Nosy "Neighbors"

The title of my blog (“Metaphorical Times”) has a double meaning for me. I mean to comment on how important metaphorical thinking might be in these times of run-away abstract thought. But I also draw on publications, like the several newspapers named the Times, for insight on what is happening in our world and what might be done about it, metaphorically. This morning I had a happy experience of serendipity in my readings: two articles that deal with nosiness in different ways.

I was reading an older article about Walt Whitman in the New York Review of Books, and this statement by J.M. Coetzee caught my eye:

“There is a certain sophistication, governed by unspoken social consensus, whose nature lies in taking things simply for what they seem to be. It is this sort of social wisdom, whose other name might be tact, that we are in danger of denying to our Victorian forebears.”¹

Coetzee says this while discussing the general unawareness by early readers to apparent allusions to homosexuality in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The passage grabbed me, however, because it seems to me to be such an appropriate comment on our increasingly social-media-ized world. In fact, I would say we are not only in danger of denying this generous tact to ourselves, we have largely lost the ability to appreciate it. We seem to think it old-fashioned and not relevant anymore.

We obsess about trannies and who comes out as gay, as well as who might be having licit or illicit sex with whom. High school kids with relatively little sexual experience feel compelled to declare their sexual orientation in the social media. Sexual activity has left the realm of the private and entered the realm of the public. Thus, Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner is hailed for his “courage” as he underwent his sexual transition by the popular New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof: “Bruce Jenner is now a gold medalist again.”² Why has sexuality become so important a focus in our social lives? I guess we see ourselves as more open-minded about sexual matters than previous generations, but I think it's also possible that we are just more nosy because it has become not only acceptable but even laudable to be nosy. Nosiness is often euphemized as sharing, which begs the question of whether the recipient of nosiness is ok with sharing.

Coetzee considers that Freud's warnings about the bad effects of sexual repression have brought about this situation, but he also notes:

“Pace Freud, it is perfectly possible to refrain from having fantasies about the private lives of other people, even of our parents, without having to repress those fantasies and to bear the consequences of repression—the notorious return of the repressed –in our own psychic life. We pay no psychic price when, for example, we refrain from ruminating on “the intimate details,” “the actual facts,” of what other people do when they visit the bathroom.”³

The problem with our choosing to concern ourselves with the “private lives of other people,” of course, is that while we think we are being open and accepting, any social act of witnessing what should be personal becomes, effectively, a comment on the personal thought or act. It is, inevitably, a kind of social pressure, and it virtually abolishes subjectivity. I keep thinking of the early anthropologists who thought they were observing the natural behavior of certain peoples, when in fact their presence—even if relatively unobtrusive—changed the nature of the experience for those peoples. This is now known as the “observer effect.” A person cannot freely experience her own individuality if her most private thoughts and actions are being observed. One becomes an object, rather than a subject, inevitably. (See my previous post, “Subject or Object?” 14 December 2014.)

After I read Coetzee's essay on Whitman, I happened to read this in the excellent Stone series on philosophy in the New York Times:

“Minding one's own business isn't easy. Most people prefer to live among like-minded others, and most are interested in limiting how different their neighbors are. But life in a free and open society requires living on publicly equal terms with strangers one may well loathe. . . . a free society cannot tolerate those who would disregard the liberty of others to live as they see fit. One cannot harm others in pursuit of one's own ideals, or because one feels deeply insulted by their lives and opinions. The critical question is not whether I judge a person to be radically misguided, or judge her way of life to be morally repugnant, but whether she is a danger to the life and liberty of others.”⁴

“Minding one's own business isn't easy,” but the social media make not doing so a lot easier. Anyone who uses a computer to get online knows that much of her personal life is being monitored and used by social media and marketers. Tyler Clemente found out that a computer could also monitor his sexual activities in his own dorm room, unknown to him, and broadcast those activities to an audience. Was Tyler consoled that the audience would not judge his sexual activities? Apparently not, since he committed suicide shortly thereafter.⁵ The violation of an individual's private life is a serious issue. Celebrities like Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner expect and want such scrutiny, usually. But when any one person's thoughts and actions become acceptably open to the scrutiny of others, then that person has been harmed. And I would go further, to say that the society that would allow and encourage such nosy activities is also harming itself--especially if the individual has asked that such intrusions stop, and those intrusions do not stop. As a very basic minimum, I should be able to control who has access to my bedroom and my activities there. Tyler Clemente did not, and others will not either.

Is society substituting the joys of voyeurism for the pleasures of privacy because we really do not have any choice, in the long run? Do we want the approval and security of the group more than we respect the right of the individual to privacy? Or is it possible that we might someday prefer the hard work of minding our own business, relating to others with tact, and respecting their privacy and individuality? I will continue to hope for the latter.

1J.M. Coetzee, “Love and Walt Whitman,” New York Review of Books online, 22 September 2005:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/sep/22/love-and-walt-whitman/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+Gaza+Bellow+Roman+glass&utm_content=NYR+Gaza+Bellow+Roman+glass+CID_e02dc102f506ef99351cfb298e787b25&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Love%20and%20Walt%20Whitman

2Nicholas Kristof, “Bruce Jenner's Courage,” NY Times online, 5 February 2015:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/opinion/nicholas-kristof-bruce-jenners-courage.html

3Of course, some people do obsess about this; Freud would say they are stuck in the anal stage of development.

4This passage is spoken by Jerry Gaus, professor of philosophy at University of Arizona, and recorded in “The Virtues of Political Disagreement,” an interview by Gary Gutting with Jerry Gaus, NY Times online, 11 June 2015:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/the-virtues-of-political-disagreement/?emc=eta1&_r=0

5See Ian Parker, “The Story of a Suicide,” The New Yorker online, 6 February 2012:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/02/06/the-story-of-a-suicide