Paradox

     One of the many fun songs in "Pirates of Penzance", which I attended last weekend, is about a paradox. In the opera, the paradox was that the main character, born on leap year, was at the same time 21 years old and a little boy of 5. Paradox means a seemingly contradictory statement. I believe one of the great paradoxes of our time is our right to privacy vs. our compulsion to post.  To paraphrase the saying about the right to remain silent--we have the right to privacy, what we lack is the capacity. The right to privacy has grown into a politically correct monster, especially in the health care field in which I work. Older hospital volunteers tell me that the names and conditions of hospital patients used to be published in the newspaper. Now hospital staff can neither confirm nor deny that an individual is even a patient there. I feel like a voyeur when I try to find out the room number of someone I want to visit. For a time, at my home health care office, staff members were required to turn client files face down on their desks even though everyone who worked there knew who the clients were. And they are no longer called clients, the current p.c. buzzword is "consumer", which I refuse to use because I resent being equated with food. Nursing homes used to post lists of resident's birthday months, now it is a secret, as if identity thieves could benefit by claiming to be Bill Smith, born in November.
    Most of us could paper the walls with privacy statements--and  that is the only way we would bother to read them. I want to know what my credit card and doctor's office are doing with my personal information, I do not care that the lawn service knows my address. People who are reluctant to list their address in the phone book, will publicly air their dirty laundry from their cell phone.
     Rather than refraining to post embarrassing Facebook photos and faux pas, the legal system is considering blocking employers from accessing this public/private information. Right to privacy, which has been declared constitutional (the constitution writer's must have considered it too private to include) has even been used to condone atrocities like abortion and sexual deviance. Privacy is not a right, and in the information age it is a rare privilege--a paradox the public can like or decline to share.