At the time, I tried to underline the case that the notion of “authenticity” entailed a problematic duplicity that guaranteed the cogency of the discussion. In plain English, once we decide that there’s something inauthentic about ourselves and feel the urgency of trying to fix it, we generate the kind of over-against-self consciousness that we’re trying to remedy. (Thanks to wood s lot for returning to us and for pointing out this article in which Vincent Lloyd makes a complementary case.)
And I tried to suggest that pseudonymity did not liberate us to speak freely, but constrained us to subdivide our selves into partial identities, shackling ourselves to our partitioned personae.
All this becomes relevant again in my life partly because I’m practicing saying the word “identity” a lot, since I’m getting prepared for Digital Identity World—the Conference, and partly because I’ve been drawn into several recent nightmares in which “confidentiality” plays a significant role. The heart of my attitude toward “confidentiality” connects directly to my approach to identity and authenticity. We can be whole persons, whole characters; but our investments in self-diminution render wholeness unattainable. One source that funds a tremendous proportion of these self-diminishing investments is the notion that people should be secret-keepers.
Quickly, now, I do not advocate instantly divulging all one’s friends’ most embarrassing, most incriminating, most vulnerable confessions. My point concerns the complications that arise through the conflicts of accountability that inevitably arise when keeping secrets, along with the tremendous amplification of the power differentials among people who ought to be able to converse and trust freely and fearlessly.
I propose that confidentiality erodes the very social obligations that it pretends to sustain (just as searching for authenticity alienates one from the self whom one always already is, and the practice of pseudonymity buys the prerogative to say whatever one wants at the cost of acceding to one’s unfreedom to speak in one’s own name).
In the past, I’ve been misconstrued as arguing the opposite of what I want to recuperate from: that there’s no such thing as artificiality, or that no one should ever deploy a pseudonym, or (today) perhaps that no one should have any secrets. So permit me to grant that we will have secrets, and then follow up with some reservations.
We will have secrets, because even if you, dear reader, exemplify everything pure and noble and admirable in life, you’ll end up dealing with at least one person who falls short of your unblemished integrity. In our social connectedness, we can’t avoid secrecy of some sorts.
We can, however, resist the prevalent glib assumption that any time anyone says, “This is confidential,” we have no alternative but to accept a binding contract not to discuss the topic again. I myself need to say more often, “No, this is discretionary; if you trust me enough to talk with me about your next-door neighbor, I need you to trust me to discern soundly with whom I might share what you say. If you’re unwilling to take that chance, please don’t talk to me about your neighbor.” Spreading “confidential” information around almost ensures that the secret will get out, and that it won’t be the secret-giver’s fault: “I told you that in confidence!” But if we shift the preponderance of our confidential discourse to the category of “discretion,” we who make secrets share in the accountability for the secret’s dissemination, for we determined that our listener might fairly be trusted wisely to reckpoon who might receive the secret and who not. If we choose a blabber-mouthed recipient of information, we can’t hide behind the immunity-claim, “But it was confidential!”
Then, if we clear our plate of the countless inanities that pass for confidences—often enough, simple gossip that we ought not to circulate anyway—we make room for rare, genuine confidences. We should accept the terms of these imperative confidences (I’m deliberately avoiding the use of “necessary” or “essential”) only in extraordinary circumstances, and some of us shouldn’t accept them at all. By my vocation, I can’t refuse some kinds of confidential information; but I have recently witnessed more than one occasion where confidentiality has been used in ways that do significant harm, and circumstances that call into question the ideological reflex by which I grow accustomed to accepting confidentiality as an inevitable general ingredient in social and professional relationships.
We’ll more readily trust one another if we ask for the utmost exercise of trust less casually. We’ll be better able to grant that ultimate trust if we hold fewer conflicting confidences. More often than we might think, the simplicity and freedom that derive from saying openly who you are and what you think far (or in opting not to speak at all) outweigh the dangers that arise from sowing mines of secrecy along the avenues of our social traffic.
I have some links and nuances to add in a later post, but it’s time to put the computer (and me) to sleep.
DRMA: It’s three in the morning; Margaret’s sleeping in bed next to me. I’m not listening to anything but the sound of her breathing. And it’s beautiful, and I’m tired and fretful and restless.
