A Note on Anonymity

I recently emailed a question to an old friend of mine, with the suggestion that he might care to write about it -- and that, if he did, I'd love to read his thoughts. Without getting into the details of the question, which are not important to the thought of this post, I'll just say that it was theological and sociological in nature and that my friend is somebody who is eminently qualified to opine on theological and sociological matters. He is neither a theologian nor a sociologist by training, but his life experience and personal study qualify him to express opinions that I shall read with great interest, even if he disagrees with me. He's that good a friend and that good at what he does.

He replied that it was a good question and that he just might write about my question on his blog -- anonymously. That was an interesting thought. He feels obliged to perhaps quote from my question and then react to it, without letting anybody know who asked it. I believe he thinks that he's protecting me.

Well, maybe he is. It's a question that could get quite a lot of people very upset -- just the fact that the question was asked.

But on another level, I don't really care to be protected in that way.

I am a member of a community. The only way to function as a member of a community is to have an identity by which people can know me and relate to me. If I dissemble, trying to make some of these people think that I am what I am not, that deceit does not serve me in the long run, and it does not serve them at all. I believe that I must be who I am, flaws and all, with no attempt to convince people that I am something else. This does not mean that I want to slap people in the face with the reality of me. I, like most people, can be a turn-off if taken in large doses under the wrong circumstances. Forcing people to see me in my full reality, when they have no desire to do so, would be the height of arrogance. It just wouldn't be polite. But trying to seem like I am something I am not does not seem to me a wise course.

Nowadays, there are a number of technologies that aim to let people have anonymity on the Internet. There are a lot of people who will avidly take advantage of those technologies. One of my brothers refuses to have a Facebook account, because it would reveal too much of who he is to too many people. He's concerned that people might not like what they see -- he could even face negative consequences in social and business relationships.

I can't live my life that way. Here I am. Like me. Or don't like me. It's entirely your choice. If you don't like me, I can live with that. If you disagree with one of my opinions and want to tell me, "You can't be a Christian and hold that opinion", that's okay. I'll pray for you. And I'll think about your opinion. You might even convince me that you're right. But what I will not do is try to be who I am not.

So, here on my blog, I openly claim to be "Paul H. Harder II, Ph.D." In the one instance when I wrote a short article on Wikipedia, I posted it under the handle "PaulHarder2". I use my own name throughout the World Wide Web, the huge community of which I am a part. Google me. You'll learn more about me than you care to know. You'll find that I am an Esperantist, that I have something to do with an independent Christian choir, that I teach for the University of Phoenix, that I have written an ebook about statistics for my students, that I was credited as a co-author of a scientific paper about the use of Nimbus 7 satellite radiometry data to investigate snowpack properties, that I worked for my brother-in-law's church architecture firm, that I made a YouTube video of Lenny Solomon's song "Global Warming Blues", and many more things, some of which you may like and some of which you may detest me for.

This is me. It's who I am.