Mind the Beginner

Before I start this blogpost let me apologize. I haven’t been able to write a weekly update this weekend on the state of my blogchallenge. As it stands my weekends are filled to the brim with things I need to do in real life and even though this blog is important to me, real life still has some priority.

That being said, let’s start with the new blogpost for today. An interesting concept called security by obscurity. You can interpret this in various ways. There’s the law, which is definitely something obscure and something people tend to use against each other even though they don’t know what the law actually says. Copyright agencies use this all the time trying to intimidate people into submission and so securing their assets. Over here in the Netherlands it’s perfectly legal to download music for instance, but hardly anyone knows that because a local group is trying to prevent that knowledge from spreading. Piratebay is legal here, they don’t offer anything that’s copyright protected now do they? They only offer torrents.They facilitate piracy, but if we look at things that way we can sue The huge hambuger empires for facilitating obesity and car manufacturers for producing huge pieces of metal that can kill.

It’s not what’s offered, it’s what you make of it.

Another way of looking at security by obscurity is on a personal level. More often than not we tend to be vague about our goals, intentions and plans. Just because it feels safe somehow. Writing down a plan, using the SMART method for instance, makes it final. It’s now crystal clear and we can’t hide behind not knowing anymore. All the steps are there, all we have to do is follow them…

..and that’s scary as hell.

Somehow we find security in not knowing, and what’s more. The more we know, the more re realize that we don’t know anything. In the end we live all our lives with obscurity and uncertainty, and find security in not knowing. With knowledge comes responsibility and as I’ve said before humans are lazy. If we can avoid responsibility we will, because it means we can relax a bit more and slack. Knowledge also is power however, power to take control over your own life, and even the lives of others. Power to influence things and to predict possible outcomes.

It’s this ability to predict outcome that will offer you a sense of security as soon as you get out of the safety bubble of obscurity and start learning. As said, it’s scary as hell at first, but the more you’re out there the more comfortable it will get and slowly obscurity won’t seem so safe any more. Okay, so now you have a problem. Doing nothing and letting things be obscure is no longer safe so you’ll have to keep learning and working hard to stay with that sense of security. Hard work in stead of slacking, and both result in a feeling of security. These two being equal (minus the work) would you rather know or let things be obscure?

I just thought you’d like to know.