Take Ego Out of Politics: The Charlie Kirk Murder as a Case Study

take ego out of politics case study
take ego out of politics case study

On September 10, 2025, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. The accused, Tyler Robinson, reportedly targeted Kirk for his political beliefs. The tragedy sent shockwaves across the U.S. and U.K., sparking grief, outrage, and a flood of polarized reactions.

Spirituality provides a lens to understand what’s happening here: ego at work. Beyond the personal loss and grief, the collective ego feeds on such events, intensifying division and suffering. Let’s look at how.

How Ego Shows Up in This Event

1. Identity + Belief Attachment

Many are defining themselves — or their entire side — by how they respond to Kirk’s death. Conservatives frame him as a martyr; critics frame him as a provocateur. Beliefs and identity fuse, so a challenge to one feels like a challenge to the other.

Consequence: Polarization deepens. Nuance disappears. Listening becomes rare.

2. Need to Be Right / Scapegoating

Leaders and commentators quickly cast blame: “the radical left” is accused of fueling hate; others insist conservatives created the conditions. Each side strengthens itself by declaring the other side guilty.

Consequence: “Us vs. them” grows sharper. Truth is obscured by competing narratives.

3. Reactivity & Outrage

Responses are charged with emotion: sorrow, fury, vengeance, defensiveness. Media amplifies the outrage, and social platforms magnify every emotional spike.

Consequence: Emotions run the show. Rational reflection becomes nearly impossible.

4. Labels & Role Fixation

Kirk is labeled a “martyr” by some, “hate figure” by others. His widow is turned into a symbolic role. Identity collapses into labels.

Consequence: The story becomes black-and-white. Complexity vanishes. Healing is blocked.

5. Feeding the Pain-Body

Historical wounds — racism, class wars, cultural clashes — are re-activated. This single event becomes fuel for old grievances.

Consequence: The collective pain-body is re-energized, keeping cycles of hurt and hostility alive.


What Presence-Based Politics Could Look Like

Spirituality reminds us: the moment we see the ego, we’ve already stepped beyond it. Here’s how presence might shift political responses:

  • From accusation → to inquiry: Instead of “who’s to blame,” we ask, “what forces are shaping this violence?”
  • Acknowledging complexity: Recognizing multiple factors — rhetoric, radicalization, mental health — without collapsing into one-sided stories.
  • Centering compassion and justice: Supporting victims and communities without inflaming revenge.
  • Listening across divides: Allowing criticism without defensiveness, seeking common ground beneath the labels.
  • Speaking with awareness: Choosing words that calm rather than ignite outrage, avoiding opportunistic point-scoring.

Closing Reflection

Charlie Kirk’s death is a tragedy. But beyond the grief lies a choice: do we let ego hijack the narrative, or can we bring awareness into the way we process and respond? If even a few voices in politics step out of ego, they create space for healing and for conscious problem-solving.

In that space, politics becomes less about identity battles — and more about human beings working together to reduce suffering and build a future.

Take Ego Out Of Politics

take ego out of politics
take ego out of politics

Have you ever noticed how political debates often feel less like problem-solving and more like identity battles?

How ego shows up in politics:

  • I am my beliefs” → disagreement feels like a personal attack.
  • The need to be right by making the other wrong.
  • Collective ego: parties, media, and movements feeding on drama.
  • Old wounds (racism, class, culture wars) keep getting re-activated.
  • Roles and labels (“patriot,” “woke,” “elitist,” “working-class”) taken as ultimate truth.
  • Addiction to outrage cycles that give a false sense of aliveness.

What conscious politics could look like:

  • Recognising beliefs are just thoughts, not who we are.
  • Listening without needing to defend or attack.
  • Seeing shared humanity beneath the labels.
  • Approaching politics as practical problem-solving, not identity warfare.
  • The paradox: the moment we see ego in ourselves or in our political tribe, we’ve already stepped beyond it. Awareness itself is freedom.

Imagine if even a small group of us engaged politics from presence rather than ego. What kind of Left and Right would we have then?

