why do we need privacy?

[velocity]

why do we have "public lives" and "private lives?" is it something about the way society is constructed (normative, so we play by the rules) and/or is there something about the very nature of the human animal to always have some part of itself hidden (to escape control, avoid judgment, or to wield power, etc)? does anyone here live a completely "open" life and has no problem talking about any action? is this a cultural construct? what are is the role of privacy in sociality? also, what are the roles/functions of secrets?

 

[Tallulah]

I don't know. I've always been a really private person, though. You don't get lots of details from me until I've known you for a while and feel safe with you. I've always really envied the "open book" people, but I know I can't be one.

 

[Mole]

Momentous

why do we have "public lives" and "private lives?" is it something about the way society is constructed (normative, so we play by the rules) and/or is there something about the very nature of the human animal to always have some part of itself hidden (to escape control, avoid judgment, or to wield power, etc)? does anyone here live a completely "open" life and has no problem talking about any action? is this a cultural construct? what are is the role of privacy in sociality? also, what are the roles/functions of secrets?

Privacy is only a recent invention. For 200,000 years we lived in earshot of one another in tribal vilages. But with the invention of the printing press in 1440, the dream of univeral literacy was born and has only been realised recently in the West and developed countries.

And as you notice, we read a book alone, silently in private. In fact the carrels you find in your library are there to give us silence and privacy.

But the invention of the electric telegraph in 1840 put an end to all that.

For the electric telegraph led to the electric telephone, the electric radio, the electric television and the electric internet.

Ask not for whom the phone rings, it rings for thee.

And so the electric Typology tribe was born in the global village.

We are now all in electric earshot of one another just like a tribe in a village.

And privacy has come to an end. In fact the private bedroom has come to an end, as almost all of us here have the internet live in our 'private' bedrooms.

But of course we drive forward looking in the rear vision mirror at privacy, while the global village rushes towards us through the windscreen.

We can only see our private self through the rear vision mirror, but we can see the whole electronic tribe of Typology through the windscreen.

And if you haven't noticed, the windscreen is the screen in front of us at this very moment.

And it is momentous.

 

[Lark]

I believe a private realm is necessary to prevent totalitarianism, especially in a society which contains differing and disparite political and other identities co-existing side by side.

I also think that it has to do with propriety, I do not believe in exhibitionism and I think a lot of contemporary social trends militate against this in a pretty insidious manner. Part of my own views about propriety are to do with not flaunting what you have in front of those who do not or can not or should not have the same things. I do not believe it is fear of approbation or disapproving judgement alone, that's the negative and what I described is the positive.

Plus there are aspects to your life that you wont want to share with everyone, those are privileged for just a few and therefore again privacy becomes valuable in those connections and ties.

 

[FDG]

I remember a section of Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee" explained clearly how the need for a public-private split came by. It was related to reproduction; I will take a look at the book again later, and edit this post.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

We need privacy to keep seeecrets, eeewuhl seeecrets.

 

[Valiant]

Privacy is for us who need recharging when exhausted from social life.
Privacy is also good for us who read a lot every day.
Or we who play computer games. Programming. Inventing things. Artists, whether they be writers or painters.

I'd seriously feel like killing myself if I didn't have privacy. I become easily irritated and weirdly unbalanced if I don't get to be alone with my books for at least a few hours a day, and that's a bare minimum.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

why do we have "public lives" and "private lives?" is it something about the way society is constructed (normative, so we play by the rules) and/or is there something about the very nature of the human animal to always have some part of itself hidden (to escape control, avoid judgment, or to wield power, etc)? does anyone here live a completely "open" life and has no problem talking about any action? is this a cultural construct? what are is the role of privacy in sociality? also, what are the roles/functions of secrets?

Good question. If we look back, like Victor so eloquently stated, across time we see that humans lived in tribes and in tribes there was probably very little personal privacy within your small village. In fact, that was part and parcel how villages kept people in line and kept the peace, because as an intimate entity, the village made it harder to break rules and get away with it, and harder to be sneaky. There was more accountability.

