/reader

Elan argues that what matters in a work isn’t the tools used to make it, but the “expressiveness” of the work itself (was it made “from someone, for someone, in a particular context”):

If something feels robotic or generic, it is those very qualities that make the work problematic, not the tools used.

This point reminded me that there was slop before AI came on the scene.

A lot of blogging was considered a primal form of slop when the internet first appeared: content of inferior substance, generated in quantities much vaster than heretofore considered possible.

And the truth is, perhaps a lot of the content in blogosphere was “slop”.

But it wasn’t slop because of the tools that made it — like Movable Type or Wordpress or Blogger.

It was slop because it lacked thought, care, and intention — the “expressiveness” Elan argues for.

You don’t need AI to produce slop because slop isn’t made by AI. It’s made by humans — AI is just the popular tool of choice for making it right now.

Slop existed long before LLMs came onto the scene.

It will doubtless exist long after too.

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“Ego is…” by Adam Newbold

There’s a sure degree to which I appreciate that the first submission offers a simple list structure to start things off, but I also find myself quibbling a bit with the idea that ego seemingly is purely bad. Weirdly, it made me think of a poem I wrote probably sometime in the 90s. It was about “the mind of god” but somewhat clumsily could be about “ego”. It complicates the question by suggesting there’s a positive energy to be found in ego, too.

ego is
savage, arrogant, nasty, foppish,
maudlin, glorious, noble, rollicking,
corrupt, foolish, ignorant, petty,
beautiful, bold, angry, joyful,
pathological, shiny, prejudiced, reasonable,
sophisticated, derisive, psychotic, affable,
obsessive, malicious, tolerant, magnanimous,
ineffectual, hedonistic, extravagant, crazed,
sympathetic, contrite, pathetic, ruttish,
gluttonous, and winsome

romp like ego

“This Entry is A-OK” by Pete Rijks

Pete doesn’t seem entirely sure about ego, or what to say about it, but there’s something to be said for a post where “there's no good thread linking all these things except that they're thoughts from my brain”, and making such a post on one’s blog itself is an act of ego. Or, at least, it’s consistent with my own flailings about blogging and ego.

“The Adversary Within” by Marisabel Munoz

Marisabel says that “the ego just wants to be heard”, and this, too, is consistent with my obsession with the fact that #FrannyWasRight about ego. At the same time, I am increasingly of the mind that it is staggeringly important that we see and be seen, that we hear and are heard—and is not ego implicated here? I’m taken, however, with Marisabel’s final thoughts: “[O]ur ego’s only purpose is to keep us alive. Our soul’s is to evolve.”

“Ego and the allure of cheating to win” by Desiree Dahl

Desiree makes me think about whether there is a difference between having an ego and being egotistical—the latter perhaps best being framed as a sort of addiction to one’s own ego. The example given “doesn't paint me in the best light,” Desiree suggests, “but the ego never does”—yet that last is something of which I’m not yet entirely convinced.

“Eram quod es, eris quod sum” by V.H. Belvadi

“Ego makes us believe we are different,” V.H. writes, and as might be evident so far as I revisit each post to this carnival one by one, I’m not entirely sure I believe this. Ego, I think, makes us believe that we matter, but perhaps does not necessary do so in a way that says we in intrinsically different ways, than do other people. Perhaps it is ego out of balance that makes us believe we are different?

“Why can’t i throw away my old notebooks?” by Anthony Nelzin-Santos

In the idea that a notebook (or, say, a blog) might be an “outer brain”, I certainly see myself. “That’s why i can’t throw them away,” Anthony realizes. “I’d be throwing me away.” In this I see my once again stalled blog restoration project, which after all could be view as nothing so much as an attempt to untrash my past selves.

“So Empty Without Me” by Andrei

Andrei says that readers are “the engine that pushes me further”, and its an outward view that contrasts at least a bit with the fact that I write for myself, and anyone else who finds something worthwhile in it is something of a bonus. Arguably, Andrei’s perspective is healthier in the sense that my battles with ego are about feeling insufficiently seen or heard, despite writing primarily for myself. There’s a lot to unpack.

