THR how professional secrecy has in vain spread to most professions and vocations

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Week 18

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The bartender may have been given and heard more than he bargained for, when he first sought and got the job, even 424-3890-type telephone numbers.

Motion: THR how professional secrecy has in vain spread to most professions and vocations
Role: PM (gov.)

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A hush or silence has slowly but surely descended on private and public affairs. We cannot talk about supersensitive or just plain sensitive stuff in the way we could decades and years ago. In the past, it was customary that there was a scandal, because there was a whistleblower, after which media outlets arrived like vultures to tear the flesh and bones of the object or subject of the scandal. Today, we are lucky if media outlets report verbatim what certain celebrities have themselves laid out on the internet on their Instagram accounts. There, scandals are thin on the ground. Nothing is being said sub rosa.

In the Beginning, Bankers, Doctors, Lawyers, Priests
An oath of confidentiality was at first the domain of but a few practitioners and protectors of sensitive information. The economical, juridical, physical and religious “SWOT matrices” (really, if you think about it) of people were guarded over by bankers, lawyers, physicians and priests. From the beginning, there has usually been the component of people or professions who have people or persons as their objects, points of departure and subjects as the grounds for professional secrecy.

However, an oath of confidentiality then spread to other, less important areas of human activities, such as hotels, offices and prisons. Today, civil servants, hotel concierges, and the police usually keep mum about the specifics of different cases and guests that they are dealing with. Especially with the police, it usually does not make any sense. If the suspect is apprehended, on “Riker’s Island” and under investigation, there is usually no reason why information about her or him should be withheld. Suspects do not have a cell phone to communicate with the outside world, they cannot interfere with the investigation, and the public is entitled to know about the hows, whens, wheres and whys of certain crimes and misdemeanours. Usually there is no need to protect the public from this information, inasmuch as their interest is merely curiosity, with which there is nothing wrong.

Now Most Professions and Vocations Have an Oath of Confidentiality
If the above was not bad enough, now more and more ways to support oneself fall under professional secrecy. Bouncers cannot tell what kinds of customers cause trouble. Cleaning women cannot tell what they find in their trash. Teachers cannot tell what happens in the classroom. And there is the juridical malady of non-disclosure agreements which crop up everywhere. According to them, participants cannot tell the media about abuses, incidents and rows that may have occurred between certain contract parties. It is a blocker against the free flow of useful information and serves only to let people save face, when they do not deserve that.

One case in its own right is the press and its source protection. It is grounded in the sense that the press needs to have access to sensitive information, but the downside is that the press, too, uses it just to further its own agenda. The press never tell lies, but their venality is in how they handpick what they show in photographs and tell in plain words. They reckon they never get caught spreading disinformation or misinformation, inasmuch as they tell a truth or two, without adding anything to them, but without telling the whole of truths. The source protection of the press is also, in a certain way, more a part of the problem than the solution.

We All Would Benefit From Less Professional Secrecy
My understanding is that these oaths of confidentiality should be lifted to most extent. If silence and whomever it is supposed to protect is not appropriate and defendable, silence should be revoked. Bring back the yesterday of acute scandals and chronic flow of muckraking.

Would there be any way to decide on what merits professional secrecy and what not? For instance, the determining factor could be whether it is a question of attacking downward or upwards, striking against the powers that be or someone who is already down. Or, alternatively, it could be about the thin green line between so-called professions and vocations. If you were a professional, you’d be entitled to professional secrecy. If you were someone in a vocation, you’d not be entitled to it. As simple as that.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Tässä puheessa tarvitsin apuja ulkopuolelta, kun en tiennyt, miten sanotaan “lähdesuoja” tai yleensä “vaikenemisvelvollisuus”. On kuitenkin kiitollista jättää tällaisia aukkoja puheeseensa, koska sanat voi selvittää kollegaltaan tai netistä. Tietämättömyyden takia ei kannata jättää käsittelemättä sanoihin liittyviä asioita, jos ne lankeavat luonnostaan paperille. Oletan, että vastapuoli käyttää tehokkaasti hyväkseen ajatusta herjauksesta tai kunnianloukkauksesta suurimpana syynä sille, miksi asioista vaietaan.

