Delphic Maxim 108: Keep deeply the top secret

I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each of the Delphic Maxims for 15 minutes a day.

108. Keep deeply the top secret

We live in opaque times, where transparency and openness are increasingly rare. At least, that seems to be the case with government — the keeping of the top secret is more pronounced than ever: whistleblowers are penalised, journalists are raided. My immediate reaction is to say “to buggery with the top secret!”. But that may be a brash reaction.

I was speaking to my friend Justin earlier this evening — drunk on the island of Kephallonia, which I’ve wanted to visit for a while now. He described a forum online that was discussing this maxim (which he had just googled — maybe I should be doing more background research? But then, these are supposed to be 15 minutes of effort a day, and background research would slow down the process of writing). Anyway, in this forum, he paraphrased many of the arguments to arrive at the old saying: loose lips sink ships.

Keeping deeply the top secret shouldn’t just be interpreted through the lens of a government monitoring, policing and controlling a people. It should also be understood as a rule for interpersonal relations. If someone takes you into their confidence, if they divulge top secret details about their life, then it really is morally appropriate to that person that you keep their confidence.

There’s obviously something lost in translation here: I doubt they had the phrase ‘top secret’ back in ancient Greece, even when Leonidas was laying his secret campaign against the Persians. They would have had some iteration of top secret — that which should not be divulged under any circumstances — but not in the sense the we understand it today.

So, to keep this maxim brief, because I am writing it late at night and drunk: keep a confidence, be worthy of trust, and keep deeply an interpersonal top secret.