Episode #187 - Transcript

So LAST episode we talked about the possibility of a digital panopticon emerging. We talked about Foucault, the relationship between knowledge and power…and an important FOLLOW up on all that for the beginning of THIS episode today…is that ONE of the things Foucault’s MOST interested in when he’s DOING his work…is that he wants to figure out, HOW EXACTLY…people’s behavior is being CONTROLLED within a society. 

What are ALL of the ways… that people are COMPELLED to behave in a particular way…and NOT JUST when it comes to all the OBVIOUS ones that people typically think about!

See because throughout the history of western philosophy…LOT of thinkers have looked at POWER and tried to understand how it FUNCTIONS. And MOST of them look to something like the GOVERNMENT… as THE thing that’s IN POWER that’s PASSING the laws and controlling people’s behavior. 

It ALL SEEMS very OBVIOUS. You GOTTA follow the laws…you don’t follow the laws…ultimately there’s a GUN to your head forcing you to DO it. In philosophical terms you could call that the SOVEREIGN POWER COMPELLING people to DO things under threat of violence, they control the military.  

And Foucault DEFINITELY ACKNOWLEDGES that that’s A form of power in society. HE’S just saying that if you ONLY looked at the GOVERNMENT… as the thing that has POWER over people…then you’re gonna be missing out on a LOT of important ways that your behavior is disciplined, controlled, drilled and normalized into a particular LANE…by INSTITUTIONS in society.

The examples from last time… schools, factories, hospitals, barracks…these are ALL EXAMPLES to Foucault of institutions where there’s not a GUN to anybody’s head…but nonetheless HOW these environments are structured… ENCOURAGES a system of conformity. 

Back in 1975… this is ANOTHER UNDENIABLE WAY that people’s behavior is directed in the world. This is a kind of POWER. 

And to Foucault by the way…he KNOWS this is a HALLMARK of 1975. He understands that the specific TACTICS of power SHIFT from generation to generation. Which RAISES the NEXT question… that if he were alive today he’d NO DOUBT still be ASKING: What is the architecture of how power operates TODAY…in THIS society that we’re LIVING in?

What are the ways that your freedom is being limited right now…that are NOT AS OBVIOUS as there just being a GUN to your head?

At the end of the episode we’ll talk about the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and how he takes up the WORK of Foucault in this area and speculates about what HE thinks…is a NEW type… of controlling society that’s emerging in the beginning of the 21st century. A NEW structure of how power works. 

But…just to COMPLETELY switch gears here…don’t read too much INTO this…it’s not related at all.

Did you guys know that George Orwell’s 1984… is one of the most banned books in the history of the world? Yeah, I don’t know why…it’s like governments don’t want people hearing about the gradual erosion of people’s rights through surveillance…all the different FORMS that surveillance can take. Could be that. 

OR it could just be that the people banning the books…didn’t really like the way George Orwell SOLD the whole idea of a surveillance state. In hindsight…he REALLY did focus a bit too much on the negative, didn’t he? I mean yeah, dystopian FUTURE and all…but HAVE you ever thought about the UPSIDE of an all encompassing surveillance state? You’re so NEGATIVE all the time you ever thought about the POSITIVES?

Stuart Armstrong wrote an article EXPLORING that very possibility. And he STARTS by saying that IF that kind of world ever becomes a reality…it may be surprising…but SOME of you out there… are gonna like it. 

There are a LOT of things about the way the world is RIGHT NOW that are pretty annoying…that would INSTANTLY be gone if we had a total surveillance state starting tomorrow. I figure since George Orwell didn’t do a very good job of selling it WHY NOT start here? And how bout this RIGHT OFF THE TOP, LOW HANGING FRUIT…Stuart Armstrong says to picture a level of CRIME REDUCTION…that is actually DIFFICULT for people to fully imagine, picture a world…. where EVERYTHING is being recorded…down to EVERYTHING…and I mean EVERYTHING…and that THAT information is being recorded, analyzed and filtered in a way where if you EVER committed ANY sort of a crime…that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that you would EVER get away with it. 

So ANY crime outside of crimes of passion…all of that now become practically unthinkable in this society. And not just PETTY crimes…that extends to bribery. That extends to corruption. ALL of those would be recorded now. 

Police brutality, gone. Abused children, spouses, employees being treated horribly…ANYTHING that is CURRENTLY…a my word against their word sort of situation…frustrating in THIS world to know who’s telling the truth...in THIS world there would be a recording of that event that exists FOREVER. Meaning if you’re someone that decides to HURT someone else…EVEN if you can intimidate someone into not talking right now…you will be sitting there for the rest of your life KNOWING that a recording of it thing exists somewhere, just waiting. Good luck with your blood pressure medication, by the way. 

