privacy is for people with something to hide

How predictable the follies of the sons and daughters of Adam. How typical the seeds of their transgressions. How obvious the symptoms. Would that we did not blindfold ourselves, so much more readily would we anticipate our disappointment.

Contracts 4:18

Transparency has been on my mind lately. It’s something we demand with ease from institutions and public figures, but not our peers. We call out media outlets, corporations, and governments for their doublespeak then turn around and use it with each other. Tim and I talked about how the threats of shame and violence probably contributed to the rise of proto privacy rights or at least the rise in the clamorers for those rights. Understandable. The general lack of transparency, however, among individuals – especially regarding our desires, valuations, and fears – often among those closest to us is simply jarring.

The whole mess strikes me as doubly odd given our obsession with the unknowability of the other. Defending a right to opacity helps alienation along its little path, inevitable or not.

I guess the quote from Contracts isn’t actually about opacity. I’m didn’t think that the Book of Contracts even had whole sentences in it (with the exception – maybe – of the very beginning). I’ll have to go to the source on this one.

The rest of the dogs are here. Or also on Facebook where everyone has already seen them.

Also the Yukon.

New life was breathed into threebyfive today. I say that once every two months during periods in which I betray my laziness. At least it’s prettier now, instead of totally nonfunctional.

Incase you hadn’t noticed, everything is now justified.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 11:09 pm and is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.