Mike,
This is circulating all around universities as we speak. Do you think it’s true?

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

Follow the link. It’s worth it. Even if you don’t care about the education system, cheating, or ethics, you should read it because it’s a beautiful piece of writing. Ed Dante, a person who gets paid for writing papers for students in college, weaves a scathing critique of the education system around a story about shadow writing a graduate-level business ethics thesis. Here is my response to my mother (unedited, untouched, with some information redacted for privacy; I wanted it to be a representative to my initial reaction):

That guy is an incredible writer. First comment on the article sums it up: “Wow.”

I believe every word he said. Every last one. I really do think that our education system is failing a lot of people, directly and indirectly. Directly – those students who stand to gain nothing from a system so rigid it cannot flex to accommodate them, because they are incompatible with its image, lack the necessary mental prerequisites to succeed, and are neither motivated intrinsically – through self-interest – nor extrinsically – through grades. The ESL and incompetent people he writes about fall in this category. Indirectly – those people who get pushed down the food chain when the privileged are granted a free ride through the education system and subsequently up the workforce chain because they fit the normative idea of a successful person – the privileged being the rich lazy rich kids he writes for.

The question educators should be asking themselves is not, “Is cheating this pervasive?” Nor is it, “How do we catch the cheaters?” I imagine most will indeed fall back to the conventional method underlying these questions, which is to analyze and fight the symptoms of an issue and forget around the source. Reacting in this way means you’ve completely missed the point of his essay. Think of it in the way Hemingway framed his writing on his iceberg principle. For every 3/8ths of an iceberg showing above water, there’s 5/8ths below water. The content of Ed Dante’s writing outlines his experience interacting with the top 3/8ths of the iceberg – the problem you can see. The overarching, or, in the name of puns, underlying message, though, is one of the 5/8ths; the superficial top of the iceberg wouldn’t even show itself if the other 5/8ths didn’t exist.  Focus on the tip of the iceberg and you will certainly miss a majority of its mass.

People are starting to realize the shortcomings of our education system. Some are seeing how education is largely self-contained and merely trains students to pass entrance exams while looking good on applications. Others recognize how the entrance exam system benefits some more than others.

Unfortunately, while some do see problems, often educators will not acknowledge them. I showed [redacted] this video featuring Ken Robinson. He criticizes the fundamental attributes of the Western education system. A lot of his ideas can easily be criticized themselves, but honestly it’s a step outside of a box that’s failing a lot of students out there. In turn, she presented some of the ideas to the local educators out here in [redacted]. They shit on these ideas, offering superficial cries of “but we have such great technology here, look at the classrooms!” and such. Technology, up to this point, has merely been a band-aid on a hemorrhaging wound. It really hasn’t revolutionized anything, besides perhaps the accessibility of knowledge. But the paradigm of education remains the same.

You know, once I had this conversation with some people at Notre Dame. I told them I’d rather get an “F” in a class than cheat on assignment, paper, or exam. That is, I wouldn’t cheat in order to avoid an “F”. I don’t believe my response to their question really says much about my ethical fortitude. It just says something really simple: my upbringing, abilities, and mindset fits within the educational paradigm (although loosely, I’ll admit). I could easily say, “yeah, I wouldn’t cheat to avoid the failing grade,” because I knew I’d never need to do that. I did well in school, and it wasn’t hard at all.

So, what about those people who don’t fit so nicely within the system? Sure, some of them might just be dirty, rotten cheaters, but we know from Dante’s essay that this is not necessarily the case. Can we really blame them for cheating? Or do we blame ourselves?

Spoiler alert! Here’s the full story if you’d like to read it first. I suggest you do this and draw your own parallels before being influenced by mine!

Parallels to Modern Society in “The Machine Stops”

Reliance on Technology

The society in “The Machine Stops” is housed in a large underground network of hexagonal cells. One person lives in each cell, isolated physically from other people. But these people are not truly isolated. They are connected together by a sophisticated network that allows them to practice Forster’s 1909 vision of video conferencing. The cells also provide other amenities, all accessible through various buttons: they have instant access to clothing, music, literature, and really anything a person needs or wants.

While we do not live in the underground, physically isolated in hexagonal cells, we are certainly connected together by a network that permits us to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any moment, from the comfort of our chairs. Some would argue that the Internet is a mere adjunct to social interaction. I’m not so sure anymore. Imagine a day without the Internet. Really, with the rise in popularity of smartphones, people no longer need to spend a minute outside of the comforts of connectivity. Forster captures a bit of the anxiety people suffer when they are deprived of the constant stimulation of response-producing button pushing, and how the mere presence of the technology can be uplifting as a drug user who has finally earned their long-awaited fix:

His image is the blue plate faded.

“Kuno!”

He had isolated himself.

For a moment Vashti felt lonely.

Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere – buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

I find the last sentence particularly foreboding. If Forster followed around a handful of people in today’s Internet-connected society, she might just believe that the world within our 4G phones, TVs, and desktop computers were all that we cared for in the world.

