Dumb or Just Happy: Is There a Concept of Liberty That Respects the Pursuit of Apathetic Nirvana?

"But if I no longer feel attached to property, no longer care whether or not I am in prison, if I have killed within myself my natural affections, then he cannot bend me to his will, for all that is left of myself is no longer subject to empirical fears or desires. It is as if I had performed a strategic retreat into an inner citadel - my reason, my soul, my 'noumenal' self - which, do what they may, neither external blind force, nor human malice, can touch. I have withdrawn into myself; there, and there alone, I am secure."

--Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty**

In the minds of political philosophers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, the notion of privacy, as a sphere of private life that—on principle—should be left free from external intrusion or influence, derives its substance from the more basic tenet that individual freedom is necessary for the advancement of society. Although reasonable minds can differ in their optimism about human nature and the resultant transformations that might occur when the sinister id, so to speak, is given more or less private space in which to entertain itself sans social superego, a general consensus exists that at least “some portion of existence must remain independent of the sphere of social control.” While there are many sociopolitical forces, or interests, that tend to encroach on individual privacy when left unchecked, only recently has attention necessarily turned to an unlikely body of culprits—citizens themselves and those who share a peculiar kind of apathy about caring for their own privacy interests.

Despite a seemingly constant flow of media reports documenting the privacy threats posed by popular internet mediums such as Google and Facebook, a significant portion of their patrons —- even those who are well aware of such threats —- manage to maintain an unconcerned and self-assured sense of apathy. Like a Where's Waldo effect manifesting itself in the context of attitudes about internet privacy, this kind of apathy is often justified by a statement resembling: "Since I'm not Waldo, there's no reason to worry. And regardless, what's the point of worrying?"

**Note: All unlinked quotations in this essay were taken from Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty"

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