However, there probably was some sort of familial privacy that existed within one's private quarters, house, or domain. I have done limited study of ancient or even modern-day remote communities, but it seems that there is a cognizance about having to live peacefully in your small society, and not wanting to rock the boat. Also, in some peaceful societies, anger was frowned heavily upon. So, privacy about one's personal affairs or frustrations might have been the norm. I'm just purely speculating of course. I've heard that in Asian cultures, there is much more concern with having a modicum of neutrality and appearing happy and putting a nice face on when meeting people, being pleasant. But surely in private this type of Asian would need to vent his true feelings, which must sometimes at least be negative, to his trusted family and friends?

I think most people tend to shun, or at least separate themselves, from completely 'open' people. I'm not sure why. Maybe a throwback to the fact that when you were completely different and didn't fit in, or didn't care how you were received or viewed, you were a liability, not an asset, to the tribe. I think we are as fascinated by completely OPEN people in our society as we are contemptuous of them, like a freaky carnival side show.

And I think you are right. The concept of being an 'open book' might be a completely new construct of modern society.

 

[Lark]

There's also the whole issue of age appropriate behaviour, any parent knows that there times when they need privacy from their children, if they arent aware enough of this they are likely to get a visit from the social services to remind them of this quick smart.

 

[Totenkindly]

...I always wondered what society would be like if we always knew exactly what everyone else was thinking.

 

[Kra]

A theory I subscribe to personally is:

A collective mind, though more powerful, ultimately only comes up with one idea, and the perspective offered is all internal. Whereas, an intelligence that comes from multitudes of sources, comes up with many ideas and external perspectives that compete or compliment one another, in theory providing a much more productive answer.

Obviously, this connects only loosely to the debate of full public vs. partial private/public, but I think it has some pretty decent correlation.

Human personalities run a full gamut of the spectrum, and that creates a sort of balance. If you create a situation wherein introverts are denied their prime operation, you're essentially crippling the balance. We've all seen what happens when a mostly E society tries to transform an I into an E, and it's not usually pretty...

 

[BerberElla]

I'd seriously feel like killing myself if I didn't have privacy. I become easily irritated and weirdly unbalanced if I don't get to be alone with my books for at least a few hours a day, and that's a bare minimum.

Yep, agreed. I have to go to my room and relax if I want time alone, as I have a house guest who has been here for over a year, and honestly that sucks as I feel like most of my privacy has gone, and all that's left is my little room with it's crappy lighting.

If I had been alive in the times when people all sort of lived together, you can be sure I would have ended up as some lone ranger or bard just so I could retreat for private time somewhere out in the wilderness.

 

[Mole]

...I always wondered what society would be like if we always knew exactly what everyone else was thinking.

There is no need to wonder. You can go live with a tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. And it will be a life changing experience, for you will find the whole tribe feels as one. It is like belonging to a flight of birds wheeling and turning in the emotional sky. Startling at the hawk or settling on the ground as one to feed. Or perhaps hurled as one spear in war, or united at first cry of the new born.

You may cry at being so accepted by those around you, or perhaps you will be so alienated that you will long to bury your nose in a book.

Some who go, never come back - for they have entered the heart of darkness. But for most who have been taught to read, they realise they can never stop, that although we created print in 1440, print has created us.

We have been imprinted with an indelible ink.

But for good or ill, print has been subsumed by the electric telegraph, the electric telephone, the electric radio, the electric television and the electric internet.

Yes, we have created the electron and now the electron creates us.

And our children will wheel like birds in the sky.

 

[Mole]

The Song Electric

There's also the whole issue of age appropriate behaviour, any parent knows that there times when they need privacy from their children, if they arent aware enough of this they are likely to get a visit from the social services to remind them of this quick smart.

Before literacy and the private bedroom, we practised bundling. That is, we all bundled together to sleep in the same bed.

