“Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.” — Thomas Carlyle

This morning I spoke with a nonprofit hospital in South America about fundraising. Stuff that would’ve made you want to pound your head into a wall, until the word “kidnapping” was thrown in the mix.

They'd invited a major donor to visit their hospital as a thank you. The donor came, attended the ceremony, and posed for photos with the giant check. But then the staff approached about posting on social media. The donor went pale. "Please, no. I don't want to become a target for kidnappers."

In this part of the country, visible wealth can be a death sentence. This donor understood something that we forget too often: privacy isn't about having something to hide. It's about having something to protect.

We live in an era obsessed with transparency, "bringing your full self to work," and "building in public." We’ve mistaken exposure for virtue and silence for shame. We've forgotten that some of our most powerful systems — democracy, recovery, even scientific progress — are built on secrecy. Some truths need shadows to work.

For most of human history, privacy didn’t exist. The lines between public and private spheres were blurred: you slept in the same room as your entire family, religious confessions were public spectacles, and executions were entertainment. Even voting was a public act.

Democracy is a toddler in the grand sweep of human history. It’s young, volatile, and deeply reversible. Before the secret ballot, democracy was theatricized. In most early democracies, casting a vote meant declaring your choice out loud, often in front of your employer, your neighbors, or armed men from the opposing party. You can imagine the pressure of social conformity matched that of more secluded communities, like in The Scarlet Letter.

In America's early elections, parties often printed ballots in different colors so everyone could see your choice from across the room. Violence at polls was so common that elections looked more like riots.

This way of voting started to change in the mid-19th century. Though early traces of secret ballots existed in ancient Greece, the idea only took off when Australia formally adopted it in the 1850s. By 1888, the U.S. followed suit. Known as the Australian ballot, this revolution gave birth to modern democratic privacy. But it critics labeled it as “un-manly”. How could democracy function if citizens wouldn't publicly stand by their choices?!?

Yet secret ballots helped! Secrecy built the public trust that democracy requires. And like jury deliberations, anonymous tips, and protected journalistic sources, it’s one of many places where hiding is a deliberate feature. A necessity, not a flaw. Where public virtue needs private choice.

This shouldn’t be too shocking to you. Studies like the Hawthorne Effect have shown how simply being observed can distort people’s decision-making process. Watch someone too closely and they’ll start performing, not thinking.

And when everything is performance, is it really honest?

Secrecy is more than just a civic tool. Psychology has long understood its power. In therapy, privacy is a necessary precondition that enables honesty. In medical trials, patients and doctors are “blinded” to avoid bias. In addiction recovery, anonymity is the name of the game. But perhaps the strangest place secrecy shows up is your goals and dreams.

“When you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it, the brain is tricked into feeling it’s already done.” – Derek Sivers

It’s often said that people don’t want to define success for their goals because that would mean defining failure. But what’s under-discussed is what happens after you define your goals.

Known as the "substitution effect,” announcing your goals can trigger premature gratification. The social acknowledgment — the likes, the "slay momma!!" comments — scratches the same itch as actual achievement. Your ambition is like a soufflé: open the oven too early and it collapses. Secrecy here is the necessary fuel.

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." — Oscar Wilde

If your parent died tomorrow, would you read their diary?

Héctor Abad faced this choice. In his memoir Oblivion, he recounts the life and death of his father, a Colombian doctor and human rights advocate who was assassinated in 1987 by a paramilitary force in Medellín. His father had been killed for his public words - defending the poor and condemning violence.

You know from the very beginning that the Héctor’s father will be murdered, but what you don’t expect is what follows.

When faced with the choice of reading through his father’s private writings, he leaves them undisturbed.

In a country that was drowning in political violence, where truth was often weaponized or erased, Héctor chose oblivion. Not as an act of ignorance but of reverence. He let his father’s thoughts die with him, untouched by interpretation or spectacle, upheld by sanctity and respect.

It taught me a strange but profound truth: some privacies should be eternal, not because they hide shame, but because they preserve dignity.

This is the gift of secrecy in an age of permanent records, where every Google search is cached, every text screenshotted, every mistake archived. We've built a world where nothing seems to disappear.

Not everything needs to be archived, decoded, or “understood.” Some things earn the right to oblivion.

I am not the fool who clings on hard

To the magic sound of his own name.

I think with hope of my forgotten fame,

Of those who will not know I lived on earth.

Here beneath the sky’s indifferent blue,

It calms my mind to think that this is true.”

- Jorge Luis Borges

We film our workouts, stream our gaming, post our therapy breakthroughs, and share our embarrassments like trophies. There's beauty in vulnerability, but something feels like it dies when the camera turns on.

This sort of "cringe transparency" culture online feels like it’s blurred the lines between access and intrusion. The attention economy has turned confession into currency.

Transparency becomes spectacle, admission becomes content, and trauma must be posted. In a world of exhibitionists, restraint is rebellion.

This might explain our current moment, where politics has become pure performance, every thought broadcasted, every cruelty celebrated for its transparency. As Ezra Klein observed about Trump's administration: they're not hiding the corruption anymore, they're just posting their way through it. When everything's public, nothing's sacred and shamelessness becomes the strategy.

Past administrations at least gestured toward secrecy or dignity, even if they failed. But under Trump, “the cruelty is the point.” Every thought is tweeted in the effort to translate exposure into dominance.

Contrast that with England’s Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. During WWII, when he learned that England’s surest ally, France, had fallen to the Nazis in 1940, he held back the announcement for days, knowing that timing mattered more than transparency. He let the truth marinate before serving out a powerful message to rally the British public.

One leader confuses spectacle for strength, while the other understood that secrets and restraint can buy you time to lead.

The South American donor wanted to give up money, not privacy. Yet the lesson here isn’t paranoia. Secrecy doesn’t always mean hiding the truth; sometimes it means honoring it.

Some shadows serve us. The voting booth, the therapist's office, the diary we'll never read, the goals we haven't announced, the donations without photos.

A little darkness can be a form of discipline, even dignity.

In a culture that confuses exposure for honesty and performance for authenticity, maybe this is the most radical act.

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

_{The vibe-killer disclaimer: The opinions in this post and all other posts only represent myself and do not represent the opinions of my employer or any groups I am a member of.
This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice}