Max Sturgeon

12/13/2011

English 1102

Prof. Veronica Hapgood

Paper Six Final Draft

Jamais Vu:

In the last few years I have been observing an incessant change in the events of my life. In a

steady stream of consistency this change was at first very unwelcomed. Following the divorce of my wife

I suffered a deep depression that led me to alcoholism and consequently the most complete separation

from the world as I have ever known. At that time in my life I was very blessed to have one last

connection to the world that bound me to a central state of mind. My son was very young at the time,

and may or may not have known of his role in this period, but he ultimately gave me breadcrumbs. Yes,

that’s right I said breadcrumbs, what I mean is that he left me a trail by which I could find my way back

into a world I had expelled.

The deep depression I suffered was not only due to divorce. It was alienation that ultimately did

me in. I grew up as a young adult caring for four young siblings of mine. My brothers and sisters came

into my life early on and I cared for each one of them as if they were my children. Three of them, a set of

triplets, were the same age. I was blessed with an ability to teach them the many things that were

important in life. With parental figures being all but out of the picture due to issues I will not discuss

here I became the father figure of these wonderful children.

There came a time when I had to make a life of my own, and leave my children to do the same

for themselves, and so one can see how the divorce left me utterly alone. Because of poverty I had little

contact with my brothers and sisters after the divorce. We all lived far away from each other, I could not

afford a telephone bill and in my depression I failed to realize saving money could help with that. What

little extra money I did get went to forty ounce bottles of malt liquor, and cases of beer, and thankfully I

was at least clear minded enough to remember to use the rest to help provide my son with a better life

than I had ever known.

I soon found that my son would never have everything he needed in life without a decent

father. I may have been there for him in a material sense, but mentally I was far away. By some means

that still eludes me I found the motivation to give up drinking entirely. Ironically this only made my

depression grow deeper, but I was much more aware of what I needed to do to be a good father, and

depression or no, I was damb well going to do it. I began to evaluate the world around me. I started on a

path to figure out what I was doing wrong, and how I could teach my son to avoid the same trap I had

fallen into. Eventually I went back to school in search of answers. It was the first time in years that my

loneliness began to recede, and I started finding the answers I was seeking. Not that they had ever really

eluded me. To this day I have not discovered anything new, rather I have discovered how to better

understand that which I am already aware of. So the work that follows is not merely an assignment, it is

an attempt, perhaps my first, to build a strong foundation for teaching my son and others how to find a

center of being that they can always find their way back to in times of need. A center of being that

transcends arbitrary belief systems, popular culture, and religions divided faith.

The following work is the first in a series of five papers. I wrote it in response to John Berger’s

“The Ways of Seeing” in search of my individuality; a thing which I have always treasured. What I soon

came to realize, especially looking back on it, is that there is no such thing as individuality for a person

who has grown up conforming to every cultural expectation that has ever been asked of them.

Discipline, fear, and uncertainty have made me into a product of everything my culture has forced on

me. However, I am at least in part an individual so I include this paper here as a basis for critical

evaluation. As you read try to consider just how much of me is a product of social expectation, and how

infinitely small are the tiny observations that truly speak to individuality.

Artist: Unknown

Title: Unknown

Morals and Modesty

I go to the old Paris building. There are good paintings there, one I really like in particular. I take

several pictures, but none of these paintings really speak to me, so I move on. I go all over old town

visiting Pasta & Vino, the coffee shop across from the bread store and Simplot Square. Nothing speaks.

Finally I hit the Gate City Fine Arts Gallery. I look all over the place, and almost leave, but I see a small

painting in the far corner on the very back wall.

It is a portrait of a woman. The painting appears to be a contradiction in that it is simple and

complex. The woman is simple, with milky white skin, and red hair. She appears to be looking down at

her lap almost shamefully. She has prominent bone structure, pale pink lips, and she is wearing a black

wide neck shirt. The wide neck shirt has slid down over her right shoulder ever so slightly. Otherwise the

painting is complex. There is depth created by the use of three mediums; oil on top, watercolor and ink

beneath. The fiery background of orange and red oil over black ink gives her the look of someone who is

in hell, yet she appears content.

This painting speaks to me. As I stand before it I have a singularly indescribable vision through

the medium. I will make a brief attempt to describe this experience, though description will certainly fall

short of actual experience.

                 She is very modest, being put on the spot like this makes her cheeks turn red, but after a while 

posing for the artist, her blush fades. She looks down at her hands because she is embarrassed, and 

alienated. She is no model, she is just a woman. She doesn’t even understand why he asked her, there 

are beautiful women out there he could have painted instead of her. She tries but can’t look up. The 

artist insists but she just can’t do it. He tells her it’s alright, tells her that if that’s the way it is then that’s 

the way it’s meant to be. She doesn’t know what he means, but she gets comfortable, and picks threads 

out of her skirt while he works. 

                It takes a lot longer than she suspected, she never thought much of painting until now. Her shirt 

slips down over her arm, she moves to tug it back up, but he waves an impatient hand to stop her. Her 

modest nature screams in protest, but she is suddenly aware of the moment of creation. For a moment 

she understands everything. She looks up briefly, just for a split second, and looks down again afraid. She 

is not afraid she might make the artist impatient, she is afraid because she saw me, me and everyone 

else who stands before this painting, merged together into a single moment. Now she knows why the 

artist chose her.

The question I feel compelled to ask as I stand before this oracle is, who am I? The first thought

that comes to mind when I think this is that I am a student. This crosses my mind though mainly because

this project has been assigned to me. This painting will reflect what I want to see if I let it. So I go further

down; invert my mind in search of what this painting will reveal to me.

“Who am I?” I ask of the painting.

“You are but a humble man, the divorced single father of one red headed child. You grew up in

poverty, and it’s all that you know of social status. You never once knowingly set your morals aside for

anything. Your life has been defined by slow development, loneliness, mistaken love, drug addiction,

and varying levels of passive awareness. These things are reflected in the way you see me.”

“Then why do I see beauty, morals, and loneliness in you figure?”

“You know why. You grew up slowly; the combination of your father’s leaving while you were

very young and your mother’s long term drug addiction is partly responsible. But you do not hold

anything against them for their actions. You maintain a good relationship with both of them because

you look beyond negative assumptions to see the beauty in them. Seeing their mistakes has made you

aware of a need to be different. You have a greater moral awareness than they do. So when you look at

me you see the same qualities which you see in yourself.”

“Then what of awareness?” I ask.

“Despite slow development you eventually woke up and realized what the world was, and how

it worked. You started getting the tools to get it into your own hands. You started reading, and getting

interested in stories and writing. Your new found independence was lonely, you wanted to share it and

in doing so to quickly made a vital mistake in going after what you knew. You met a girl and felt sorry for

her because she was a heroin addict. You insisted that you could help her, and reluctantly she listened.

It must have been a nasty start to a relationship, but she quit heroin. The experience brought you

together. You fell in love and shared it for some time. Then one day that was all gone too.

“You woke up that day in a new way and became conscious of who you were. You realized you

had made a mistake in just going with what you know all the time, because up until then all you had

known was poverty, drug addiction, welfare, and sound sleep; the deep sleep of the unaware. You

started to challenge yourself. You tried to find hope in the ability to help others that had lived lives

similar to your own. It soon became inevitable that you couldn’t do anymore without more tools. You

became a student and because of this process of awareness that has grown in you, you see awareness in

me.”

