Publicizing Privacy
August 16, 2010
Joseph Bottum
The teenaged girl at the next table was typing away on her laptop, which seemed to irritate her parents, though they were trying—in that well-worn and slightly mad aren’t-we-all-having-a-good-time-on-our-vacation? mode of parents—not to show it.
“What you doing, honey?” the mother asked. “Telling my friends about this awful breakfast on Facebook,” she answered. “You misspelled putrid,” the father observed, leaning over to look. “Dad,” the girl despaired, “it’s only Facebook.” 
I was kind of proud of the parents, for they managed to use that answer to start a discussion and draw the teenager back into the family circle, at least until her little brother, growing bored, decided to see how much syrup the little plastic Smuckers jelly cups would hold before they overflowed onto the carpet. And the burden of the girl’s argument was that Facebook wasn’t her diary or even a letter to Grandma. It wasn’t special—the meaning of which seemed to alternate, in her mind, between private and important—and so misspellings and misgrammars didn’t matter.
The family eventually gathered themselves up, wiped one another off, and headed off to see Mt. Rushmore. But there was something in that girl’s line that stayed with me—mostly because she’s right: the concepts of private and public have undergone a strange new shift in American culture.
My grandmother would have said that, for anything done in public, accuracy and convention were far more important than they were for anything done in private. Well, actually, my grandmother would have said that accuracy and convention are important for their own sake. Your true table manners, she insisted, are how you eat when you are alone. But mismanners in public are embarrassing, exposed to view, in a way they are not in private. And we have a duty to behave well in public—and more than a duty: Since only our fellow people have the honors to bestow that are the rewards of virtue, the things we call virtues are particularly significant in a public setting.
This isn’t quite the argument that’s been held recently about the Journo-List, those archives of private discussion among leftist journalists that has recently been made public. Yes, it’s true that every public performance needs a backstage area, a place where the actors can let down their hair and cease, for a moment, to act—even while they continue to be actors, indulging one another as members of their shared profession.
That looks like an argument that publication of the archives is an invasion of privacy. But it’s also true that any private gathering of people of the same profession soon turns into a cabal against the public. It’s true for lawyers, and it’s true for doctors, and, no surprise, it’s true for journalists: The fact that something is private, in the sense of secret, isn’t the same as its being private in the sense of personal. That’s why we have the word conspiracy. And intrigue. And junta. And gang.
Anyway, the Journo-List brouhaha is an argument that’s about what are still old concepts of public and private. What that teenaged girl was noting, however, is a feeling of the inversion of those old concepts. My daughter has it, too, and my godchildren, and many others. The private matters more because it’s private—larger, more real, more dwelt in.
Think of it like a house. The old houses had tiny, monastic-sized monastic bedrooms, with few closets and even fewer bathrooms. They also had large public rooms: parlors and living rooms and sitting rooms and dining rooms. The face a house presented to visitors, its public face, mattered more than its private rooms.
Of course, modern houses have changed all that. Many of them don’t even have a dining room, and the public rooms matter less than the private. The people who built these houses still understood the old world of public vs. private; they just elevated the private. But the children who grew up in the houses that were built this way, what happens to them?
They get an inversion. Facebook doesn’t matter, the girl said, because it’s public. When she writes in her secret diary just for herself, when she sends a letter just for one other person, that’s when it matters. That’s when it counts.
Joseph Bottum is editor of First Things.
Comments:
8.16.2010 | 8:17am
Sky says:
When I was growing up we never ate in the dining room except for formal occasions either; we always used the kitchen. (We did our homework on the dining room table; otherwise, the room was largely untouched.) Even for entertaining, though we’d use the dining room, activity would usually end up centering around the kitchen most of the night. The living room we sat and read in, so it was well used.
The public/private shift is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s entirely a bad thing. As a 30-something, I’ve noticed a major shift between my generation and older generations in formality, in the importance of maintaining a pristine public image. While this may lead to less reverence, less respect, and poorer grammar, with it also comes, perhaps, less hypocrisy, more sincerity, and more compassion.
The public/private shift is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s entirely a bad thing. As a 30-something, I’ve noticed a major shift between my generation and older generations in formality, in the importance of maintaining a pristine public image. While this may lead to less reverence, less respect, and poorer grammar, with it also comes, perhaps, less hypocrisy, more sincerity, and more compassion.
8.16.2010 | 9:01am
Stuart Koehl says:
"While this may lead to less reverence, less respect, and poorer grammar, with it also comes, perhaps, less hypocrisy, more sincerity, and more compassion."
