Sad news. The Queen’s sister passed away a few weeks ago. She was 71 years old.

She had lived most of her life in Italy.
In an interview, she said that she liked living in Italy because she could walk the streets anonymously and that “that was not unpleasant”. You must have been a public figure since childhood to know what that means.

The princess ‘fled’ the country to become a commoner.
Her nephew, the king, and his queen have a different arrangement. The press gets to take pictures of the couple and their children once a year, but only if they leave them alone for the rest of the year. A journalist who breaks the agreement is removed from the list of invitees, never to be invited again.

Why is it essential for them to be anonymous? Looking at where we ‘ordinary’ people stand, they stand at the very top of Maslow’s pyramid, and their problem is that they are in the public eye. Why?

On the other hand,  why do humans always want to know as much as possible about others? Especially people that society zooms in on.

Nobody likes to bear it all. It’s dangerous if people know everything about you. It makes you vulnerable. That is why we all wear masks. We keep up appearances. You often don’t want anyone to know who you really are, even if you aren’t involved in anything illegal or questionable.
Especially to your tribe. The ones who are closest to you.

In a sense, we are all being watched all the time, whether we live in Italy or not:

Google follows us around everywhere we go
Mobile phones register everything we do on the web
Every word we say in the presence of a mobile phone is recorded

All of this information is sent to the database with the sole purpose of making it easier for companies to sell you their products.

On the global stage, there is no place to hide; most of us are famous people already.

Photo:

Martin Alberts