Super Ego:
What is it you want to be loved for?
He: I don’t
Super Ego: So, as the adoring crowd claps you do what?
Duck your head in shame? Run from the
stage as a donkey runs from the rain?
He: I cannot accept the praise in good
faith. What I have done was of mere
coincidence and accident. There is nothing
praiseworthy in the action. It is
praiseworthy in the reception. The crowd is praiseworthy for praising correctly. That crowd is exceptional. I am ordinary.
Ego: This is true but the crowd sees themselves
through you. They thrive as you
thrive. They love themselves as they
love you.
He: But they can only love as they have
seen. They can only praise what has been
praised before. I construct from prior
construction. Everything that is novel
has been done. I can only passively
combine.
Super Ego: Allow them to love you as they wish, there is
love-worthiness in all creatures.
Id: What they love in you is your drive and
innate sense of purpose.
He: I have no innate purpose. My drive is a car ride in the night without
headlights. I move through the world in no
particular direction, and in doing so I amass no evil and I amass no
virtue. My choices are both arbitrary and meaningful. My outer display is a consumable
product. My inner life is my own.
Ego: But surely it is not all mere chance. Surely there is something to be said for
virtue. Of prudence, reason, and
rationality?
He: These are some of the guiding principles of
civilization. But even reason has its limits. One cannot sit on the couch all day,
reasoning the day away. At some point, one
must dive head first into the world action.
Id: In acting without reason we succumb to our
instinctual selves. We act as we do in dreams, without thinking.
He: There is an important distinction to be made
though. The dream being has no bounds of
self. There is no difference between
subject and object. It is simultaneously
itself and all else. In the
non-dream world, I am a singular agent of action, and responsible by consequence.
Super Ego: If everyone knew as you knew, would the world
be a better place?
He: In a way…yes.
In a way…no. Better is a judgment
that can only be made by the historians.
It would be better for me, because there would be no pushback. Better for everything? That is a question I cannot answer.
Ego: If you sit on the fence, you risk not helping
anything. Isn’t it proper to sacrifice
yourself for the greater good?
He: The greater good is a figment. There is only the good that sits in front of
you. Large-scale change is uncontrollable. Those who attempt to
control it become the power hungry dictators and genocide-creators. The only good the individual can know stares
them in the face every day. We cannot
see the links of the causal chain, and the idea of the greater good relies solely
on the linking of the causal chain.