I don't know about that. Hypocrisy is, in my view, the WD-40 of society, a necessary lubricant that smoothes out the rough edges of social interaction. Telling people precisely what you think of them all of the time, always acting in an artless and transparent manner, these are not the sort of things that produce a gentler and more compassionate society. Certainly, it does not produce a more polite one. A number of science fiction writers, notably Douglas Adams, have dealt with this idea. In "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", for instance, Adams postulated something called the "babelfish", which, when inserted in one's ear, allowed one to instantly understand what everybody was thinking. As a result, all life in the galaxy where it was invented was destroyed in a cataclysmic war. In a similar story, people woke up one morning able to understand what their pets were thinking. By the end of the week, not a dog, cat ferret, rat, hamster or even a goldfish was left. Both stories make a strong case for discretion and, yes, hypocrisy, as necessary for the development of civilization.
The internet, to some extent, functions like the babelfish by allowing us to hear the innermost thoughts of those who participate in it. Because we stand at one remove from our audience (most people, like Sky, do not post under their real names), this perceived anonymity reduces or eliminates inhibitions (you should see the stuff that appears in my in-box after I write an article).
Something similar happened in the Dark Ages, a time when an heroic, honor-based society put a premium on manly honesty--but which also could not tolerate an insult. The result was endemic violence, as slight was met by assault, was met by revenge was met by blood feud. But gradually, people learned that to live long, they had to put a guard on their tongues. Indeed, the elaborate codes of manners and behavior that began evolving in the Middle Ages were mainly an attempt to get through life avoiding serious puncture wounds--an armed society is a polite society.
As we have (more or less) moved beyond the code duello to settle disputes, there is, at this point, nothing similar to deal with the Facebook situation, other than the dreaded "flame war". But I suspect, as social networking becomes more integrated into "real life", people will begin to develop an equally elaborate code of etiquette in response to the ramifications of untrammeled free speech. In fact, it's already happening, as people discover that they can be expelled from school or lose their jobs over an unguarded on-line comment.
I don't know about that. Hypocrisy is, in my view, the WD-40 of society, a necessary lubricant that smoothes out the rough edges of social interaction. Telling people precisely what you think of them all of the time, always acting in an artless and transparent manner, these are not the sort of things that produce a gentler and more compassionate society. Certainly, it does not produce a more polite one. A number of science fiction writers, notably Douglas Adams, have dealt with this idea. In "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", for instance, Adams postulated something called the "babelfish", which, when inserted in one's ear, allowed one to instantly understand what everybody was thinking. As a result, all life in the galaxy where it was invented was destroyed in a cataclysmic war. In a similar story, people woke up one morning able to understand what their pets were thinking. By the end of the week, not a dog, cat ferret, rat, hamster or even a goldfish was left. Both stories make a strong case for discretion and, yes, hypocrisy, as necessary for the development of civilization.
The internet, to some extent, functions like the babelfish by allowing us to hear the innermost thoughts of those who participate in it. Because we stand at one remove from our audience (most people, like Sky, do not post under their real names), this perceived anonymity reduces or eliminates inhibitions (you should see the stuff that appears in my in-box after I write an article).
Something similar happened in the Dark Ages, a time when an heroic, honor-based society put a premium on manly honesty--but which also could not tolerate an insult. The result was endemic violence, as slight was met by assault, was met by revenge was met by blood feud. But gradually, people learned that to live long, they had to put a guard on their tongues. Indeed, the elaborate codes of manners and behavior that began evolving in the Middle Ages were mainly an attempt to get through life avoiding serious puncture wounds--an armed society is a polite society.
As we have (more or less) moved beyond the code duello to settle disputes, there is, at this point, nothing similar to deal with the Facebook situation, other than the dreaded "flame war". But I suspect, as social networking becomes more integrated into "real life", people will begin to develop an equally elaborate code of etiquette in response to the ramifications of untrammeled free speech. In fact, it's already happening, as people discover that they can be expelled from school or lose their jobs over an unguarded on-line comment.
8.16.2010 | 10:28am
Emina Melonic says:
Very nice essay, Mr. Bottum.
Mr. Koehl, to a certain degree, I disagree with your statement:
"If you want to look at the destruction or erasing of the public/private barrier, I suggest the answer is not technological nor architectural, but philosophical"
I will be the first one to say that in order for things to change practically, they first need to change philosophically. I cannot speak for Mr. Bottum, but I do think that the purpose of his essay was exactly that philosophical has penetrated into the architectural and technological. Witness, for example, the existence of "urban lofts" where there is no definition at all: dining room blends in with living room, living room blends in with bedroom, etc. What used to be a matter of private behavior, is now entirely public. If we don't even understand that there should be a distinction between public and private in our homes, then how can we possibly discern social definitions outside of our homes?
Mr. Koehl, to a certain degree, I disagree with your statement:
"If you want to look at the destruction or erasing of the public/private barrier, I suggest the answer is not technological nor architectural, but philosophical"
I will be the first one to say that in order for things to change practically, they first need to change philosophically. I cannot speak for Mr. Bottum, but I do think that the purpose of his essay was exactly that philosophical has penetrated into the architectural and technological. Witness, for example, the existence of "urban lofts" where there is no definition at all: dining room blends in with living room, living room blends in with bedroom, etc. What used to be a matter of private behavior, is now entirely public. If we don't even understand that there should be a distinction between public and private in our homes, then how can we possibly discern social definitions outside of our homes?
