Think about the difference between object-oriented and functional programming. One bundles data with behavior, the other treats everything as transformations. One maintains state, the other stays stateless.
Your ego is object-oriented. And that's the problem.
In object-oriented programming, you create objects that bundle data with methods. A Car object has properties (color, speed, fuel) and behaviors (start, stop, accelerate). The object "knows" things about itself and can act on that knowledge.
Your ego does the same thing. It's a mental object that contains all your self-beliefs (I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm a programmer) and your behavioral patterns (how you react to criticism, what makes you defensive, your automatic responses).
The problem? Just like rigid object-oriented code, your ego resists change. It wants to maintain its state, protect its properties, and keep running the same old methods.
But there's another way to write software: functional programming.
Instead of objects that hold state, functional programming uses pure functions. Give a function the same input, and it always produces the same output. No hidden state, no side effects, no surprises.
What if you approached your identity the same way? Instead of being a fixed object with permanent properties, you become a collection of functions that transform inputs into outputs. When life throws you a challenge, you don't react from your ego's stored beliefs—you respond purely based on the situation at hand.
This connects to something deeper in mathematics and computer science. There's a principle called the Curry-Howard correspondence that shows how logical propositions map directly to types in programming languages. It means that proving a theorem is equivalent to writing a correct program.
Your ego wants to maintain consistent beliefs about yourself, even when they're wrong. But functional thinking lets you treat each moment as a fresh computation. No baggage from previous states, no defensive reactions to protect your self-image.
Category theory takes this even further. It's the mathematics of how different systems relate to each other. Everything—from your morning coffee routine to quantum mechanics—can be understood as transformations between categories.
Your mind constantly builds abstractions. You take raw sensory data and transform it into concepts, then transform those concepts into beliefs, then transform those beliefs into actions. Every thought is a function call in this vast computational process.
The ego tries to shortcut this process by storing fixed beliefs about who you are. But that's like hardcoding values instead of letting the function compute them fresh each time.
Here's what changes when you think functionally about yourself:
You stop defending outdated beliefs about who you are. When someone criticizes your code, you don't take it personally—you evaluate the feedback as pure input and generate an appropriate response.
You become more adaptable. Instead of "I'm not a math person" (fixed object property), you think "I haven't learned this math concept yet" (transformable state).
You reduce cognitive overhead. Object-oriented egos carry tons of baggage—past failures, social expectations, image management. Functional thinking processes each situation cleanly without dragging along irrelevant history.
There's one more programming concept that's useful here: the fallback function.
In code, a fallback function handles unexpected situations gracefully. When something goes wrong, it provides a default response to keep the system stable.
Your sense of self works the same way. When faced with the overwhelming complexity of existence, your mind creates the illusion of a separate, bounded self as a fallback. It's a default response that helps you navigate the world without getting lost in the cosmic complexity.
But here's the insight: once you recognize the self as just a fallback function, you can start to see the deeper connections it normally obscures.
The ego wants to maintain the illusion of separation because that's its job—to be the fallback that makes sense of chaos. But functional thinking lets you step outside that default response.
Instead of clinging to a rigid self-image, you can rewrite your mental programs. You can choose adaptability over rigidity, fresh computation over cached beliefs, pure functions over stateful objects.
The goal isn't to eliminate the ego entirely—even functional programs need some state management. It's to recognize when you're running on defaults versus when you're computing fresh responses to the actual situation in front of you.