It takes social courage, and more importantly courage of one's own convictions, to face the tide of conditioned and packaged social truths. "Truths" that will be repeated from friends, family, coworkers, such as "if you have nothing to hide .."
It is so much easier to go with the flow and takes not even a tiny bit of courage to do so.
It is difficult (but important) to self examine one's motive to insure it is not pleasure that is motivating one's standing in contradiction to (asserted) social pressures. And after that determination, it takes courage to be true to one's self.
Just disagreeing with the mainstream view on a topic often requires courage, trusting your reasoning and evidence over external sources. Then it typically requires additional courage to be public in your disagreement, especially in areas where it's common for people to criticize others for diverging from the mainstream view.
Still, I've found it really valuable to disagree publicly and then engage with the criticism, because that reduces the risk that my disagreement was due to a mistake.
"So if there was anything I was considering doing where if it became public I would be hurt, I wouldn't do it."
There is a great book Bonhoeffer[1] by Eric Mataxas which deals with this and a lot of other issues
> This corresponded almost exactly with things I shouldn't have been doing anyway, so it wasn't too hard.
The writer appears to be saying that there is no conflict between what he thinks is right and what the general public thinks is right. This is why I suggested naive or foolish might be better terms. I love Bonhoeffer, though!
Examples, explaining why I:
* Often let my kids do things alone at ages when other people wouldn't: https://www.jefftk.com/p/whats-the-alternative-to-independen...
* Disregard the warning on baby formula that says not to use the microwave: https://www.jefftk.com/p/stop-discouraging-microwave-formula...
* Work(ed) on ads: https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads
The challenging thing about reading books like Bonhoffer is that it compels you to questioning what your response would have been if placed in the same situation.
I don't think we'll be able to prevent the disappearance of privacy as technology continues to get cheaper and more widespread. I'm not saying "this is good", I'm saying "this is coming, adapt".
Because this is often a standard emotional response to very large problems. It's one of the reasons so many people (mainly conservatives) downplayed the risks of COVID. It can be mentally easier to downplay or ignore a scary problem rather than acknowledge it.