The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall

“The End” by The Doors

I found by experimentation that if a pub was a little crowded of a Friday night, putting the song “The End” on the Juke box several times was causal of a marked thinning out of people density.

If one were to take too many masks from the ancient gallery one might end up with a split personality or a dissociative identity / multiple personality disorder.

“Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is one of multiple dissociative disorders in the DSM-5, ICD-11, and Merck Manual. It has a history of extreme controversy.

Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. The disorder is accompanied by memory gaps more severe than could be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.”

From Wikipedia

I think it is generally held that having a fairly stable sense of personal identity is a sign of mental health, though many can have an identity crisis in which said set of views and processes, the identity, are called into question. After crisis one might arrive at a changed personal identity, that change could be small or large it is unlikely however to be an utterly complete change. The notion of self-plays a big role in modern psychiatry, dissolution of self leads to liberation is Buddhism etc. Self-esteem which we hear these days is under threat partially because of all the imaginary imagery. Petabytes of doctored pictures provide an illusory ideal yardstick by which to measure inadequacy.

The sense of self might have a strong component of profession. There may be qualities and descriptors to which one subscribes. These may change during life. The thing is I don’t think that many people actually know themselves very well, which suggests that their self-image, self-description and personal legend are at best inaccurate. This does not prevent life from going on as an ersatz. Not everyone needs to fathom the depths.

Whilst one is fully engaged in the common currents of life and the angular momentum of the daily hamster wheel there is little time for reflection and discovery. The pace of life is too fast to bother. Crisis can change this.

I have heard it said that many who go on a 30 day silent solo retreat, struggle. This is because without the accoutrements of self and a lifestyle, the notion of self starts to fall away. This can be very scary. Some may get scarred. Others come out the other side less obsessed by notion of self, less attached to this and have little or no urge to defend anything even minorly contradictory to the illusory narrative of self. Other people are not holding you to this self-image which you have spent much time projecting into the world and your relationships. You are not bound by a self-narrative to the same extent.

For a number of years, I was an evangelical vegan. Then my notion of self had veganism as a core part. Others saw me as a vegan, perhaps annoyingly evangelical, to sit down at table with them and eat beef steak was a game changer for them and for me. I was bricking it that they would call me a hypocrite. They had a sudden change of view.

Self and identity refer to similar things. I could say that I identify as a heterosexual male. But I don’t really, it is a side effect of my dangly bits, chromosomes and residual sexual orientation.

The ninth aspect of the stalker’s rule is:

“A stalker never reveals his identity, not even to himself.”

The notion of stalking is to stalk perceptions, primarily one’s own perceptions. If you have strong descriptor of self and a fixed identity then you will perceive everything through the possible colouration of that lens. It will provide a perceptual and conceptual bias. If you have no identity or no fixed identity the range and scope of possible perceptions increases.

When I first started stalking my perception, I started with the ninth aspect instead of the first. The implications of this aspect of rule are very wide ranging on the one hand and utter simplicity on the other.

If you don’t say things like, “I am / was a senior lecturer in physical chemistry of Welsh extraction, with left wing leaning politics and profound concern about anthropogenic climate change with a wife and a nice house in the country.” Then people will not know where to place you. But this kind of little sentence forms the basis of many person-person interactions. There is a desire for such a one liner for people to start to feel comfortable about who and what they are dealing with. On one level that one liner is true. But it says nothing about what I am like nor how my world view is configured. I do not identify with that sentence even though it is correct. This kind of statement is a part of ritual sniffing where humans metaphorically sniff each other’s arses, like dogs.

If people ask, I can now say that I am retired. If you say it in a particular way few inquire as to retired from what. Although I am retired from in-world quotidian interactions I am not retired in an absolute sense. I have not carked it yet.

At first glance and upon fleeting interaction I seem pretty much like everyone else. I’ll speculate that once my very different world view was rubbed up against, I would see less normal. If I did not wear my normal society mask and let my true colours emanate, I would differ markedly. Just how markedly is impossible to explain, it would have to be experienced. This is because I have used over two decades erasing self and weakening any identification, especially with the form side of life. At first pass a psychiatrist might be concerned, especially if they were taking notes upon how I see myself, what I like, what I don’t like. They may reach for their bible, the diagnostic manuals, excited.

If I say that I learned at an early age to blend and be a chameleon they might raise an eyebrow. But this is a true if metaphorical statement. I went from an “experimental” late sixties Bristol primary school where I was allowed to play chess instead of do art, to a traditional Mines School deep in the Australian outback. For safety I learned to blend. A sore thumb pom quickly spoke Strine.

If you have a sense of identity, whether strong or otherwise, it is difficult to imagine what it is like to have none. Group and group mind comprise a subset of identity. There are millions of red cap wearing MAGA devotees who might identify as non-woke anti-liberal nonce. Group identity remains identity and it is this which is aback and casual of wars.

Many people identify as Christian but in no way do they practise the teachings of Christ, they might better call themselves old-school Jehovian. Brutal destructive vengeance is not a Christian trait to my understanding.

A big contribution to sense of identity is peer group. In the peer group people share stories about their lives and others keep them beholden, to an extent, to these stories. There may be underlying assumptions and expectations on identity.

If you identify to / as anything it can be used to leverage and manipulate you. You can manipulate others with/by their identity.

Look you are eating steak! I always knew you were a hypocritical self-righteous bastard, shame on you. If you do this for me, I won’t tell the others.