Can You Keep a Secret?

People vary in their definitions of success in life, but one classic vision still resonates with many: an upscale income to finance an upscale suburban home in an upscale neighborhood shared with a desirable spouse and two kids whom you drop off at a desirable school in one of the two Audis you park in the garage. It’s called “having made it” or “living the dream.” At least it’s called that by enough people to keep real estate prices in those upscale neighborhoods frothy. By most definitions the upper middle class consists of about 20% of the population, but in a populous country (such as the US with 332,000,000) that’s a lot of people and a lot of neighborhoods. (I live in one of them even though I don’t check those other boxes and have no desire to do so.) The risk of defining success and self-worth in this manner is that the way of life is fragile. Finances, health, relationship circumstances and other factors can alter radically and quickly. How far might some people go to defend against threats to their lifestyle – or just to their chance of achieving it in the first place? Sometimes the threat can be a simple secret. 

Harlan Coben, native of Livingston NJ (very much one of those upscale neighborhoods), writes consistently good page-turning thrillers and mysteries. The Stranger (made into a 2020 Netflix series that I haven’t seen) is a little different from most of his books, but is still intriguing. The central protagonist is Adam Price who checks all of the “having made it” boxes in the upscale (fictional) suburb of Cedarfield NJ; a dad of another player on his son’s high school lacrosse team actually says to him, “We’re living the dream.” His comfortable life is then threatened by a secret – or rather by the revelation of one. A stranger walks up to him at a bar and tells him his wife Corrine had faked a pregnancy and miscarriage; he tells exactly what old credit card charges to check online that will verify the story. The stranger then raises with him the question of paternity since one big lie makes another more plausible. Adam is not alone in hearing life-upturning secrets from the stranger. One woman gets the news that her college daughter is an escort. Others hear secrets ranging from sexual indiscretions to financial improprieties. It seems that a few young computer-savvy entrepreneurs (including the stranger) are using the resources of modern tech to discover dark secrets and make money from them. This proves more dangerous than they anticipated. 

The yarn is a good one in its own right, but it raises unsettling questions about privacy in the modern world. Everyone has secrets. Some are tame and some are not. Some are not even ours, but secrets we keep on behalf of friends. They might include financial secrets (e.g. hiding a bank account from a spouse), theft, infidelity, deception, romantic desires (even if unpursued), or outright criminal behavior. Sometimes secrets are kept out of a sense of shame, and these can be burdensome to the secret-holders. Even those who shamelessly reject conventional morality and are perfectly comfortable with their secrets may still fear the practical personal, social, employment, or legal consequences if the secrets are revealed. Such fears are often justified. 

Yet, as many have learned to their cost, secrets are difficult to keep against a determined investigator in an ever more monitored world. The tools for tracking people have multiplied over the past two decades. The location of cell phones can be tracked by a simple app. EZ Pass registers the times and places of road and bridge tolls. Police cars automatically scan license plates of passing vehicles. Security cameras proliferate. Where were you last April 17^th at 10:20 a.m.? It’s very likely this can be determined. Nothing posted or stored online (or even on an individual computer) is ever really secure. Nothing is ever safely deleted – someone may have a copy somewhere. It is entirely possible for a 30-year-old to be suddenly confronted with something stupid he or she posted or emailed in high school. (There are certain advantages to being old enough for one’s teen years to have predated World Wide Web.) Then there is DNA testing, which is not just a forensic tool anymore. DNA test kits that sell for under $100 can be bought at any pharmacy. They come with warnings that the tests may reveal uncomfortable family secrets. About 30% do: not just the obvious paternity question but grandparental surprises, sibling surprises, and even some maternity surprises. 

So secrets aren’t what they used to be. Nowadays, most people keep their secrets only because they aren't worth anyone else’s bother to dig them out. What if they were? That eventuality didn’t work out well for Adam Price and Corrine. It probably wouldn’t work out well for us either.

The Pierces – Secret

When Pumpkins Grin

It’s that month again. Like all major holidays since I was a kid, Halloween has expanded its domain. It now rules the entire month of October and stretches Cthulhu-like tendrils back before the equinox all the way to Labor Day when Halloween candy suddenly appears on supermarket shelves. (For non-American readers, Labor Day is the first Monday in September.) Though Halloween did not originate in the US, the American way of celebrating it (well over a century old) has become popular even in places (such as Japan) completely removed culturally from the holiday’s Celtic origins. Perhaps this is not surprising. Around the world there are parallel notions of a time of the year when the boundary between the living and the dead is permeable and ghosts walk the earth more freely than usual, such as the Day of the Dead in Mexico or the Hungry Ghost Festival in East and Southeast Asia. Some celebrations of those parallel holidays are hardcore, such as ritual disinterment of the remains of family members for home visits in Indonesia. (See From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty for a description this and other death-related rituals.) I can see how carving pumpkins, dressing up spookily for fun, and cadging candy could make inroads as alternative activities – or at least as additional ones. Many Halloween costumes seem far removed from the influence of the graveyard, but cavorting with ghosts and tweaking the nose of Death still remain at the core of the holiday.