I turned away from the painting. I had been there for some time before that painting. I looked

into it, and it looked into me. It will certainly look into you as well if you give it a chance. A painting,

especially a portrait, is no more than a mirror. It will reflect what you see in yourself if you are daring

enough to look.

I believe my experience with this piece compliments Berger’s essay, “The Ways of Seeing.” At

first read I misunderstood Berger’s intentions a bit. I became aware reading it over again that he sees

the way I do. He stands on the side of an individual’s right to interact with a painting. He wants the

individual to be aware that no one person has the right or the authority to install into you the meaning

of a piece. My life amongst the lower social classes does not take away from my ability to be human and

decide authority for myself. In fact it only strengthens my awareness.

End

In retrospect I see how I was mistaken. I felt very much like an individual when I wrote this

piece, but even within the paper its self I write about the unity I share with everyone. If you examine the

second italicized paragraph you can see that I express a deep connection with the woman in the painting

where I write about how she sees me, but she sees everyone else too. Everyone who has ever stood

before that painting merged into one. Even at a subconscious level I reject my own feelings of

individuality within a work meant to accentuate what makes me singular.

I have come to find a deep fondness in ideas concerning unity. Our culture in America is being

divided by an ill-conceived individualism and it is causing the general public to become materialistic

consumers. When we reject others and strive to better only ourselves we have only a limited amount of

options to pursue happiness. This is why we turn to consumerism. When we can’t show our superiority

and individuality through our personality we do it through our stuff. So we purchase flashy clothes, and

new superior gadgets, and sports cars, and fine foods etc. The problem is that these things don’t give us

happiness, and they in fact only make the divide between individuals grow ever larger. In a world where

we can no longer be happy with each other we start turning to more and more meaningless forms of

expression in search of individuality. Because of this commodity driven industry we live in, and because

of mass media, a person in search of meaning in their life is often likely to find what they are looking for

in the most unlikely places. Once community meant that you could turn to others when you needed to

find something. Now in this world of media and popular culture you are more likely to find hope and

retain your sense of individuality in a world of mindboggling images.

The Post-Modern human being is a fallen soul lost in a constant stream of images and circus

style wonder. Every commodity is introduced by the ring leader in a loud amplified voice. The promise

they give is wonder, the ability to defy gravity, wit, and grace. What they are really doing is what every

good ring leader does. They make you look left when you should be looking right. Every commercial you

see promises results, healthy skin, or a perfect body. While you’re concerned with this expectation they

skate right by without you seeing the real substance. First, the results are only temporary at the least,

and second, you are going to be left broke, struggling for an expectation you can never attain, and

without hope.

Moving to the second of five papers we come to a paper I wrote in response to a piece by Susan

Bordo called “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” The piece speaks mainly about images and how

images affect us in a world where nearly every person’s moral stability is fractured. There is a small part

in the paper where I refer to Tilda Swinton as follows. ‘This man is a tall, fashion conscious, high heel

wearing, leaner. Could there really be a better show of putting all your (gender) bonnets in one basket.’

When I wrote this piece I did not know who Tilda Swinton was but in retrospect knowing that she is a

female does not change anything from my point of view. My goal in this piece was to show how

meaningless gender really is and how today’s idea of what gender should be just gives people a role they

feel obligated to play. I wanted to reach into Bordo’s work and extract the important material. It took a

long winding path to do so but I felt that by the time I came to the concluding paragraphs I had come

close.

Timeless Beauty

Susan Bordo (b. 1947) is a philosopher who has brought her background knowledge of

traditional philosophy into modern day popular culture. This work is an attempt to summarize and

evaluate Bordo’s piece “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” The topic of the piece concerns the Male

figure and its changing role in advertising as compared to the Female figure. What I want to accomplish

in this work is to critically evaluate the text, and ultimately undress the purpose behind it, so that we can

see what it is and how it could be important to any popular subject of any particular time.

THE BORDO CONJECTURE

The selection “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body” by Susan Bordo is broken down into six parts. Each

part has its own specific theme and leads to the ultimate conclusion where Bordo uses the parts

collectively to evaluate true beauty and the way it is mystified by popular culture and advertising. I will

begin my evaluation by looking at each part individually.

Men On Display. This part in Bordo’s selection takes a highly personalized look at her first time seeing

the male body as a sensuous art form. She explains that she never felt this way looking at an ad before

and tells us how she felt she had an insight now on how men must see women in advertising, as a form

of art rather that a person. She points out in this part how studies relating to sexual responses in males

and females are said to be different, but explains how this could be tainted data because culturally men

have been voyeurs for some time while women have only recently become voyeurs.

Thanks Calvin. Part two of Bordo’s selection moves on to describe how the male body found its way into

advertising. It may be important to point out that it was not women who sponsored this drive but gay

men. Bordo explains how it would be nice to think women created this idea, but that women were only

inadvertent “beneficiaries” of another idea created by men (Bordo 197). She moves on to show how

men’s new role in advertising is most likely due to the large quantity of money that gay men

represented to commercial industry, and how careful use of “a “Dual Marketing” approach” appealed to

“gays” and “straits” alike without making heterosexual males too uncomfortable to spend money(Bordo

199).

Rocks and Leaners. This third part to Bordo’s selection provides us with an in depth look at the way our

culture views gender roles and how these gender roles formed in our history. The selection takes into

consideration two stances, the direct masculine “face-off” and the indirect submissive “Lean” (Bordo

204-207). She goes on to describe how the face-off and the lean contrast each other in terms of age and

ethnicity, and how these roles are slowly changing in advertising as our cultural ideologies evolve.

“Honey, What Do I Want To Wear?”  This fourth part shows a more in depth look at our cultural views of

what it means to be masculine and what it means to be feminine, especially concerning fashion

consciousness. Bordo explains how fashion consciousness itself has been a predominantly feminine

virtue. She explains that the idea of fashion conscious males coming into the mainstream is new to our

culture and how men formed a need at this point to justify being adept in the ways of fashion. Because

of cultural norms these justifications were only necessary for those who found it necessary to fit in with

the popular crowd which axiomatically describes most of the general public.

Male Decorativeness In Cultural Perspective.  In this section Bordo shows us where gender roles in our

society emerged, and how they relate in comparison to the past and to different cultures. She

specifically compares this ideal definition of gender to African American culture and class roles. In this

selection Bordo shows us that our cultural ideologies concerning fashion are relative, and in this

perspective how our current ideas of fashion are almost brand new with respect to our history. This

selection is important because it helps us to see how gender is in the eye of the beholder and how a

culture makes use of gender to classify people into categories, rich, poor, ethnicity and most important

to her topic, gender and sexual identity.

My World…And Welcome To It.  In this last selection Bordo describes how our culture is changing. She

shows us how our culture is using images to shape the way people feel about what it means to be

feminine or masculine and how new age advertisement is breaking down the walls that once defined a

clear divide. People (men and women alike) can now cross through the boundaries that were once well

established and mingle on either side of the gender line thanks to advertising. With so many people

choosing to cross this line the question Bordo’s argument poses is this: Why is it that advertising this

way is successful? Bordo points out that society’s rules regarding gender are arbitrary, and that

advertisement guru’s have successfully seen into the personal lives of people. They have been able to

exploit this arbitrary cultural belief and degrade arguments concerning gender to mere banal social

expectations. Thus many people have been able to see that they can be whatever they want without

caring how people judge them, because they know that judgment is the uneducated product of an

arbitrary social construct.

