I’ve been looking for the right phrase to articulate something and I randomly discovered someone writing perfectly about its essence – in a book about Buddhism.
[Post flagged for cleanup – there is a lot going on in here]
Contents
- The Book – a passage about spiritual materialism
- Context – further info about the author and philosophy
- The Junkyard – defining it, and examples
- Junkyardism – why it exists and how our ego enforces it
- Creative Depth – openness and trusting yourself over your ego undermine junkyardist tendencies
What is “ego”?
“Ego” is the “self” or “I” which is conscious of our own existence. To be “ego-centric” or have a “large ego” is to have an exaggerated sense of self-worth, and act in a way which holds oneself in higher importance than others (selfishness).
What is “spiritual materialism”?
“Spiritual materialism” is a distorted view of spirituality where spirituality is used to boost egocentrism; someone who falls into spiritual materialism believes that he/she is developing themselves spiritually, but is actually strengthening their ego through spiritual techniques. This is related to spiritual pride, which is more like self-righteousness under the guise of religion. A simple example is the belief that one is “holier than others”, and thus more important that others.
Notes
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Some of this post has an aura of gatekeeping – I don’t mean that junkyardists are necessarily worse for society or stupid or something (I am one too!), I just find it a curious concept that I had never seen articulated so well before, and wanted to share and expand on it.
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This post is not about religions. The Buddhist worldview is interesting, so I have included reference to it in here, but I apply the concept of spiritual materialism outside of spirituality, where it turns out to be fairly pervasive.
The movie Idiocracy (2006), featuring a hellscape of stupid people, ultimately serves the ego of the viewer because they set themselves apart from and above the society which exists in the movie – similarly to how David Foster Wallace explains how TV viewers in America view themselves as “above” and not “apart of” mainstream society, while actively participating in its exact culture of TV and consumerism in “E Unibus Pluram”. Idiocracy is commonly referenced when making fun of mainstream society on the internet, while also being extremely ironic to reference, since watching an hour and a half of that movie sets one deeply as a part of the group of mainstream viewers with an interest in cheap, stupid entertainment.
The Book
In the book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, the author, Chogyam Trungpa, emphasizes how it becomes easy to study and collect an assortment of philosophies, books, texts and ideas, but difficult to focus on one and develop ourselves by applying its wisdom. Instead, we may find ourselves treating it as simply another object in our collection or bookshelf. He calls such a collection an “antique shop” which becomes a “junk shop” as more and more antiques fill the space; I’m going to call this whole psychological effect “junkyardism”. Trungpa is writing about spirituality, but the main theme resonates well across how we choose to spend our time and energy in general.
He writes,
It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego’s constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking. One must step out of spiritual materialism. If we do not step out of spiritual materialism, if we in fact practice it, then we may eventually find ourselves possessed of a huge collection of spiritual paths. We may feel these spiritual collections to be very precious. We have studied so much. We may have studied Western philosophy or [Eastern] philosophy, practiced yoga or perhaps have studied under dozens of great masters. We have achieved and we have learned. We believe that we have accumulated a hoard of knowledge. And yet, having gone through all this, there is still something to give up. It is extremely mysterious! How could this happen? Impossible! But unfortunately it is so. Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego’s display, part of the grandiose quality of ego. We display them to the world and, in so doing, reassure ourselves that we exist, safe and secure, as “spiritual” people.
But we have simply created a shop, an antique shop. We could be specializing in [Eastern] antiques or medieval Christian antiques or antiques from some other civilization or time, but we are, nonetheless, running a shop. Before we filled our shop with so many things the room was beautiful: white-washed walls and a very simple floor with a bright lamp burning in the ceiling. There was one object of art in the middle of the room and it was beautiful. Everyone who came appreciated its beauty, including ourselves.
But we were not satisfied and we thought, “Since this one object makes my room so beautiful, if I get more antiques, my room will be even more beautiful.” so we began to collect, and the end result was chaos.
We searched the world over for beautiful objects – India, Japan, many different countries. And each time we found an antique, because we were dealing with only one object at a time, we saw it as beautiful and thought it would be beautiful in our shop. But when we brought the object home and put it there, it became just another addition to our junky collection. The beauty of the object did not radiate out any more, because it was surrounded by so many other beautiful things. It did not mean anything anymore. Instead of a room full of beautiful antiques we created a junk shop!
Proper shopping does not entail collecting a lot of information or beauty, but it involves fully appreciating each individual object. This is very important. If you really appreciate an object of beauty, then you completely identify with it and forget yourself. It is like seeing a very interesting, fascinating movie and forgetting that you are the audience. At that moment there is no world: your whole being is that scene of that movie. It is that kind of identification, complete involvement with one thing. Did we actually taste it and chew it and swallow it properly, that one object of beauty, that one spiritual teaching? Or did we merely regard it as a part of our vast and growing collection?
