Contradictions; the Ego Against Itself
Luke Krier / 2019
I must speak plainly, now, or else I will spin my words into circles and end in the depths of pretension.
Although I do not expect to succeed to write simply, I will at least try. My efforts will be in vain of course,
for my efforts are not in fact true. Although I ought to, saying I must only encourages my pretension more.
The chance of irony is too great. The assumption to be made from this assertion, to speak plainly, is that I
typically do not speak plainly, and therefore I usually speak in a complex and nuanced fashion; I am a narcissist of
the highest quality (as any self-aware narcissist should say they are). For I bind myself to my ego no matter how
I act, I am stuck. Even though I don't wish to be so full of myself (you may decide if that's true) I cannot just
act humbly. I may act in a humble fashion, but it is only in service of an image I propagate for myself,
thereby furthering my ego and pride. To act humble is to act righteously and to act righteously denotes a righteous,
upstanding, and smart man. Again now, we reach my ego.
I do not claim, rationally, that there will be
a great revelation or insight found within my words. That would be, of course, rather rash and presumptuous of
me, instead I attempt to claim that nothing is insightful and everything is shallow in a sore attempt to
chastise myself. Do not, then, assume I do not wish and think I have made a great advance. Glory and fame, useless
and immoral as they are, are cravings I cannot rid myself of. I dream of future professors echoing my thoughts,
of speeches in my life ending with standing ovations, I dream childishly and foolishly. So enjoy these words how you please.
This dream that pervades me, I cannot elude it, encourages me to create a great work. So then, off I
set to write, or draw, or create in whatever fashion I please. This seems innocent, however, the moment I begin
creating, the dream, the pretension, wells again inside of me, and shakes it. It takes any idea I can come up with,
and before I can so much as think it, it contorts it round and round again until it's already a great work in my mind.
It's already completed, without any words being so much as thought of. It's in a publisher's hands, as the pen hits
the page. By the time I'm done with the first sentence it's won a Nobel prize. It's already critically acclaimed,
and I must begin writing it.
At this point no storyline, no idea, no question can be authentic. It is
always contrived. Some ploy to make a great insight. Here I reach my contradiction, this childish dream
that so fervently pushes me to create also dilutes and robs anything I create of its authenticity, of its heart.
The drive to create also acts as the brake. I can no longer simply create, I can no longer simply act, I must act
greatly, I must create wonderfully.
My pride drives me mad, it demands of me much, and robs me of it all.
It says "you can achieve great things" implying "you must achieve great things". It gives me self confidence to
be, and yet forces me to be a shadow of my own self, imitating a greater version of myself. Yet through all of this,
I still cannot just be me. These circles and contradictions go round and round and round, I do not know if they make
me mad or a genius. Either way, it feeds the ego.
My narcissism forces me to punch myself, and then tells me what a good right hook I have. I have wished before,
under the watchful eye of my ego, to leave my future behind. To forego any plans for the future and just walk
out. Walk away and be. This, however, does not solve my problems either. I romanticize this too, as it happens,
I think of walking out into a thin mist with nothing but my backpack and my mind to think and be present in the
world. As soon as I were to begin leaving this world behind, I would just as soon begin imitating an image of
what this new world would shape me to be. I would soon begin to dream of "becoming enlightened". No, this cannot
set me free of my ego. It will follow me wherever I dream to persist. For it creates the dreams just to snuff
them out.
I then am pushed towards not creating, towards not leaving behind this existence, to not doing. To just remain where I am and just act as I “would”. To return to normal life and coast through it. This surely, would set me free of my ego. Becoming disengaged with my life to flee the thing made me hate it. This too cannot free me. It is only but another dream. Because to decide to act normally is to act abnormally. It is again to act in imitation of normality. My actions would be shifted and altered from their authentic place. I would still be acting under the influence of my ego, just not upwards. My chase for authenticity is in of itself the least authentic thing there is.
Again we reach the same contradiction, and a vexing one at that. I am unable to act anymore and yet I am forced to act. If I decide to act then I am chasing an authentic end with inauthentic means. The very act of deciding to act dictates it so. And if I do not act, I decide not to act, which is again inauthentic. All I wish for is to be able to act without notion, without a good reason, I wish to be able to live life and experience it for what it is and not through the delusions of my ego, and be present with the reality of my ego. However via this wish I curse myself not to be able to achieve it. By the very essence of it, wishing it makes it impossible. Which makes it all the more ironic that this is the only part of my being that is truly authentic.
It is what I want without notion, why do I care about being authentic, why does it matter? I do not know, and yet I do care about it and it is what banishes me from touching anything truly. My wish pushes me to dream of never thinking, of only action, of pure experience, and yet it entraps me in thinking about it.
Here I lie. Frozen in action and compelled into every action. Forced into inauthenticity by way of the only authentic thing I have.
