The ego is built on the same self-deception as ritual sacrifice

Evidence

The sacrificial representation that a fashionable irrationalism has so exalted, cannot be separated from the deification of the human sacrifice—the deceit of a priestly rationalization of death by means of an apotheosis of the predestined victim. Something of this trickery, which elevates the frail individual to the status of a vehicle of divine substance, has always been apparent in the ego—which owes its existence to the sacrifice of the present moment to the future. As much as the immortality of the victim, its substantiality is but a semblance and an illusion. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 60

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense, paradigm-shifting identification: the individual ego is structurally identical to the fraud of the deified sacrificial victim — the self is a semblance owed to sacrificing the present to the future.
• XREF: This anticipates the culture-industry claim that ego/subjectivity is itself a manufactured semblance, tying directly to Burns’s theme the reader flagged. — connects to: Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 283; The ego is constituted by resisting the urge to mimic.; Sincerity can be an active ingredient of self-deception rather than its opposite — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1405 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 283
• Sincerity can be an active ingredient of self-deception rather than its opposite #expands (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1405
• Extreme acts of self-sacrifice can function as argument rather than abandonment of it #complicates (0.75) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 569
• The ego is constituted by resisting the urge to mimic. #complicates (0.72)
• Claiming total self-honesty itself signals defensive self-deception #expands (0.72) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1813
• Morality serves a self-directed ego function of constructing moral identity. #expands (0.72) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 546