There are people who believe that the world's problems are rooted in ego, and that doing anything at the political level is ego-driven and thus a part of the problem.
They are wrong – completely.
The problems of the world are not rooted in ego. They are rooted in wrong choices that people make. This can most certainly come from ego; but it can also come from any number of other things than ego. They can come from deliberate negative intent. Or they can come from error. And these, once again, can have any number of possible sources, from bad intent to bad thinking.
Me escaping the world or meditating away my ego would solve absolutely nothing. It may improve my state of mind or even my character; but it will not solve things such as global warming and gender war. What would solve our problems is direct, honest, intelligent action toward that effect. And there are plenty of things that need to be done in the world.
Am I driven in this by ego? No. I am driven in this by wanting my daughter to inherit a better world than did I. I am driven in this by love, which is what spiritual people are meant to be driven by.
Even if someone is motivated by ego, that does not mean that he is going to be doing wrong. Bill Gates is an egomaniac, but he computerized the world and contributed billions of dollars toward fighting AIDS in Africa. Certainly ego can go wrong; but it also can go right. Yes Hitler had a big ego; but so do any number of major contributors, and most of them are not doing evil.
Another claim I have heard is that I am driven by power. I for one do not seek to kill or to rule anyone. I seek to influence thought with better ideas. And there are plenty of these at https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought.
Now there are many of such people who talk about responsibility; but I do not see them practicing it. Responsibility does not mean having a huge house and a Hummer. Responsibility means leaving the world a better place than you have found it. It is completely wrong to portray concern for such things as lack of responsibility or “victim consciousness” or anything of the sort. You are here. You are taking up resources. It is your responsibility to make the place better for you having been in it.
Should we throw away spirituality? No. We should however throw away bad thinking, and in these situations this is what we see. Positive thinking or anything of the sort solves absolutely nothing. In fact it causes more problems than it solves. You think positive, you fail to anticipate problems, you do foolish things.
Negative thinking is not the solution either. A negative thinker would portray anything good as yet another, sneakier way to do evil; and after being treated that way by a number of people who have that mentality I finally had enough of it and decided to cut them out of my life. Negative thinking would have us convinced that we are not able to solve our problems. That is completely wrong. We most certainly are capable of solving our problems. It just takes intelligence and guts.
Neither positive thinking nor negative thinking begin to be the solution. The real solution is real thinking and real action in its pursuit. Removing ourselves from the fire accomplishes nothing. We need to apply ourselves toward solving the world's problems. It does not matter if someone thinks that this is of the ego. What matters is leaving the world a better place than we have found it; and that can have any number of possible motivations. In my case, once again, the motivation is love.
So it is time that real problems be confronted by real action. And that means among other things throwing away deceptions such as what we see in the New Age movement and doing what actually needs to be done. And there are plenty of things that need to be done.