David Bowie needed this persona to perform, he was otherwise an introvert and shy.
“As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs onstage and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going onstage and being myself. I continued designing characters with their own complete personalities and environments. I put them into interviews with me! Rather than be me — which must be incredibly boring to anyone — I’d take Ziggy in, or Aladdin Sane or The Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do.”
I got a nickname when I was 14, my life completely changed after that. I went from sitting alone at lunch, to having parties with over 100 people. Most of them only knew me by the nickname, or variants of the nickname. I went by it almost exclusively for over 10 years. I definitely feel like a different person than I was then.
I had the same experience. When I talk with the few people remaining in my life from that era we refer to the nickname as a third person. I'm not that person any more, I think most are not the same person they were 10 or 15 years ago.
Now this is interesting - I also got a nickname in highschool from a popular kid that helped me gain an identity in other people's minds and be much more social and involved, but I don't think it was an alter-ego. I think it helped make me memorable to other people while giving me a confidence boost (as the nickname was complimentary), but I think that it just brought out the real me. I don't go by that nickname since I left highschool, but I feel the same as I did then. It was more about getting over shyness and being included than being someone else. I suppose it varies from person to person!
Edit: The super pervasive nickname is a fun phenomenon, eventually even the teachers and principal called me exclusively by the nickname.
I’ve recently browsing 4chan again (only few specific boards) and I have the feeling it’s the reverse: people there can state their opinions, totally disregarding how socially unacceptable it would be. Which means their alter-ego is probably the IRL one, which has to shut up a lot of thoughts to blend in society.
> Which means their alter-ego is probably the IRL one
Another possibility is that they can make claims they don't really stand behind, because there's no personal responsibility for their statements. Trolling, essentially.
The problem is, it's often hard to tell which is which. A bit of Poe's law.
Christopher Poole did a Ted Talk 10 years ago on the value of anonymity online. Hiding a real-world persona has the power to create new and different things.
I wonder how much this applies to furries. How often is a fursona “the real me” vs roleplay? I’ve witnessed both in different individuals, and also both within a single person (primary ‘sona and some other separate ones which are just role playing).
Adjective Species probably had an article on this, though it also reminds me of the discussions about therianthropy, contherianthropes, and New Age discussions of the use of masks in tribal religions.
On a related note, I attended Dr. Gerbasi's research results at Anthrocon a few years ago, and she noted from her furry survey that the experimental group (furries) rated themselves higher in response to questions such as "I feel good about myself" versus the control group. (her college students)
It could also be biased by age; I assume that the furry subject group skewed older than the students (or at least that the students were a more tightly restricted age group). I know I felt far more self-assured at 30 than I did at 20.
The question is if this is caused by having an alter ego, or (for example) by the fact that these people experience more control over what they look like.
Anyway, whatever the reason, perhaps it is also why lots of people like to get tattoos.
I do think furries - or really, anyone wearing something that hides or shields them from the world - can "come out their shell" more easily.
I've heard similar with people wearing face masks nowadays, and personally I had something like an "out of body" experience when I first started wearing glasses. There was a barrier between me and the world.
It’s not about hiding, it’s about expressing. How people think of their inner selves comes to the fore. The (relative) anonymity is a helpful thing too of course, but mostly for the person to be able to let go of their normal selves.
This worked on our (then) 5 year old, who was shy on the soccer field but kicked it up a notch when we told her to be a dinosaur. Of course, this also resulted in her running around with t-rex arms and baring her teeth, so I guess you have to be careful which alter ego you adopt.
In high school, it was wearing a three-piece suit (because if you're not wearing a vest, are you really wearing a suit?) for all of my speech and debate events; now, it's wearing one of my kilts. For those of us with anxiety, esp social anxiety this entire article isn't necessarily surprising, as many of us use some form of externalizing our confidence to get through big presentations, meetings, etc.
If I've got an important set of meetings that I'm going to be at it's always going to be a kilt (with appropriate vest as well, everything snazzy needs vests) or a full suit.
If I'm going to something where I know I'm going to need to be social, it's always the kilt. It's amazing how much a kilt is just a segue for other people to talk about their "scottish or irish" heritage; talking about myself is terrible, but listening to the 10,000th person today talk about their boring ass family tree is great (the convo will eventually turn to something interesting or the person will wander off). It also makes me extremely memorable and findable, so I don't have to initiate most conversations which is also a terrible, horrible thing.
True Story: the guy who leads our sales team is a super star named John (legal name). He’s fearless, organized, focused, determined “and Canadian” as he would say.
Any way, while he was a rising junior his GF came to the office one day and I heard her call him Jake (nowhere in his name legal name). I asked “who the hell is Jake?” to which she replied “oh, that’s what we call John back home”. I looked at him and he said “John likes to make cold calls, Jake doesn’t”.
