Thursday, September 17, 2009

Protect Your Private Life

There are two commonly used methods to protect the personal life. The more common one, and the one that requires less analytical thought, is to individuate, withdraw, go out of communication, maybe even hide. This can involve private phone numbers, gated communities, high walls, guard dogs, exclusive clubs, etc. For those who cannot conceive of operating in a group from other than their personal viewpoint, it can also involve the purging of individuals from groups, which can easily devolve into a non-analytical group dramatization of the mob mentality.

The more analytical and pro-life option is to assume and operate from the viewpoint of a hat that is appropriate to the situation. The reason this can work is that a hat viewpoint is always impersonal, so the personal life can still be protected from unwanted communication or impingement if the individual is adept at fielding and responding to unwanted personal communications from the point of view of an appropriate hat.

A basic hat viewpoint that can be fallen back on in almost any situation is the Citizen Hat, which, inspired by recommended naming conventions from the C# programming language, I like to call the ICitizen interface. The reference to C# is my only my personal choice, and does not need to be used by others. I just like it because it helps to remind me what "I" am being in a certain situation, even though in the C# convention the "I" stands for "Interface". The concept of an Interface also helps, because that is really what the assumed hat is-- a social interface which allows only limited, regulated types of communications or interactions with the environment to pass through, and so protects the private data and private activities of those behind the interface from arbitrary interaction with the environment.

You are on solid analytical footing with the Citizen Hat, which is where you want to be, as long as you are dealing with someone old enough to assume the responsibilities of a citizen. That is because it is actually a step forward in the pro-life direction on the group causation scale from the level of social groups (which occupy the bottom of the scale) to more formal and causative groups. Any time you move in the pro-life direction you are also moving in the analytical direction, so you are not doing the party of the other part a disservice, even while maintaining a closed door to your personal life. There is no reason to snub or invalidate the party of the other part. Any such snub or invalidation could only come from the personal viewpoint, and so would knock the part of the first part off from the Citizen Hat viewpoint. So this method of protecting your private life is also a polite one.

The Citizen Hat can be used with either fellow citizens of your own country, or with citizens of other countries. In a foreign country, the Citizen Hat would involve ensuring that ones actions do not offend against the cultural values of the host country.

I have not fully worked out the Citizen Hat, so I recommend that you consider the following as only a basic framework. It can be used as is, but it can also be added to and filled out.

CITIZEN HAT, derives from Human Being Hat (see below)

  1. Obey laws of the land.

  2. Conform to cultural values, at least in public.

  3. Uphold decency standards to include:

    1. Avoid public intoxication to a level that impairs analytical thought below the level at which the Citizen Hat can be supported.

    2. Interaction with the opposite gender in the direction of sexual attraction extends only as far as monitoring of compliance with public decency laws (e.g. no rips in clothing showing underlying underwear, no "plumber's crack", etc.) Note that this does NOT extend as far as sexual attraction, but stops short of it. Sexual attraction would belong to the personal domain. It can, however, include corrective actions that move, or help to move, any such observed violations back into compliance with public decency.



  4. Uphold and support public safety.

  5. Uphold and support public health.

  6. Uphold and support cleanliness of public areas.

  7. Avoid lowering or degrading the effectiveness or condition of public equipment or property.

  8. Monitor the national condition and direction to see that it aligns with the pro-life purpose line. Take corrective actions as necessary.

  9. Uphold the rights of the HONEST individual, where an HONEST individual is defined as someone who can and will take responsibility to detect when the local, state or national course has diverged from the pro-life purpose and is able and willing to take corrective action. Recognizes that rights for the honest individual allows the group to correct itself.

  10. Respects the rights of other citizens to direct the course of their private lives of their own volition. Maintains this respect for another citizen’s private life as stronger than the desire to know any such citizen personally.


HUMAN BEING HAT, base hat

  1. Monitor self and others for the purpose of avoiding falling into a condition of Mob Mentality, or getting self or others out of any such condition found.

  2. Stay healthy, help others to stay healthy.

  3. Be useful in improving or maintaining conditions for self and others.

  4. Uphold the standards of intelligence appropriate to being a member of the “most intelligent species on the planet”.


    1. Don’t be a herd animal.(Human Beings have standards to uphold)

    2. Don’t be a lemming.(Beneath us)

    3. Utilize higher educational methods than “monkey see, monkey do”.(We can do better than this)

    4. Have courage to operate from the basis of right and wrong, rather than “well thought of” and “not well thought of”. (This is in contrast to dogs, who generally have these two scales reversed).

    5. Think for yourself.


  5. Seek to have good life experience, and build on good life experience from the past.

    1. Stay in the analytical band. Support practical usage of the analytical mind.

    2. Support movement towards less war, less crime, more education, rejection of false data, support of good data, less ignorance, more productivity.

    3. Be useful.

    4. Improve ability to face up to and do work.




Warning: failure to wear the Human Being hat can result in being labeled a “Human Bean”.