DRMA: "Inca Roads" by Frank Zappa and the Mothers.
I can’t believe I’m doing this; I have to find colleagues to cover my classes, I have to find a place to stay in Denver (Eric, do you have a bench on your front porch?), but I will be there.
DRMA: "Sofa No. 1" by Frank Zappa and the Mothers.
Maybe best of all, Mark Pilgrim demonstrates that sometimes when gifted people act to keep their integrity, they come out ahead. Go, Mark! And thanks for pointing us to the scarifying blog that worried your ex-boss.
DRMA: "Girl U Want" by Devo; "Love Stinks" by the J. Geils Band; "Planet Telex" by Radiohead; "Fever" by k d lang; "This Time The Dream's On Me" by Alison Krauss; "Walking On Water" by Melissa Etheridge; "Because You're Frightened" by Magazine; "You're An Artist" by Morphine; "Bus Rider Blues" by Blind Boy Fuller & Sonny Terry.
Perhaps we could clarify the bewilderment for our Canadian brother by comparing this result to what a Maple Leafs fan might say to a partisan of the Habs. Duke University, North Carolina’s most distinguished institution of higher learning, has a long-standing rivalry with its neighbor institution in Chapel Hill; one expression of that rivalry is Duke basketball fans’ chant, “Go to hell, Carolina!” Evidently a Duke supporter wangled the Google result to which Michael pointed.
Oddly, though, I couldn’t reproduce the results Michael got. . . .
It’s kind of him to characterize my posting as “[my] usual refreshing candor,” though it’s mitigated to some extent by his suggesting that I haven’t yet acquired the taste for the thrill of the intellectual hunt. Oh, well, someday I may get there.
Since he makes the quest for a satisfying narrative-of-ideas the topic of his contest, sets up some extremely restrictive criteria, and rules out some of my favorite candidates, I’ll have to work hard at coming up with an entry. In the meantime, it’s the first day of classes here at Seabury; I have to go print and photocopy a syllabus.
DRMA (he’s back, between coats of paint): "Match Box Blues" by Blind Lemon Jefferson; "I'm The Only One" by Melissa Etheridge; "Bones" by Radiohead.
Since some of you laggards won’t make it to St. Luke’s by 5 o’clock, I’ll tip you off to the burden of my sermon here. I try, in homiletical oratory, to make a case that the socially-predominant depictions of angels not only generate misplaced visualizations of what an angelic presence might be like, they (more importantly) occlude the angel’s essential function of making the truth known. “Making known,” by virtue of their identity as a messenger, (Unicode coming—gibberish if your typeface or browser isn’t compliant) מלאך or ἄγγελος; “the truth,” because divine communication necessarily communicates the truth.
Angelic truth-telling will in most cases scare the wits out of us, since we tend to adapt our spirits’ eyes to the dim cave-light of human social existence in which fibs and evasion look glaringly honest compared to the manipulative deception and outright fabrication that crowd our daily consciousness. “Be not afraid,” the angel says, as though more than a handful of interlocutors could afford not to fear confronting the divine truth about themselves and the world, themselves in the world. But if we willingly swallow the hopsack that the industrial media sell for cloth-of-gold, we reinforce the inclination to sentimentalize, to trivialize angels—rather than acknowledging their mission to deconstruct the false front of cozy self-deception that funds the most prominent representations of angels in American culture.
The sermon argues that angels exemplify, represent the truth, and that on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels we who gather to give thanks and pray re-commit ourselves to the spiritual humility of remembering that the truth is greater than we are, that we may work to abide in the truth but we cannot comprehend it, and we may endeavor to shape lives whose recognizable contours testify to the claims that truth makes on us.
And we can sing together, not in order to avoid more concrete work on behalf of one another, but as a reminder that we are made for a beauty and concord that we can make perceptible in harmonious music. In lifting up songs of praise and thanksgiving, we practice a kind of rough draft of divine peace that we do not easily forget, and that we thus more readily draw near to in our daily lives. And you know that can’t be bad.
He seems like a nice guy.
Has he written any books?
Would he come speak to us?
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