Ghosts are part of the mythic heritage of every people on every continent. What surprises those of a skeptical bent is how much they remain a part of modern belief systems. In a 2019 US study 45% of adults admitted to believing in ghosts, defined as spirits of the dead who can manifest to living people. (A solid majority believe in spirits if you count spirits who have moved onto someplace else.) Another 20% are unsure. This is pretty typical of advanced countries including ones that are highly secular in the usual sense. This may be an undercount since some people are embarrassed to admit to believing paranormal things. Counterintuitively, belief in ghosts rises with education. In a 2006 study by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward Jr. of the University of Central Oklahoma (reported in the Skeptical Inquirer) 23% of college freshman believed in the general gamut of the paranormal including astrology, clairvoyance, and ghosts (40% believed in haunted houses specifically, with another 25% unsure), while 31% of college seniors did, and 34% of graduate students did. Science majors were no more skeptical than other students. From Science Education is No Guarantee of Skepticism (2012) by Richard Walker, Steven J. Hoekstra, and Rodney J. Vogl: “Across all three samples, the correlation between test scores and beliefs was non-significant... In other words, there was no relationship between the level of science knowledge and skepticism regarding paranormal claims.”

Choosing a seat at my
kitchen table

Ghosts have never been a part of my personal belief system. As a child my parents told me they didn’t exist and I believed them as uncritically as I believed their story that Santa Claus did exist. By the time I was able to think more critically for myself I saw no reason to change my mind – about the ghosts, that is. Yet, around half of my friends (including highly capable professionals) to this day are believers or at least are unwilling to say they are disbelievers. About a quarter tell me my house is haunted with two claiming to have seen apparitions. My house in the woods makes a lot of creaking, knocking, and groaning sounds as it heats and cools; the floorplan and lighting result in odd shadows – some of them cast through windows from trees that move when the wind blows. I don’t think about the sounds and umbrations except when teasing guests, e.g. “Don’t worry, the troll downstairs gets restless but he is securely chained.” Not all of them are amused. There is at least one grown man who doesn’t like to go to my basement alone.

I’m not immune to the creepiness of shadowy houses at night. The scariest Halloweens of my life have been in them. My dad was a builder and construction sites have a special appeal to marauding teens on Halloween (and the night previous). They don’t always confine themselves to spreading toilet paper and soaping windows. They sometimes did substantial damage including breaking windows, spray-painting obscenities, and slashing tires on construction vehicles. So, by my later teens I had been drafted into guard duty at unfinished houses on the last two nights of October. If you want to experience a spooky Halloween, spend it alone (with no cell phone) in a dark half-built house on a wooded lot at night. It wasn’t ghosts that worried me, of course, but the possibility of confronting beings with pulses. They are always the greatest hazard at any place or time.

In my own home, no ghost ever has done me harm, so if I’m wrong about their nonexistence, I figure at least they are friendly. Perhaps they’ll even do me the favor of scaring off some marauders with pulses.

 

Bessie Smith – Haunted House Blues (1924)

Good Enough

I grew up with films of the 30s through 50s: what we now consider classic movies. At some hours there wasn’t much else on TV. Until the end of the 1960s TV stations, even though there were just a handful in each market, were scrounging for content. Some stations (even major ones) simply went off the air at night because they had nothing to broadcast. Others, however, during non-prime hours of the day and late at night played classic films, the rights to which they had acquired for a song. Nowadays a youngster always can find something more suitable to a kid’s taste any time of the day or night on one of 200 other TV channels – or online. Back then we settled. 

These old films varied a lot in quality. The bulk of them were B-movies in every sense, but I wasn’t a particularly precocious youngster and so wasn’t a very good judge. It is interesting to revisit them now with an adult eye. Even some of the bad ones still have a nostalgia value for me because I remember having watched them at age 10 when I should have been in bed. I re-encountered one such film on TCM the other day that I barely remembered from youth. Lured (1947) is a noir mystery in which a pre-I Love Lucy Lucille Ball plays a taxi dancer who co-operates with Scotland Yard by acting as bait to catch a serial killer. In truth, the movie is contrived and not very good, but it isn’t altogether bad either. It is good enough to enjoy for 102 minutes. 

As I’ve grown older I’ve become a fan of the good enough. To be sure, I appreciate excellence as much as anyone, but that is a rare commodity and not always worth the cost. Voltaire warned that “the best is the enemy of the good.” He meant, of course, that demanding nothing but the best (including from oneself) may mean you don’t get or achieve anything at all. It usually means that. We are often discouraged from writing or painting or building something by our own concern that we won’t be great. The truth is, we’re probably right – especially by contemporary standards. Kurt Vonnegut once remarked that in a Neolithic village the totem carver was Michelangelo as far as the villagers were concerned. The rock painter was Picasso and the campfire singer was Elvis. In the modern global village we are up against world class performers, not just a hundred locals. It accordingly is easy to become discouraged by comparing ourselves to them. Excelling on a global scale is tough. 

