You’re only as sick as your secrets

“You’re only as sick as your secrets” is a phrase I have heard from recovering alcoholics. The idea behind this is that lying to cover up your wrongdoing keeps you sick.

On the flip side, telling the truth about your wrongdoing will make you well, which is also the idea behind the Catholic confessional. If the truth will make you free, as Jesus once said, then lies will keep you bound. You will go through life dragging the chains you have forged for yourself.

A TV series, “Sworn to Secrecy” about the role of espionage in various wars, hot and cold, is a fairly mainstream production; we can assume that it has pulled its punches to a great extent, especially regarding the CIA’s activities. Even at that, it’s like lifting the lid on a septic tank, exposing secret agencies’ total disregard for the dignity and value of human life. All the lies, intrigues, assassinations and disgusting medical experiments are morally repugnant, which is why they keep them secret.

Moral outrage is raging-out 24 hours a day on both our corporate and social media. Moral outrage can be a good thing; it can help keep us on the right path. It can also be manipulated to promote immoral agendas, like the Nazi outrage against the “evil” Jews and the Hutus’ outrage against the “evil” Tutsis. The outrage-agenda was the mass murder of innocents, about as immoral as you can get.

Let’s be clear: Only individual human beings are free moral agents. My dog does ‘bad’ things openly, because he does not have any concept of good and evil. We humans do have a concept of good and evil and so hide our wrongdoing in the dark.

Secrets are for hiding wrongdoing. Trust me, if they do right they will shout it from the housetops. Edward Snowden released 200,000 secret documents; a mere drop in the ocean. In 2004 alone, 15 million government documents were classified; i.e. kept secret. This suggests that there is a lot of wrongdoing going on.

They must keep their secrets, they say-to protect you. On the other hand, they insist they must collect all of yours-also to protect you.

Protect you from what? From takeover by evil totalitarians who will keep their own immoral activities secret while spying on you? Think about that.

Only the guilty are compelled to cover up. You are only as sick as your secrets.

“A good man is not without sin; a good man admits and expiates his sin.” From the movie “The Confession”(1999)