left alone, together
“When we scale up the individual to a body politic, it is the private sphere that’s crucial for our capacity for democracy and self-determination. As individuals, we need privacy to figure out who we are when we’re no longer performing the self. As a collective, we have to be able to distinguish who we are as individuals hidden from the norms and pressures of the group in order to reason clearly about how we want to shape the group.”
I'm currently reading a book on lost cities and the transition humans made from being nomadic tribes to living together in large cities and reading this piece on privacy at the same time has some thoughts percolating in my head, thoughts about how we're meant to live and how we actually live, and more that I don't even have words for yet. But I've now subscribed to this blog, feels like some good writing and thinking happening here.