Are the Americans Really Free - Coursework Example

Are the Americans really free 2007 A. Introduction For the present report, I have chosen, I believe, a very burning issue of the modern American society - that of freedom. In fact, there has been much debate on this topic at different stages of development of the USA, and it is necessary to mention that the notion of freedom may change together with the times and peculiarities of the society. Freedom is a dynamic phenomenon: e.g. in the 219th century freedom was denoted as an opposite to the slavery, in the 1960s freedom was the ability of Afro-Americans to drink water from the same bubbler, and nowadays the speculations about freedom normally concern democracy, religious and political freedom, gender and racial equality. Historically, the USA is considered the birthplace of democracy, and which is important - democracy is an inborn feature of the American nation. The founding fathers of the Constitution of the United States can by no means be called the creators of our freedom - in fact, it already existed in the minds and, which is more important, lives of the colonists. Taking into account all the above said, it seems irrelevant to even question the fact that the Americans are really free yes, things are not so unambiguous in the modern society, and there are phenomena and facts that certainly limit our freedom. In this report, we will concentrate upon the problem of the USA as a panoptic society and the way it limits personal freedom. B. Are the Americans really free What is a panoptic society At the end of the 20th century (1975), a French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote a book Surveiller et punir (Disciple and punish) that gave a historical account of European prison, and the ideas contained in this book have become the basis for the new philosophy. The reason why we have to talk about Foucault's work is because the philosopher was the one who gave a new birth to the term "panopticum" that was first used by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century to describe a prison allowing to constantly observe the prisoners, and which is more, ever since Foucault's book was released, the modern society began to be regarded as "panoptic" by some researchers. Foucault shows, in effect, how the system of surveillance first practiced in nineteenth-century prisons - those 'complete and austere institutions', as Baltard called them - has increasingly spread throughout modern Westernized societies. This dynamic is terminologically reflected in the shift from what Jrgen Habermas originally called the 'structural transformation of public space' to what he came to call the 'colonization of the life-world'. Colonization has returned home, equipped with appropriate technology. A new, and no less 'peculiar', Apparatus is central to Foucault's account: Bentham's Panopticum. (The Lesser Evil 2003, p. 55) Whereas M. Foucault begins from describing a prison, he finally reaches the conclusion that practically all social institutions are panoptic by their nature - i.e. hospital's wards, school or university's classes, etc. In a panopticum, "[a]n individual is an object of information, but is never a subject of communication". (Foucault 1999, pp. 292) Hence, since panopticum is meant to keep people from communicating, it is a way to suppress their freedom. As Foucault has it: "If there are criminals in the cells, there is no danger of a plot,.. if there are ill people-there is no danger of spreading infection. If there are insane people - there will be no risk of mutual violence; if these are schoolchildren - they will never be able to cheat; if workers are kept there-there are none of the pleasures which can keep them away from work". (Foucault 1999, pp. 293-294) For the French philosopher, panopticum is not only a certain particular organisation - it is, in fact, a principle, a mechanism that acts in the society and serves as means of suppressing individualism, controlling people, turning them into a crowd, forcing onto them some particular type of behaviour - all in all, limiting their freedom. Another French philosopher, film director and artist Guy Debord, also dwelled upon the problem of panoptic principles in the modern society, and came up with an idea of "the society of spectacle". According to him, the modern societies tend to be built up in accordance with the principles of certain "quasi-revolutionary" ideals, and are in their nature totalitarian. Any revolution that is happening in such a society is not more than a spectacle, and moreover quite a primitive one. The participants of the seemingly "revolutionary" events are, in fact, only spectators and not active agents. G. Debord writes: "When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs". (Debord 1967, sec. 18) Debord is extremely pessimistic about democracy and power of the state and the government - he is sure that any government, any political force aims its activity at the "falsification" of the social life. Democracy seems to be nothing more than simulacrum, with authorities manipulating the masses using, above all, visionary effects (spectacle), and control them, ironically using primarily the sight as well (panopticum). According to Debord, the sight is "the most abstract, the most mystified sense", and it "corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present day society". (Debord 1967, sec. 18) We will also consider the position of a German philosopher Martin Heidegger who stated the dominance of the mass psychology in today's world