Panopticon: The Ideal Social Order
"The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish
to put it to, produces homogenous effects of power." Panopticism is a style of
controlling the individual and making him conform to the system. That system
could refer to the police or the world as a whole. There is never a definite
top position, therefore, everyone feels as if they are being monitored by
someone else. It is for this reason that this disciplinary mechanism is so
effective.
The Panopticon serves as a tool for discipline and a laboratory of power.
The capabilities of a Panopticon are endless. It is the basis for the
government while it could also aid in the criminal activities for the mafia. In
the government there is a system of checks and balances where nothing can get
accomplished without the authorization of a higher ranked official. Once these
ideas are passed they are then imposed on the individuals of society by other
organizations . Whether it be the police, the IRA, or a neighborhood watch
group. The Panopticon can serve the public in many ways. It can defend a
country, reform prisoners, treat the ill, and educate the public. It does
this by creating channels of power and distributing them to the individuals. In
the Panopticon, no one individual shall be granted too much power so as to
place his or her own values upon the masses. The concept behind panopticism is
the distribution of power in order to better society as a whole. The historical
problems with power have proven, when it is unevenly distributed, those with
the power take advantage and impose their values on the public. For instance,
Hitler was given too much power and he massacred millions of innocent people.
The Panopticon, on the other hand, serves to increase the wealth, welfare,
education, and spirituality of society. The Panopticon does punish but it does
so in a means of reform. It attempts to restore the individual to a being that
can be a productive and positive influence. The system has two main purposes,
the distribution of power and the means of establishing discipline.
Every aspect of the world has the ideas and principles of panopticism
behind them. The world is full of intricate and complicated people. These
people group together to create tribes, governments, countries, and or
civilizations. What are the rules? How are we, the most complicated form of
life that we know of, suppose to act towards one another. The panoptic system
has implemented itself upon the world. It has created a system where no one
There was a chief new discovery of fossil bones and teeth belonging to the earliest human ancestors ever discovered. The fossil bones predate the oldest formerly discovered human ancestor by more than a million years. The discovery was of fossil remains of a hominid that lived in present day Ethiopia between 5.2 and 9.8 million years ago. (Hominids include all species following the split as of the chimpanzees on the “human” side of the evolutionary tree.)
The Neanderthal fossil was first discovered in 1829 but it was not until 1856 that conclusions were made. Originally they were not categorized as possible human ancestors until further discoveries of fossils were discovered in the mid-19th century. The taxonomy of the Neanderthals has been highly debated between homo neanderthalensis or homo sapiens because of their close physical similarities with humans, eventually they were ruled as a subspecies of homo sapiens. The similarities between Neanderthals and homo sapiens was traced back by DNA from 350,000 to 500,000 years ago identifying a common ancestor between the two taxonomies.
The first Neanderthal fossils found in Europe, a fragmented child’s cranium in Belgium in 1830, and an adult cranium in Gibraltar, were not immediately recognized as a divergent kind of human. Only in 1856 after a partial skeleton was found in a cave in the Neander Valley in Germany it became clear that these fossils belonged to an extinct human and our closest evolutionary relative (Hublin and Pääbo, 2006). Since then, questions about their relationship with modern humans have been fiercely debated between anthropologists. But what attracts most interest from scientists and popular media is the possibility of hybridization between Neanderthals and modern humans if, in other words, they were a genetically different specie or a single specie capable of producing offspring.
Rutkin, Aviva. "Policing The Police." New Scientist 226.3023 (2015): 20-21. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
Democratic societies are were the people are involved in the decision making of the government and have representation. In Thomas Paine’s Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs, Paine desired for the colonies to go to war against Britain to gain independence, while having the feeling that Britain was exploiting the colonies. Paine explains the disadvantages of the colonies being connected with Britain. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Divinity School Address he brings forth a moral argument. He discusses the relationship between man, soul, God, and the church. In Henry David Thoreau’ On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Henry believes in the act of civil disobedience, in which man does not need the government as much as they think they do. Henry promotes the idea of individuality, in which man could do better than the government in various situations. Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, were American writers who generated their own ideas of an ideal American society, where people have involvement with the government or church.
In Panopticism by Michel Foucault, Foucault discusses the measures to be taken when the plague appeared in a town. He talked in death about the abnormal individuals that were stricken with the plague and the individuals were lepers and excluded from society. Strict partitioning occurred during the plague, the towns closed and individuals who attempted or left the town were sentenced to death. Stray animals were killed and the town was divided into districts that were governed independently. The syndic was in charge of the quarantine and would walk around to lock the door of each house form the outside (Foucault 282). The plague resulted in a need for order and aimed for a disciplined community. It was important, at this time, to measure and supervise the abnormal individuals. Anyone could become sick and become abnormal. And in this case, abnormal was extremely dangerous to other individuals in the community. Also separated from society were lepers. The leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion (Foucault 284). The aim of separating the lepers was to create a pure community. There was ...
