Talk:Secrecy
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Secret is (a piece of) knowledge not shared, or not intended for use by others, thus kept hidden. In contrast to knowledge, the basic aim of which is to be shared and distributed usually indiscriminately. Society works by seeking and/or creating new knowledge and keeping some of it in/as secret. Today the world is described as going toward a Society of Knowledge, whereas quite convincingly it continues to follow the path toward a society of secrets. Typically, you do not share knowledge a) of your true internal nature, thoughts, feelings and ideas "as is" they are; b) neither are you ready to share out your knowledge of your own acts that have been violating some nonorms, laws, etc. And the list is not exhaustive. Society is very much in defence of knowledge concerning financial matters of its actors, especially money/funds held/collected or otherwise got hold of. They are called business secrets implying that your rights to the freedom of information are just as limited as any other rights in society that is based on secrecy rather than sharing assets generated on mutual confidence, such as money. Now each trade is "a plot aginst the rest of the trades" as G.B. Shaw put it somewhere, hence they all have knowledge of how to generate money, legal or otherwise by practising the tricks of their trade. These are called trade secrets and they range from patent rights to devices of tax evasion. It is a general assumption that Nature has secrets that have to be discovered by practising scientific research into various single-minded directions, groupped under the labels of disciplines. Most of the research and study can be described as finding ways to extend the range of human perception, senses and other faculties to go beyond direct, hands-on experience. As a result, we have been mainly using destructive technologies to "unearth" what is inside objects, large or minuscule. Our targeting and shooting capabilities whether nano or cosmic precision level are amazing, yet the point or purpose of the endeveour has not changed much, i.e. it remains to be "to get there". One day we may just as well find out that the whole story of humankind was started by a gross misunderstanding and/or lapse of some early wisdom or teaching, such as "go and breed", or "you will own and rule the Earth", etc. that gave rise to unjustified confidence in intelligence of humanoid kind (cause/reason cycle or chain). apogr
Can anyone see this page going anywhere? Is "secrecy" really a phenomenon that merits a whole article's worth of discussion? Do people have serious and in-depth things to say about secrecy? Right now we're basically a dictionary entry. --Ryguasu 12:14 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)
- Yes, there are serious and in-depth things to say about secrecy, but I don't have the time right now to write about them. However, secrecy is a key concept in politics and warfare, and we should let this stand as a stub for a better article to evolve.
Current social theorists and politicians claim that Knowledge Society is based on sharing knowledge (meaning: selling technology transfer to places where it is not always relevant or productive) whereas in fact the whole of the business world is based on hiding knowledge called business and trade secrets, etc. the biggest source of making extra profit until universal copying exercise renders them worthless.
Therefore I suggest exploring the "publicly known", but not necessarily documented secrecy of professions and trades to demonstrate how they effect the resultant turbulence and chaos that we suffer. What do you think? Apogr 15:59, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Feel free to be bold! Jussenadv 07:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] William Penn quote
Is the William Penn quote ("It is wise not to seek a secret; and honest, not to reveal one.") really best quote on secrecy we could use? I find it somewhat silly (sometimes it is indeed wise to seek one, and often very honest to reveal one—I might be misinterpretting this but this quote sounds a lot like "don't ask, don't tell" to me). Personally my favorite secrecy quote is the only Ben Franklin one, "Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead." --Fastfission 00:59, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- A better quote, by far. __meco 07:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Contradiction
"among a group of people, which can be as small as one person" Group: "any collection or assemblage of persons or things; cluster."--84.249.253.201 23:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Secret/Sacred
Can someone tell me if these two words have the same word derivation.
Thanks.
Richard Collins —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 144.139.37.47 (talk) 10:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC).
