Privacy – Another Form of Fear 8-20-10

Anderson, South Carolina

One of my grandest joys is the sense of community immersion that comes from walking about cities in Latin America. As one roams, even at night in very small villages, a powerful sense of everyone being ‘out’ prevails There’s a splendid sense of exteriorized community; doors thrown back, windows open, lights on, people sitting outside on porches or low walls in the plaza. Music is ubiquitous. Pedestrians are legion. A delightful recent memory is seeing lovers sitting in the sublimely beautiful plaza of Valladolid at midnight. Tropical trees awash in lavender flood lights created a stage set of numinous proportion.

There appears to be no urgent need for privacy in this part of the world. People seem to think they have less to hide. While walking one hot muggy night in Zonganzotla with a friend, we were passing an open door to a modest house. Someone inside leapt up, came out, and with great animation invited us in for ‘refreshment’. Refreshment turned out to be a full scale meal of epic proportion – at midnight no less. I found more upper class hospitality in that modest cement house in the middle of the Mexican night than in the greatest hotels in the world at prime time. Meantime the media and State Department tell us how dangerous it is to be in Mexico. I’ve never felt safer.

When I return to the United States I’m always dumbfounded by how clean and deserted the streets feel. There is simply no public life in most places. There are few places designed for one to simply drop down on a seat and watch the world pass by, to chat with friends. Even the large bookshop in my town just did away with its comfy seating. In our car-dependent sprawl, there are no pedestrians. Here most of the activities of community would be construed as loitering and earn one a free night in jail for being a misdemeanor public nuisance.

This week in Atlanta I was again amazed at how few people are visible in a city of four million. Fear has interiorized them in locked cars and buildings. Recently, a number of people returning from long-term overseas assignments have lamented to me how difficult it is to reenter a land without much public life. They struggle with the limited participation in public life, the sense of isolation.

There is a growing pre-occupation with privacy in America. We are sensitized to identity theft, credit card fraud, targeting by telemarketers, and a hundred other forms of fiscal mischief. Sadly we are battening down the hatches in many areas of our lives, not wanting others to know what we are doing. We plant cypress trees along our property lines so the neighbor’s lonely dog won’t see into our empty back yards. Rather than sitting on front porches near the sidewalk, we hide on back decks enclosed with lattice screens, lest the neighbor’s wife see us from her kitchen sink while we are grilling burgers. Unlike the wide-open doors and windows in the Latin world, many windows in our houses have vinyl slat blinds occluding views in either direction; giving a profound closed sensibility to a typical suburban street.

Dark tint on car windows provides anonymity, often to the angst of law enforcement officers walking up to such cars. We use automatic door openers to drive these blacked-out vehicles into our suburban refuges. Once inside our fortresses, caller id, e-mail filters, unpublished numbers, and smart security systems insulate us from the outer world.

Privacy has recently been taken to another level, disrupting my attempts at making the world a friendlier place. For twenty years I’ve been involved with Hospice; a splendid informality made volunteering easy and rewarding. I visited patients, helped with fund raising, ad infinitum. Several weeks ago I was standing watch with a dear friend who was expected to pass within days. On one visit I asked to be notified when my friend passed on. Despite being asked by the family to participate in final arrangements and representing the church, Hospice refused to agree to call me, citing privacy rules. On my next and last visit I found the bed clean and empty. Asking when Lily died, I was told I could not be given any information, again privacy was cited. I had to call undertakers around town to find out when my friend left us. Apparently morticians are not yet worried about privacy; none of their clients talk much.

For the same two decades I’ve been taking flowers, candies, stuffed animals, and small pillows to patients in nursing homes. My last visit included giving out colorful pillows made by a quilting club. Dementia patients find much calming and comfort from whimsical pillows with tassels, zippers, and buttons; satisfying the fidgeting that comes from advancing dementia. Wanting to encourage the quilters I took a few photographs of patients with their pillows, planning to give the photos to the quilting club. Despite patients being in clear agreement about my taking pictures, nursing home staff said taking pictures is not allowed, citing new privacy laws, and I was not told in very diplomatic terms. Since when does an American citizen not have the right to give permission to someone to take her picture and give it to a benefactor? These patients are not incarcerated in prison, or are they? Has increasing obsession with privacy actually moved us towards a legislated institutional environment where we can’t even let our friends take our picture?

A lifetime lived behind tinted windows, cypress trees, window blinds, lattices, caller ID, e-mail filters, smart security, and the Health Information Privacy Act might just mean dying alone; no one being the wiser for it. There might not even be a picture for your obituary because making one will violate your privacy.

Perhaps we should have a greater fear of being islands unto ourselves and dying alone, than being found out. You probably have less to hide than you think. I do.