The Masks We Wear

This topic had been suggested several times in the past, but this time I dredged it up to fill out the list and it got voted for.  My initial thoughts were focused on how we seek to avoid offending or upsetting people around us, either through politeness or strategy.  A couple of other good points came up in discussion.

It's accepted that we can't be completely honest about what we think or how we feel about things, mostly to avoid causing problems with the people around us.  They can be people we care about, like friends and family, or people who have the power to make life difficult, like bosses, police, or other authority figures.  We might have a different mask for every situation, some similar to each other, some much more subdued or loud or vulgar, etc.  But some masks are not "acceptable"; they are used, not to prevent bad feelings, but to manipulate or control.  Some people lose themselves behind a particular mask, leaving the others aside, like somebody who has lost a loved one to a cult might think.  Where does the mask end and the person begin?

While I was considering only behavior, it was pointed out that physiognomy also carries mask-like qualities in people with awareness and good control over their physical selves.  It's a difficult task, as many reactions are beyond our conscious control, like blushing, or tics.  A good actor always wears a mask, one that's made of his/her own face.  Even without make-up or special effects, s/he can convey a character to the audience, with all the personality that character has.  In fact, another participant insisted that she was more herself on stage than she was in the street, since those characters she got to play were more like her real self than society wanted her to be.

Which moves us to the next point: our masks are based on societal expectations.  Human beings are social animals, herd animals even.  We like to belong to groups, both for our own inclusion and, almost contradictorily, for the exclusion of others.  Those groups all require a particular persona to be a part of them, and we take on that persona when belonging appears to be the best for us.  The mask is a psychosocial strategy for survival which allows us access to others in ways that are determined to be acceptable, everybody playing a part in the great play that is life.  Another contributor mentioned the psychological construct of the ego, id, and superego, although her terms were slightly different.  Basically, her view was that the ego is the mask we construct from the internal pressures of the id being combined with the external expectations presented through the superego.  In this vision of the self, wouldn't that make the id, the selfish and self-centered part, the most "real" person, while the ego was simply a constructed mask?  The same person later stated firmly that altruism, rather than selfishness, is what makes somebody a real person, and is one of the keys to an individual's happiness.  I couldn't help but wonder how much that has to do with the conditioning that individual receives versus being a natural and inevitable mental/ethical development.

Another idea that came out in discussion was how our masks are actually chosen.  As already mentioned, society has expectations of us, and my line of thought was following the path that people chose their masks voluntarily, with some idea of the rewards involved.  However, sometimes masks are imposed upon us, especially in the family environment.  In those cases, we have little choice in the mask that we wear, one that was assigned practically from birth, and in some cases even before.  Because of a child's dependence on the family at the beginning of life, there is little to be done to escape an unwelcome mask.  Children either adapt to them or find a way to escape, which means abandoning the safety and support that the family is supposed to afford to its members.  It was also mentioned that children aren't really aware of wearing the mask, especially at very young ages; they only experience the reactions of people around them to their behavior and generally don't calculate their actions with a great deal of foresight and long-term planning.  Their "self" is still developing, probably, a self that will be a composite of the masks they've been presented with.

In the end, I'm left with one idea: nobody knows us.  Even when we are "honest" with others, they receive our honesty through their own filters, warping the message to some extent.  Even those closest to us can never see what we really are, know our real thoughts and feelings, because we are separated by our physical selves, each with its exclusive experiences.  The best we can hope for, in terms of community, is only pissing off people we wouldn't want to associate with anyway.  Because they're so easily pissed off, probably.