Humans know or understand the theory of evolution and how they evolved from apes, but there is always talk of a missing link between apes and modern humans. Apes did not just suddenly evolve into modern day humans. Apes evolved into another species that fall into the relation of modern humans. This is what the missing link is referring to; we call the species hominins. Hominins comprised of many species actually, including but not limited to, Australopithecus afarensis and Homo erectus. Homo erectus may have been a direct descendant of modern Homo sapiens. These species hold strong evidence that they are the missing link between apes and modern humans. There are many pieces of evidence that lay the path of evolution from these species to modern humans, “…these include anatomy, living primate behavior, and genetic relationships” (Stanford, 237). Australopithecus afarensis comes first, existing about 3.9 to 2.9 million years ago, with intermediate anatomical traits between living apes and modern humans; their fossils were found in Africa (Yukimoto). About a million to two million years later, the species Homo erectus came into existence and lots of evidence has been found about this particular species, in fact, it was probable that it was the first species to leave Africa (Yukimoto). These species are significant in the evolution of modern humans. We do not have a clear path or even understand why these species emerged when they did or how they, in theory, eventually evolved into modern humans. We can only assume these things, by using various evolutionary processes such as natural selection, genetic bottleneck, and many more.
From the ancient bones of the Neanderthals, scientists have been able to extract small amounts of DNA. The DNA comparisons to modern humans show no relationship, implying evolutionary separation (Kunzig, 159). Some anthropologists say the small sections of DNA found are not conclusive evidence, because modern humans show just as much variation in DNA. These people point out that individuals such as the “Portugal Kid” are hybrids of Neanderthals and modern humans, showing there was gene trading. One argument against this is that there is no skull from the ‘Portugal Kid” so it is hard to compare it to Neanderthals. Also, it is known that closely related species can breed and their offspring can be fertile, but they are still separate species (Kunzig, 161).
Scientists thought that interbreeding would be a logical assumption to the Neanderthal conundrum. Unfortunately, any evidence of DNA from Neanderthals mixed with human DNA is difficult to come by because their fossils are usually tarnished upon finding. That is until Svante Paabo, and his research team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, came across the remains of twenty-four Neanderthals and forty early humans.* All of these fossils were nearly 40,000 years old and were from Germany, Russia, and Croatia. Nine of these fossils (four Neanderthal and five human)
This constitution made by the people, for the people, declares the necessary laws required to maintain a perfect utopian society. Unlike our previous society, there will be many opportunities to help our society thrive. Everyone will have rights that were not present in previous societies. Unlike other civilizations and empires, the goal of this utopia is not to create a era of peace and advancement. The goal of this Utopia is to keep peace, prosperity, enlightenment, and a “Renaissance” going on forever.
Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. (New Westminster Police Department, 2014)
An impractical scheme for social improvement. This is the third definition of the word utopia in the Mirriam-Webster dictionary. Anatole France says it best with this quote regarding utopian societies, „Without the Utopias of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians that traced the lines of the first city· Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.„ The world has been constantly changing over time, new ideas pave paths that lead to better living. Most of the ideas are expressed through science fiction stories written by authors looking to change the world in some way or another. Authors begin with an idea, and then move towards placement of thought and scheme into somewhat of a reasonable reality. Authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Octavia Butler use the stories they write as ways to express their problems that they have with the present world. Advances in the present day world can only be reached through dreams and desires. These dreams and desires come to life as authors present their ideas on paper.
According to Stringer and Andrews, the Out-of-Africa Model suggests that there is a fairly recent common ancestor that shares many of the anatomical characteristics displayed by modern Homo Sapiens (1263). This version is more parsimonious with regard to the fact that it ...
Michel Foucault’s essay, “Panopticism”, links to the idea of “policing yourself” or many call it panopticon. The panopticon is a prison which is shaped like a circle with a watchtower in the middle. The main purpose of the panopticon was to monitor a large group of prisoners with only few guards in the key spot. From that key spot, whatever the prisoners do they can be monitored, and they would be constantly watched from the key spot inside the tower. The arrangement of panopticon is done in excellent manner that the tower’s wide windows, which opened to the outside and kept every cell in 360-degree view. The cells were designed so it makes impossible for the prisoners to glances towards the center. In short, none of the prisoners were able to see into the tower. The arrangement of cells guaranteed that the prisoner would be under constant surveillance. This is the beauty of the panopticon that anyone can glance at the cells from the tower but no prisoners can see the tower. The prisoners may feel like someone is watching, and know the he or she is powerless to escape its watch, but the same time, the guard in the tower may not be looking at the prisoners. Just because the prisoners think that someone is watching them, they will behave properly.
The word ‘police’ is derived from the Greek word politeia or its Latin equivalent politia. The term politeia stands for the ‘state’ or ‘administration’. In present context the term ‘police’ connotes a body of civil servants whose primary duties are to preserve law and order, to prevent and detect crimes and enforce law