photo by mbgrigby
This blog has sat here in relative silence for the month of September, a silence that was largely prompted by a difficult time my family went through while I was visiting. I was lucky to be with my entire family during that period, and I found myself in a surreal headspace where thoughts became difficult to transfer to paper (or screen); it felt more natural to allow these thoughts the time to unfurl and grow within.
We have the absolute of the private life, the inner life so deep even we have trouble grasping it.
Then there is the private life of thoughts, the thoughts too bare, too loving, too divisive, too politically incorrect.
We have next the private life lived outside, but alone — morning bathroom rituals, a journal penned, songs belted out in a car.
This shares a blurry boundary with the private life shared, whether with one person or two: opinions admitted, feelings confessed, love made, and a laugh shared quietly in public.
… and on, and on …
I could of course go on describing, but what really interests me is what happens when the spaces on the spectrum overlap and jumble. What happens when you secretly read the journal of another, or when the diaries of a renowned writer are published after her death? What happens when feelings confessed to one person are revealed to another? And it doesn’t always need to be negative jumbles resulting in betrayal or deception — there is the woman blogging about her most vulnerable self for all the internet to see; the man speaking his most private poetry out in the street, because he just can’t bear to hold it in.
When do we draw these lines? What triggers overlap and jumble? I think technology will come to mind for many of us as a trigger, as social media has pulled much of the private life to be shared with not just one person or two, but hundreds, or even thousands. The private life may be idle thoughts that five years ago, may have been kept inside — or it may be an account of a scandalous affair. But what else?
I’m curious to know your take on these shifts… are there both positive and negative effects? What’s your experience?
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Welcome back, Zoe
nice and provocative post.
There are so many dimensions to it. Like a social network counterpart of agoraphobia, that makes some suddenly crave for some isolation and turn off all connections to the Web. Or when someone feels overpowered by the compulsion to blog, Tweet, Flickr, Facebook, connect like an annoying addiction one cannot just easily quit.
But is it that different from “non-virtual” life? Have we not to always decide where to draw the line between our privacy and our public confessions?
This is a real challenge to everybody who are networking on the websphere. I’d say that technology, and the blogosphere + Twitter & etc, just add to a new and powerful dimension to a dilemma many of us have been dealing with for a long time. What should I do to keep my “self” separate from my social “ego”? Many thanks.
.-= Sergio Abranches´s last blog ..There is some hope for a climate deal in Copenhagen =-.
Welcome back, Zoe!
This idea of private vs. public is something I grapple with in terms of my own blog, because I want to be able to share what I’m thinking, but I want to make sure I do so in a way that retains something just for me.
When I was reading your post, I thought of your idea in terms of a ladder – the idea that there are different levels of public/private, each level getting more public (or more private) as you move up and down the ladder.
But in my mind, I think of it as parallels. With one group of people (say, bloggers), I’m this much private and that much public. But with a different group of people (i.e., friends), the public/private ratio is different because I have a different kind of relationship with them. I also think the kinds of things I share with each group changes. So, for instance, I might be very public about my religious views with bloggers, but with my friends, I’m much more private about that subject because the dynamic is different.
The blurring of the lines happens at different parts of my life based on how I interact with that person (or people). What – and how much – I share depends on who I’m communicating with at any given moment.
(Hope this helps – my thoughts are a little jumbled today.)
.-= Meredith´s last blog ..15 Things – 5 Final Reasons Why =-.
The main shift I’ve noticed, (coming directly from cultivating an ability to reveal “private” thoughts) has been a lack of respect…or a gain of rapport. Preserving one’s privacy gains respect (among my own cultural micro=climate) and revealing what the culture considers to be “private thoughts” gains rapport.
I have usually chosen rapport over respect. I’ve had a philosophy that I’ve held pretty much all my life that the most personal becomes universal as it is artfully expressed. So my life has been an experiment with what happens when one’s own personal process is revealed.
There have been disadvantages. Evidently, knowing the micro-management secrets about how something is done can drain the mystique out of it – even when the result is quite remarkable. Gained is the ability to design alternate pathways and take suggestions. Sometimes a tacit agreement would be evolved with others that an open-minded person is a tractable person who will ALWAYS take suggestions and do what others want them to do. This assumption is, of course, a rude awakening when it is not so.
It seems that (in my own culture anyway) that a person can either gain respect or gain rapport – but not both. There are not many character traits that actually exclude each other in an absolute way. But the effect of this particular pairing has been striking.
I’ve been able to establish respect in some of the fields of my interests by separating them and establishing boundaries between them. Who was it that said? “Creativity comes from skillfully hiding one’s own sources.”
