Asher’s Seventh Maxim: We’re all naked.

Asher writes: At any given moment, we are communicating in scores of languages. Our posture, gestures, myriad little movements, dilations, tone, cadence, pauses, breaths, pulse at the side of the neck, pallors, pheromones, and more that can be observed through the various senses, from goosebumps to bodily oils, are speaking volumes. Even our pretenses reveal what we want others to believe. We cannot hide, except from those who cannot see, and each reaction against this knowledge reveals still more. We are nude, down to the soul which, despite all our philosophies to the contrary, is still integral to the body. The moment that we stop collaborating in the pretense that we are each covered up, clothed, protected, safe, we can begin to realize what it means to live in community with others. Each of us desires, irrefutably, to be known. To do so, we must allow the social walls that occupy even our most intimate relationships to crumble. We must look for the friend who will, on his own initiative, break down the first one in spite of us, and without welcome. We must keep watch on these walls, since they are walls of the thinnest sort, with the obvious singular purpose of being breached. Each barrier is a confessions of our desires to be penetrated, entered, overcome, known, connected, vulnerable, revealed. The emperor has no clothes. The edenic attempt to snatch a fig leaf and cover ourselves is futile. When you look and see, you realize you are no longer safe, and can finally rejoice. Ender says that it is impossible to truly known someone and fail to love them. Finally, then, we can stop guarding that secret desire — to be wanted.