And if THAT’S the kind of world we’re LIVING in Stuart Armstrong says…it just FOLLOWS that we ALSO probably wouldn’t really need as giant of a standing POLICE force patrolling the streets from day to day. More than that we probably wouldn’t need them armed with assault weapons and armored vehicles either. I mean all that stuff we’re told is NECESSARY in the US just in case someone plans a secret attack. But not in THIS world…there ARE no secret attacks.  

And in a world with no secret attacks…he says the nature and scope of the MILITARY would have to change too. A big reason why militaries have to have as many weapons and troops as they do is out of consideration of how many weapons and troops OTHER countries have that may be dangerous to us. But if everyone knew everything that everyone had… maybe that could change as well. 

Even if you don’t believe in the Disney/Pixar grand vision of the whole MILITARY side of things being better…there’s OTHER things that would DEFINITELY be easier. Pandemics he says could be traced and quarantined really quickly…no need to shut down the entire globe for over a year. More than that, whenever there’s a dangerous technology instead of issuing a blanket BAN on research…he says maybe you could allow research to continue and use the surveillance data to sift out the bad actors that we’re ACTUALLY scared of…think of how much progress is NOT CURRENTLY being made because of oversight…that COULD be made if we didn’t have to FEAR people like that. 

On a similar note…think of any study that involves human testing… where currently… you need funding, you need everyone in the study to be a volunteer, they have to go through a long process, it can be tough to find real people that actually want to PARTICIPATE in these things…I mean honestly…who really goes down to a building on their day off and does a STUDY in their spare time, only reason I did it one back in the day is because I was desperate to pay bills. Well as Stuart Armstrong says imagine the possibility of scientists using surveillance data… and INSTANTLY being able to test any NUMBER of theories, from ALL different ages, cultures, lifestyles…as he says the panopticon…could be a research Nirvana. 

PASSWORDS in this world would become POINTLESS. Because why do I REALLY gotta come up with some SECRET CODE of letters and numbers so that the server knows that it’s really me? People would just be tracked in this world. If you need to buy food…they’d just be able to charge your account when they know that you’re actually at the grocery store. More than that…what is the purpose of waiting in LINE ANYWHERE in a world like this? Just grab what you need and walk out. At a music festival he says, just charge the people that go within a particular boundary. Security lines at the airport would be gone as well. 

But maybe one of the BIGGEST changes he says…is that in a world of an ALL encompassing surveillance state…lies and hypocrisy… would become practically IMPOSSIBLE for someone to pull off as well. At least when it comes to lies about stuff that people saw or did in their life. Just imagine how much something like THAT… changes the world. 

See as it TURNS OUT…there’s plenty of UPSIDES to a surveillance state…IF you’re willing to look at it from a particular perspective. The REAL question is of course…what is the COST to you, personally…for GETTING those benefits? And I’m not talking about a financial cost. 

I saw an example one time of a philosopher talking about the cost of a surveillance state…and he made a point by asking the reader to imagine that you’re THINKING of attending a school in the future…and that there’s two different hypothetical SCHOOLS that you’re TRYING to choose between. And I’m paraphrasing here cause it was a long time ago: but he says imagine one of these schools… where it’s a surveillance culture…cameras on every desk, microphones everywhere picking up everything that’s being said…where IF you are a student there…EVERY day of your life you are recorded, checked and scrutinized DOWN to the finest detail of your behavior.

Now what this school can brag about in it’s pamphlets when its trying to RECRUIT people… is that they have the LOWEST incidence rate of CHEATING… of ANY school in the world. There’s no cheating, and for that matter there’s no bullying, there’s no littering…there’s nothing out of line going on in this school at all. 

But then imagine there’s ANOTHER school that you’re comparing it to… that, DOESN’T scrutinize everyone’s life that goes there. They have more of an honor system approach where yes some people are going to cheat…but they ask that you don’t, there’s consequences if we find out that you DO cheat…and the question this philosopher suggests the reader asks THEMSELVES after CONSIDERING these two schools… is NOT JUST which school has better STATISTICS of crime and efficiency…but which one of these schools… would you actually rather GO TO? And WHY? 

At the heart of these questions is an ongoing social dilemma that our modern societies are CONSTANTLY engaging in…it’s one of the most important conversations in the HISTORY of philosophy…and it’s one where there’s a surprising amount that the average person actually can DO about it in comparison to OTHER issues. I’m talking about the age old philosophical dilemma of freedom vs security.

