- Limit airing your personal thoughts and actions on Facebook, LinkedIn, and similar types of social media. It's all accessible to anybody and makes it much easier for the State to control you.
It's been said that while art imitates life, life also imitates art. Especially when we look at George Orwell's famous novel, 1984. In the book, Big Brother had ubiquitous video screens monitoring what the plebs did. We now have hundreds of millions of cameras all around the world—not counting billions more in smartphones. Universal surveillance is making for very grim times.
Recently, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum said that everything will be "transparent"—a euphemism for darker things. But don't worry: you have nothing to fear, he said, if you do nothing wrong. That's ridiculous. It's exactly what the Stasi, the KGB, and the Gestapo said.
I wonder if Schwab would be willing to have a camera observe him in his bathroom and bedroom, or when he visits his safe deposit box and has a private conversation with friends—or fellow conspirators? Of course not. Transparency is only for the potentially dangerous plebs, who may not share the views of their betters.
One of the differences between a civilized society and a primitive, barbaric society, is privacy. In primitive societies, privacy doesn't exist. You have paper-thin walls in your hut. Everybody sees everything you do and everybody you talk to.
One of the nice things about civilization is that you can get away from other people and keep them from observing you. Privacy is one of the central elements of civilization itself.
Eliminating privacy, whether it be personal or financial, is not only an aggression against individuals but also destructive of civilization itself. Schwab's "transparency" is a regression towards barbarism.
The first time that it became apparent to me on a personal level was at a police station in D.C., where I was paying a fine for some traffic violation. I got to chatting with the cop in the back of the computer screen. This was a long time ago, in the late 70's.
And as we talked, he said, in a friendly way, "
Look, you don't have any idea how much information we have on you—but it's a lot."
He wasn't trying to intimidate me; he was just observing a fact. And that was a long time ago.
About 25 years ago, Larry Ellison, the head of Oracle Corporation, came out and made a shocking statement to the effect of "
Privacy doesn't exist, forget about it." At the time, I thought it sounded like Ellison approved of it, but now I don't think that was the case. He was just pointing out a reality.
Arnold Schwarzenegger made an ad during the COVID hysteria. He said, "
To hell with your freedom," encouraging people to stop protesting about getting their shots.
Children no longer say, "
Hey, it's a free country," when one says or does something that another doesn't like.
People have been programmed not to take privacy seriously. Worse, they're now suspicious of it and passively accept the fact that it doesn't exist.
With China's Social Credit System, everything you do, everywhere you go, and even everything you say is recorded and reported. We're going to get our own version. You'll be rewarded or punished according to what the ruling elite thinks is good or bad.
So the question is: when, if ever, will this trend turn around? Well, I'm not sure it's any longer a question of "when." It's more a question of "if"—at least within a reasonable time frame. The trend is not only still in motion but accelerating.
A lack of privacy means a lack of freedom. And a lack of freedom is what characterizes a serf—although we are servants in today's world, many enjoy a high standard of living and do not realize it.
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