One of the things I love about growing up in the US is growing up with the concept of privacy. Did you know that such a thing is only associated in western culture? Many languages like Russian (along with all other Slavic languages) don't even have a word for "privacy" and so rely on creating complex terms from existing words or borrowing the very word from the English language. Not only that but Anglo-American culture sets it apart from even Western European countries. It's a fundamental view derived from old isolationist movements to secede from the British Empire and live separately from the rest of the world.
Privacy is important for the well being of a human's mind. It's security for thoughts that would otherwise conflict with society's views. But why is providing protection for such a thing so important? It's because it's this conflict that defines the existence of individual thought from the unanimous thought of society. Without individual thought, there are no internal conflicts, no impurities in humanity, and we are left as a single collective with human beings as its cellular structure. Some may call this paradise because of its harmonic, utopian value where we progress in the universe with great efficiency. I call it stagnation where culture becomes synonymous with human survival, and creativity & art cease to exist.
To destroy a person's privacy is to destroy his mind.
1 comment:
Privacy wasn't really an idea until 200 or 300 years ago. Up until that point, it was village life for most people where everyone knew each other -- everyone knew what everyone else was doing pretty much.
That's my only real input for this entry. I liked it. <3
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