I place so much emphasis on this point because I know that all of us have come to the teachings and practice of meditation not to make a lot of money, but because we genuinely want to learn, want to develop ourselves. But, if we regard knowledge as an antique, as “ancient wisdom” to be collected, then we are on the wrong path.
– Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism pg.15-17, 1973
Context
This quote has a lot going on. Here is some extra context, plus a few things to note about Trungpa himself and Buddhist philosophy:
- Buddhists view the ego and its “bureaucracy” as the cause of the greatest suffering of the human experience. This bureaucracy refers to our tendency to be hyper self-aware, over-analyze ourselves and “check” ourselves to make sure that we maintain and enhance our ego in desirable ways. From the Buddhist view, our main suffering in life as humans is the struggle in maintaining and enhancing our image of ourself, an image which is particularly transient, yet we want it to be solidified, so we constantly grasp at doing so, and it continuously slips out of our reach – this is the struggle brought upon us by our egos. We feel like we have to watch ourselves/check ourselves to fit our own (transient) mold.
- In other parts of the book, Trungpa writes about how we have this confused perspective of duality – we feel like there is someone conscious inside of us, that is separate from the world, when this is not true: we are literally the world itself, there is no separation. When he talks about “complete involvement in one thing” in the above quoted passage, he is also indirectly referring to the Buddhist viewpoint of non-separation with the world – “non-duality”, a cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy.
- The final bit about “regarding knowledge as an antique” refers to how enlightenment works, specifically that teachings are not passed down as knowledge: Buddhist teachers use the teachings to help someone experience the personal journey of enlightenment. Then that person can go on and help enlighten the next. There is a famous story of a Buddhist in training who lost all of his notes in a canoe accident while traveling back from his teacher, only to realize that he did not need the texts at all to be a Buddhist – he had already experienced the teachings which his teacher had guided him along his path to experience, so he was permanently changed from them and didn’t need to memorize any doctrines, which is the antithesis of Buddhist practice. (see next point)
- It is relevant to note that in Buddhist philosophy, “enlightenment” is centered around removing the barriers in your brain that stop your enlightened self from shining through – it’s not about external addition of doctrine or information to the brain, it’s about real change using the material already there. This change breaks down egocentrism and preconceptions about the world that clog up our mind. Buddhist teachings are meant to be experienced personally; it is also relevant that enlightenment doesn’t have hierarchies – as you continue along the path, you become more grounded and down to earth. Meditation is about grounding yourself in the present moment, not floating on air, or maintaining some ethereal trance state.
- Trungpa did not view spirituality as a fight between good or evil, not only because involvement on a battlefield is not sacred, but also because a battle between “this” and “that” is still just the ego asserting itself and trying to establish and assert its territory. He believed that any involvement in worshipping a deity is just an ego assertion of being involved with a “bigger” power in the world, as opposed to a “smaller” power (of a human) – and this dichotomy was yet another categorization attempt to make our ego feel good about picking the “right” side. He viewed our preconceptions about the world as a form of (ego) security, arguing that we must drop the need to feel secure in every moment in order to see the world “as it is”, and accept it.
The Junkyard
I will have to come back to this definition to continually iterate and refine it.
A junkyard is:
- a collection of many things – physical, digital, mental – or experiences –
- which we provide only a passing, shallow level of energy or interest in,
- and/or only consider top-down for results and not bottom-up as an end to a means, and
- which we desire to collect more of to boost our ego over the growth of said collection.
One person could have many junkyards. I have a junkyard of concepts from various topics. Others may have spiritual or philosophical junkyards, hobbyist junkyards, digital junkyards. Some interests do not create junkyards because the interest is not tied to ego, it is genuine.
Breaking this down:
- A collection can be one of experiences too, for example, going to many concerts or visiting many countries.
- I used the word “energy” because I was thinking about the energy levels involved with actually studying something and taking notes vs. just reading the words and pretending to absorb and understand it without comparing, contrasting, thinking. To have interest in something is one thing, to have the energy to actually understand and apply the wisdom from it is another, and that’s the point.
- “Top down” and “bottom up” – the idea here is that if I view something from the top down, I see the result I want and work towards it with it as the goal. Bottom-up means that I start from fundamentals and work towards designing a system from that starting point, from the get-go. To consider something deeply from core concepts is a bottom-up approach, whereas to consider something from its resulting qualities (ex. another book on the shelf) is top-down.
- “End to a means” – what I mean here is that when we collect to serve ego, we consider the act of collecting a means to an end. Instead, an anti-junkyard philosophy would be to stop considering a means at all, for example: why collect, if only to serve our ego? What good is another antique in the junkyard?
