I mean as in Spy x Family. Everyone has a secret they hide from everyone else, even their closest people.
Do you think real life is like that?
The person you don’t show others is no more your “true self” than the one you do. It’s still you, existing in that moment, responding to your environment, whether it’s your deepest emotions or your best mask.
As someone with ADHD, absolutely. I’ve heard that many people with nerodivergent brains use this coping skill.
Yes. We all have an avatar
They covered this when I took Sociology 101 about 40 years ago.
You would love Erving Goffman
I think I’d go further and say that there isn’t really any such thing as a person’s “true self.” People present different aspects of themselves in different circumstances. It’s like asking which orientation you should hold an object against a light to see the “true shape” of its shadow.
I believe thats whats called in Buddhism as having No Self. You are who you are at that moment.
Could be, I’m not deeply familiar with Buddhism. There’s still a core “something” in there that’s casting the shadow, but it’s not something that can be interacted with directly so I don’t know if it would fit the normal definition of a “self”. You can only directly interact with the shadows it casts and those shadows are situation-dependent. It doesn’t think or act in isolation.
I suppose one could just pick some specific set of circumstances and call the self that emerges under those conditions the “true self.” For example you could call the version of you that emerges when you’re lying in bed alone at night thinking about the dumb stuff you did during the day your “true self.” But that’s a bit arbitrary.
I have a collection of masks. I assume others are like that too.
Politicians do this all of the time. Say and do one thing as theater to the public, turn around and do and say different things out of the public eye we later find out about.
I do this fairly often too. Where I work, nobody doesn’t need to know of shit about my personal life, it is none of their business. There’s nobody I like enough there that warrants me gushing about myself. I have about maybe five key friends who all know in depth of me, but how I tell things slightly differs from another but they’re generally getting the same stories and experiences I talk about.
I think everyone has about 3 “versions” of themselves.
One version for work. One for family. One for friends and partners.
The work version is the least honest because so much is unacceptable to say at work and people self-censor a lot. Say the wrong things and you will get meetings, write ups and maybe fired. Everybody gives their boss to much information at least one time and learns why you don’t do that.
The friends and partners version is normally the most honest version and can be completely genuine for some. Good friends can be trusted to keep secrets and don’t judge.
Family is normally in the middle but this depends. If the family was incredibly old fashioned, conservative or religious then maybe a person would need to self-censor even more than they do at work?
it’s called roles. we play the sibling role, parent role, friend and SO role, our job role. there is no true self, just adjusting to meet the role’s needs.
I’ve always thought of it like a d20. For every role we occupy, we show a different facet on top. Some facets remain visible despite not being the “dominant” one, but others are hidden on the other side.
No single face is our “true self” but they are all a part of who we are.
Or persona per the psychologist Karl Jung IIRC.
So definitely a thing for basically everyone.
People have different facets. The way I interact with my partner for ten years is different to my close friends I’ve had for 20, different to my co-workers, different to my family. But my family and friends and co-workers see how I act with my partner.
I mimic people to some extent treating them similarly how they treat me. There are limits though, I’m bounded on that scale by my personal values which mature as I do. So I’m still never going to act outside the bounds of my morality and values, but I’ll still treat my partner with unconditional love, and my friends with the best times and silly jokes.
These I don’t consider masks, but not everyone sees me the same. They’re just facets.
Yes. There are many different traits that I would all call a part of me but how much I act out on them is different between different people.
In some groups there are topics that define me for the other members, while in other groups the members don’t know I even care for this topic
I overact some traits but what topic I overact os different in each group
I wouldn’t call it a “mask”, because it implies deception. Depending on who you are around, you show (and hide) different treats of your personality: In an employment setting you do not act the same way you would act when you hang with your boys (or girls, respectively) - you show different aspects of your personality while you are with your significant other, rather than with your parents. Also, your online behavior would be different from your offline behavior when navigating public situations.
Different people around you and/or different social settings make you filter things regarding your personal beliefs and/or personal traits.
What’ll really blow you’re mind is when you realize we aren’t even honest with ourselves either.
Your mask you show to others is no more fake than the mask you show to yourself.
That is not universal, some of us have actually thought about things for a long time and are honest with ourselves.
I try to be honest with myself about everything, but I’m also honest with myself that sometimes I subconsciously avoid thinking about things consciously anyway
Acknowledging that sometimes you avoid thinking about certain things is part of being honest with yourself, even when it is subconcious. Being aware of who you are doesn’t automatically change anything.
Wrong person sorry
I find being honest with myself to be easy anymore. It’s not something I’ve always been good at but I’ve worked on it. Understanding myself is still hard at times. If I’m feeling a certain way about something, sometimes I have to pause for a while to think about why.