Even by Roman times this was an issue. Vergil was so unhappy with the Aeneid that on his deathbed he directed the manuscript be destroyed. Fortunately, his dying wish was ignored and this classic of Western literature survives. In 1908 Monet destroyed a number of his paintings: “I know that if they are exhibited, they’ll be a great success, but I couldn’t be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad.” So, sometimes we are wrong about our own work. However, even if our judgment is right (as is more likely), it’s worth giving whatever we like to do a go anyway. Maybe it won’t be great. It probably won’t be. Yet it might be good enough to bring pleasure to oneself and perhaps to others. Once again, there is something to be said for that. Just yesterday I did a good enough job of mowing the lawn. The result won’t win any landscaping awards but it doesn’t look bad either – and it was cheaper than hiring professional lawn care. 

I’ve had occasion to contemplate what a life filled with good enough can be like: a good enough job, a good enough car, good enough home, and, yes, good enough relationships. It sounds like a pretty happy one to me. I’ve experienced stretches of life filled with extreme bests and extreme worsts, and I’d be willing to trade. 

Maybe I’ll check what is playing this evening on TCM. If it’s something like The Philadelphia Story (definitely a best), that’s wonderful. But if it’s something good enough like The Falcon’s Alibi, that is OK, too.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Good Enough

“Diseases Desperate Grown”

Adam Kucharski began writing The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread – and Why They Stop before the Covid-19 outbreak in the West but was able to incorporate information about it prior to publication. Kucharski is an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he analyzes infectious disease outbreaks. He didn’t start his career in the field. He first interned as an investment banker. The two fields have more in common than one might think, but more on that in a moment. 

Kucharski explains in easily comprehensible terms the mathematical bases for modeling contagions and making predictions about their course. Primary factors are the infectiousness of the pathogen (the likelihood of passing it on to a susceptible person), and what portions of the population subject to exposure fall into the categories Susceptible, Infectious, and Recovered. A bacterium or virus with a reproduction number greater than 1 (i.e. each infected person can be expected to infect more than 1 other person) will spread while less than 1 (even 0.9) will self-limit and burn out. The reproduction number changes as the percentage of Recovered in the population rises – assuming, as is usually the case, the Recovered have immunity. A population thereby can achieve herd immunity with a smallish percentage of Recovered in the case of a disease with an initially modest positive reproduction number (e.g. 1.1) since the Susceptible pool needn’t drop much to get the rate under 1. Similarly, one needn’t kill all malaria-carrying mosquitoes to eliminate malaria from a given region – just enough of them to get the reproduction number from individual to individual via the mosquito under 1. Naturally, getting something close to the correct numbers for these factors requires extensive investigation since they are different for each pathogen. He quotes the old line, “When you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen one pandemic.” There are also public health measures (identifying and containing routes of transmission) that can impact the numbers. According to an NIH paper (Time-Varying COVID-19 Reproduction Number in the United States) the reproduction number in the U.S. for Covid-19 was 4.02 in March but declined to 1.51 only a month later. By comparison, the highly contagious smallpox virus (fortunately extinguished) had a historical reproduction number between 4 and 6 in susceptible populations. Kucharski does acknowledge the limits of mathematical modeling since even if the model is good the data are often insufficient to plug reliable numbers into it until after an epidemic has run its course, but even a limited benefit is still a benefit. 

Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), very similar analytical methods can be applied to social contagions. This explains Kucharski’s hop from banking along with the move of marine ecologist George Sugihara to building predictive models for Deutsche Bank, and the move of Gary Slutkin from epidemiology in Africa to modeling crime in Chicago. Social behaviors from fashion fads to riots to labor strikes to rumors to gun violence to (oddly) obesity all are contagious to varying degrees and can be described in terms of disease models with special attention to routes of transmission and susceptible populations. Kucharski describes the financial contagion of 2006-2008 in these terms. 

Online memes so obviously follow similar rules that the term “going viral” dates to the very beginning of the internet. Offensive memes and tweets reproduce better than inoffensive ones. Microsoft learned this the hard way in 2016 when its conversational Artificial Intelligence named Tay went online on Twitter. It was designed to learn how to increase its Twitter following by interacting with other users and adjusting its conversational style accordingly. In only 16 hours Tay had to be shut down because it had quickly learned that being an offensive hateful jackass maximized its following. Fake news, unsurprisingly, has a higher reproduction rate than actual news since it can be tailored to appeal to (infect) susceptible people who will pass it along. Real news stories also can be infectious, however, if they share similar traits to the highly infectious fake ones. Hence, while there are 20,000 homicides in the US every year, just a handful dominate the news at any given time while the rest are all but ignored – those handful just touch the right buttons. 

None of this would have surprised Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) whose 1928 book Propaganda remains influential in advertising and political circles. (Bernays intended no negative connotation with the word; he was just describing how it’s done.) Modern modelling simply helps make it more effective. 

Kucharski’s book is a good first step in understanding contagion in its literal disease sense. It also (hopefully) is useful for inoculating oneself (at least to a degree) against social contagions by conveying an understanding of the mechanisms. 

New Years Day – Epidemic