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.

XREF: Connects to sociological theories of otherness and social complexity reduction (Luhmann, symbolic interactionism).

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 103