Bordo goes on to describe that this is both good and bad. It’s good because it gives people a

feeling of freedom to be what they want. It’s bad because the images advertisers use are geared toward

perfection. These groundbreaking advertisements themselves create a new arbitrary belief system; the

perfection of the human body. Bordo points out that this is detrimental to our society because in striving

for perfection people lose sight of what beauty really is and reach out to attain an artificial beauty they

can never have.

A NEW AGE?

Bordo’s argument as a complete work is very convincing and believed to

be true. It certainly has not been disproven and so stands for the

moment as a great authoritative work. Only time will tell what comes of

this argument. With that said I would like to evaluate Bordo’s selection in

light of my own position in society. Now, some twelve years after Bordo

published this work many of her ideas are panning out very much the

way she anticipated them.

The new age of advertising.  This advertisement from a current issue of

Vanity Fair magazine shows men using both stances Bordo described in the second part of her selection.

The man on the far left (note his probable distinct ethnicity) is showing us an example of the face-off

Bordo speaks of. The man in the middle is doing a kind of cross between the face-off and the lean pose.

As Bordo describes the lean is acceptable in our culture regarding males, but only for younger

adolescents and women. This model shows us an “of age” male with a clear sense of style in the lean

pose, but with a face-off gaze. It is a clear definition of what Bordo points out about the growing trends

concerning role reversal. This man is a tall, fashion conscious, high heel wearing, leaner. Could there

really be a better show of putting all your (gender) bonnets in one basket. This advertisement easily

exploits the dual marketing technique. It also shows us how far we have come since Bordo wrote her

piece. Now we can put feminine and masculine males in the same advertisement and we don’t have to

use wordplay as much to attain the homo- hetero- balancing act. Males are becoming ever more

conscious of arbitrary gender definitions.

My own personal experiences tell of trending behaviors as well. As a kid growing up in the

nineties, I learned from social interaction that “fairies” (homosexual males) were the low of the low.

Some of my friends that shared these beliefs are now grown up and are they themselves homosexuals.

They have embodied and fully embraced an idea that we grew up to fear. This personal experience

allows me to reflect on Bordo’s argument as a whole to show how advertising did not necessarily violate

everyone’s personal taboos. Instead this new advertising showed how people’s personal belief systems

were different than that of main stream culture. The real taboo we see being violated in Bordo’s

argument is the taking of sub-culture belief systems and forcing them boldly into mainstream popular

culture. This is where Bordo’s argument becomes less about fashion and more about the human

condition. In this way Bordo shows us how our governing bodies mystify our cultural ideologies and their

origins. They attempt to rule our everyday lives by filling them with unwarranted beliefs and expected

social norms. Usually such attempts to bring individual ideas into mainstream culture are unsuccessful,

but the sheer popularity of these particular ideas in this time brought success to advertisement.

This image is another ad that shows how things are changing in our culture. I found this ad to

show the contrast to Bordo’s fourth part. Men do not need women to dress them anymore. This man is

all alone in a completely submissive pose and showing a clear sense of style. As Bordo anticipated in her

essay men’s growing awareness of style is expanding. Nowadays it can be hard to find an advertisement

where a man is unsure about what to wear. In ads today men show confidence through their personal

style. Bordo’s selection certainly seems to be a group of ideas that are withstanding the test of time. As

time goes on these ideas are as of yet only growing and evolving in just the way she predicts. So this

brings up the question posed earlier. What is the purpose of Bordo’s essay?

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN

Bordo’s background in philosophy, and hints throughout the selection (especially in the conclusion) give

us an insight into the purpose of this piece. Bordo has created an argument regarding a hot topic of its

time and used it not only to show its significance to our current culture, but also to show how it is

significant to the human condition. In this argument Bordo uses the topic of fashion to show how

popular belief and personal belief are not created equal. She also shows us how subscribing to popular

belief can be detrimental to the human experience and fill people with delusions that compromise their

integrity.

Bordo accomplishes something in her use of

fashion that is important to mention. Fashion is

big, really big. This helps her to spread her

message to a very large audience. She uses

fashion and the new trends found within to

show how such timeless qualities as beauty,

freedom, and unity can get twisted by popular

culture. She points out that culture has a way of categorizing things unfairly, and that such defined

classifications, ill intended or not, can be dangerous. This is why Bordo could have used any popular

topic of her time to fulfill her underlying agenda. Such topics as fashion are always changing with time

and cultural adaptation, but there are concepts concerning the human condition that are forever, things

like beauty, murder, jealousy, divinity. These ideas are the real important ones, and they can be

evaluated in any aspect of daily life, in any time throughout human history.

End

By the time I had finished this paper I hated Bordo’s piece. I had read it about a gazillion times

and knew every page and right where to look to find material. Yet somehow I was still missing the bigger

picture. I had come to the hasty conclusion that Bordo’s piece was concerned with arbitrary definitions

of beauty. I felt that she wanted people to see how wrong they were about beauty and how much more

powerful beauty can be when you see it for what it really is, when you pierce the veil of a person’s

exterior and peer into their very soul beauty is something completely beyond flesh, yet it resides there

within. I soon realized that there was more to the piece. It certainly focused on these ideas of beauty

and arbitrary belief, but it hinted at more, it hinted at how to identify where the arbitrary belief

spawned from, and of why that information could be useful.

Our next paper in class was to be a blending of Berger’s ideas and Bordo’s ideas into a single

essay. As I started to examine the two essays together I noticed that both papers shared similar ideas. I

saw how the papers together could be seen as a guide to find the root of arbitrary belief systems. I

started to wonder if the people responsible for creating these belief systems shared my own moral

foundation. I soon realized that many of them probably did, but it was very unlikely that they all did. I

became concerned that putting myself in a position where I just did as was expected of me in terms of

social convention and pre-determined belief systems could truly make me into a man against my own

moral foundation, a paradox which I quickly meant to evaluate and mend to the best of my abilities.

I found that indeed following social conventions often put me in a position where I had to

abandon my own moral center to do what was expected of me by my culture. For example I found that I

abandoned the idea of talking with my teachers as if they were people. Social conventions make

teachers into something other than humans, vessels of information used to pass ideas along

generations, as if they were machines. So whenever I was put in a position where I had to talk with one

of my teachers person to person I parroted language to them as if I were Spock demanding information

from the Starship Enterprise. So I made plans to amend this behavior A.S.A.P.

As I thought through these two pieces and my recent considerations concerning morals I

decided that social expectations (especially those that skewed one’s own moral center) and the people

who decided them could be seen as a person’s enemy. I started to realize that by following all these pre-

determined conventions I was not only aiding my enemies, but I was also making myself into my own

enemy. The way I had fallen into the trap mentioned earlier was becoming apparent to me. I was a

human paradox, a man fighting against his own shadow. A man at war with himself, predicating his own

failure on specters before success had even begun.

Then came the realization that my second piece was lacking. I had found only a small idea within

huge argument. I made plans to avoid letting this happen again. My next paper was going to be

something I had never dared to do in an English class before. First, I decided that whatever grade I was

going to get did not matter, what I wanted to say was more important than mere grades. Second, I

decided I was not going to let arbitrary beliefs change what I had to say. I was going to get my point

across the best I could, and I no longer cared what people thought about it or what grade I got. If people

didn’t like my paper, it was because they didn’t like me. If they didn’t like me, so be it, I would be a man

apart. I’d lived with alienation before, and was certain I could live with it again.

