I plan a few posts to follow-up on Sunday's sermon, "The Social Network," in which I talked about the intersections of faith and new media, particularly Facebook. I hope to generate comment and converation around these topics.
Let's jump right into privacy first off, as this is a big concern for people. Most of us have some boundary of privacy. I assume very few are completed unrestrained in their on-line presence. Most of us set our privacy controls somewhere beyond the most open. What are your particular guidelines for privacy?
I generally don't do apps or games or anything that asks me to share information. Someone recently asked me, "What are you afraid of?" I am aware that pretty much all that information is already out there. If you are a Google or Facebook user, then they've already got your number, literally. I was very upset when Google changed their privacy rules last fall (I cancelled my Google+ account), but I wasn't willing to give up my g-mail, googling (though I find it less helpful a search engine of late because it primarily directs me to places to shop), and Chrome (which I prefer to the current Explorer).
Answering that question put me in the opposite place of where I sometimes am. In a recent church meeting I and the other young man in the group said that one should live as if all that information is out there anyway, because it is, so trying too hard at privacy attempts is a waste of time and energy.
At the Emergent Village Conversation in February I led a session on "Blogging, Social Networking, and Process Theology." In that session we entered into a lively conversation about privacy.
Use of social networking, by ministers especially, allows us to be present with people in new ways, to share our stories, and watch other's. But, one question was, does it violate ministerial boundaries, or come close to?
One of the ministers in the room said it's possible that social networking reveals that ministerial boundaries is a mistaken notion, that we should live openly without a facade or division beween our private and professional lives anyway.
This was followed up with the comment that it's possible that private lives are a mistaken notion anyway. I added, since we were discussing process theology, that according to process thought, our identities are constituted by our relations with others, so maybe we can't truly have private lives.
I believe that keeping of secrets is generally destructive and that people should more openly share about the things in their lives. Please note that this does not mean that I share the confidences given to me. But I don't have a lot of respect for secret-keeping, even about intelligence and national security. I find it destructive. We should live honestly and openly and charitably with one another.
What does this mean for the school teacher say, who gets fired for someone else posting a picture of them at a party? Well, that shouldn't happen. One thing social networking will require of us is for us to defeat the social reactionaries and their restrictive, prudish moralities. Non-criminal adult behaviours should not shame us or have to be hidden, and we should get over our cultural hypocrisies. I like the move in some states to pass legislation protecting employees from having on-line things used against them by stupid, reactionary employers.
There are things that I want to keep only to myself and don't want to share. It seems important, on some level, to have such things. But, are they also destructive and unhealthy? I ponder that question.
Then there are things like medical and financial records that surely must be protected from the abuse and criminality of others.
We didn't get into all this in the session, but as we were discussing this topic of whether privacy was genuine reality or not, one of the students said, "Maybe this question comes from the place of white, male privilege? Do non-privileged people sometimes need privacy and boundaries, particularly abuse victims?"
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