in his work Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). It is in this work that he introduces one of the key concepts of his philosophy - das Man, the world where there is no individuality, no "Self", the world of dispersion, groundlessness, being lost in publicity. Das Man is a German impersonal pronoun, yet whereas it can normally be translated as "they", Heidegger's term cannot be translated since this is an "anonymous" word that does not have any translation, or freedom. "Das Man," which has been variously translated as "the they," "the anyone," or "the one" plays an important, albeit ambiguous, role in Being and Time. On the one hand, it appears as a way we have of understanding ourselves which deceives us about the world and ourselves by leading us uncritically to accept the identity and beliefs we have in virtue of our socialization according to certain roles we have in society. It thus forms the basis of a critique of society. On the other hand, the one is responsible for the publicity and shared character of our experience. (Keller 1999, p. 158) In Heidegger's opinion, the society does not have any active agents at all, nobody is trying to do anything, nobody has responsibilities or makes decisions - das Man is anonymous, it is no one, and it makes an individual waive his freedom and become a part of the crowd. Das Man is the embodiment of unification, and at the same time alienation - these two elements of the modern society, though seem to contradict each other, largely determine the life in it. There are no personality, no "self" - and consequently, no freedom. Similarly to Foucault or Debord, Heidegger believes that there is a group of people in the society controlling the rest - in fact, das Man presupposes that the society is controlled by "another" people - who are, in reality, the same as we are, and moreover, we ourselves give them the right and the power to control us, admitting that we belong to them. Can the American society be called "panoptic" What is the reason of us talking here of Foucault's and Debord's ideas concerning the panoptic principle It seems that this has nothing to do with the life in the modern USA. However, is that really so In fact, practically every societies nowadays has a certain degree of panopticum about it, and America is no exception, since it is a disciplinary community controlled by certain power, and apart from that, in the USA, technology penetrates all institutions - schools, hospitals, army, etc. The spread of surveillance systems that is sometimes a basis of scandals is also a distinctive feature of our society - we are constantly controlled at workplaces, in the streets, in the hotels, etc., i.e. the majority is being observed by the minority. One may argue that a panoptic society equals to an ideal, happy and safe society, yet to my mind, it eliminates the notion is freedom, observing not only potentially dangerous groups of citizens but, in fact, all of them. Whereas in Michel Foucault's book, special kinds of social institutions are depicted that need supervision and surveillance as they have people who are potentially rebellious, it is believed that in the modern USA the same technologies are used for grabbing the power and controlling the whole nation. The factors that also affect the freedom of an individual in our society are many - among them there is peer pressure which is a powerful stimulus to act just as everyone else does. This phenomenon is based on a well-known peculiarity of the human psychology - if everyone says something is right, or acts in a particular way, it is often extremely hard to retain one's own ideas and beliefs. This mostly works with younger people, however in general all people are prone to being influenced by the peer pressure, and many of them actually enjoy the feeling of being part of "the crowd". This phenomenon of the human psychology can effectively be used by political technologists for manipulating people - and this is also a feature of a panoptic society. Panoptic is the society where the government, the regime is able to control their citizens, and this task is made easy for them because the subconscious nature of a human being wants to be controlled. Crowd psychology is a normal part of a human psyche, and over-conformism that presupposes readiness to agree with the opinion of the majority or an authoritative person is also not a rare thing, especially among people who are poorly educated. In Heidegger's philosophy, das Man "is not only a positive condition for our social or shared understanding of the world. It also plays the negative role of describing our inauthentic and conformist mode of existence". (Keller 1999, p. 162) A prominent writer George Orwell in his 1984 assumed that "men all over the world, unless the course of history changes, may lose their most human qualities, become soulless automatons, and even not be aware of it." (cited from: Fromm, E., 1984, p. 257) Important is the influence of mass media upon our society and our freedom. I do not only wish to stress their influence on the public opinion in political or economic issues - actually the media tend to produce a powerful impact upon the psychical side of a personality. It is believed that violence in the media triggers violence in the society, and the tragic events in American schools and colleges are often linked to the excessive amount of violence on TV and in films. One more problem that is topical for our society is terrorism, and this is also grounded upon the panopticum principle. Why Simply because