The Private and the Public
What does or should the private look like in a world so enmeshed with public expression?
View
A few weeks ago, I visited Nepal and was speaking to a friend there. “Pastor” he said, (he always calls me Pastor), “will I hear your podcast again?” I first met him when visiting three years ago - I had spoken at a conference he helped put together. I don’t remember talking about this newsletter or the podcast, but somebody must have. At any rate, he was a listener to On Culture and he missed hearing it. Frankly, I was a bit stunned that someone in Nepal was asking about my little podcast. When I decided to pause it (we started it back up in May), there were reasons I expressed at the time. The idea that someone would miss it, true confession, didn’t really occur to me. The idea that someone in Nepal would miss it, or was even listening to it, would never have occurred to me. I thought it was a private decision only, and in a sense it was, of course. But because it was a private decision about something that was public facing, it wasn’t totally private. It had impacts out there in the world beyond me, beyond my home office where I sit writing this - out there in the 15 states and 4 countries where you all live. Don’t get the wrong idea, this sprawling empire of The Embassy consists of less than 150 subscribers. But I don’t know who a lot of you are. Some of those states … no idea. A couple of those countries … no idea. There seems to me to be a truth lying in here that I need to consider - perhaps naming something about our world that we all should consider.
I want to write, as someone who has always wanted to be a private person, about being private in a public world. In doing so, I realize that I am writing about privacy and the private in a piece that, because I push a button, gets emailed to all of my subscribers and gets published to my website. (And, apparently, gets read in 15 states and 4 countries). I realize that might seem like a contradiction, or at least a possible one. But that is the contradiction that interests me, a contradiction that may be important for all of us to consider. I want to be a private person. I am, to those who know me, a private person - not cripplingly so, but not someone who shares the details of his life freely with more than a few people. I value my private world and the independent mind God has given me. I generally don’t think much about whether or not people like me - sometimes in healthy ways and sometimes not. Also, true confession, I want you to hit the like button (it is the heart shaped icon at the bottom of this article). And/or the share button (it is the button that has “Share” right in the middle of it). And/or the Subscribe button. And/or the Restack button. I write to influence and to say something in the world beyond myself and to, perhaps, by God’s grace, have some impact in the world - to have some impact with you. And, by God’s grace, I have faith that this is the case. Also, I want you to hit the Like, Share, Restack, and/or Subscribe buttons.
Even though it is something I feel called to, it is a strange thing, not ever being a professional writer, to send these things off to people I don’t know. And, perhaps because of that, I want these private thoughts to make an imprint out there, with you - and, in so doing, are they no longer private? And, what impact does all of that have on me? (A not very private question to raise, but I hope you might consider the question, as it may be appropriate for you.)
How much is the technologically enabled drive to go public with our lives - a public that is now global - reshaping how we understand ourselves? Reshaping the moral landscape of our interior lives, our psychological incentives, the very definition and experience of being a person? … Have we ceased believing that something of value might lie outside what other people can know and articulate about us, beyond what we can even know about ourselves?
Anne Snyder, Seen and Unseen, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025
Have you ever seen one of those social media videos that are posted because they are really embarrassing to someone - they make the subject look stupid, weak, scared, awkward? And have you ever noticed that many of these videos appear to be posted to the account of the person who is the subject of these videos?
I also take it for granted that the greatest threat to privacy is not prying eyes, so much as our own desire to be pried into.
Anton Barba-Kay, Keep it Private, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025
Now, of course, these videos may be fake. But I think that makes the point even more clearly. We seem to live in an age where exposure, being noticed by others, is its own currency. And while I don’t think that any of you would do such a thing, such things impact us. While we value our privacy, many of us, culturally, seem to assess our value (at least partly) via exposure - whether by likes and clicks and hearts or by other ways we present ourselves to the world or to ourselves. I rarely post on social media - in fact, almost all my posts are links to this newsletter to let people know it is out there … which, back to the contradiction. I am part of the attention economy even as I analyze it. That, as I have written many times before, is how culture works - we can analyze it, but we should remember we are a part of it, even the parts we don’t want to think we are a part of. It leads me to consider (after having to admit it to myself) why I check to see if anyone has liked or shared or subscribed. It isn’t for the money - I make enough to cover the costs of my website and to help me do some consulting and coaching for churches and leaders who can’t really pay market rates for these services. (Why am I telling you this?) Anyway, it isn’t about the money. I want it because at least part of me wants the affirmation. Does that change anything about what I write? I don’t think so (see above). But it is a question I should ask myself.
