Dignity

Dignity

January 28

Today, 7 rhetorical questions for Sunday…

What is necessary for something to continue existing?
Is autonomy necessary?
Is physical integrity (as opposed to “physical dispersion”) necessary?
Does dignity require privacy, which requires autonomy and physical integrity?

Privacy is the key that unlocks the aspects of yourself that are most intimate and personal, that make you most you, and most vulnerable. Your naked body. Your sexual history and fantasies. Your past, present and possible future diseases. Your fears, your losses, your failures. The worst thing you have ever done, said, and thought. Your inadequacies, your mistakes, your traumas. The moment in which you have felt most ashamed. That family relation you wish you didn’t have. Your most drunken night.

~ Carissa Véliz from, https://aeon.co/essays/privacy-matters-because-it-empowers-us-all

When one violates another’s privacy, is that only attacking their dignity?
Is that also diminishing their autonomy?
Is that also attacking their physical integrity?

“But,” some say, “it’s just data.”

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Unlearning how to pose

April 23

The old and the very young have always held sway for me because of bald and unerring candor, and the lack of affectation. They had either stopped posing or had not yet learned to pose.

~ Mylinh Shattan from, https://treehouseletter.com/2022/09/06/98853/

Intentional or not, I’m awarding style points for the innuendo which Shattan’s use of the word bald brings to that first sentence. Beyond that this piece is the epitome of fusing a personal story with an overview of a book. I’ve not done that often—if at all, sorry, I’m too lazy even to search—in short-form as she has.

But in classic “this stuff is me doing my personal reflection with the garage door up” style, it occurs to me that I do do it a lot in micro-form. Basically every one of these my missives combines something I found lying about, a bit of commentary about it, and then my personal thoughts or stories. Am I draw to other writing which is of similar form? Am I unintentionally writing within some genre whose name I know not? Am I crazy? Am I insane? (Am I the victim of evil doers out to destroy me? Perhaps. I don’t know what it is— a deep-fried feeling I guess.)

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