We are the World’s Ego: scapegoating, remorse and redemption at scale

The ego of humanity reflects, almost precisely, the ego of the individual human being. The difference is not qualitative but quantitative—not of kind, but of scale. The same distortions that plague our personal psychology are writ large across nations, civilizations, and empires. Humanity is but the “collective man,” and its character bears the same inner flaws, magnified.

---

In the clinical sciences, this dynamic is illustrated in Attribution Theory: when something we perceive as “good” happens to us, we instinctively attribute it to our own agency—our skill, virtue, intelligence, or worthiness. We congratulate ourselves, subtly engaging in self-credit and, in truth, self-worship. Conversely, when something we perceive as “bad” occurs, our instinct is to attribute it to some external cause: another person, an unjust system, fate, or even God Himself.

Gurdjieff named the same reflex inner considering—that mechanical habit of placing ourselves at the centre of every event, interpreting all happenings in terms of personal benefit or harm, and holding others accountable for the negative. Its twin is self-calming: the ego’s desperate need to soothe itself by shifting blame, neutralising discomfort without undergoing the purifying fire of self-examination.

---

Christ addressed this exact sickness in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14). The Pharisee stands before God and proclaims, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men…”—crediting himself for the good, offloading evil onto “them.” Meanwhile, the tax collector cannot even lift his eyes, but beats his breast and prays, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Jesus tells us it is the latter, not the former, who goes home justified. This is the fork in the road: the way of attribution and projection, or the way of self-seeing and repentance.

But the ego—whether individual or collective—cannot rest until it has neutralised its unease. If it will not suffer the truth, it must find an enemy. Here we meet the oldest ritual in the world: the scapegoat. In the individual psyche, this appears as bitterness, slander, and quiet sabotage. In humanity as a whole, it escalates into persecution, ideological purges, and genocide.

The logic is tragically consistent:

1. Identify a perceived source of harm.

2. Attribute all discomfort to it.

3. Eliminate it.

Caiaphas, the high priest, embodies this when he declares before the crucifixion of Christ, “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish” (John 11:50). This is scapegoating in its purest form: destroy the innocent in order to preserve the false peace of the collective.

Yet Christ exposes the futility of this. His teaching on the plank and the speck (Matthew 7:3–5) cuts to the root of projection: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the plank in your own eye?” This is Gurdjieff’s psychological law stated in spiritual language: we do not see ourselves as we are; we see others as the problem.

---

The only remedy—for both the solitary soul and the whole of humanity—is what Gurdjieff called the remorse of conscience. This is no vague sentiment of guilt; it is the highest form of voluntary suffering, the raw, living pain of seeing the truth about oneself without excuse, without displacement, without “self-calming.” Christ called this taking up one’s cross daily (Luke 9:23)—not the cross of our enemies’ sins, but the cross of our own.

Such remorse is the true sacrifice, the one God desires: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). This is utterly different from the false sacrifice of scapegoating, which kills another to restore our comfort.

The true sacrifice is inward: the surrender of self-love, pride, and self-justification that fuels the neccessary elements to crystallize a Soul.

Until humanity learns this—until it can stand like the tax collector in the temple of its own soul and pray, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”—it will go on killing its scapegoats and calling it salvation.

But the salvation Christ offers is born not of the blood of others, but of the piercing light that exposes our own hearts.

The narrow way, as He said, is hard, and few find it (Matthew 7:14). But there is no other way: for the individual, for the nation, or for the world.