Do Trees Have Egos?
by Elinor Dickson
The Ego has gotten a lot of bad press lately and rightly so. It has massively overplayed its hand in human affairs. Since it is a term that I frequently use, I am having one of those, “rethink your assumptions” moments. This task was prompted while reading Glenn Aparico Perry’s recent book, Original Thinking.
His thesis includes the thorny, philosophical question as to the existence of an ego. He writes, “The ego may have originally been an illusory abstraction, but it has been invoked so many times by now it has been reified into existence. In other words, it exists because we believe it does. But whether real or not, the corollary effects of our belief in ego: fragmentation, anxiety, separation, loss – are undeniably real. Moreover, they are potentially devastating for self, society, and nature. In short, once we believe in an ego, we build a separate identity. And this identity reinforces the illusion that we are all somehow apart from each other and apart from nature.”(1) Perry correctly reflects the current dilemma humanity finds itself in. The news gives us plenty of examples where the ego has totally swallowed the person, depriving them of any morality or any ability to see the bigger picture. Therefore, if we stop believing in an ego, will our problems begin to resolve themselves?
To further examine my assumptions, I went back to Carl Jung’s definition of ego as a complex that represents the conscious mind. It comprises the thoughts, memories, and emotions that we are aware of. Tor Norretranders, in his book; The User Illusion, points to the fact that the ego has a very narrow bandwidth in which it operates. Each second, we only process sixteen of the eleven million bits of information our senses pass on to the brain. (The rest goes into the body, the carrier of the unconscious). Norretranders takes the word “ego” back to its original meaning from the Greeks, namely the “I”. There is merit in this, as the “ego – I” is, perhaps more easily understood as the self-referent point. I am here. I did such and such. This sense of identity is essential. It remains, however, that the “I” -- ego, is not the source of its thoughts or images, it needs to take its place in relationship to the Self – a term used by the Upanishads 3000 years ago, pointing to the larger circumference of the reality in which we live.
Until recently we have always had a relationship with the Self, the deities that our ancient ancestors worshipped across millennia. These images became a way of understanding the power invested in Nature and how we could relate to such energy. However, in separating out from Nature to develop a sense of “I”, or ego, we became enamored with our own ability. The development of our ego was meant to be a phase, not a destiny. The real question is, how do we approach the relationship between our ego and our Self today?
It was then that I came across the writings of Stephen Harrod Buhner, herbalist and researcher at the Foundation of Gaian Studies. For Buhner, “The ‘ego’ in its simplest definition is the part of us that monitors our survival. It monitors our environment for safety and initiates behaviors designed to keep us safe in response to what it is perceiving. It is, at root, a healthy and important part of us that wants to keep our self-organization intact. However, it has no morality. It decides behavior and initiates it without regard to consequences. … Underneath its expressions are the desire to protect the self-organized entity of which it is a part.”(2) That is, depending on our internalized values, the ego can present and support creative choices, but if it sees the world around it as predatory, it will react in kind. In the 21st century, it often seems that our ego has decided our collective survival depends on the accumulation of guns and money.
Since our experiences, stored in the phylogenetic memory of our species, form the bedrock of the ego, a further question popped into my mind. Do trees have an ego? My friends rolled their eyes, but in the realm of emergent evolution there is a case to be made and a lesson to be learned. From light to particles, to atoms, to molecules, to plants and animals, each evolutionary turning point is taken up to the next level until we arrive at humans. Whatever conscious abilities we have had to be there in an innate capacity from the beginning.
Sailing in the north Pacific I had the opportunity to listen to recordings of whales in conversation. Whales use their distinct and rhythmic language to track and inform each other of their current position and circumstances. My curiosity about consciousness in nature deepened when, in 2016, I read forester Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel and How They Communicate. I was awed by the fact that “trees evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony.”(3) On May 1, 2024, I opened the Atlantic magazine that featured an article by Zoe Schlanger entitled “The Mysteries of Plant Intelligence.” It is a review of the recent studies on the consciousness and memory of plants and how they communicate.
Thinking of nature in this way, I’ve come to realize the wisdom they can teach us since their awareness, or ‘ego,’ is still rooted in the larger circumference of the “Self.” Their behavior instinctively includes 1) community, 2) caring, and 3) play. For example, in terms of community, microscopic fungal filaments join the hair-like root tips of trees to form a mycorrhizal network, sometimes called “the wood-like web.” The biggest, oldest trees have the most fungal connections and are often called the “mother” trees. That is, having deep roots they draw up water and make it available for the young saplings. Often overshadowed, the saplings lack sunlight to photosynthesize so the larger trees “feed” them by pumping sugar into their roots.
In terms of caring, the vast amount of work done on animal interactions and communication, such as the work of Jane Goodall and many others, shows how creatures in the wild care for each other. Elephants will bury a dead newborn or share mothering responsibilities, etc. Of course, the search for food, or other instances of survival can seem aggressive to us, but I have come to the sorry conclusion that only humans slaughter their own species by the millions. With our highly developed sense of “I”, morality is often bypassed completely.
Lastly, let’s consider playing. Humor that flows into genuine laughter, even at oneself, is the sign of a healthy human. When the source of “laughter” is the ridicule of another, human connection is lost. Animals not only survive, but they also play. One needs only to think of dolphins, or horses, or dogs. Play is often a substitute for aggression or preparation for survival. Like all tensions, it is, perhaps, the intent within the action that leaves room for survival and “creative” options.
Returning to my assumptions about ego, what I see in these instinctual capacities is an ability for plants and animals to exist with an innate ability to live in a community. Survival is attached to something greater than themselves. That is, as creation evolves, we are seeing throughout nature the roots of a larger circumference that humans have come to recognize as the totality of a person’s identity? This is why studies show that human physiology is altered for the better when we spend time in in the innate rhythms of nature.
Since our ego was meant to be the witness to the evolutionary process, the chaos and anxiety many people are feeling today can be seen in two ways – both of which are true. First, we are living through the collapse of the patriarchal paradigm with its largely monotheistic, hierarchal structures based on power as strength. Even as we double down on old “strongman” structures, the current chaos leaves our ego, individually and collectively, feeling numb and out of control. Depression, drugs, conspiracy theories, authoritarianism and violence begin to take over.
Inversely, amid the chaos, many people see the immense collective field within us trying to break through to an expanded consciousness. If we can reframe the upheavals in our lives, process replaces progress, duality becomes paradox. We continue to need our ego, but one that has the humility to open to a greater reality – a healthy ego that presents to the brain the images and thoughts that align us with the creative processes of Nature. “Survival” takes on a whole new meaning.
(1) Perry, Glenn Aparico. Original Thinking, North Atlantic Books, California, 2023, P. 223
(2) Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth, Bear & Company, Rochester Vermont and Toronto, Canada, pp. 486-487.
(3) Do Trees Talk to Each Other? Smithsonian Magazine, by Richard Grant with photographs by Diane Markosian, March 2018.