HumanEgoCollective

The world is a reflection of one self. This is expressed in many cultures around the world and can be seen to be true in just as many ways. But what can one make of such statement? What practical purpose can this possibly have?

First in the more literal sense because the way the world appears to me is conditioned by my upbringing and education, the way I see it is shaped by how I am shaped. Really everything I've learned in my life shapes my perception of the world. [This ties in nicely with the "On Information" post.] My perspective is what changes when I real-ize something I didn't know before. This realization - whatever the subject matter - comes through an understanding of information. This understanding is of the meaning of the description the new information carries combined with the pre-established framework of information that is my world view. I might receive this new information from the world via description or I might find out myself by observing 'my own' description of the world. In either case what is realized is a certain perspective, the world in a certain light, the world through a certain description. The description is what defines the perspective.

Above "my own" is in quotes. That is to emphasize that what I call my description is not mine any more than the design my clothes is cut by. The words that constitute my description are sounds that others have already uttered repeated in a certain way. The combination of words might be novel or I might even have invented a new word for a never before seen thing. But the meaning of this new word - even if it is shared by others - is conditioned by the whole structure of other preconceived words. In this way whatever we come across will be interpreted in the light of the information we contain.

As investigated in other writings, what sustains the description is the perpetual movement of thought, the internal dialog. [See "The Observer and The Observed"] If I hear something that makes me mad, it's not really the sound I heard that made me mad, but what I thought of the sound when I heard it. Since what I thought of the sound is this conditioned structure residing 'inside' myself (thought), I see that if I get mad, it's not at the world that sounds like this or that, but at that same thing that defines who I am (thought). And as such I would be mad at that which I in any other situation would call 'myself'.

Another way to put it would be the obvious. That perception I have of the world is something which exists 'in me'. Not only the thoughts, but that which is seen 'out there' is really something my brain constructs from sense data. So it's not really the sense data themselves that I'm mad at, but the representation in my mind of them. Again, I would be mad at something in myself.

If the world is 'just' a reflection of one self, then that which is reflected must be something true. Yes. But don't mistake the reflection for the thing itself. The reflection is the 'just that', a reflection, though of something that is in and by itself. In other (analogous) words, you wouldn't try to shave the beard in the mirror would you? To change the mirror you know that you'd have to shave your face. When that changes the reflection does.

Besides the Gandhi quotes about changing yourself to change the world, it also brings to mind associations to the matrix analogy (or brain-in-a-vat thought experiment). Just want to touch upon that. The world might just be an illusion or illusory in nature, but it doesn't remove from the fact that the train will be merciless when it hits you. It will alter your situation to who knows what extent, and a reasonable assumption is that you will feel that alteration.

There is another more practical sense in which the world is a reflection of one self. Any cognitive content is what we call thought objects. Thought objects are finite in nature. These objects and their relations constitute together with movement, a working mechanism in constant motion; the internal dialog or thought. Mechanisms are structural in nature. Behavior reflects thought. Therefore behavior shares thought's structural nature. Actions are thus also structural in nature.

The collective actions and behavior of the human species as a whole would also share this structural trait. The same - or at least similar - structural trait as that which operates on the individual level, that is. Because this structure in the collective is the same/similar to structure of the individual ego, the collective mass of human behavior can be described as “ego-collective”. [This is not something new, C.G. Jung talks of the "collective unconscious" in his work from 1959 'Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious'.]

Consequently, if this is so, we can have an indication of the workings of mankind in force of introspection. If you know your own inner workings you'll know what mechanisms drive not only your own tendencies, habits, likes and dislikes, but also what mechanisms drive mankind.

Once again, the answer to what makes the world go around is to be found in yourself. This would be true only if the world is a reflection of yourself or if the world is yourself.