There are two basic wishes at play in all our privacies: the desire for solitude and the desire for society. We wish to be left alone, but it is hell to be alone. We wish to break the spell of solitude, but hell is other people. Digital technology promises to resolve this problem by affording us both … But instead of both, we get neither.
Anton Barba-Kay, Keep it Private, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room, alone.
Blaise Pascal, 1654
I am using this newsletter and social media more broadly as examples, but I am also thinking about the larger cultural impulse to present a curated picture of ourselves to the world, even to those we know and love, without thinking about it. We seek to present this to ourselves also, for our own approval. The perfect vacation, the perfect wedding, family, anniversary. The gleaming career, the wonderful house, the latest fashion. Many people, not all, but many, bought a certain electric car because it communicated what they considered to be the right things about the kind of person they wanted to be seen as. Some people, not all, cheered when those cars were torched when the message those cars delivered to the world changed. Some of that second group of people are also in the first group of people. The car is more than a car - it is a statement in a different package. Even statements about privacy are statements to send out publicly (I guess like this one? or from a writer I like below). I think most of this happens under the surface, beyond our personal reflection.
I am not a mental health professional, so I am sure I won’t get this exactly right - but one of the concepts I am wrestling with is something called differentiation. Differentiation is me not having to have you be a certain person, or a certain type of person, or to act or respond in a certain way, in order for me to be comfortable being me. It is me being comfortable in my own skin, while being in relationship or connection with someone else. I think I have a healthy degree of differentiation. But of course I would say that. There are certain audiences that matter more than others, of course - I care much more about what close friends and family think of me than what others may think. (Even though I just said I want you to hit the like button). At any rate, I believe our culture suffers from a deepening lack of differentiation. We, as a culture, care far too much about what other people, people we do not know, think of us or our team or our position. Without that affirmation, we seem to be losing our ability to know who we are or to value ourselves independent of the (perceived) positive interaction of others. But this positive interaction tends to be shallow and ephemeral and, therefore, perpetually disappointing.
The audience I sometimes fail to consider is my ever present audience, if that is an appropriate way to describe Him. Jesus spends the central portion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 emphasizing this central point. It is the motive of being seen and approved of by others that Jesus speaks to, especially in all things spiritual.
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them … so when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets … and when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others …
Jesus, selections from Matthew 6
In Terrence Malik’s A Hidden Life, we see a family living a quiet, peaceful, and private life until a commitment of faith and of conscience leads the main character into an unwanted and painful public ordeal. To Malik, the hidden life, the life no one may see (or everyone may see, if required), is life. And, fidelity to it, to the commitments that define us, are more precious than life itself. He also, perhaps, refers to Paul’s description of Christ -
… so that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Colossians 2:2-3
Spiritual growth is, in one sense, uncovering this mystery in Christ, finding the treasures there. It is this hidden life that I hope to nurture and, to some degree, share. At times, the public life seeks to distort it.
Links
Anne Snyder, Seen and Unseen, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025
Anton Barba-Kay, Keep it Private, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025
A Hidden Life, Written and Directed by Terrence Malik, 20th Century Studios
Interesting. The need to have someone else like us or approve of us seems to be a constant across time and cultures…maybe it’s just an indicator that we are social beings but it also could be seen as strong evidence of the existence of God.
As a fairly private person that also happens to write and podcast on here, this has given me much to consider.
And of course, I loved the comparison to Malick’s brilliant A Hidden Life.