THW not clean up the public verbal sphere of insults

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Week 34

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Motion: THW clean up the public verbal sphere of insults
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)

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It is not uncommon to hear that someone has been insulted in public in a snarky way that brings out the fingerwaggers from the woodwork. Some recent examples are when a journalist called a communal politician of the alt-right, anti-immigrant hue a “N––i Clown”, or when a brown journalist took offence at an astronomy professor uttering the word n––o in a TV panel on boundaries and racism. These are actually not so good examples, as I am focussing on the instances where someone calls someone something inhospitable and ugly but which does not evoke even remotely any 19th–20th century horrors. For instance, a man calling a woman a “bupid stitch”, or something else that is ‘timeless’ and ‘universal’.

Normal People Have to Bear Insults
It is characteristic of people’s upbringing that it was not smooth. People grow up in families. Families consist of fighting parents and fighting siblings. Small children learn the ropes of infighting when they follow the verbal exchanges between their parents. When kids are verbal enough, they begin sparring with their siblings. They use whatever they can to drive their point or hurt the other one. It is only later that they learn that it is occasionally better to stay silent than make matters worse. A wise person steers clear of the trouble an intelligent one can handle.

An exception to this rule is people who grow up as only children in their families. They lack the aforementioned entirely as far as I can understand, because they do not have to take pettiness from their parents who are typically 15–35 years older. They may learn to manipulate their parents and parents learn to manipulate them, but that is different from taking insults. Insults are traded mainly, because there are less resources than there are users. Only children may not ever learn to understand what the point of insulting other people is, and where it stems from, as they do not have to share, apart from with their own parents. There may be an honest mutual incomprehension between only children and children with siblings when it comes to learning how to insult and being able to give and take insults. That is, provocations. Or taking the p–s.

Is It Because of That?
My question goes: the drive to have an insultless public sphere – where does it stem from? My hypothesis is that it could result from only children, who I believe sincerely do not understand why friendly or unfriendly insulting is part of a common human condition. Only children typically have upward professional careers as they get so much “coaching” from their parents and a tendency to be precocious, because they are their parents’ apples of the eye and learn to talk like adults from an early age, not having any other kinds of role models such as rebellious big brothers or sisters. They can easily get into positions where they begin to contribute to and influence public exchanges of words, more so if they are influential in social media or study mass communications.

As an aside, I think that especially female only children would attain such positions, because they tend to fare better than male only children. Women do not seem to suffer from not having any siblings at all to the same extent as men, who may every now and then be left behind in the rat race and “give up”, whereas female only children soldier on to some position they deem fit for themselves. It would seem that this holds water in juxtaposition with the impression that most people who want an insultless public sphere do it from a feminist or identity-protective point of view.

There Is No Point
I think this anti-insult & insultless cause is a lost cause. We do have a richer, more versatile public space and sphere if we let some curated insults flourish. I do not advocate anarchy or hurting people with whatever one can find (e.g. kiss-and-tell insults etc.) but having an “unsafe” public space, where one can not predict how and what can be said –  by anyone. This unpredictable, not a savage space, is the aim. It would guarantee that any kind of BS not be believed at face value but be opposed by verbal means, aggressive if necessary, in a time-honoured tradition. People have the options of going on the offensive or defensive depending on their situation.

What needs to be born in mind is that we have already legislation in place to protect us from graver verbal insults. The misdemeanour rubrics are “libel” and “slander”. They protect us sufficiently from bullies, hecklers and shamers, but there is also a threshold for their application. Relevant erudites in law must consider if the offenses are grave enough to warrant pressing charges – minor reasons are not enough and public figures must tolerate a certain level of badmouthing. I do not want to see a future where “slight” or “slur” – let alone “microaggression” – join “libel” and “slander” as legal labels.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Yritän tuoda keskusteluun uutta, psykologisoivampaa ainesta, samalla kun toivon parini pitävän yllä yleisempää sävyä. En pidä tätä “puukottamisena”, sillä harva tietää, kuka paikallaolijoista on ainoa lapsi ja kuka ei. Toivon jälkeeni tulevan puoleni edustajan tuovan jotakin muuta omaperäistä ainesta mukaan. Näin voimme muodostaa uskoakseni klassisen kaavan joukkueen, joka esittää status quon–syyt–seuraukset.