Privacy is a term that refers to the right of being left alone. This is therefore a comprehensive right that must be valued and respected. Privacy, therefore, can be described as a fundamental right of human beings where it mandates that every individual should be given his/her right to make personal decisions regarding their own intimate matters, a life an individual wants to live as well a right to choose whether to be involved in some activities or not example drug testing, electronic surveillance among others.
To begin with, the first fundamental reason why privacy should be valued is the reason that privacy contributes to human dignity which in a greater sense implies that privacy is essential to each person’s personal individuality as well as personal self-worth. Privacy, therefore, is an important tool in protecting an individual reputation since when one personal life is known publicly one loses his/her own respect. Privacy, therefore, can be seen as a tool that is core to human dignity since the more a person’s privacy is invaded the more the individual loses the two central components of dignity and individuality which are respect and command from others. Furthermore, when our innermost selves become the subject of knowledge and criticism of others the resulting social pressure quickly erodes away a person’s individuality.
In addition, exposing a person’s private matters to the public is an essential tool that will make many people afraid to turn away from what society endorses with a fear that the individual will be the subject of criticism or attack. This, therefore, means that individual matters should be kept secret for an individual to be able to freely survive within a given group. Since some constraints are necessary for any society to function as well as some limitations imposed by society benefit an individual by teaching the individual to practice some norms and respectable values. This may be of no benefit to society in case people can know personal things about everyone else since it leads to difficulties in sustaining individual identity and uniqueness.
The second important point as to why privacy should be valued is the fact that privacy is the heart of mutual trust, friendship, tolerance, and creativity. If all privates issues concerning a person or business were to be revealed by one of your closest friends this will create a situation where the confidence one has in-person fates away since someone will think twice before trusting that person or treating that colleague as a friend.
Furthermore, privacy enables a person’s creativity to flourish for it protects against other people from interference by others since privacy acts as a prerequisite for a free and tolerant society since each person has her/his own secrets which concern her./his weaknesses that they are not to be revealed to the changing and competitive world. Since such revelation of a person’s weaknesses may lead to the shattering of individual dreams since it will create a situation where other people in the society takes advantage of that person to ridicule the individual with heavy emphasize on the individual’s past deeds that bear no relevance to the present conduct or desires that a judgmental and hypocritical public condemn.
In conclusion, privacy is of great importance both to a person and a society since it acts as a core tool through individual identity is preserved as well as given societal norms and cultures. Since in a society where there was no total privacy it would be difficult to live and tolerate that kind of society because every individual tends to know your actions which is hard when it comes to businesses keeping their business secrets as well as individuals who value their personal life to much.