Human beings have their lives, their existence, structured around biological and social references. He is a being-in-the-world, and in this sense, he is the same as any other being, such as animals. Differentiations arise through apprehension, perception of the place occupied and spatial dynamics. Each organism has specific configurations that allow it to apprehend what is around it, in other words, to apprehend its own environment. We humans, by transcending the limits imposed by organic, biological and relational contingencies, manage to structure culture, civilization, and thus, as beings in the world, we structure ourselves.
The relational polarity creates subject and object in a constant reversible process. This doesn't happen with animals or plants, because even when they react they have a short path of action due to the lack of propelling conditions, such as transcendence. In other words, transcendence, going beyond one's own centre, one's own structuring context, although starting from it, in other words, reaching the sky despite being stuck on Earth, is what humanises us, it's what differentiates us from the animal, from the structuring biological organism.
Thought is the extension of perceptions, which in turn are structured by being in the world with the other, by existing.
The more limited the relational processes, the world you live in, the smaller and more restricted the perceptual data. Living in a prison or being isolated in the Himalayas can be considered an experience of spaciousness, while being in what is considered the centre of the world, such as Wall Street, can only shape what you think is good or bad, what will be useful for you or what is useless, resulting in an experience of restriction.
In short, the limitation or expansion of "universes" will depend on the points of convergence and divergence of the structuring factors of self-referential processes. Thinking about fear - omission - thinking about vanity - narcissism - makes us realise the destroyers of humanity, the reducers of the human to survival, and consequently to alienation from oneself.
The self is the possibility of relationship. When this process is determined by equal or homogenous references to adaptation, submission and survival, then these are its basic structuring factors. In this context, you live to eat, you live for pleasure, you live for revolutionary and religious ambitions, for example.
Being transformed by objectives, goals or purposes (needs) hinders the realisation of possibilities and transcendence. The structures and dimensions that are realized and exhausted by needs stifle the exercise of possibilities, induce us to repeat what has worked, and so repetition prevails.
The new is frightening and possibilities are destroyed - existence is reduced to survival. It's a fatal move for any human being, as they become motivated and commanded by what directs, helps and fulfils their needs, namely hunger, thirst, sex, and sleep. This process creates the providers, the saviours, such as a father, a mother, the government, the party, the terrorist organization, or the religious organizations that decide and solve life's difficulties. In this way, to become a puppet is to be part of the arsenal needed to maintain the status quo, wars, religions, and other factors unrelated to one's own problems.
The greater the manipulative factors, such as the family, the club, the church, or the state, the greater the withdrawal from oneself and one's relational possibilities. The antithesis, like questioning, is a way of breaking the a priori, of breaking the neutralising tentacles. These questionings can sometimes only be exercised through disagreement, and other times by giving up, by renouncing. However, it will always be a different gesture, unexpected or unaccounted for, that will allow for change or a new approach.