If you’re unaware of just how EMBEDDED this freedom/security debate is into MANY of the arguments people are having today, well then this episode will hopefully be a nice one for you. This polarity exists pretty much underneath everything. Look AROUND you. I’m gonna leave YOU to determine the SPECIFICS of how it lines up with the exact issues in your world…it’s not my JOB to be political…MY job here…as the resident fan of PHILOSOPHY is just to say…that this is a MASSIVELY important issue to understand if you want to know what’s going ON.

And it SHOULD be said… it’s an issue that’s been going on… for as LONG as there’s been people working together with other PEOPLE to try to make life a little easier. The first time ANYBODY was walking through the woods and comes across a group of people and wants to be a part of them…THAT person had to sacrifice SOME LEVEL of individual FREEDOM…in consideration of the COMMUNITY that they want to receive a benefit from. There is ALWAYS SOME LEVEL of a trade off. 

You scale this UP to us being CITIZENS of a modern society and the question becomes: HOW MUCH individual FREEDOM are you willing to sacrifice to be SAFE from outside threats? And how that usually manifests in the world WE’RE living in where fear and technology are such a thing…is how much PRIVACY are you willing to give up… in the name of security?

One side of the argument…the more SECURITY minded people…don’t MIND sacrificing quite a BIT of freedom and privacy… IF it MEANS that everybody is gonna be more safe if we DO that. 

THIS side of the argument might talk about the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes…where that sacrifice IS what’s going ON whenever you CREATE a society at all. We START in the state of nature where there IS no society. Nobody LIKES it in the state of nature you could starve…you could get eaten by an alligator, you could have hail coming down on your head, that kinda hurts sometimes especially when they get a little bigger…these are ALL horrible possibilities…And what we DO to AVOID them is we form a society, we sacrifice certain freedoms and HAND them over to a government… so they maintain order and can keep everybody safe. 

Ah but here’s the thing…state of nature was BAD ENOUGH in the 1600’s when Thomas Hobbes was doing his work…but in 2023 this person could say…what we have now…are a HOST of NEW possibilities that have NEVER EXISTED… that have CHANGED what the state of nature IS. 

Bioweapons, nuclear weapons, deployable AI, automatic weapons…we WANTED better and better technology…and we GOT it. But this person would say these things have put us in an age… where if we want the government to keep us SAFE from these things…we just HAVE to sacrifice MORE of our freedom and privacy. Look we may have agreed a long time ago to sacrifice a CERTAIN amount of privacy… for a CERTAIN amount of SECURITY. But NOTHING ABOUT THAT AGREEMENT meant that it should be CHISELED into stone and can never change. 

This is ONE SIDE of the argument. 

But the OTHER side of the argument, the people more on the FREEDOM side of this may say BACK…okay, you’re right we sacrifice freedom for security. But the REAL question is: how much FREEDOM…for how much security? Is this me sacrificing my freedom to build a nuclear weapon in my garage so that I don’t have to worry about one going off in the middle of a city? That seems like a fair trade. OR is this more like a digital panopticon situation where I’m sacrificing ALL of my personal information so that I can get a roast beef SANDWICH delivered five minutes faster. 

It’s ALL in the details of the trade off of freedom and security. What am I sacrificing and what am I getting? 

They might talk about the work of someone like John Stuart Mill or John Locke…BOTH of which argue strongly for how individual autonomy… is CENTRAL to human dignity. They may say look what good is all the security in the WORLD if you’re not free to be your own PERSON on the other side of it? And YES…the LEVEL of PRIVACY we give up HAS to change based on the time period…but it ALSO has to be said that you gotta be SO CAREFUL… about each little BIT of that privacy that you give up. Because historically…whenever people have given up rights and handed them over to the government…there are almost ZERO examples of people GETTING those rights BACK, WITHOUT some sort of violent, bloody revolution taking place. 

And THAT’S the WAY that this stuff typically happens is slowly…SMALL little invasions of privacy…bit by bit, you ALMOST don’t even notice it…and then all of a sudden, poof it’s gone…this is why we have to always remain VIGILANT on the privacy side of things as well.  

These two perspectives on freedom and security…it’s a classic disagreement. And you might think that the MAJORITY of this argument was figured out hundreds of years ago…Ben Franklin figured this stuff out when he was whittling a little wooden goose. But in reality…this is actually a discussion where there’s been some key moments of progress that have JUST happened fairly RECENTLY in the latter half of the 20th century. 

