Seeking privacy in an unprivate world

With a theme like Private Spaces, it’s kinda difficult not to revert to toilet humour. I’m reminded of my late German friend who had a cartoon artwork in her guest toilet.

It portrayed a man with a blissful look on his face doing what comes naturally. The words alongside were Wenn's Arscherl brummt, ist's Herzlein gesund. Reputedly originally said by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself. Loosely translated as When it’s noisy downstairs, all is well upstairs (heart).

Seriously though, it is a basic human wish to have private time and space. It is quite baffling to know that in a Mumbai slum community in the 1980s, the men sat alongside each other on a communal, open long-drop when excreting. (Read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.)

How can anyone flourish in the depths of their souls without time off and privacy? This need drives us to create welcoming window seats in our homes or shaded benches in a corner of the garden. Spots for inner meditation. Think of the opposite: angry mobs, demanding and demanding. Do they have a special place of solitude to collect their thoughts and anchor their souls? Probably not. How much of that is the reason for their anger? Overpopulation and crowded areas surely can’t enhance inner peace?

“Privacy - like eating and breathing - is one of life's basic requirements,” said Katherine Neville, a bestselling American author of adventure/quest novels. Writers over the ages have agreed. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) reputedly said: “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”

On Resurrection Sunday, social media cameras followed our Presidential couple to church, with a video later posted on the information ministry’s Facebook page. Where is their privacy? Should they not be allowed to worship in peace? Churches should be one of our private spaces that we seek out to be still before Him.

Sadly, houses of worship and schools, where one is supposed to feel particularly sheltered, have become anything but private. Over the decades across the world, they have been the scenes of shootings: mass shootings in the USA led to more than 1 200 deaths between 1966 and 2020.

In a world “starved for solitude, silence and privacy”, we thus need to pay particular attention to spaces where we may ground ourselves, where we may put on our spiritual armour against the all-too-often aggressive world. Be it in the bathroom, bedroom, office, garden or beneath a camelthorn tree, we need a spot offering calm and comfort.

Part of the protective armour that we need, is knowledge of artificial intelligence and specifically algorithms. Behavioural scientist Gerd Gigerenzer, the director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam in Germany, says too many of us are now letting AI make the decisions. “People should realize that it isn’t a good idea to give your data and your responsibility for your own decisions to tech companies who use it to make money from advertisers. That can’t be our future. There is a true danger that more and more people are sleepwalking into surveillance and just accepting everything that is more convenient.” He warns that the public must not become slaves of the ”likes” their social media evokes. People should be thinking for themselves, not allowing digital input to overrun their lives, and take back control of their own passions instead of allowing algorithms to dictate what they see and read.

Our private lives should be just that: private.

Christine Stoman