8.16.2010 | 10:37am
Peter Leavitt says:
Serious people are well mannered and careful about what they say in public. None of them would care about the largely egotistical gush found on Facebook.
One is private and informal with close family and friends, mostly in person or through mail including email. The real problem with the young girl is that she was allowed to bring a laptop on a family vacation. In our family vacation place, television, radio, cameras, and computers are forbidden. Games and reading are welcome.
One is private and informal with close family and friends, mostly in person or through mail including email. The real problem with the young girl is that she was allowed to bring a laptop on a family vacation. In our family vacation place, television, radio, cameras, and computers are forbidden. Games and reading are welcome.
8.16.2010 | 1:18pm
Josh says:
"Since only our fellow people have the honors to bestow that are the rewards of virtue, the things we call virtues are particularly significant in a public setting."
I strongly disagree with this sentence. Aristotle from Book 1 Paragraph 5 of the Nicomachaen Ethics:
men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their goodness; at least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue; clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better.
To paraphrase this passage: "virtue is its own reward." If the reward of virtue is to be public honors, then where does that leave us? Only to practice virtue when others can see it happen? Only to practice those activities that the rest of society is willing to acknowledge as a virtue?
I'm very leery of ascribing any weight at all to public honors. Why should we ever care what others say about us or the honor that others do us?
How are table manners a "virtue?" Do they really matter? Anyone that actually cares about you won't care how one acts at the table, at least they won't expect any archaic set of rules to be followed.
I agree with this girl, why do most things "matter"?
I strongly disagree with this sentence. Aristotle from Book 1 Paragraph 5 of the Nicomachaen Ethics:
men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their goodness; at least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue; clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better.
To paraphrase this passage: "virtue is its own reward." If the reward of virtue is to be public honors, then where does that leave us? Only to practice virtue when others can see it happen? Only to practice those activities that the rest of society is willing to acknowledge as a virtue?
I'm very leery of ascribing any weight at all to public honors. Why should we ever care what others say about us or the honor that others do us?
How are table manners a "virtue?" Do they really matter? Anyone that actually cares about you won't care how one acts at the table, at least they won't expect any archaic set of rules to be followed.
I agree with this girl, why do most things "matter"?
8.16.2010 | 1:41pm
EM says:
I'm on the lower end of Gen X. My husband is on the upper end of Gen Y. We both Facebook, though I am more active than he.
Facebook is a good example of how private life is much more publicized than the past but I think I'd argue a little with you (a) that the public is now generally treated as less important than the private, and (b) that, even if so, this is a bad thing.
You used a teenager as your example. Most teenagers don't see why they should do algebra either - what does that have to do w/ real life!?! Consider doing a study of how sharing / networking occurs on Facebook between adults and professionals.
I understand the "hypocrisy as a social lubricant" idea that a commenter brought up, and it can function that way. But there is also virtue to the WYSIWYG approach to human relationships that social networking helps to facilitate. There was once concern that the Internet would lead to an extreme fragmentation of public and private personas. Yet, in reality, that is rare. People crave being known, and mostly known truly - or at least known as they see themselves to be.
Often today, people sin more openly than they used to - we then conclude that society is worse off. But is it? Maybe, yes, "society" is worse off if our "perfect" image of ourselves is tarnished, but people aren't worse off.
Mrs. Smith is sipping vodka mid-day and is so trashed that her family can't count on her. Mr. Smith comes home from work and dinner isn't on the table so he starts into an angry tirade that ends with him slapping his wife across the face. Later, when his laundry isn't perfectly folded, he punches her hard in a place no one can see. Jason Smith (17) has tried weed and he has sex with his girlfriend every weekend. Sabrina Smith (14) is terribly lonely, failing in school and depressed so she cuts herself to relieve the pain she feels inside.
In the old world, these were all "private" problems. As long as Mrs. Smith kept up her social obligations with the PTA and made the right appearances, no one would know about her alcoholism and no one would ever tell. The kids problems would be hidden or "fixed" if the family was sufficiently wealthy. No one cares about Mr. Smith's violent and abusive habits as long as he manages to hold down a job and keeps up his responsibilities as a deacon in his church. Family matters are "nobody else's business."
In the new world, Sabrina and Jason will post on Facebook. Their friends, and maybe their friends parents, will see what is going on and may ask questions or step into help. But even if not, everyone in their social circle will soon know that Jason smokes week & sleeps with his girlfriend and Sabrina is depressed enough to cut. Mr. & Mrs. Smith can't maintain the "perfect family" facade anymore. Maybe one day they too will expose their own secret sins of Facebook. A cry for help could actually lead to getting help for this dysfunctional family. Someone at church may care enough to suggest that these people need to be receiving care for their souls not living a lie as the "deacon's family." Maybe nothing will change in the new world vs. the old - except the lie that "everything's OK."