And while the upsides of the surveillance state really do speak for themselves as to why someone would WANT them…I think it’s important to take some TIME here and give a more DETAILED account for why some people think PRIVACY…is one of the most important things protect in the world. Seems like a good way to get to know the TRUE COST of the surveillance state. 

See because… it’s not just BIG GOVERNMENT people or weirdos that want to look in your windows that would say that maybe PRIVACY isn’t the thing that we should be focused on protecting. There’s actually quite a few arguments that say privacy…may just be the wrong WORD. Maybe privacy is too BROAD of a term to even be USEFUL in these discussions about protecting people’s rights…or even that it’s a false category altogether. 

For example: the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson famously argued back in the 1970s…that when you examine cases where people talk about their PRIVACY being violated…violations of privacy… are always reducible to other things. There is always SOME OTHER violation that is going on that’s ALREADY protected by the law in a more CLEAR way. 

So say that somebody reads your diary…you didn’t WANT them to read your diary…Judith Thomson would ask is that a violation of your PRIVACY? Or is that actually a violation of your property rights? When someone’s eavesdropping on your conversation…is that a violation of privacy? Or is that more… trespassing, or interfering with your bodily autonomy? 

See that’s the thing in these conversations: one of the big questions that people started analyzing MORE in the 20th century is what is the correct way to be THINKING about privacy?

Ask YOURSELF this question: do you think that privacy…is a human right? That should be guaranteed to everyone regardless of the circumstance? Or as it’s said, do you think privacy is better defined… as an interest. An interest…that is absolutely IMPORTANT to us, but that it should ALWAYS be weighed in consideration of OTHER interests like the interest of national security. The interest of public health. Even the interest of people’s personal well being sometimes. 

Because there’s been OTHER arguments over the years against privacy…some feminist thinkers have really tried to examine the ROLE of privacy… as something that certain people ONLY value… because it allows them to keep skeletons hidden inside of their closet. 

We talked about how a total surveillance state would make it so that abusive and toxic people COULDN’T HIDE the fact that they were abusing people. Well this is the reverse of that. They say some people claim to be ALL ABOUT privacy and individual freedom…when really those things are just TOOLS they want to protect…so that they can be able to keep treating people, often times women, horribly. 

Some people have tried to say that privacy…is really just a vague CLUSTER of rights that all fall under the broader category of LIBERTY…they’d say we ALREADY protect people’s right to liberty, how is that any different than privacy?

Naturally people argued against it. Clearly we have things that are protected in the name of people’s liberty, free speech, freedom of religion…and clearly these things have NOTHING to do with protecting someone’s PRIVACY. 

Anyway ALL THIS DISAGREEMENT between people has actually been a GREAT thing for our understanding of privacy. TONS of smart people to READ in this back and forth by the way if you’re looking for something in this area, Ruth Gavison, Anita Allen, Adam Moore, Edward Bloustein, Judith DeCew. 

For the sake of your convenience I won't go through each thinker one by one…I just wanna give you some of the watershed moments from this discussion…synthesize it for ya. Because I THINK the ideas that they arrived at… really emphasize what would be LOST for an individual person if we found ourselves LIVING in the type of surveillance society we talked about at the top of the episode. 

See it may be tempting to think that privacy… is really just ensuring people’s ability to keep things SECRET about themselves. But what they FOUND in these discussions is that it’s actually much MORE than that. ANOTHER REALLY important thing that privacy DOES is that it really is the THING…that gives people SPACE to be who they truly are. 

We talked about this a little last time when we asked do you ever have PRIVATE conversations about things that you would NEVER say in a public setting because it’s irresponsible to. But nonetheless those conversations are CRUCIAL when it comes to your own education and development. 

Privacy is the ONLY thing that makes those kinds of conversations possible. In a surveillance state…there is no SPACE for people to read what they want to read… watch what they want to watch… without having to worry about it being publicly visible. NOT giving people that FREEDOM will CHANGE the ideas they are able to get exposed to. 

Another important aspect of privacy they found is that privacy is ALSO the ONLY THING it turns out…that allows people to decide WHO they want in their life… and to what extent they actually WANT that person in their life. 

Like if you’re an abused child, and you grow up, you work through all your demons, you have a family, you’re living a happy, satisfied life…what if you DON’T want the people that abused you  to have ACCESS to the details of your life? Shouldn’t that be something you have at least a VOICE in? 

Or say there’s a creepy guy down the street… that develops some kind of weird fixation on you. Where they watch you. You don’t WANT them to be watching you…you don’t want them to know anything about you. But in a surveillance state all of a sudden… they have access to ALL SORTS of intimate details about where you are, what you’re doing, who you’re talking to…you go by their house on your morning jog they ask you how was that bowl of cornflakes you had this morning? Noticed you used TWO spoons of sugar today…SOMEONE’S treating themselves. 

