Benjamin Franklin said that “three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” It’s a classic piece of eighteenth-century shade that perfectly nails our modern obsession with oversharing. Franklin knew that once a second person is in the know, you haven’t shared a secret; you may as well have issued a press release. In his day, it meant a biting political pamphlet; today, it’s a brutal meme.
We all need to hold secrets. Samuel Johnson mused, “To keep your own secrets is wisdom; but to expect others to keep them is folly.” Franklin and Johnson were contemporaries and bookend the implications of secrets held personally and those given voice. It always amazes me when social media headlines claim access to “hidden secrets” and “unknown facts” How are these even possible?
Governments have classified files, corporations and celebrities use NDAs to protect their trade secrets, avoid liability or shield bad behavior. But secrecy is also frequently a multilayered curtain hiding incompetence. Sometimes that curtain is literally shrouded with levels of guards, barriers, and cameras. Other times, it’s a thirty-page legal document written in a font so small it’s legally classified as a vision test. And occasionally litigation filed just to stall and obfuscate disclosure.
Secrets are not going away. But that doesn’t mean that there is not truth to be discerned and discovered. As intentional disinformation and propaganda thrive as robust industries in our world, discerning the truth is an increasingly important skill.
I’m not a knight boldly hunting the Holy Grail of Truth. But I know our assertions or beliefs don’t magically become truth or knowledge just because they are decorated with bold font and a couple of exclamation points or an AI generated meme.
Truth today is a frightened cat under a sofa: it’s definitely under there, but it’s not coming out just because I ask nicely. Since facts are increasingly buried under layers of fear, greed, and jargon, I’ve settled on a different yardstick: authenticity.
Authenticity is the courage to be genuinely human—warts, awkward phrasing, and my shiny, ever-enlarging forehead included. It’s the opposite of a polished persona vetted by a focus group. As writers we face this daily. Even when I try to be a neutral instrument, I still end up smuggling in my biases and a suspicious number of adjectives.
But how do we actually “suss out” authenticity? There’s no blood test for it. In fact, if someone starts a sentence with, “Let me be totally honest with you,” I immediately check to see if my wallet is still in my pocket. True authenticity isn’t a performance; it’s a pattern. You look for the “admissions against interest”—when someone admits they were wrong, or says “I don’t know” without acting like the sky is falling. Authenticity is found in the people who show their work and represent their opponents fairly, even when it ruins a perfectly good zinger.
Fiction writers too have to be “authentic,” which sounds like a paradox since we are literally paid to create fictional worlds and embellish. I think a novelist is being authentic when they don’t cheat. They don’t use a deus ex machina because they wrote themselves into a corner, and they don’t make their characters act like idiots just to move the plot along.
An authentic fiction writer respects the internal logic of their world building more than they respect the reader’s desire for a happy ending. If the “truth” of the character requires them to be a disaster, the authentic writer lets them be a disaster. They aren’t trying to sell you a lifestyle; they’re trying to describe a being, even if that soul is imaginary.
Of course, I still get fooled. Clickbait still works on me because I apparently really need to know the “one trick” that will fix my life. The key is to move on before the next headline informs me I’ve been using a toaster incorrectly for forty years.
Attention is our most valuable and unique asset. We “invest” our time and attention whenever we read or watch. Our attention is targeted by everyone. Attention, like respect, must be earned. Authenticity is one of the few currencies left that can buy mine.