Humans are the first creatures evolving from nature that has the ability to act beyond the boundries of instinctive emotions. Humans are the first creatures with the power to ac freely of natures hard wired directives. Humans have created meaning wrapped in symbols and it is this world of artifically created symbolism that operates beyond the complete control of nature.
The virtual world, the world of symbolic meaning, the world of non deterministic reality, is the world beyond the natural world. Ego is what has made such a world possible.
Ego says, HOLD IT, TIME OUT, while I examine the situation to determine if I want to change the siuation.
The ego is our command center; it is the “internal gyroscope” and creator of time for the human. It controls the individual; especially it controls individual’s response to the external environment. It keeps the individual independent from the environment by giving the individual time to think before acting. It is the device that other animal do not have and thus they instinctively respond immediately to the world.
The id is our animal self. It is the human without the ego control center. The id is reactive life and the ego changes that reactive life into delayed thoughtful life. The ego is also the timer that provides us with a sense of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. By doing so it makes us into philosophical beings conscious of our self as being separate from the ‘other’ and placed in a river of time with a terminal point—death. This time creation allows us to become creatures responding to symbolic reality that we alone create.
