Information Compulsion

Everything you say should be true,
but not everything true should be said.

— Voltaire

The late writer Tom Wolfe believed that everyone suffers from "information compulsion," that everyone is "dying to tell you something you don't know."

Wolfe relied on the compulsion to draw secrets out of the hundreds of people he interviewed during his career, including Ken Kesey, Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, Junior Johnson, Hugh Hefner, Phil Spector, and Leonard Bernstein.

We're taught as kids to be discreet, not to volunteer information or share "family business."

And we learn as young adults the numerous penalties attached to having loose lips, when we see peers chastised, ostracized, marginalized, demoted or fired for compulsive blabbery. 

We even take a formal oath of secrecy whenever we're forced to sign one of those sinister-sounding NDAs.

So why do we so readily cave to "information compulsion" when it comes to social media?

In the past 24 hours alone, I have learned through Facebook:

• Despite her need to, a painter I know cannot sell any of her artwork.
  
  
• Another painter I know has been "blocked" for more than a year.
  
  
• A student in a group I follow is clinically depressed.
  
  
• A publisher I know can't stop grieving over his father's death.
  
  
• An event planner I know can't find a job—or even get an interview.

I'm no Pollyanna. Like everyone else,  I too have my share of irksome troubles.

But sharing them on social media, as if it were one big recovery meeting, makes no sense to me.

Surrendering to information compulsion may reduce your anxiety, but it confers no honor upon you, and is sure to haunt you in the long run.

"The ideal man bears the accidents of life with grace and dignity," Aristotle said, "making the best of circumstances."

You want to be that man (or woman or neither).

Because dignity is non-negotiable.