the revolutionary, the insurrectionist against Rome.

What the people of Judea were looking for was confrontational power – power to beat their enemies. “Power against”. And, as French points out, many of us are still looking for it now. It’s a case of “devour my enemies” as against the admonition that only God has the right to vengeance.??

But that brought up another question. What is it that drives the “will to power”? What is it that makes the exercise of power-against or power-over such a crucial part of human existence? And it?is?human existence and not just Christian.?

Isn’t it division? Not?difference?but division. Not the fact that you are Christian and I am Muslim, not the fact that I am white and you are black, but the assumptions that we make, that those differing religions, races, political beliefs or genders are a threat, are superior or inferior, are to be feared, envied or contemptible. A divide. You on the fear side of the divide, me on the contempt side.?

So, where do those assumptions come from? Yes, they are socialised:??by mythology, by a scarring experience – not necessarily ours but perhaps of a parent or even distant ancestor;??by guilt, fear or resentment of generations of family and community.??

But why is the history of the human species, characterised much more by divide than by difference??

In very simple terms: what is the primary driver for divide? Or what was the initial driver for division?

It seems to me that all the great religions try – in some way – to answer that question.?

All, in some way, talk of the ego – the lower Nafs, Ahamkāra, Self, Nephesh - as the restrainer, the blocker in the relationship both between God and human beings and between humans and their fellow beings.?

The ego may be a useful mechanism for consciousness to mediate between itself and changing contexts, but it becomes a danger when that mechanism is then mistaken for the reality: “I am my ego” rather than “the ego is simply the current filter, the current lens with which I am viewing the world, in order to experience and deal with that world.” It’s like thinking that your avatar in the metaverse is you in the real world.?

And when we take that one step further and say: “the avatar is my only identity and without it I am lost”, we set the stage for division, for French’s Will to Power.

The logic is sound: if I hold on to that which identifies me as a stand-alone, separate entity, then I will, inevitably, find myself defending myself (and my Avatar-Ego) against other entities who are also hellbent on preserving their individuality, their uniqueness. The greater the perceived threat, the greater the competition, the more attention and energy I will devote to preserving my ego. And I will, no doubt, use any and all tools and weapons to do so. “After all,”, says the ego, “if I am not preserved, I am obliterated in this great big universe. I have nothing with which to identify myself”.?

The point about clinging to or defending oneself – or rather what we?identify?as self – is that the rest of the world becomes Other. And - coupled with the anxiety of?self-preservation - it becomes competition or the enemy.

We even identify God as an individual. Ironically, we imbue omniscience, omnipresence, with the narrowness of a supreme human being – a supreme ego.??We give Omniscience a?dimension?when it is clearly beyond all dimensions and even definitions. If God is the supreme being, then he, she, it (note, it now has a gender) will act like a human being with supreme power. She will punish me, He will reward me, I can make deals with It. If I don’t do X, Y or Z, She will obliterate me. So, we turn what we believe is the very foundation of existence into a threat. And not just?a?threat but the Supreme Threat.

Because we’ve now expressed omniscience as an individual, Supreme Being – we have also, by definition, placed that Being in competition with other Super Beings who are vying to usurp his throne: Satan or other religions’ Gods. Now we not only have to defend our?own?egos but that of the Supreme Ego – who is, after all, our foundation. We go to war in that cause, presumably hoping that – as Soldiers of the Lord - we will be safe from incurring the supreme wrath and will be amply rewarded in an afterlife.??

The poor little ego, we have created, is caught in a web of threats. Not only does it need to be defended against other competing egos, but it has to keep the Supreme Ego happy – or else.?

(By the way, if you think this doesn’t affect you because you don’t believe in God, please think again. The earliest records of worship or ritual are estimated to be up to 200,000 years old. We are all -like it or not – affected by a phenomenon that is so deeply embedded in our cultures. )

Of course, humans - being the brilliant creatures that we are – have learned to manage those threats. We have built ourselves a world of relationships and tools to keep them at bay. We construct relationships along the spectrum of enemies, competitors and allies. We develop tools: of conflict to deal with enemies; of transaction to deal with competitors; and of allegiance to deal with allies. But we have?built ourselves a world under siege: in defence of the ego. Defence of the illusion that we are separate from universal being and that this separateness needs to be preserved and protected at all costs.?

Our survival, says the illusion, depends on the degree of separation of our identity from, at first, that of being in general and then from human being.???We tell ourselves we are the only ones with a soul. That all other beings are there to serve us. And therefore, they have less - or even no – value. And if other?beings?have less value then, surely, certain other?human?beings, who believe in “a false god” or threaten our identity, have less or no value too.??We go to war against our species and, indeed, our world, all to preserve our egos.??In effect, we go to war against reality to preserve an avatar.?

