Secret
A secret is the name given to any piece of information that you, or any other individual, are not supposed to know about. Reasons for keeping a piece of information "secret" vary, including protecting your dignity from the mean people who may laugh at you, or ensuring the police don't discover any clues about you that may put your freedom at risk. For example, that one time you had a gay experience with your flatmate was initially a "secret", until everyone else found out about it, after which point it became gossip. Another example of a secret would be where the bodies are buried, who buried them, and what kind of horrific acts were performed on the bodies before their burial.
Secrets are found in all walks of life, but one place absent of any secrecy is the government. The government does not have any secrets hidden from the general public, and as such it is completely irrational for a person to be convinced otherwise. Any information about the government you wish to know can be found on government-run or government-sponsored websites. The concept of keeping something a secret is called secrecy, named for a middle English combination of "sacrilege" and "heresy", as keeping information from your superiors was considered both.
History
Like all good things such as sliced bread and bondage, secrecy hasn't always existed and was invented by humans. The first secret was held in Mesopotamia in the days Before Christ. The Kingdom was at war with the Assyrians, and a scout from their rival empire made his way to the palace to approach, the King of Babylon, demanding to know what his plan was. This trick had worked on previous empires, who crumbled after their leaders had fallen for such a cunning tactic - with the secret not having yet been invented, they immediately gave away every detail. But the new King suddenly had a brilliant idea. After being asked what his plan was, the King swiftly replied "I'm not telling". Everyone in the room gasped at the King's large metaphorical balls, and so a revolutionary new war tactic was born. It was named a "secret", after their many-breasted Goddess of Fertility, Secretititties. While keeping their plan a "secret" prevented any sabotage prior to the battle, the Assyrians ended up destroying them anyway.
After being passed down to several generations, the concept of secret found its way to the Ancient Greeks. Famous philosopher Plato is credited with having revolutionised a new form of the secret. He was out partying one day when he had a little too much to drink, and awoke the next morning to find himself lying in bed next to the town whore Eleanor of Athens, the second most overweight and ugly woman in Ancient Greece, behind only your mother. After explaining the concept of secrecy to her and giving in to her blackmail, Plato made sure nobody else found out. This was a twist to the original concept of the secret as a war tactic, whereupon Plato was now using it personally to keep his dignity intact. The secret was very tightly kept and was completely unknown until this day, where it was written in an Uncyclopedia article for all to see.
The third revolution of the secret came when the Roman Empire invaded Greece. While the soldiers were given orders not to kill the famous inventor Archimedes, who was in the middle of experimenting on secrets, the crazy Romans did it anyway. Realising they were in deep doo-doo, they learned from the nearby textbooks on secrecy and covered up the murder. They hung a noose around his neck, put some dirty stone tablets near the dead inventor, and told their superiors that Archimedes hung himself while getting frisky. Previously, criminals would hand themselves in for punishment when they were asked "what happened at the scene?", and so this is believed to be the first instance of a secret being used to cover up a murder and a crime of any sort.
In the 17th century, the Puritans voiced objection to the concept of secrecy, as - much like everything else - they found it "sinful". They maintained that if you had defecated and someone politely asked you about it, you were to give away every detail. Knowing that somebody might spot a loophole and attempt to lie their way out of it, the Puritans also placed a ban on lying, which they also found sinful. As this rule effectively made it impossible to lie or hold secrets, nobody engaged in any sinful acts during the Puritan reign; if someone had, they obviously would have told the authorities when asked.
Famous secrets
There are plenty of secrets that everybody knows. However, the most tightly kept secret in the world is believed to be that of the contents of the Krabby Patty secret formula. The list of the famous burger's ingredients - a bun, beef, cheese and lettice, topped off with tomato sauce, a ghurkin and some sesame seed - is so tightly guarded it is not known by anyone. What would happen should these secrets be revealed to anyone is unfathomable. FBI agents and other government officials are known to be hostile towards the idea of secret-keeping, and will infamously perform as many cavity searches as is possible in order to obtain information they need, to intimidate someone, or to relieve themselves of boredom.
How to keep a secret
The best method of keeping a secret has been perfected over the many centuries following its invention. The best method of keeping a secret goes as such:
- Learn the information that is to be kept secret.
- Do not tell anyone this information.
- Tell one person the secret, convincing yourself they won't tell anyone.
- That one person will tell other people the secret, who will tell others, and so on. It is no longer a secret.
- When the information is no longer a secret, keep the fact that you were involved a secret. Repeat.
The last three steps of this foolproof method were perfected and added into the list by the barbarians, who discovered secrecy after they looted and destroyed Rome. As they were not the sharpest swords in the armoury, they decided that letting a few untrustworthy souls in on the secret was the way to go. Though considered uncivilised at the time, modern scholars consider this the best way to keep a secret, as keeping the details of the secret from other people is considered rude.
See also
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