Which scenario is really better?
Your teenage friend wanted to be known as someone who doesn't care about the niceties of spelling and grammer, hence she just wants to "be herself" on Facebook. She may change her mind about that once she realizes future employers look up her Facebook profile. But for now, she is being authentic... and any employer may be forewarned about her lack of regard for the rules of spelling and grammar in written communication.
Facebook is a good example of how private life is much more publicized than the past but I think I'd argue a little with you (a) that the public is now generally treated as less important than the private, and (b) that, even if so, this is a bad thing.
You used a teenager as your example. Most teenagers don't see why they should do algebra either - what does that have to do w/ real life!?! Consider doing a study of how sharing / networking occurs on Facebook between adults and professionals.
I understand the "hypocrisy as a social lubricant" idea that a commenter brought up, and it can function that way. But there is also virtue to the WYSIWYG approach to human relationships that social networking helps to facilitate. There was once concern that the Internet would lead to an extreme fragmentation of public and private personas. Yet, in reality, that is rare. People crave being known, and mostly known truly - or at least known as they see themselves to be.
Often today, people sin more openly than they used to - we then conclude that society is worse off. But is it? Maybe, yes, "society" is worse off if our "perfect" image of ourselves is tarnished, but people aren't worse off.
Mrs. Smith is sipping vodka mid-day and is so trashed that her family can't count on her. Mr. Smith comes home from work and dinner isn't on the table so he starts into an angry tirade that ends with him slapping his wife across the face. Later, when his laundry isn't perfectly folded, he punches her hard in a place no one can see. Jason Smith (17) has tried weed and he has sex with his girlfriend every weekend. Sabrina Smith (14) is terribly lonely, failing in school and depressed so she cuts herself to relieve the pain she feels inside.
In the old world, these were all "private" problems. As long as Mrs. Smith kept up her social obligations with the PTA and made the right appearances, no one would know about her alcoholism and no one would ever tell. The kids problems would be hidden or "fixed" if the family was sufficiently wealthy. No one cares about Mr. Smith's violent and abusive habits as long as he manages to hold down a job and keeps up his responsibilities as a deacon in his church. Family matters are "nobody else's business."
In the new world, Sabrina and Jason will post on Facebook. Their friends, and maybe their friends parents, will see what is going on and may ask questions or step into help. But even if not, everyone in their social circle will soon know that Jason smokes week & sleeps with his girlfriend and Sabrina is depressed enough to cut. Mr. & Mrs. Smith can't maintain the "perfect family" facade anymore. Maybe one day they too will expose their own secret sins of Facebook. A cry for help could actually lead to getting help for this dysfunctional family. Someone at church may care enough to suggest that these people need to be receiving care for their souls not living a lie as the "deacon's family." Maybe nothing will change in the new world vs. the old - except the lie that "everything's OK."
Which scenario is really better?
Your teenage friend wanted to be known as someone who doesn't care about the niceties of spelling and grammer, hence she just wants to "be herself" on Facebook. She may change her mind about that once she realizes future employers look up her Facebook profile. But for now, she is being authentic... and any employer may be forewarned about her lack of regard for the rules of spelling and grammar in written communication.
8.16.2010 | 2:46pm
Ethan C. says:
I think I agree with the thrust of Jody's argument, though I do agree with Stuart's criticism about architecture. It seems to me that floor plans are becoming more "open," with big common areas, not more compartmentalized into bedrooms and suites.
Not that I'm in a position to be an expert judge; I've never been wealthy enough to afford to live in a house with distinguishable "public" rooms. Our dining room and kitchen are all a single area, and the only guest that isn't allowed into the latter is my brother's dog.
Not that I'm in a position to be an expert judge; I've never been wealthy enough to afford to live in a house with distinguishable "public" rooms. Our dining room and kitchen are all a single area, and the only guest that isn't allowed into the latter is my brother's dog.
8.16.2010 | 3:12pm
Hugo Schwyzer says:
I was doing so well, enjoying another lovely Jody Bottum meditation. Liberal parents too marvel at the ever-changing yet ever-consistent adolescent obsession with what "should" and "shouldn't" be known. We too note that young folks draw the public/private line in a different place than we did a few decades ago.
But then I'm stopped short at the precipice of the ideological gulf when I read comments like this from EM:
"Mrs. Smith is sipping vodka mid-day and is so trashed that her family can't count on her. Mr. Smith comes home from work and dinner isn't on the table so he starts into an angry tirade that ends with him slapping his wife across the face. Later, when his laundry isn't perfectly folded, he punches her hard in a place no one can see. Jason Smith (17) has tried weed and he has sex with his girlfriend every weekend. Sabrina Smith (14) is terribly lonely, failing in school and depressed so she cuts herself to relieve the pain she feels inside.
In the old world, these were all "private" problems."
