They got no clues and they wanna get warmer, but Nate won't turn informer...

Alright, I suppose that not many people will be familiar with the bad one-hit wonder lyrics (For those who are really curious, they happen to be from Snow's "Informer."). However, there is a serious point to the rather flippant title. Currently, the nation of Romania has been faced with a growing furor over the release of files about the secret service during the Communist regime. Apparently, the nation of Romania had 700,000 informers in a population of only 21,000,000 people. Seriously, that is one informer for every thirty people. And people think I'm paranoid.

Anyway, with all that snooping going on, it appears that some skeletons hidden deep in closets are being revealed in a rather unpleasant manner. For example, one respected former BBC reporter (according to an AP article on this topic by Allison Multer) apparently was snooping on his friend, a poet, because he had made a fellow university classmate pregnant and refused to marry her. For this the government blackmailed him. At least his friend, upon finding out what was reported, had the kind heart to forgive the reporter for what was "neutral" information. Many others were not so fortunate.

What makes someone turn informer? It is a frightening thing when societies become so dark, and so incapable of handling matters openly and honestly that they must sneak around in dark corners trying to find all sorts of unpleasant information to turn family members and friends against each other. It's a terrible world when people seek to extort and blackmail others because of our human mistakes in order to make us tools of oppressive tyrannical government. *Shivers*.

It is rather easy in such cases to think the problem exists merely in other societies, particualrly communist or Facist societies. It is certainly true that totalitarian societies tend to have a lot of this sort of informing going on. However, paranoia does not merely exist in societies like Stalin's Russia, Ceaucescu's Romania, or Hitler's Germany. Elizabethan England, for example, had much the same problem. Such informing has existed in our own society before as well, and may yet again.

However, such a paranoid society cannot exist without willing participants. In societies that depend on secretive behavior and the paranoia of thought control, much still depends on the courage and strength of people to thwart the wickedness of corrupt leaders and their shady minions. It may be a regrettable necessity (and I think it is both regrettable and necessary) that we all live at least somewhat secretive lives, in at least certain ways. We call such secrecy privacy after all, and value it highly.

If the rise of snooping technology allows every moment of our lives, and every word we say (or write) fodder for prying and unfriendly eyes, we still do not have to cower in fear if wicked people seek to use such knowledge against us. We have the choice, if we are brave enough, to face up to what we have done and refuse to collaborate with any kind of secret police force. The choice and the responsibility are ours, and we must all face on our own, at some time, the bitter choice between living an honest and candid life and giving in to the temptations of an easier and less complicated life. Nothing worthwhile is simple anyway. Everything is complicated, and those who have easy answers speak without wisdom and understanding. And sometimes, there are no good choices, but merely a choice about whether we are to suffer in one way or another.

Whichever path one chooses in such occasions, though, there is a lot of sympathy from me for such people. After all, those who inform on the lower level are often fairly ordinary people, and often feel the greatest amount of guilt and suffering for what they do, because they do not have the defenses of habitualization that numb and harden the conscience against wrongdoing that come for those higher in authority. Even so, regardless of what one chooses, sometimes there is a bitter price we must pay. It is useful to reflect upon that sometimes.