When did it become OK to be a creep? When did it become normal to have entities (FB, Google, Govts, businesses, people, etc) intruding into every aspect of our personal lives: know your exact location (GPS, doxxing), facial identity (cameras, tagging), interests, opinions and beliefs (cookies, search engines, social media), medical/vaccine history (vax status and passport)?
When did it become status-quo to accept creep-like behavior? We had all kinds of negative names for people like this in the not-so-distant past: stalker, peeping tom, spy, busybody, meddler, nosy person, voyeur. Nobody wanted to be labeled this way or get caught engaging in these type of activities. To be considered a creep meant you were a lowlife, a scourge, a loser on the fringes of society. Now it is so pervasive, that people no longer recoil when they sense these types of violations into their personal lives.
But- Privacy and personal dignity are incontrovertibly intertwined. Deep down, every human knows this. Just about every person has had the very human experience of forgetting to lock the bathroom door and having the door opened on them: an embarrassing and undignified moment. Even small children are aware of the basic human right to privacy. At some point in the toilet-training journey, they will ask for it explicitly.
What has happened to this need for personal privacy, and the freedom to act in this life without the voyeuristic eyes of others in one’s personal business? I would make the claim that this failure to demand, this most basic of human values, is at the core of many societal problems. IOW- it is THEIR “freedom of reach” which should be limited, not ours.
Expanding on this idea, we can see how a general lack of privacy impacts free association and movement, the chilling effect i.e. self-censorship, and person-to-person communication. In my opinion, this lack of privacy is beginning to reach Constitutional-level violation status.
A good first step and possible overall solution? Let’s bring back shame! What if instead of accepting this low behavior, we as a group, scowled, boycotted, looked down upon and relegated these privacy intrusions back to the low-life status where it belongs? Perhaps those engaging in it would find it carries too much of a social/monetary burden to continue dealing in these behaviors.
When I talk about personal privacy, invariably, there will be someone who says - “if you don’t have anything to hide, why do you care”? My answer is simple, bathroom doors have locks on them for a reason. Every human is born with the inalienable right to basic privacy. I don’t need to explain why I need it. The onus is on YOU to explain why your creep-needs are more important than my fundamental rights.
Privacy is either given or it is not. I believe it to be a binary choice. Anyone who thinks otherwise, wants you to accept a world in which humans don’t have true dignity. Let’s reject this premise, and send the creeps back to the shadows. The world would be a better place...
How do learn anything about the world without asking questions? Who, what, when, where, how and why are the basic forms. All of them purpose built to receive a certain type of info in return. I’ve noticed something different about one of them, the question (Why).
(Why) has a superpower that none of the others have. It often hides a complaint. If you try to use any of the others the same way, it doesn’t work. Most people don’t even realize they are using this power when saying the word. It is my hope that this post will change that.
Let’s see some examples, “Why are you wearing those skinny jeans?”, “Why are you coming home so late?” or “Why do you have to be like that?”. When I am honest, I notice that the word (Why) is almost never used in the spirit of general inquiry. It masks something negative inside.
More often it is used to signal MY lack of acceptance of a situation, or to cast judgement on another, or show disapproval of someone or something. Where the other forms ...
Listening is an important skill. I’ve noticed a subtle shift in the way people speak now. Up until 5 minutes ago, most people talked like this : “I think X” and a person would respond “Well I think Y”. Now people have replaced the word “think” with the word “feel”.
So now people are talking like this “Well, I feel like we are going in the wrong direction”, Oh yeah, “I feel the same way” This is a subtle but profound change in the way people are now communicating. This change is more evident in younger age groups.
Not sure exactly how or when this happened. But, the consequences to the collective/social mind will be profound. We are subtly cueing that “feeling” is the default action over “thinking” every time we speak.
Has anyone else noticed the reduction in debate, critical thinking and general sense-making of certain demographics? I don’t think this is a coincidence. I believe this is the logical result of prioritizing emotion over intellect in schools, ...
I wonder how many projects have been delayed temporarily or permanently by people not knowing where to begin? Do I wade carefully into the shallow end or dive head-first into the deep end of a topic? Do I start at the chronological beginning or in present times? Most importantly, will people even care to know or will they not even give a damn?
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell
