the sacred space of being unseen
SIGNULL (https://signull.substack.com/)
there is no freedom without #privacy.
there is no love without privacy.
there is no real self without privacy.
privacy is a condition, not a feature, the condition for being human.
we’ve been tricked into thinking privacy is a luxury or a preference. that it’s about hiding something bad. that if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.
but that’s a lie told by watchers.
truth is, if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to become.
because all becoming starts in the shadows.
before anything can be shown, it has to be held.
before a thought can be spoken, it must be safe to whisper.
before love can be declared, it must be allowed to grow where no one else is looking.
the greatest storytellers knew this.
orwell didn’t just write about totalitarianism, he wrote about the horror of having nowhere left to retreat.
kafka gave us the dread of invisible eyes & inscrutable systems, watching & judging without appeal.
even the bible opens with a moment of forbidden knowing & the first consequence is shame. a loss of innocence. a loss of cover.
privacy has always been the real garden of eden.
& now we’re burning it down.
we trade our most intimate thoughts for convenience.
we leak our desires for algorithmic breadcrumbs.
we perform our lives in a panopticon & call it authenticity.
but performance is not identity. & surveillance is not love.
the scariest part is that we’re forgetting how to crave privacy.
we’re forgetting what it felt like to be unseen, unrecorded, unjudged.
& in that forgetting, something ancient is dying.
privacy is the womb.
it’s where we gestate who we are before the world gets to shape us.
take it away, & you don’t get more honesty. you get collapse. conformity. psychic suffocation.
if you love freedom, you have to love privacy.
if you care about the human spirit, you have to defend its room to breathe.
& if you still want to become something tomorrow, you must protect what the world doesn’t get to see today.
this is less about data.
this is about dignity.
this is about soul.
this is about being allowed to be a person, not just a persona.
defend your shadows.
they are sacred.