WHY SHOULD ANYONE…NOT have a say in WHO we want to give ACCESS to the intimate details of our lives? Simply from a supply and demand perspective…the freedom to have privacy MAY ACTUALLY BE what makes it VALUABLE when we CHOOSE to allow CERTAIN people into our lives and not others…and in a total surveillance state…you no longer HAVE that kind of CONTROL over your life. Oh but don’t worry. You’re really safe, right?

It was SAID earlier in the episode that IN the surveillance state… it would be next to IMPOSSIBLE to LIE or to be a hypocrite. 

And this was the CASE…because in a surveillance state you wouldn’t be the only one with ACCESS to what’s going on in your life…you tell a lie and people could just SEARCH your DAY and see if you’re telling the truth. 

But the FLIP side of not being able to LIE…is that you’re ALSO not able to have discretion. You’re not able to decide what things you feel are important for people to know and what things you want to keep to yourself. And NOT just when it comes to secrets…but how bout just when it comes to your PERSONALITY. 

What I mean is: think about the level of scrutiny that the surveillance state invites on people simply, by DESIGN. 

AS OF RIGHT NOW…you can HAVE strong thoughts on things about the world around you…and if you don’t want to TELL people about them…if you don’t want to DEAL with the scrutiny and drama of the entire internet coming after you for saying the wrong thing…right now you have the freedom to KEEP your opinions about things private. But in a world where anyone interested can sift through the inventory of the events of your day and comment to you on it… how you drive… or how you talked to the cashier a little too snippy…or that maybe you didn’t wash your HANDS long enough after relieving yourself…should people be FORCED to endure public scrutiny on this level? Or should privacy protect it?

MORE than that it was argued back in the 1990’s…doesn’t privacy ALSO allow for a wide range of voices to be able to be developed…in the FIRST place? And isn’t that what we want? 

Think of something like ART. To HAVE artists that are PUSHING the boundaries of what’s normally acceptable…that’s an INCREDIBLY important to have for a society. We NEED to give people the space to feel COMFORTABLE enough to be eccentric…to be WEIRD. We NEED weird people. John Stuart Mill points out in his essay On Liberty…individual freedom…feeling safe enough to express your own creativity or weirdness…this is not just important for an individual…this is important for the health of a society. Societies that DON’T have that privacy for the individual run the risk of falling into despotism or stagnation. 

Privacy is what gives you the space to define who you are… and HOW you relate to others. And I think some people would say THAT IS THE TRUE COST… of giving up privacy for the security of the surveillance state. 

Anyway…if you’re wondering where you PERSONALLY stand… when it comes to your views on freedom vs security…the GOOD news is we all just came out of a situation where every one of us had to SHOW OUR HANDS when it comes to how we FEEL about this stuff. I’m talking about Covid. 

Because no matter HOW MANY theoretical conversations you used to have at the dinner table about how you’d stand up to the government… or how necessary it is to sacrifice in the name of the community…situation BEING what it was REALLY showed people where they ACTUALLY stand on things. FACING the fear of the unknown. FACING the social pressure of it all. 

It really is interesting… how QUICKLY people were willing to say that a DOCTOR NEEDS to sign a card to ALLOW someone to eat at a restaurant…and people were OKAY with this for the GOOD of the COMMUNITY! That’s what we DO in society…we’re ALL in this together!

Again, this side of the conversation will say that Covid’s a great example of how the state of nature is NOT what it used to be. There are NEW threats that we need the government to protect us from…and by the way here is the INSIDE of my BODY for you to surveil via the medical establishment. PLEASE take this TRACKING device in my pocket and tell me whether I’ve been in proximity of OTHER people who are carrying the virus. To this person these are just effective methods of keeping people safe that are EXTENDING into social institutions. 

They would say that your PRIVACY… is an INTEREST, not a right. And that when there’s a catastrophe going on in the interest of public health…your individual interest of privacy HAS to take a back seat for a while. OTHER people might say okay, understood. But I hope you don’t mind if fight back for every INCH of that privacy that you try to TAKE from me…because I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS when people GIVE these sorts of freedoms up. They don’t often get them back.

There’s a philosopher named Giorgio Agamben who wrote an article actually RIGHT at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, right when EVERYTHING is kicking off…and he MADE a point wondering what life was gonna be like AFTER the world emerges from whatever was about to come with the coronavirus, nobody knew…and his point…much like the last episode we did, was building off of ANOTHER concept from the work of Michel Foucault. Giorgio Agamben talks about MOMENTS in the world that HE calls a state of exception. 