This entire idea is particularly relevant to me because I’ve not only seen the phenomena arise in different hobbies/fields, but I’ve been a part of it myself too. Now that I’m writing about it, junkyardism appears fairly pervasive and may be a part of human nature itself. Some examples:
- traveling: collecting shallow international travel “experiences” is a huge deal on the internet, as people go to places solely for the instagram clout, thinking travel will cure their problems[*], and miss the personal development that could happen if they shut off their tech and tried to talk to the locals or engage in other ways not listed on TripAdvisor.
- the radio control hobby: it’s easy to collect and collect airplanes (and the associated gadgets) without getting better at flying them, or learning a specific niche of flying well. There’s a lot of “jack-of-all-trades, masters of none” who are ultimately bored (which is what happened to me) with their junkyard.
- libraries and bookstores: where the self-help genre is quite literally a junkyard of millions of opinions and information that’s easy to collect and more difficult to apply. I also spent time purposefully searching for obscure material to set myself apart from the crowd.
- wristwatch collecting (a hobby I used to be involved with): it’s quite literally a collection of pretty objects that over time mean nothing and just serve the ego. Also, flexing anything expensive is stereotypical egocentrism behavior.[**]
- in Appalachian Trail planning: there’s so much noise on the internet about this and that piece of gear, and collecting pieces of gear can become a hobby in and of itself instead of just getting outside and walking – which is what hiking really is.[***]
- technology and computer science: it’s easy to browse HackerNews every day on the hunt for interesting tidbits of information or peruse the junkyard of new Python projects fraught with computer disease, and more difficult to build out a project for yourself, or become more grounded in the fundamentals of CS (like learn how Python actually works), instead of focusing on the latest shiny thing (like AI…).
- see this post I made about devices and overengineering, which articulates some related themes about reinventing the wheel instead of knowing fundamentals deeply to make a good product that actually lasts and isn’t full of tedium and unnecessary complexity.
- all over YouTube and the internet in general: endless scrolling is a literal junkyard even if we ignore the sound-bite sized content lengths (endless YouTube recommendations count too), and people are constantly trying to hack out a new way to improve life instead of understand the fundamentals of where their pain is and take small steps towards safety. There is this constant desire to search for the “hidden knowledge” that will change everything. “the TRUTH about acne medication - 12mins”, Truth Social itself, incel-isms and redpill ideology, alongside literally every cultish subreddit which has its own vernacular to set itself apart from the herd.
- minimalism (and the ethos of this website!): classic web fans are trying to put more signal and less noise in their websites, to not accumulate a junkyard. Still, I’ve pruned my site before of excess posts that were mid, and still think I have too much noise on here. Blogging can become mundane, and many websites have too much fluff – which is why the classic web is so enticing :)
- consumerism and marketing in general, where we jump from purchasing one thing to another due to intense marketing strategies that convince us that the new solid-white shoe is surely NOT the old one… and then we still are in pain if we walk too long in those flat shoes because they are poorly designed.
- in mathematics: the whole idea of diminishing returns seems relevant here; quite literally, the law of diminishing returns speaks to the fact that adding more and more inputs to a system after a certain point barely increases output – in fact, at a certain point, adding more decreases the output. Similarly, with a junkyard of knowledge, you’re not making any progress by adding yet another self-help book’s philosophy to it.[****]
[*] - the linked post has strong Buddhist philosophy chunks in it (intentionally or not), ie “While travel does expand and stretch the horizons of what we know about the world, it is not the answer we’re looking for in times of unrest. To strengthen the health of the mind, the venue to do that in is the one we are in now.”
[**] - it’s worth mentioning that I recognized that I studied math in part due to my ego motivations – I even made a point to note that I was interested in the esoteric knowledgebase of it all. Yet another lame junkyardist tendency of mine.
[***] - it is probably more relevant that the vast majority of hikers now cannot use a map and compass, yet have accumulated vast troves of emergency and prepper gear. This vane of thought borders gatekeeping, which I despise, but it’s relevant.
[****] - the concept of Junkyardism, from a birds eye view, basically takes the law of diminishing returns and relates it to human egoism in the material world. It can take on the form of different types of junkyards (physical, experiential, etc. as described earlier), but it appears to be all tied to the same psychological pattern related to information/option overload and self-centeredness / self-exaltation / monument-building.
The idea here is also that if you study something deeply enough where you actually apply yourself to it, you will develop yourself in ways that would make you more capable to handle other fields too. Existing in a silo is not a bad thing if the knowledge from it gets applied and not memorized / regurgitated. You don’t have to pretend to know about everything, just say “I don’t know / it’s not my field”, like many scientists do. You can use the models you built from one knowledge base to augment thoughts about another as long as it’s within reason.
