Today: Is Anything Private Anymore?

Today, with a few clicks of a computer mouse, the Average Joe or Jane can find out just about anything about you, from where you live to whether you’ve got a criminal record. It used to be that we had to pay private detectives to gather such information; now it’s at our fingertips.  Is this a good or a bad thing?

Having information is a good thing. There is never pure good or pure bad — and there are shades of grey in everything. Having the wonderful technology that brings us advances in medicine, luxury to the middle and lower classes and exchange of information at the drop of a (very heavy) hat, also brings a loss of privacy. But what is it that is no longer private?

The answer is that information about money, jail time, marriages — anything that’s legal and recorded — is now much more easily found out than it used to be. And yes, detectives are no longer as necessary, but on the other hand, when they are, they have so much more in the way of resources at their fingertips than ever before.
What is still private and more valuable than ever are character, values, relationships and love. What this new technology has done is weed out what’s important and what’s not. In a way, it’s done us a favor. So what if our neighbor knows how much we make or how much we owe? Once we get over our socially restricting morality that makes us think someone is better or worse because they have more money or less money, more debts or fewer debts — then we can move on to more important issues in the evolution of our community and our relationships — character, values, relationships and love.