Panopticism

Scariest thing ever. i honestly got a little bit of the chills reading this although i thought it would make for a really cool /creepy movie, with people living out their lives in this state, millions of people constantly monitered, like a big brother type thing but even more intense.
Extremely difficult to get through. kept finding myself lost in a daydream where i was one of the guards watching the prisoners, and i felt sick at being there. i wanted to help but my fear of getting caught and being put into a cell was too overwhelming for me to try anything.
I liked the use of plague to demostrate at what point people will give up all freedom in order to have security. For all that we talk about freedom, it really doesn't take too much for people to surrender all of it in the hopes that someday they will get it back, at least partially; along with their lives. The scary thing to me is that once someone has that much power over another, it can sometimes be hard to let them go completely free again, or at least without some sort of tag attached. From that point on you will be in perpetual debt to the person that not only saved your life, but set you free afterwords. You will never quite be free from their clutches because power is a funny thing and once men have it over another man, it can be hard to get it out of that man's head. He will want compensation for freeing you, even if it's what he promised to do in the first place.
Of course i don't mean all men are like this but you never can really be sure i suppose who is or isn't which is what scares me about the whole concept of control.