Foucault and self-policing

[Audley Strange]

So you put eyes on a bit of paper and the chimps act all honest? Seriously?

Yep its the dark ages.

[Clinton Huxley]

Here's looking at you, kid.

[Audley Strange]

You think if we put a picture of a castrated cock, we could deter the filthy bastards from breeding?

[Mysturji]

Anyway, left to themselves, the vast majority of people govern themselves far more effectively than anyone else ever could.
The reason we need governments, police etc. is to provide the basic infrastructure needed for a society to function, and a legal/enforcement system to deal with that relatively tiny minority that either can't or won't govern themselves in a civilised way.
Apart from that, the powers that be should just let the vast majority get on with it and stop interfering.
We don't need no fucking panopticon.

[Audley Strange]

Anyway, left to themselves, the vast majority of people govern themselves far more effectively than anyone else ever could.
The reason we need governments, police etc. is to provide the basic infrastructure needed for a society to function, and a legal/enforcement system to deal with that relatively tiny minority that either can't or won't govern themselves in a civilised way.
Apart from that, the powers that be should just let the vast majority get on with it and stop interfering.
We don't need no fucking panopticon.

The ones who complain most about government interference are by and large the very people who most need to be interfered with.

[Tyrannical]

Even if there were no codified laws, criminals would still be punished. Thieves, rapists, and murderers would be punished by the rest of society, just no lawyers or judges involved. Codified laws are important because they dictate a predictable punishment.

[Svartalf]

Lynch mob punishments tended to effectively deter criminals from doing it again.

[Mysturji]

Anyway, left to themselves, the vast majority of people govern themselves far more effectively than anyone else ever could.
The reason we need governments, police etc. is to provide the basic infrastructure needed for a society to function, and a legal/enforcement system to deal with that relatively tiny minority that either can't or won't govern themselves in a civilised way.
Apart from that, the powers that be should just let the vast majority get on with it and stop interfering.
We don't need no fucking panopticon.

The ones who complain most about government interference are by and large the very people who most need to be interfered with.

Have you considered a career in politics?

[Mysturji]

Even if there were no codified laws, criminals would still be punished. Thieves, rapists, and murderers would be punished by the rest of society, just no lawyers or judges involved. Codified laws are important because they dictate a predictable punishment.

Unless the criminals are in charge, which, eventually, they very well could be, and sometimes are.

Lynch mob punishments tended to effectively deter criminals from doing it again.

I could rebut that argument, but not without invoking Godwin.

[Svartalf]

Dang, I hoped I could get this thread godwinned without having to do so in so many letters.

[Hermit]

Lynch mob punishments tended to effectively deter criminals from doing it again.

(Citation needed)


Lynch mob punishments were singularly ineffective in deterring people from committing the crime of being black.

[Seth]

I'm sure more people would murder if they though they could get away with it, but I think that's not the main reason people refrain from killing. There are many and varied evolutionary and cultural reasons for our moral and ethical responses to the word.

But anyway, Foucault... what do you think about his ideas that we are self-policing? How does that fit in with other explanations of our behaviours?

I doubt that more people would murder if they thought they could get away with it. After all, people who DO murder think they can get away with it, or they just don't care if they get caught, and they most often are.

Nor would I call the fear of being watched as a disincentive to crime "self-policing." Those who self-police are those who recognize atavistic thoughts and urges as socially improper and suppress them because they have a moral and ethical compass, not primarily because they actually have and want to give in to those urges and do socially inappropriate things but are afraid that someone is watching them.

One might better call such fears a fear of social policing with the government taking the role of society whereas in the past each individual of the society monitored the behavior of all others members he or she came in contact with rather than ignoring bad behavior and expecting someone else, some abstract governmental official, to do the monitoring.

I cite "1984" as the quintessential reductio ad absurdum examination of the surveillance state.

The real problem is that "1984" no longer seems so absurd.

[Seth]

Lynch mob punishments tended to effectively deter criminals from doing it again.

Wrong. By definition "lynch mobs" are not dispensing justice to a criminal, they are dispensing mob-rule collectivist judgment on a presumptively innocent person.

Now the death penalty, after due process has been provided at a fair trial, is a 100 percent cure for recidivism...

[Seth]

Anyway, left to themselves, the vast majority of people govern themselves far more effectively than anyone else ever could.
The reason we need governments, police etc. is to provide the basic infrastructure needed for a society to function, and a legal/enforcement system to deal with that relatively tiny minority that either can't or won't govern themselves in a civilised way.
Apart from that, the powers that be should just let the vast majority get on with it and stop interfering.
We don't need no fucking panopticon.

Too fucking right!

[pErvinalia]

I'm sure more people would murder if they though they could get away with it, but I think that's not the main reason people refrain from killing. There are many and varied evolutionary and cultural reasons for our moral and ethical responses to the word.

But anyway, Foucault... what do you think about his ideas that we are self-policing? How does that fit in with other explanations of our behaviours?

I doubt that more people would murder if they thought they could get away with it. After all, people who DO murder think they can get away with it, or they just don't care if they get caught, and they most often are.

Nor would I call the fear of being watched as a disincentive to crime "self-policing." Those who self-police are those who recognize atavistic thoughts and urges as socially improper and suppress them because they have a moral and ethical compass, not primarily because they actually have and want to give in to those urges and do socially inappropriate things but are afraid that someone is watching them.

I think the crux of it is where the line is drawn between what society thinks is acceptable and what an individual thinks is acceptable. Most people are pretty clear that the line is nowhere near murder/rape/etc. But there are certainly grey areas that are less serious crimes than that where individual beliefs might vary from society's standards.