And the liberal in me is aghast. A depressed girl self-mutilating; a husband punching his wife; and consensual sex between a seventeen year-old and his girlfriend. The old Sesame Street song comes to mind at once: "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong..."
Ain't gonna be no rapprochement in the culture war anytime soon.
As for public and private, I think J. Bottum probably appreciates Auden's thoughts:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2004/11/18/thursday-short-poem-audens-the-common-life/
The final lines:
"without
the Spirit we die, but life
without the Letter is in the worst of taste,
and always, though truth and love
can never really differ, when they seem to,
the subaltern should be truth."
But then I'm stopped short at the precipice of the ideological gulf when I read comments like this from EM:
"Mrs. Smith is sipping vodka mid-day and is so trashed that her family can't count on her. Mr. Smith comes home from work and dinner isn't on the table so he starts into an angry tirade that ends with him slapping his wife across the face. Later, when his laundry isn't perfectly folded, he punches her hard in a place no one can see. Jason Smith (17) has tried weed and he has sex with his girlfriend every weekend. Sabrina Smith (14) is terribly lonely, failing in school and depressed so she cuts herself to relieve the pain she feels inside.
In the old world, these were all "private" problems."
And the liberal in me is aghast. A depressed girl self-mutilating; a husband punching his wife; and consensual sex between a seventeen year-old and his girlfriend. The old Sesame Street song comes to mind at once: "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong..."
Ain't gonna be no rapprochement in the culture war anytime soon.
As for public and private, I think J. Bottum probably appreciates Auden's thoughts:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2004/11/18/thursday-short-poem-audens-the-common-life/
The final lines:
"without
the Spirit we die, but life
without the Letter is in the worst of taste,
and always, though truth and love
can never really differ, when they seem to,
the subaltern should be truth."
8.16.2010 | 5:21pm
Joe says:
In the end there is nothing hidden, that will not be revealed.
Might as well get it out, and deal with it now.
Might as well get it out, and deal with it now.
8.16.2010 | 6:47pm
Eric says:
Nope, no rapproachement.
Because, although Jason and his girlfriend had used condoms in the past, he felt, justly, that they were withholding an important part of themselves in their love-making. They weren't giving themselves in entirety. They knew the barrier was the condom and he knew omitting it involved a danger, and even a sin.
But, “as awful and as risky as what…they were doing, they were doing it together, as a couple, bonding themselves together in their mutual sin. And as (his) girlfriend and (he) wrapped (themselves) around each other, unable to get enough of one another, (he) remember(ed) thinking ‘I’m willing to risk everything for this – and the one life I’m willing to jump is my own, my future.’”
How does this end? Hugo knows, and so do we.
They struck the match and, surprise, surprise, a flame sprang to life.
Or, a baby.
Harmless little thing, teenage sex.
‘I’m willing to risk everything for this – and the one life I’m willing to jump is my own, my future.’”
Or someone else’s future. Or someone else’s life.
Less than two months later, she had the abortion while (he) sat grimly in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.
Rapprochement at the Eschaton.
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2010/07/07/the-longing-to-jump-the-life-to-come-a-reprint-on-shakespeare-contraception-and-risk-taking/
Ready yourself for the Bridegroom, Hugo; you still have time.
Because, although Jason and his girlfriend had used condoms in the past, he felt, justly, that they were withholding an important part of themselves in their love-making. They weren't giving themselves in entirety. They knew the barrier was the condom and he knew omitting it involved a danger, and even a sin.
But, “as awful and as risky as what…they were doing, they were doing it together, as a couple, bonding themselves together in their mutual sin. And as (his) girlfriend and (he) wrapped (themselves) around each other, unable to get enough of one another, (he) remember(ed) thinking ‘I’m willing to risk everything for this – and the one life I’m willing to jump is my own, my future.’”
How does this end? Hugo knows, and so do we.
They struck the match and, surprise, surprise, a flame sprang to life.
Or, a baby.
Harmless little thing, teenage sex.
‘I’m willing to risk everything for this – and the one life I’m willing to jump is my own, my future.’”
Or someone else’s future. Or someone else’s life.
Less than two months later, she had the abortion while (he) sat grimly in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.
Rapprochement at the Eschaton.
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2010/07/07/the-longing-to-jump-the-life-to-come-a-reprint-on-shakespeare-contraception-and-risk-taking/
Ready yourself for the Bridegroom, Hugo; you still have time.
8.16.2010 | 6:59pm
Michael says:
What I saw as the gist of Mr Bottum's point about the increasing size of bedrooms is that the small cramped bedrooms of older homes made it difficult to use them for more than changing and sleeping and sex. The larger bedrooms we see nowadays with private baths and walk-in closets makes them potential dorm rooms within a home. Large public rooms don't mean much if everyone is in their own personal cave.
