One of the most rare and valuable skills is one of the most general: to detect masquerades. Since most of what is deadly parades around as helpful, desirable, heroic, or divine… we must train each other to debunk the parasites and predators whose game is engineered to draw us into the forms of trance that render us pliable, compliant, and obedient. One must learn to spot the pretender in every possible domain and circumstance, from linguistic and ideological to physical and political. And yet, this is not the beginning of clear seeing, whose actual presence reveals masquerades as if it were light falling on masks made of shadows. That is to say that we may live and act with such depth, sincerity and presence that mimicry cannot establish its deceptions or their resultant trances. It is possible to be true and to embody mutuality with such beauty and fervor that the gambits of those collectives who shape us to their disposal are revealed in all their insipid toxicity. So yes, we must detect deception adeptly, but let us not be mere analysts: we must also become the answer.