It's deception to an utter randomer, as well as to yourself.
You really need to be careful with lying to yourself like that. Being a whole integrated person who doesn't have to remember who he is and what lies he's told comes in handy.
Actually, that's not exactly what the story contained. It said that John was the legal name, but it didn't say that Jake wasn't the legal name. That happens all the time, John Jake Johnson, for example.
Few people in my family use their first and second name in different contexts (family/friends/work). Reasons probably vary. For my mum it just started that way when she was a kid. Family used her second name and when she started working people knew her by her first name.
That partly explains a perplexing issue I have with my students.
For example, let's say a student named Fred Smith emails me, but then signs his name as "Alex Harrison." And his self-selected email address is alexrogers@school.edu. I'm not sure if it's a trend or a culture thing to use multiple names and last names, but it gets a bit confusing at times.
Same here. Its fairly common in the north east of England and parts of Scotland to be known by your nickname.
Both my sons have a couple of nicknames each, which come out depending on the situation. They're 3 & 6 now and are both called wee man by way of greeting.
The youngest is now getting called Mac because his nickname is MacMonkey McBean. Names evolve over time.
I ended up doing this, more or less for the same reason. I've found it kind of useful though, as I'm terrible at remembering names and faces, so if someone calls out to me the name they use gives me a clue where I know them from.
It’s a bit like in gmail, where you can add a + and it allows you to spot spam mail. So, if someone calls you John+firstjob, you know where they’ve known you.
I'm curious, does this still work? Since GMail is likely the largest email provider in the world, I would have expected spammers to simply filter out the `+.*` by now.
What advantage would spammers get from trying to hide the provenance of a bought/rented/stolen list? If it was a really profitable scam like crypto phishing, having the modifiers might even be an advantage because they could target the templates more effectively.
Well, if the ones who sell email addresses to spammers filter out the `+`, there’s a larger chance they can continue to do so without getting caught or exposed?
I'm reminded of the bit in Silicon Valley where Jared turns into Ed Chambers. Of course that was a pretty dramatic character swing, but I had no idea that this was a real thing people did.
The way he totally transforms on the spot into a cackling jerk in the kitchen scene is so great, Zack Woods was such an incredible talent on that show.
The more nuanced version of the same comment would've been to point out that it's no co-oindence that rappers commonly choose an alter ego (not just a pseudonym, but a character with different mannerisms and traits) under which to perform. On top of that, Eminem used an alter-alter-ego, Slim Shady, for his most egregious lyrics, and conversely used his birth name to lend realism and humility to the songs that were (or alleged to be) honest about his real life details.
Lots of people named John choose to use another name.
'John' is common enough that having to negotiation which John on a team or group of friends uses the name is a common problem. I prefer to either use 'Jack' (a common alternate form of John, similar to Richard/Dick), or simply my last name by itself. I've also seen many Johns use their middle name, or 'John [LastName]' pronounced almost as a single word. Back home my family calls me by my middle name, since my father, grandfather and cousin are also named John.
Initials seem pretty common around here, I've known a few Johns who go by JW JP JK etc. Never gave it much thought but after your comment I realise they are all Johns!
Actually, dissociation of character is a trait that is rewarded.
Although people will claim they want kind-hearted people as lovers, they also very often conveniently ignore what they do for work, and how cruel they have to be, and the partners happily enjoy the shared money (or respect they have from the world). Lovers surely know it: hard to claim Che Guevarra’s wife, Stalin’s wife or Pablo Escobar’s wife didn’t know anything about drug dealings, but it shows that what people actually fall for are people who are nice... with them, and ruthless to the outside of the family.
So the John/Jake dissociation is unfortunately a road to success. I say unfortunately because it brings swathes of problems: John doesn’t mind having less ethics than Jake; wives who suddenly are dumped find themselves on the outer side of the fence, at risk, and very close to a very brutal human; and the last unfortunate corollary is that violent humans who can dissociate (and be someone else in private) reproduce easily from generation to generation. Hitler, Stalin, Che, Saddam Hussein have wives and Salah Abdeslam (the French terrorist, as famously any other mass killer) receives love letters, while people who won’t reproduce include Beaudelaire, Newton, Tesla, the Wright brothers or Alan Turing.
The Jake/John dissociative trait is very interesting.
That... was not the point GP was making, at least not how I see it. And it is doubtful if dictators use / have used different personas, or they simply behaved differently towards close ones (for some time at least).
> Che Guevarra’s wife, Stalin’s wife or Pablo Escobar’s wife
Comparing Che Guevarra and Pablo is totally unfair. Che was a true inspiration, born in a rich family, became a doctor and yet sacrificed his life and fought for what he thought would make the society just. On the other hand Pablo is just a gangster who did not care outside of his family.