terrorists are trying to enforce certain actions and behaviour upon the rest of people, and there is certainly someone observing the entire situation. The terrorists are, on the one hand, supervisors, and on the other hand, they are being observed as well, and seeing them and their actions is supposed to motivate us to behave in some particular way. Same as the in the concepts of world and society put forward by Michel Foucault and Guy Debord, the power is based on vision (either those who represent the power observe the rest of the citizens, or the people themselves exist in accordance with the well-designed scenario and not realising that the outer reality is a spectacle), terrorism is predominantly based upon visionary effects - and the terrorised are, in fact, not only the actual victims of terror but all of us who see them, and therefore live in constant tension, fearing for their own lives and the lives of their dear ones. During the September 11 attacks in 2001, the powerful effect produced upon the Americans and the entire world community was wholly based on the visual perception of the spectators - thousands of millions of people all over the world watched the catastrophe on their TV, being totally unable to do anything about it, to help the victims, to stop this act of ultimate violence and cruelty. What makes terrorists so powerful The answer is simple - our pain and fear, and with the help of these terrorists manage to make suffer not only separate individuals but entire cities and countries. Terrorists are not just manslaughters, they do not only kill people but they suck out the energy of everyone who sees them and their actions, and is afraid of them. Terrorism is also able to turn people into "crowds", eliminating the notion of freedom completely. When there is terror in the society, there is no individuality - people act more in accordance with their "animal" nature, staying together and acting in the same way. The terrorists often manage to make us a crowd, and therefore separate us (since a crowd, though being unified, is by no means a structure where individuals support each other). The terrorists supervise us making us do exactly what they want us to do, they impose upon the society the idea that they are the true power, and all that is left for us is to watch - and to fear. C) Conclusion The question of whether the Americans are truly free is not easy to answer. On the one had, we live in a democratic society with a powerful Constitution, and we are free to choose political and religious beliefs. At the same time, some argue that there is still racial and gender oppression in schools, at the workplace, and in the society in the whole. However, without considering the issues of oppression and inequality, in this paper we concentrated on the philosophical aspect of freedom and put the issue into the context of the panopticum principle elaborated by Michel Foucault, developed by Guy Debord, and widely used in the modern discussions concerning the nature of the modern society (i.e. George Orwell in 1984) It is obvious that we all live nowadays in a panoptic society, and therefore we are being viewed and supervised on a constant basis. It is not really clear if we have some definite power in our society that supervises and controls us (like in Foucault's or Debord's concepts), or if there is no definite power at all, and we only exist in the "das Man" state (according to M. Heidegger) where it seems there is no power at all, and we are only controlled and made to act by fear, our complexes, blind belief and ignorance. These fears and complexes are likely to turn us into a crowd which is, perhaps, the most destructive thing for individuality and freedom. Though sometimes it is argues that the crowd represents power, it is, in fact, unable to act in accordance with the needs of each separate individual - it is an irrational, blind power that needs to be guided by some outer force, and do whatever this force wants it to do. Without supervision and control, the crowd is helpless. Being part of a crowd means acting in the way everybody does, and there are multiple technologies in the modern society that are designed so that to turn people into crowds. Some of these technologies allow to manipulate our consciousness, and the most widespread is, perhaps, advertising - for products or political parties, etc. - and as a result we buy something we do not really need (it is certainly worth while remembering Frederic Beigbeder's 99 francs) or chose "our" political leader without even being sure this will actually make our lives better. Society being an everlasting value that is the source for democracy and without which freedom is impossible, we still have to remain individuals and not turn into the crowd. With so many issues arising in the modern American society that limit the freedom of each individual, we should be particularly careful so that not to let the society oppress our own "self" - that is the only way to remain truly free. Bibliography 1. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle, Detroit: Black and Red, 1967. 2. Foucault, M. Disciple and punish: the birth of prison. London: Ad Marginem, 1999. 3. Fromm, E. Afterword. In: Orwell, G. 1984. New York: A Signet Classic, 1984, pp. 257 - 260. 4. Keller, Pierre. Husserl and Heidegger on Human Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 5. The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices. Ed. by Helmut Dubiel and Gabriel Motzkin, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003. Read More