Utter Dependence on an Incomprehensible System

None of the amenities in the hexagonal cell – buttons for food, music, clothing, hot-baths, deodorized liquid, literature, and so on – would exist without infrastructure. In “The Machine Stops,” the infrastructure is the Machine: a sort of invisible, ubiquitous ultra-powerful provider of everything that humans created to serve them. The Machine, within the frame of the present, can be seen as a metaphor for the systems maintaining the existence of society. True, education, government, and economics are not invisible. We can take classes at schools, visit the White House, and walk down Wall Street. However, I would argue that no one actually grasps the interactions of these systems on a grand scale; thus they are invisible to the common person, understanding blocked by an unprecedented level of complexity. Even smaller systems are nigh incomprehensible by the layperson. How many even understand the back end processes of an online shopping order, from credit card validations to supply chains to shipping routes? For most, the package just arrives at their doorstep. Like magic.

Or maybe, like religion? While the Machine is manmade, the citizens of the underground resort to a ritualistic worshipping of the powers of the Machine (I promise, I did read it and didn’t just sample from Alfred’s article. He just picked the best quotes):

“How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!”

“How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!” said Vashti.

“How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!” echoed the passenger who had dropped his Book the night before, and who was standing in the passage.

Arthur C. Clark’s third law of prediction states, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This might be a stretch, but I might adapt this to society by saying, “any sufficiently complex societal system is indistinguishable from religion*.” The people created the Machine just like we created systems of education, economics, and government. Over time, the people became so reliant on the Machine that its functional characteristics disappeared; it invisibly provides what people need. We see in modern times people going about their daily lives not seeing the millions of cogs and gears permitting the stability of their reality to continue. I don’t see people worshipping the system – we’re not there yet – but during really good times while things are going well for us, we do tend to give praise. Religion works in a similar way. An omnipresent, unseen force provides people what they need. Faith serves to represent truly understanding how this relationship works. Only, in the case of the Machine and our social systems, we created these systems to serve us, and over time, due to over reliance and growing complexity, the systems become incomprehensible (indistinguishable) to the point where a loss of agency occurs. We have great difficulty making alterations to the systems we once upon a time created. We cannot control them.

*Please do not take this as a criticism of religion. The idea: once a set of social systems becomes sufficiently complex, at the very least, the laypeople (the majority) cannot comprehend how the systems function; the very language used to discuss the systems are only understood by a few. It is ironic because we created the systems, not God.  I’ve left the idea undeveloped (maybe for a later post). It’s just what I saw in “The Machine Stops.”

A Fatal Lack of Agency

A part of the Machine called the Mending Apparatus fixes parts of the Machine when they go into disrepair. The people, having been hopelessly dependent on the Machine for so long, cannot fix the Machine themselves. Forster presents a relevant question in the novel: what happens when the Mending Apparatus itself breaks? At first, the functions of the Machine falter:

“He does not refer, I suppose, to the trouble there has been lately with the music?”

“Oh no, of course not. Let us talk about music.”

“Have you complained to the authorities?”

“Yes, and they say it wants mending, and referred me to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus. I complained of those curious gasping sighs that disfigure the symphonies of the Brisbane school. They sound like some one in pain. The Committee of the Mending Apparatus say that it shall be remedied shortly.”

The music! What would they do without the music? The people do complain to the higher-ups. After nothing gets fixed, they instead grow adaptively complacent.

Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer. The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had become so subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the Machine. The sigh at the crises of the Brisbane symphony no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit. all were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from bad to worse unchallenged.

This passage bears a lot of relevance to present society. You have this huge, utterly complex beast of intertangled systems we believe can fix itself. After all, we designed it that way. We have rights. We have the free market. We have government regulation. Until one day, a few chips get removed from the block of rights we hold in the name of security. The free market fails to block banks from bringing our economy to its knees while the government fails to punish the greedy criminals whose actions still might bring about an economic collapse. Unhappy and unable to feed their families, the downtrodden caught in the poor state of the US economy complain endlessly and flock to voting booths to elect officials they believe will be different, the people who will usher in real change. But this is the limit of the people’s perceived power to fix the conflagration of problems surrounding them: to hope the higher-ups they think can mend the issues get elected, and if they do, to hope that they actually do anything about it. Vashti, the main character in “The Machine Stops,” complains (votes) to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus, demanding they fix – at once – the broken music.

Of course he had made it at a venture, but the coincidence annoyed her, and she spoke with some petulance to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus.

They replied, as before, that the defect would be set right shortly.

“Shortly! At once!” she retorted. “Why should I be worried by imperfect music? Things are always put right at once. If you do not mend it at once, I shall complain to the Central Committee.”

“No personal complaints are received by the Central Committee,” the Committee of the Mending Apparatus replied.

“Through whom am I to make my complaint, then?”

“Through us.”

“I complain then.”

Complaint registered. And that is the extent of Vashti’s ability to change the failing Machine. You can guess what ultimately happens. The people, unable to fix the Machine and doomed by a broken Mending Apparatus, sit about idly, fearful of a future with an ailing Machine, yet occasionally fueled to extending their complacency by false hope. Finally, everything collapses. The Machine Stops.