What is a state of exception? Well, Agamben recognizes that constitutional governments that TYPICALLY are restricted by checks and balances and a separation of powers…DURING times of CHAOS…when something CRAZY is going on in the world like a Pandemic disease…the GOVERNMENT goes into what he calls a state of exception…where they need extra constitutional powers to be able to protect people from everything that is going on. 

What ALSO happens during moments like this is that for the average person…NORMAL REALITY is suspended for a while. Everybody plays by a slightly different set of rules BECAUSE things are so weird. Think of how WEIRD you woulda been wearing a mask in public two weeks before the start of the pandemic. 

And what Agamben says is that what ALWAYS HAPPENS when we come OUT of one of these states of exception…is that some aspect of reality is developed so that we can DEAL with whatever the pressing ISSUE is…then we DEAL with it…and then AFTERWARD that thing that people ONLY ALLOWED because we were in crisis mode…magically sticks around and is NOW just a normal part of human life. 

Couple examples of this: first one he gives is barbed wire. Barbed wire… was NOT a common thing that you saw everywhere… UNTIL we fought the first world war and barbed wire became a totally COMMON thing in the trench warfare that was going ON at the time. Then the war ended…and barbed wire stuck around. NOW barbed wire is on the fence of every prison, junkyard, people don’t even think TWICE about it when they SEE it. 

Another example is NUCLEAR power in WW2. Obviously developed… so that we could beat the Germans in a race to an ultimate weapon…and then after it ends the war… it’s adopted as a totally, normal, routine part of modern existence. Giorgio Agamben asks: when it comes to Covid and the state of exception that SO many governments declared…what did the public accept as a NECESSARY part of THAT whole nightmare… that they will blindly accept as a normal, routine part of the world moving forward? 

He suggests maybe its gonna be that people will see their fellow human beings as merely spreaders of disease instead of actual PEOPLE…maybe it will make people think of human life in terms of mere survival… rather than all of the rich experiences that are possible when you ACCEPT the baked IN RISK to what a human life even is. 

But regardless, KNOWING what we DO about the invasions of privacy that people accepted during Covid for the sake of the good of the community…we HAVE to wonder if what will LINGER is NOT physical things like barbed wire or nuclear power, but a sense of willingness… to BE tracked and controlled in the name of the collective good… that has never really existed before.

The sociologist David Lyon has said that what we’re SEEING with the rise of surveillance in recent years…this is not just a minor UPTICK in the amount of surveillance that people are ALLOWING into their lives…when you zoom out and you pay attention to what’s really going on…we are actually living inside of a surveillance culture. 

He defines surveillance as: “any focused, routine, systematic attention to personal details, for the purpose of control, influence or management.” 

And when you think about surveillance in THAT way…then SURVEILLANCE is ACTUALLY a PRIMARY COMPONENT of MOST things that people are doing on the internet. We are ALL surveilling EACH OTHER. We’re literally WATCHING people play video games. We’re going to a social media feed to get the most recent surveillance footage that people take of themselves. People WEAR…WATCHES and health trackers that turn the DETAILS of their BODIES into data points, remind them to stretch. Remind them to breathe. 

People literally carry around a tracking device as they walk down the street constantly on camera from one angle or another…and DON’T feel weird about it AT ALL! And I’m not saying ANY of this like look at these morons who don’t care about being on camera…this REALITY…STARTS to make the case for a NEW type of controlling society that’s emerging talked about by Gilles Deleuze towards the end of his life. He writes about it in his famous essay Postscript on the Societies of Control. 

And again if we’re TRYING to figure out much like Foucault did…WHERE EXACTLY people’s behavior is being directed…and we’re doing this to TRY to better identify how power operates in the world…then ONE thing Deleuze says we’re GOING to have to do for this MODERN day and age… is to move PAST Foucault’s old model of the Disciplinary society where people’s behavior is drilled and normalized by the totally SEPARATE institutions of the school the factory the hospital etc. 

If LIFE for a person USED to be something where the institutions of society funnel people into different lanes in life… or what Deleuze calls enclosures…you know you go to school, after you’re done with school you go into the workforce, when you go home you’re part of a family unit, when you’re at church you’re part of a religious institution…if life USED to be something where EACH of these different enclosures were SEPARATE… for Deleuze, life has NOW become one where ALL of them have started to blend together into one. 

