Openness is a privilege

The privilege of openness must be equitably distributed

Privilege has a strong correlation with openness.

With greater privilege comes greater capacity for openness.

Sadly, not all people with great privilege make use of that extra capacity.

On the other hand, for some greatly unprivileged people, openness is their only choice. In the face of violence and death, openness becomes the only reasonable thing left to do.

When openness is vulnerability

If open source is just an obviously better way to build products, companies and governments, why aren’t we doing more of it already?

Simple: It’s really scary to be open. It can even be legitimately dangerous. Sharing a part of yourself in the open makes you vulnerable. A part of your soft underbelly is exposed.

Openness is the willingness to tell people your story.

Vulnerability is your willingness to let others be part of it.

~ Melissa Joy

If you’re a company, you’re not supposed to have any vulnerabilities.

If you’re a person, you might have experienced feelings of hurt that you’ll avoid at almost any cost.

Being 99% open is an immense privilege. I’m personally in this position because I’m exceedingly safe. Economically, emotionally, politically, spiritually… My Maslow pyramid is all filled up.

In a kinder, more compassionate world, I think one’s degrees of personal openness could look like this:

• 99.99% open with life partner(s)

• 99.9%: closest friends and family

• 99%: the general public

But for most people, it’s much lower than that. My most conservative guesstimate might still be a far too hopeful one:

• 99%: life partners

• 90%: closest friends and family

• 10%: general public

And I’m not talking about whether your partner knows what you had for breakfast every single day of your life. I’m talking about the extent to which they know the fullness of your character.

I have the immense privilege of not having to obfuscate or lie about my age, work, salary, gender, sexuality, skin color, ethnicity, nationality, politics or religion – to the general public! For the vast majority of people, at least one (often many) of these identifications is something they are not at liberty to talk openly about.

I can reveal just about anything about myself (but no, you may not have my credit card information) because I have no enemies. Sadly, a lot of people can’t say that.

Most people, corporations or products can’t be entirely open, because it would make them too vulnerable. Their enemies would find a way to hurt them through that opening.

Thankfully, modern companies are finding ways to incorporate their openness into their holistic business model. They’ve devised ways to turn openness into a competitive advantage.

Human beings have been working on this openness thing since we first started consciously communicating a million years ago, and we are getting vastly better at emotional openness with every generation. People 10 years younger than me tend to be more open-hearted than people 10 years older than me.

Distributing privilege

Making the rich even richer was definitely not part of the original ethos of the open source movement. Most open source software has been built on the backs of people enjoying privileged lives with an abundance of free time to satiate their intellectual curiosities. Volunteer value contribution also helps lessen the guilt induced by being in the group of people who just lucked out with the life-ride we were put on.

That’s not to say sacrifices haven’t been made. Open source is also built on contributor churn; burnout.

We can’t have a movement that grew out of privilege and suffering become an amplifier of more privilege for those who already have the most, and more suffering for the underprivileged! That’s a very bad look for us aspiring movers. And it would make obvious that what we thought of as “intellectual curiosities” might’ve just been ’pretending to be intellectuals by making up puzzles for ourselves to solve’.

How much of our “progress” is really just little distraction machines that we built to keep our brains from going too quiet and introspective.

We will know our movement is succeeding if we are contributing to privileged wealth being widely and equitably distributed. We will know we have failed if the status quo remains unchanged, and the powers-that-be remain comfortably seated.