Sometimes caring about the self is just a reflection about how much someone cares about other "things", in a selfish way. Struggling desperately to preserve the self translates as struggling desperately to preserve the present, which is elusive and illusory. To see the present as what it is (an indeterminacy sandwiched between other indeterminacies) is the same as seeing the self for what it is; that is, indeterminate; not there, but not unreal, yet not *as* real as the rest of the universe, which is defined by everything that the self is not.
This selfish perspective is probably the basis of egotism, which necessarily is reflected outwardly as materialism. The idea that "things" are what they are, and can be expected to stay that way, because they are comprised of some definable essence* that makes them a "thing" separate from other "things".
*The essence is actually a mere mental construct, still not *unreal* but infinitely less immediate and substantial than that which is defined by what the mental construct is not.
I think most of us here know, that such is not the case. The closer you look at a "thing", the more apparent it becomes that the "thing" is less its own and more of a configuration of substance, a facade, only artificially its own creation; not truly independent of the substance from which other configurations are made.
It is the same as confusing the notes coming from an instrument with the instrument that produces the notes. Notes, being the "things" that appear (to the untrained eye) to be so individual and like stand-alone entities. The musician knows that this is obviously not the case; he plays the instrument from which all possible notes pour from.
"As above, so below."
- Schopenhauer Wannabe No. 127