You’re no longer just a STUDENT…when you’re in school. Learning and RELEARNING is now a LIFELONG PROCESS that someone is NEVER done with. Factories are no longer even a THING as Foucault talked about them. COMPANIES are now a thing. And COMPANIES operate based on a TOTALLY DIFFERENT kind of ethos than a factory did. 

When you’re AT a company…there’s a CONSTANT FEELING now of what Deleuze calls metastability…see back in the days when people worked in the factories that Foucault talks about…THAT situation was very predictable… it was a CONTROLLED environment…there was a very CLEAR EQUILIBRIUM that the business was going for, they want to have the HIGHEST PRODUCTION LEVELS for the LOWEST POSSIBLE WAGES. And that whole situation at the factory was rigid, structured, and FILLED with behavioral expectations, for sure. 

But NOWADAYS in the corporate world…there’s more of a metastability…bonuses, stock options, incentive packages, pitting employees up against each other for the sake of TEAM BUILDING PURPOSES…this is ALL EVIDENCE of what Deleuze thinks is a NEW KIND of control mechanism that’s going on that’s far more omnipresent, and fluid.

See if in the Disciplinary type of society that Foucault talks about your JOB was to be a good student when you were in school, RESET and be a good worker at your company, RESET and be a good partner when you get home…if that society was about homogenizing human activity with norms and taboos. Then in the society of control that Deleuze’s talking about…NOW the way your life is controlled is that it’s MODULATED, he says. 

You’re never JUST a student or JUST a worker or JUST a partner anymore…in a sense you’re ALWAYS ALL of them… all the time. In a sense you are NEVER really off the clock of ANY of those roles in the world. Your boss calls you at 10pm, you pick up the phone…and you INSTANTLY… fluidly…. need to adapt into this OTHER social role that you play. When you’re at work…your MOM texts you…you are BUT A TEXT MESSAGE AWAY…from needing to fluidly transition into being a family member, a son, a daughter. 

Point is PEOPLE aren’t navigating these binary institutions anymore where there’s rigid rules defining each one of them…and as a RESULT… people aren’t following as many rigid social norms as they USED to…they’re told to be whoever you WANT when navigating all of these roles in life…to Deleuze they may even SEE the fact that they’re different from other people around them as a testament to how FREE they are. 

But simultaneously he says…almost paradoxically…at the SAME TIME they feel so FREE because they’re not conforming to norms…their behavior is MORE tracked and MORE modified at a GRANULAR level than EVER BEFORE…and most people DON’T even think TWICE about it.

I mean if you’re looking for examples of POWER where there’s not necessarily a GUN being pointed to your head.

To Deleuze people in a society of control are not INDIVIDUALS anymore. They’re what he calls: DIVIDUALS. And what he means is actually something very interesting. At SOME points in history…the primary LANGUAGE that’s been used to CONTROL people’s behavior is AT THE LEVEL of mass psychology. You wanna CONTROL people…you use nationalism or culture, some higher level cause to get people moving. THEN there’s times in history where people are controlled at the level of the individual…think of how priests would have an influence on an individual person, people would CONFESS to the priest, and they’d USE that information to guide their behavior all the way down to the specific stuff they’re going to be doing that week.

Well IN the society of control…people are broken down at levels that are BENEATH the level of the individual. The language used to understand people’s behavior NOW…is just a small piece of their behavior that’s measurable and predictable by algorithms. For example what YOU ARE to amazon.com that wants to direct your behavior is not a person…you’re a collection of shopping tendencies. What you ARE to the place that you get your news from is not a whole person…you’re just something that clicks on certain thumbnails over others during certain HOURS. 

The language that’s used to CONTROL your behavior now potentially gathers information about you in every situation that you find yourself in. THERE IS NO DIVISION BETWEEN these institutions in the way there USED to be. It’s ALL blended into one…for example… it USED to be that you go to the store when you want to buy something. And when you’re at the store, maybe you’re subjected to certain marketing tactics, maybe people try to sell you on something, these are old style examples of other people trying to direct your behavior. But in a society of control…you can be NOT EVEN a PLACE… where you want to be buying ANYTHING…you’re not a shopper at this moment…you could just be wanting to read an article about how to clean the stain out of your jacket…and on the side banner of the website is something trying to sell you soap because you’re looking at that article. 

For Gilles Deleuze…we are ALL moving into a reality… where our social roles as workers, as learners, as citizens…these are NOW more than EVER before…. in a constant state of flux. The constraints… that define the details of our lives that USED to be very FIXED THINGS… are now being continuously updated, and modulated. In this new form of a society, the methods used to control people… become MORE pervasive… and SIMULTANEOUSLY more flexible because NOW it operates based on a continuous spectrum…instead of through binary or fixed institutions. For Gilles Deleuze…in 1990 when he WRITES this thing…we are on the VERGE…of a MAJOR SHIFT in the way that people’s behavior is going to be controlled in the world. 

