My Fifth Recommendation: LEVEL THE EGO – MAKE YOURSELF LOOK FOOLISH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
Since many of our lives appear empty we try to fill them with our own ego. It is an awkward way to live. We consider ourselves to be huge and the universe and everything else to be tiny in comparison. A Casual observer could see that this is incorrect. The ego is difficult to shrink. I have found that one sure way of doing it is to make ourselves appear foolish or insignificant on as many occasions as we can. My ego has always been out of control and, for me, only extreme measures had any noticeable effect. I’ll tell you about my own efforts to contain my ego and perhaps these examples will give rise to more appropriate examples for yourselves.
Dressed as a well weathered derelict, I would panhandle on a busy street. I have done this in nearly every large city in the States. 
It is one of the most illuminating activities a person can engage in. If you do this seriously, you will begin to look at your fellow man with an entirely different eye. I have discovered that if you are of no importance whatsoever to another human being, then that human being tends to open his or her true self up more readily. People who are, in the normal course of business, polite, kind and gracious, sometimes turn rude and petty when they are speaking to a person who is not really a person to them. Other people who are generally attentive to their neighbors and even random strangers, will not look at you or even acknowledge your existence when you speak to them if you are below a certain status. Homelessness appears to be at the very bottom of this unwritten caste system.
Panhandling never failed to amuse and educate me. My most memorable time was in Ventura California in the late Fall of 2004. I went into a Goodwill store and purchased an old ragged hat and an old worn overcoat. I waited until 6 o’clock in the evening and set up shop in the alcove of closed jewelry store on the main street downtown. I made a cardboard sign on which I wrote “broke and stupid” and held it in front of me while I sat cross-legged on the ground. I placed a small box in front of me in which I tossed a few crumpled dollar bills and some random change. I placed 5 new 100 dollar bills in front of the box, side by side.
My first customers were four Hispanic gang members who nearly passed me by. One of them noticed the hundreds and made as if to come over and scoop them up. He was grabbed by the arm by the tallest member, who whispered something in his ear, at which they all turned and went on their way. I can only assume that the tall one thought I was a cop and the whole scene was a set up.
.
I plaintively asked each and every passerby for spare change, 99% of whom ignored me as if I did not exist.
After 5 or ten minutes, two elderly ladies, looking much like regular churchgoers, dropped a dollar in my box and admonished me not to spend it on drink. I promised I would not.
A few minutes and a dozen or more people later (to whom I was invisible), a dark blue, brand new Porsche parked about four spaces up the street from me and out stepped a man and a woman, dressed to the hilt and wearing conspicuous, expensive looking jewelry. As they approached I asked “can you spare a dollar?” To which the man immediately replied, indicating he had nothing to spare. I quickly grabbed one of the hundreds and held it out to him saying “I’m so very sorry for you. Here then, take this.” He looked dumbfounded and stopped in his tracks, but the woman, without hesitation, took the hundred and put it in her purse. (That was a first for me, by the way).
The man wanted to know what was going on. I explained that since he had no money, and I did, it was only right that I should share my good fortune with his misfortune. He was unable to help me, so he claimed, but I was able to help him, so I did. The 
conversation quickly settled on the fact that they gave generously to the poor through contributions to United Way. I asked why it was easy to give large sums through an intermediary but when an apparently small, but real need spoke up from the street, they were able to decline it.
The talk went on in from there in great depth. At some point the woman began to cry. Eventually, the woman asked if they could have a second chance. I said “of course”. She took her husband by the arm and walked back toward their car. She turned and they again walked towards me. “Can you spare a dollar?” I plaintively asked. The woman reached in her purse, gave me back my hundred, plus a dollar, and they walked on by.
Two of my current readers were observers of this event as it happened. I hope I remembered it correctly. Please correct me if I misrepresented anything.
You don’t have to panhandle, of course, in order to shrink down the ego. I’ve done hundreds of similarly belittling things that have worked equally as well. Some of my favorites include:
~Taking a new date to a very fancy restaurant wearing absurdly out of fashion attire, then purposely mispronouncing everything on the menu, and acting awkward and out of place regarding the use of utensils and other unfamiliar objects, such as butter knives, tea strainers, etc.
~Renting an electric wheelchair from a medical supply house and spending the day pretending to be paraplegia in some public place. There is nothing that brings the ego down quicker than thousands of pairs of eyes staring at you in pity throughout the day.
~Attending at least 10 AA meetings. Get genuinely into the spirit of things. Stand up in front of dozens of people and fearlessly and completely tell them who you really are. It’s OK. It’s safe.
