it is fair to say that if the self is a multitude then they are generally made from the various pop culture personalities we are bombarded with every day, tv, music, films all generate many types of mythological personality, some we carry around with us, some we aspire to be like, some we identify with. so do other people exist?
they exist if we invite them into our heads, or they force their way in. friends and family have more reality for us than people we have not met, but politicians, pop stars, people who are characters in a film or tv show, all have some sort of existence for us. take note of the mixture of fake and genuine, dead and alive characters here. anyone you have not met is imaginary.
out of these experiences we build our own identities, absorbing imaginary attitudes, and values. we often use a theory of mind upon them and then they acquire a reality of sorts in our heads.
for much of history people have grown up with parasites inside their heads, monarchs, gods, emperors, dictators, gurus etc.
these characters all strive to control the culture in which they live. they want precise control of their personality cult, and no competition. uncensored uncontrolled media has weakened the hold of parasites on most people’s minds in democratic countries, but elsewhere, tight control of media has strengthened it.
in a free country you can fill your head with a vast selection of real and imaginary identities and end up with a much larger self image, or you can retreat into a simple reality with one personality or god figure. there are many countries where you can either believe in one deity or face the consequences.
we live at a point where we live in a world where a substantial fraction of humanity has freedom of belief but hardly knows what to do with it.
some adopt a fundamentalism, or single issue cause, to create self definition others wander lost in the cosmos with no metaphor for self., squandering belief on one fad after another, some define themselves by relationships to others, and commit to nothing internally. they have to remain constantly engaged socially or with imaginary people from the media, or they cease to exist in their own minds.
when people stop believing in god they believe in anything, and this is the solution, not the problem.
new age, neo paganism, magick all adopt a strong element of neo pantheism.
as advanced cultures pass out of an monotheistic aeon rendered untenable by scientific thought, neo pantheism takes over as the spirituality of choice in the fifth aeon.
both science and fundamentalism hate neo pantheism and in doing so they have helped define it.