Secrecy and Moral Choice

Introduction

The book, “Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation” is written by Sissela Bok. She was a talented writer, and she discussed the situation of that time when the political crisis was at the peak. Bok was the professor at the Harvard Medical School; she warned her reader's frequently about conceptions muddles and took her own exhortation seriously by carefully defining truthfulness and its antonym, deception (Kim, p. 12).

She did ague not only the necessity of secrete but also the unnecessary of secrete. In this paper, I am contributing in her work by sharing my view about the effectiveness of her book. My all focus is revolving around the second chapter of the book that is “Secrecy and Moral Choice”. This is an interesting chapter that can easily capture the interest of the reader.

Sissela Bok started her discussion by using a quote that predicts the validity of her idea. She came up with an innovative idea to aware the people about the ethics and the political games of the governmental agencies. She did not only argue on the government agencies, in order to deliver her idea, she also argued the life and the problem of the lay man. Sissela Bok's notable book agonizes over deception in public, professional (law, medicine, and journalism especially), and secret life. While her broad range may appear at first glance as a weakness to some, selecting such diverse illustrations is actually enormous strength. Lying demonstrates that we often become self-serving, easily excusing our misbehavior if confined within our own vocational or individual walls. We are forced through this book to a more holistic and balanced presentation of the issues so that our myopia and smugness fall away.

In the second chapter, she categorized the world into four societies, and later on she described every society with different features. These features based on the “Secrecy” (Patterson, p. 96).

DiscussionAt the time of Richard Nixon took office as president in 1969. The large part was influencing by the political roadblocks, difficult for a federal official to begin an investigation of a political figure or of a government agency. By the time, he left because of the fallout from the scandal that drove him away. Oversight and openness had become the watchwords of the day. No one wanted to be accused of a cover up.The pendulum already has begun to swing back, but for a few years the combination of criminal investigations, congressional inquiries, whistle-blowing and investigative reporting. All coinciding with new criteria of what was fit to broadcast and print before the public, resulted in a flooding of once secretes information into the public domain. I believe that we learned every moment, for example, we learned from the Pentagon Paper of the extent of the bungling, the deceit and the lying that had marked the Vietnam War. We learned the CIA had tried, and failed to murder Castro that the FBI had bugged the hotel room. Bok's idea says that, as we learned more about the governmental agencies, we also learned more about the men and women, who are directly or indirectly running by the event (Kim, ...