Geheimnis
The demand for openness is all-encompassing: whether at the supermarket checkout, in the gym or when researching on the Internet - we willingly reveal personal data about ourselves everywhere. There is a fundamental blind trust in “information” and, with it, in all-encompassing transparency. Questions about the protection of personal data concern data protectionists - and us too, but only until the next click on the Internet.
Perhaps sometimes - and not only in the digital world - it is necessary to defend the secret: Where are the limits of disclosing information reached, what (personal) data should be used and be viewable and who decides? Do we really want to become transparent people, do we want to know everything about each other?
Perhaps sometimes - and not only in the digital world - it is necessary to defend the secret:
Where are the limits of disclosing information reached, what (personal) data should be used and be viewable and who decides?Do we really want to become transparent people, do we want to know everything about each other?
And is it really possible to know “everything”, isn't there an unattainable ground of personality?The secret is something that is closely interwoven with our personal history and identity: what do I say, what do I conceal?Am I what I know and tell about myself?
The secret can be found on the thin line that separates eroticism and pornography as well as on the psychoanalyst's couch.The shy sister of the secret is shame, its cheeky sister is curiosity: while shame is supposed to protect a person's intimate secret, curiosity sets out to uncover the secret: perhaps to the bottom of a neurosis, the course of an entire family history - and perhaps even the behavioral patterns of an entire community.The secret is ambivalent: it protects and conceals.