At this point of the novel, The Circle has adopted three different mantras that demonstrate their ideals; Secrets are Lies, Sharing is Caring, and Privacy is Theft. These three separate statements all reflect not only the company’s views on data, but also the employees personal views when it comes to the internet and information.

Secrets are Lies. Well technically that isn’t true in the real world. A secret is just some form of information that you don’t desire to other people and can be for any number of reasons. You could be embarrassed about it, you could possibly get in trouble over it, you could be protecting someone from it, or you could even just be selfish and don’t want anyone else to know. And a lie is, in its most basic form, a deception that you tell to someone else. And in the real world, this doesn’t really make any sense. Almost everyone has at least some form of a secret ranging from minuscule to earth shattering. And we also live in a world where people’s secrets are being released constantly, but we don’t consider them to be lies. But, this is relevant in the world of the The Circle. The idea of transparency also becomes apparent by this point in the book, with Congresswoman Santos revealing that from now on she will no longer have any secrets. Because she will have no secrets, she believes that the people of the nation will trust her deeper because she will not be able to keep anything from them, and therefore will be unable to lie to them.

Sharing is Caring. In the physical world this is a very true statement, although usually when we say it we are talking about physical things, such as sharing food or wealth. As a society, we are very promoting of sharing because we believe that sharing makes us all better people. We believe that giving part of what we have to others is a kindly act that all of us should work towards to achieve. In terms of the novel though, the company is primarily concerned with just the sharing of information, in the idea that if you share all your information with the rest of the world, then you are doing what is best for everyone. By sharing all of your data, you are expanding everyones network, and only good things can come from that. The main example of this in the novel is when they talk about potentially chipping children in order to prevent child kidnapping. While this would effectively solve this problem, it also would create some very serious privacy issues, which leads into the final mantra.

Privacy is Theft. In reality, privacy is valued very highly and people pride themselves on having private things and having their own privacy. There is even a prevalent issue today is the argument of privacy versus security where we are so uncomfortable with giving up our privacy that we are willing have less personal security in order to maintain our privacy. However, in the Circle, they view privacy as a theft of human experience that you are being selfish and keeping for yourself. The best example of this is when Mae is at Francis’ place and  they have a sexual encounter which he films. When she asks him to delete the footage, which soon the rest of the company will be able to see, he says no because it was as much his experience as it was hers.