Is Privacy always the "Greater good" - A case study.

Background.

Aug 15 2007: The 7th most Googled website[1] was www.dontdatehimgirls.com. This site is About girls annotating their sour experiences with ex-boy friends. Is this a case for "personality assassination" and "privacy invasion" ?.

Rhetoric for selecting the "Greater good"

Is this site is privacy invasive ? My take Yes
If yes is this bad for society? My take No.

The case for the site's privacy invasion is based avoiding physical/social abuse of women which is good social cause. People invading privacy usually link the need for invasion with a "widely" accepted good social good example "national security", "social awareness about criminals" and "women abuse" as in this case. Hence forward we refer to such privacy invasions as a "linked privacy invasion (LPI)". The social cause to which such invasions are linked are hence forward referred to as the "Linked social cause (LCS)". Now we have two good causes a. "Privacy" b. "Linked Social cause". The problem here is to judge the greater good.

When faced with such a dilemma we can refer to Aristotle's rhetoric on the subject of selecting the"Greater Good" (book 1 chapter 7). Aristotle here gives us hints and advices on how to choose between 2 goods causes for the society .i.e choosing the "greater good". He gives multiple criterion against which to compare to the two good cause. In most of the criterion the cause to avoid women abuse emerges as the winner when compared to privacy.

One such criteria for selecting the greater goods is measuring thier corresponding evils of the two good cause. The evil against the privacy cause is that people may abuse the system for personality assassination. The evil for the "social cause: stopping women abuse" is that more and more women can be subject to abuse from the same men (this is what the site stops). If we compare the related evils clearly the evil of women abuse is greater than evil of personality assassination, and hence the social cause of stopping women abuse is the greater good in this case.

Thus I feel we have to give up privacy in this particular case because its not the greater good. Opponent to my viewpoint may jump to point out that Aristotle himself was bad, he was anti democracy Blah blah blah !!, but then I can argue democracy is never good for the minority, as it always favors majority.(Your take)

This is one of my obvious viewpoint articles. Things that seem obvious have (stopping women abuse is good) do have some rational explainations. We are not the first ones try to answer the unsolved mystries of society, jurisprudence and rationality - philosopher have already noted such dilemmas. If you were expecting some spicy girlfriend boyfriend stuff in this article sorry for the bland liturgy about the greater good and privacy and thanks for reading.


[1] Source Google Zeitgeist