Dilution of Knowledge

A side effect of growing complexity is a phenomenon someone might call the dilution of knowledge. On the Internet, people redistribute information on a large scale. When people pass the information along they slightly modify it, twisting it to meet the specifications of their argument or to match up with their view of reality. Consider how lecturers promoting the Machine push the idea of learning only second-, third-, or tenth-hand ideas:

“First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by live and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element – direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine – the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought LafcadioHearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution. Through the medium of these ten great minds, the blood that was shed at Paris and the windows that were broken at Versailles will be clarified to an idea which you may employ most profitably in your daily lives.

The lecturer believes that information learned this way is free of “personality,” or, as Vashti and her peers would say, more “mechanical.” Information processed through many sources or even one source suffers from the taint of bias. The Internet, T.V., radio, and other media outlets bombard the individual with biased information on a grand scale to the point where it is difficult to grasp what is real. Interpretations of scientific studies (which are touted as the pillars of truth) often suffer from these biases; researchers, writers, and laypersons commonly make broad-sweeping conclusions about studies that may just be false. Take the example of Prozac. Commonly accepted: Prozac “cures” depression. This idea has been pushed for years by psychiatrists, drug companies, and advocacy groups. People with depression have a chemical imbalance. SSRIs correct them. But the serotonin hypothesis of depression has not panned out in research. Millions of people take SSRIs, causing abnormal states in the brain that just so happen to offset certain symptoms of depression in the short run, and many psychiatrists say little to nothing because the pharmaceutical companies pay them a lot of money. If money can bias information and doctors, the people we trust to be careful with the knowledge they use to diagnose, treat, or cure disease, then what information can we trust? First-hand information is hard to come by in the modern era and a lot of knowledge is diluted by second- to tenth-hand processing.

This brings up another point. Only experts can really interpret first-hand knowledge in complex topics such as medicine, economics, and politics. And these experts, upon whom we rely on for information, can be biased strongly as shown in the pharmaceutical example.

Panoptic Control

Forster’s society in “The Machine Stops” differs from the world presented by Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There is no Big Brother watching anyone, despite the Machine controlling the population and restricting its agency. Within the realm of the Machine, the people propagate the imprisoning ideas among themselves. They create the stigmas barring creative thought, they treat thoughts of anti-Machine sentiment as poisonous, worthless drivel, and they continue to live their lives of utter dependency without question. The Machine does have one object of panoptic control: the respirators. People must wear respirators when they leave the confines of the underground to explore the surface. Although they shielded the lungs from the so-called poisonous surface air, the respirators serve to connect the people to the Machine as they venture outside of its domain. Even on the surface you depend on the machine. Do not forget that.

On July 14th, 2010, I hauled a pile of my photo gear a mile up Mt. Si to a clearing beside the trail I noticed on my last hike up the mountain. I saw several themes of order and chaos in the forms defining the open space that revealed more of the juxtaposition between the artificial, or manmade, and natural that is ever-present on well maintained trails.

I won’t explain much about these photographs. Take them as they are: explorations of forest forms through the eyes of a human. I do regret not unifying their processing in terms of color versus monochromatic. In some cases, I really felt unable to cast away the beautiful colors adorning the beautiful life around me.

Forest Forms 1

Forest Forms 2

Forest Forms 3

Forest Forms 4

After a day of rest my knee felt ready for a hike. I drove up to the parking lot at around 9:45 AM. It was 60 degrees and sunny, as advertised. Perfect.

GPS track for Mt. Si

The Mt. Si trail is about four miles to the summit. Most of those four miles are spent traversing the monotonous trail that switchbacks up the forested face of the mountain. I describe it as monotonous because there isn’t much variety in the terrain you’re hiking through. The trail is in good condition, with mud being the hiker’s greatest foe; several casual adventurers climbed the 3,000 feet of elevation gain in tennis shoes and jeans.

The first 1.5 miles were hard on me. There seemed to be a lot of elevation gain in the beginning of the hike. In terms of difficulty, the beginning and end of the trail “sandwich” the middle, offering the most punishment.  Still, you’re gaining 3000 feet of altitude in four miles – no matter how that gain is patterned, it will be rough on your legs. At mile two I hit my groove and time melted into history. You see, before I hit my groove, I want to quit hiking. Badly. On my Granite Mountain hike, I didn’t hit that groove until mile three of four. That’s rough.

"Forest pathway" B+W, along the Mt. Si trail

I reached the top in about an hour and 45 minutes. Looks like I’m finally getting into better shape. The top was crowded with a lot of high school kids making a lot of noise. No matter, I enjoyed the sun and the stunning, absolutely crystal-clear view of Mt. Rainier from the pseudo-summit below the Mt. Si Haystack. You see, you hit the top of Mt. Si and there are several rocky outcroppings. After climbing around on these rocks, you notice a huge, I don’t know the term, tower of rocks on the summit ridge. It’s about 200 feet high. That’s the highest point on Mt. Si. I hiked over to the base of it and found the climb up a bit too technical to proceed. I’ll come back when I’m ready to tackle that scramble.