Why would you respect someone for sacrificing and fighting for what they think is just? Osama Bin Laden wasn't too different either. Many Islamic terrorists were engineers before sacrificing their careers and fighting for what they believed in. You're right that they are true inspirations to others, but you seem to imply that's a good thing. Gangsters are obviously also a true inspiration to others (hence glamorization of gangster life) but not really good for society.
I suspect that what you really mean is Guevara fought for what you think is just. But that's a weaker statement.
> I suspect that what you really mean is Guevara fought for what you think is just. But that's a weaker statement.
You might have mistaken me as a supporter of communism. I don't support communism. Osama Bin Laden exploited the religion for his personal gain. His goal is to become the caliph which is roughly equivalent to being the single military leader for entier Islam as said in the quoran. He did not bother about the people or had any ideology of his own.
Che did not exploit religion. He is an atheist, was supporter of women rights, he understood the value of education and setup schools for his young troops even during the guerrilla warfare. He knew he will not be the leader of cuba and Fidel Castro would be the leader of the country and yet he fought for what he thought would make the society just.
Che thought deeply, was highly intelligent and had the balls to sacrifice his life for what he thought would make the society better.
Gangsters are one who have balls to do violent things but do not care about society.
There is a documentary about the people killed who had found to be guilty and they did not find a single evidence where some one is executed wrongly.
Now i will state my reasons why Che is an inspiration. First of all I am not an American or from the Latin country and i do not support Communism. I like Che because of his analytical thinking and hacker like personal traits. I read his book "Guerrilla Warfare"[1] and based on the title i expected the first page must preach about moral values or self righteous, but was very much surprised to find the explanation on the necessary conditions that must exist to start a revolution and goes on to describe how many core members are required, their preferred age and should not be married. He asks to treat the captured enemy nicely and does not make any false pretense of being noble about it. He is direct in pointing out that it is in their self interest. His arguments were logical and rational.
That's are pretty complicated boundary between good and bad you've defined there. Political ideology is OK but not religious ideology? Being a 2nd in command is OK but not a national leader?
> Political ideology is OK but not religious ideology?
Right. Religious ideology is without a doubt is exploitation. Political ideology that does not involve religion is probably coming out of good intentions.
> Being a 2nd in command is OK but not a national leader?
The point is he is not after power and did not try to become 2nd in command either. He left the minister position he had given after the war and left to another country to start a revolution where he was killed. So looking all these facts he actions must be coming from the noble intentions.
If Guevara did everything the same but instead of Marxism, he was fighting to exterminate the blacks out of a genuine belief that it was a noble cause which would help people, would you still describe him in the same positive way?
You already said you don't like communism, and I guess you don't like ethnic genocide either. So that wouldn't be a distinguishing factor.
> If Guevara did everything the same but instead of Marxism, he was fighting to exterminate the blacks out of a genuine belief that it was a noble cause which would help people, would you still describe him in the same positive way?
Pablo Escobar, like modern day cartels in Mexico, gave away lots of money to local communities. He built hundreds of houses for the poor. It’s mostly ego, and buying good will, but there’s definitely a component wherein the government has failed these communities and the Narcos step up.
We have little evidence that they used the dissociation trick. But I think it is not really required anyway. Most of us don't need it to get by with our daily lives. And it's far too simple to demonize the villains just by saying they used this trick. It is simply part of human nature to have empathy for those that we consider our own, and to be cruel to the rest. Similarly, to be able to silence our cognitive dissonance when we find out that the people around us and the system we live in have dark sides to them.
My dad does the same thing. "Bill" (his real name) hates social settings, yoga, and emotions. "Fred" (his alter ego) is more than happy to try out any of those things. Just don't ask John.
It certainly works pretty well for him. At the local gym he even had a Jake/John moment where everyone knew him as Fred and not Bill and got confused when my mom tried to reach them about something.
It's useful for customer support too. Some places all use fake names for personal safety but it also lets people say what needs to be said more confidently.
This reminds me of something I read in a book about self love, where it's easy to confuse what you do with who you are. For example, someone who acts shy in large groups of people might start to think that they are a shy person, and that there is nothing they can do about it.
I've long been fascinated by the complex imaginal techniques of tantra in Tibetan Buddhism, in which you vividly imagine yourself as a yidam, or tutelary deity.
Via intense concentration on elaborate self-visualization, repetition of the yidam's mantra, and ritualized hand gestures (mudra), you take on the form, attributes and mind of the yidam for the purpose of transformation - to recognize that one's own mind is not, in fact, different from the all-pervading Buddha-nature.