Looking At Care Differently

Get Results: change perspective
Get Results: change perspective

Are you a nurse or carer emotionally overwhelmed with the current situation?  Or are you someone forced to stay at home and watching from the sidelines, struggling to deal with the pain, suffering and loss of others?

Just a slight digression for a moment, I’d like you to think about the following scenario…..

If you saw a person (male or female) keep head butting a wall then complaining they have a massive headache, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them?  Please consider this before reading on.

Back to your suffering and feelings of being emotionally overwhelmed, about the current situation.  You’re getting upset that people are struggling and even dying, not just because those things are happening, but largely because you believe that others shouldn’t have to suffer.  But this is not possible, death and illness are part of life, this is the way it has always been and will always be. None of us will escape the clutches of death, and will inevitably be ill at some point of our lives.

Holding onto the belief “people should not suffer”, creates an expectation/preference that can never be fulfilled, and will only bring suffering to the person that holds onto that way of thinking. It is metaphorically like banging your head against a wall.  Instead shift your mindset. If dealing with sick patients, be grateful you can ease their suffering to some degree or help their passing be more tolerable. Grateful you are well enough to do be able to care for them in some way. If you were not there for them, their situation would be so much worse.

One final point I need to make, the difference between you and the person head butting the wall is that your suffering comes out of caring about others, not just as a result of some mindless act of self-harm. The fact you care so much, is in itself, something to be immensely proud of. Caring people make for a better world to live and die in.  So keep caring, but don’t suffer for your caring. Take joy from your priceless assistance, we love you for it, and so do those you look after.

You’re Not Who You Think You Are

Get Results: self awareness
Get Results: self awareness

If you’re of adult age, you’ve probably experienced a fair amount in life.

You’ve probably fallen in love, and maybe out of love again, at least once.

You’ve probably been to school, witnessed or been the victim of bullying.

You’ve undoubtedly experienced  a loss of some kind, whether it be someone close to you, or loss of a valued possession.

You’ll have most certainly have experienced many different emotions; such as happiness, sadness, anger, embarrassment, longing etc.

Through all these experiences, what has been the one thing that has remained constant?

If you said your “thoughts”, then we know this isn’t true, your thoughts come and go like clouds. Sure you experience many thought over and over, these form beliefs that shape your life, but they do still come and go. You’re not thinking the same thing all the time.

If you said your “emotions”, then again these are constantly in flux.

If you said your “behaviours”, then again these have changed as you’ve grown and unless you do exactly the same thing all the time, they are constantly changing as you undertake different tasks.

So what is the one constant, that has shared every second of every day?

The answer to this is the “awareness” in which all experiences unfold. The “presence” that watches, listens and is.

This presence can be described as consciousness, awareness, or even space. It is the space into which all life unfolds, but it isn’t empty space. It isn’t a vacuum of nothing, but it a space of “NO THING”.

You can not view it in the same way you can your mind constructed self. The self you describe when someone asks you, who you are.

I am [whatever age you are],

I am a male or female

I am a professional whatever

I am a father, mother, daughter son, only child

Whatever you label yourself as being, is not really who you are.

This labelled self is your mind constructed identity, used to tell stories about, to describe, to understand, to point to, but it isn’t the real you.

You look at a flower and you call it a flower, you have a mind constructed idea of what as flower is, what it should look like, where you should find it.

In the same way you do with anything you’ve ever experienced.

You label it, so it can understand it, and your mind does the same with its version of you.

When you say I’m trying to find myself, this is a false way of thinking about it. The real you, can’t be observed,  or lost like an object because you can’t removed yourself from it. “You are it” and “it is you”. You can’t do anything other than “be who you are”.

It’s not about finding yourself, it’s about losing everything that mentally and emotionally blocks your realisation of the truth, that all the constructed versions of yourself are not you. The real you is what’s left when all the labels are stripped away.

You are awareness, presence, the space in which all experiences play out, without the layer of thought and interpretation getting in the way. The space that just is, without any need to add anything else. You are consciousness.

