This ties into the general phenomenon of not acting being considered less wrong (no pun intended) than acting. It’s not just lies and secrets—not actively going out to save people’s lives is fine, while killing people is wrong. Yet in both cases, people die.
The reason for that philosophy is easily understood, however. People are dying all the time, and if you’re considered responsible for every death that you fail to prevent, then you should be spending all of your time saving people (or at least working on the most effective way of saving people in the long run). Obviously, folks would rather concentrate on living their own lives and not worry about saving everybody else, so they have manufactured “acting is worse than not acting” as a convenient rationalization. “Not revealing a secret isn’t as bad as lying” is just a special case of the general principle.
One might think that the general principle doesn’t fully apply in this example. But if you genuinely thought omitting things was as bad as telling a lie, then you should logically spend all of your time going around telling people everything you thought they didn’t know, even complete strangers. If we narrow it down to the specific case of discussing a specific matter with someone, in a situation where you’re expected to provide accurate information? Well, in that case the general principle doesn’t apply as much, but you have to remember that it’s a rationalization created to avoid taking true responsibility of things. You’ll automatically want to avoid closely examining rationalizations such as those, to avoid noticing them as flawed.
This ties into the general phenomenon of not acting being considered less wrong (no pun intended) than acting. It’s not just lies and secrets—not actively going out to save people’s lives is fine, while killing people is wrong. Yet in both cases, people die.
The reason for that philosophy is easily understood, however. People are dying all the time, and if you’re considered responsible for every death that you fail to prevent, then you should be spending all of your time saving people (or at least working on the most effective way of saving people in the long run). Obviously, folks would rather concentrate on living their own lives and not worry about saving everybody else, so they have manufactured “acting is worse than not acting” as a convenient rationalization. “Not revealing a secret isn’t as bad as lying” is just a special case of the general principle.
One might think that the general principle doesn’t fully apply in this example. But if you genuinely thought omitting things was as bad as telling a lie, then you should logically spend all of your time going around telling people everything you thought they didn’t know, even complete strangers. If we narrow it down to the specific case of discussing a specific matter with someone, in a situation where you’re expected to provide accurate information? Well, in that case the general principle doesn’t apply as much, but you have to remember that it’s a rationalization created to avoid taking true responsibility of things. You’ll automatically want to avoid closely examining rationalizations such as those, to avoid noticing them as flawed.