'One of the most characteristic features of tantra is what we call “deity-yoga,” where we imagine ourselves to be a Buddha-figure. The term is usually translated as “visualize” instead of imagine, although we’re not just dealing with some visual picture of ourselves. I think the word “imagine” is great because we imagine that we really are a Buddha in the form of this figure. Not only do we imagine looking like this figure, but we also imagine speaking, thinking, helping others and experiencing pure enjoyment with all our senses like it does. We also imagine having all its good qualities, such as equal love and compassion for all beings and deep understanding of everything. Of course, to do this successfully we need to have trained beforehand in each of these qualities with sutra practice. Putting them all together with deity-yoga, then, is like a dress rehearsal for actually being a Buddha. By rehearsing now, we build up powerful causes for attaining enlightenment. This extremely efficient method is known as “practicing causes that are the most similar to the result.”'
If you're using tantra (vajrayana) for ego-oriented material benefit, then that's called "spiritual materialism." According to Tibetan Buddhism, the vajrayana can be dangerous for you and those around you.
Edit: I apologize. I realize that was very heavy handed. I felt obligated to throw out the usual warnings about Buddhist tantra.
No worries! I'm familiar with Trungpa's warnings about spiritual materialism. I know the context of Vajrayana is quite different from the "Batman Effect" discussed in the original article, but I wanted to spur discussion in general about the power of assuming the identity (transitory though it may be) of a chosen figure.
And for anyone who's interested in tantra, I'll spell out the warnings more explicitly: this kind of practice should only be attempted under the careful guidance of an expert - a teacher who is empowered by a qualified lineage. These kinds of visualizations are very powerful, and can be dangerous to one's mental health if done foolishly. Hacking with the boundaries of one's ego and merging with deities is not to be done lightly. Seek expert instruction.
Consider the neurological danger of visualizing yourself as (e.g. hitler) repeatedly over and over. The exercise mentioned above is one of neurological conditioning (anpassen in german). You are training your neural pathways to take on a certain form of thought pattern. If you pick (e.g.) hitler as your mould, then you are training yourself as hitler. That's what the danger is with such a practice.
Therefore, you must be careful and wise about what neurological mould you are seeking to "impersonate" with your practice, since you would be creating new habits and neural pathways in practice.
I'm not an expert on this topic, but I can use my common sense to figure that out.
> Is that because this whole stuff is incredibly in fashion in SV?
Well, I grew in the rural South and currently live in Wisconsin, so I don't think I'm succumbing to some kind of SV hippie group-think.
The literature and instruction of Vajrayana is filled with warnings about using the techniques improperly. And they are very powerful, with tantra having developed during the peak of sophistication of Indian Buddhism in the 6th-9th centuries. The Tibetans have refined things further. E.g. the emergence of Dzogchen and Mahamudra.
Re: Hitler: Playing with the boundaries of self-identity as a form of daydreaming for the average person probably isn't harmful. But tantra combines a number of introspective technologies that hugely amplify the depth of concentration and effects of the exercise on the entire body-mind.
Weaving together ritualized breathing practices, somatic visualizations (i.e. energy work), external auditory stimulus (bells, etc.), chanting, internal/external visual aids (mandala), in the social context of serious vows to one's teacher, the Buddha, and all other sentient beings in the universe. . . well, it turns everything up to 11, so to speak.
Submerging oneself in an imaginal identity as a deity under those circumstances can provide a sudden, inarguable new insight into the boundaries and nature of one's self-construct, so the so-called truth of anatta. It can reveal in a flash the moment-to-moment fabrication of a particular kind of self-narrative you've been engaging in your entire life. And you can experience the incomparable freedom of being freed from that straitjacket.
Or if you're winging it without proper instruction, a similar exercise can deeply fuck you up, leading to weird somatic illnesses, grandiose thoughts (you think you _are_ the deity, or Hitler, or whatever), manic states because you don't understand how to safely bring down your psychological arousal level, etc.
I feel like the former is a lot of the Internet in the late nineties. People pretending to be someone they’re not. Nobody knows you’re a dog in the Internet.
There are interesting correlations with the research on the sense of self, and how it relates to spiritual teachings which equate much of suffering with the sense of being a separate "self" entity (rather than seeing oneself as an indivisible part of a whole).
Maybe this trick helps reduce the activity of the DMN (default mode network) which is attributed to much of our worry based thinking, which is self centered?
Hip hop artists use alter egos to explore different stage personas and styles. e.g. Daniel Dumile as MF Doom, King Ghidra, Viktor Vaughn or Eminem as Slim Shady.
I've done a lot of this as a writer. I'll actually take an article from a favorite writer of mine and paste it on the page. Then'll I'll go through that article and write my own article on top of it paragraph by paragraph. None of the content or subject matter is the same. I'm not "rewriting the original article". But it helps keep the patterns similar. I can see how I might want to change pace, structure the story, etc.
But even more importantly it helps me imagine being that other, successful, famous author.
