I was asked by a reader to comment on the article that starts as follows:
When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they’re not worried. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” they declare. “Only if you’re doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don’t deserve to keep it private.”
I have a very protective attitude towards my privacy. It matters so much to me that I guard it like a rabid dog. When people ask me where I’ve been and what I’ve done, I sometimes lie. Not because I’ve done anything I’m ashamed of, but simply because I don’t feel like sharing this information about myself. As much as I love my husband, if he went through my pockets, rummaged in my papers or read my emails, I would end the relationship immediately, no questions asked. The same goes for all of my friends, relatives and colleagues. Invade my privacy, and we are done for good. And it isn’t because I have anything to hide from my husband or anybody else. It’s because if people invade my private space, this means they disrespect me completely as a human being.
At the same time, in spite of this exaggerated need to protect my privacy, I have absolutely no problem with having a gazillion surveillance cameras record what I do or satellites observing me inside my house (I have no idea if that’s done or possible, mind you). It matters absolutely nothing to me if all my purchases are listed and stored in some database and some governmental officials or corporate employees have a record of every drink of alcohol I ever had and every condom I ever purchased. I don’t even care if some governmental official records every session with my analyst and listens to it at leisure.
The reason why I guard my privacy so fiercely from people I know and don’t care in the least about what some strangers know about me is that I have no relationship with strangers. They can’t disrespect me as a human being because they don’t know me as a human being. To them, I’m just a number among millions. They don’t know what I eat, drink or read. They know what number 73625268V03030L3-3-7 eats, drinks and reads.
It’s a little like what happens in a hospital. Many women would have a problem with spreading their legs and demonstrating their vaginas to a group of coworkers and friends, right? However, women who give birth at a hospital do just that, even if they are giving birth though an elective C-section, and suffer no emotional trauma as a result. Many people would never walk naked in front of their neighbors and friends, yet those same people do that very easily at a hospital. Medical personnel has no relationship with me as a human being, so there is no shame or reticence between us. This is precisely the reason why people so often share secrets with strangers they meet on a bus or anonymous online interlocutors.
Privacy as a concept only makes sense when you are interacting with somebody as a private individual. My personal space can only be invaded by a person who knows me as a person.
The belief that somebody somewhere cares enough about you to collect and analyze every bit of data about you and that somebody constantly pays attention to every aspect of your existence is an effective cure for loneliness. It’s easy to feel lost and insignificant in an enormous universe and these paranoid fantasies of how somebody will analyze your purchases and notice that you are sick (one of the examples from the quoted article) must be comforting. “Somebody has got to be paying attention to what I read, eat, drink and worry about,” people like the author of the article seem to say. “There’s got to be somebody out there who actually gives a fuck.”
As we all know, life only has meaning if there are witnesses to it. How do we even know if we exist when nobody pays any attention to us? In the absence of actual human beings who are interested in our reading choices, purchases and the state of our health, we might generate fantasies about the “Big Brother” who actually does care.
What I do find curious is how easy some people find it to sell their “life is so scaaaaaary” worldview of abandoned, terrified little kids.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m of the view that whether or not I’m understood doesn’t matter, so long as people can avoid making reductionist responses with narrow minds. Experiences can’t be replicated and therefore nobody can really understand another’s experiences. That doesn’t mean they can’t use another person’s words to understand their own experiences, though.
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I’d be very very glad if people could fight against their tendency to make reductionist responses to my texts. Time and again, people come to the blog to accuse me of being aggressive towards them when all I do is express my own opinion in my own online diary. The idea that they are the ones who are actually being aggressive doesn’t even begin to visit their minds.
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That happens when people feel threatened by ideas they don’t quite understand. Few people exercise any degree of patience.
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What about private information not being protected well enough? Not only there is “usual” identity theft, (criminals are very interested in some private info
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft//consumers/about-identity-theft.html )
but today’s wars are also cyber. F.e. Saudi hacker recently targeting Israeli credit card users.
Other countries will be very interested to gain access to databases for their own purposes. Even if those DBs wouldn’t hold credit cards numbers, they would hold other potentially useful info.
On another topic. I just read this:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/06/19/the-limits-of-religious-freedom/
And got vibes of both
– something, at least partly, antisemitic, as if Americans or Christians don’t have their own weird customs (pay attention that the post’s point isn’t against circumcision, but against those sexually-molesting-newborns Jews)
– connected to your post on unhealthy attitude to sexuality in US. She writes:
I don’t see any connection to sexuality here, but even if you somehow do – Isn’t it ridiculous to let circumcision happen, but to go A State Must Step In in a minor last step of it, originally used for health reasons?
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If I wasn’t clear enough, I agree with state stepping in to prevent infection, but she is mostly interested in (in her eyes, not mine) sexual aspect.
