September 20th, 2006
I subscribe to Time Magazine, despite (or maybe because of) its America-centric stance and editorials. It is about as fair, cosmopolitan, and international as a magazine based out of the US can be, I think. Not perfect, but not the National Review or Mother Jones kind of biased, either.
And the essays that are presented on the back pages of nearly every issue range from a-bit-left-of-center to firmly-on-the-right, but even the ones I don't like are intelligent and worth my time to read.
One of those writers is Time's Arts and Television critic James Poniewozik, who typically writes essays that make me mutter things out loud like, "Right on!" or "Amen brother!" (despite my complete agnosticism). And his latest essay from the Sept. 18th 2006 issue of Time, "Top Guns and Top Secrets" really hit the mark with me. Here's something from the essay that made me jump out of my chair:
[S]ecrets can be the means to important ends, but as publicists and White House aides know, keeping secrets is an end in itself. Even when it's brazen—especially when it's brazen—secrecy affirms and bolsters your alpha status: I know you want to know this thing. But you do not have the leverage to make me talk about this thing. Therefore I own you.
Yes! Cue the gospel music and watch me wave my hands in the air and dance with beatific joy in my soul and on my face! Poniewozik has caught the essence of something that has pissed me off to no end since at least high school and probably longer. Something, in fact, that is probably near and dear to my heart because of my growing up with a couple of older sisters who were all about keeping secrets from me ... and usually for the same reasons as well—secrets for the appearance of dominance, and brazenly so to heighten the squashing effect it had on me.
And a few days ago I was talking about those heads of business who, coupled with a determined effort to follow through on their system to pursue success, lucked into expansion and growth and suddenly fancied themselves (in metaphor) to the Next Napoleon Bonapartes of Business. Well, after writing all about that, I went home and read Poniewozik's article and, apart from wishing that I had thought of it before reading it in his essay, realised that he had captured a big part of what makes the Mister Men (who, by the way, can easily be women) go all alpha and Napoleonic with you: When they have information they can keep from you, and then when they endeavour to not only keep it hidden, but let you know that they are keeping it hidden.
And, more to the point:
There is a vast galaxy of information out there that I don't know, you don't know, and, in its entirety, is in fact completely unknowable. That does not mean that we are being slapped upside our heads by the myriad of folks who know information we don't. What turns that lack of disclosure into alpha assholery is them suddenly thinking to themselves, "Aha! I know something that he doesn't, and I am going to deliberately not tell him. Yes, and I am going to let him know that I am not going to tell him! Haha! Then he will see that it is I who wears the iron underpants around here!" And it is at that point that it becomes real abuse, and not just unshared information.
It is at the point where the facts, no matter how worthless or innocuous—especially out of context—become the battlegrounds. Information is nothing by itself, it is only at the point where someone decides to put it under lock and key that it becomes the tool of abuse and the point of contention. When someone makes a decision to hide information, that decision becomes meta-information (information about the information). And thus the chest-beating alpha-status meat-measuring abusive assholery begins.
But the abuse is not in the information, it is in the meta-information.
OK, so where does that leave us? Not much farther up the road than before, except that maybe we can better deduce the real reasons why people withhold information. But that doesn't help anything, does it? Our knowing that they are withholding is part of their power, and it's not as though everyone should go running around shouting official secrets to everyone they see, either. It's not an absolute; sometimes the reasons for withholding information are valid.
But a note to you people who define yourselves as secret-holders (i.e., the alphas of the world): Information is like water. No matter how well-contained you think you have made it, it will always eventually seep out. Like water, it erodes its container over time and makes its own holes and escapes. That container (your mind) can't hold it forever. And once it's finished seeking its lowest point, it's worthless. So no matter what your mind contains today, it will be devoid of all that made it valuable tomorrow. That's what happens when you make information valuable; you become destined to be worthless.
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