Secrecy and Confidentiality

[sar_anon]

I haven’t posted in a while and have had lots going on in my head as of late. I’ve spent the last week in training at my internship site, working my internship, and working my other job. While this leaves very little time for much of anything (including eating and sleeping), it does bring up a lot of interesting topics

Comments

[dustin_00]

I look at it from a "who is it harming" perspective.

Let's say I know two things about my friend Adam:
1. He stole $100,000 for the corner coffee shop.
2. His shorts ripped while performing in Our Town his senior year.

If I DON'T tell anybody about #1, then the corner coffee shop suffers.
If I DO tell anybody about #2, just Adam suffers (embarrasment, humiliation, etc).

You can tell me all the #2 secrets you want, I will hug you and say "that's terrible", and I will never tell anybody else about it (odds are good within 3 to 30 months, I will actually forget it entirely).

[tylik]

How would you relate this to the ritual use of secrets? (I say secrets because it is the predominant terminology there. And I distinguish secrets - which are usually closely held knowlege - and mysteries, which are experiential and can't be told.)

I have mixed feelings about secrets in a ritual context. I mean, magically, that's how I was brought up, and there are still more contexts in which I will choose to keep silence than otherwise. The whole in group / out group dynamic... Eh, it has its uses, but making a fus about their existence to people not in the group isn't one I have a lot of respect for. (It's kind of like making a big fuss about who one considers family. It doesn't have to be about exclusion, but often it is.)

But it has also been my experience that there are things to be said for schooling one's tongue to silence. (Having quite the symmetry with how it can also be very important to learn to speak out.)

[mystic_winds]

Confidentiality is a very important concept in the field you are working in. I'm glad to see that you are comming to define its meaning to you, and determine how it applies to the interactions with your loved ones.