Prompt:
Nowadays nothing is private: our culture has become too confessional and self expressive. People think that to hide one’s thoughts or feelings is to pretend not to have those thought or feelings. They assume that honesty requires one to express every inclination and impulse.
—Adapted from J. David Velleman, “The Genesis of Shame”
Assignment:
Should people make more of an effort to keep some things private? Plan and write an essay …
Essay:
Privacy is a personal preference that can be both promising, as well as detrimental. Many believe that it is a poor concept and that people should become more expressive and confessional. However, privacy is a fundamental part of living and if everyone respected each other’s limited privacy, our culture would expand.
With privacy, comes confidentiality and a certain introversion in people. Martin Luther was an exemplar model of how extroversion and self-expression is a necessity in our culture today. In his lifetime, the Catholic Church was a corrupt, scheming building that was decaying day by day. Many people noticed the madness stirring within the previously religious temple, but Luther was the first man to truly stand up against this. He nailed his 95 Theses, which were the 95 reasons why the Catholic Church was corrupt, onto the Wittenberg Church, resulting in the people who went to that Catholic Church to think twice before entering the nefarious building. Although Luther’s exocommunication and solitary life was unfortunate for him, he managed to reform Catholicism as well as create several other religions such as Presbyterians and Anabaptist. If not for Luther’s expressiveness and ability to break the wall of privacy, Catholicism may have been damaged to an extent beyond repair.
Politicians, are another example of how privacy is a terrible concept. Often, politicians enter elections with a facade. They lure their voters with a false impression of who they really are, and are most empathetic about getting the most votes. William Howard Taft, is a prime example of why this privacy or concealment can lead to distress. Taft entered the presidential election after Theodore Roosevelt, promising to follow Taft’s ideals, such as the Square Deal. After not living up to his promises by firing one of Roosevelt’s favored employees and ignoring issues that Roosevelt would never avoid, such as conservationism, Taft ended his presidency in a downward slope. He ran again the next term, and unsurprisingly lost to Woodrow Wilson. When William Howard Taft ran for presidency, no one suspected his private vendetta to pretend to be Roosevelt’s clone, and he ended up being thrown out of his high horse.
In the real world, privacy can be harmful to not only the individual, but to the world, as proven in Taft’s story. On the other hand, non-confidentiality or expressiveness, can be a promising element, like in Martin Luther’s case. All in all, people should not make an effort to keep more privacy because this leads to nothing but corruption, concealment, and fraud.
Thank you!