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The late Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch wrote, “In the moral life, the enemy is the fat, implacable ego.”
If we take the word “morality” out of it, a sentence from Murdoch’s philosophy book The Sovereignty of Good (1970) would work similarly. It is not only in our inner moral life that the ego becomes very destructive, but also in our civic and political life. And it can be especially dangerous when egos are hurt.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot ever since I heard part of a great interview with the late foreign correspondent Dame Anne Leslie on the BBC’s HARDtalk program. She was talking about what it means to “make the powerful evil.” (This entire episode was originally recorded in 2008 and re-released upon Leslie’s death in 2023, but it’s well worth the 23 minutes of your time.)
“We just don’t understand how humiliation plays a role in creating monsters,” Leslie told interviewer Stephen Thacker, adding that the Arab world (at the time still ruled by many dictators) claimed that they had been humiliated by the feeling that they had created a monster. It is no longer a world-class intellectual and military power. She also mentioned Adolf Hitler, who was twice rejected and humiliated by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts because his paintings were “unsatisfactory.”
“I know this sounds terribly cheesy and psychological, but look at all the monsters in modern history,” Leslie continued. “They always have an element of humiliation that makes them feel like, ‘I’m going to get them.’
Personally, I don’t mind some of the old-fashioned psychological stuff, and I also think that what Leslie got there isn’t “cheesy” at all, but rather profound. Humiliation is an unpleasant emotion that arises from the feeling that one’s social status or self-image has been damaged, as well as the more frivolous emotion embarrassment. However, unlike embarrassment, there is usually some kind of perpetrator involved, and the humiliated person is often provoked to seek a kind of revenge (even if it is directed directly at the perpetrator). even if it is not a thing).
I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a monster, in fact I don’t think it’s wise to classify people as heroes or villains most of the time, but in a slightly circular way, as I once called him a political Elon has been a “moderate,” but Musk seems to be moving further into far-right territory the more he faces criticism (and the more it drives people to leave his social media platforms). He may be the richest man in the world and he may be best friends with the next president of the United States, but I clearly feel that Musk is a troubled man. That’s a fragile ego.
He’s not the only one. Many of us spend too much time worrying about ourselves and what others think of us, especially in this “curated” internet age, People rarely think about how they feel. But the funny thing is, if we can let go of our inflated, obsessive egos and focus on what’s going on in the world around us, we end up feeling much better about ourselves. That means it will happen.
For Murdoch, the best way to achieve this self-renunciation was to spend time admiring nature and works of art (an idea that the emerging field of “neuroaesthetics” has certainly will confirm). She wrote that after looking out the window “in an anxious and exasperated state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings,” seeing a kestrel completely changed her entire way of thinking.
“Appreciating art and the beauty of nature is not only the easiest mental exercise,” Murdoch writes. “It’s also a perfectly appropriate entry point to (not an analogy for) the good life, because it checks egoism in order to see reality.”
“Seeing reality” may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of living a good life in these somewhat worrying times, but Murdoch here explains how we’re often talking about “mindfulness” these days. It actually describes what we call , which is being present in the present moment. . And in fact, as Murdoch explained, it is this process of “selflessness” that can lead us away from ego-driven fear and into something entirely different and wonderful: love. “The liberation of the soul from fantasy lies in the ability to love, that is, to see,” Murdoch wrote.
Mr. Musk is not the only fat and persistent ego that will be on display over the next 12 months. But that doesn’t mean we need to follow suit. It has become somewhat outdated to talk about love outside of a romantic context, just as we have to talk about virtue and honor. But ego is fear. And at the risk of veering into the realm of spiritual talk again, the only thing that can overcome fear is love.
jemima.kelly@ft.com
