I think she is talking about secrets....and I just think Rebekah Higgs from Halifax is swell!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
as tensions rise
Privacy; Our ability to maintain it, our ability to disrespect it, our desire to practice it. Our privacy is negotiated in our day to day lives as a way to both protect and conserve the intimate details about our lives to ourselves.Now, I struggle to keep anything private. In fact, things that I used to feel shame about I now talk quite openly about. Things that I let rott me from the inside out, I now can speak candidly about, sharing my experience and transformation. A lot of this comes from a new ability to take ownership for my actions, and a desire to be known not for the pain that I have caused and the pain that I have felt, but rather for my ability to be a genuinely good person. For me, getting the dark secrets out so that I might be saved from my sins is pretty important for self discovery and reflexivity. When others in my life are private about their affairs, the closeted whistleblower in me is exposed. Why would they want to keep something like that private? Why wouldn't they want to share? What are they afraid of?
I can spend a lot of time speculating on why anyone would want to keep information private. A fear of judgement? Fear of having nothing left for oneself? For me, I have this illness, this inate desire to say everything I experience outloud, so that it can be realized to be true. I guess I sort of feel, if I don't talk about it, if I don't awknowledge that moment with the stranger in the streets, or how I really feel about someone or some situation, then it isn't real at all. My research has shown that "we talk ourselves into existence" (reference pending). Institutions are established through talk and communication alone. So what I wonder then, is what exactly is not established, what fails to exist, when we keep things private.
My immediate speculation would be human relationships. Human relationships are heavily built upon our ability to trust each other, to tell each other intimate things, to share the imperfect parts of ourselves so that we come to understand each other as imperfect beings. Durkheim writes about a "state of anomie" or a "state of normlessness." With the advent of the internet, wearable computers, electronic banking, and countless social networking sites, privacy has taken on an entirely new meaning. What we "put out" online about ourselves begins to inform the people around us, and more and more, the people not physically around us, about who we are and about the person, or the version of ourselves we want people to base their opinions from.
queer this
Is this what happened to us? I hear you are still the sweetest person. I also heard that you even speak respectfully of me. I hope I didn't do that much damanage.
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