In Buddhism, human suffering is explained by the Buddhist concept of dependent arising, which consists of twelve parts which work together in an orderly manner. First and foremost, ignorance is the first of those twelve parts. Next comes fabrications.
Indeed, Buddhist thought confirms that the ego is a social fabrication. Likewise does social psychology.
According to Greenwald, Ego, or self-will, is an organization of knowledge, characterized by cognitive biases strikingly analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies.
These totalitarian-ego biases function to preserve organization in cognitive structures.
Ego's cognitive biases are egocentricity (self as the focus of knowledge), "benevolence" (perception of responsibility for desired, but not undesired, outcomes), and cognitive conservatism (resistance to cognitive change).
In addition to being pervasively evident in recent studies of normal human cognition, these three biases are found in actively functioning, higher level organizations of knowledge, perhaps best exemplified by theoretical paradigms in science.
The thesis that egocentricity, benevolence, and conservatism act to preserve knowledge organizations leads to the proposal of an intra-psychic analog of genetic evolution, which in turn provides an alternative to prevalent motivational and informational interpretations of cognitive biases.
See Anthony G. Greenwald's article "The Totalitarian Ego Fabrication and Revision of Personal History" (1980).
Commentary:
"Benevolence" is my interpretation of Greenwald's term "beneffectance" (beneficence and effectance), which is a term he coined to describe the perception of oneself as responsible for desired outcomes but not responsible for undesired ones. This involves forgetting failures more easily than successes, and remembering one's contribution to a group effort to have been better than average due to superiority bias.
Beneficence is defined as doing good and feeling beneficent, and specifically describes the quality of being kind, helpful or generous.
"Effectance" itself is not defined in any dictionary, but is probably related to effectiveness and its synonyms, power and especially powerfulness, which means possession of controlling influence.
Cognitive conservatism, being defined as resistance to cognitive change — changing what one knows based on current experience — suggests an unwillingness to adapt to present circumstances.
Adaptability is a useful psycho-social trait in which the individual adapts readily to the current environment, especially during times of political change and upheaval. It is also useful within the context of social rehabilitation related to addiction, mental health and associated issues.
Thus cognitive conservatism as defined by Greenwald does not imply adaptability at all.
Overall, egocentricity, beneffectance, and cognitive conservatism are not effective means of dealing with human suffering. The reason that they are not is that the ego tends to blame others for human suffering, so as to reduce its ultimate role in one's own suffering.
Indeed, the ego will come up with seemingly good excuses to avoid or deny responsibility. Yet a healthy view of personal responsibility allows for each of us to share responsibility for relief of the suffering of others.
Therefore, Greenwald's article suggests that totalitarianism might be the externalization of egocentricity taken to political extremes.
Egocentricity taken to extreme on the individual might also explain addiction and other dysfunctional behavior, especially within the context of beneffectance and cognitive conservatism.
Indeed, beneffectance in itself could be used to deny and excuse responsibility for undesirable outcome, while cognitive conservatism, the inability to change.
Overall, Greenwald's analogy that the cognitive biases of the ego are similar to totalitarian information-control strategies confirms the ego only exists as a social fabrication.
References:
Social psychology notes on Greenwald's article: http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/greenwald_tot_ego.html
Totalitarian ego: http://biasandbelief.pbworks.com/w/page/6537228/Totalitarian-Ego
Greenwald's references on beneffectance: http://biasandbelief.pbworks.com/Beneffectance
Mistakes were made but not by me: http://biasandbelief.pbworks.com/w/page/6537204/Mistakes-Were-Made-but-not-by-me
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