if there's one bit of simplistic information you're looking to gleam off these pages but haven't understood anything yet, look no further. rest your weary eyes and quaint little mind here, this won't require much thought at all. this is the key to understanding about 90% of the world's thought.  As long as you develop the skill to see into it correctly, you shouldn't have any problem.

here it is:   people think two things at once.  One emotional set to fulfill their ideal self (the top layer), and one emotional set to fulfill their actual self (bottom layer).

knowing what these two are is the tricky part. usually it'll be a balance of short emotion and long emotion - that is, a person will show happiness but have an underlying, more subtle display of hate within it (this is common of people who think they are above hate). others will use the delay method, in which an initial, shallow emotion is portrayed but if the person is an unskilled 'actor' the true emotion will wiggle its way out in a few seconds.  it's easy to differentiate these two tolerances because the short will fall back into stupidity, hate, or whatever else the person is hiding; the long will fall back into ignorance (or simply won't fall back at all). look at stephen king's books. that's all he does and he's fucking world renouned. he knows where to place you, then go for the stab.
 
 
 

how can i prevent this from happening to me, you ask? well, the answer to this is the answer i retain in each of my zens - tell the truth; the real truth (see, i used a little double right there). when there's nothing to hide, this trick won't have any function. unfortunaltely, 99% of the world makes a habit of having an ideal self, so play on it as you wish.
 
 
 

now, i've opened the pandora's box for you all. did you really think such an easy lesson of life wouldn't have its consequences? every one of you that reads this and uses this double method is now going to develop a third layer out of unconscious fear of being discovered. no, don't bother saying 'this guy's bullshit, i don't act like that', well, it's all unconscious; if you have fear of yourself, it'll happen.  your first ideal will be bumped up to a nominal tolerance, your 'real self' will now be your pretend, and you'll be placed at a higher skin. heh, and by saying this, a fourth layer will emerge. see what i mean? the layers may merge into each other though as time goes on - most people only have room for so much in their capacity.

look on the bright side - if you choose to act on this and turn the weakness into a strength, you'll be able to use this over anyone else that hasn't seen this peice of philosophy and be able to read them like a book.  not only that, eventually if this knowledge ever reaches the public, everybody will develop this extra layer and the sequence will develop all over again, until it gets so monotonous the entire thing breaks down and chaos arrives. yay!

you might be asking yourself, "why did this pretentious fuck tell us this then??" - i dunno. cause i can, i guess. it's a very human thing to do, so i might as well indulge my life and my mind while pushing the human race further.