The Gollum Effect

About how internal contradictions do not allow us to live well.

The image of Gollum, it seems to me, is a vivid and accurate metaphor for the phenomenon I want to talk about / illustration by midjourney

“We wants it, we needs it. Must have the Precious...”

The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Gollum Effect is a state of internal conflict and inconsistency, which is typical for the vast majority of people. I briefly touched on this topic in a previous letter about the main sources of money. Today, let's take a closer look.

Gollum or Smeagol?

Our infantile ego generates a grandiose inner conflict. First of all, true human nature (the best in us) comes into conflict with the desire to possess external values.

In The Lord of the Rings, it looks like this: the deep essence (Smeagol) is in conflict with a heavy addiction, something that we can call “False Self” (Gollum), which was formed under the influence of seductive external values (the One Ring).

Two mighty powers,

1. deep inner essence

2. and dependence on external values, on “the Precious”,

collide with each other and split the poor creature in half. On the one hand, to be guided by the best hobbit nature, means to lose the Ring forever. On the other hand, the attempt to get the Ring means the final corruption and death of the true nature, since in order to obtain the Precious, Gollum must lie and kill, again and again.

As a result, he is contradictory, unpredictable, and suffers cruelly. However, the true essence in him has not died completely — a remnant of unconditional love and freedom still lives inside.

For example, the Nazgul were irrevocably enslaved by “external values”. The inner struggle means that hope is not yet lost / photo by Ergo Zakki

By the way, it is interesting that Gollum, Frodo and other characters are not able to control the Ring, which has its own interests and can easily slip out of the pocket to change hands. This also echoes what we talked about in “The Basic Principles of Wealth”. We can temporarily dispose of external values, but we are not able to completely control them.

The Gollum Effect and Creativity

How does the Gollum Effect look in real life? One of the clearest examples is problems with creative self-expression.

For instance, a person suddenly feels inspired to sing, dance, write or draw something. This is the primary inner impulse — alive, pure, unburdened.

However, almost immediately a toxic internal dialogue begins, provoked by the infantile ego. The idea comes that if you are going to do something, you definitely need to “succeed”, that is, get approval, praise, or, at worst, just avoid criticism.

Okay, this desire in itself is not so bad, if you keep a balance. But our rigid attachment to external values does not allow this. Instead, we experience a sharp contradiction between inside and outside.

I want to do something from the heart, something honest and truthful, something beautiful and good, but… What if my relatives, friends and strangers will criticize me, what if I don’t earn anything on this, what if I don’t get enough likes? Won't I look like a “fool”? Won't I “disgrace” myself?

As long as a people's attention is totally riveted to external values, they hardly notice reality, including the pain of other living beings, injustice, and global problems / photo by Ryoji Iwata

If we attach too much importance to “the Precious” (i.e. how others will appreciate our creation), then we generate a fear of “failure”. This is followed by painful perfectionism and procrastination. Often inspiration dies altogether under the pressure of external expectations.

As a result, many people do not realize themselves, remain dissatisfied and unhappy. If you have creative potential, you are like a nightingale. The nature of nightingales requires them to sing, and this is not only truly wonderful, this is vital.

But if we are obsessed with the Gollum Effect, the lion's share of creative energy goes to the fight against internal contradictions. We can't sing under that pressure. We can create clearly, freely and easily only without ego.

Obviously, the same principle works in other areas of life. Try to hear yourself, try to stop considering “the Precious” as a fundamental guarantee of your psychological well-being, and then you will take the first step towards serenity.

The problem is even worse than it might seem

In fact, infantile hopes don't just split our mind in two.

External values are not a single whole, they are also divided into several parts. As we learned in the previous letter, there are six key groups of ego-values:

1. 💰 Money

2. 💜 Relationships

3. 👑 Power

4. 👍 Status

5. 💪 Physical Body

6. 🦄 Escapism

Often, people tie their mental well-being to all six groups at once. But is it worth saying that all these aspects can interfere with each other, conflict with each other? Since it is impossible to get everything at once, infantile thinking faces serious contradictions.

Our attention moves in a circle between the main external values. By the way, it is interesting what we usually think about our physical body at the very last moment / collage by ArtFreja

Moreover, these six ego-aspects are also divided into many subtypes. Take, for example, Status. Many of us wear a great variety of masks to ensure high status in the eyes of all sorts of people: parents, friends, wife, husband, boss, neighbors, random strangers on the street.

In addition, people strive to prove not just one status, but at least several. We often try to look “smart” and “beautiful”, “spiritually rich” and “fashionable”, “humane” and “patriotic” at the same time. And, of course, all these masks and statuses create external and internal dissonance.

As a result, we get a terrible confusion in the head. It is difficult to combine pleasant relationships and a lust for power, our persistent desire to always appear “nice person” and a passion for money, a strong tendency to escapism and a fear of physical ailments.

Again, in addition to multidirectional external interests, something real also breaks through — the desire to be a Human, to live at the call of the soul, from a pure heart.

People tend to justify bad deeds in order to maintain their status of “infallible”. We complain, we blame; wrong becomes right, right becomes wrong. Reality is distorted in the interests of the infantile ego / photo by Malcolm Lightbody

Thus, our rigid attachment to external values generates multidimensional internal splitting. Double standards, hypocrisy, self-deception so familiar to our society are born. People are always dissatisfied, they are haunted by frustration, confusion, irritation, stress, fatigue. You cannot completely rely on such people, because who knows which of the various external interests will prevail next time (or maybe the Human will suddenly wake up?). The Gollum Effect is causing instability.

Of course, such splitting is beneficial for businessmen, it is an opportunity to get rich. To maintain the appearance of integrity and well-being, consumers turn to a variety of goods and services. Entrepreneurs offer “adhesive tape” to temporarily glue the fragments together, and “multi-colored paints” to mask cracks.

However, a person can also benefit from this state, since suffering forces us to learn, draw conclusions and understand some important things.

Well, we will definitely continue to explore this phenomenon. In one of the following materials we will talk about another interesting character from The Lord of the Rings. Subscribe to not miss new updates.

P.S. By the way, on Patreon, I published book recommendations that are related to egonomics and everything I write about. I will be happy if you join!