Privacy

A few weeks back, two of our friends, A. and E., were fighting about what whether it's okay to forward an email which your friend sent only to you, to another mutual friend or friends. A., who is a young Christian, denigrated the whole concept of privacy, saying it is necessary only because of human selfishness and pride. In an unfallen world there would be no need for privacy, he claimed. I disagree, vehemently. The following are some thoughts on the importance of privacy.

I believe privacy is deeply connected to personhood, not just sinfulness. Even in a world where everyone was perfectly loving and humble, I think the need for privacy would still exist.

*Note: Perhaps in Heaven that won't be the case, because Jesus promised that we will be one there as He and the Father are one--perhaps this includes sharing all our thoughts? Likewise, in a world with telepathy or perfect communication, privacy would function differently.

This is because privacy has to do with appropriateness and the specificity of relationships. Respecting a person's privacy is honoring the specificity of their relationship with you. Each relationship is different, because every person is unique. Persons, even persons who all study computer science, or even persons who all follow the same God, are never interchangeable. When you say something to one person, that person will interpret it in a particular way, because they have some particular and finite knowledge of you and a particular relationship and history with you. If that person repeats what you said to another person, that third person is not going to hear and understand it in exactly the same way as the original, intended audience.

For example, if I say something to O., he will understand it in a much deeper and more nuanced way than if I say that same thing to O.'s best friend S., because O. knows me more intimately and also knows more about me and simply has had more experiences with me. Thus if O. does repeat what I said to S., he has a responsibility to both me and S. to provide whatever context and/or interpretation he can to make it more likely that S. will interpret my words as I intended them.

Of course, in a lot of cases, no matter how much context/interpretation O. provides, there is no way for him to repeat my words to S. in an appropriate way. Some things just can't transfer, because some context is relational and historical rather than informational. That is, the fact that I'm O.'s wife is a major, major part of the context of whatever I say to him, and that context is simply not transferable because our relationship is unique.

Now, I know marriage is an extreme example of a relationship being specific and its contents being impossible to repeat appropriately outside of the marital context. But every relationship is specific and particular. The particularity of relationships is rooted not in our fallenness but in our personhood. A., E. has a particular relationship with you, and E., A. has a particular relationship with you. That particularity in and of itself, without recourse to matters of pride, unlove, hiding, etc., necessitates a consideration for the particularity of any given exchange between the two of you.

To summarize and apply: Simply because E. is a unique individual and he said some things to you, A., as your own unique individual in the context of your particular unique shared relationship--simply because you are both persons and every time you speak to each other you do so as persons--it doesn't work to repeat what he said to you to other people who weren't invited into the original exchange. If you do so without asking his consent, you are treating him as a non-person.

Whatever bad purposes privacy may be used for, privacy in itself is an essential way of respecting personhood. That's why it's important.

P.S. It's also worth noting that when you argue that privacy is only important to people who wish to hide something, you make it impossible for anyone to request privacy without appearing to be guilty. It's a conversation-stopper. If your goal is to foster open communication and create a space where no one feels the need to hide their true self, then making the argument that the desire for privacy comes from sin is counterproductive. On the other hand, if your goals is to shut down communication and "win" the argument, this might be a highly successful tactic to take... Heh.

#401

This is my four hundred and first blog post! Considering that I've been with this blog for just about four years now, I suppose it's only reasonable to have stacked up so many posts. Still, it feels like an accomplishment, a significant accumulation, like a pile of autumn leaves large enough to leap into.

Lately I've been thinking about the nature of this internet chronicle of mine. Some of my thoughts are finally enough in order to record and share, and this seems a good occasion. So read on, for some reflection on different sorts of blogs and which sort this one might be.

I have noticed that, when I stumble onto strangers' blogs in the tangled forest of Internet, there are two types that snag my curiosity enough to make me linger. The first type is informative, educational, thought-provoking: the idea-driven blog. In these blogs, it's not important to me who is writing, because the ideas speak for themselves, and their relevance or importance is determined in relation to the world outside, not by their relation to the blog's author(s).

Then there is the second type: the self-disclosing blogs. The story blogs, the personal blogs. The blogs where I get to see the person on the other side of the writing, not just in a snapshot or a statistical analysis, but in an on-going account of life in which I know fairly soon who the main character (the blogger) is: her key relationships, his ideological standpoint, her job, his hobbies, etc. I quickly lose interest in personal blogs that do not make clear the who behind the writing.

My own blog does not fall into either these categories. It is definitely not an idea-centric blog, since I so often write things that take their significance primarily (or entirely) in relation to my personal experience. And while I do often write about events taking place in my heart and soul, I carefully excise most of the eternal references that would root the emotions and meditations in a story. This is largely because I do not want random strangers to know my story. I feel exposed and vulnerable to a person who knows the story-shape of my life, in a way that I do not feel exposed to someone who has seen intimate snapshots of my life but has no larger picture of how those images fit together. The shape of this blog has been largely or entirely determined by what I feel like and want as a writer, with minimal consideration for what readers might want. Does this mean any stranger who stumbles across this blog will abandon it after a few sentences in favor of a more story-centric one?

I suppose those story-centric blogs are like memoirs being written in real-time. Meanwhile, my kind of blog is more like a collection of lyric poems. In reading a memoir, you learn an entire history, the story of how a person came to be. You learn a thousand things about them, though it may be (depending on the memoir) that you gain very little understanding of what it feels like to be that person. On the other hand, in reading someone's poems, you can get to know that person in a very intimate and intuitive way. But you don't know anything about their life, necessarily; what you know is the indefinable, indescribable, invisible pattern of their thoughts and emotions. You carry the imprint of their heart upon your own, and yet you wouldn't recognize the writer if you met him or her on the street.

I would be okay with having hundreds of strangers read a book of my poems. (More than okay: I would be so proud and happy.) But I would not be okay with having hundreds of strangers read a biography of me or a memoir by me (which I will never write). So I guess it only makes sense that my blog has the flavor of a collection of lyric poems, rather than the flavor of a memoir. And that's okay, because there are people out there who read Rilke, if not in the same numbers as people who read Dreams From My Father.

Thanks for reading, and here's to the next 401 posts! :)