But let’s turn this upside down. Let’s assume that the ego?is?real. That we?are?our egos.” Who cares whether it’s a hologram or not? It’s there – we have to deal with it.” And it’s been so embedded in all human beings - and maybe all beings – for such a long time, that it is a reality. Does that change the fact that it is the source of the will to power, abuse, conflict and wars? As soon as I say, my priority is to preserve my fixed identity (real or not) then you - having a different fixed identity, different values or different ways of doing things - become the enemy. And the foe inevitably becomes less than: less special than we are. We even convince ourselves that it is less capable of pain and grief. It is less human. So much so that we even treat orphaned children – fleeing from disintegrating countries – as a threat. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems, Hindus – who have been my neighbours for centuries - become my enemy when my ego, my created identity, sees itself as threatened. Or is?persuaded?that it is threatened.??

No wonder all the Great religions focus on the ego as the greatest impediment to salvation, Moksha or Miraj.?

Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, quite explicitly, urges, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” Not, ‘as significant’ but “more”. Jesus, he said, “emptied?himself by taking the form of a servant.” Jesus himself talked about the impossibility of a rich man entering the kingdom of God. Not, I think, simply because of acquiring prosperity, but because?clinging?on to that wealth means that you are?withholding?it from others – you are clearly saying they are less significant than you are. Attachment to wealth also signals that any real decline of that wealth is a threat. A threat to what? To your identity. You’re saying to yourself: “I am my wealth. Without it I am nothing.” It’s an extension of the myth of the ego: “I am my ego. Without it I am obliterated.”?

The 2nd Surah in the Quran recalls Moses as saying “Kill your egos, (yourselves) to be redeemed.

Rumi’s quote about ‘dying before you die’, does not mean, in my view - as it is widely interpreted- living life as if it were your last day. It means, empty yourself of all that shackles you to the tiny little world of your ego, and therefore of your terror of being obliterated.??

And Buddhism, roots the cause of all suffering in clinging to the self – the ego.

So, what is the solution? Is there a solution? After all, the formation of the ego, is probably hundreds of thousands of years old. And despite the core message of the great prophets, the religious institutions they left behind have been the source and patrons of countless wars, persecutions and divisions.?

I think that the most important first step is recognising – and continually remembering – that the ego is an instrument – a tool. An avatar, to locate oneself and navigate in the world. It is not you - and it is not more precious than your fellow beings – the ocean of which we are each a drop. You are not swimming in the sea; you are an essential?part?of the sea. So, you don’t need the ego to save you from drowning.?

Neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, in his extraordinary book “The Strange order of Things”, tracks the evolution of organisms from single cells and multicellular organisms through to what he calls “general systems” – intricate nervous systems. Bacteria,?pre-consciously, sensed and responded to the presence of other bacteria. Over billions of years, they evolved into extremely complex nervous systems that could map and produce images both of their “own” systems and their context: the world around them – or the “surround”, as Damasio terms it.. And here, he makes a crucial scientific point – which philosophers like Heidegger make in their own way: “.. the ‘surround’ of the nervous system also includes the world?within?the organism in question, and this part of the surround is commonly ignored to the peril of realistic conceptions of general physiology and of cognition in particular”.?

To put it another way: the ego is akin to an avatar you give yourself in the metaverse.Or more accurately in metaverses. Its purpose is so that you can connect both with the metaverse as a whole and the other avatars within it.?

Without it you could not operate in that world. You would be an unrecognizable set of ions.??

The avatar functions according to the rules and norms of that?particular?metaverse. You wouldn’t be silly enough to use the same avatar in a combat game metaverse as you would while conducting surgery in an operating theatre metaverse. There are different requirements for each.??You know that the avatar is not you, and that you can leave both it and the metaverse without threatening your own survival. Similarly, your ego is an instrument of connection -with its focus interdependent with the context within which it operates.?It is not a fixed identity.??

Once you’ve recognised that the ego is an instrument for?connection?with different beings rather than your core fighting for survival, you begin to recognise that you don’t have to cling to it. Perhaps we can start using it for the purpose for which it was designed: not to find divisions in the differences of being, but to connect; to understand those differences; to link; to learn about our fellow beings and about?being itself.

Seeing it as an instrument, rather than “the Self”, means that we may be able to manage ourselves – not, on the one hand, by guilt, or the dogmatic imposition of values of good and evil??nor, on the other hand, by the aggression, manipulation or transactional relationships of self-preservation, but by the simple question: "Am I using this Avatar- Ego, this instrument of connection, of learning and understanding, correctly?" If I am bludgeoning you over the head with it, I am not. If I am using it to coerce you to do something against your will, I am not. If I don’t use it to discover what your will?is, I am not.?

The key question, it would appear, is “Am I using it to divide – to exclude – or am I using it connect, to discover and to learn? We learn for the entire nervous system that is our world so as to increase its capabilities and therefore ours. Power over???No. Power with? Always.

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