I love these two quotes that say it all…

“Thoughts are like clouds, you are the sky. ”

“You are the Universe, experiencing itself from infinite points of view. ”

That means you and I, and all life are connected because we are all a manifestation of the Universe experiencing itself.

As I Began To Love Myself Poem By Charlie Chaplin?

Get Results: Love and do what you will
Get Results: Love and do what you will

As I began to love myself
I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living
against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is Authenticity.

As I began to love myself
I understood how much it can offend somebody
if I try to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time was not right
and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I call this Respect.

As I began to love myself
I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything
that surrounded me
was inviting me to grow.
Today I call this Maturity.

As I began to love myself
I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time,
and everything happens at the exactly right moment.
So I could be calm.
Today I call this Self-Confidence.

As I began to love myself
I quit stealing my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects
for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness,
things I love to do and that make my heart cheer,
and I do them in my own way
and in my own rhythm.
Today I call this Simplicity.

As I began to love myself
I freed myself of anything
that is no good for my health –
food, people, things, situations,
and everything that drew me down
and away from myself.
At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism.
Today I know it is Love of Oneself.

As I began to love myself
I quit trying to always be right,
and ever since
I was wrong less of the time.
Today I discovered that is Modesty.

As I began to love myself
I refused to go on living in the past
and worrying about the future.
Now, I only live for the moment,
where everything is happening.
Today I live each day,
day by day,
and I call it Fulfillment.

As I began to love myself
I recognized
that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick.
But as I connected it to my heart,
my mind became a valuable ally.
Today I call this connection Wisdom of the Heart.

We no longer need to fear arguments,
confrontations or any kind of problems
with ourselves or others.
Even stars collide,
and out of their crashing, new worlds are born.
Today I know: This is Life!

Having done some research, we found that this poem“As I Began to Love Myself” was not actually written by Charlie Chaplin. As far as we can tell, the poem is actually an English translation of Portuguese translation of an English language book written by Kim and Alison McMillen in 2001 entitled “When I Loved Myself Enough.” That text was then altered even further into the shareable form it consists of today. 

 

Get Results: As I Began To Love Myself poem
Get Results: As I Began To Love Myself poem

The Ego Is Flawed

Get Results: The EGO is flawed
Get Results: The EGO is flawed

Use the Ego don’t be used by it.

Understand how it is calibrated so you can override it’s shortcomings and limitations and rise above them.

The Ego is well meaning but primitive.

Its fear based approach is self serving and survival driven but limiting and objectionable.

It prefers routine over exploration because it’s the safer approach. Routine is the enemy of innovation and creativity.

Thinking differently results in acting differently, acting differently results in experiencing differently, experiencing results in thinking differently. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Thinking without being invested in those thoughts is freedom from the EGO, because EGO is thought invested with your sense of self.

For more about spirituality, click here.

You Are More Than Enough!

Get Results: Love and do what you will
Get Results: Love and do what you will

We’re are bombarded with messages telling us to..

“Buy this [car/makeup…] you’ll get [girls/guys/success…]”

Marketers telling you “YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH!”, so that they can sell you their stuff

You can’t truly love others if you don’t love yourself

Self love is not to be feared
We’re told vanity and arrogance are bad
But it’s okay to feel good about yourself, it really is

You might ask yourself..

“I wonder how should I act?”

“How do I love myself?”

Some people are busy filling other people’s cup but are irresponsible with their own cup

Treat yourself like someone you love

Look through all your fear

know you are already enough!

For more, check out this inspirational video below

Desiderata

Get Results: Desiderata
Get Results: Desiderata

“Desiderata” is a 1927 poem by American writer Max Ehrmann. Largely unknown in the author’s lifetime, its use in devotional and spoken-word recordings in 1971 and 1972 called it to the attention of the world.

Liberal versus Conservative

Liberalconservative sign
Liberalconservative sign

Fear and Love are the main drivers for all human behaviour, and this fact is accurate for every person that has ever lived, but we differ greatly in how we believe to best achieve this.

We all have a mix of conservative and liberal views, we are positioned along a continuum which as liberal values at one end, and conservative views at the other. We appear along this continuum at different points from one another and also from ourselves with reference to different subjects, topics at at different time and in different situations.