Childhood was yet to be invented and teenagers were unheard of.

It is only sequential, linear print that has enabled us to think in the serried ranks of child, teenager, adult, and the aged.

Indeed print has given us marketing demographics piled on marketing demographics, and naturally we identify with our demographic. Why, there are self confessed teenagers reading this as I write.

But they are all dissolving as they read, for they are not reading print but electronic text.

Print moves as slow as the eye while the electron moves as fast as the ear. The electron moves at the speed of light and everything happens all at once, in just the way the ear hears.

So the linear sequential world is dissolving at the speed of light as you listen to me.

While Jennifer calls me the Pied Piper - as I sing the song electric.

 

[Tiltyred]

or the body electric, eh?

I have an idea ... many years ago, I lived in a culture that was more family oriented, where it was not unusual for parents and grown children to live happily together in small quarters. One of the grown children (in her late teens) had a boyfriend who would come to visit every evening. The two of them would rub noses and talk sweet talk in whispers in the living room. Apparently in front of everybody. Except that by tacit agreement, no one acknowledged their presence. Sort of like when you are in an elevator, maybe. (Although I know some people do talk to strangers in elevators.)

Anyway. I think it is not impossible to have some privacy even in a tribal setting. I have a hard time believing the need for privacy is a new invention.

 

[Mole]

We need privacy to keep seeecrets, eeewuhl seeecrets.

In my very first Encounter Group at the National Training Laboratories (NTL), I discovered that secrets aren't worth keeping.

And later I discovered that secrets can't be kept at the speed of light in the new age of the electron.

 

[Oeufa]

I always just assumed privacy was a survival instinct. If you told people your weaknesses you could be exploited and killed.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

or the body electric, eh?

I have an idea ... many years ago, I lived in a culture that was more family oriented, where it was not unusual for parents and grown children to live happily together in small quarters. One of the grown children (in her late teens) had a boyfriend who would come to visit every evening. The two of them would rub noses and talk sweet talk in whispers in the living room. Apparently in front of everybody. Except that by tacit agreement, no one acknowledged their presence. Sort of like when you are in an elevator, maybe. (Although I know some people do talk to strangers in elevators.)

Anyway. I think it is not impossible to have some privacy even in a tribal setting. I have a hard time believing the need for privacy is a new invention.

I've heard similar accounts about communal living. I agree. I think privacy has always existed to some degree.

 

[Tiltyred]

In my very first Encounter Group at the National Training Laboratories (NTL), I discovered that secrets aren't worth keeping.

And later I discovered that secrets can't be kept at the speed of light in the new age of the electron.

They always tell you such crap. That's because if you tell them all your secrets, they have stuff to control you by, so it's to their advantage to convince you not to have any. You either have to be incredibly boring or very very young not to have any secrets, is what I think.

 

[Mole]

or the body electric, eh?

I have an idea ... many years ago, I lived in a culture that was more family oriented, where it was not unusual for parents and grown children to live happily together in small quarters. One of the grown children (in her late teens) had a boyfriend who would come to visit every evening. The two of them would rub noses and talk sweet talk in whispers in the living room. Apparently in front of everybody. Except that by tacit agreement, no one acknowledged their presence. Sort of like when you are in an elevator, maybe. (Although I know some people do talk to strangers in elevators.)

Anyway. I think it is not impossible to have some privacy even in a tribal setting. I have a hard time believing the need for privacy is a new invention.

The first casualty of any revolution is irony. And the second is history.

Pol Pot the great revolutionary of the twentieth century took Cambodia back to Year Zero to obliterate history. In the same way, the great American revolutionary lexicographer of the nineteenth century, Noah Webster, cut the English language off from its historical roots.

And it is now this bowdlerised form of English that you use to think. So it is no surprise you find it hard to believe privacy is a new invention. In fact I should imagine you find it hard to think of anything in historical terms. And of course that was Noah Webster's intention.

Noah Webster left you literal minded, bereft of history.