~Doing some little foolishness every day. Sing your favorite song standing in the checkout line at Safeway or some similar place (as Janice can tell you, I do this multiple times a day). Or dance a jig while walking down the street. Or wear a Clown Wig for no apparent purpose.
As Shakespeare (or possibly Baby Ruth) so beautifully said: “To become wise, we must first become a fool”.
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Thanks to SL for making the fun video.
Only two more recommendations to go…. 🙁 Be sure to check back tomorrow.
©WEB~2014 ☮
April 24, 2015 at 8:41 am
Funny video! I like it!
By the way…. is that what the call a ” camel toe” ?
April 12, 2014 at 4:01 pm
Something to consider, Mr. McAfee, concerning the public’s disdain for panhandlers…
I personally disdain them because, time and again, many of them have been shown to be fraudsters… people willing to debase themselves for money instead of work for it. Long story short, I was even had TWICE by the same guy. He told me his sob story, I took a 5 dollar bill out of my wallet, said to him “either you’re for real, or your’e a damn good liar”. He took the bill, smiled at me, and said “Thanks… I’m a damn good liar.” And walked off. A year later I was in the same area, and he tried a different game on me. But I remembered him… I got right in his face and said “I remember you… you’re the one that’s a DAMN GOOD LIAR…” I almost attacked him out of pure rage for his attack on what remains of my compassion. I am sure he is not the only habitual street-fraudster. In fact, local news crews have followed some of these “unfortunates” home to find they live better than most working folks. Sin, crime, both… yes.
I disdain them. No… I HATE them… because some of them (and we don’t know which) are simply preying on, and destroying, one of the last threads of humanity… “compassion”. Once enough people get burned by the liars in the panhandling population, all compassion will be lost. Just like the people faking a break-down on the side of the highway were luring good Samaritans to them so they could shoot them and take their cars (Florida, 1990’s) caused people to be totally on their own on the side of the road in the event of REAL distress, fake panhandlers will destroy compassion for the poor and leave the REAL hungry to starve slowly in front of us because people are sick of being burned…. or killed.
I personally don’t give anything to anyone anymore. I flatly told a guy that approached me at an ATM last week “I’ve been burned too much by stories, man. Sorry.” Another guy at a gas station a few years back wanted to fight me because I would not give him a couple dollars… when he figured out I was armed, his demeanor changed for the better and he rapidly went another way. A different freak another year started jumping around threatening to shoot me with his hand shaped like a gun because I would not give him some money. This is crazy shit, and it needs to be stopped. Personally, I think they should be culled like overbred feral animals.
Be careful in how you debase your ego. We need you.
February 23, 2014 at 12:40 pm
It’s gotta be even more of an issue in your case, John, because you already have a public image, after giving us the products which triggered that. People look up to you, pressure you to sound like expert on anything they ask, and automatically pay more attention to your opinion, than the other person’s view, without really knowing why.
That has got to be difficult. I’m certain I wouldn’t be able to handle that sort of attention, without falling prey to all sorts of mind traps, letting flattery make some of my decisions for me.
…and possibly stifling creativity; don’t know for sure, haven’t been there.
THEREFORE – please continue to work on D-Central, or any other device or procedure, which would allow those with knowledge/literature/inventions to make a positive difference in the world, preserving their anonymity, and avoiding the psychological consequences of fame.
Thank you, sir.
February 1, 2014 at 5:59 am
Hi, this is me, your Ego. I noticed that you were mocking me here John! So I had to take action. John, from the bottom of my sould, I want to re-assure you that you need me. You don’t however understand that, as you rightly say, “when [our] lives appear empty, we try to fill them with our own ego” because not every man has got the same intelligence as you John. People, who lack your ingenuity, need Ego. Ego fills the space between knowing well from learning and understanding it, and not knowing and being desperate from not understanding anything.
So, don’t mock me, alright?! You might think you don’t need me eternally but that is an incomplete idea.
January 13, 2014 at 9:09 pm
I hope i can apply this to my life, if i can level my ego perhaps i won\’t spend as much wasted time worrying about what people think :/Thanks John!ps; you remind me of Tony Stark for some reason
January 10, 2014 at 4:49 pm
Ha ha so true.Eventually,if we are fortunate,we discover that the “I’ who feels humiliation (anger,envy,ect) isn`t really who we are at all.It is a ‘thing’ that has attached itself to our consciousness and feeds off emotional response.Kill it without mercy and live free.