“Ego” by Abhinav Tushar

Is ego “primarily as a measure of self-importance and entitlement”? Is it, echoing V.H., also a “a sense of uniqueness”? It’s clear that I’m coming down elsewhere on this particular question. “In some ways,” writes Abhinav, “my childhood memories are more my parents' than mine.” This is interesting to me as it makes me think about my own aphantasically deficient memory, and what that does or does not mean for my self, let alone my ego. This, too, implicates the question of why I want to restore twenty-five years of my own blogging.

“Ego and the moving finish line” by Ruslan Osipov

“Throughout my early years,” Ruslan reveals, “I was really concerned with what people thought about me.” This is my struggle. Or, no: it’s not, for me, about what people think about me but about whether they think of me at all. I’ve talked a lot about this idea of how important it is to see and be seen, to hear and be heard, but in midlife I’ve come to realize that however much it is my ego (complimentary) that lets me write my way into being and self-belief, it is my ego (derogatory) that yields frustration at a perceived invisibility.

“Ahamkara: the ego machine” by Ruben Verweij

This is the toughest one for me. Longtime readers will know that I intermittently suffer from a deep thanatophobia, compounded by the occasional spiraling existential crisis. “I’ve been unhealthily afraid of death,” Ruben says. “Intrusive thoughts like what if I never wake up again? prevented me from falling asleep.” In this sense, then, the worst parts of or definitions of ego are a trap. I believe that each of us matters, even if neither any of us nor the universe itself means anything, but is believing I matter itself among the “false identifications and attachments”? I don’t have an answer here.

“On Ego” by Manuel Moreale

Manu is onto the slipperiness of the word “ego” and the various and varying ways in which different people, professions, and philosophies define it. If it’s your “being, knowledge, and values” (to use the example definition he cites), then why would we be seeking to give it up in the sense of ridding ourselves of false attachments? The worst of ego in one direction is “thinking you’re the absolute best”, but the worst of ego in the opposite direction is “thinking you’re worth nothing”. I’m not one for both-sidesism but in this case it carries.

“On Difference and Belonging” by Aleem Shaun

I’m struck here by the fact that other writers, when saying that “the majority of white nationalists and their sympathisers are disaffected, ego‑driven and entitled men”, perhaps would have stopped there, suggesting that this is what ego itself hath wrought. Aleem, however, goes further, saying that ego itself is “neutral”; it’s the entanglement of “arrogance and entitlement” that endangers us. His suggestion that “humility is not about self-erasure” is perhaps the most compelling thing here, because it carries with it an implicit recognition of the ego of others.

“The Importance of Ego” by Sara Jakša

Sara is right, I think, that might be “what make[s] us act and it's what allows us to continue”. I’m not familiar with Dr. Stone, but I had to pause at the idea that the idea that “the ego and the greed is the way of how all the positive changes are made”. Greed seems like the wrong thing to go along with ego if we are discussing positive motivations and outcomes—greed, in the end, being insatiable, like its cousin gluttony. (Is ego itself insatiable? Is that from whence my death anxiety springs?) Perhaps a better word here is desire. Ego and desire together “helps us be ourselves”, and have the sense that we might help “solve a society problem”.

“Slowing down and figuring out my anxiety” by Sacha Chua

First of all, I recognize several of Sacha’s brain’s failure modes. Second of all, she identifies a particular failure mode of ego itself: “It would be unproductively egotistic to think I have to do this all on my own.” What’s interesting to me here, as someone with a neurodivergent brain, is that some people would view some of the ways in which I handle my brain’s failure modes as egotistic. Those “rest days” Sacha mentions? They are self-protection, but to others they’d be seen as selfishly indulgent. Whether or not one’s ego is in failure mode is almost a relativity: it depends upon where you’re standing, and what you know.

