Oh, I Wanted To Write About It But Someone Has Already Done It. So Here's Some Additional Information:

oh, I wanted to write about it but someone has already done it. so here's some additional information:

like, yep, it may be just coincidence because «panoptes» in Greek means «omniscient» buuut the fact that Myron's last name is also Bentham...

here are some notes about Jeremy's idea:

By reformulating ethics in terms of an intricate calculus designed to maximize pleasures and minimize pains, Bentham hoped to secure "the greatest happiness of the greatest number"

On one level, of course, Bentham was dealing in hypothetical future. Yet Foucault insisted that the Panopticon was more than just an idle fantasy. Bentham's "simple idea in Architecture" offered, he wrote, "the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form"; it mapped out the specific anatomy of modern power that Foucault called "discipline".

mm, I smell some parallels, mister Riggs

A peculiar theory about Myron Bentham and his Panloopticon

Alright, if you have read Library of Souls you know about the Panloopticon an its function. Months ago I got an ask on my other mphfpc blog about the meaning of its name and at first it had to do with the Ancient Greek word “pan” which means “all” + loop + ticon, because, you know, it’s supposed to be a door to other loops. It makes sense.

But this week I developed another theory about how Riggs might’ve come up with this name. For this I have to tell you about a French philosopher named Foucault. In 1975, he published his book “Discipline and Punish” about personal and institutional discipline and different subjects that I won’t go into right now because it’s not that important for the point I’m going to make. Foucault stated that, if institutional discipline is taken too far, it will have a negative effect on society, but that it is in general a “good” thing because when you when you know or think that you are being watched you start to behave differently (think Orwell’s “1984″).

In his book, Foucault invokes the idea of another philosopher and social theorist, Jeremy Bentham, an Englishman. This idea was something called the Panopticon - a type of building, a prison, that looks something like this:

(Source: http://foucault.info/) The cells along the walls have two mirrors facing the outer wall and the inner wall. The guard in the centre of the panopticon is able to watch all prisoners all the time, but the prisoners aren’t able to notice when he is watching them, thus creating a constant fear that they may or may not be watched.

If translated loosely, Panopticon means “place where everyone and all can be watched”.

And I don’t know if Riggs is into philosophy, but I thought this was a very plausible theory for the origin of the Panloopticon.

- Mod Isa