this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025

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Are we being taught to love the panopticon? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 days ago by rainrain@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's weird. The simple fact of being watched and told what you can say. And the possibility that what you're saying is being edited and what you're hearing is edited too.

This strikes me as abhorrent. But most of the people here call it necessary, preferable and even desirable.

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[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Right. Then I'll just open up your banking history here on lemmy...

Oh wait.

And words have meaning. You can't just point to their etymology and claim they can be used to refer to everything you consider slightly related.

The fact is, the word panopticon has very specific meaning, and specifically refers to prisons. And you didn't even get it right. The original concept doesn't involve constant surveillance, but the possibility of constant surveillance.

Otherwise every single room with someone wearing sunglasses in it, would be one, because you can't tell whether that person might be looking at you at any given moment.

[–] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

FWIW the Panopticon has been used metaphorically before.

From Wikipedia (I'd recommend reading the whole Criticisms and use as Metaphor section):

In the mid-1970s, the panopticon was brought to the wider attention by the French psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller and the French philosopher Michel Foucault.[30] In 1975, Foucault used the panopticon as metaphor for the modern disciplinary society in Discipline and Punish. He argued that the disciplinary society had emerged in the 18th century and that discipline are techniques for assuring the ordering of human complexities, with the ultimate aim of docility and utility in the system.[31] Foucault first came across the panopticon architecture when he studied the origins of clinical medicine and hospital architecture in the second half of the 18th century. He argued that discipline had replaced the pre-modern society of kings, and that the panopticon should not be understood as a building, but as a mechanism of power and a diagram of political technology

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

Fair.

It does make for a much more compelling allegory for society, as much like prison, it's really hard to "exit" society.

While opting out of moderated social media is not difficult at all.