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Privacy

“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

– Ayn Rand

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Passing It On. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Privacy”

  1. C.K. Sample III Says:
    December 6th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    Actually, I think this is exactly the root of the majority of humankind’s “civilized” problems. A little more of the tribal distributed and shared panopticon would do us good. Not an institutionalized, top-down big brotherian approach, but a more tribal approach.

    The strict privacy that arose in modern times, and that was codified societally for English speaking nations during the Victorian age is little more than a construction of the bourgeoisie that’s time has passed. Let it die.

    … of course, this could all be just my silly over-sharing opinion. ;-)

  2. Super Jesus Says:
    December 6th, 2009 at 3:01 pm

    Meh, yet another thing Ayn Rand was wrong about.

  3. Evo Terra Says:
    December 7th, 2009 at 11:23 am

    Sure doesn’t seem to be accurate today, does it?

  4. Chris Miller Says:
    December 8th, 2009 at 9:33 pm

    @CK: You may be right about the tribal approach. The evolution of what we call privacy is an interesting subject, and I think you have a point. In many ways, the Victorian model of privacy helps foster family issues and leads to isolation by it’s very nature. Good example…I live in on a street that thirty years ago was a neighborhood. Now it’s just a bunch of people living on the same road. We’re all so very private, so wrapped up in what we are doing. The last time we all got together was during the power outage what took out the NE United States.

    That’s pretty sad.

    I found the quote interesting. I’m not sure that I agree with it, but it does cause one to think.

    I also find it interesting that people so willingly cast off their privacy with respect to the Internet. Perhaps its because we like to feel connected. Or it’s convenience. Or it’s fun. Or all of the above. Still, I cannot help but think that some private time away from all of this is healthy, that living online leads to a myopic view of personal relationships.

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