“The Online Manifestation of Your Ego” by Crystal Touchton

“A personal website” asserts Crystal, “is a repository for the online manifestation of your ego.” As someone who more than once has referred to this blog as something along the lines of writing myself into being, and a public way to be a whole person, this certainly resonates. Just having a personal website or blog is an act of ego (complimentary). Thinking we deserve to be heard is an act of ego, one that only becomes “ego (derogatory)” when we think we’re the only ones who deserve this, or when we don’t also make sure to hear others. Personal blogs as an “online manifestation of your ego” is what makes blogs, as I stole from Kevin Lawver, the great empathy engine of the web.

“Special Edition — Ego” by Daryl Sun

If we took it as true that a personal website is “the online manifestation of your ego”, then what does it mean when Daryl says, “Daryl isn't my real name.” She says that her online ego differs in “confidence” from her ego offline, but that “they both come from the same fundamental values”. Does an ego necessarily have to be all-encompassing? Can one’s ego have different presentations depending upon context and still be a single, whole self? I’d think so. Ego is an internal force. it might be more accurate, then, to say that a personal website is “the online manifestation of [facets of] your ego”. Presentation isn’t deceit, but curation.

“The Life of Sorrow” by Andrew

Andrew’s poem focuses bluntly on the worst that ego has to offer. An accidental pairing (because I’d forgotten there was a poem submitted) with my altered poem “Romp”, but only if you strip out all the potential positive connotations of the idea of ego, leaving behind only those aspects of ego which would leave you “seething with hate for anything beautiful and true”.

“What the hell is ego?” by Joe Crawford

When it comes to definitions, arguably the most well-known is referenced by Joe when he notes, “Sigmund Freud talked of ego, id, and superego.” But is it true what Joe says, that “the ‘good’ ego is that superego”? I’m not widely read here but if we go by Wikipedia, the id is “uncoordinated instinctual needs”, the superego “internalized social rules and norms”, and the ego the mediator between and among the id, superego, and reality. In this sense, then, it’s not ego itself that presents a problem, but dysregulated or immoderate ego—what I’ve termed elsewhere “ego (derogatory)”, or when the mediator fails to mediate itself.

Looking back now across my reflections upon each of these submissions, and taking it all in as a whole, I find my superficial reading of Freud’s conception compelling, if only in the sense that my brain has a deep need for being able to put things into clearly-labeled boxes, a need I only really consciously recognized after my autism diagnosis—itself a way to organize my own thoughts about my own brain, because now I could put things in a box labeled “Autism Spectrum Disorder”.

I’m really kind of partial to this idea of there being four forces at work: instinctual needs, internalized norms, external reality, and a mediator between and amongst them. It’s this idea of the superego as internalized norms that makes me question Joe’s idea of superego as “the good ego”, because social rules (and would that it were so that this was self-evident) are not always good. Anyone who is autistic, otherwise neurodivergent, or elsewise disabled knows this keenly in their bones, and in their nervous systems.

Mostly, this idea of ego as mediator means that the ego can get things wrong sometimes, but also that ego itself is not a wrong thing. If we conflate, even just a little bit, “ego” with “self” then it means that as much as we are too often at the mercy of outside forces and outside actors, we’re designed to be able to make decisions about how we navigate those forces and actors. Ego, in this sense, then, becomes a representation of our own autonomy and agency. If healthy and unimpaired (there’s a parallel, or analogue, here with the ways in which my autistic nervous system situationally juggles reactions and responses), we can direct our instinctual needs and our internalized norms in ways that, as required in the moment or circumstance, either give them play or rein them in.

What, then, becomes of Franny Glass?

“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody,” she laments. “I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.” Is this, indeed, “ego, ego, ego”? Or is this ego dysregulated, ego immoderate? Is this, in fact and instead, “ego (derogatory)”? I think so. Which still doesn’t quite get me past my own struggles with feeling that #FrannyWasRight, because I do want “to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting”. Or, at least, I flail in and among these feelings because the systems in which we live are designed eventually (inevitably?) to consign me to oblivion—and that’s even before we get to the real, existential oblivion of death itself.

