Privacy in Public Venues

The thriving communities of West Virginia at one time embraced the creativity and ideas visitors brought to their small towns.  It was commonplace for entreprenurial West Virginians to engage people from other parts of the United States in order to spur the economic and social progress of their towns.  Such persons were referred to as Boosterists who desired to combine personal gain and public good.  The prospect for personal profit was tied to the growth of the booster's town and to any activity that would "make it easier, cheaper and pleasanter" for people to join his community. 

A visitor, well established professional and a consumer of our town was recently party to concerns over privacy in a public venue.  The descriptive article and comments in The Charleston Gazette led me to question how the communities of West Virginia have evolved from boosters in the 1800's to now supposed privatists in 2009.  I believe there are underlying implications from the photographers incident that will impact the development of Charleston and other communities. 

Specific parties believed their privacy was being encroached upon when photographed.  However, their participation in a public venue would alter certain private rights.  Some state that privacy protects us from unwanted access by others whether it be physical, personal information or attention.  Also noteable is the enactment of the public, which contains multiple groups of diverse people coming together in a mutually physical, mental or idealogical area.  As social and political societies became more established in the late 1700's and early 1800's, distinctions began to evolve about a person's private life in the public sphere.  Jurgen Habermas, renown German philosopher, studied this very evolution in one of his books discussing the disintegration of individual private lives and "public institutions."  People use to work from their homes, maintain their privacy and not discuss their personal problems to total strangers, but this privacy has disintegrated into a public realm where nothing is sacred.  Demands for privacy have changed as the public realm has grown by means of the internet, television, and the media. 

If a boosterist were active today in the same sense as in 1860 and if he or she understood the grander implication of what a visiting consumer to our community offers, then the photographer would have been embraced in the public sphere setting of the Charleston Town Center.  I imagine the photographer would have been asked to utilize his private strengths (photography) to benefit the public community as a whole.  Habermas and the boosters would have encouraged the parents and police officer to engage the photograher.  To have a public conversation encouraging the disimenation of what was believed to have been an encroachment on personal rights to a positive appreciation of what The Charleston Town Center provides to its community members via Santa and The Choir.

Holding the Door Open

I aspire to be surrounded by people that never stop helping others, whether that be giving money to charitable groups, mentoring younger individuals or simply holding the door open for others.  Some members in our society are more concerned with monetary gains and success than they are with those around them.  Our local news has been plagued lately with the stories about businesses and businesspersons unjustly affecting others. 
Despite, the discouraging news about self-seeking individuals there are many in our community that continue to be self-deprecating.

As a community, we must be encouraged to promote the (now presumed) minority of people who hold doors open for others.  According to John Stuart Mill, as power is given to a distinct group, it is inevitable that another group or individual then relinquish that power. I contend that our society has given some power to those who are more concerned with their own personal gain than encouraging and promoting others to progress society.  Mill’s fear is the complete suppression of such a minority group will stop the progression of improving life. 

If you currently are not in a situation that benefits society as a whole for the progression of improving life, I encourage you to begin doing it now.  Find a person in your business that you can mentor, have a conversation with your neighbor or simple say hello to someone while holding the door open.  The leadership you display through these simple acts will empower others to do the same.  And if we stop progressing these acts and allow them to disintegrate further, what will become of our community?  Mill states, “A people, it appears, may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop: when does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality.” It is when the individual is silenced by the power of the majority that the evolution of change ends.