The Encroachment of the Public

The Encroachment of the Public



By Sam Vaknin

Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"



As Aristotle and John Stuart Mill observed, the private sphere sets

limits, both normative and empirical, to the rights, powers, and

obligations of others. The myriad forms of undue invasion of the

private sphere - such as rape, burglary, or eavesdropping - are all

crimes. Even the state - this monopolist of legal violence -

respects these boundaries. When it fails to honor the distinction

between public and private - when it is authoritarian or

totalitarian - it loses its legitimacy.



Alas, this vital separation of realms is eroding fast.



In theory, private life is insulated and shielded from social

pressures, the ambit of norms and laws, and even the strictures of

public morality. Reality, though, is different. The encroachment of

the public is inexorable and, probably, irreversible. The individual

is forced to share, consent to, or merely obey a panoply of laws,

norms, and regulations not only in his or her relationships with

others - but also when solitary.



Failure to comply - and to be seen to be conforming - leads to dire

consequences. In a morbid twist, public morality is now synonymous

with social orthodoxy, political authority, and the exercise of

police powers. The quiddity, remit, and attendant rights of the

private sphere are now determined publicly, by the state.



In the modern world , privacy - the freedom to withhold or divulge

information - and autonomy - the liberty to act in certain ways when

not in public - are illusory in that their scope and essence are

ever-shifting, reversible, and culture-dependent. They both are

perceived as public concessions - not as the inalienable (though,

perhaps, as Judith Jarvis Thomson observes, derivative) rights that

they are.



The trend from non-intrusiveness to wholesale invasiveness is clear:



Only two hundred years ago, the legal regulation of economic

relations between consenting adults - a quintessentially private

matter - would have been unthinkable and bitterly resisted. Only a

century ago, no bureaucrat would have dared intervene in domestic

affairs. A Man's home was, indeed, his castle.



Nowadays, the right - let alone dwindling technological ability - to

maintain a private sphere is multiply contested and challenged.

Feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon, regard it as a patriarchal

stratagem to perpetuate abusive male domination. Conservatives blame

it for mounting crime and terrorism. Sociologists - and the Church -

worry about social atomization and alienation.



Consequently, today, both one's business and one's family are open

books to the authorities, the media, community groups, non- governmental organizations, and assorted busybodies.



Which leads us back to privacy, the topic of this essay. It is often

confused with autonomy. The private sphere comprises both. Yet, the

former has little to do with the latter . Even the acute minds of

the Supreme Court of the United States keep getting it wrong.



In 1890, Justice Louise Brandeis (writing with Samuel Warren)

correctly summed up privacy rights as "the right to be left alone" -

that is, the right to control information about oneself.



But, nearly a century later, in 1973, in the celebrated case of Roe

vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court, mixing up privacy and autonomy,

found some state regulation of abortion to be in violation of a

woman's constitutional right of privacy, implicit in the liberty

guarantee of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.



But if unrelated to autonomy - what is privacy all about?



As Julie Inness and many others note, privacy - the exclusive access

to information - is tightly linked to intimacy. The more intimate

the act - excretion, ill-health, and sex come to mind - the more

closely we safeguard its secrets. By keeping back such data, we show

consideration for the sensitivities of other people and we enhance

our own uniqueness and the special nature of our close relationships.



Privacy is also inextricably linked to personal safety. Withholding

information makes us less vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Our

privileged access to some data guarantees our wellbeing, longevity,

status, future, and the welfare of our family and community. Just

consider the consequences of giving potentially unscrupulous others

access to our bank accounts, credit card numbers, PIN codes, medical

records, industrial and military secrets, or investment portfolios.



Last, but by no way least, the successful defense of one's privacy

sustains one's self-esteem - or what Brandeis and Warren

called "inviolate personality". The invasion of privacy provokes an

upwelling of shame and indignation and feelings of indignity,

violation, helplessness, a diminished sense of self-worth, and the

triggering of a host of primitive defense mechanisms. Intrusion upon

one's private sphere is, as Edward J. Bloustein observes, traumatic.



Incredibly, modern technology has conspired to do just that. Reality

TV shows, caller ID, electronic monitoring, computer viruses

(especially worms and Trojans), elaborate databases, marketing

profiles, Global Positioning System (GPS)-enabled cell phones,

wireless networks, smart cards - are all intrusive and counter- privacy.



Add social policies and trends to the mixture - police profiling,

mandatory drug-testing, workplace keylogging, the nanny (welfare)

state, traffic surveillance, biometric screening, electronic

bracelets - and the long-heralded demise of privacy is no longer

mere scaremongering.



As privacy fades - so do intimacy, personal safety, and self-esteem

(mental health) and with them social cohesion. The ills of anomic

modernity - alienation, violence, and crime, to mention but three -

are, therefore, directly attributable to diminishing privacy. This

is the irony: that privacy is increasingly breached in the name of

added security (counter-terrorism or crime busting). We seem to be

undermining our societies in order to make them safer.





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AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)



Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant

Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West

Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review,

PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International

(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health

and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and

Suite101.



Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government

of Macedonia.



Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com