Janus

In which we try on different masks and faces

Janus, from the Museo Chiaramonti (Wikimedia Commons)

Janus is the Roman god of beginnings (hence ‘January’), transitions, gates, doors, and endings. He is depicted with two faces to signify his dual nature — beginning and ending.

Janus is far from the oldest god with more than one face. Even in ancient Mesopotamia (5,000 to 6,000 BC) we find a deity - Isimud - with two faces. In Hinduism, Brahma is often depicted with four faces, as is the Slavic god Svetovid, and, of course, we have the cult of the many-faced god in Game of Thrones.

Sometimes, I feel like Janus.

There is science-y me and there is creative writing me (and there are other me’s, but they don’t get to participate in this newsletter just yet). Of course, there is no clear division. Good scientists are creative and many creatives use scientific/technological methods, even if they don’t know it themselves. No person is just one thing. Except when it comes to how you ‘market’ yourself.

When people want to hear/read about science, you better be a scientist/science journalist. When people want imaginative, creative writing, you better be a literary prodigy. Slight exaggeration there, but you get the point.

C.P. Snow (a chemist and a novelist, by the way) famously wrote about the ‘two cultures’: the sciences and the humanities. Based on a 1959 lecture, he writes:

I believe the intellectual life of the whole of Western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups…

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.

The reason that this is on my mind is that I’m pondering the future of Thinking Ahead. More on that later, but one of the things I’m considering is to refine the content. I haven’t yet figured out how. Wait, I have a wonderful hivemind at my disposal. No, I’m not giving you a ‘both’ option. *evil laugh*

I think we all have many faces, or, perhaps a better metaphor, masks. Masking is a well-known psychological phenomenon in which we ‘manage’ how others perceive us by altering our behavior. We all want to be liked, even (secretly) the curmudgeons among us. Masking, of course, is a well-known behavioral strategy used by people on the autistic spectrum, but some aspects of masking are used by the population at large.

For example, this 2021 study probes the experience of masking in autistic, undiagnosed neurodivergent, and neurotypical people, and:

… many aspects of masking are experienced across different neurotypes and are likely related to outside perceptions of difference and stigma. It is likely that what we call “autistic masking” is similar to other forms of stigma management previously theorized. Some aspects of masking do seem more specific to the autistic neurotype (e.g., suppression of stimming)…

The extent will differ among people, but we all mask. The funny (or sad?) thing is that we mask for people who are also wearing masks.

Sounds exhausting. One of my favorite examples is that introverts (hi there) can act extroverted, which makes sense because (most) people like others with an extroverted mask (aka the extrovert ideal), but this also makes the masking introvert tired and feeling inauthentic. (By the way, I’ve written a whole series of posts on the science and psychology of introversion. Here’s part 1.)

I guess the trick is finding the mask(s) that fits. (Or the confidence to not need a mask at all…)

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