Example: the wife and I have an argument about something (which is rare) and I take offense to something she said. She never says anything with the intent of offending me. I know this even though I’m feeling angry. Instead of just reacting in anger, I like to put a pause on the discussion, be alone for a while, and think about why I was offended.
The reasons vary but I pretty much always figure it out, after which I’m ready to resume the discussion with, it nothing else, a little more clarity.
My friend I’ve thought about who I am for 20 years. You are not honest with yourself if you believe you are honest with yourself.
People meditated on mountains for decades to be honest with themself. You didn’t accomplish that on Tuesday. Neither have I.
We get closer but to truly reach that point… we probably zero-sum and cease to be.
We learn to lie before we learn to speak. It’s part of all of us. You can’t escape it unfortunately. It is the default setup.
Maybe you’re just really bad at it?
Yeah I kinda suck at grand spiritual enlightenment. Glad you figure it out. Any tips would be appreciated.
I know that was sarcasm, but stop thinking about it in pseudoscientific religious nonsense terms like “spiritual” and “*enlightenment”.
You’re a human, humans can be figured out, we’re not magic.
“Stop thinking about-“
No. I’ll continue thinking if it’s all the same to you. About everything all the time.
I continue working to enlightenment. Magic and all. It would be great if you could just let me know how you achieved enlightenment but if not I just keep thinking about things. Like people do. You know… like the human brain does lol
I personally am in the camp that people should think more but I don’t want to make a this political.
Let me break down that comment.
So, you want to feel better about yourself, but only through supernatural means?
And when I point out that that is getting in your way to achieving what you call “enlightenment”, you not only straight il refuse, but insist that magic is definitely a potential correct path.
And you cover it all with a nice sauce of insulting my intelligence.
You have a VERY long road ahead, and you’re currently walking at a right angle to it.
You are not honest with yourself if you believe you are honest with yourself.
That is a load of self defeating bullshit.
It is often difficult, but not impossible, to be honest with ourselves. Hell, there might even be things we didn’t consider because they slipped our minds, like whether we acted in a selfish way or not when we were 10 years old, but that doesn’t mean we are not being honest with ourselves. Being honest means that when we do think about something specific, we can consider our thoughts and actions and not hardwave them away without thought. It also acknowledges that things are often complicated and how we see things and how others perceive us doesn’t align.
But being honest doesn’t mean perfectly perceiving everything, it means actually thinking things through and not letting our pride or other hang ups get in the way of introspection.
I stopped reading at self defeating. “ we can do better” isn’t self defeating it’s recognizing an issue lol.
You are not honest with yourself if you believe you are honest with yourself.
Saying that it is impossible to be honest with one’s self is self defeating. The rest of the post explains why, but if you can’t get past someone disagreeing with you then I can see why you struggle with the idea of being able to be honest with yourself.
Being honest with ourselves is how we can improve.
I didn’t say it’s impossible. I didn’t say you can’t be honest with yourself. I said if you think you don’t lie to yourself you need more introspection.
You can disagree with me as much as you like, that doesn’t mean I need to be silent on your arguments.
If I say you’ll never ride a dragon I don’t feel that’s me being negative. If you say you’ll ride dragons all the times I want some information from you…. That’s not an easily attainable thing that people just stumble apon. I have questions lol.
You’re talking about reaching a state of pure inner peace… please elaborate how you attained such knowledge?
I thought about things a lot and accepted my faults and bad habits without excuses.
I know exactly who I am and am at peace with being less than perfect, but aware of what I need to do to be better. Knowing doesn’t guarantee success though, sometimes it requires constant work.
I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about with the dragons. If you mean Komodo dragons, I sure wouldn’t ride those as they are fucking dangerous.
How does the mountain help one be honest with themselves?
How does the mountain help one be honest with themselves?
height radiation and also oxygen deprivation causes hallucinations which can have a psychedelic effect and help you figure things out about yourself that you wouldn’t otherwise know. also it helps that historically, there used to be very few distractions on a mountain because it was mostly un-inhabited.
If I could answer that I’d write a book. I’d make million dollars and never count it lol.
My point is simple tho, it’s not just as simple as “oh I don’t do that anymore. I never lie to myself”
Dude tell me everything?! Where’s your book? Do you have a commune I could attend?
This is profound information the world itself has been searching for and you have it? Tell me, please?
i think the reason why you feel like you have to go on lying and can’t be honest with yourself is because you’re worried that you’re just like the wind, when it stops blowing, it ceases to exist, because it turns into thin air. and the lies are what keep you going.
Introspection isn’t what keeps me going. It’s a hobby.
God I wish I had a very strained pun to reply with.
To summit all up, you get a peak at your inner… self?
We can workshop it, there might be something there.
Then we can figure out the appropriate pun
For the sake of the survey, I know I do.
