The other gives the self context. Without the other, the self is not only unaware of its own existence, but cannot exist entirely. This is because the self is merely a collection of interactions with the other. Every thought that the self produces is born from the history of every encounter that self has had with that which is not the self. In physical terms, the self is the electromagnetic collective firing of one hundred billion neurons across a flesh machine that has been designed by natural selection purely to interact with things that are not it. Therefore the self is entirely shaped by the other. It is analogous to a snowball rolling down a snowy hill. The snowball is not the snow on the hill it resides on, but without the hill or the snow that spawned the ball, the snow ball could not have existed. If the hill and the snow were suddenly to disappear, the snow ball then would cease to grow. I, like the snowball, am a collection of every interaction with the other that I have ever had. Every single thought that I am capable of producing is built upon twenty years of this sensory input. It is impossible for a self to exist without any history of sensory input from the other. The self cannot exist without the other.