It’s perhaps not so surprising, then, that someone might want too much to be seen and to be heard, when they feel dropped down halfway.

This, I think, is where I come down in the end, thanks to being able to explore the matter through this Indieweb Carnival: ego is agency. It is in this sense that what we do matters, and so, too, therefore why we matter—even if in the wider sense none of it means anything. We are, each and every one of us, agents of directed action. We are, none of us, entirely at the mercy of the world because—for all of how much we cannot control that world—we can control how we act within it, toward ourselves and toward each other alike.

Ego does not mean selfishness. It means that we believe we have the right to be here and to have an impact on what’s happening around us, and happening to us.

Ego is our birthright, and our claim to pushing back against the world when it says that we have no value and do not count.

Addenda

1. Shortly after publication of this roundup, Aleem alerted me to the fact that I’d left out his submission, an embarrasingly true thing. I’ve restored it to its rightful place in the chronology, both here and in the original October prompt post. My apologies for the error.

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Our focus-rings in Fluent use a 1px inset white highlight and a 2px offset black focus-ring. It’s a smidge chonkier than the Chromium default. The reason we do this is to guarantee contrast against the focused-element, in the above example, a blue button. Without the addition of the white stroke, the black outline wouldn’t “pop” with enough contrast to the blue background.

To make this work, we have a --focus-inner-ring token and a --focus-outer-ring token themed for both light and dark modes.

*:focus-visible {
  box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 var(--focus-inner-ring);
  outline: 2px solid var(--focus-outer-ring);
  outline-offset: 1px;
}

How would this change with nested contrast-color()?

*:focus-visible {
  outline: 2px solid contrast-color(var(--page-bg));
  outline-offset: 1px;
  box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 contrast-color(contrast-color(var(--page-bg)));
}

All you would need is one token you probably already have (--page-bg) vs two tokens. Neat.

One consideration… your focus-ring isn’t always on a --page-bg. Sometimes it shows up on a --card-bg and this little trick might fall apart. As always, your mileage may vary.

Aside: This got me thinking it’d be nice to have a currentBackgroundColor like we have currentColor in CSS today. I’m not sure how much career I’ve got left to wait for that, but who knows.

On second thought…

Mulling this over a bit more… you might be better off using color-scheme and light-dark() for this instead.

 :root {
	 color-scheme: light dark;
 }
 
 *:focus-visible {
   box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 light-dark(white, black);
   outline: 2px solid light-dark(black, white);
   outline-offset: 1px;
}

Yeah… I’d probably do that. You dodge the spotty contrast-color() support and have a singular function instead of a nested situation. It keeps it simple and readable.

If you converted this to tokens, you’d probably need four tokens to fill out the inner/outer and light/dark matrix. But I’d consider not using custom color tokens for focus-rings at all and embrace the higher contrast… or limit tokens to the outer-ring.

A song I’m loving:

I want to tell you I haven’t slept much the last nine nights, and this won’t be the most cohesive or impressive thing I’ll ever write, and sitting down to write feels like drinking water after being parched, and hydration is important in all its forms.

I want to tell you I’m writing this from a coffee shop, my first time away from my daughter in a week after a scary trip to the ER last Friday night, and pneumonia, and a relentless fever, and ceaseless coughing, and little sleep, and checking and checking and checking, and sobs, and fear down to the marrow, and shock at how quickly everything else quiets when the task is making sure the people you love most are okay, and the wildness of the sediment inside me that has been stirred this last week while trying to love her back to health, and the reality that nothing but love really matters.

I want to tell you witnessing the news this past week while loving my child has felt like a fever dream, like a slow drip of despair that has no choice but to be cancelled out by the act of loving what is right in front of me, like terror as I read the endless justifications for murder, for kidnapping, for separation, for bombing, for greed, for hoarding, for power, for control, for violence, for harm, for dehumanization, and the ridicule of those who try to name what else could be possible.

