The Panopticon – a place where all can be watched at any time, unaware of the status of their observers. First proposed by social theorist Jeremy Bentham, the idea of the Panopticon was that the constant potential for being observed would lead to behavior which would fall in line with the moral requirements of society. Although this concept applied to many different building types proposed by Bentham, the one that we are most familiar with today is the Panopticon style prison.
The concept is as simple as it is effective; if you are always under surveillance, or not able to tell when you are or aren’t, you can only act as though you are being watched. Proponents believe that this will lead to causing people to alter their behavior, and can eventually lead to moral reform as societal pressure causes people to adapt. But adapt to what? Who decides mortality?
But at what cost? What level of paranoia and emotional anguish would result from such a situation? There’s a reason the Panopticon has been proposed not only as a model for social reform, but for emotional torture. We know the satanists and our governments love torture.
Today, the concept of the Panopticon is relevant once again; as electronic and digital tools lead to the ever-increasing capability of constant surveillance – not too dissimilar to the dystopian societies conjured by writers such as Orwell. 1984 was not a movie or a book it was a documentary of how to do what is being done to society right now. The prison of the mind.