Other people as alter egos multiply world complexity and demand reduction mechanisms

Evidence

Opening up the world in this way, and identifying meaning and selfhood in the world, are possible, therefore, only because we invoke a whole new dimension of complexity – the subjective ‘I-ness’ of other human beings which we experience (perceive) and understand. Since other people have their own first-hand access to the world and can experience things differently, they may consequently be a source of profound insecurity for me. Over and above the plenitude of real objects of various kinds and the amplification of their variety in the course of time, the complexity of the world is further enhanced through the social dimension in which man appears not simply as another object but as an alter ego. This is why further increases in complexity call for new mechanisms for the reduction of complexity – above all, of course, for language and for reflexive self-consciousness which act as mechanisms of generalization and selectivity. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 103

Categorization

• DEFINE: This grounds Luhmann’s core notion that alter ego appearance inflates complexity, setting up why trust is needed as a reducer.
• XREF: Directly the reader’s stated thesis link: human unpredictability generating insecurity is exactly what Giddens’s facework and faceless commitments are meant to answer. — connects to: Ego psychology spread because individuals mirrored society’s objective trends. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1551