In this day and age, we may take a look around us and wonder what could possibly have resulted in the frankly depressing state the world currently seems to be in. Poverty, war, hunger, and a general sense of helplessness are shoved in all our faces by social media, the news, and the people we know. Despite this, no one seems to have discovered a connection between all of this adversity. It might be suggested that there isn’t one—that there is no single reason for this. However, this seems unreasonable to me. I believe I have discovered the common thread, the reason for all of this to have occurred.

It all comes down to ego.

Ego, derived from the Latin term for “I,,” refers to beliefs someone may hold when asking themselves about their identity. These things can be physical, such as height or weight, or social, such as religious and/or political views. The ego considered in this essay specifically refers to the idea of self-esteem, or feeling good or bad about oneself.

From birth, our egos are inflated significantly by being celebrated for little. We’ve all seen the classic scenario in which both winners and losers are rewarded, such as in a primary school football game. To be sure, we don’t want to damage the self-esteem of young children, but rewarding inadequate effort teaches them to think they are better than they are, a trait they can then carry into adulthood, where it can cause more harm than good, as shown later in this essay. However, that is far from the only cause of our inflated egos. Those with even a smidgeon of power are surrounded by yes men, who tell the person in power that they are correct and that they deserve their power, all in an effort to advance themselves until they have power, and the cycle continues. This can be seen everywhere, from an employee sucking up to their boss in the hopes of being appointed to the boss’s position once they’re gone, to a dominant politician’s follower, encouraging and telling them their policies are correct when they may not be, all in the hopes of gaining some of their dominance for themselves. In all cases, an ego is swollen to dangerous proportions and can have dire consequences (perhaps co-workers don’t talk to their boss about their problems, or the politician votes for a policy that causes thousands to go into poverty).

On a larger scale, news outlets inflate our egos in perhaps a subtler fashion. Instead of telling you that you’re special, others are put down and said to be worse than the rest of us. Take, for example, this piece from the prominent Sun newspaper, talking about Liz Truss and her government’s September 2022 mini budget. It starts with the line, “It is time for sanity to prevail over the mini budget and the turmoil that followed.” The “sane people” referred to are those who support the mini budget, and those who don’t are labelled as insane. This kind of sensationalist wording makes the people reading this piece and believing in it feel better than those “lefty pundits,” as the Sun calls them, and less likely to listen to opposing arguments, despite how much sense they make. The Sun is hardly the only paper guilty of this as well. In fact, feeding people’s egos makes people happier, and thereby more likely to buy that newspaper again.

Scarily, a similar tactic is used by terror organisations as well. A new member is praised for his work. It is seen as courageous to kill for them. Their members then want to feel better about themselves and boost their egos through horrible acts, all the while radicalising their views and, like the newspapers, making them feel better about themselves. The Al Qaida recruitment process, according to RAND, begins with “encouraging a youth to leave home and join a military or paramilitary organisation, (which) can be (1) couched in patriotic terms if the youth’s family is a member of a privileged class, (2) framed as a step in social advancement if the family is immigrant and struggling, or (3) characterised as a revolutionary act of self-discovery if the family is disapproving and must be circumvented.” All of these relate to the members’ egos in some way. An important part of maintaining the members’ loyalty is feeding their egos in an echo chamber (an environment where a person only encounters information and opinions that reflect their own beliefs), which is a tactic often used by extremists. As well, war leaders suffer from making rash decisions based on ego. For example, the war in Ukraine was started by Russia. Putin justified the war in a speech at Russia’s 2022 annual military parade, saying, “Russia called on the West to engage in honest dialogue, seek sensible, compromise solutions, and take each other’s interests into account.” Putin’s “sensible” compromise involved reclaiming Ukraine as Russian territory, which appears insane to anyone who has even a passing glance at what the Ukrainians might want. And to take a look at Russia’s position at the time of writing, this is confirmed. They have incurred heavy losses, crippled their economy, and are being beaten back with nothing to show. And still they batter on unsuccessfully, all because of the egotistical whim of a few men in power.

Online, echo chambers can be found left, right, and centre. Whether it be the disgustingly sexist involuntary celibate forums or the incredibly harmful pro-anorexia subreddits, they never cause anything good to happen. A quick foray into one of these comes up with things like “The solution to your loneliness is simple and easy.” “Just f*** hookers and simp for big t***y e-thots on Twitch, and your male brain will be content.” What a disgusting thing to promote, and yet they somehow see no problem with this? It is likely a woman at some point or another has hurt their ego somewhat, perhaps not going out with them, and they find like-minded people and feed each other hatred and despair.

However, it is clear that keeping our egos in check will have many benefits for all of us and others. An inflated ego tends to have a negative effect on someone’s mental health, as it causes them to view themselves as above most failures, so it feels even worse for them when they do fail. As such, if we keep a check on our ego, we will be happier overall. Our relationships with others will also improve, as it is unlikely you will agree with someone on everything, so being able to listen to their argument without viewing them as less than you for it will make them feel better around you, and as such, they will spend more time around you and care for you more. As well as that, focusing less on yourself makes you more empathetic to others’ problems, deepening your emotional intelligence at the same time and making it easier for you and someone else in any form of relationship, platonic or romantic, to overcome emotional obstacles. Bill Bullard, an American politician, sums this up by saying, “The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.”

In conclusion, ego is a truly massive problem for us to overcome, both on a personal and societal level. It motivates war and encourages racism, sexism, and the like as people view themselves as better than others. It can be so damaging to someone’s emotional health that they commit suicide. It seems obvious that when humans cause bad things to happen, it comes not from an outside source but from within. And the things within that motivate us to do terrible things—jealousy, pride, envy, wrath—are all born out of harm to someone’s ego.