8.16.2010 | 8:29pm
Gil Costello says:
Then, of course, there is the distinction of the private representing the interior spaces of a person, and the public where persons meet to practice prudence in getting along with and helping each other, with all its gradations:
Private: I am ultimately alone in the world, and I am not going to wait until my death to acknowledge it, and I must attend to this aloneness in my understanding of self.
Public: I am alone in the world, but ironically and mysteriously I become more of who I really am in relationship: in my associations with others on many levels, both intimate and non-intimate, my interactions call out and help clarify what inner-essence there really is in what makes up who I am uniquely, what is true of me in my radical aloneness endemic to that uniqueness, my unrepeatable existence.
Then Nietzsche reminds us "It’s not a matter of dialectics—it’s a matter of degrees."
There is no thesis (private) and no antithesis (public) in the gestalt of a human person, but only a necessary tension between the two that enhances each and is always working towards the supreme actualization of self in the gestalt of God's grace.
The male principle (private) in contradistinction to the female principle (public) are part and parcel of each individual existent. There is no separation in the actualization of self. The Church’s understanding of marriage reminds us of this, why it is called the domestic church that defies dialectics in genuine unification, not synthesis. And the tension of the private and the public can only be resolved finally in radical unification with God, and why unification in cyberspace is “misdirected transcendency” as well as idolatry.
The modern problem is that the private is too often swallowed up in the public, where it dies, and the public is swallowed up in the private, where it dies, and we become "hollow men" and women.
The private is, among other things, the knowing of the heart which too often, in prudence, cannot be uttered in public, but must find a way to engage the public so that the public has meaning for the private.
The private is also the realm of the intimate, and when our cognitive experience of intimacy tries to enter and take hold of the public, it dies. Yet intimacy does arrive on its own terms in public, most often in silences. It’s what infuses and quickens the public.
If Marshall McLuhan were alive, I suspect he would say that twittering, face-booking and other cognitive now-information-activity is a means of making the private public by extending neurological, second-to-second, cognitions peculiar to each individual in their second-to-second cognitive lives available to public realms: we become MORE of who we are by expanding our neurological activity into cyberspace for anyone to connect with who is interested not in my interior realm, which has been abandoned for higher ground, but in my neurological expansion, becoming more of who I am in the cyber-space expansion of self. There is no goal to know anything, not really, and therefore no need for correct spelling or having anything of substance to say: it is a higher form of communication: ME, my neurological activity, in the raw, progressively becoming omnipresent!
In this age of an ever-escalating crisis of undifferentiation, the only means available to become more of who I really am has nothing to do with complex relationships and my battered emergence in that matrix, but of getting ME in clinical-technological safety out there more and more into the public realm, and the curse is that what is truly intimate, and what is truly profound, always resides in the deeper interior spaces, our private rooms, and the soul is the most private room of all, where the Holy Spirit communes with us, and where we can, distant from the omnipresent noise of the world, including humming computers, we actually hear Jesus' gentle knock on that room's door, a place we fear most because it is the most distant from my i-phone.
Private: I am ultimately alone in the world, and I am not going to wait until my death to acknowledge it, and I must attend to this aloneness in my understanding of self.
Public: I am alone in the world, but ironically and mysteriously I become more of who I really am in relationship: in my associations with others on many levels, both intimate and non-intimate, my interactions call out and help clarify what inner-essence there really is in what makes up who I am uniquely, what is true of me in my radical aloneness endemic to that uniqueness, my unrepeatable existence.
Then Nietzsche reminds us "It’s not a matter of dialectics—it’s a matter of degrees."
There is no thesis (private) and no antithesis (public) in the gestalt of a human person, but only a necessary tension between the two that enhances each and is always working towards the supreme actualization of self in the gestalt of God's grace.
The male principle (private) in contradistinction to the female principle (public) are part and parcel of each individual existent. There is no separation in the actualization of self. The Church’s understanding of marriage reminds us of this, why it is called the domestic church that defies dialectics in genuine unification, not synthesis. And the tension of the private and the public can only be resolved finally in radical unification with God, and why unification in cyberspace is “misdirected transcendency” as well as idolatry.
The modern problem is that the private is too often swallowed up in the public, where it dies, and the public is swallowed up in the private, where it dies, and we become "hollow men" and women.
The private is, among other things, the knowing of the heart which too often, in prudence, cannot be uttered in public, but must find a way to engage the public so that the public has meaning for the private.
The private is also the realm of the intimate, and when our cognitive experience of intimacy tries to enter and take hold of the public, it dies. Yet intimacy does arrive on its own terms in public, most often in silences. It’s what infuses and quickens the public.
If Marshall McLuhan were alive, I suspect he would say that twittering, face-booking and other cognitive now-information-activity is a means of making the private public by extending neurological, second-to-second, cognitions peculiar to each individual in their second-to-second cognitive lives available to public realms: we become MORE of who we are by expanding our neurological activity into cyberspace for anyone to connect with who is interested not in my interior realm, which has been abandoned for higher ground, but in my neurological expansion, becoming more of who I am in the cyber-space expansion of self. There is no goal to know anything, not really, and therefore no need for correct spelling or having anything of substance to say: it is a higher form of communication: ME, my neurological activity, in the raw, progressively becoming omnipresent!