On the other hand, it seems that as I become more personally skilled at describing my own inner processes, it’s as though other people have less room to respond. They react as if I’m having the last word, having stated it so completely. This characteristic must have something to do with how writing expresses authority. Obviously, I’m still exploring this ongoing question of how to invite participation…(which you do so well!)
Great to see you’re blogging again, Zoë!
Two examples come to mind:
I felt really awkward reading Susan Sontag’s journals in “Reborn”. There’s much in it that is interesting, but also so much internal stuff — the guessing and self-doubt and self-definition, the mix of uncertainty and over-confidence, etc.
It renewed my understanding of why writers and artists in the past have so often burned everything.
You can’t create without vulnerability, but that doesn’t mean that the vulnerability itself has to be public, does it?
And the other example that comes to mind is Richard Burton, whose wife burned much of his work on his death. From what I’ve read, there is some controversy regarding why she did that, but it is unquestionably an enormous cultural loss that she did.
Yet if she genuinely feared retribution from the government or the church or the community or her family for the contents of those papers, who could have morally claimed the right to veto her decision?
Ownership and control are one thing if you’re an artist or creative person wanting to share your work. You are, to some extent, voluntarily crossing that line into the public sphere, and then it’s a matter of who has permission to move that line.
Maybe the more disconcerting question: Can one choose to be private anymore? Or keep aspects of their life private and personal? Will it be possible to maintain identity firewalls, or is it like Scott McNealy once said: “You have no privacy. Get over it.”
Long-term, I think transparency could have a positive effect in expanding empathy and increasing tolerance.
But I fear the short-term — the transition to that long-term — because there are a lot of intolerant, judgmental and enraged people in the world. There are still so many places where people are beaten, jailed or killed because of who they are, and that makes the end of privacy seem like too steep a price to pay for Web 3.0. (Or whatever version number we’re up to now…)
Will increased transparency lead to more tolerance over time? How long will that take? And what if it doesn’t?
.-= Matt Blair´s last blog ..My Experience of English as a Second Language =-.
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@ Sergio – That’s a great point… I agree that it completely mirrors our public/private dilemmas in ‘offline’ life. I think it’s also interesting that some people seem to lean one way in online life, and the other way in offline life… in a way, it’s cool that it adds a whole new plane of interaction.
@ Meredith — I like the parallels analogy. Brings to mind what I wrote above to Sergio, because it seems like the more areas we engage in (online or off), the more dynamics we can play around with. Completely makes sense to me
@ Franis – What a fascinating point about respect and rapport! I feel like on that spectrum, I’ve leaned a bit more to the rapport side too. I think that in every dynamic, I have to choose which way to lean, but it hasn’t seemed like they are fully exclusive in my experience. It’s funny that you say I do well to invite participation — I’ve always thought that stemmed from being transparent about still “figuring it all out” and approaching the things I write about with a very honest openness — meaning my own view is not fixed, so open. Thanks for bringing up so many questions to ponder!
@ Matt – Wow, so many thoughts spurred by your comment. I often think about this question of writers and artists’ journals… it can be incredible material to read, but what about when they did not choose for them to be public? I think it does come down to respecting boundaries set by the individual (or someone close to them). I think part of the complications of privacy is that humans seem to have an underlying desire to test the boundaries… to push themselves to divulge, to know about the private lives of others… I think there’s a lot of internal contradiction there, inevitably.
That’s a big question about increased transparency. I won’t pretend to have the answer, but I will venture to say that a certain degree of transparency, such as sharing honest stories, can be a powerful way to spread tolerance, or perhaps even inspire people to start believing in others…
I have been reading your blog for months. It is cool. Directed here through a nonconformist blog no wonder I found a kindred soul: I am also an unrealistic person (doubt gravity) plus I am crazy about words.
Like all your posts found this post thought provoking. True, the increasingly shrinking of private space is a worrying trend. But that is a price we must pay as we converge into a global village and a happy big family called – humanity.
This may shed light on this. In the Ten Commandments when it commands ‘You shall not lie’ it does not mean you should not lie to outsiders- only to your ingroup. But now this ingroup is expanding to encompass humanity. If we have to lie now it is to aliens. As a species we have grown. The overkill nuclear stockpile comes to mind…the point I am trying to get across is: you no more have to hide your cards up your sleeve.
Even if I can not do it I have too much respect and gratitude to those writers or bloggers who bare their private life for us.
Paul.
@ Paul – Thanks for commenting — and I’m sorry to take so long in replying! Interesting analogy with the Ten Commandments, one I certainly hadn’t thought of. I think your vision of a humanity-wide family is what we should strive for, though I think we have a way to go… but it’s important to have such a vision in mind in order to spark continual progress.
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