Defining my terms: Openness

[mdlbear]

It occurs to me that, in a series of posts about mental states and relationships, I probably ought to define my terms. It's only fair, especially in an area where peoples' personal definitions are both vitally important to them and in some cases appear to have very little overlap.

Since this is an exercise in information sharing, it seems only right to start off with my definition for openness.

Openness:

Openness is, fundamentally, willingness to share information. In both directions. One might call the receiving direction "open-mindedness", though that's probably only part of it; I can't think of a good word for the sending direction. Anyone?

So let's take the sending direction first. Openness, in that direction, is a willingness to share information about yourself with others. There are degrees, of course, both in who one shares with and how -- and exactly what -- much one is willing to share. Some people share their most intimate feelings only with their closes friends; others (like me) "publish and be damned" almost everything on the open web.

In the other direction, openness is most of all a willingness to listen. It implies both interest in what the other person is saying, and (where applicable) a willingness to consider new information and possibly change one's own mind.

There's a lot of similarity between openness in relationships and in software; a good open-source software project not only shares its code freely, but accepts bug reports and patches for that code. It's not exact; there is, unfortunately, no revision-control system for relationships.

Most of the time I'm pretty far out on the openness side of the scale, by my own measure. There's very little about my own emotional life that I wouldn't publish here in my LJ, or put into a song. There have been a couple of times when I've suddenly thought "did I just say that to the entire damned Internet?" and friends-locked a post, but it feels wrong when I do it. As if there was something I needed to hide.

Sometimes I do need to hide things, though. I won't share anything I understand to have been told to me in confidence, and I won't share anything I understand will hurt someone else or reveal information they don't regard as private. The key word here is understand -- I'm all too likely to default to my own standards of openness; feel free to whap me with a cluestick if I blunder and cross one of your boundaries.

I've run across other peoples' boundaries enough lately that I'm setting up a private journal that's just for myself, finally. I haven't had a private journal in nearly four decades, but I have to write about things if I expect to understand them, and I need to be open with myself even if I can't necessarily share those particular thoughts with anyone else. It still feels wrong.

So, just as a reminder: this is my definition. You can tell me how it differs from your definition -- I really hope you do, in fact, since one of the motivations for this is to find out how my use of language differs from everyone else's -- and I'll be glad if you point out obvious inconsistencies or mistakes, or places where I could be more precise. You don't get to tell me that my definition is wrong. (edit 5/4) You can tell me why it doesn't really appear to be the definition I'm actually using. And you can tell me why you think I should be using a different one.

Similarly, you can tell me where you are on the scale, but you don't get to tell me I'm in the wrong place.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Openness is a two way street. What you said makes sense. I do keep things told in confidence, well confidential. But other than that... But I tend to be a private person, so rarely blab things to this or any other journal.
I only f-lock posts because I don't want bots picking up my posts and spreading them all over the internet. But other than that, friends can share the data.

Personal boundaries and "Secrets"

[harmonyheifer.livejournal.com]

I have always found it highly interesting what boundaries people have and what they consider private. Very few people feel the way I do about personal information, but I come from a very dysfunctional background that forever altered my point of view and lifestyle choices in that area. I grew up in a home with a drug addicted and alcoholic mother. We lived in a small rural town where everyone knew everyone's "secrets," so the secrecy my family tried to surround my mother's disease with was a total sham, and being an intelligent kid, I had this figured out long before any of the rest of my family twigged to it. In fact, my mom died thinking that no one knew about her alcoholism and drug addiction when in fact virtually everyone she knew was perfectly aware of her condition.

Having grown up in that environment with the proverbial elephant in living room, my instinct has been to just get my version of my personal life out in the open before someone else runs their edited and maybe exaggerated or perhaps error-filled version of my life up the flagpole. My opinion is that in a small town where the major hobby is gossiping about your friends and neighbors, that is the only way to go.

Now that I live in a city, no one really gives a hoot what I do, and I love that more than I can say. Certainly my neighbors here in Phoenix have better things to do then to speculate about my life or what I am doing behind closed doors, but the tendency to publish and be damned, or speak very openly about things because people may as well get their facts straight if they are going to gossip, is still very much a part of who and what I am. It really all goes back to that dysfunctional childhood, though, and the dawning and then mortifying realization that honesty starts at home, you never really fool half the people you think you are fooling anyway, and that most people rarely keep the secrets they think they are keeping even when they are patting themselves on the back for being so terribly clever.

That being said, I always try very hard to keep secrets when I am asked to, and can be very good at it, which has often amazed my friends, who have learned that just because I blab to anyone about my life, I can respect their boundaries when they tell me what those boundaries are.

I have had more difficulty when a friend has not mentioned that a certain subject is taboo and I blunder in, not realizing that the friend wishes to be selective about who they share that information with. Once I figure out that certain friends have certain topical restrictions, I usually don't screw up in the same way twice, but I still find their certainty that these things are secret from others a bit amusing for the reasons listed above. Most people are a lot more transparent than they like to imagine and some secrets are just plain impossible to keep from anyone but yourself. In Al Anon, we call those kind of secrets denial.

Steve, you prove to me over and over that people who sometimes label themselves as socially clueless can often be anything but. You and my husband are very alike in that respect. I adore your "personal posts." I have a much greater understanding of what you are saying in them than your technical posts, for reasons that ought to be obvious to all. *snicker*

Thanks for a very thoughtful post on an interesting subject.

Re: Personal boundaries and "Secrets"

[mdlbear]

"more difficulty when a friend has not mentioned that a certain subject is taboo and I blunder in..."

