Then all of these layers upon layers of transparency melt away and the myth of the self is challenged at the very heart and core. Although a small provocation, the entire focus and energy of the individual ‘ego’ is madly engaged in self-defence strategies. Truth has very little to do with any of this since the world is spun like a spider’s web that this grand illusion---the world---be complete and made total. The very self we hold is revealed in this predicament taken to messianic proportion. As with a totalitarian leader, rarely do we see the naked ego at work in defensive strategy, weaving the web of coherency which is its ‘truth’. For better or worse it seems to be the fate and vocation of the philosophical writer to attempt to awaken these energies in readers.

It is as though, all at once, one is able to “leap the scaffolds” and to get a glimpse of the mother spider weaving its webs of lies---lies, and truths, insofar as this web is the nest, the environment in which the ego is nursed and cuddled.

The ego in this sense can be defined as a commitment to a worldview and a certain way of seeing all things as a world. The ego is if the gate or window through which this world must pass for better or worse. It can be likened to an ideology as well as a potential state of ‘openness’ to the way things are. It first evaluates and determines what may count as ‘real’.

The circularity of the relationship of language to framing this worldview and legislating and revealing its contents is rendered acute in the discussion concerning the nature of the ‘ego’ and the correct manner we must seek to describe its ‘true being’. Herein lies the advantage of the hermeneutic approach, which does not take language as self-evidently true no matter how purified its presentation. Language too, is not spoken of as objective reality, but represents the totality of the ego’s delusion, and the web it weaves.