This third piece became an attempt to define my enemies, or at least a consideration of who

they were and how to recognize them. I crafted what I thought of as my best work yet this semester. It

was honest material, freedom incarnate. I reserved my pride but let the feelings of freedom flow out of

my pen and nearly every word was worth more to me than all the riches in the world. I felt that a man

weighed down by possessions and gold would probably never be able to experience such a feeling of

freedom in his life. I include this third piece unmodified from the original final draft. Even as time goes

by and I begin to find better ways of expressing myself I doubt I will ever be able to change much

concerning this work. Destroying its original voice just feels wrong.

Know Your Enemy

The two famed writers John Berger and Susan Bordo have established themselves in our world

as representatives for the common man. They have used their hard earned authority and status in the

world not to “rise above” the common man and belittle us, but to walk along side us and help us to see

the things they have learned in their path to success. In their work they share a common goal; to show

people how to establish our own place in the world so that we can find where we stand. In addition

Berger and Bordo also show us how to see those people who stand in opposition to us. The parallels

they draw in their work seem to be the product of a strategic attempt to dismantle our preconceptions

and toss aside popular belief, so that we can see the world through our very own filter and determine

what to make of it for ourselves.

In this essay I will be entwining the ideals of Berger and Bordo into a single unit so that we may

better understand why this work is important to them. I will be using examples from two specific texts

to do this, Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” and Bordo’s “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” It may be

important to mention that I myself find this work very important and because of my subjectivity it may

be important for the reader to be cautious and test my examples for themselves, for this is the very root

of the two texts; to learn how to stand for yourself in a world that expects your submission.

The two selections mentioned above are both concerned about images. They ask us to consider

who uses images. Who decides how we regard an image? The answer appears to be obvious, the

individual decides what they see, right? However, Berger gives us an excellent example to show how this

obvious answer is complicated by people’s preconceptions. Speaking of a work of art by Leonardo da

Vinci Berger writes

“It became famous because an American wanted to buy it for two and a

half million pounds. Now it hangs in a room by itself. The room is like a chapel.

The drawing is behind bullet-proof perspex. It has acquired a new kind of

impressiveness. Not because of what it shows- not because of the meaning of

its image. It has become impressive, mysterious, because of its market value.”

(150)

This is an example of what Berger calls “Mystification.” He shows how mystification is used to

create excitement and envelope art “in an atmosphere of entirely bogus religiosity” (Berger 150). This is

important to his argument because it shows how specialists of any given field (in this case, art) have a

need to create value where none actually exists. In this particular case, mystifying the work of art has

made it popular. It is arguably true that this work of art is worth more than two and a half billion pounds

now that it has a reputation. The real money is in reproductions, vendor sales, plane tickets, hotel fee’s,

entry charges, taxes, etc.

Susan Bordo identifies with similar ideas. Bordo explains how images in advertising are used to

speak directly to individuals. This becomes important to marketers because if they do not connect with

an audience on a personal level then their products are less likely to sell. Bordo writes, “The most

compelling images are suffused with “subjectivity”- they speak to us, they seduce us” (Bordo 203). There

have been studies that show a person is more likely to make a purchase if they touch a product. You can

often identify a good salesperson if they tell you about a product then hand it to you to try out for

yourself. In advertisement the same is true for making a personal connection. If that personal

connection is made successfully the consumer feels that they identify with the product and are much

more likely to make a purchase.

The reason specialists are concerned with matters like mystification and making personal

connections is because it sells an idea. The product or service itself is of no real value. The specialist’s

actual need is to sneak into the consumer’s life unidentified. Suddenly you find yourself longing to see

Leonardo’s famous work because you feel uncultured. Is this because you really see yourself this way or

because of how you’ve been taught to see art? Suddenly you finish off your bottle of face cream and you

need to have more. Is this because you actually need it, or because it’s snuck into your life unnoticed

and become a part of your daily routine that you can’t live without it anymore? Bordo writes in her

conclusion “The management of the body is a gold mine for consumerism, and one whose treasures are

inexhaustible… Ideals of beauty can be endlessly tinkered with by fashion designers and cosmetic

designers and cosmetic manufacturers, remaining continually elusive, requiring constant new

purchases…”(Bordo 229). You are much more valuable to a specialist if your consumption becomes a

lifelong commitment to their products. You are also creating a divide between you and them with every

dollar you spend; making commercial industries’ vast wealth ever larger, while depleting your own

modest investments.

Berger had an idea. He wanted to show people the meaning of mystification, and show how it

was used to create commodities without consumers becoming aware of it. He wanted to give art back to

the people and help them see that is wasn’t the vacation and the visit to the Louvre and the hotel and

the corndogs that made the art. He wanted everyone to be able to see the image in respect to the

history in which it was created. To see it not as a mysterious, transcendent, object, but as a link to

another human ancestor and, however small it might be, an insight into how they saw the world. Nearly

twenty five years passed between Berger’s selection and the selection by Bordo. He may never have

anticipated that the internet would give the world the ability to have any work of art at their fingertips,

and viewed in the context of their own living room no less. Yet Bordo continues to hammer away at the

same topic. This leads me to ask the question. Why, if Berger got his wish, is it still important to Bordo to

show us the division between popular culture and ourselves? Why is it still important for us to see the

world through our very own personal filter?

The reason Bordo picks up where Berger left of is because the whole processes of supply and

demand is centered on a great push and pull relationship. Bordo mentions how another idea of Berger’s

was being challenged and shows how culture was “chiseling cracks in the rule…even as Berger was

formulating it” (Bordo 214). Bordo shows us that there is no real end to the process but there is change,

there is evolution. Berger’s arguments concerning art may now be looked back on as a kind of epic win

for the common consumer, but if there is one thing commercial industry is aware of it is the relatively

short lifespan of trends. Trends often come and go several times in one person’s lifespan. If the common

man\woman is to ever have a competitive edge over commercial industry it is going to lie in his\her

ability to know where they stand, and be aware of the nature of those who oppose them. This could be

thought of as getting to “know your enemy.” Such a term has obvious negative connotations, but it is

debatable as to whether or not this is a justifiable negative view. Maybe this is a good debate for you to

take up on your own as you consider the changing world around you.

The most important conclusion I care to draw from these considerations regarding

Berger’s and Bordo’s selections is that the world does not just end. Some people might argue this but

until the end actually comes let us consider that the sun will continue to rise and set. It is easy to get

comfortable and stagnate. It can be easy to settle with what is and has been, but the world is moving

and revolving and evolving. If we stop were we are at now, then we are being left behind in a world that

is moving on. This is why we cannot forget to look into our past when we consider our future. It is vital

for the person who wants to make a difference in the world to know their place in the order of things

and anticipate change, so that they can be ready to swiftly and certainly exact justice upon the hand that

is dealt to them. It is a common struggle, shared by a common man\woman.

End

I was very happy with this paper yet a depression began to sink in. On one hand I had

experienced a personal freedom I had not felt in some time. On the other hand it came at the expense

of realizing some really heavy and really depressing things about American culture. One thing led to

another and these depressing ideas were everywhere. Practicing in transcendent forms of thought and

higher awareness can be dangerous. While they give you as increased awareness and proximity to the

better things in life, so do they bring you closer to the extreme lows, and the dark nature of things.

It was in the midst of this subtle but profound depression that I read the next class reading. It

was Laura Kipnis’ piece “Loves Labors.” The piece is a polemic view of the many disturbing belief

systems that drive today’s modern view of love. Kipnis suggest that love is akin to factory work where

people break their backs working their lives away for little to nothing in return. She argues that despite

the persistent work ethic required to make love successful one cannot hate love without being

considered an abnormal enemy to the current system. If you can be against love, she suggests, then

there is something “wrong” with you, and you don’t “fit in.”

