Camel in Tent!

I feel inhibited by the perceived lack of privacy on my devices.

I can tell it is keeping me from writing everything I feel and think. Too bad.

Last night I dreamed a bad and sad worry dream, but I don’t feel free to write it down, even on my supposedly private journaling device. 

I would have written it down in a paper diary, for my own use and reflection.

Too bad. It’s like a window is closing.

For millennia, our thoughts were private, but limited by ignorance, superstition, and false beliefs. Then, for a brief historical moment, a window opened, due to the brave and heroic actions of those who fought for freedom and enlightenment, and even privacy, and we had a glimpse of free flowing light and expression. More recently, this window was thrown wide open for a few moments in the early years of the internet, and we glimpsed the possibility of a truly free and open world of love and sharing.

But now, with current technology, the camel’s nose is pushed firmly back into my tent. The whole head, really. Sad. What can be done to stop the whole camel from knocking down my tent? The whole herd from trampling it? Only an updated ethic that respects privacy, legally and morally. If information is to flow free, the use of it needs protection. Otherwise it will be and is obviously misused. 

For example, when women or children are given the right to travel freely it is still only possible for them to do so if the whole culture supports and enforces the standard that they may do so unmolested. If your vulnerable information is to flow freely, we all need to support and enforce the protections against the exploitation of it for profit or abuse. 

Primitive, patriarchal ideologies preach that women must be kept at home behind walls or placed in black bags to protect them from bad guys. 

The daily compilation and recitation of all of the worst things that have happened, which, by the way, are considered newsworthy because they are rare exceptions to the usual and normal, lead stressed and panicked grown ups to post armed guards at schools and other fear addled bizarre actions, like constantly keeping children behind locks and walls.

But the only enlightened way to protect the vulnerable is to give everyone enforceable rights. In the case of our privacy, the right of control of how our information is used. Rights we can use to defend ourselves, rights everyone takes to heart, and supports in a tangible effective way. 

An enlightened world is our only hope. And it is the light that shines in our newly open windows that we must defend from the camels that do not belong in our tent. We want the light, the breeze, the free flow of voluntary sharing of information, but we do not want camels’ noses in the tent, camels’ heads in the room watching us, and we certainly don’t want to be trampled by a herd of them destroying all we hold precious.

In the past when everyone lived in small tribal communities, everyone knew all of your secrets and history. This was oppressive in many ways, and did inhibit cultural evolution, but helped the tribe as a whole cohere and survive. Then, urbanization gave people a way to break free individually and innovate. This was so successful that we created an elaborate and abundant industrial civilization. 

But now this extreme freedom is being abused in increasingly less rare, but increasingly more destructive cases in a way that threatens the very freedom and autonomy it has bestowed on us. For example, the increasing weapon fire power available to anonymous and possibly disturbed individuals; the access that the interstate highway system gave to criminals to hit a town and run; and now, the ability for huge corporations and governments to follow your every move. These are no longer familiar members of your tribe who would suffer consequences for hurting you.

It has come to the point in today’s world where we will either lock down in fear, or open up in freedom and love. It will not do to lock up women and children, and it will not work to lock up our freedom of expression, autonomy, and private agency. So we must quickly act to prevent information abuse so we can keep the window of free flowing information open for sharing. Let us not smother this baby in its’ crib.

Already in China, home of a large percentage of the worlds people, the window opened by the interweb is shut, the doors are barred, a new great wall is going up, and freedom of expression is trapped and suffocating. Even freedom of thought is being starved by lack of information even as the new technologies are being turned upside down and abused to encircle and oppress each individual. Compared to the physical hundreds of thousands incarcerated there in re-education concentration camps, my little self imposed inhibition about writing down my bad dream seems trivial. But the dark clouds of fear and self censorship now gathering are just the same.

I wonder which way will will choose to go.