Transparency Requires Acceptance

President Obama and his team believe in transparency: the ability for people and society to be able to see the workings, activities and transactions that are going on in government, banking and business. This trend will also become a primary demand in communities and smaller groups over the next few years.

I can certainly see why this would bring benefits to society. With the amazing tools for information and team coordination that we have today, it is possible to "play the shell game" on people faster and with more "smoke and mirrors" than ever before, in whatever domain you pick. When a society allows individuals to make money, command power, and control people and businesses under hidden wraps, you get two things: people making bad decisions while thinking the decisions are just fine (being disconnected from others and society), and you get collateral damage in the form of wrecked and lost lives, destroyed businesses, or in some cases, destroyed economies.

Transparency brings us choice. If we can see what is going on, then we can make a choice about it. Maybe we alarm, or make new laws, or simply make the knowledge available to those who would be at risk. Or maybe we just choose to let it go on. The key difference is that now we have a choice, and that changes everything.

However, there is another component needed to actually be able to exercise that choice. It is a component of social maturity and personal dignity: the concept of acceptance.

If we over-react as individuals and as a society to new openings of transparency and start judging and restricting people's lives and actions according to our own religious codes, our own likes and dislikes, or our own ideas of what is right and wrong beyond the law, then transparency will operate as new chains of restriction and rejection, a new chilling effect,  imprisoning the very passions and the creative, exploring drives that made America the leader it has been in technology, business and economy. It is important that people are still free to follow their passions, try new things, push the boundaries, and be themselves, however unusual they be.

That's why transparency, from a social point of view, is more about seeing than doing. Each person will make the right choices for themselves about who to do business with, about what to invest in, about who to be friends with, as long as they can have the information, the transparency, to be able to make those choices. You make your choices, and let others make theirs.

Madoff's ponzi scheme would never have gotten off the ground if the transparency had existed to potential investors to see that it was a ponzi scheme. Risky credit default swaps and bad CDO's would never have gained demand or value if there had been full transparency for the investor. Caveat emptor has been proven once again, despite credit-rating agencies breeching their trustworthiness with their mistakes. Those are just the huge examples right now, there are thousands of others in various domains.

Helping each other see and understand the different things we know about, as they want to know or as it would affect them, is a simple way to personally support transparency. Choosing the path we know is right in our own lives and actions, the path that doesn't bring damage to others or cost society, over the path that is easy, or quick money, or other short-term gain, is our personal responsibility and an individual action to transparency.

Supporting transparency is great, but that is the easy part. The hard part is accepting the diverse and maybe strange things that we can see with our new transparency, and accurately assessing if they affect anything. Say you find out that the owner of the grocery store where you shop is - shudder - a __________ (fill in your choice of shocking religion, political affiliation, sexual oritentation, etc. here), and has even donated some money to his cause. While you might not agree with his choice of religion, political affiliation, etc., does it really affect his ability to be a great grocer? Does it affect the value trade of your money for his well-stocked, well-managed store of goods and services? Should it really disqualify him from the rights every American has?

(Do note here, I'm talking about accepting differences in legal things. Of course if we discover the grocer has been murdering people, or dealing drugs, or any illegal activity, then his American right becomes that of a fair trial!)

Practice acceptance. Recognize when feelings about one thing are smearing into your judgement on another, unrelated thing. America is all about the pursuit of happiness for all of us, and different things make different people happy. Transparency will bring out all kinds of new information about things that used to be mostly hidden. It is time to exercise maturity, tolerance, acceptance and (to be a warm winter fire) even find a positive delight in our differences, for it is that which releases the true power and benefits of transparency and choice.