I often rewrite solutions to identical problems in different ways. It helps me get a good handle on what works in different situations, and how solutions differ in general.
I recently rewrote a JS problem I did in an interview in a much more functional style, a style that just visually appealed to me, and I feel like I learned a thing or two from it, or at least reinforced some things I already knew.
I am a man who can sit for hours working productively at his computer. I am a man who is not affected by boredom. I desire nothing more than to sit, and code. My productivity is off the charts and I am being considered for a promotion. I have excellent coding ability and can apply it with ease by sitting, and coding, for hours, and hours.
It doesn't matter if the tools are broken, the docs are missing/incomplete/incorrect, the API is non-sensical, the library is buggy, the service is unreliable, the support team is incapable, or the space around me is filled with hordes of ignorant and disrespectful people. These difficulties are temporary. Like smoke in the wind, they may block my view, sting my eyes, congest my nose, and make me cough, but will be gone soon. I keep moving on, away from the source of the smoke.
I move steadily toward my goal. My soul is enveloped in a shimmering cloud of dispassionate focused equanimity.
My name is Patrick Bateman. I'm 27 years old. I believe in taking care of myself, and a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an ice pack while doing my stomach crunches. I can do a thousand now. After I remove the ice pack, I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower, I use a water activated gel cleanser. Then a honey almond body scrub. And on the face, an exfoliating gel scrub. Then apply an herb mint facial mask, which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.
This isn't about dissociation. This is about using the tool of a constructed or adopted persona to engage differently with the situation at hand. Dissociation is about finding a way to disengage from the situation at hand. I have experience with both - the former after a fashion although I don't think of it that way, the latter in such extensive detail that it took me the better part of a couple of decades to learn how not to do it - and I can tell you, they're not even a little bit similar.
Also, again based on experience, I do not think that parents who teach their children to dissociate - or, more accurately put, make it necessary for their children to learn to do so - are particularly skillful at identifying what is and isn't good for those kids. They seem very often to be very sure that they are, but I wouldn't recommend taking their word for it.
> Adopting an alter ego is an extreme form of ‘self-distancing’, which involves taking a step back from our immediate feelings to allow us to view a situation more dispassionately.
What's the difference between this and repressing feelings, emotions and basically not dealing with it ? Does it work only in short lived moment (a presentation, a concert, etc.) and can't be used 24/7 (or even less) ?
I don't think it's necessarily repressing feeling and emotions or not dealing with them. This is the same kind of thing I've heard from meditation advocates.
If you're the boss at a company and an employee shows up late for the third time this week, you would be completely (morally) justified in being frustrated, responding sharply, and/or lecturing that employee on why being punctual is important.
But there's a good chance that those responses do not positively affect your own goals. None of those things are likely to make the employee be more punctual, and an off-the-cuff response could lead the employee to act out or quit, which will just make things worse.
So it's better to understand your subconscious feelings (being frustrated about the employee being late), but be sufficiently grounded to consciously respond in a way that benefits you (or at least doesn't work against you).
Dissociation is a defence action. I think it could be quite helpful if used intentionally. If it becomes a habit, it could cause problems. Unintentional and habitual use of defence mechanisms leads to negative consequences. This is what people think of when they use the term "neurotic."
Anxiety-management tricks that I personally employ is to either refer to a group/class I find myself in as "we" or to use passive rather than active voice.
The former I borrowed as a kid watching Spider Man 1994, where Brock/Venom symbiont calls themselves "we"; the latter is an inspiration from David Bohm's rheomode.
Both shift the perspective from your ego to the environment that it is embedded into and is a part of: e.g. a company, a crowd, a body ("we" as a human microbiome), humanity, or nature itself; not as an object, but as an ongoing process, from being to becoming. A giving up of ontological primacy.
Relatedly, I've noticed that video game youtubers almost always refer to themselves plurally (as in, "We're going to take our main army over here" or "We won!").
I assumed this was to cultivate a sense of belonging or identity for their followers, but separating their performing-identity from their regular identity could have a lot to do with it as well.
"We" is also common for old-school Let's Play series, dating back to the screenshot-only days, though those often have some level of voting or other interactivity that gives some fan involvement in each segment.
What I described is more of an internal monologue thing, not even at linguistic level but as an attitude and stance towards stress with anxiety. Should have phrased it better.
It sounds pretty cool. I heard a similar thing — someone advised to completely ignore word "I" in writing. So you don't write e.g. "I felt disappointed that moment", you write "There was a feeling of disappointment then". Don't know if it helps with anxiety, but nevertheless it makes you think more while writing, and that is fun.
Yup, it’s super helpful. An alternative abbreviation of my name is one I typically associate with shitty people (never met someone who went by that version of the name that I liked), so whenever I find myself wanting to engage in some form of negative behavior (even tame, like being a little lazy) I tell myself that that’s what [abbreviated name] does, not me. Works pretty well.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 315 ms ] threadDavid Bowie needed this persona to perform, he was otherwise an introvert and shy.
“As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs onstage and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going onstage and being myself. I continued designing characters with their own complete personalities and environments. I put them into interviews with me! Rather than be me — which must be incredibly boring to anyone — I’d take Ziggy in, or Aladdin Sane or The Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do.”
Edit: The super pervasive nickname is a fun phenomenon, eventually even the teachers and principal called me exclusively by the nickname.
Another possibility is that they can make claims they don't really stand behind, because there's no personal responsibility for their statements. Trolling, essentially.
The problem is, it's often hard to tell which is which. A bit of Poe's law.
https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo...
Adjective Species probably had an article on this, though it also reminds me of the discussions about therianthropy, contherianthropes, and New Age discussions of the use of masks in tribal religions.
On a related note, I attended Dr. Gerbasi's research results at Anthrocon a few years ago, and she noted from her furry survey that the experimental group (furries) rated themselves higher in response to questions such as "I feel good about myself" versus the control group. (her college students)
Might be related to the oxytocin furries get from all the snuggling, though.
Anyway, whatever the reason, perhaps it is also why lots of people like to get tattoos.
I've heard similar with people wearing face masks nowadays, and personally I had something like an "out of body" experience when I first started wearing glasses. There was a barrier between me and the world.
[1] http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/fixed-role-ther.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html
Edit: And of course you already had two suggestions for this. I should refresh the page before commenting.
If I've got an important set of meetings that I'm going to be at it's always going to be a kilt (with appropriate vest as well, everything snazzy needs vests) or a full suit.
If I'm going to something where I know I'm going to need to be social, it's always the kilt. It's amazing how much a kilt is just a segue for other people to talk about their "scottish or irish" heritage; talking about myself is terrible, but listening to the 10,000th person today talk about their boring ass family tree is great (the convo will eventually turn to something interesting or the person will wander off). It also makes me extremely memorable and findable, so I don't have to initiate most conversations which is also a terrible, horrible thing.
Fun times.
Walks off
Maybe England only wanted control over Scotland to shut the fucking bagpipes up.
Any way, while he was a rising junior his GF came to the office one day and I heard her call him Jake (nowhere in his name legal name). I asked “who the hell is Jake?” to which she replied “oh, that’s what we call John back home”. I looked at him and he said “John likes to make cold calls, Jake doesn’t”.
It works...
You really need to be careful with lying to yourself like that. Being a whole integrated person who doesn't have to remember who he is and what lies he's told comes in handy.
If you measure by being a decent and content person, I'd have to say no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_name
Actually, that's not exactly what the story contained. It said that John was the legal name, but it didn't say that Jake wasn't the legal name. That happens all the time, John Jake Johnson, for example.
I used to have some extended family who all went by nicknames unrelated to their legal names. It was a cultural thing.
For example, let's say a student named Fred Smith emails me, but then signs his name as "Alex Harrison." And his self-selected email address is alexrogers@school.edu. I'm not sure if it's a trend or a culture thing to use multiple names and last names, but it gets a bit confusing at times.
Both my sons have a couple of nicknames each, which come out depending on the situation. They're 3 & 6 now and are both called wee man by way of greeting. The youngest is now getting called Mac because his nickname is MacMonkey McBean. Names evolve over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnug6i5SkQQ
Edit: Don't know why the downvotes. Maybe the song 'all-solo-founders-please-stand-up' does not relate to as many of us as I thought.
Although people will claim they want kind-hearted people as lovers, they also very often conveniently ignore what they do for work, and how cruel they have to be, and the partners happily enjoy the shared money (or respect they have from the world). Lovers surely know it: hard to claim Che Guevarra’s wife, Stalin’s wife or Pablo Escobar’s wife didn’t know anything about drug dealings, but it shows that what people actually fall for are people who are nice... with them, and ruthless to the outside of the family.
So the John/Jake dissociation is unfortunately a road to success. I say unfortunately because it brings swathes of problems: John doesn’t mind having less ethics than Jake; wives who suddenly are dumped find themselves on the outer side of the fence, at risk, and very close to a very brutal human; and the last unfortunate corollary is that violent humans who can dissociate (and be someone else in private) reproduce easily from generation to generation. Hitler, Stalin, Che, Saddam Hussein have wives and Salah Abdeslam (the French terrorist, as famously any other mass killer) receives love letters, while people who won’t reproduce include Beaudelaire, Newton, Tesla, the Wright brothers or Alan Turing.
The Jake/John dissociative trait is very interesting.
