Tuesday, August 6, 2013

The Joy of Secrets

Our classic cars series must have taken the fans of our laborious and ranting posts by surprise, so we go back to the deep insights our readers are accustomed to. But there are more car pics to come, just saying.

As in previous posts, we draw on local talent, another of the talkative old Germans with too much time on their hands.

The K-Landnews Random Research team has found a former keeper of secrets and struck up a conversation. No worries, there are no leaks to be had, other than a couple of coffee induced bathroom runs no semblance to a leak was reported by the team.

The world, or at least a tiny part of it, has debated the merits of unlimited spying on your own and other populations, and there has been an astounding amount of sh*t hitting the fans.

An overlooked small aspect of the big picture was brought up by the former keeper of secrets and we throw it out today: secrets are fun.

"There is a potent allure to secrets", said the ex-keeper. "It feels good to be the go to guy at the office. Imagine the typical hierarchical government setup, with the leaders having spent decades to get the swanky titles and public recognition they deserve as pillars of society. Many cannot resist to let it hang out after striving so hard to get it. Now imagine yourself as some junior worker dealing with noxious behavior for years. And all of a sudden, you become the keeper of secrets. The other keepers of secrets hand you a key or two, a chip card, make you memorize combinations to safes big or small, and you are now a member of the fraternity of keepers. The eight hundred pound gorillas instantly treat you differently, with a pinch of deference for your new role. Where there was no area of your work that was immune to their questions bright or dumb, you now have a realm you can simply shield by telling them, sorry, I cannot go into details. Or using the more overt power answer "that's classified". Heady stuff. It can change you, too. I have seen the office mouse mutate into, well, not the office tiger but into the office cat, if you will. This is certainly a view from the bottom, now think how this can flourish if there are tons of money to be made, if you have an organization of secret keepers. We don't talk about this in public, you have to read a good spy novel to get an inkling of the personal aspects. For psychologists, this would be a great field to study, but, well, it's classified, and you cannot get a truly great classified psychologist. I could go on and one about this."

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