Mt. Rainier from Mt. Si, incredibly clear

Mt. Bandera track - short of the actual summit

Mt. Bandera is conveniently located roughly 45 minutes down I-90 on the way to Snoqualmie Pass. Actually, since the Mt. Bandera trailhead is at the end of FS 9031, it shares the same freeway exit as the Talapus and Olallie Lakes trail. I rolled out of my apartment’s parking garage at 7:50 AM, carefully navigated the I-90 “I-drive-90 MPH” speedway, and dodged the typical Forest Service sedan-consuming potholes on the way to the trailhead. I arrived to a nearly full parking lot. The spots were filled by a large group of volunteers preparing to repair parts of the trail. Finding one of the last vacancies in the lot, I locked my car and began hiking.

Leaves blowing in the wind, motion stopped

The first couple miles of the trail could be described as a steady upward climb. Oh, I can admit it: I had a lot of trouble with this hike. The steady climb steadily increased the pain in my legs. It took a mile or two of struggle to find that “groove” where you forget about the difficulty, but I found it. Just in time, too. At mile 3 or so, I was standing at the base of the steepest part of the trail. Nested in tall grass, the trail switched tightly up the final ascent to a ridge that places the hiker just under the 5000’mark. Snow covered the top of the ridge, forcing me to kick out steps to make it the rest of the way. After a few hundred feet, I stopped at a false summit about 2000 feet from Mt. Bandera. It didn’t look safe enough to continue, so I spent some time eating and taking pictures.

Top of the steepest part of the trail. Random person.

I-90 from the ridge across from Mt. Bandera

The trek down was the opposite of fun. While it took less time than the way up, my knees did not enjoy absorbing all the impact for 3.5 miles of downhill even with my young knees that only have to support a light frame (6’2” 175lbs). I put a lot of weight on my trekking poles to alleviate some of the stress on my knees. It was a success, as I didn’t have any real knee pain in the aftermath of the hike.

Modified stream, rerouted by a pipe

Mt. Bandera goes on the list of hikes that I attempted but never completed due to danger, such as crappy snow conditions or avalanche danger. Snow Lake is the other hike. I will return to both of these places once June has swept away the winter snows.

I started the drive at around 8:30 AM and was trekking up the trailhead, hiking poles in hand, by 9:15. Nope, no 6:15 AM departure this time; I didn’t have to deal with the two hour drive to Mt. Rainier. Luckily for my Focus, FS 9030 was in good shape and the deteriorated parts, riddled with potholes, left enough wiggle room to avoid any potential sedan breakers. At the end of the road, I parked at one of the last few available spots at the trailhead, studied the posted map, set my GPS to track my path, and set out.

GPS track, heading up to Olallie Lake

The leg of the hike up to Talapus Lake unfolded uneventfully. There were about two or three groups of hikers around. Three women with their dog kept my exact pace about 250 feet ahead while I later passed an elderly couple admiring the raging Talapus Creek. At Talapus Lake, there was a family of three, a woman, man, and their child, resting at the lakeside. Throughout the day, almost every group of hikers I passed could be classified as one of the above: a party with a dog, an elderly couple, or a family.

One of the many bridges along the trail

Around 3300’, near Talapus Lake, the first signs of a residual snow appeared. By 3600’, the snow covered much of the trail. It was semi-frozen snowcone cascade concrete, which somehow isn’t slippery yet supports my 175lbs body + 20 lbs pack weight, stopping me from postholing. After a few thousand feet of neither slipping on nor punching through this “snow,” I caught up to the three women with their dog. They had lost the trail, and so had I. GPS to the rescue. OK, not really. We knew that just keeping the creek on our right would lead us to Olallie. However, the trail is easier on the knees, so the GPS saved our knees. When we found the trail, one of the women gave thanks to “gadgets.”

Artsy bootshot, "Moving in opposites"

Olallie Lake was a welcome sight when I reached it. Unlike Talapus, it was mostly frozen and covered in snow. You may note that I hiked to two lakes yet posted no lake pictures. Honestly, Talapus didn’t have any great vantage points to shoot from and Olallie was an exposure nightmare. Overcast, covered in snow, with low-lying clouds? No good foregrounds either. Instead, I stuck to making best with what I found on or alongside the trail.

Other pictures from the trail that I couldn’t fit nicely between paragraphs:

Bunch of yellow flowers alongside the trail

Abstract of Talapus Creek, "Flow"

The Propagation of Panoptic Control by the Culture of Terror

Traditional forms of anthropological prose, following the literary turn, flow from ethnography to analysis, self-reflection to objective description. Increasingly, the construction of such texts resembles a form of art. The purpose of this piece is to produce stylistically Geertzian ethnographic accounts completely separated from accompanying theoretical analysis, effectively mimicking an artist’s presentation of his or her work, where a set of pieces whose depth and form is initially interpreted by the audience. Further guidance is provided by an artist’s statement. The following essay consists of four literary accounts, with a statement that explains these accounts in abstraction but does not allude to them. However, the progression of the analysis closely follows the events, reflections, and revelations of the accounts.

