Panopticon blueprint by Jeremy Bentham, 1791
Hotel California
for release 03-21-06
Washington D.C.
Shortly after the birth of our Rebublic, Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher and liberal, designed a prison building called the Panopticon. His goal was to streamline the prison model so that it could more efficiently and humanely and economically house prisoners. To this end he devised an architectural solution to the problem of controlling a large population of prisoners. It was a circular structure with a guardhouse in the middle and the cells radiating from it on the periphery. The construction was such that the guards could at any time see every prisoner but that the prisoners could never see the guards. In other words, each prisoner had to assume that he was being constantly observed. In this way, very few guards could be used to control many prisoners. The Panopticon makes every prisoner his own guard.
The Panopticon was never built in Bentham's time but it has been a great influence on more modern penal techniques and prison construction. When I was on my vacation at State expense in Huntsvillle, Texas at the Wynne Unit, I was lucky enough to stay in a version of the Panopticon. In the main bulding at the Wynne Unit, what they now call 'the old building,' there is a central guard cage and radiating from it are five dormitories. A guard in the central cage can see any prisoner in any of the dorms. They kept the dormitories lit at night and the guard cage in darkness. I know first hand, from the prisoners point of view, what it feels like to assume, just from the structure of the building, that you are being constantly observed. The basis for control is the assumption on the part of each inmate that the all seeing eye is watching him always.
Michel Foucault pointed out in the late twentieth century that the concept of Bentham's Panopticon applies to our modern society in a metaphorical sense as well as an architectural one. We assume that there are cameras recording our every furtive move in public places. The cops in the corporation/government have all our personal information. They know every penny we make or spend, and thanks to credit cards and implanted tracking chips on merchandise, they know what we spend it on and where and when. If you have a cell phone, they know to within three feet where you are at any given moment. Don't even think about getting out of line, the IRS or the credit bureau or the thumb of god will mash you like a bug if you do. We all know this, it's internalized.
Remember the cartoons showing a person with a little devil sitting on one shoulder and a little angel sitting on the other? They were both whispering into his ears. You know, the voice of your conscience and all of that. It's a graphic representation of how we internalize values and beliefs. These days everybody is walking around with a little cop riding on both shoulders. We assume that the all-seeing computer, the wrathful Jehovah machine, knows our every thought, so even our thoughts march to the beat. In the name of comfort and security we have built for ourselves, and occupy, a Panopticon. I never felt safer, more secure, than when I was in prison. I was surrounded by steel and the all-knowing eye was always upon me. Everything ran like clockwork.
I don't have to tell you that the watchers are there. You can see the cameras, but you can't see who watches the cameras. You know about one-way glass. You know that every email you send and every phone call you make is potentially monitored. The NSA might have a tap on you right now and who would know it? Certainly not the FISA court. But you know that the Panoptic Eye is upon you.
Any old garden variety dictator can make you behave according to his wishes at the point of a gun. But that is crude and expensive. It takes a clever dictator to control your behavior simply by making you believe that he knows everything you do. The cleverest dictator becomes a system and a bureaucracy, a Panopticon. That way he can go play golf while you control yourselves.
In their provocative book Welcome to the Machine, Derrick Jensen and George Draffan examine the implications of the Panopticon. One thing they mention is the process of being institutionalized.
When I first arrived at the Panopticon at the Wynne Unit there was an old black man that we all called Pops. He was about 70 and had been locked up for 35 years. He would shuffle around the institution sweeping the floors. Then one day he discharged his sentence. They put him on the chain bus and took him ten miles to The Walls Unit in downtown Huntsville where releases are made and they let him go. The next morning Pops was on the front steps of the Wynne Unit. He was so institutionalized, he didn't know where to go or what to do but come back to the Panopticon. It was the only home he knew. It was heartbreaking in a way; they wouldn't allow him in. I never heard what became of him after that. He should have simply stuck his finger in his coat pocket and tried to rob a 7-11 the minute he hit the streets.
The Poet's Eye can't see everything but knows that no matter how comfortable or harsh our Panopticon happens to be, we are there only because we invite or comply with our institutionalization.
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
’relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!
--Eagles
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