Hiding Places
The necessity and impossibility of being unseen
Hiding is an art form – it is the opposite of being seen and exposed. In the social world hiding is almost unacceptable, and in the business world it is practically impossible, but in the natural world being able to hide provides a kind of evolutionary advantage. Creatures hide to avoid threats: predators, temperatures, humans. They also hide to catch prey. Hiding is both offensive and defensive.
Things that are not ready for the world are hidden. Babies in wombs. Eggs up in nests. Newborn foals standing in their mother’s shadow. Those really disgusting little fish that live in their parent’s mouth. Only when the time is right, these new things come out where they can be witnessed, understood and engaged with by others.
If it’s natural to hide until you have a chance of survival, most knowledge work seems unnatural. We exist in a state of constant over-exposure and are regularly called upon to show embryonic thinking that isn’t yet strong enough to be seen in the light. Physical places to hide and be alone with our thoughts have been designed out of workplaces under the deluded belief that Silicon Valley’s open plan style is somehow superior. If you want to know why so many coders wear hoodies, it’s not because they are ashamed of their Only Fans bill – it’s because their employers have removed almost every form of privacy from their physical and digital habitat. Hoodies are the fashion language of rebellion in the face of oppression. An act of subtle defiance in an over-surveilled world.
Our ability to hide is also eroded by the norms of everyday business practice. Slack is a conveyor belt of expectations that demands presence and response - a sinister proxy for email that sacrifices your choice to read at the right time for radical availability. Meetings, set to a default hour and abiding by ‘the ‘more the merrier’ principle, demand that we show up to share ourselves and what we have. I am so sick and embarrassed by starting presentations with ‘this is still very much work in progress’ because some twenty-something project coordinator is popping off on the Teams invites. I want to collaborate as an exception and to be exceptional when I do… not apologetic.
Placemaking and the cargo cult of activation has also squeezed our ability to hide. Where is the brief calling for somewhere that allows people to hide? Why does the cliche of ‘eyes on the street’ and passive surveillance always trump solitude and psychological safety? Why does the loneliness epidemic have such good publicity when being over-saturated must be equally if not more destructive? If being lonely is the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, being connected is like having a crack pipe constantly to your lips. This situation was not inevitable just because more people now live in our cities - it is because we wrote strategies that called for relentless activation and made Insta ‘likes’ a KPI for all human experience.
We shouldn’t confuse hiding with avoidance. It is smart to wait until you have the energy for someone, rather than letting them down with your lack of warmth. It is smart to hold an idea until it is ready to be defended. It is smart to have people wonder just a little bit about where you are and what you are doing… actually it’s attractive. Unfortunately it is now also a privilege afforded to those with the energy to wake up before everyone else, those with the financial power to buy space to hide, or those that can hire a support team to shield them from the demands of life.