Kipnis goes on to use these arbitrary judgments as a basis to justify therapy, which is really just a

device to charge you money and convince you that nothing is really wrong with you. That really what it

all comes down to is that you are not working hard enough. I saw how this piece related to my own

current ideas of knowing your enemy so I looked for another way to use this material as an in to a good

paper. What I found rendered me speechless.

Kipnis reveals that people who participate in an affair after marriage are committing a form of

unconscious protest against the idea of monogamy. In a country where freedom is a key element of our

structure, we let the government tell us we are only allowed to love one person. What does this mean

for someone with a capacity to love more than one person though? What if someone loves three or four

people very dearly and sees nothing wrong with that? What happens is they have their rights robbed

from them. They are just as free as anyone else to do as they please, yet because popular culture has

decided that polygamy and polygyny are abnormal they cannot exercise those freedoms without

suffering dire consequences.

The idea of the unconscious protest became the central topic regarding our fourth of five papers

and this gave me an excellent in to the next topic I wanted to discuss. I had found a trail to my ultimate

objective by then. Though my ideas were still vague at the time I was aware that I wanted to evaluate as

many arbitrary aspects of culture that I could and attempt to show how falling victim to such beliefs

could be avoided. To show how one could truly set themselves apart from the rest of the world’s

expectations and become someone that they could stand looking at in the mirror, no make-up, no

nothing. To simply be someone you could stare at, stripped “naked” of the worlds’ judgments, and still

be able to attain a contented view of yourself despite the world’s reaction to you.

I wanted to make an attempt to bring in some of the ideas I had previously considered

concerning language. Looking back now I find it quite predictable that I settled for focusing on silence

rather than language. I have always thought that silence carried a lot more weight than the spoken

word. I posted my final draft with a feeling of depression still looming over me. It was after all yet

another bleak and dreary realization about the world. Yet it spoke with such power that I felt I had

nothing important to say for days following its completion. Every time I did want to say something I

opted instead for meditation, and deep contemplation. It took me nearly a week to find my voice again,

and when I did, I didn’t really like the sound of it. Something about the considerations in this paper

changed me.

Silence and the Irrevocable

There is a time in every person’s life when they take action without thinking. They do or say

something without thinking things through and they inevitably come to realize that their actions have

come and gone and there is nothing they can do about it. When people take action in this way they are

so often greeted with silence by the affected party. What does this mean? Why silence? Why do people

greet a person’s irrevocable action with silence? When I first started considering the meaning of silence I

realized there was a profound difference between the meaning of silence as an unconscious action and

silence as a conscious action. I found a need to consider silence as an unconscious action and look

deeper into what exactly it is that renders people speechless in western culture.

There are many definitions of silence and they are very different depending on the context they

are put into. The definition that is most relevant to my consideration is the verb form, or silenced.

Silenced: To make silent or bring to silence. This suggests the unconscious form of silence where one is

brought to silence rather than choosing to be silent, which is a very important factor to consider in this

analysis. Upon further analysis I found that silence in its unconscious state is a form of protest where

one party is rendered silent because of an opposing party’s invasion. This is jumping to the end result

though; to see how this is relevant we have to consider what defines an invasion.

In order to be silenced it follows logically that first one must be the opposite of silent. This in

turn suggests vocal communication. In any form of vocal communication there must be at least two

parties involved. In western culture humans have been trained with countless social expectations. As

with most cultures, if not all of them, there are forbidden areas of examination when any two parties

are communicating. These forbidden realms of exploration are open to change depending on the

relationship between the communicating parties. For example, when talking to your doctor you might

reveal a lot more about the issues you’re having “down there” than you would to a prospective mate.

You would almost certainly reveal a more intimate examination of you sex life with your best friend and

confidant, than you would with your mother or father. So we come to the first step in understanding the

aspect of invasion; the creation of borders.

The creation of borders is something that happens almost immediately and without much

conscious thought in any social interaction. When you communicate respectfully with a stranger you feel

out these borders from the moment a conversation begins. People do this by asking open ended

questions and picking up on verbal and physical hints given by the opposite party. When one discovers a

path of communication that a person is willing to pursue, they are greeted with fairly regular responses

and few signs of physical discomfort. When people bring up topics that are not to be discussed they are

greeted with aversion, agitation, and a general unwillingness to share. Humans become so adept to

identifying these physical and verbal signals that they rarely think about what they are doing. Once a

border is reached the most readily available conclusion is to change topics.

When an outsider observes a conversation like this in detail they often observe a series of

unrelated topics, moving one to the next each time a border becomes established. What this does for

the party’s involved is open a range of ideas where they share common ground and common willingness

to share, while also defining a well-rounded background of taboo borders. This gives both party’s an

insight into the other’s views. Since we are so deeply cultured by our systematic approach to the world

an insight into what a person keeps to themself is almost as useful in determining their character as

what they reveal. The outside observer, if paying close attention to detail, can often place both parties

of the conversation into generalized sub culture with a fairly high degree of accuracy. For example,

someone who is willing to talk about charity, God, Scriptures, and the betterment of mankind , but is not

willing to talk about sex, radical movements, death, and pornography, is a person who is likely a deeply

religious God fearing individual. While a person who is willing to talk about back door deals, money

laundering, pyramid schemes, and pornography, but is not willing to talk about prison, paranoia, or drug

use, is likely to be a criminal. Of course there are always exceptions to such grand generalizations, but as

I said these things can be determined with a fairly  high degree of accuracy, not a certain degree of

accuracy.

While observing conversational expectations in this way I find that communication is perpetual

only when the two parties recognize and respect each other’s borders. If you want to find a quick way

out of a conversation try this line and you will see in most cases what I mean. “Hey there stranger, how

was your bowel movement this morning?” If you get any response at all it will probably be something

like ‘None of your business, go pack sand.’ Even more likely you will be greeted only by silence, and still

agitated physical communiqués. This is because you have not established a common ground with the

other party, and you have violated an almost universal taboo in western culture, the morning body

ritual.

Now we come to the last of three observations that need to be regarded to understand the

nature of being rendered silent. This observation is the key to the difference between whether a person

will defend their borders or not. As we have observed above a stranger is fairly likely to tell you to go

pack sand, or eat shit and die. Strangers are capable of horrific retort in response to horrific violation of

borders. A stranger has not established a relationship with the opposite party and therefore is capable

of defending themselves more readily because they have no personal attachment to such an individual.

The final key to understanding silence as an unconscious protest of wrong doing is the relationship.

Any communicating parties begin their journey to a well-defined relationship with conversation.

Conversation begets the understanding of a person’s borders and leads to common ground, or we could

say understanding. Continual exploitation of deeper and deeper understanding leads to a more

profound form of communication known as the intimate relationship. The intimate relationship in this

regard does not necessarily have to include copulation or coupling but does not eliminate these traits

either. In other words intimate relationships could include friends, relatives, coworkers and couples;

pretty much anything that goes beyond casual acquaintance.

What happens in an intimate relationship is borders recede. Confidence in ones commitment to

a relationship opens the borders up to further and further examination until finally the two parties are

very intimate and have a greater understanding of each other’s inner most ideologies. As we have

observed above what someone will not talk about is often as much or more revealing that what they will

talk about. As the borders get infinitely smaller it becomes easier for both parties to identify what the

other is keeping to themselves. Ultimately everyone has a few things in their inner sanctum that they

will never openly reveal, but it is often really easy for an intimate friend or relation to know the truth of

what is beyond that border because of the process of elimination. It is the one thing that that person

will never talk about no matter how often it’s brought up. It is the one thing that they always keep to

themselves and hold dear to their individuality.