I want to tell you what a gift it is to witness endless acts of care right beside the breathless ache of it all — what a gift it is to see people caring everywhere, no matter how imperfectly — what a gift it is to watch us stumble through our attempts to bring more compassion to this trembling world — what a gift it is to remember we can re-center care again and again, even when we fumble or forget how, even when it feels like a kernel in the face of a universe, even when the results of that care aren’t always obvious in the moment.

I want to tell you how vulnerable it is to care — how I felt the vulnerability of caring when I watched my child trying to breathe, when the fear that wobbled in my chest mirrored the amount of love I don’t always know how to fully be with, when the desire for her to be okay echoed the desire for every human to be okay.

I want to tell you there is risk in caring: caring can lead to disappointment, betrayal, misattunement, rupture, hurt. Caring can lead to confronting the places in you that aren’t sure how to care as well as you wish you could, as well as the places in others that have protection in front of their own care. Caring can bring you right up close to loss. Caring can amplify grief, highlight the truth. But only because caring happens when our hearts are open, and it’s in that opening we feel all of life more acutely… which is often the very place our care can widen from.

I want to tell you the protectors in me don’t always remember this… of course they don’t.

I want to tell you I’d rather practice caring imperfectly than not try.

I want to tell you caring imperfectly is the only option for us.

I want to tell you I watched Renee Nicole Good caring for her neighbors, and being able to see care where others see danger reminds me my heart is still intact.

I want to tell you trusting the risks of caring are worth an intact heart.

I want to tell you a reminder I’m telling myself: that in the face of a dying world is not nothingness on the other side, but instead is the birth of something completely new, something we’ve perhaps been longing for all along, something that asks us to trust in death not being an ending but marking a beginning.

I want to tell you I don’t always remember this.

I want to tell you shame annihilates seeing clearly, and tending to our own shame is perhaps the very salve our clarity is asking for.

I want to tell you how exhausting it is to tend to shame in a world that prescribes it.

I want to tell you this dissonance is not your fault.

I want to tell you your efforts matter, and your practices matter, and your noticing matters, and your witnessing matters, and your attention matters, and your longing matters, and your willingness to try matters, and your attempting matters, and your questioning matters, and your dreaming matters, and your loving matters.

I want to tell you I’m letting there be room for rage and anger, for the seething, burning sensation that arises upon witnessing corruption and Othering, for the disgust that reminds me what is wrong, for the hardening my heart leans toward when I’m afraid of my own rage, for the softening that comes when I allow it to tell me something important.

I want to tell you this is a practice, not an arrival; this is a practice, not an identity.

I want to tell you when we got home from the hospital at 2:15am last Friday, while the wolf moon was at its fullest, my daughter looked up and said, “I’m so glad we have a moon.”

I want to tell you I’m afraid, too.

I want to tell you there are anchors everywhere, and we can turn toward them when the jumble of it all feels like too much — when we aren’t sure what to do — when we feel like we might burst with sorrow.

I want to tell you how astonished I am every time I remember the goodness and beauty and sweetness of this world haven’t been snuffed out by the hatred. That beauty is sturdy and steady. That kindness is plentiful. That aliveness is bursting forth even now. That there are roots just about to shoot through the concrete that looks lifeless. That we can catch our breath again after losing it. That it is okay to be terrified. That is is okay to forget hope until some small act of healing reminds you it, too, is still here, still available. That there are people everywhere, holding up what you need to set down for a moment. That you are probably holding more than you know. That the heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe. My heart is breaking open and open and open. The whole world seeps in.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

△ An Elegy for My Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good

△ We are in a space without a map

△ Dropping out of the new year race

△ Slowly reading this incredible collection

△ So grateful this podcast is returning with a new season on Tuesday

△ The year ahead

△ Thirty minutes of wisdom and care from Janaya

△ Goodreads is hosting a giveaway of 20 early galleys of When the Ache Remains; click to enter from now (Jan 11th) until February 8th!

With care,
Lisa

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