Now whether you think Deleuze’s analysis of the control society is dead on accurate, whether you think its a bit too metaphorical or even just speculative…regardless, theories LIKE THIS ONE… are important. If we EVER want to be able to know where to draw the lines in terms of freedom and security…we HAVE to be able to know EXACTLY what mechanisms are being used to control people. It’s not good enough to just look at the government or to blame everything on social institutions. 

Look, the GOAL of the episode today was obviously not to SOLVE the dilemma between freedom and security. And I think it’s important to GET the idea out of your head right now that there is any sort of EASY ANSWER, or FIXED ESSENCE of EXACTLY how much FREEDOM or SECURITY that a society needs. The sociologist Zygmund Baumen said that this is a social dilemma… that is CONSTANT. It’s not GOING anywhere. It’s been going on for thousands of years…and it will CONTINUE to go on as long as we have deliberative democracies where we are STILL somewhat in CHARGE of the levels of each of these that the public wants. 

Point is: if everybody woke up tomorrow and decided to agree on everything…both EXTREMES of the freedom/security debate COULD come true…we COULD be living in George Orwell’s 1984…or we COULD make surveillance… illegal. Now hopefully it’s obvious that BOTH of those outcomes…would be completely SILLY if we actually DID them…it would be SILLY to not use surveillance…it’s an incredibly powerful tool…and just like with OTHER things like the police or taxation…the question is NOT whether we NEED them but how do we structure things in a way where they don’t get out of control. 

I think it’s important to try to see your personal decisions in the greater CONTEXT of this ongoing TENSION between freedom and security. Because in 100 years when people look back on THIS time period…and they SEE the issues that we faced in OUR time of increased surveillance, covid restrictions, tracking cookies…it will be CLEAR to THEM…that the average person, the individual VOTE that you cast when you accept all cookies on a website for example…THAT vote mattered. You should at least know the consequences of accepting all cookies. 

Look if someone offered you a bag of cookies in real life…you would KNOW… what you’re doing…you KNOW what the consequences are to your stomach when you accept all cookies in THAT situation…this isn’t like other issues where you can throw your hands up in the air and say what am I REALLY going to DO about it…you’re VOTING in one direction or another whether you’re AWARE of it or not. 

One of the GOALS of this episode is just to bring light to the fact that if you are living in a deliberative democracy…YOU really ARE the line of defense against WHATEVER it is that is about to come with this stuff. Again you don’t gotta be Ben Franklin whittling a wooden goose ready to DIE in the name of your freedoms here. 

No, EVERY generation… NEEDS the INFORMED VOTERS of their time to do the work, to educate themselves, to hold the line when it comes to how much freedom they’re willing to sacrifice. In THIS sense… its a lot like a lot of OTHER important issues…you know they say the arc of the universe is long and it bends towards justice… or towards freedom in this case…and that it doesn’t BEND in that direction by gravity they say. It is iterative. It takes people showing up every day and casting their votes in the right direction… and over time, the people eventually decide where the lines are drawn. 

If you live in a world where you run the risk of getting trapped inside of a digital panopticon, then as somebody aware of that fact, there’s a sense in which there’s no point in sitting around being scared about it… all you can do is do your best to understand the state of this tension between freedom and security, understand what the intelligent arguments are on either side and then show up for whatever side you’re gonna show up for. 

This argument WILL KEEP GOING. And when it does…when SO many people around the world can’t seem to agree on exactly what the lines are here that should be drawn…some people might look around them at that, see people arguing…and think gah the world’s coming to an end. But ANOTHER possibility might be… that society isn’t FAILING if everyone’s ARGUING about this stuff. It MAY actually be a sign that more people are PARTICIPATING in the DISCUSSIONS that we need people to be having to KEEP this stuff in check. 

I know a lot of you were excited about the round table of philosophical thinkers helping with strategies to navigate something like a digital panopticon. Ran out of time in THIS episode. But NEXT episode, seven days from now on August 6th, we will be talking about strategies at ALL different levels. We’re gonna talk about Guy Debord and his possible way through the society of the spectacle. Boethius, Epictetus, Montaigne…it’ll no doubt be a star studded evening that’s SURE to make the while family happy. Anyway hope you have a great week. Love ANYONE who made it to the end of this. 

Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.