When one party in the relationship can’t stand it any longer and they have to bring this element

into conversation this is what renders the other party speechless. This is what creates the unconscious

protest of wrongdoing, or silence. When two people, or four, or whole communities, or entire cultures

have their deepest and most profound borders penetrated by a close relation it is a violation of the most

violent kind. When an intimate relationship is violated in this way the effected party is rendered silent

and there is no question why, is there? The effected party cannot defend themselves the way a stranger

can, they cannot possibly say anything that has not already been said. Anything they could say was part

of what brought the relationship in question to this degree of understanding. With understanding being

to such an infinite degree as this, direct violation of the only rule that still stands is not only an act of

violation, but also one of treason, and violence.

This understanding is what leads to the conclusion that silence is an unconscious form of protest

against irrevocable wrongdoing. The violator in such an example often comes to understand that what is

done is done, the profound silence that ensues forces on them the gravity and irrevocable nature of

their violation. This is the kind of observation that leads me to believe that silence can be violence. This

can be extended beyond simple relationships to include any form of communication between any

number of effected parties from two individuals, all the way to globalization. From one utterance, to

clamor. Silence is not a lack of sound, it is the signal that alerts us that everything has already been said.

It is not lack of communication, it is the embodiment of total communication.

End

As a class we were coming to the end of our considerations fast. We had come to the last in a

series of five papers and things were working themselves out quite nicely. I had exceeded my own

expectations and unwarranted pride threatened to lend itself to me. I have been threatened by false

pride before and I know how detrimental it can be to someone. I cannot stress this point enough, pride

will take away your soul, and the fall that comes later hurts that much more when you let pride carry

you to unmanageable heights. So I battled with this pride as I considered the last paper and ultimately I

found a way to deflect it.

I decided these works thus far were too personal; this is why pride loomed around every corner.

I formulated a plan to make our final assignment in class into a completely selfless work, meant in hopes

of bringing people to higher heights. So I planned to use the fifth of five papers as a way to bring

everything I had previously written out of myself, and present it in terms of society as a whole. I found

this quite a lot easier to do than I had at first thought.

By this time I knew there was going to be a sixth paper where we would bring all five works

together as one, so I planned this fifth paper as best as I could around being the last leg of a complete

iteration in a cycle. The topic, panopticism, really seemed meant for this purpose. I thought long about

how my teacher had designed this class to flow in this way and realized what I had by now long

anticipated. That she had in fact designed this course for the very purpose I was trying to use it for. I

realized how subtly she had been, influencing the actions of the class. She did not demand respect,

instead she respected us, and so we respected her back. She did not force us into deep consideration,

but waded out into it alone, and so we followed. She did not force us to listen, or to respond, but we

did; out of mutual respect, and a need to know how far we could take it. She silently and subtly guided

us through these considerations until we came ultimately to our own subtle and profound conclusions.

For me it was that I wanted to teach my son and others similar ideas, and in a similar manner. I wanted

to be selfless and subtle, I wanted to be able to reach my son in this way early on so that he did not fall

into the same trap that had almost pulled me into darkness. I wanted this work to be for everyone else

too, after all how could a parents valuable, meaningful insights meant for their children really be bad for

anyone? Are we not all someone’s children?

So I planned this paper accordingly and I now leave it to fate that people can find in this material

a means for hope and continuance. You are all in my heart, I cry out for humanity, I promise my life of

servitude for you all. I will make every day of my life a search for a better way, but one man can only do

so much. If I am ever really going to make an impact, I am going to need your help.

Welcome My Son, To the Panopticon: A Quartet

You didn’t like school and you know you’re nobody’s fool,

So welcome to the machine…

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.

-Pink Floyd-

Prelude-Michel Foucault, philosopher and historian, introduces readers to a lineage of the

emergence of the police state. His selection entitled “Panopticism” is from his book Discipline  and 

Punish: The Birth of the Prison. The piece follows a timeline through history starting with a description of

a plague state in the seventeenth century and shows the morphology of that discipline system into the

current system now commonly referred to as panopticism.

Foucault shows what events prompted the morphology and describes the characteristics of the

most important issues in the chain of causality; the manipulation of discipline (i.e. the emergence of self-

disciplined social roles), the inception of the police state, the economic value of panoptisicm, the new

stratification of power, and the objectives underlying inquisition.

In his description of the plague state Foucault describes a plague stricken town. He outlines how

each household is isolated and regulated by the presence of officials. The town is then divided into

sectors headed by another official, the sectors making a whole unit report to a magistrate and the

magistrate reports directly to the King. Each man from household to magistrate has a duty whose

transgression is punishable by death. This description gives an accurate representation of the complete

stratification of power from the most powerful (the King) to the least powerful (the individual). It also

describes a costly inefficient system in that the pure number of officials needed to observe, enforce,

report and discipline represent a very large portion of the whole. The segmented nature of the example

is also troublesome because it allows no process by which to maintain a circular nature. Each action

begins at a new starting point and ends in segmentation. This system worked well as long as there were

essentials needed to support it; mainly a small population and inexhaustible wealth.

Foucault then introduces Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and describes how its circular nature,

solitary cellular division, and constant exposure of every movement bring about a system of greater

power at minimal cost. Unlike the segmented plague division, the Panopticon’s circular nature brings

unity to each isolated individual, effectively cutting them off from each other while simultaneously

making them visible to officials from a central tower. To further contrast the plague state, the

Panopticon only requires one guard for the entire demographic. The nature of being fully exposed and

always watched by an official that cannot be seen, hiding in a central tower eventually causes the

prisoners to internalize the gaze of authority, eliminating the need for even a single guard. This

effectively reduces the need for inexhaustible wealth, minimizes reporting errors and creates a self-

perpetuating system in which no action constitutes a dead end or a new starting point. Actions flow into

and out of the wheel smoothly and are effectively observed by all parties; officials and subjects alike. I

think of this circular power structure as the “wheel of power.”

This circular nature allows the ideas of panopticism to flow into the community from the

Panopticon and vice versa thus passing on the internal gaze to every citizen in the system. The inception

of this cycle is the only broken part in it. Once the idea is off the ground and the wheel of power starts to

spin the ideas inside and outside of the Panopticon equalize creating a cultural norm, thus also spawning

the contrasting nature of normal, the abnormal.

The recognition of abnormalities becomes problematic in that they do not support the system,

and thus emerges the manipulation of discipline. The original system of discipline was to reject or

eliminate the offender; Foucault compares this to the banishment of lepers in the seventeenth century.

In the new system the community attempts to reform the abnormal element so that they help

perpetuate the norm. Naturally, in such an environment one’s family becomes the first mechanism for

reforming abnormalities. Further transgression leads to increasingly supreme iterations of discipline

from counseling and psychiatric treatment, to imprisonment if the abnormal element remains prevalent.

Since the panoptic mechanism runs so efficiently it becomes possible to sever it from the King’s

wealth while simultaneously using it to maximize production. Having abnormal subjects who are

constantly watched by officials (not to mention themselves) is a practice in stagnation. As the police

state emerges from the judiciary’s independence from the King, the subjects become useful as a source

of work. Using subjects to maximize productivity and stabilize economic growth became a highly utilized

practice. In other words, panopticism led to a palatable justification for slavery.

