Subject:      Is privacy natural? (was: Evil, children, and Holy Cows).
From:         sasha1@netcom.com (Alexander Chislenko)
Date:         1995/08/20
Message-Id:   <416608$qgf@nntp5.u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups:   sci.bio.evolution


Della Noche <dnoche @wco.com> writes:

>Yikes!  You guys will be surprised when you have kids!  Incest taboos,
>including "watching" are pretty strongly "hard-wired" in humans.  I was
>interested to note in myself how this seemed a "big monkey" thing rather
>than social conditioning.  Once I had a kid the prohibition seemed to be
>coming from a deep, almost viceral level.  I suspect it is Mother Nature's
>(or our species') way of protecting the gene pool.

That's an interesting point...
Looking at whether animals attempt to protect their privacy, property, etc.
could give some insights into what of this is biologically inherent in
humans, and what is socially conditioned (but not necessarily what is good
or bad - unless one is crazy about all things "natural"[=mindless]).

  Property, in the conditions of scarcity, seems to be the first natural
thing to protect. This probably is the instinct that give birth to feelings
of privacy - e.g., predators (unlike herbivores) may object if you watch
them eat (but not pee).  This also may include the desire to be alone while
being vulnerable.  Sex seems to fall into both categories, at least for
some species.

  The nice thing about animals is that each of them attempts to protect
its own privacy, and never runs around forcing others to hide their
activities.  This feature seems remarkably universal among all species
- except humans, that is.