From: QueeneMUSE@aol.com
Date: Thu Dec 19 1996 - 13:11:10 MST
In a message dated 96-12-19 08:06:45 EST, Paul Wafker writes:
<< However, I reject this view of a person's desire for privacy. I
strongly
believe that a deep concern for privacy is psychologically unhealthy. To the
extent that someone has this need, they are to that extent psychologically
crippled and certainly less estimable in my judgement than someone who has
no
need for personal privacy. >>
I agree. Compulsively private people can complicate their lives to madness.
Here I think we are having a semantics problem.
Privacy in the term you are using it, is as loaded as Ayn Rand's use of the
word selfish was when she started calling it a virtue. It has baggage.
It is not exactly privacy in the sense that many of us think about that you
oppose (an unhealthy compulsion to hide) just as her "valued" kind of
selfishness is not the usual meaning - (unthinking self obsession).
It seems you are talking about decompartmentalization, and issues of the
"private self" as oposed to the "public self" . Plato thought a good ruler's
public self and private self should be equal. A man should be as good a
person privately as publicly and so forth. Then he would be a truly great
king.
I agree with the premise that one should strive to be as integrated as
possible, and show_ONE face_ to the world and not be ashamed of one's actions
on any front! ,
But that is quite another thing from removing sovereignity over one's own
_environment_, which may include alone time, secret value, not unveiling
things until the right time, body privacy, and voluntary isolation.
... if nothing else these things give one simplicity and peace. They may also
be useful for strategical planning.
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