The emergence of the police state minimized the stratification of power. Where once power was

an infinitesimal division from the King to the powerless, now the absolute power of the King still

remained, but there emerged an intermediate power in the form of the judiciary system and below that

was the powerless individual. This new tiered system prevented uncertainty in the division of power.

Whether or not you had authority became a black and white issue with nothing in between.

From all of this Foucault shows the new importance of the process of inquisition. With the

panoptic cycle firmly established, a refined process of inquisition arose. Even abnormal entities could

gain a certain amount of power. Of course the majority always trumped the individual even when it

wasn’t intended, but the powerful abnormal individual often spawned from a product of unique

circumstances. The idea that a single individual could even temporarily attain agency over the sheer

numbers of the majority showed an educated use of unique abilities to gain an amazing display of

power. The process of inquisition evolved from a need to acquire knowledge of how that unique

individual attained such power. When the source of power was discovered it became useful to adopt

like resources into the panoptic wheel to make it adaptable to resistance. The process of inquisition

became the driving factor in the evolution of panopticism. In other words criminology evolved not

because of a desire to improve the system, but because panopticism is ever enslaved by abnormal

displays of agency.

Because the only change we see in the evolution of panoptic devices is an adaptation to

incorporate abnormal power displays into the system, Foucault shows that the only true agency in the

system is in the abnormal. The abnormal element is the only thing that brings about any change in the

panoptic system. As the system adapts to incorporate the abnormal, the abnormal adapt to transgress

it. As the system evolves people slowly adopt justifications for what was once thought to be abnormal.

People who are in prison now for the acts they committed were born in an unfortunate time. In a few

hundred years the practice that put them there will probably evolve into completely normal everyday

behavior.

By this argument Foucault shows us why it is no mistake that our current disciplinary

institutions, prisons, seem to reflect other institutions in our societies. Including hospitals, schools, and

big box stores; maximizing production, maximizing profits, and justifying slavery so that the wealthy elite

need do nothing but put their feet up and watch the wheel go round. This elite class may think they

have agency, but Foucault makes a fair argument against them.

These ideas of Foucault’s have spread into our everyday world. We live with the reality of

panopticism all around us. Even in places we don’t at first recognize, it becomes apparent upon closer

inspection. There are three authors that my classmates and I have paid particular attention to in the last

few months that show just how interchangeable these ideas can be. John Berger, Susan Bordo, and

Laura Kipnis all write in an attempt to define why certain aspects of our culture are the way they are.

Their selections all have one underlying commonality, panopticism, and ask the question ‘who has

agency?’ Their work, with the inclusion of Foucault’s, can be compared to a Baroque composition. Most

music in the Baroque consisted of several parts. One line called the Basso Continuo would give a

foundation for all the music in a piece. A piece consisted of three sections called movements. The Basso

continuo in most pieces would remain consistent while other instrumentation in each movement varied

highly. Observe the commonality in the following text, which I call “Welcome My Son, to the

Panopticon.”

Movement One (Allegro non molto)-“The majority take it as axiomatic that the museums are full

of holy relics which refer to a mystery which excludes them: the mystery of unaccountable wealth”

(Berger 152). Berger’s piece about art shows how there is a power struggle going on over art and its

various meanings. He describes the way art authorities have shrouded art in mystery, displaying it in

temples and museums and raising it to a status of almost divine quality in people’s minds creating a

bogus demand. The funny thing is that neither the authorities nor the art seem to have power over the

success of this demand.

In this selection it’s all about money. A work can be alone in the shadows in the corner of some

old bookstore somewhere and out of nowhere someone offers a large sum of money for it. Picture that

work of art slowly rising into the light, a royal red carpet unrolls down granite stairs, down floats a

Plexiglas case like a halo, two movers bring in a Greek looking column and there you have it. Suddenly

the piece is famous and able to create demand. When it comes to Berger’s selection art, like

panopticism, is only successful when it’s paying for its self. In this way Berger shows that abnormality is

a key element in this success. A work of art is nothing special until something axiomatically atypical

happens to it.

Movement Two (Largo)-“Klein’s genius was that of a cultural Geiger counter; his own bisexuality

enabled him to see that the phallic body, as much as any female figure, is an enduring sex object within

Western culture. In America in 1974, however, that ideal was still largely closeted” (Bordo 198). Susan

Bordo’s selection concerns advertising. Her piece, released in 1999, was a philosophical approach to

understanding how men’s roles in advertising were changing, and what it meant for the future of

advertising and mainstream culture. She tells the story of an ordinary man who became extraordinary.

Calvin Klein came into the lime[green]light of advertisement when he displayed an incredible capability

for reading into what people wanted. He was able to discover that people had ideas that were

unacceptable in mainstream culture and that those ideas were growing strength. He was able wield an

amazing amount of power with a few strategically placed ads and an appeal to an abnormal crowd that

was yearning to be accepted. Today Klein’s success is everywhere, and the once taboo ideas he

exploited are acceptable everyday practice. This demonstrates that once ideas get incorporated into the

panoptic wheel they cycle into our culture so fast they nearly can’t be stopped. In her selection Bordo

produced an excellent example of how abnormal power structures can manipulate culture.

Movement Three (Allegro) –“…desire is regressive, and antisocial, and there’s no cure, which is

what makes it the wild card in our little human drama. (And also so much fun.) It screws up all well-

ordered plans and lives, and to be alive is to be fundamentally split, fundamentally ambivalent…” (Kipnis

401). Laura Kipnis introduces readers to a world similar to our own where monogamous men and

women are just not happy. She iterates just how much work it takes these days to keep a marriage

together. She gives readers many valid arguments explaining why people commit adultery, why divorce

rates are so high and even offers solutions. Solutions like not getting married, or not committing to a

monogamous relationship would be culturally unacceptable though. It’s generally more acceptable to

settle into a marriage, maintain it as long as possible, and eventually get caught with you pants down.

But wait, that’s not culturally acceptable either. You can’t love because it’s too much work, yet you can’t

be single because you won’t “fit” in. So what is a person to do? Kipnis exemplifies the contradicting

nature of panopticism. Panopticism does not allow abnormal behavior, yet it generates systems where it

is impossible to be normal.

Kipnis’ selection is the apotheosis of rebellion. No matter how strong panopticism becomes in

our culture people have a desire to defy it, even subconsciously, as Kipnis suggests. In some area’s

panopticism becomes so refined that there is literally only one thing a person can do to escape being

labeled. It becomes as if life is a script. You can only do this one thing this one way and your life is pre-

determined. If you transgress you will need be reformed so you better do as you’re told. This is how

panopticism contradicts its self. It gives you freedom, but only if you live the way your told.

Cadenza (Allegro Pastorale)-Defiance and abnormality are built into the panoptic system. As

abnormal power forms in society, panopticism adjusts to counter act it. This evolving system eventually

becomes so powerful that the desire to defeat it initiates radical abnormal power structures. It is no

wonder we are in the middle of a War on Terror. This is what it has come to. This Panopticon demands

normalcy, but what could be more abnormal than the Panopticon its self? If the Panopticon ever

becomes powerful enough to completely envelope Terrorism then, I ask, what’s next? Where are we

going to draw the line and admit this approach is inhumane, or will we just keep evolving this structure

until it gets so powerful that it annihilates?

We are playing with fire here. Trying to control power is like trying to fight a tempest. True 

power lies deep within its self, and anyone’s ability to control it is only temporary. Trying to wield power

for any length of time destroys people, and nations, and for the first time in our past, the atomic

revolution has created a power source so lethal we could possibly destroy our Mother Earth. I call out to

you, friends and foes alike. Let us take a knee and observe a moment of silence now, for all the injustices

we will commit by this system in the future..._____________________.

