There are a lot of evil governments in the world, and nearly all private companies are functionally evil. You don't want them knowing who you are. That information will only be used against you. The government is not always your friend and your employer almost never is.

It seems to be rooted fairly deep in us to believe that if we just told our stories and had our true selves known to the world--if our reputations portrayed us fully and fairly--we would be not only accepted but embraced by the world. This isn't the case, and it's not for a lack of personal value, but because the human world is not always a benevolent place. It's full of conflict, and it has a lot of terrible people in high places.

As I get older, I'm increasingly convinced that, while I have no patience whatsoever for the intolerant, self-righteous, and right-wing strains of US Christianity, we do need something like religion, at least enough of it to convince people and society (a) that cultural integrity is important and worth fighting for, and (b) that playing a decent role within one's culture, rather than trying to dominate or "influence" it as much as possible, is enough. Sadly, the most effective strategy for preserving a culture seems to be convince people that terrible supernatural consequences will occur if the culture is violated--the most dangerous individuals won't necessarily believe in these consequences, but their potential followers will, and so one could (in theory, anyway) proactively deprive these would-be warlords and CEOs of the supporters they would need in order to seize power. Worse yet, it seems in practice that this doesn't help, because nothing prevents horrible people from using religion to their benefit (in fact, it is historically very common). So... I don't know. All I know is that mukbang is fucking disgusting and anyone who watches it should feel bad about themselves.