Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of Sissela Bok (born 2 December 1934), philosopher and ethicist. Sissela Bok is best known for her book, Lying: Moral Choice in Private and Public Life (1978) and as the daughter of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, both Nobel Prize winners.

"Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived."
- Sissela Bok

"Confidentiality refers to the boundaries surrounding shared secrets and to the process of guarding these boundaries. While confidentiality protects much that is not in fact secret, personal secrets lie at its core. The innermost, the vulnerable, often the shameful: these aspects of self-disclosure help explain why one name for professional confidentiality has been "the professional secret." Such secrecy is sometimes mistakenly confused with privacy; yet it can concern many matters in no way private, but that someone wishes to keep from the knowledge of third parties."
- Sissela Bok

"While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive."
- Sissela Bok

"White lies are at the other end of the spectrum of deception from lies in a serious crisis. They are the most common and the most trivial forms that duplicity can take. The fact that they are so common provides their protective coloring. And their very triviality, when compared to more threatening lies, makes it seem unnecessary or even absurd to condemn them. Some consider all well-intentioned lies, however momentous, to be white; I shall adhere to the narrower usage: a white lie, in this sense, is a falsehood not meant to injure anyone, and of little moral import."
- Sissela Bok

“We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.”
- Sissela Bok

“Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared.”
- Sissela Bok

Bok image source (1)