I suppose the question boils down to whether you think that everything in life should be out in the open or whether some things should be concealed. I favour the second view, but I think I am now in the minority. It is not merely that, like everyone else (I assume) there are things about me that I would wish no one else to know: I think there are things about everyone I care for that I would not wish to know. The art is in knowing where to draw the line.
The hidden is, in part, what makes life interesting. To say that someone is an open book is also to imply that they are shallow. There are many things that should be skirted over or even brushed under the carpet.
— Theodore Dalrymple, Nothing But Wickedness: The Delusions of Our Culture
• While talking to a college kid we have working for us during his winter break, I offhandedly mentioned my wish for a widespread ethos of “digital modesty,” in which people refrain from oversharing. I thought this was a banal remark, but he seemed quite struck by it. Has no one else ever offered him that perspective before? It just serves as a reminder of the quotation misattributed to André Gide: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
• While listening to Christmas music, I was reminded of a coworker from my days in the newspaper business, a guy from the island of Truk, in Micronesia. I worked with this guy almost every day from 1993-2011; in particular, this song called to mind one Christmas morning when we were two of the few people who still had to come in to work rather than take a day off. He was everyone’s ideal employee: hardworking and always cheerful, but he was somewhat quiet, owing partially to his basic command of English. We only had a few real conversations over those couple of decades. The last time I talked to him was in the summer of 2013, when we discussed him doing some side-work for me. Upon Googling him last weekend, I found that he died of cancer almost a decade ago, in February 2015. He was only 46. Did I ever really know him? Did I need to?
• At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and “know” everything. “Is it true that the good God is everywhere present? ” asked a little girl of her mother: “I think that is indecent”: a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the shame-facedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo, to speak in Greek?… Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial – from profundity!
—Nietzsche, The Gay Science