Everybody plays a role, it's known.

When we go to work, or if we we have a duty involving authority or responsibility at a certain degree… then, virtually always.

Now we can't define every degree of pretense the individual adopts in various circumstances, nor this is the moment (I really do not have time) to mark which are the roles that are good to play, or to which we are called to stick to for our own good and happiness, nor to reason about how role-playing in a certain extent is even healthy for the individual.

Anyway, we have to spend several words about a danger I have seen becoming clear and present in some cases.

We assume that the roles we play, generally, are just "interfaces" or "modulations" or a series of rules in which express our personality, our functions and activities. On the other hand, it often happens that the individual inverts perception of what he/she internally is with what he/she is on the surface; that is he exchanges or confuses the substance with the interface, his real persona with the role he's playing, the face with the mask (to use a term already used, see post about communication, we could also say he's confounding the internal meaning of himself with the words used to express it). And this, even if it could seem an obvious and thin distinction since Pirandello, it makes a terrible difference.

At this point we could draw in the concept of honor. Don't you dare to mistake it with omerta. Strictly, a man of honor (or a woman, of course) is firstly faithful to himself. There's no honor without coherence. There's no loyalty. (One day we will talk thoroughly about this too).

Now: the individual who does not have clear in mind the difference between "objective self" and the roles he plays, either he is in a state of mental and psychological confusion, or he's one of the cases that I put under "stealth psycopaths", that are folks mentally ill – literally – but appearing perfectly normal in daily life and even to acquaintances and close relatives. And I assure you they are far, far more than you think.

How can this individual stick to moral values? His values change according to circumstances. How can he have certainties? He will only have illusions, built above cloudy concepts, because he can not admit the existance of one absolute truth, a concept needed for the existance of all relative truths you want (yes, I have to update the post about relativism tautology: "all is relative" = self-confessed nonsense).

How can a person like that behave according to his conscience? It's clear that a conscience can't work properly in a mind like that. It does not have a real point of reference, or landmark. Or, worse, he think he has it, but not barely in himself, nor from God, though in the kind of persona he's playing at that very moment, and this is an aberration! It makes come to my mind the pseudo-sentient dolls à-la Philip Dick (or Ghost in the Shell), you are warned…

Let's pay attention to these cases; they're loose cannons in social/affective relationships.