Most of us are not prepared to defend everything we do, even when we know we're not doing anything wrong. Sometimes we're just doing things we would find it difficult to explain. That's where privacy is most valuable.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed any privacy. My father, who was kind of obsessive about such things, wouldn't even allow me to close my bedroom door. He even threatened to take it off its hinges because I closed it too often. He claimed to believe that closing doors was bad for air circulation and damaging to the furnace blower! He also claimed to believe that there is no reason any honest person would WANT privacy - that the only thing privacy was good for was covering up something bad.

When HE wanted to cover something up, he simply lied. (He was a secret drinker, for one thing.) But he never admitted to having lied, ever, in his life.

Consequently, I grew up having no respect for my own privacy or anyone else's. This lasted considerably into my adult life. To make a long story short, I eventually learned that having no privacy had given me a rather rigid, unforgiving personality. Once you accept the idea that you have to be able to rationally defend and justify everything you do, and subject it to public scrutiny, it makes you awfully afraid to try anything new. You can't change your mind about anything. You can't give up old habits or learn new ones. Whatever shortcomings you have, you have to rationalize them. You can't forgive people, or ask for forgiveness. You can't be creative.

Privacy is the nest in which we nurture our creative vulnerable selves. It is where we defend ourselves from the over-critical, censoring, controlling, rationalizing, spiteful world. Just as a political revolution can't occur without secrecy, a revolution in the way we look at things can't occur without privacy either.