Okay so first of all the title of my blog came from a song by Lupe Fiasco but I cannot at this moment remember which one it was, nor do I want to look it up and tell you, so i will in a later post. You will just have to trust me that it is a good song, and an album worth listening to.
I am going to apologize ahead of time- I am a terrible speller, I tend to have a lot of typos, and I don't always capitalize my "i"s, or the first letter of a sentence, or use good grammer. which is slightly ironic because i am considering a major in English literature.
So our conversation last night really kind of stuck with me. Secrecy. What if everything and everyone was really transparent? I knew everything about you and you knew everything about me? how intense would that be? What if you could know everything about someone- their bathroom habits, how and what and where they eat, their deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo they use, or how often they wash their sheets. You could know if they use drug, or have a drinking problem, how they treat their spouse, or spend their money. Personally i do not really care to know everything about everyone, nor do i think i would have the time to care. Honestly i do not really want everyone else knowing everything about me. someone said in my group "everyone does something bad" and that is true- no one is perfect. But if people's secrets were exposed then would everyone strive to be a better person- to avoid being judged or becoming an outcast. if every one's guilty pleasures were exposed to the world would they be guilty pleasures anymore?I think secrets are important to keep boundaries, lives personal, thoughts private.
On Tuesday night i went to Campus Outreach and the guy there talked about how we live in a "postmodern" world- meaning that the common thought is "whats right for you may not be right for me, so don't tell me what is right." So basically everyone can just do what they want because it is right for them. He compared this to a book in the bible called Judges- in judges the people's king died and all order was lost people murdered people, stole things, raped women and children, and any other bad thing you can think of. All this is because people just did what they wanted-- sounds kind of familiar right. People had secrets, and walls- no order, no conception of right and wrong. I found this really interesting people do what they want and have no real conception of what the absolute truth is yet they claim to be Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim- all of which i am assume (i cant really speak for any religion except Christianity) that all have some sort of standards to live by, how to treat other people, to be a good person- yet there are few people in the world who truly humble themselves and follow these standards to the best of their abilities. People are still selfish, killers, rapers, manipulators, substance abusers- all because they say "this is right for me, and whats right for you may be different- so don't tell me what to do." I guess what i am trying to get at is if people just lived the way they want to then there is no true right or wrong, and they will continue to do wrong- most of which will be in secret. Therefore, if every one's secrets were exposed then would people lead better lives, would the problems of the world be solved?
4 comments:
Odd that you should bring up religion and transparency, as they seem to go together quite well. At their core, many religions suggest that transparency to ones God is the ideal state of being. We stand naked before God, just as in the Garden of Eden, and God knows us, and we know God. No secrets, no barriers.
The core metaphors in Christianity for the relationship between God and us are all very intimate: bridegroom and bride, parent and child, husband and wife. Jesus himself promised his followers that they would know God just as he himself knew God.
Transparency, then, appears to be a religious ideal, but … can we mere mortals live with that much holiness? Doesn't seem that many in this class want to.
When talking about transparency in the context of religion, I see it as a positive advancement. Just as Mr. Hamon commented, God knows us completely and so should everyone else. However if I take the issue of transparency out of the context of religion and relate it to individuality I see it as a hindrance. On the one hand, it's good because like you said, it may make people strive to better themselves because they're "guilty pleasures" will be revealed for the rest of us to see. On the other hand, what does that mean for us as individuals? Because of our emotions, guilty pleasures, and motives being revealed we, in turn might not want to express our so-called guilty pleasures any longer. Thus leading to a lack of individuality. I suppose it's a good thing if we're all being good civilians, but I think our intimate emotions, pleasures, and habits are what make us unique. Complete transparency will shatter the individuality that makes us each as special as we are. And personally, that's something I would not like to lose.
Yeah, so this whole issue of Transparency seems to be making people think, which is awesome. I don’t necessarily believe, however, that the type of Transparency that is being talked about is all that good. I do, however, feel that the only one who can fully know us, all of us, every thought, every idea and action is God. It would take God to be able to handle such an immense burden, not that people are burdens, but if we knew each other and every thought and action that went through their head, it would become a burden; in fact it would become very psychologically devastating. People don’t really even know themselves for the most part. On Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, Self Actualization is the highest level that one can attain. This is because it is very rare for someone to come to the point that they even fully know themselves. Only a few people in the world have ever been thought to have “Self-Actualized”, such as Gandhi and Mother Teresa. If transparency really went into effect, then everyone else would be self-actualizing to everyone else. Every corrupt, distorted thought would be able to be known, every destructive behavior and every misconstrued deliberation would be known to everyone else. Even married couples spend their lives learning more about each other and discovering more, even this is a gradual process, who could handle knowing everything about someone all at once. Even then secrets are revealed. Maybe that’s part of the reason divorce rates are so high- people find out things about their spouse, they didn’t already know. I don’t think people can handle other people’s baggage, we can barely handle our own. Who could handle that such a weight? No one could handle that, I believe that in reality only God can handle that.
-P.S Thanks for the post and honesty, I like it.
I really had not considered transparency on this level until I read your post. However, Hamon has a great point. "many religions suggest that transparency to ones God is the ideal sate of being." Others seem to believe that because of this we should be transparent to everyone. I don't agree with this idea. I do not know a lot about religion outside of Christianity. However, in Christianity we all meet our judgment in the end (for some it will be a new beginning) but we nonetheless meet it. If transparency really existed between humans as it does between humans and God I believe people would begin judging one other and the result would be chaos. I think that there are many different stages to this transparency issue. For instance, sure we need to know when our government goes to war and if our leaders are somehow out to get us. However, I do not want to know every little secret about every person. People change, I wouldn't want the burden of knowing who they were 25 years ago, I wouldn't want the temptation of judging them for the person they used to be.
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