In this age of an ever-escalating crisis of undifferentiation, the only means available to become more of who I really am has nothing to do with complex relationships and my battered emergence in that matrix, but of getting ME in clinical-technological safety out there more and more into the public realm, and the curse is that what is truly intimate, and what is truly profound, always resides in the deeper interior spaces, our private rooms, and the soul is the most private room of all, where the Holy Spirit communes with us, and where we can, distant from the omnipresent noise of the world, including humming computers, we actually hear Jesus' gentle knock on that room's door, a place we fear most because it is the most distant from my i-phone.
8.16.2010 | 8:33pm
Mike Linton says:
Jody, such an interesting business, the notion of public verses private and architecture how it all changes. Our house in Vermont was built in 1769. It had a large dining room across the broad central hall from the front parlor. The kitchen wing was the vertical part of the “L” that extended along the back; it was remodeled in the 1890’s. Upstairs were two large bedrooms (with original closets) and an attic (with a bedroom) above the kitchen. A large front porch was added after the Civil War. The architectural zones reflected class distinctions: the top of the “L” was for the staff, the horizontal part for the owners and their guests.
Even in much more modest homes without staff, such as my grandparent’s Ohio farmhouse, built around 1840, there was a similar distinction between front rooms--a front parlor and a dining room--and the kitchen and lean-to summer kitchen (you didn’t want to eat in the kitchen if you didn’t have to because in the winter it was pretty much a mess from all the cooking and too hot in the summer—and too small). The front parlor was a formal room where you had the best furniture and the piano, and later your radio. If you didn’t always wear your Sunday clothes to sit in the parlor you certainly at least didn’t wear your work clothes there, the room required a bit of decorum. The bedrooms, all upstairs, were fairly large; you might not have many of them and beds tended to be well populated but the rooms were more spacious than we might expect (even the bedrooms of 17th century homes in New England weren’t that much smaller than the “public rooms” downstairs).
At least in the Midwest and South, porches were required for summer comfort (and there was an elaborate etiquette for the front porch; the differences between standing in front of the house and speaking the folks sitting on the porch, standing with one leg on the bottom step, and then relative intimacy of being invited to “sit a spell”). Air conditioning made porches less necessary and the retreat from the public life of the front porch to the private life of the “family room” is probably a more significant social event than we give it credit.
But maybe best place to see the change in American attitudes to privacy are seen in our generally smallest spaces. Telephones used to be housed in tiny booths with substantial folding doors where you talked without anybody over hearing your conversation.
Now folks shout their conversations into contraptions attached their ears as they walk through Sam’s Club. And privies had multiple seats. The folks at Williamsburg have done a good job in keeping the old privies and seeing one with three wholes is a bit surprising to us. Conversations used to be guarded and defecation, at least occasionally, communal (and yes, I know there’s a good Anglo-Saxon word for defecation but one tradition we haven’t abandoned is going to Latin when we talk about things below the belt). Now all that’s reversed. Defecate in private and everybody gets to listen in to your conversation.
Oh, And for EM: folks pretty much used to know what was going on in their communities before WWII. There weren’t that many secrets. I guess that changed with the disappearance of the porch and the spread of suburbia. To get a feel of what those old communities were like, Helen Santmyer’s “Ladies of the Club” works well. It’s about Xenia and nearby Jamestown Ohio in the period between the end of the Civil War and the Depression. Santmyer was my dad’s English teacher and although he didn’t think much of her as a teacher he did think her book was a pretty good portrayal of the life of his childhood. I know the summer’s almost over but at over a thousand pages you can start the book now and finish it next July.
Even in much more modest homes without staff, such as my grandparent’s Ohio farmhouse, built around 1840, there was a similar distinction between front rooms--a front parlor and a dining room--and the kitchen and lean-to summer kitchen (you didn’t want to eat in the kitchen if you didn’t have to because in the winter it was pretty much a mess from all the cooking and too hot in the summer—and too small). The front parlor was a formal room where you had the best furniture and the piano, and later your radio. If you didn’t always wear your Sunday clothes to sit in the parlor you certainly at least didn’t wear your work clothes there, the room required a bit of decorum. The bedrooms, all upstairs, were fairly large; you might not have many of them and beds tended to be well populated but the rooms were more spacious than we might expect (even the bedrooms of 17th century homes in New England weren’t that much smaller than the “public rooms” downstairs).
At least in the Midwest and South, porches were required for summer comfort (and there was an elaborate etiquette for the front porch; the differences between standing in front of the house and speaking the folks sitting on the porch, standing with one leg on the bottom step, and then relative intimacy of being invited to “sit a spell”). Air conditioning made porches less necessary and the retreat from the public life of the front porch to the private life of the “family room” is probably a more significant social event than we give it credit.
