I used to be a high school teacher. Nine years in the classroom and in the front office working with disenfranchised youth. There was only one thing nearly universally abhorred by every young person I have ever met, censorship. I spent a lot of my time as an educator making the case for nuance, that there are occasions where censoring or withholding information is necessary.
In the way of the world, I have come full circle. I am a nearly unyielding advocate for radical transparency. With radical transparency we would not be at war in Iraq. With radical transparency our economy would not have been floated by imaginary value where investment is more like gambling.
In 2005 Harold Pinter was given the Nobel Prize for Literature. He just died on Christmas eve, 2008. There are two quotations from that speech that add the nuance that is necessary to this discussion.
A misunderstanding that I struggle to overcome is that transparency does not equal truth telling. The assumption that I, or anyone, hold the truth and the hubris to assume that I can calculate with any certainty the conditions under which that truth is to be withheld is absurd. As Pinter says above, there is no truth, no reality. I believe the best we can do is to aggregate our collective experience and understanding. Only with radical transparency can this aggregation divine what may be real or true.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us, the dignity of man.
- Harold Pinter Dec 7th, 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech
Only with radical transparency can we hope to respond to this challenge.