300, for my safety

“300 times.”

“Three hundred times?” My verbal reaction lasted two seconds. My mind would dwell over the estimation for far longer. Great Britain was a leading advocate of the preventative force of CCTV surveillance, and London, her greatest city, was riddled with cameras. A typical stroll through the downtown area of the city would yield the London law enforcers – or whoever else was concerned – three hundred animated mugshots of me. Pulling at the front door of Notre Dame’s student center in London, I produced an empty doorframe that quickly filled with the atmosphere of downtown London: air, a bit of pollution, and a lot of surveillance. Inhaling the mixture, I step outside. 1.

12. The student center is conveniently located across the street from the symbolic Trafalgar Square. The Nash-designed square eventually became the center of London while holding the role of the only large, open public gathering place in the city. I strode across the square to admire Admiral Nelson, 43 wondering if CCTV was gazing at the historic amputee that saved the Empire from Napoleon. Uninspired by Nelson’s naval genius, I broke away 68 from the sight to comb the Strand for a wine seller. To prepare for the potential conversation when I did find a wine shop, I peered at my now-unfolded notebook paper bearing the scribbling of a New York Times best cheap wine list. I nearly bumped into a Londonite in my distracted state, and apologized midstride 84. Squinting down the road 95, I saw some possibilities 100.

Over the next half-mile I entered and exited three different wine shops 150 and two liquor stores 195. Other than a 2005 bottle of red wine from the Beaujolais region, little success befell my quest. Alas, the list read that the 2006 harvest was the real bargain of value. I bought the bottle regardless, and it was time to head back to the student center. London was an unfamiliar city; naturally I took an unfamiliar route to Trafalgar Square 245 avoiding the dreadful repetition of backtracking. From Trafalgar Square, a self-designated landmark of familiarity, I quickly returned 254 to the awaiting indoors of the student center.

My arrival was met with everyday, shallow inquiry.

“How was your walk?”

“Oh, pretty good. 250, 260 maybe.”

“What?”

I looked away from the question and out the nearest window to see a building adjacent to the student center. An excellent vantage point. 255.

The most dangerous photograph I’ve ever taken

From my old house on Ka’onohi Street, Aiea, O’ahu, Hawai’i (living on an island creates problems with location names: street, city, island, state), I can see Pearl Harbor. The rise and fall of the tide brings various warships of the United States Navy to port; a battleship is no atypical sight to an Aiea denizen. Rarely, the ocean current tugs in a truly atypical sight, but it certainly does happen.

I’m not sure why Pearl Harbor was named Pearl Harbor. I can make a couple guesses. Guess one: there were a lot of oysters in the harbor at some point. Guess two: the harbor was given its name in 2006, when the United States parked its 280-foot X-Band Radar system in its waters. The unit is critical to the missile defense of the Pacific theater. Resting atop the structure is a mammoth pearly white sphere, likely housing the radar’s innards. I was very curious, and above all I wanted a picture.

Taking a photograph of anything in Pearl Harbor is easily said, and easily done. It is largely exposed, and conveniently situated at its shore is a park two miles from my house. I packed up my gear and drove straight to the park. Parking is no problem; the place is empty. Sitting in my car, I fastened a telephoto lens onto my digital SLR camera. Stepping outside, I aim, focus, and… freeze.

I stopped mid shot. Lines upon lines of discussion about photographer’s rights spurred by recent arrests scrolled in front of my eyes. Photographers were being harassed by the police over taking pictures of bridges, what would happen if I were caught pointing my lens at a critical component of an anti-ballistic missile system? I looked around. There were a few joggers on the park’s paths. Could they be watching? I quickly lifted the viewfinder to my eye, snapped two quick pictures of the radar, and hurried back to my car. I left, physically unscathed but worrying in my mind. I’ve taken over 12,000 photographs over the past five years, and none were remotely as dangerous.

Security checkpoints and fasten your seatbelts

15 minutes. 20 minutes. Time ticks as I wait in line. I actively make estimations of how much longer in my mind nearly subconsciously; only in impatient boredom does the process bubble into consciousness. Boarding pass and identification card in hand, there is little else to serve as a distraction beside the careful observation of the airport security screening process before me. The possible future airplane passenger waits apprehensively at a floor-drawn line for the signal. The security guard notions the sheepish traveler forward. Still intimidated, the terrorist scuttles through the metal-detecting-identity-changing doorway, emerging as just another person who is a threat to no one. I breathe a sigh of relief as the cleansing process continues to efficiently ensure my safety. I unconfidently step through the doorway, unsure if I am a terrorist. I materialize from the opposite end without hearing the “beep” and take my bombless weaponless bags from the conveyor, reflecting upon the immediate evidence that I am innocuous.