Junkyardism
Junkyardism is everywhere! – this idea of collecting things to maintain and enhance our egos, without connecting with each one deeply enough to have them change our views/opinions. Connecting with one takes time, thus reducing the speed of collecting new items for our junkyard – therefore hurting our ego, which wants to see continuous growth of wisdom and intelligence. Connecting also requires a sort of humble openness, which carries with it the possibility that we may have to change our views after truly understanding the material – again, hurting the ego, which wants to maintain that our views are consistent and solid, and that we were right all along.
There is also an argument in here somewhere about how overproduction (or overconsumption?) of stuff (like IoT connected devices) and ideas (self-help genre comes to mind) leads to junkyardism, which may be more relevant for my other post, but I digress.
Trungpa writes that these sorts of collections are a function of the ego not only soothing itself (as we continue to build monuments to ourselves and feel good about ourselves), but also protecting itself. The reason we collect so much knowledge but have never worked to experience things deeply, is because doing so would threaten the very existence of our ego. How? We can very easily just let our ego think that we are wise instead of becoming wise. If we were to truly become wise, we would have to drop our (flimsy, grasping) satisfaction with our large, full bookshelf, and spend a month with a single book, letting it marinate with our worldview and considering it deeply. Our egos are threatened by this, since we are trying to enhance them with more and more information and ideas – we want to continue building monuments to ourselves – so we struggle to ground ourselves and build deep wisdom that may actually change our perspectives.
The same goes for collecting things. Start to analyze more deeply the inner workings of the watch, and you may realize you’re not as interested in them as you were before. A black box can lose its appeal when it’s no longer opaque: there’s no mysticism anymore. It’s just a watch.
The Paradox of Choice exists as an effect of junkyardism too – the more we collect, the less each individual thing means to us, and it’s harder to engage with, since there’s simply so many other options to choose from… why pick that one? Picking any one thing gives us anxiety because, maybe it’s the wrong thing to pick. Thus, we are less satisfied with what we do pick.
This post reminds me of The Gervais Principle, too. People who are trying to impress the next person to move up the corporate ladder ultimately are just given more work to do and taken advantage of. Similarly, those with junkyards find themselves with more work to increase their junkyard, in an every-increasing game of playing catch-up with the next person, who has more wristwatches, more books read, and more spirituality. The “losers” of the MacLeod hierarchy end up winning at life (in some sense) since they play no part in the keeping-up game. See The Onion and Mark Manson.
Creative Depth
Openness is the solution to junkyardism: being open enough to care and accept yourself, and openness in willingness to change – not just upon learning new information, but upon experiencing new things. If we are closed and simply defend our egos 24/7, we remain miserable, shallow, and lack joy and creative spirit. Being open allows one to be curious and creative and be a part of their world instead of a spectator of it. This is non-duality, a fundamental Buddhist concept.
The Tibetan word for wisdom is “yeshe”, which means “primordial intelligence”. Buddhist philosophy considers the idea that some forms of trust have no beginning or end – they are primordial states of the universe. To find your ultimate trust in yourself is to not look for it, because it’s always been there, that’s the idea.
Trungpa emphasized to not observe yourself unnecessarily – forget “Big Brother”, it is “Big Me”! – and believed that constant over-analysis of ourselves is death because we will experience no further creativity, which would lead us down a limited, rigid life. He stressed openness and confidence in taking steps forwards, like the walk of an elephant, to make real use of life.
I believe creativity spawns in the midst of open, genuine interest, which not only produces serendipity - a catalyst for development (of ideas and change) - but is also primed and ready to take advantage of it. The path towards creativity and life is one where we have to trust ourselves to be open and not simply serve our ego.
“If you really made friends with yourself, you wouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes all the time.” – Trungpa
Best,
Daniel
I’ve spent the last two months without my computer desk set up – I literally just tore it down to get outside more. Finding this book genuinely felt like the culmination of my search for information lately, and I’m a bit stuck in limbo thinking about what to do with my life now because it made such a serious impact on my headspace.
Writing this post made me wonder if I’m just re-articulating the concept of enshittification, but in a psychological vane. Maybe the answer of why things become enshittified lies in complexity science.
What Buddhism attempts to teach, in a nutshell:
- Becoming down-to-earth – become more grounded and experience “nowness” (living in the present moment) more regularly
- All you need is your mind – make internal changes to your brain, with the material of the brain (nothing more) for a perspective shift (“removing the obstacles in your head set up by ego”).
- No memorizing antique knowledge or mystical scriptures – the teachings are meant to be applied for a unique personal experience
- No conquering or hierarchical thinking – the idea is to transcend destructive tendencies and let go, in a controlled way, of categorization like hierarchies or form (race, gender, etc.), so that we can experience the naked quality of life without our preconceptions (which are fickle and generally wrong)
- Anti-materialist – working against the spiritual junkyard
- Trusting yourself to be open and not feel the need to defend your ego at every turn
See also my notes on the whole book: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.
“Have you even tried being happy?” – Ben