Panopticism and ingenuous way that society could be ran in the eyes of French philosopher Michael Foucault. It is a system in which everyone and everything is under constant surveillance to make sure that people are acting the way they are supposed to be acting and every detail of the world is safe and sound. Nobody knows whether they are being watched over or not but had the burden on their shoulders to act the way a civil being would act if being watched. A society under such strict living standards may be that of unimaginable, unfathomable perfection.
"The Panopticon is a machine fore dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen." (p.232). What Foucault is trying to get across here is that the Panopticon establishes a difference between the people watching and the people being watched. If one were under constant surveillance and evaluation, knowing that one false move can translate into termination, then the obvious occurs and the being would act as proper as can be. Under such scrutiny, a person would have one of two choices-to be an angel, or to go crazy because of not knowing if a surveyors eyes are watching over their every move. The man that is lucky enough to be standing in the tower is the one who seems like he has all the power because the man that is being seen but "cannot see" so to say, is the one that is going crazy because he doesn't know if he can get away with something at a certain point in time because of not knowing if he is being watched or not. So what can one do but to do what is expected of a perfect human being?.
" any member of society will have the right to come and see with his own eyes how the schools, hospitals, factories, prisons function." (p.237). Foucault states that while the Panopticon will be ran by higher authorities, the people of society will have their very own chance to see what goes on inside of the Panopticon and they for themselves can see that the Panopticon is really that effective.
