A Conversation for Talking Point: Privacy

Privacy- and " West"/ "East" Divide

Post 1

CASSEROLEON

Some of the points that I have just posted in a Guide Entry which discusses an article by Dr David Owen on the medical challenges associated with the responsibilities of Medical Professionals regarding the health of political leaders seem relevant to this whole question of privacy:

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Reflecting on the issues that Dr Owen addressed in that article written for a Medical Journal, the examples he looked at were I think meant to elucidate two issues
(a) the role and responsibility of the Doctor, and
(b) the mechanisms and means best suited to reconciling the private with the public in such key roles.

But in this respect Dr. Owen's views seemed to be shaped by:
(a) A rather "British"- though perhaps more particularly Southern English- attitude that respects other people's privacy, and expects the same in return, and
(b) a tendency for Doctors to take on the mantle of priests and to treat the personal knowledge that they gain as almost like the secrets of the confessional.

Regarding the latter, this sanctity of the consulting room is clearly inappropriate. By definition in the confessional both parties believe in an Almighty God, who has the future in his hands, and so there is no real concept of the Truth being closeted. So the Priest, who truly “keeps faith” can wash his hands and leave it to God, while also pointing out to the confessing party that what he has said is no secret to God ,and God may well "work in his mysterious way", leaving the "faithful" to try to do the "right thing" in Future. "God is watching you and expects you now to do the right thing"

But even among priests- as portrayed humorously in the Don Camillo stories- at least by the 1920’s- belief in the Divine Intervention of an Omniscient God in the minutiae of human affairs had declined.

But Dr. Owen’s manifestation of a rather British idea of privacy reminded me of a scene in Han Suyin's novel "The Mountain is Young" in which her heroine, a forty year old woman born in Shanghai to a British single mother, talks to a new old-wise friend in 1956 Nepal, who presumes to talk to her about her most intimate private life.

When she says that this is her private life, and therefore not his business- according to her Western education- he replies that of course it is her private life. That is why those people, who count themselves as her friends and who know and care about her personally, should talk to her about these problems. Otherwise she will have to face them all alone-with all the weaknesses and inadequacies that of necessity means.. Then Anne Ford remembers her Chinese childhood and the fact that the private and personal are community property in Asian culture.

In another exchange the Field Marshal says "Confucious, two millenniums ago, prescribed the rules of correct and harmonious human existence in all their minutiae. To the Chinese mind the issue has always been the problem of the relationship to other human beings. Perhaps that is why the group spirit , the welfare of the collective, becomes so readily their social patterns".

In other words the Chinese person is by definition a social being, and has no exclusively private life, merely a group of intimates at the heart of an ever-widening circle into which the individual is connected. Hence apparently the Chinese language had no word for "liberty" because the concept did not exist. The closest word would be interpreted in English as "self-willed" of even "selfish", in another words acting with no thought of the consequences for others.

In the recent privacy controversies it has been commented that France has a very different culture to the Anglo-Saxon and British one, with individuals going to court to get injunctions to protect their privacy. And Dr Owen mentions a couple of examples of French Presidents whose detailed medical conditions were kept out of the public domain. One might also add the existence of a"love child" of one President and the "coloured" girl who was adopted by the another.

These things were no doubt known to intimates, and were also no doubt discussed within such circles, with friends and enemies respecting the difference between intimate and personal and public. But, as yet, it seems that France does not have a developed "Kiss and tell" culture. And, of course the French people are not deceived by the public pronouncements. They expect their public figures to be like themselves with secrets and “dirty linen” that stay within the family.

But to return to Chinese culture and values, most people will have noticed the very marked emphasis on the friendly demeanour of the Chinese Premiere when he arrived in Britain yesterday.

Given the present relations between Britain and China, he could be confident that "the West" is determined to be friendly at present, and the Chinese delegation has arrived as friends determined to approach the current World economic problems in a Confucian spirit of the pursuit of harmony. Hence the Premiere was pleased to use an old Chinese saying "A friend in need is a friend in deed".

In this kind of approach the problem that Dr.Owen considers does not exist, and can only exist if Medicine is only concerned with the mere physical well-being of the patient and not with the "whole man".

In fact a huge proportion of current British ill-health is due to symptoms of poor lifestyles- sleeplessness, depression, obesity, drug-addiction- many of which are due to the uncaring society in which so many people are left to struggle on their own in households which do not work as homes: and the Doctors’ surgeries are full of people who just appreciate being treated as a human being for a few minutes. The Parish priest used to perform the same function for lonely old ladies.

Many decades ago when a friend went into General Practice he was briefed about the star-system on the patients record cards, which flagged up to the novice newcomer those patients who were such regulars essentially looking for an excuse to drop in for a chat.



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Privacy- and " West"/ "East" Divide

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