On Privacy
It seems more and more apparent to me that people feel entitled to the individual, inalienable right to privacy which I had thought to be self evident. More and more colleagues are obsessed with “What are you doing, where are you going?, why aren’t you doing xyz. The reality is closing in around me that people have no respect for an individuals right to privacy. Even behind me a man and a woman are sitting together and one says to other, “Who are you texting? You just got that phone?” The other replied with a satisfactory answer, yet the other one seemed annoyed and even perturbed at the answer. Another thing that I find bewildering is that one the one who asked the question seemed dissatisfied. People more and more today are looking for conflict and as such are moving society to follow suit. People do not like being lied to, this is obvious, but to insist that one is being lied to has become the new normal in interpersonal relationships.
It is regrettable to me that the only way that I can find to maintain any right to privacy is to never leave my house or to speak to anyone. If I leave my house to go to the library there is a chance (no matter how minute) that someone will see my car, or me at a store making a purchase that might then ruin a bit of my privacy. What would I buy that might ruin my privacy? I regret to inform you that the very question has been socially conditioned into you so that you might suspect something of me for not wanting to divulge information that I would rather keep private. By asking this question, or worse still, harboring suspicion about me because of the mystery that you perceive is also socially conditioned.
What are we supposed to do then? Take everyone at their word? Not necessarily. I suggest that we as a society uphold the values that we ourselves espouse as basic human rights. Innocent until we are proven definitively guilty. Until such a truth be reached we need to quell the part of our minds that insists that the world around us is wrong and out to get us and instead adopt and hold dear the fundamentals of human relationship that binds us all in mutual respect for our fellow man knowing that as we seek to aid in keeping the privacy of others that we too are helping our own privacy to be kept. Restoring the intrinsic right of a human being to have to themselves a piece of their life reserved for them and them alone.
Our government has taken insufficient steps to prevent corporate structures from gathering all the information that they can on an individual. I call to mind an anecdote do demonstrate this simple invasion of personal privacy from when I was a laborer, working for a company that has thankfully disintegrated in my time away from the company. The law protects individuals from divulging certain medical information to an employer so long as that medical information does not directly relate to the safety of that worker and their colleagues. A reasonable ask. As this does not forfeit out privacy entirely as each employ can choose the manner of their employ or attain the highest form of liberation which is to follow the process of powerful autonomy in which one employs themselves for the direct betterment of their own future. Whilst working at my menial labor I was required by my employment that I was to bring my medication to my employer so that they could copy the prescription details, and keep it on file for whatever they desired. This violation of my privacy no matter how trivial led to a reputation being fostered concerning my character amongst my employer and ultimately, when all other attempts to terminate my status with the corporate entity, led to termination with no reason given. I give you this small example to illustrate how a small violation of my person privacy tainted other’s perception of me, and led to consequences based on assumptions.
this is the problem with the condition of society and they way that we have been misled into a state of distrust and the passive hostility of prejudice that has been fostered to achieve a blind and coerced obedience to any party that exercises authority over any individuals personal privacy and by extension their autonomy. This demand for obedience is often implicit rather than demanded, and when the implication is not inferred, it is expressly communicated that within personal relationships, the party in, or seeking, authority over the other, there can be no privacy. inasmuch, so long as this paradigm is allowed to persist within society, privacy will continue to be relegated to privilege for the obedient instead of a basic, human, inalienable right of the oppressed.
