Since the advent of social media and other data mining technological giants, privacy has become a contentious topic in our society. It is often construed as a social right every individual is entitled to.
I am here to tell you otherwise.
Privacy is fabricated. It doesn’t truly exist outside of our idea that it does. Never really has to be honest.
It is a social construct that exists in Western culture as a result of the process of civilisation. A key sociological thinker, Norbert Elias, wrote extensively on the process of civilisation and the role privacy played within this process.
The process of civilisation is an ongoing one. A society doesn’t just become civilised overnight, nor does it stop the process of becoming civilised. It is a process that is constantly active, sitting there in the background. It quietly takes place while everyone goes about their daily life, not noticing the subtle changes that occur in the world around them as ‘civilisation’ works its magic and takes hold.
If we look back to the Middle Ages, compared to our standards of civilisation today, we’d easily be able to consider people from those days to be uncivilised. People spent a lot more time in close proximity to each other in those days. In fact, quite a lot of the social etiquette we abide by today stemmed from those days and prior.
For instance, etiquette around grooming oneself, picking one’s nose, blowing one’s nose and farting in public areas developed around then. There were manuals written detailing what kind of behaviour is appropriate in public.
(As an aside, can you imagine being lumped with the job of handwriting procedures and etiquettes for appropriate ways people could fart and blow their nose when in the presence of others? Ha! )
We take this etiquette for granted now because this is just how we do things these days. But, it was only a few short centuries ago that the process of civilisation was silently taking hold and changing the way people interacted in their society.
This very same process of civilisation also saw the creation of public and private spheres. In a society where personal space was non-existent, privacy was also non-existent. As social etiquette for behaving in public spaces became more pronounced, so did the distinction between public and private.
The private sphere was defined by anything that took place outside of public spaces. By 1980, it came to mean ‘the right to be let alone’ as defined in Samuel D Warren and Louis Brandeis’ article titled The Right to Privacy.
Here we see the history of privacy taking shape as a social construct. It was a tool for enabling the civilisation of society to gradually become a staple part of our society’s legal structure.
But just because something exists in the law, it does not make it real. Laws simply encapsulate the moral and ethical code of a society along with stipulations and measures if these codes are violated.
Laws reflect collective consciousness at a specified time. They reflect our ideas of what is right and wrong. Behaviours that might seem unethical and totally barbaric today were once fine to abide by. The law we uphold ourselves to has simply changed over time to reflect common perspectives in society which emerge as a result of the civilising process.
Coming back to privacy, just because it is stated in the law, it does not make it something that actually exists. If enough people have the idea of privacy as being a right they are entitled to, then they can make it a part of the law. That is until more people come around with the idea that privacy is not actually a right anyone is entitled to and then it eventually stops being a part of the law.
If we look at the truth of what privacy is, there is very little substance to suggest that it exists as anything other than a social construct. In fact, it exists by way of helping to define the public more than it does as a phenomenon in and of itself. Privacy is simply the absence of public.
To think of it as a social right to me seems nonsense especially when considering the technological age we find ourselves in.
It is paradoxical to think that one can enjoy social media while also enjoying privacy. On the one hand, publicly sharing intimate details of one’s life on a mass scale and on the other wanting control over how that information is used and spread further.
That’s just silly in my opinion.
This ideology brings me to question if enough people think the same thing, whether that makes it real?
That’s the same with the topic of privacy. If everyone starts thinking that they are all entitled to the right of privacy and mass social sharing, does that then make it real?
I am inclined to say no.
Sure, you have the right to choose what information you will share. But if you are going to publicly share information online, don’t be foolish. You give away your right to how that information is really going to be accessed the moment you make it publicly available. Privacy is only defined in comparison to what is public after all.
The internet amplifies the public space. Finding your balance is up to you and what you decide. The beauty in the non-existence of privacy is that if you accept it is simply something you create in your mindscape, then you can play around with it and decide where you draw the line for it.
The responsibility regarding what information is shared publicly rests on your shoulders. Anything you don’t want to be shared publicly, well, don’t share it. With anyone.
A wise person once told me a secret is only kept a secret if no one knows you have a secret. The moment someone knows you have a secret, then that’s just as good as telling them the secret.
Going on social media and openly saying you are keeping a secret but then getting offended when people ask you what that secret is makes no sense. Don’t tell anyone you have a secret and they won’t come looking for it.
Similarly, if you don’t tell anyone you have private information then they won’t come looking for it. They simply cannot come looking for it. Anything you choose to share is shared in a public domain.
Sharing may be caring when it comes to gifts and sweets, but I’d beg to differ when it comes to information.