Personal life

Apart from hunter-gatherers, most pre-modern peoples' time was limited by the need to meet necessities such as food and shelter through subsistence farming; leisure time was scarce. People identified with their social role in their community and engaged in activities based on necessity rather than on personal choice. Privacy in such communities was rare.

The modern conception of "personal life" is an offshoot of modern Western society. Modern people tend to distinguish their work activities from their personal life and may seek work–life balance. It is a person's choices and preferences outside of work that define personal life, including one's choice of hobbies, cultural interests, manner of dress, mate, friends, and so on. In particular, what activities one engages in during leisure-time defines a person's personal life. Religious authorities, moralists, managers and personal-development gurus have seized on the concept of an individual life as a fulcrum for potential control and manipulation.

People in Western countries, such as the United States and Canada, tend to value privacy. Privacy includes both information privacy and decisional privacy; people expect to be left alone with respect to intimate details of their life and they expect to be free from undue control by others.

History

In the past, before modern technology largely alleviated issues of economic scarcity in industrialised countries, most people spent a large portion of their time attempting to provide their basic survival needs, including water, food, and protection from the weather. Humans needed survival skills for the sake of both themselves and their community; food needed to be harvested and shelters needed to be maintained. There was little privacy in a community, and people identified one another according to their social role. Jobs were assigned out of necessity rather than personal choice.

Furthermore, individuals in many ancient cultures primarily viewed their self-existence under the aspect of a larger social whole, often one with mythological underpinnings which placed the individual in relation to the cosmos. People in such cultures found their identity not through their individual choices—indeed, they may not have been able to conceive a choice which was purely individual. Such individuals, if asked to describe themselves, would speak of the collective of which they were part: the tribe, the Church, the nation. Even in the 21st century, survival issues dominate in many countries and societies. For example, many countries in the continents of Africa and Asia are still largely mired in poverty and third-world conditions, without technology, secure shelter, or reliable food sources. In such places, the concepts of a "personal life", "self-actualization", "personal fulfillment", or "privacy" are often unaffordable luxuries.

The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) figures among the pioneers in discussing the concept of individual rights. In the 17th century he promoted the natural rights of the individual to life, liberty, and property, and included the pursuit of happiness as one of the individual's goals.