Not a new concept, but evergreen, in the worst possible way, is the idea of inadvertently causing harm to oneself. Our Idaho Education Association President delicately chided association members in an email address to us after HB 93 (voucher bill) jumped every hurdle, including tens of thousands of individually-voiced objections, and got Gov. Little’s signature.
“Elections matter.”
As our professional association’s face, he is the soul of diplomacy and restraint. So, what else could he say? Certainly not …. Listen, Idaho educators and association members who shot all of us in the foot. Pull your heads out, open your eyes, and find the actual target! But as a nobody with nothing to prove, I can give in to my frustration and say it.
It’s pretty common nowadays to complain about the uselessness (or danger) of teaching the humanities, but in the face of broadly consequential redistributions of our power, money, and influence, nothing satisfies like a solid foundation of literature, philosophy, history and scripture to fortify and arm voters against manipulation. I encourage us all to lean on that support now and take a look back at Michel Foucault’s 1977 concept of a carceral culture from his book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
It’s been many years since I read it, but the big ideas keep resurfacing for me, and they help me get a handle on things as they are unfolding today. Foucault’s way of thinking is a lot like George Orwell’s way of thinking and also a lot like Ray Bradbury’s way of thinking and a lot like Hannah Arendt’s way of thinking or William Golding’s way of thinking or Arthur Miller’s way of thinking…. And all their thinking was motivated by the cognitive dissonance that their experiences of twentieth-century fascism brought. They bore witness while humanity, as they had come to know it, transformed into inhumanity–institution by institution, country by country, and most horrifically, individual person by individual person. Each of these thoughtful people was driven to understand how and why it happened. And they shared what they felt explained it in works of fiction and nonfiction that are well-worth rediscovering today. Their work attempts to safeguard us from inadvertently shooting ourselves in the foot in the same way again. Seriously, go read Lord of the Flies, 1984, The Crucible, “The Veldt” or Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
Anyway, to circle back around to the beginning of this piece, is anyone else hearing comments like these amongst their educator colleagues?
Well, I’m a Republican, but I would never have voted for that (fill in the blank with one of the anti-public education/ICE in our schools/anti-union/anti-immunization/anti-mental health support/anti-safe routes to school ….) policy…. Or As a Christian, I only vote Republican…. Or I don’t follow politics. Politicians are all the same, anyway… Or This country is so messed up it needs a dictator.
Please don’t read my commentary here as an endorsement of all things Left. Nor is it a rebuke or denial of the genuine concerns of MAGA voters. I support public education, educators, and Idaho. My point is, these comments demonstrate anti-thinking responses that anti-democratic leaders need from voters in order to take over. They’re the kinds of remarks that show a culture at risk of falling into what all those writers warned us about.
It’s good to review Foucault now because he thought a lot about the nature of power. He noticed that as Europe became less bloodthirsty and leaders stopped using physically violent, public displays of discipline and punishment (beheadings in the public square, lynchings) as the means of keeping citizens in line, power-hungry rulers developed more insidious strategies to manipulate people. Foucault uses the psychology embedded in the design of a prison called the Panopticon (not a structure he came up with) as a metaphor for what he called carceral culture in which people police themselves, without even realizing it, and to their own detriment. It’s a prison where prisoners don’t need prison guards.
So, here’s an assignment I might give (if I didn’t have to check myself and fret about the risks I could open myself up to by doing so):
Compare and contrast carceral culture, epitomized by the architecture of the Panopticon Prison, to our culture and the way we behave today. Consider the best ways for you, personally, to relate to power and freedom. How should a just society maintain law and order, safety and freedom? How, and why, do people frequently vote against their own best interests?
