I just zipped through Jake White’s book `In Black & White’. I think Jake is great and was a big fan of his from day one. The book opens with a warning against books that air dirty laundry and goes on to do just that. Kind of like saying don’t take a cookie to a little child then stuffing one in your face. There are two reasons I think he wrote the book…
1) He is candid, and feels telling things as he sees they are instead of politicking is a good approach.
2) It is going to make him a lot of money.
One thing it did make me think about though…
What level of `secrecy’ do we owe to people with whom we interact? Often we are told something in strict confidence, and often the reason it is in strict confidence is because they in turn were asked not to tell anyone. Presumably if you garner a reputation of telling things all the time, fewer people will tell you those sorts of things.
But what about day to day interactions? Is it fair, for example, to write a vivid description of the various friendships and relationships you have had over the years?
I have intermittently kept a journal. At times I go back and read what I had to say. Once or twice I have even read extracts to friends. On one particular occasion I think I was out of line, reading an extract which while amusing was probably not fair of me to read to other people… again that whole question of whether or not it is fair to tell?
I guess the way most authors get around this problem is by slightly altering incidents, changing names and `masking identities’. But that is in the world of fiction. What degree of responsibility do we have to not tell of certain experiences in the real world?
Looking forward… what if one day we can record experiences… visually and sensually and replay them in a virtual reality world? Do our experiences belong to us? Should we be allowed to tell others?
6 comments:
My preference is hugely tilted towards everything being fair game unless specifically asked otherwise. Good recording equipment would really help with this.
it'd take a little getting used to but I think it would have the potential to transform society in a good way.
I am busy reading a Seth Godin book called `Small is the new big'. It is basically a collection of essays from his blogg. One of them is on the problem of anonymity of people. In the same way as when you go overseas you can randomly tell girls in the street they are beautiful or act like a complete tosser, because no one will recognise you.
I think there would be a very fundamental change in the way we act if we knew those acts could be viewed again.
All well and good for that if we knew…
But what sort of `moral code’ is there currently on disclose intimate details of interactions we have with people now? It would be pretty arb if every time you spoke to someone you had to say, `This is in the strictest confidence’.
people are ruder in big cities where repeat encounters are less likely. maybe recording would act as a repeat encounter...
my hope would be that a) we'd get over minor things that currently leave a bad taste in some mouths. if everyone has some embarrasing quote or pictre on facebook then people might stop caring. b) people will stop doing really bad stuff.
I'm not especially worried about the confidentiallity issue. we do it already, we gossip about people are mean about people we dont like etc. we'd still use our discretion about whats acceptable (and get it wrong sometimes) I'd just like it to shift towards openess.
It should actually decrease malicious gossip since people could actually verify what he said she said.
Writing this I'm thinking about how many people would be horrified by all this
Many would...
... and yes people would stop doing bad stuff.
1) But maybe people would just stop doing what wasn't popular?
2) With no back bone and no secrecy, maybe they will also stop doing good but hard stuff?
We also have a variety of circles of friends with whom we have different things in common, and secrets which allow us to continue interacting...
Take HIV status, Sexual-Preference & activity for example...
I am not sure people in general would be able to put all their predjudices aside in a completely open society?
Even in relationships, the people we are most honest with, would the world be better if we read all of each others mails, listened to all of each others conversations... and imagine it `could read each others thoughts'...
hmmmm... perhaps it would force us to become more accepting, less reactionary and more mature...
but imagine the truth would be the world functions a little better with a little secrecy simply because `we can't handle the truth'
my attitude is pretty utopian and not the way things seem to have changed in the past few years. We hear of people being fired for posting arb stuff on their web sites and even if this is rare the point is more how people react to it. I think people do keep it in mind.
I think it a mistake to think of it as just like this but more... like reading each others e-mails. First we all do a lot of stuff, and we're to boring to be worth reading e-mails. second, our conventions about social interaction would be different in ways we cant predict now. a lot of our current interaction woul dhave seemed completely unthinable at some time in the past.
My gut tells me bear all honesty would make us better people...
But we would also have to be much better at something we ar clearly quite poor at...
1) disagreeing
2) non-violent conflict resolution
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