Comparing Che Guevarra and Pablo is totally unfair. Che was a true inspiration, born in a rich family, became a doctor and yet sacrificed his life and fought for what he thought would make the society just. On the other hand Pablo is just a gangster who did not care outside of his family.
I suspect that what you really mean is Guevara fought for what you think is just. But that's a weaker statement.
You might have mistaken me as a supporter of communism. I don't support communism. Osama Bin Laden exploited the religion for his personal gain. His goal is to become the caliph which is roughly equivalent to being the single military leader for entier Islam as said in the quoran. He did not bother about the people or had any ideology of his own.
Che did not exploit religion. He is an atheist, was supporter of women rights, he understood the value of education and setup schools for his young troops even during the guerrilla warfare. He knew he will not be the leader of cuba and Fidel Castro would be the leader of the country and yet he fought for what he thought would make the society just.
Che thought deeply, was highly intelligent and had the balls to sacrifice his life for what he thought would make the society better.
Gangsters are one who have balls to do violent things but do not care about society.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but you don't have an excuse.
Now i will state my reasons why Che is an inspiration. First of all I am not an American or from the Latin country and i do not support Communism. I like Che because of his analytical thinking and hacker like personal traits. I read his book "Guerrilla Warfare"[1] and based on the title i expected the first page must preach about moral values or self righteous, but was very much surprised to find the explanation on the necessary conditions that must exist to start a revolution and goes on to describe how many core members are required, their preferred age and should not be married. He asks to treat the captured enemy nicely and does not make any false pretense of being noble about it. He is direct in pointing out that it is in their self interest. His arguments were logical and rational.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Warfare_(book)
> Being a 2nd in command is OK but not a national leader? The point is he is not after power and did not try to become 2nd in command either. He left the minister position he had given after the war and left to another country to start a revolution where he was killed. So looking all these facts he actions must be coming from the noble intentions.
You already said you don't like communism, and I guess you don't like ethnic genocide either. So that wouldn't be a distinguishing factor.
I don't see anything noble about genocide.
My take: he had worked with such cretins before, I think he didn't really want to associate his favorite name with them.
Out of Uni, in the workplace I am legal-name - no more, no less. I don't want work bullshit to taint what I associate with friends and good times.
In further adult life, you get my legal-name until I know you well enough that we're social and you overhear my nickname.
It also means legal-name is more disciplined, whereas nickname is not...
My wife knows when to use which one. :-P
It certainly works pretty well for him. At the local gym he even had a Jake/John moment where everyone knew him as Fred and not Bill and got confused when my mom tried to reach them about something.
Via intense concentration on elaborate self-visualization, repetition of the yidam's mantra, and ritualized hand gestures (mudra), you take on the form, attributes and mind of the yidam for the purpose of transformation - to recognize that one's own mind is not, in fact, different from the all-pervading Buddha-nature.
https://studybuddhism.com/en/tibetan-buddhism/tantra/buddhis...
'One of the most characteristic features of tantra is what we call “deity-yoga,” where we imagine ourselves to be a Buddha-figure. The term is usually translated as “visualize” instead of imagine, although we’re not just dealing with some visual picture of ourselves. I think the word “imagine” is great because we imagine that we really are a Buddha in the form of this figure. Not only do we imagine looking like this figure, but we also imagine speaking, thinking, helping others and experiencing pure enjoyment with all our senses like it does. We also imagine having all its good qualities, such as equal love and compassion for all beings and deep understanding of everything. Of course, to do this successfully we need to have trained beforehand in each of these qualities with sutra practice. Putting them all together with deity-yoga, then, is like a dress rehearsal for actually being a Buddha. By rehearsing now, we build up powerful causes for attaining enlightenment. This extremely efficient method is known as “practicing causes that are the most similar to the result.”'
Edit: I apologize. I realize that was very heavy handed. I felt obligated to throw out the usual warnings about Buddhist tantra.
And for anyone who's interested in tantra, I'll spell out the warnings more explicitly: this kind of practice should only be attempted under the careful guidance of an expert - a teacher who is empowered by a qualified lineage. These kinds of visualizations are very powerful, and can be dangerous to one's mental health if done foolishly. Hacking with the boundaries of one's ego and merging with deities is not to be done lightly. Seek expert instruction.
I can visualise myself as Hitler; for all it is I can also visualise how I could consciously go all the way with whatever methods he employed.
Are you trying to say I should not think about it because so will suddenly start World War III?
How is this different from visualising myself as the all-powerful deity?
Therefore, you must be careful and wise about what neurological mould you are seeking to "impersonate" with your practice, since you would be creating new habits and neural pathways in practice.
I'm not an expert on this topic, but I can use my common sense to figure that out.
Well, I grew in the rural South and currently live in Wisconsin, so I don't think I'm succumbing to some kind of SV hippie group-think.
