There is a type of selfing the world which worlds the self in terms of an identity. It is generally unwise, while it may have prosocial outcomes, these do not generally provide not long-term strategies.

With-ness

One can identify with someone when they tell a story, and one says in recognition “That’s me in the mirror!”

It is still a mirror, a very dry pool. 

mirror face

To go a step further than recognition, is to become dogmatic and identify with identification as a way to world the self. This is unwise.

To gad about, out and about, holding that moment of recognition "This is me!" for overlong, afterall it was you, is to hold up proudly, that mirror in front of your face, instead of your face. And regardless of whether the mirror faces this way out or that way in, like some kind of emblem; a stinking badge.

This is a derived behaviour, an over-extension of learning’s pathways, though perhaps it has prosocial outcomes. Perhaps that's why the unwisdom persists among us.

Firstly one identifies something in the world i.e. identity is what we others do in worlding the others among them, and us. The others are sometimes us, and even me, in the mirror. But the reflection is not the reality of the dance, at least not its entirety, its potential is far more than the dry pool’s magic.

Whereas narcissists see in the dry pool the entire world beneath them, those who identify unwisely see in the dry pool something they are, but can not get past the fact that recognition is only a passing glance.

The reflective process distances them from the recognition and perhaps empathy into mere identification. Whereas the narcissists identifies the world with their ego and its own, which is why empathy, even if available, for the narcissist is of no consequence.

Remember the mirror is not a person.

as others see me

On another day, walking down the city street, you will see yourself in a shop window reflected, and think “Who is that stranger?”

Will you then identify with that unrecognised stranger? I.E. who you are when looking through the window of other’s eyes? Who is the fool here?

Identifying with an identification is unwise. It can confuse the world without within and within without. Ask who or what does this benefit if someone encourages it.

It’s ‘let’s pretend’ gone too far past any truth in recognition, it strips empathy away.

A story’s power is its storying, not its reality. Even if that storying power is what makes the world real for us, a place to self the world among others doing the same.

What do you see?

NAME:

Compare this idea of identity and identifying some aspect of your lived experience, to the idea of identification when you have to prove who you are. Is the ID who you are? Are you that number? What are you exactly?

Through history people have often rejected or subverted state power to enforce surnames on the population. Surnames were unnecessary within the scale where they lived. Is your family just a surname?

Compare this with your first name, are you your name? Is everyone with that same name the same person? Why aren’t names actually individual? Can they reflect some aspect of you? Some happy accident? Some curse? Some stage of life?

Do you have a true name? Is it secret from the world? Do you world the self in secret? Do you have many names? How many selves are you? How many worlds do you live in.

Who would care? They care who would call you friend, you name is theirs.

With me now?

An interesting thing to consider is that while you may or may not be your name, or you may belong with your name, but… —your name is owned by everyone else, because they use it to get your attention, or give you attention. The world ‘owns’ your name in a way you may never use it, outside of magic or mental health issues. This is why governments were keen on surnames as a way of generating and applying ID before numbers could be easily formed and applied at scale.

You do not want to be just a number? You also do not just want to be just a name.

People often confuse their name with the world itself when they make a name for themselves, as if they can take on what the world does.

Maintaining their good name in the face of their behaviour.

Unwisdoms lie in all directions.

See also The sky pool , Shiny traps, and Remember the mirror is just a very dry pool.

See also, Remember the mirror is just a very dry pool and The sky pool.