After the standard slumber at the airport gate, I allow myself to be herded in yet another queue. But this queue is different, because I know that everyone is innocuous. Eventually, I am shuffling down the airplane’s crowded aisle. I sit at my designated seat, and in a fit of déjà vu, exhale a sigh of relief. The plane takes off. Two hours into the flight, the fasten seatbelts symbol lights up, preceded by the trademark “something is about to happen” airplane tone. The pilot’s voice sprawls out of the intercom unintelligibly, the message’s clarity lost in some form of user error. An articulate Samuel L. Jackson repeats the pilot’s warning, commanding the passengers to “hold onto your butts.” The plane shakes violently in the turbulent air, jarring loose the illusion of safety I had in my head. I became overwhelmed and confused as the plane fell apart around me, then reassembled itself when turbulent air turned to smooth, safe flying air. I settle into my seat, and breathe a sigh of relief.

To all employees customers: employees must wash their hands

Scrubbing gently, I clean my hands using the coffee shop’s provided soap. The bathroom is small but unsullied, with a single large picture frame on one wall whose advertisement is changed when Starbuck’s needs to market a new drink.  Above the sink are a mirror and a plastic sign adorned with one-inch letters that read, “Employees must wash their hands before returning to work.” A quality establishment, I thought to myself. They remind their employees to wash their hands.

My hands washed, I made a move to exit the bathroom. Opening the door, I glanced at the mirror. Startlingly, the reflection showed a Starbuck’s employee. I furiously raised one arm and waved my hand left and right. The reflection reverted back to an image of the person before it. I left, puzzled, but ready to order a coffee.

Arriving at the register, I could not turn my eyes away from the hands of the people serving me. Those are clean hands, I assured myself, the sign told me exactly what employees did before returning to work from the bathroom. I purchased my coffee and sat down at a table that just happened to be a chess board. I sipped quietly from my cup. The coffee was warming, and above all, clean.

Statement

The Foucauldian notion of the social panopticon is an adaptation of the Bentham panopticon – an architectural design – that shifts the concept from prison surveillance to an “all seeing” state overseer (Dobson & Fischer 2007: 307). Power relationships in totalitarian regimes revealed themselves under the theoretical framework of panoptical control. Left unexplained was how state power could propagate itself so strongly among the people of society as a group, eventually solidifying itself in the consciousness of the individual. Applying Michael Taussig’s culture of terror to panoptical control yields a model that explains the pervasiveness and raw power of visible and invisible surveillance among a population. Taussig asked the question of the “colonial reality:” how did so few colonists dominate a massive population of Africans with such efficiency (Taussig 2002: 173)? The modern question reads: how does the state and its institutions, arguably a minority by number, assert a panoptic dominance among a large population?

Constructing a culture of terror among the people is an essential aspect of panoptic control. The thought of control permeates deep into the conscious and subconscious, becoming inexorably tangled with the pseudo-normalcy of everyday life. This panoptic inspection, the awareness that a person is always being watched, is inescapable (Strub 1989: 42). But traditional descriptions of totalitarianism rarely stray far from a top-down model (Malby 2005: 663), with state institutions twisting the dials and pushing the buttons of societal control. When considering the culture of terror, it is revealed that the intrusive fear of panoptic control is deposited in a top-down manner, but propagates itself horizontally. People are molded into agents of panoptic control as individuals question each other’s motives, and the very reality of the quotidian. At the height of the culture of terror’s influence, agents of panoptic control are created within the consciousness of the individual, eventually manifesting as debilitating paranoia.

The framework of the panopticon can be divided into two parts of which equality is unimportant: the -panopticon and the +panopticon. The -panopticon weaves the blanketing culture of terror in the population. The success of the surveillance agents in maintaining the culture of terror is the outwardly projected illusion of security, the +panopticon. The realms of surveillance and established security are visibly asserted, and both lend to the hegemony of the panopticon.  The illusion of security can be presented as a distortion of Taussig’s colonial mirror. In the panoptic, pseudomirror, feigned notions of security are sometimes indirect, yet made tangible when deflected onto the fooled subject. With panopticism already penetrated deep into the mind of the controlled, there is little room in the consciousness for anything but the shallow analysis of deceptive signs.

The first stages of a society progressing into a culture of terror are marked by subtle wrinkles in the perceived reality of the state’s citizens. Actions and events that constitute normalcy are impeded by the perversion of the truth by minor paranoia. Hesitation preceding even habitual action occurs, and the rhythm of the quotidian is disrupted ever so slightly. The +panopticon and the -panopticon simultaneously work to gray the region between the visible and the invisible, until a thin veil of morning fog forms a perpetual doubt about what is real.

References Cited

Dobson, Jerome E., and Peter F. Fisher

2007 The Panopticon’s Changing Geography. Geographical Review 97(3):307-323.

Strub, Harry

1989 The Theory of Panoptical Control: Bentham’s Panopticon and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 25(1):40-59.

Taussig, Michael

2002 Culture of Terror: Space of Death. The Anthropology of Politics: Ethnography, Theory and Critique: 172-186.

Walby, Kevin

2005 Open-Street Camera Surveillance and Governance in Canada. Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice 47(4):655-683.

