lj_refugees | (no subject)

(no subject)

According to USA Today, SUP is at the forefront of sociology. Our demands for privacy are not only outmoded and outdated, they are not socially beneficial.

I don't like this society. Can I please have interstellar travel now so I can go elsewhere?

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**Facepalms**

Right, shared this with a "friend" the reply:
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Friend: Hmm. It might help lower inhibitions. Which isn't a bad thing, really.
No offense, your country needs to loosen up. So does mine. But not like Sweden loosened up. That's just crazy.

Me: wait... you AGREE with the article?

Friend: I don't particularly think it's a big deal. These things come in, they go out. Inhibitions rise, inhibitions falls.

Me: Huh... well that explains a lot... I'm getting too old for this
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No really, I'm thinking I'm in a different generation. Maybe even a different planet.

I know I am. Someone didn't get the memo that I was supposed to have been born 20 years earlier. I walk around now like "Wait a minute, why are you texting me when we both have cellphones and you can just call? Isn't that why you made me GET a cellphone?"

Ugh YES!

It's odd. When I was little I was told that I was "Born Thirty"... And now? I don't know, I just feel OLD in general.

I look at classmates from HS who were NEVER interested in computers and now? they are WAY more 'plugged in' than I am: texting, FB, Twitter, etc.

I think Americans are hilariously Victorian sometimes. Witness the old-but-still-valid example of Janet Jackson's breast being exposed during the Superbowl. The entire country got the vapors and had to collapse on a fainting couch.

So yeah, I do think we can be uptight sometimes.

However, while I had no issue with Janet's breast, that doesn't mean I want to show everyone my breasts. We need to get over our pearl-clutching, but eliminating privacy is not the answer. I think it would actually increase our inhibitions, allowing some to feel superior to anyone who doesn't line up with our ideas of Normal, to rank them in ways that never occurred to us. Knowing private facts about people doesn't tell us more about those people, it just gives us something justify our snap judgments and dismissals. "I read on Lisa's FB that she's bipolar. No wonder she's such a moody bitch!" So anyone living in some way outside of the "norm" will be have even more reason not to want it out there.

And once society accepts privacy is passe, anyone who resists this notion will be looked upon as someone with something to hide and not to be trusted. Hello McCarthyism!

Anyway, privacy loss won't loosen us up. It will turn us into witch-hunters.

Edited 2010-09-15 11:27 (UTC)

Yup, and the trouble is? There really is no such thing as "normal." Not really. We all have our quirks that "deviate from the norm."

Having a "public persona" and a "private persona" is actually quite normal: Actors, news anchors, etc. do it all the time. Just because I'm not "famous" to a lot of people outside of my "circle of influence" doesn't mean that I want everyone in my circle to know that my 'public persona' is me.

There's a fine line that must be drawn.

If DW had metaquotes, I would metaquote that first paragraph.

Also, not Victorian but Puritanical. remember, the nation was "officially" settled (Jamestown was there first, but no one seems to remember them...outside Virginia, that is) by people invited to leave England for wanting to poop all the parties.

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