More Transparency

And another thing…

…influencing all this, which I meant to mention in the last post, is more of a species-nature issue.

Humans have a hard-wired norm-seeking instinct. Our monkey-brains are hardwired to generate error signals when they perceive that we are being disagreed with by other human-shaped objects. It is from this – and the need to escape, therefore, receiving negative feedback for doing anything that the neighbors disagree with – that our secretiveness tends to spring, along with certain related things like desire for anonymity, desire for privacy in public actions, the right to be forgotten, the GIFT, and so forth.

Eldrae don’t have that instinct. They find peer pressure a weird, alien, and disturbing notion.

(And also, culturally, they are very much of the opinion that an important part of proper etiquette is respect for other people’s choices, and even tratalmir ulkith, which compound glosses as “proper indifference (to the affairs of others)”; it is proper to permit others their legitimate freedom of choice without interference, and grossly improper to interfere with or pass personal judgment upon that which is none of your rightful business. Upon such care for boundaries does the ability of a society of individuals to function rest.)

As such, no-one particularly cares about keeping many of their affairs secret, because no-one with any decency cares negatively and anyone who does care negatively is irrelevant, because they eo ipso have no decency.