Five days ago, among the repetitious aisles of store number 156 of an outlet chain that sold dozens of variations of four unique products, a man called Werner browsed for desired merchandise. A stranger, perhaps desiring the same merchandise, shopped near Werner. The stranger desired the merchandise but did not desire to pay for it, Werner noted, as the man concealed several unpurchased shelf items in his pockets. Werner stopped thinking about the stranger to focus on shopping and directed his full attention to the specifications on the product packaging before him. Seconds later, a second stranger approached the shelves where Werner had parked himself. The new stranger’s eyes bore the shape of accusation. Even the spacing and frequency of the stranger’s footsteps implied indictment. Werner did not realize feet could reveal a person’s mood.

“Hello?” The stranger did not hesitate to start the interrogation. Unsurprisingly, accusatory.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean, ‘what am I doing,’” Werner responded quizzically. The man gestured toward the stranger in the same aisle, a few yards away, who was examining the packaging on a small electronic device.

“You were shopping next to that person in this aisle. You saw them stealing.”

“And?” Werner was beginning to understand. This was one of those hyper-moral people.

“Stealing’s wrong. You didn’t even pause, you just kept shopping like nothing happened,” the man said. A many-word answer for a one-word question.

“It’s wrong? According to the law, maybe. According to me, no.” Werner paused as an enraged look formed on the man’s face. “It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t affect me.”

The man barely restrained an outburst. After two deep inhalations, he spoke in a low, stern voice. “He’s stealing. You can’t just let people steal around you, whether it affects you or not.”

“I can, really. The state doesn’t pay me to be a police officer. It’s not my job to enforce the law.”

Werner looked back at the thief to see if he was still there. Just as he looked, the thief placed a small item in his shoe. What a clever person, stealing with his shoe. Werner looked back at his interrogator and drew a circle in the air with his right index finger.

“Besides, you’ve come around full circle and it’s tiring. I should stop thieves. Why? Because it’s wrong. Stealing’s wrong because it’s wrong?”

“How about I put it this way,” the interrogator began, sounding annoyed, “his pilfering does affect you. Those goods are unaccounted for. It’s pure cost, no revenue. The paying customer pays for that extra cost when the prices of all these items go up to pay for extra security or for lost inventory. You pay for his stealing.”

Werner scanned the items before him, those he was intent on purchasing, and grimaced. That sinking feeling that he’d been wrong in his judgment filled his chest. “You’re right,” Werner conceded. “It affects you, me and everyone else.”

“Thank you for realizing that. Now, can we stop this thief?”

“Yes, let’s do it.”

Both men turned toward the thief, full of a fiery passion for justice fueled by moral and utilitarian reasoning. They took a single step in the direction of the thief; the combined sound of their advance resembled a judge dropping the gavel to crush an outburst in court. But there was something wrong. Movement turned to stillness, the fire of passion turned to dying embers as the judges stared at an empty aisle. The thief had fled during their discussion.

“He’s gone,” Werner said monotonously.

“Yes. I really wanted to stop him too.”

“What should we do now?” Werner asked.

“I don’t know. I have some shopping to do.”

“Me too,” Werner said. He then realized that he did not know this person’s name. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Mackie.”

“I’m Werner. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

Mackie and Werner faced the shelves presenting the store’s goods and stared at them blankly. After awhile, Werner spoke.

“Let’s go to another store. Maybe there are thieves there we can stop.”

“Good idea. Plus, everything in this store looks the same to me. I don’t even know why it’s so big.”

Mackie glanced back at the place where the thief had been stealing as Werner started walking to the end of the aisle. Mackie jogged to catch up to join Werner’s side, and the two navigated the aisles of store 156 of the outlet chain that sold dozens variations of the four unique products until they found the exit door.

-ISM: Moral Internalism

Verb: Park

Device: Conflict

Here’s what it looks like in Excel:

Simple, right? The left column numbers are generated through the RAND function and the third column uses that random number in an INDEX formula to grab a term from lists on different worksheets. I’m only generating three items right now: an –ISM, a verb, and a literary device. As you can see, I’ve left a lot of room for possible expansion. I hesitate to begin wildly adding more items, because I think that would only lead to worthless clutter in my writing.

The goal of this generator is to push my writing to places I haven’t tried to go yet. Above, you can see iambic pentameter had been generated when I took the screenshot. If I had generated this for a writing topic, I would have cooked up some poetry. Of course, I could just click the “Calculate” button again to get something I liked, but what would be the point of that?

Below I will list the pieces I write using this generator. Don’t hesitate to drop some constructive criticism in the comments section, as this is intended to help my writing grow.

1. Shopping, stealing, and a brief conversation

Written on May 5, 2009

Ratatouille and Morality

A rat, an awkward son of a chef who can’t cook, and a pretentious food critic walk into a bar kitchen. The critic asks for a dish, and the rat controls the chef’s son by pulling on his hair from under his hat, revealing the rat is not only a skilled cook but a champion puppeteer. Out comes the dish, “Ratatouille.”

