A forgotten aspect of privacy

Privacy is extinct. I don't think anyone will disagree with that statement. In today's digital world it is almost impossible to maintain privacy. Every time you use a credit card, an ATM card, your mobile, your GPS, make an online purchase, or apply for anything, your information is being tracked and recorded somewhere. Every time you enter a store, walk down the street, drive down the freeway you are being video taped. What you buy, where you go, your preferences, ethnicity, income, everything about you is public. But there is a minor aspect of privacy, a nuance that is never considered. This fragile aspect of privacy was the first to die and its demised paved the way for the complete obliteration of privacy: etiquette in a social context.

What does etiquette have to do with privacy, you may ask. They have an ancient and unintentional association. Their relationship is subtle, but historically etiquette and social norm have served to protect the privacy of individuals in society. The interaction exists but we have never given it a name, there is no noun that describes this phenomenon and so I will attempt to exemplify it.

For most of human history social norm has dictated public behavior in minute details. This was not done with the intent of protecting individual privacy, but it had that consequence. In Roman times (for a while at least) baths were actually co-ed, men and women bathed communally the same spaces. This might have been the ultimate lack of privacy and invitation to lascivious and salacious behavior on the part of all concerned, but it was not. Etiquette saved the day. There were strict norms for decorum and behavior in public baths and the first rule was that you should always act as though you, and everyone else, were fully dressed. If a man ran into his neighbor's wife, you know, the one he had been coveting for months now, he was to greet her politely, inquire about her health and family, send his regards to her husband and walk away in a dignified manner. Another strict rule, of course, was no staring. He had to do all of this while looking her straight in the eye. If you broke the rules you were tossed out on your fanny and banned from the bath. To quote Obelix 'They're crazy these Romans'. But the point is, even if lack of privacy reached the extreme of being naked in public, etiquette compensated for the intrusion and mortification could be completely avoided. The behavior of the public persona was completely regulated by manners and etiquette, which conspired to protect one's privacy even under extreme conditions.

This continued in different forms over the ages. Through the centuries in Europe's upper echelons, etiquette ruled society and unwittingly protected the individual's privacy. Etiquette demanded that an individual of a certain social standing present a very specific public image. You couldn't leave the house without wearing your public persona. You were expected to dress according to the specific trends, speak of certain subjects and in a contemporary style, behave fashionably and follow social protocol. This resulted in a uniform society of public personas, everyone endeavored to present the same image.
Your manners and behavior determined how society judged you. That public persona was not necessarily who the individual was in the privacy of his home. His private persona was protected by the façade of the public persona he was expected to portray. Take the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (or movie if you prefer, Dangerous Liaisons), the characters' behavior went against socially acceptable norms. The public persona they were supposed to present became tainted by the private persona they failed to conceal, an enormous breach of etiquette. Again, etiquette operating to conceal one's reality and thus preserve privacy.

Once our numbers increased and our societies became more complex, such strict etiquette became difficult to maintain. It lingered though as a diluted version of itself. In a 1953 episode of I Love Lucy, Ethel and Lucy agreed to go on an errand downtown:
Lucy: Sure, come on let's get downtown and buy all the paper and stuff
Ethel: Ok, I'll get dressed.
Lucy: Ok hurry up
This is what Ethel (left) was wearing when she announced she had to go get dressed in order to go out:


A perfectly good and presentable dress by today's standards. In 1953 there was still some vestige of the public persona, etiquette at the time still demanded that the public persona presented downtown be somehow superior to the private persona in the house. The requirement was "to be presentable" - i.e. the same as everyone else - the unintentional result was the concealment of the expressions that made a person an individual: etiquette preserving privacy.

The artifice of presenting a public persona in order to maintain privacy is still often used today. Star Trek TNG actors for example will answer thousands of questions from fans at ST conventions every year, but will never respond to a question about their private lives. The persona they offer to the public is different from the people who go home after the convention, and if they were to comment on their private lives the two personas would merge and their privacy would be obliterated. This is a conscious decision by people in the public eye; they present a public persona in order to maintain their privacy. It is not dictated by etiquette and it does not apply to society at large. It is a tool rather than a social obligation and so it is different from the extinct concept I'm trying to exemplify.

Some time after 1953 etiquette died. People behaved, dressed, spoke and addressed each other in public exactly as they would in the privacy of their homes. The public and the private persona merged and etiquette died out completely, and with it died that aspect of privacy that was dependent on etiquette and social norm. Privacy, in its broadest terms still endured until the advent of the internet, but the demise of the nuance of privacy that was shrouded in etiquette, a nuance that had endured over millennia, was the first step in our willingness to forgo privacy completely.

This etiquette dependent aspect of privacy never had a name, we never created a word for it, and so when it deteriorated no one complained. It died completely unrecognized. An unknown species that went extinct before anyone knew it existed. I wish we had a noun of some kind to place on the gravestone.