Time to Adjust Privacy Settings

Every feeling loses power when it is spoken.

The intensity of a feeling can in no way be communicated in feeble words. And so often, it comes out all wrong.

This is part of the wisdom that says silence is golden. Because the less you speak, the more genuine your thoughts and feelings remain. So unless they are absolutely necessary to communicate, thoughts and feelings ought to remain just that.

And this is why quiet people get more attention when they speak. Not only because it’s a rare treat for the listeners but also because their words are more vibrant than one who has emptied his energy account (and then some) by constantly talking.

And that is also why, the deeper and more intimate the feeling, the less it should be spoken. Less often, and with less words too.

This is the golden rule: intimacy thrives on privacy.

In today’s world that rule has been utterly deserted. In fact, the conventional wisdom is sliding towards the opposite extreme: the deeper you feel something the more you should speak about it, and to the maximum amount of people. But this abuse of privacy, by dragging it into public view, is chipping away at the foundations of intimacy.

The perpetual barrage of images, texts and lyrics all broadcasting intimate, and private feelings and thoughts in the most public, coarse way, is nothing less than an attack on the sensitivity and natural modesty of today’s man, woman or child.

Immodesty is poison for a society and following in Europe’s shameful example, America is following foolishly in those dangerous footsteps. (And even more painfully, Israel follows next, subservient as it has decided to be to everything USA.)

Lately there has been an onslaught of radio ads urging us to clean our homes of HHW, or Hazardous Household Waste. There is no more hazardous household waste than which gushes from today’s media. If you care enough to protect your children from HHW, then you certainly care enough to nurture and protect their sense of privacy, modesty and native innocence.

There are parts of the human heart, the human mind and the human body which are meant to be preserved through privacy. Let us preserve them - for the good of our society, our marriages, our society and our children.

*****

“How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!                   

“How goodly are your tents: For…the entrances were not facing each other (and they didn’t see into each other’s tents.” — The Talmud