I lean towards stability and responsibility in some situations while favoring innovation and a more carefree attitude in others. I feel reassured by politicians and celebrities that I am familiar with, and that I trust (there aren’t many of those to be honest), but also embrace change and uncertainty at times.

Conservative values come from beliefs that resist CHANGE, and carry the narrative that change equals uncertainty, risk, threat, and/or danger. Those with Conservative values that feel under threat crave the reassurance of something and someone familiar.

Research shows that people who identify as having liberal values often display conservative tendencies when they feel threatened, and  those that classify themselves as conservatives display liberal tendencies when they feel less inhibited.

I was recently researching Simon Baron-Cohen’s hypothesis Empathising-Systemising theory, which suggests that people may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions: empathising and systemising.

It supposedly measures a person’s strength of interest in empathy (the ability to identify and understand the thoughts and feelings of others and to respond to these with appropriate emotions) and a person’s strength of interest in systems (in terms of the drive to analyse or construct them).

Well I consider systemising to be a conservatively based trait. The need to take things apart and figure out how they work, and to organise processes into routines, that are easy to understand and follow, I hypothesis, come from a desire to make us feel less threatened by our environment and more in control of our destiny.

Empathising could also be considered fear based trait, but its an alternative strategy to achieve the same thing as systemising, but in a more inclusive way. It could also be perceived as a way to spiritually connect with others, to get outside of ourselves. Empathisers figure that understanding others makes them less vulnerable to the world. It’s the same desire as the conservative, but employs a completely different strategy to achieve it.

Get Results: diffusion of innovation bell
Get Results: diffusion of innovation bell

Now let’s consider the diffusion of innovation bell. This attempts to explain why some people embrace innovation quicker than others. At one end of the scale you have the Early Adaptors and at the other, Laggards.

So why do Laggards resist change, because they crave the status quo, they like to keep things the same, because they fear change, which is a conservative trait. On the other hand Early Adapters focus on the new thing because it brings with it opportunities rather than risk and danger, which is a liberal trait.

So while you might consider yourself coming from a more conservative or liberal mindset, the underlying desire for pleasure and need to avoid pain are the same in everyone. We are more similar than we are different. We love and fear in the same way, but our beliefs shape our strategies for navigating the world so that we avoid pain and find pleasure.

We should embrace different views because they open our minds, and give us ideas for alternative strategies for achieving the same goals.

Until next time..

Power Corrupts And Absolute Power Absolutely Corrupts

Get Results: power corrupts
Get Results: power corrupts

“Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts.”

It’s an interesting statement but is it accurate?

If you think about human nature we all have a tendency to gravitate towards inflating our sense of self, and avoiding situations that devalue it.

Evidence of this is all around us in everyday life. Arguments are engaged in to uphold ones sense of self. For instance, think about the reasons why you last argued, were you protecting something important to you? Something you’d invested yourself in. When you prefix “my…” to anything, such as“my idea”, “my thoughts”, “my opinion”, “my possessions”, “my kids” you make it part of your self-worth.

The mind believes, the more you HAVE the more you ARE, but the flip side of having more and being more, is that you also have more to lose.

When individuals gain more money, more power, more stature, it becomes more difficult to face loosing it, and so self interest and self preservation become even more important.

Those in power have more to lose by rocking the boat, by fighting again the very system they are benefiting from, so what do they do, they fight to preserve the status quo, because it serves them and after all, we are all designed to protect ourselves, it’s our survival instinct doing it’s job.

If you understand this trait of human nature, you come to realise that anyone in power is open to corruption, and is not going to drive through change that could potentially put them at risk.

You can’t defy human nature, we are what we are, but you can manage it, so that society is better for it, and so that those in power, serve society rather than themselves.

So how do we, the ordinary people, deal with the fact that people are self serving and power only increases this instinct?

Well, we start to actually hold politicians, businesses and powerful individuals to account, we make sure they deliver on the promises they benefited on the back of, and if they don’t they should know they have a great deal to lose.