Empire State of Mind

Yes, I'm writing a second post about my trip to New York. No, this one will not be as selfish as my last one. Yes, I've finally thought of a topic that connects to College Writing.

So as I previously stated, the last post, the travel diary (novel?) about my trip to New York was a pretty selfish use of my blog space, and I don't really expect anyone to want to read it. It was basically a product of my need to relive an awesome weekend. Anyway, blog time.

We all know that New York is a huge and hugely populated place. We are given images of the traffic jams, rushing crowds, long lines, and impatient noises that characterize a place as busy as New York. With this in mind, I found that all these images of the city proved accurate. There are so many people, seemingly all in one place, that it was easy to get caught up in it all. At first I felt self-conscious being around so many people, especially those who were obviously native or longtime New Yorkers. However, I soon realized that there was no need to be so self-conscious. These people didn't care who I was or where I came from as long as I wasn't being stupid or obnoxious.

With this epiphany came a sense of power. I could watch everyone without being worried about being watched myself--at least, by people I cared about being watched by. I felt like the guard in the watchtower of Bentham's Panopticon, with, of course, one major difference: the lack of any actual control. Yes, I could observe everything without being watched myself. But I couldn't influence the people around me simply by watching. These people had one goal: to get on with their daily life. They didn't care--or even notice--that I was watching them. Why would they?

Though the idea of the panopticon could be applied to society at large, that is no longer the case. Of course, there are people such as police or government officials that keep crime in check, but the laws of society as it existed in Bentham's--and even Foucault's time--do not apply now nearly as much. People are much less concerned with what other people think. An individual can be made to feel ashamed or embarrassed for their behavior, but once mixed in with a huge group, there is no longer anything like the controlling power the presence of other people had. It isn't surprising anymore when a person disregards politeness for their own agenda. By the third day in New York, I didn't even look back to apologize or be apologized to after bumping into someone; such actions get lost in the greater scheme of day-to-day life.

So while panopticons still exist in obvious ways, those which control social settings have more or less disappeared. Foucault compared panopticons to the royal court, but today we are much more democratic with the power that the average person has; that scale is generally not tipped in a single direction.