The goodness of the movie begins immediately, when an old grandmother resorts to the use of a sizeable hunting rifle to expel from her home the cooking rat, Remy, and his brother. Kids, do as your elders do: when you find a pair of rodents in your kitchen, pick up your parent’s 12-gauge and let loose. Nothing extremely bad will happen, except maybe your roof will collapse revealing a thriving colony of over one hundred rats. Did I mention they were thriving because Remy’s gift of sniffing through food makeup to identify rat poison? If only Remy had been around when Lloyd tricked hitman Joe Mentalino into swallowing rat poison in Dumb and Dumber. Luckily, all ten dozen rats living in the ceiling of Rambo’s grandmother escape harm by executing their elaborate contingency plan – a set of ships hidden on the bank of a stream leading into the sewers.

Remy arrives late to the launching of the rat armada, delayed by his impulse to save Gousteau’s cook book for his reading leisure and continuing education. He survives the dreadful sewer rapids (a Class 6 by my estimation; there’s a waterfall) which led to the food center of the universe, Paris.

At this point, the moral message begins to gain impetus. “Anyone can cook,” as Gousteau proclaims, is implied to refer to rats as well (rats are people as long as they talk). To alleviate the disconnect of this disanthropomorphization (I made this word up), they use the Linguini character who becomes a puppet-cook of Remy. This connection would not be particularly clear to young children, but the Linguini character is so pathetic that it applies vaguely. The message diverges from Linguini when Linguini accepts his fate as a poor cook and an excellent rollerskate waiter (he should have worked at Sonic). I actually expected for Linguini to somehow take up the traits of Remy and triumph over the constant criticism Linguini receives for being somewhat of a failure. That never happened.

What did happen, is that a mini Gousteau (a life-sized Gousteau, even as a figment of Remy’s imagination, would have crushed the rat) appears to Remy to point his moral compass. Cook, don’t steal, fix the soup, help Linguini… these are the messages of mini Gousteau. If only the devil on my shoulder could show me how to whip up a mean soufflé.

The chef reigning over Gousteau’s after the restaurant’s originating chef dies, err, commits suicide after he fails (kids…) is a complete jerk named Skinner. He runs a tight kitchen, frequently going on Linguini-criticism rampages. He is quite greedy, using the Gousteau name to market frozen foods to make money. Eventually, a letter finds its way to Skinner indicating that Linguini is the rightful heir to Gousteau’s line and restaurant. Greed again drives Skinner to hiding this information from Linguini, because of the time-sensitive nature of the claim (after x months, the restaurant is unequivocally Skinner’s). Luckily, our main character rat can read (“Anyone can read”), finds the letter in the office, confiscates it and escapes after yet another violent anti-rat hunt, and Linguini inherits the restaurant.

Things are going pretty well for Remy – he’s got a good gig doing what he loves, although no one really knows it’s him doing it. He has access to limitless volumes of food, and after he is reunited with his family they pressure him to give them some to survive. The movie views this as theft, and it is a point of tension for Remy that recurs fairly often. Pilfering becomes, for the writers, a way to navigate, through object and ideal, the theme of loyalty centered around Remy, or Remy the Rat as I fondly call him. The issue is this: Remy enjoys cooking, which fairly well antithesizes a core rat value: eat to survive. At the same time, it is a human action, and through 30 minutes of the movie it is obvious that avoiding humans, rat-killing haters, is the epitome of rat values; on Rodent Moses’ Ten Commratments #1 would be Thou Shalt Stay Away from People. Remy is constantly torn between stealing for his family and the explicit direction of Linguini that stealing is wrong. To whom shall Remy be more loyal: Linguini the human, or his family of rat brethren?

Typically, the pronoun “anyone” references the scope of humanity – people with identities. So I was unsure if the story of Remy the Rat was to teach children to be tolerant of rats or if Remy represented a ratlike individual, a nobody type of person stomped on by society. I was unaware that there was a minority of rats with doglike senses of smell, a knack for cooking French peasant dishes, and tendencies to read literature. Now I will be more accepting of them. Back on topic, if Remy represents “anyone,” even the downtrodden, then why, through 95% of the movie, his family implores all rats to not only stay away from humans, but refrain from any humanlike behavior? Should the downtrodden hate and avoid those who dislike them, is that the message? I suppose the end lesson is that humans and rats come together, but that message is nullified by a lack of emphasis.

Overall, the movie is excellent. Just don’t think about it too much. It quickly became one of my favorites. Morally, it sends a message of anti-theft, perseverance, a strong message of acceptance (that doesn’t contradict itself if you don’t think too hard) and loyalty to one’s family. Good actions and intentions are rewarded, and a majority of negative actions are punished, except grandma’s ratbloodthirsty shooting spree. There’s a lot of violent scenes with aggression directed towards rats. You could say “they’re just rats,” but the problem is a strong anthropomorphizing effect: these rats have high intelligence, talk, and a minority of mutant rats have the propensity to cook and read. It’s confusing, but younger children taking the movie for face value would miss the confusion. Of course, developmental psychology is a set of experiments that continually prove that children are smarter and perform at a higher level than we make them out to, so who knows.