And it contradicts a common perception that the generation of young Americans who have grown up in the Internet age blithely share their personal details.
At the same time, mistakenly believing that they were protected by the distance and anonymity suggested by the internet, Americans have developed an acute habit of blithely sharing insults and threats online without any regard for the consequences.
Mackenzie's final take on idealism, once he's back in Scotland, is a melancholy if persuasive one: "I was reminded of the blithely baseless certainty I had once shared.
Yet the emotions that such losses stir can't be dismissed quite so blithely — talking to Parisian friends, I found they shared my sense of something that it would be indecent to call grief but inadequate to call sadness.
The left is collusive, if not presumptuous: should you get on well with leftists at a party, they will blithely assume that you share the same views on the invasion of Iraq, even if all you've talked about is the canapés.
The Stalinist show trials coincided with the first years of the club, but Gollancz shared the CP's sensitivity to any criticism of Stalin and remained blithely pro-Soviet.
Yet the emotions that such losses stir can't be dismissed quite so blithely talking to Parisian friends, I found they shared my sense of something that it would be indecent to call grief but inadequate to call sadness.
Mr Noda says, rather blithely, that "everyone has to share the pain of responsibility" for what happened at Fukushima.
She promises a nurse, Ann Perkins Rashida Joness, "The Office"), to turn an abandoned construction pit next to Ann's house into a park, blithely unaware that none of her colleagues share her enthusiasm.
Her new album, "Supermoon" (Heads Up International) is full of blithely benevolent messages; in "Affection" she urges, "Share it!" The music follows through with an international assortment of grooves, from funk to jazz to Steve Reich-like percussion to the most airborne one of all: the electrified pygmy-style call-and-response of "Gati".
