What Is So Good About Privacy?

Another Facebook discussion. This one starting over Lindsey Graham and Chelsea Handler's suggestion that he is gay. The common answer is that we do not care what his sexual preferences are. Such things have no relation to his public life. What he does behind closed doors in the privacy of his own residence and the like really does not matter.

I disagree. There are several reasons for this position that I will will try to tease apart here.

The first idea is in regard to privacy.  I wonder if privacy is nice but not to be as celebrated as it is. It is necessary. The idea out there is that there are public and private spaces, spheres, and the two are kept separate. The public is your professional life, your engagement in the neighborhood, your involvement with the world. Your private sphere is that which is most intimate, most personal. These are to be kept in the confines of your home, away from the masses, away from others.

First off, in a nation of 330 million people that is a lot of private spheres.

If each has their own private life, which they do not share, do you actually know anyone? I wonder what it is I do not know. Typically, the things most important to people are not shared?  Things they most care about they cannot or will not share? Is that a good thing?

Most good things we are willing to share. Becoming a parent, gaining a promotion, announcing an engagement. These are all things we share in various ways. So what good things do we not share? Sexual satisfaction. Aside from those most intimate we typically do not share such things. This is probably the biggest item in that we do not share. And even this is shared in taking of marriage vowels, or even just acknowledging that someone is special to us. We do not acknowledge the act but the person.

Much of what we want in our private life but not our public life are things that we are not proud of. Things that could embarrass or humiliate us. So we may not want to share our absolute fascination for oral sex, but we might acknowledge the person we share such with, just omitting some of the details regarding why. For those of you who remember the Sopranos, this was the case with Uncle Junior and his trip to Boca with a younger attractive girlfriend he had at the time. Despite his embarrassment though, I doubt this really hurt him. Tony tried to make fun of it, but he wanted to diminish his Uncle Junior.  Tony was routinely competing against him, but I would want to say this tale probably in fact gained Junior standing or respect of the rank and file at the end of the day.

The whole premise of that show early on was that Tony, a NJ mob capo, was going to a shrink, a psychiatrist. They played with that for a season or two until it finally came out and no one really cared. Of course later on in the show you had Vito who was one of Tony's underlings, a mid-level manager, who was an "earner". He knew how to make a buck, and Tony respected that to the point where he was willing to look the other way regarding his being gay. Of course others in the organization did not agree on that.

All of the above are tales of the personal and private life versus the public. And the Sopranos may not be the ideal place to look for insight, but it is a start. Politics is not to far afield from the Sopranos, and the workplace is still a challenge regarding various personal secrets, regardless of the numerous EEOC laws and the like. Even in marriage there are things not shared.

This goes to one's authenticity. We want to be able to trust someone as we believe we know them. I know your values and history, and based upon that I can share this with you or be with you. With the challenge of public and private personas, however, we really do not know anyone. To trust someone always is to some degree a leap of faith. If we factor this in, that there is an unknowable part that will not or cannot be shared, then that leap just became that much bigger.

Families and relationships aside, politics require we see the person we are voting for as like ourselves, with similar views or at least acceptable views. If parts are hidden from view we are left trusting what they say. This is true often times in numerous situations, but it is certainly not the desired. We want to see who and what they are, what they do. We want this to be in concordance with what they say. It should not be a case of do as I say, not as I do. With the idea of privacy, of what one does behind closed doors, being truly your own, we will never know.

So the first point is that this is problematic for the voter or constituent, for the person who is asked to believe and trust this person who is in office, who is leading the city, state, or country. Nor does it help the the person in the position of mayor, of senator, house member. . . President. What is done in privacy, what is concealed from public view, is an albatross around their neck waiting to constrict. It is a burden they must constantly attend to and be conscious of. And it becomes heavier over time. it becomes a sticking point with unknown consequences.

A partly Freudian point here but an obvious one. A man who hides something will go out of his way to insure it stays hidden, contingent upon the value he places on the secret, on the thing he wants concealed - the thing he wants maintained as private. This can be seen in policy discussions and more importantly decisions where he or she wants to convey that they have no involvement, no interest. and with that will act exactly opposite their private lives, what they do in their homes and so forth so as to disassociate themselves from it. Again the issue of embarrassment and shame, humiliation. How does such actions effect them? How does it effect both their public and private lives? We all have such lives, but I am suggesting that the lesser the distinction the better.

Circle back to the initial point of 330 million people, each with a private life or lives. We can only get along if we trust. It is hard to trust in general. The existence of the private and making it so secured, so vested, further complicates an already challenging goal of 330 million people agreeing on something. So no doubt each of us has personal feelings and history, it should make up a small part of us. The smaller the better.

What is it about ourselves that causes such embarrassment and humiliation? Is it something that only this person endures? We need to ask, or the person needs to ask, ultimately is it better to share or not? Is the price of sharing such details with people, with voters, with constitutes, too costly? Or is it the case that keeping these things private is actually more costly? I suggest it is often the later, just as I did regarding Uncle Junior. That embarrassment, that shame I suggest is often not real. Perhaps, as in the case of Junior, it is real only because we gave it credence.