orig. published in HeyAmaretto
Yesterday on our radio show there was a lot of discussion (some on air and quite a bit in the chatroom which unfortunately isn’t transcribed) about transparency.
Transparency?
I had originally heard this term used to describe a real estate transaction, but lately it has been used more broadly to describe a person’s actions, both online and off. It makes no sense to me.
When I am at a party, I behave differently than I would at the office, yet I am still me. I don’t wear my swimsuit to church no matter how hot it is, but it is still me sweating inside those clothes. That’s what human beings do; we are taught to observe those around us and interact appropriately. Given this definition of humanity, how can “transparency” be applied as a characteristic of human behavior?
My voice – how I speak to people both online and off – is naturally going to shift depending upon who I am speaking with. Is someone who chooses to downplay last weekend’s revelry while attending a Policemen’s Ball duplicitous or sensible?
Or is it polite to not want to offend others, and sensible to not expose others who wish not to be spoken of?
I think transparency- in the sense that it is used here- is probably something the world could do a little less with. Although they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I am inclined to think that the pavers instead are unbridled honesty. We have all encountered honesty that, really, was not useful in the course of life- whether it is cloaked in the guise of constructive criticism, or tossed out there with the sentence, “You want me to be honest, don’t you?”- there is no place for it.
No, I don’t want you to be honest. I want you to be nice.
So I agree that transparency should exist in transactions and courtrooms. But in human relations? I am championing translucency- be yourself, but put it through a filter. And this goes for whether you are engaging online or offline.