Yup. That kind of experience, especially recently, is what inspired this post.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

"there is, unfortunately, no revision-control system for relationships"

OK, that really did cause out-loud laughter. At work I think I've finally weaned everyone off the habit of checking in without comments and I'm imagining what I'd see while reviewing a relationship change log.

On openness, I'd say that my functioning is analogous to a company that sells a software product. There's some essential core that I need to protect in order to maintain my current "business model". But other things (thoughts, dreams, speculations...), I'm willing to make openly available. With other people, I try to maintain the spirit in which something is given to me: private conversations stay private; unlocked LJ postings are fair game.

[mdlbear]

Y'know, a relationship change log would be damned useful. You could do it with a private blog or wiki shared two ways...

Hmm...

I'm going to have to work on defining exactly where my boundaries are: I suppose I have a core like that, but I'm not sure exactly how far in I'd have to go to find it. Interesting area to research.

[zencuppa.livejournal.com]

I've had a personal journal and a public journal for hmm . . . 12 years now?

Like you, writing it out plays a huge role in helping me understand. But my level of "openness" is very different. I am far more private especially when it involves other people, such as my kids, boyfriend, ex-husband, work, etc.

I assume that everything that goes on with my feelings about them is private, unless they tell me so. That doesn't mean I don't express my love for someone or my occasional frustration on my blog, but I don't tell the details. If they wanted that on the internet, they would have a blog. It's not my place to tell.

I don't see it as "hiding," at all, because they have a right to their privacy (as do I).

I also know that prospective clients do Google me (they have told me that). And I have no desire to reveal my private life them; which is why many of my posts are friends-locked.

My two cents :-)

[mdlbear]

I understand that position. I'll generally check with people and family members before revealing things, and I occasionally have to suggest a friends-lock to some of the people on my flist.

Google has changed things a lot, and a lot of younger people seem to take the loss of privacy in stride.

I made my major decisions about privacy and openness 15 years or so ago on Usenet. They can't be taken back now, so I've generally continued to follow the same policy.

[mdlbear]

I may need to tackle "privacy" next, because that's another (and closely related, of course) place where people draw lines and make assumptions very differently; in some cases in ways I have trouble even imagining let alone understanding. I try to work with everyone's respective definitions, but it's hard sometimes.

For a long time I put my phone number and snail-mail address on my Usenet posts, and later on my web site. I obfuscate them now because of spam, but they're out there. When the subject came up years ago on Usenet I did a quick check on the whois server, found my address and phone number properly attached to the domain I was using at the time, and stopped worrying about it.

Similarly, I've made birth announcements on Usenet and put pictures on the web: my kids' names are in the public record now, so that's one more thing I don't have to worry about accidentally revealing.

[kyrielle]

I think your definition is very good and clear - and I like it. I do have a different spot on the scale. I do tend to be fairly open about day-to-day stuff but I can be shy about other things. And I try very hard not to say a lot about work where many people will see it, because that's just bad policy. I do post a lot about my husband, but that is in large part because he's said he doesn't mind. :)

[mdlbear]

Thanks. It's fascinating comparing notes on this; it's not a subject I think about very often.

I try not to post too much about financial matters where my coworkers can see ($BOSS reads my LJ). And of course I avoid company secrets. But I love my job and like my coworkers; I don't have any trouble mentioning it from time to time.

My wife (flower_cat) almost never posts for herself, but she knows where I sleep :-). So far she hasn't complained. The Younger Daughter is still underage, so she's rarely mentioned by name. The older daughter, chaoswolf, is one of the youngsters I've occasionally had to advise to lock a post.

[kyrielle]

*grins* I mostly don't have trouble with my job, as I like it a lot. The problem is that a lot of the fun or exciting stories I otherwise would wish to share, I'm never sure if I should. I mean, obviously you don't want to post anything that violates company confidentiality (like some great new project or whatever that's not publically announced), but even beyond that, we write software for public safety agencies. So a lot of what I might otherwise share either is confidential, or I'm not sure if it is. I'm just not comfortable saying a whole lot in that area, probably well beyond what really needs to be confidential. I'd rather err on the side of too much than too little, in that case.

[mdlbear]

Yeah, confidentiality can be a problem. Fortunately we're a research group, so I can be sure that anything that's been published or has a patent issued is fair game. Other than that I stick to blogging about the people and the process, which are fascinating enough. Occasionally new products or other announcements.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I hear you. Pretty much, my life is an open book.

I really do believe, too, that there is such a thing as "too much information" so I tend to be careful of what I tell which audiences. It's mostly stuff that's "historical" anyway, in that it has nothing to do with here and now. I come from a family background that has a lot of things that some people just don't cope well with, including murder, suicide, incest, mental illness, etc. I really don't want people judging my family by things that happened in it, either.

Some things, well, come the fascist revolution, I will probably get hauled off for things I've said on the net. But I wouldn't take back a single word of them.

But because I've had that experience, I don't say anything on the net or even put down in a private journal that I wouldn't mind being ripped apart (and me with it) in a court of law. Once you've been tried for witchcraft, literally, even if only as a "witness," you tend to be a lot less forthcoming about your belief systems.

[mdlbear]

It's all out there in the archives; I've been careful about a few things, maybe not careful enough about others. When they go through my past employers' backups from my Usenet days...

[filkferengi]

Your post here on openness reminds me of this author's May 06 post on transparency, here: http://crescentdragonwagon.typepad.com/nothing_is_wasted_crescen/

[mdlbear]

Thanks. Hmm; "transparency" may be the word I was looking on the sending side. Maybe "receptiveness" on the receiving side.

[filkferengi]

Maybe so. Some days it feels like translucency is the best I can do. Still, it beats opacity.