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I believe that circumcision should be outlawed. People should be able to decide on their own if they want parts of THEIR bodies cut off. However, it’s VERY hard to even start a conversation about this because people – without any religious motivation whatsoever – go into fits when the idea is suggested that they shouldn’t have the right to mutilate newborns’ penises. I once expressed my opinion about it after which a group of SCIENTISTS cyberbullied me for two weeks. This is to the discussion of how scientists are supposed to be rational and different from religious fanatics.
This is not a religious issue. It’s an issue of children’s rights.
“What about private information not being protected well enough? Not only there is “usual” identity theft, (criminals are very interested in some private info”
– There is a much higher likelihood that my purse with all my cards will be stolen any time I go outside. This, however, does not prevent me from going outside. 🙂 🙂 Bad things can happen, it’s true. But a psychologically healthy person does not let that ever-present possibility to pray on her or his mind too much. 🙂
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//I believe that circumcision should be outlawed.
I know that you think it. I wasn’t talking RE that here, but on her approach of:
It’s SEXUAL ABUSE, somebody step in!
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“I know that you think it. I wasn’t talking RE that here, but on her approach of:
It’s SEXUAL ABUSE, somebody step in!”
– Mutilation of sexual organs cannot fail to be sexually abusive and somebody should, indeed, step in. Analyzing which specific detail of the process is worse than another one is arguing whether the guillotine should be sterilized before use.
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//As we all know, life only has meaning if there are witnesses to it.
Do you agree with it too? So, if you’re an atheist, does it follow that life has no meaning? You said otherwise once. Is meaning other people, who’ll all disappear forever soon enough too? I don’t see how it makes sense.
How do you define “meaning” at all? May be, you want to write a post about it? 🙂
What I do find curious is how easy some people find it to sell their “life is so scaaaaaary” worldview of abandoned, terrified little kids.
I suppose, many people believe or have difficulty accepting their unbelief because of feeling like “life only has meaning if there are witnesses to it” and that without God to be an ultimate witness, life is too scary. Wanted to say with it that the worldview is quite popular. (But I don’t agree that the discussed post is a good example of it – you don’t have to hold this worldview to care about privacy, imo).
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“So, if you’re an atheist, does it follow that life has no meaning?”
– I don’t know how that conclusion was reached. By witnesses I mean actual people you know: relatives, colleagues, neighbors, students, blog readers.
“May be, you want to write a post about it?”
– Yes, I have figured out the meaning of life. It’s a big relief to have done so.
“But I don’t agree that the discussed post is a good example of it – you don’t have to hold this worldview to care about privacy, imo”
– I care passionately about privacy. But I can’t muster any energy to worry about the government when there is a much more near and crucial battle that I’m fighting for my privacy against actual people I know who’d like to intrude it.
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//Yes, I have figured out the meaning of life. It’s a big relief to have done so.
Please, do write a post about your conclusions then. Not many people would say the 1st sentence. 🙂
//By witnesses I mean actual people you know: relatives, colleagues, neighbors, students, blog readers.
So, for life to have meaning, you need community. Got it! 🙂
Sometimes I got impression you protest too much against the word.
What about a lonely philosopher on an island or a hermit, though? Some people have chosen to be alone for religious & not religious reasons.
//there is a much more near and crucial battle that I’m fighting for my privacy against actual people I know who’d like to intrude it
Now I understand better where you come from (hopefully).
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“Please, do write a post about your conclusions then. Not many people would say the 1st sentence. ”
– I can’t guarantee any other people will find it convincing. I have one convert, though – my husband. 🙂 🙂 I’ll write about it, sure, since there is interest.
“So, for life to have meaning, you need community. ”
– Separate individuals do not make a community. Take people who watched the same movie at a theater. They witnessed the same thing and even at the same time. But who’d call them a community?
“What about a lonely philosopher on an island or a hermit, though”
– Robinson Crusoe narrates and narrates. Can’t stoop soliciting witnesses through narration. 🙂
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//- Robinson Crusoe narrates and narrates. Can’t stoop soliciting witnesses through narration. 🙂
Yes, because he is a literary character. I meant real world hermits.
Or, do you want to say that witnesses may also be imaginary? Like writing a diary, even if nobody will ever read it.
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Any and all information a person posts (ESPECIALLY photos) may be used against them (by government, “friends”, bitter significant other, trolls); even thinking about an agency gathering information about me is making me sweat.
Of course, for them I am just a number; a number that can be easily erased.
I know I am paranoid, but am I paranoid enough ?
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Do you drive a car? Take showers? How do you deal with the anxiety provoked by the likelihood of a fatal accident during these mundane activities?
Statistically, the danger from these activities is much higher than the danger of your information somehow being used by the government to drive you to your death. You do realize this, right?
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