The literature and instruction of Vajrayana is filled with warnings about using the techniques improperly. And they are very powerful, with tantra having developed during the peak of sophistication of Indian Buddhism in the 6th-9th centuries. The Tibetans have refined things further. E.g. the emergence of Dzogchen and Mahamudra.
Re: Hitler: Playing with the boundaries of self-identity as a form of daydreaming for the average person probably isn't harmful. But tantra combines a number of introspective technologies that hugely amplify the depth of concentration and effects of the exercise on the entire body-mind.
Weaving together ritualized breathing practices, somatic visualizations (i.e. energy work), external auditory stimulus (bells, etc.), chanting, internal/external visual aids (mandala), in the social context of serious vows to one's teacher, the Buddha, and all other sentient beings in the universe. . . well, it turns everything up to 11, so to speak.
Submerging oneself in an imaginal identity as a deity under those circumstances can provide a sudden, inarguable new insight into the boundaries and nature of one's self-construct, so the so-called truth of anatta. It can reveal in a flash the moment-to-moment fabrication of a particular kind of self-narrative you've been engaging in your entire life. And you can experience the incomparable freedom of being freed from that straitjacket.
Or if you're winging it without proper instruction, a similar exercise can deeply fuck you up, leading to weird somatic illnesses, grandiose thoughts (you think you _are_ the deity, or Hitler, or whatever), manic states because you don't understand how to safely bring down your psychological arousal level, etc.
So not about an egotistical desire to become something great but more like becoming / embodying the manifestation.
* Create duplicate account with different persona and make them talk. Fun on reddit.
* Start roleplaying and mostly dming. One of my favorite experience in life.
Maybe this trick helps reduce the activity of the DMN (default mode network) which is attributed to much of our worry based thinking, which is self centered?
https://jeffwarren.org/articles/neuroscienceofsuffering/
David Bowie... a different one practically every album.
But even more importantly it helps me imagine being that other, successful, famous author.
I recently rewrote a JS problem I did in an interview in a much more functional style, a style that just visually appealed to me, and I feel like I learned a thing or two from it, or at least reinforced some things I already knew.
Frederick König.
I am a man who can sit for hours working productively at his computer. I am a man who is not affected by boredom. I desire nothing more than to sit, and code. My productivity is off the charts and I am being considered for a promotion. I have excellent coding ability and can apply it with ease by sitting, and coding, for hours, and hours.
It doesn't matter if the tools are broken, the docs are missing/incomplete/incorrect, the API is non-sensical, the library is buggy, the service is unreliable, the support team is incapable, or the space around me is filled with hordes of ignorant and disrespectful people. These difficulties are temporary. Like smoke in the wind, they may block my view, sting my eyes, congest my nose, and make me cough, but will be gone soon. I keep moving on, away from the source of the smoke.
I move steadily toward my goal. My soul is enveloped in a shimmering cloud of dispassionate focused equanimity.
Instead of coding for long hours, I invent elegant solutions solving complex problems simply and fast.
Also sometimes Ben M. Faulkner, a charming gentleman who effortlessly guides multiple people into his grand vision.
There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.
Also, again based on experience, I do not think that parents who teach their children to dissociate - or, more accurately put, make it necessary for their children to learn to do so - are particularly skillful at identifying what is and isn't good for those kids. They seem very often to be very sure that they are, but I wouldn't recommend taking their word for it.
it seems like a powerful tool, but the question is, should we limit teaching powerful things if they have the 'possibility' to be dangerous?
What's the difference between this and repressing feelings, emotions and basically not dealing with it ? Does it work only in short lived moment (a presentation, a concert, etc.) and can't be used 24/7 (or even less) ?
If you're the boss at a company and an employee shows up late for the third time this week, you would be completely (morally) justified in being frustrated, responding sharply, and/or lecturing that employee on why being punctual is important.
But there's a good chance that those responses do not positively affect your own goals. None of those things are likely to make the employee be more punctual, and an off-the-cuff response could lead the employee to act out or quit, which will just make things worse.
So it's better to understand your subconscious feelings (being frustrated about the employee being late), but be sufficiently grounded to consciously respond in a way that benefits you (or at least doesn't work against you).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism
The former I borrowed as a kid watching Spider Man 1994, where Brock/Venom symbiont calls themselves "we"; the latter is an inspiration from David Bohm's rheomode.
Both shift the perspective from your ego to the environment that it is embedded into and is a part of: e.g. a company, a crowd, a body ("we" as a human microbiome), humanity, or nature itself; not as an object, but as an ongoing process, from being to becoming. A giving up of ontological primacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_without_organs
I assumed this was to cultivate a sense of belonging or identity for their followers, but separating their performing-identity from their regular identity could have a lot to do with it as well.