End

I completed this paper to the best of my ability, and I really hope it can someday do something

for you. As I near the end of this endeavor I want to tease out some of the key points and restate them

here for further consideration. Now that you have experienced the thought process I went through to

get here I want to make sure my true purpose comes through untainted. At this point I would like to

address my son directly though you may listen in, I believe in community, and unity, so anything that is

meant for my son is consequently meant for you as well.

Son, there are five papers herein to be considered, they make a cycle, a circle, and that circle

goes around and around. At the center of that circle is a man. Every man lies at the center of his own

circle of beliefs and behaviors. A man can step outside of others’ circles, but he cannot step outside of

his own. This does not mean that he is imprisoned, or that things cannot change. What I want you to

know now, whether you are twenty, or thirty, or fifty is that you can never truly be lost. If you ever feel

like you are I want you to know that because of the relationship we share you can always try to find your

way back to your own center through me. Hopefully fate is kind to us and I am still physically in your life

when you need me the most, in the event that fate is not so kind please be aware of what these written

words really are my son. Perhaps considering St. Augustine’s work could help you perceive my

intentions.

“By whatever mysterious means it may be that the future is foreseen, it

is only possible to see something which exists; and whatever exists is not future

but present. So when we speak of foreseeing the future, we do not see things

which are not yet in being, that is, things which are future, but it may be that we

see their causes or signs, which are already in being. In this way they are not

future but present to the eye of the beholder, and by means of them the mind

can form a concept of things which are still future and thus is able to predict

them” (Saint Augustine 268).

I am here for you, and if you can’t find your way back to your center through me then consider the

topics within this paper, it may only take one sentence to change your life, so don’t skimp.

First, at times you may feel like nobody and everyone at once. At times it is only human to

consider everything around you as an extension of yourself. Descartes once wrote, “…although these

ideas do not depend upon my will, it does not necessarily proceed from things existing outside me”

(Descartes 27). This commodity driven world has become so adept to capitalizing on peoples sense of

worth (or lack thereof) that is often seems they are trying to turn people themselves into commodities

as well. This destroys individuality and community and makes people into senseless egocentric

individuals. As odd as this may sound my advice to you is to look into people’s eyes. This is a harder

practice than you may think. Looking into people’s eyes can be hard, and lots of people will get offended

and look away from you. As you grow more used to looking people in the eyes though you will

eventually see yourself. At first you may only notice big things, things that people definitely share with

you, but after a while as you grow closer to people and fonder of them you will see that everyone shares

a unity. There is some bond between all men and no person is left out of this, including you my son. It

sounds paradoxical, but the more I felt like everyone and I shared an unbreakable bond the more I

began to see myself as an individual, and the easier it was for me to know that they were individuals

themselves. This is one more piece of advice I offer to you in the event that you lose your way.

Second, this new brave world is a sea of unrelenting images, slogans, devices, and lies. I wish I

could tell you to ignore these things but they are everywhere. Don’t let images drown you out. Most of

these images are based around a theory of perfection that humans can never achieve. If you are ever

going to be closer to perfection you will find it not in images of false perfection but in a world outside of

images and meaningless stuff. Stuff will not make you happy, it will only fill up your cup. A man with a

full cup is ignorant, and can never change, because his cup is already full, he can never have anything

new in it. Socrates, even in the moments before his death, asked, “What do you say about pouring a

libation from this drink?” (Plato 197). In this case the libation was denied, perhaps ones cup is meant to

be full when facing certain death, but this is certainly not true of life. You can find a truer sense of

perfection in the silence and darkness of meditation and deep thinking, than you ever will in needless

consumption. If you are lost these are tools you can use to find yourself again.

Third, if you are still having trouble another way to realize what you want is by finding who

stands in your way. Whenever you feel like someone is keeping you from being what you want to be

stop and evaluate your considerations. Knowing your enemies well and knowing how they stand in

opposition can often help you realize exactly what it is you are after. This is essentially a parallel to

Socrates’ ideas concerning opposites. As Socrates once said after being released from shackles,

“Because I had a pain in my leg from the fetter, the pleasure seems to have come as a consequence of

it” (Plato 119). This ability to reverse engineer your motivations is a tool that can be very useful in your

life. If you find out how to do it well I guarantee you will use it often. It is an excellent way to shed new

light of things you have forgotten, and it will definitely be a good way to help you find a center of

awareness where you are happy being you.

Fourth, do not let yourself be rendered silent. This should always be a choice and should never

be forced on someone. I recommend that you let down your borders. It’s likely that the only reason they

exist at all is because society and I have trained them into you. It can be scary to let down all your

borders, but I know from experience that the more borders you create for yourself the easier it is to let

yourself stray. If you are capable of building walls around every aspect of yourself then you will

eventually do some very atrocious things indeed, and you will just build a wall around those things so

you can forget about them. This is much the same thing as looking people in the eyes, looking at people

in the eyes can help you find how you are ultimately bound to every person, finding this bond can help

you realize how useless borders really are. When you can truly live in your center without borders you

will know true boundless freedom, and nothing will be able to hurt you where you reside within.

Fifth, the panoptic cycle is everywhere. It is the eye that never sleeps. If you let it in you give it

power. The only way panoticism gets its power is by peoples willing sacrifice of power. If you willingly

submit to this eye you merely exist. If you let panopticism decide your life for you then you will never

find your center. You will only be the product of your culture, just another commodity up for sale. You

will wake up go to work, live your life serving others’ ends and die serving a system that does not believe

in you or your morals or your hopes and dreams. The advice I give to get out of the sight of this eye is

the cumulative of this entire work.

Find yourself. Remove yourself from every arbitrary system that exist in this world and use the

tools I have provided you with, or any other tools you have found for yourself along the way, to

transcend arbitrary belief systems and rise above everything you know. From up here things are so

much clearer my son. When you can reach these heights you can see how the cogs turn. From here it is

easy to anticipate what you need to do, and when you find your way you will realize that this way of

thinking is dangerous. It requires annihilating everything you think you know and embracing the alien

ideas that do not become void after this annihilation. It can be a scary and uncertain time in life, but I

promise persistence in this endeavor will help you find the truth you are seeking.

If despite all your persistence you fail to find yourself remember this is only a single cycle. The

process is ultimately a wheel, it starts back over from the beginning, and I will make one last promise to

you. If you iterate the process you will learn something new every time. Every time you read, and every

time you practice using these tools you will learn something new. Don’t give up just because it doesn’t

do anything for you today. Try and try again, and when you find me here above, don’t forget that my

father and his are here with us, and your children will be here someday as well. I love you my son, as I

do all, no man left aside. I am with you.

Works Cited

Berger, John “Ways of Seeing.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. Eds. David

Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 139-160.

Print.

Bordo, Susan. “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed.

Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 187-233.

Print.

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. 3rd ed. Trans. Donald Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett

Publishing Company, Inc. 1993. Print.

Kipnis, Laura. “Loves Labors.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. Eds. David Bartholomae

and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 388-412. Print.

Foucault, Michael. “Panopticism.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. Eds. David

Bartholomea and Anthony Petrosky. Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 279-310. Print.

Plato. The Last Days of Socrates. Trans. Harold Tarrant and Hugh Tredennick. London: Penguin Group,

2003. Print.

Saint Augustine. Confessions. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin. London: Penguin Group, 1961. Print.