We come into existence with a certain operating system already installed. We can make the choice to upgrade.
Our pre-installed binary system runs on the power of “either/or.” I call it the “egoic operating system.” This dualistic “binary operator” is built right into the structure of the human brain.
.. But this sense of identity is a mirage, an illusion. There is no such self. There is no small self, no egoic being, no thing that’s separated from everything else, that has insides and outsides, that has experiences. All these impressions are simply a function of an operating system that has to divide the world up into bits and pieces in order to perceive it. Like the great wisdom teachers of all spiritual traditions, Jesus calls us beyond the illusion: “Hey, you can upgrade your operating system, and life is going to look a whole lot different when you do it.”
America’s Epidemic of Infallibility
This administration operates under the doctrine of Trumpal infallibility: Nothing the president says is wrong, whether it’s his false claim that he won the popular vote or his assertion that the historically low murder rate is at a record high. No error is ever admitted. And there is never anything to apologize for.
.. American politics — at least on one side of the aisle — is suffering from an epidemic of infallibility, of powerful people who never, ever admit to making a mistake.
.. More than a decade ago I wrote that the Bush administration was suffering from a “mensch gap.” (A mensch is an upstanding person who takes responsibility for his actions.) Nobody in that administration ever seemed willing to accept responsibility for policy failures, whether it was the bungled occupation of Iraq or the botched response to Hurricane Katrina.
.. Later, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, a similar inability to admit error was on display among many economic commentators.
.. the open letter a who’s who of conservatives sent to Ben Bernanke in 2010, warning that his policies could lead to “currency debasement and inflation.” They didn’t. But four years later, when Bloomberg News contacted many of the letter’s signatories, not one was willing to admit having been wrong.
.. one of those signatories, Kevin Hassett — co-author of the 1999 book “Dow 36,000” — will be nominated as chairman of Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers. Another, David Malpass — the former chief economist at Bear Stearns, who declared on the eve of the financial crisis that “the economy is sturdy” — has been nominated as undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs.
.. less to do with ideology than with fragile egos
.. inability to engage in reflection and self-criticism is the mark of a tiny, shriveled soul
.. Many Americans no longer seem to understand what a leader is supposed to sound like, mistaking bombast and belligerence for real toughness.
.. we can at least hope that watching Mr. Trump in action will be a learning experience — not for him, because he never learns anything, but for the body politic.
‘He Has a Very Sensitive Ego’: Howard Stern Says Presidency Will be ‘Detrimental’ to Trump’s Mental Health
SiriusXM radio host Howard Stern talked about his old friend Donald Trump on his show this week, and he said that he’s worried the presidency will have a damaging effect on Trump’s mental well-being.
Trump is known to be highly concerned about his public perception, and Stern said on Wednesday that he wasn’t sure what that will mean for Trump now that he will face presidential levels of scrutiny. Trump is still a subject of protests and relatively low approval ratings, and Stern said that he told the mogul that he didn’t think it would be “a healthy experience” getting involved in politics:
.. “I personally wish that he had never run. I told him that because I actually think this is something that is going to be detrimental to his mental health…He really does want to be loved, he does want people to really love him, that drives him a lot. I think he has a very sensitive ego.”
Even though Trump currently has a tense relationship with the press and various liberal celebrities, Stern suggested that Trump is more deeply wounded by the negativity than he lets on:
“He’s now on this anti-Hollywood kick. He loves Hollywood. First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants hobnob with them. All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. It’s not good for him. It’s not good. There’s a reason every president who leaves the office has grey hair.”
Trump and academia actually have a lot in common
such a “storm of outraged ego” is an increasingly common phenomenon among students who, having been taught to regard themselves as peers of their teachers, “take correction as an insult.” Nichols relates this to myriad intellectual viruses thriving in academia. Carried by undereducated graduates, these viruses infect the nation’s civic culture.
.. “College, in an earlier time,” Nichols writes, “was supposed to be an uncomfortable experience because growth is always a challenge,” replacing youthful simplicities with adult complexities. Today, college involves the “pampering of students as customers,”
.. “Rather than disabuse students of their intellectual solipsism,” Nichols writes, “the modern university reinforces it,” producing students given to “taking offense at everything while believing anything.”
.. Much attention has been given to the non-college-educated voters who rallied to President Trump. Insufficient attention is given to the role of the college miseducated. They, too, are complicit in our current condition because they emerged from their expensive “college experiences” neither disposed nor able to conduct civil, informed arguments.
.. Soon, presidential enablers, when challenged about their employer’s promiscuous use of “alternative facts,” will routinely use last week’s “justification” of the illegal voting factoid: It is the president’s “long-standing belief,” so there.
In his intellectual solipsism, he, too, takes correction as an insult. He resembles many of his cultured despisers in the academy more than he or they realize.