*Reflections on an Ethical Society

You guys may have seen this already, but for those who haven't yet encountered it, karnythia wrote a fabulous post on race, gender, and the oppressive public gaze.

It makes me think of Guy Gavriel Kay's essay* on the importance of privacy in today's society, particularly this:

Is privacy important? Something with ethical value attached to it? Enormous elements of cultural conditioning underlie this question, of course, and so we should at least pause to acknowledge the complex history of private life, the way in which the very idea of a sequestered space to be alone, unobserved, has been alien to many cultures, and is still today a dream or an illusion for many people, even in our own society.

[...] We seem to now be a culture that rushes to embrace exposure. It is as if a colossal inversion is taking place: we want to be naked on the stage in public. The attention accrues more value than protected autonomy. Nobody knows you when your blinds are down and you're not out.

How does one discuss the importance of privacy, or even speak of the unwanted gaze, in the age of the jennycam, where a college coed becomes an international celebrity simply by putting cameras in her dorm rooms so websurfers can watch her, realtime, all day and night? One might deride her as naive, since most of those who have followed Jennifer Ringley down this path of proud self-assertion have at least had the simple decency to charge for it - allowing us to see the process as mere commerce - but the onlie beggeter, Ms Ringley, offered a pure, transaction-free model of exposure and ensuing fame to contemplate.

Might we make the case, as the rabbinical code did, that when this becomes a norm, when we collectively participate in that gazing process, the injury caused by seeing is to all of us?

Good thoughts (if very much western-hemisphere-focused on Kay's part), and definitely a topic I wish more people would consider.