A solution was presented to myself, To embrace the inauthenticity as the authentic mode of my being. To find meaning in the meaningless, much like the existential philosophers. To appease the contradiction by saying the contradiction is not real at all. I cannot accept this though. This tantamount to lying. It is saying to a prisoner locked in a dungeon “you are free, you just have to believe that you are free.” All it does is give me deceitful hope. It ignores the contradiction out of fear of the contradiction. I am trapped between my nostalgia for myself and the impossibility of reaching it. To say that that is meaning is to say the contradiction does not exist while also relying on the contradiction for its logic.
To further add to my confusion lies this piece. As I wrote it I found myself searching for inauthenticity within my writing. It was certainly present at the inception of it, at its base. Already contorted, but as I wrote the words spilled out in a way. Maybe this was genuine. Maybe this was my one genuine want, that to be free of the inauthentic, slipping out from under its grasp. I felt no dream, and this worried me terribly. How, then, can the words I write be true? If I write authentically in this does it not then disprove my entire premise? Does it not resolve the contradiction, that I can in fact write authentically, I found my meaning or authenticity. Does it make it inauthentic because it disproved itself? These are besides the point, unfortunately, because these ponderings are but the dream and shadow reappearing. My need for cohesion, to make a statement, to conform to a standard set by an ego out of its own bounds. By searching my thoughts for inauthentic ideas I created those ideas; the very searching was inauthentic. I could not, I cannot let the work spring from myself rest as it were. I wished ingenuity and pride were there, to make my writing true and authentic, but then again rebinding me to my shackles of my own making.
These circles and spirals into a descent, further placed not only a stronger connection and wish to be free of this cycle and doubts on it. My search for inauthenticity made me doubt my only true wish, but it also made it all vibrant. It reaffirmed the hell that this cycle brings and my wish to leave. All the same, it added only more iron to my arms. Everything makes me want more and more to be free of my binds and yet the more I want, the more it holds me back. The more I pull, the stronger it resists. I have to give up hope for it to leave me. I have to stop hoping to be free.
I now, duly, welcome you to the bottomless spiral of hell, for now I have only pushed my goal down the line. I remain again in inescapable circular contradictions, I now know I must hope to stop hoping. You can see the circles forming: next I will hope to not hope to hope to not hope to be free. I have to come across freedom by providence and luck. Even more depressing, I ought to never know I have had such providence, for if I do realize my situation of authenticity, I will have rebounded my shackles once more.
And by luck, time marches on forward, without me having to make it do so. It forces me along whether I am ready or willing, forcing me to decide second after second to act or not to act. I do not know whether I shall ever be free. I do not know what I ought to do. I only wish to be free, I wish I knew, somewhere deep inside of me, that I am living my life as I am. I couldn't even tell you if I wished to know that I had no free will, I might, I might not. I only know my singular truth, my singular hell, my pride, my ego.
Into the abyss I fall.
Circles on circles into hell, pretension a-going forth around me.
Everything washes around me as I fall, and I am terrified, petrified, of never knowing what it is truly like to just be who I am. To be who I am in the moment without a need for movement onward. To live in my own. To never experience the world as it is, with its vast riches, and to be. I romanticize. I know. I cannot help myself, I am not a realist, it would be easy if I were.
I think I do fear time, although for the aforesaid reasons, I could not tell you. That fear comes in two-fold, that of forced decisions and the inevitability of death. Time forces us to come to front with our expectations of ourselves. It forces us into responsibility. It is not the responsibility that scares me, it is the collision of ego and the actual self. What the ego expected the book to be, the Pulitzer Prize it already won coming into contact with the unwritten book. Do I march on and try and validate it? To give myself only a small reprieve of meeting expectations, for my ego to only move onto farther ends. To chase endlessly, to run the rat race, and never to stop and experience truly. Maybe the rat race is for you the experience, to keep pushing, to find content in the motion. Maybe I will find it there. Find my final reprieve from my ego and work upwards until I cannot anymore. I don’t expect authenticity to be happiness, that's not what it is. It is freedom from the agitation of expectations. That is the ego, the mother of failure, and mother of success. Authenticity, genuine action, freedom from the ego and pride, do not, crucially, mean inaction. It means the state of peace. To be free from the judgement of the consequences, not the consequences themselves.
To act in the way of myself and myself to be the way I act, and not the assumption for something else in between. I realize, though, I likely have failed to accurately describe it, although I hope it sketches some truth of what the reality actually is. And that is only a hope, an ever tainted one at that.
Who am I? My narcissism reasserts itself here, but it is the question I am infatuated with. I seek to know it truly, not in words, but in my soul and bones. I fear I never will know
And so I fall deeper.
I do truly hope this is authentic. My ego does truly hope this is something great.
2023 Luke here. Honestly surprised if anyone is reading this, but I just wanted to say: 2019 Luke, one thing I've learned is that whatever you do, you do it genuinely. At the end of the line there is always a kernel of pure sincerity, devoid of sarcasm or pretension. So you're good, my guy. You are, whether you believe it or not. Alright, have fun with COVID.