Although I don’t know when Britain and other parts of Europe began setting up video and snapshot cameras all over their public spaces or how long the US and other countries have had hi-res satellite cameras, but the following lyrics from the 1982 song Electric Eye by the heavy metal band Judas Priest provide a telling commentary on the surveillance states of Europe and the growing US surveillance state.
Electric Eye
by Judas Priest
Up here in space
I’m looking down on you
My lasers trace
Everything you do
You think you’ve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I’m watching all the time
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye
Always in focus
You can’t feel my stare
I zoom into you
You don’t know I’m there
I take a pride in probing all your secret moves
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye
Electric eye, in the sky
Feel my stare, always there
There’s nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye
Protected. detective. electric eye
I don’t know which is more disturbing, the growing surveillance state in the US or the growing trend of paternalistic surveillance parents. Libertarians often point out the encroachments of the State into our right to privacy (a corollary of our rights to life, liberty, and property), but few recognize or emphasize enough the growing trend of parents setting up video cameras in their children’s rooms and installing GPS trackers in their children’s cars. This trend has started making headlines recently. The overprotective and surprisingly prudish former wrestler Hulk Hogan in the reality tv show Hogan Knows Best comes to mind as just one example of the latter. Equally disturbing is the evidence of at least one kid in one of the tv news reports being complacent about it.
These three trends – growing statism, paternalism, and parentalism – are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. It thus should come as no surprise to see all three as growing trends in America. In America, the state has been particularly inept at providing security and other services – partly due to the highly heterogenous culture and relative decentralization of power within government between the various branches and levels of government, largely due to its monopoly on the legal use of force and ultimate decision-making – while at the same time, inevitably, divisive democratic politics and the spoils over which the various pressure groups fight (personal and corporate welfare in its various incarnations) have among other factors led to a deterioration of American social ties and mores. Faced with a semi-socialist state pushing paternalistic policies, it should come as no surprise that the American people, particularly those most dependent upon the state for their lives and livelihoods, will become less and less responsible, producing, generous, and trusting, indeed virtuous, individuals. But again, given the increasing parental abdication of childraising responsibility to the state accompanied by the general ineptitude of the state, small wonder that we see parents increasingly turning to technology as the “easy” way to monitor their children every minute of the day and night. Should we really be surprised to see children becoming used to it? And these children will grow up even more ready to monitor and regulate their own children’s every move as well as submit to the state’s policies to monitor and regulate their own and their children’s. Paternalism breeds parentalism breeds more paternalism in a vicious circle until we have a nation full of childlike adults being ruled by a handful of wealthy despots. Philosopher-kings? In your dreams.
Paternalism is dangerous, both in its statist and in its familial variety, as is parentalism, the other side of the coin. If we treat adults like children, they will eventually come to behave like children. If we do not teach children to behave like adults, then they will become childlike adults. Children need to be taught independence, initiative, self-responsibility, and other virtues. Moreover, they should be given a level of trust consistent with their level of development and aimed at their continued development into competent and responsible adults. They shouldn’t be treated as incompetent and untrustworthy unless they prove themselves incompetent and untrustworthy. Coddling them and not trusting them from the start is a recipe for failure when it comes to raising competent and responsible adults. Children need to be able to make their own decisions (within limits) and the mistakes that will inevitably go with them. Yes, one cannot stress enough that they need structure and a consistent system of rules consistently and fairly enforced, but this should not be mistaken with totalitarian monitoring and control. These modern surveillance technologies certainly have their uses, but let’s be careful about going overboard with them and abusing our fellow adult human beings and our children.
Note: See here and here for Judas Priest lyrics, and here for the official Judas Priest website.
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