But maybe best place to see the change in American attitudes to privacy are seen in our generally smallest spaces. Telephones used to be housed in tiny booths with substantial folding doors where you talked without anybody over hearing your conversation.
Now folks shout their conversations into contraptions attached their ears as they walk through Sam’s Club. And privies had multiple seats. The folks at Williamsburg have done a good job in keeping the old privies and seeing one with three wholes is a bit surprising to us. Conversations used to be guarded and defecation, at least occasionally, communal (and yes, I know there’s a good Anglo-Saxon word for defecation but one tradition we haven’t abandoned is going to Latin when we talk about things below the belt). Now all that’s reversed. Defecate in private and everybody gets to listen in to your conversation.
Oh, And for EM: folks pretty much used to know what was going on in their communities before WWII. There weren’t that many secrets. I guess that changed with the disappearance of the porch and the spread of suburbia. To get a feel of what those old communities were like, Helen Santmyer’s “Ladies of the Club” works well. It’s about Xenia and nearby Jamestown Ohio in the period between the end of the Civil War and the Depression. Santmyer was my dad’s English teacher and although he didn’t think much of her as a teacher he did think her book was a pretty good portrayal of the life of his childhood. I know the summer’s almost over but at over a thousand pages you can start the book now and finish it next July.
8.17.2010 | 12:07am
Margaret says:
@Stuart Koehl, I agree that hypocrisy has a positive side. Oscar Wilde wrote that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. It seems to me that in our society that tribute is no longer paid or even expected. A remnant of the idiocy of the 60s is that we now praise people who are open about their vice and we ridicule those who struggle to attain virtue. Think Barney Frank vs. ex-Senator Craig. The end result is that it is very difficult to have heroes and young people have never even heard of the sin of giving scandal. Let's face it, sometimes pretending to be better than we really are can be a duty we owe to the next generation. We all sin but we don't need to be so public about it! Confession belongs in the confessional, not on Oprah or Facebook.
8.17.2010 | 12:58am
Joseph Swanson says:
This simply-pointed essay is to be treasured. One does not need Wilde or Sartre to understand its enduring focus. JAS
This is utterly untrue, Jody. For most of history, the facade of a building was nondescript, because it was irrelevant. In many of Europe's more ancient cities, this is still the case. in Rome, for instance, dwellings present a fairly nondescript face to the world, because life is lived around the interior courtyard. On the other hand, the public rooms of the house are carefully, and often lavishly decorated, because these are the center of life. Bedrooms and bathrooms are smaller, but by no means monastic.
Although, to be honest, throughout history there was until recently no real sense of privacy at all. Not only was life lived in the fishbowl of the village or small town, where secrets were impossible, but most people lived together in one room houses barely removed from hovels, in which they ate, slept, caroused and produced the hordes of children needed to ensure a couple managed to live into adulthood and perpetuate the family name. Pretty much everything was done in public.
By the way, I'm nut sure which copy of architectural digest you're reading, but every new house I see on the market or advertised in the papers has a floor plan with a dining room, often a very large one.
I also don't know what the habit was where you grew up, but in my family, and in the families of all the people I knew, we NEVER, ever ate in the dining room except on formal occasions--Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter or Passover, or birthdays. The center of life was the kitchen, which was large and featured a big table on which mothers cooked and then sat and ate breakfast, lunch and dinner, talked with visiting friends, read the paper, worked on taxes, and so forth. My friends who grew up in more rural settings also remember the huge kitchen with the big table, around which family life revolved.
Because of that big kitchen, we seldom used the parlor or living room, either, except for company. So, for the most part, there was no private life there, either, but neither was there anything approaching a deliberate cultivation of a public facade. The ultimate sign of acceptance was to be invited to sit in the kitchen.
As houses have grown in average size, what we Americans have done is modestly enlarged bedrooms, added some extra bathrooms (I, for one, thank God for our cleanliness fetish, especially after each return from Europe, and as the only man in a family of women am quite grateful for a bathroom of my own), and added additional rooms with new functionality--the den or rec room, the entertainment room, etc.--though these for the most part seem to replace the parlor, sitting room and smoking room whose purpose has passed away--though, mind you, most people never had any of those, which were the purview of the well-to-do.
If you want to look at the destruction or erasing of the public/private barrier, I suggest the answer is not technological nor architectural, but philosophical: it was the New Left that coined the term, "the personal is political", meaning that every personal choice, belief, action or thought somehow or other had political implications that were therefore legitimate subjects for public scrutiny (and invariable denunciation). Conversely, the political had to become personal, since one's political choices were reduced to a manifestation of one's private life. Hence the left is mostly about appearances, and its criticism of the right is based mainly on its failure to project the proper public image. Since image is now meaningless, so is anything uttered in a quasi-public forum such as a social networking site. On the other hand, because image is meaningless, that which does actually reflect the core of our being has appreciated in value and must be guarded at all costs.