Christ, Martin Luther, Urbit, crypto, surveillance, and state power
Martin Luther first escaped his monastery, and then posthumously threw the enemies of society into them
The circumstances of Christ’s crucifixion anticipated a problem that legal systems would contend with over the coming millennia. The crown of thorns, and robes meant to mock him, began to serve as ironic symbols of his divinity; his public execution served as clear evidence of the injustice of the state and undermined its authority. If Christ walked today, he would be imprisoned for disturbing the peace. He would be let out after serving his sentence. He may even be given anti-psychotic drugs.
Martin Luther first escaped his monastery, and then posthumously threw the enemies of society into them. The same democratization that propelled the the Protestant reformation by giving everyone access to the Bible, also led to an inversion in how we approach punishment. Democratization, followed by surveillance can be seen at increasingly small scales until we reach the electron. Digital tools are increasingly tools of surveillance and control.
The time of Christ was marked by kings, slaves, and public punishment. We went from diverse individualized punishments, to punishing every crime with the same penalty: time behind bars. This isn’t the only thing that’s been inverted in justice systems.
Within an 80 year period in the 18th century that also contained the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, prisons became the primary means of punishment. Before, the vagabonds would be forced to work. Laziness would not be punished by putting them in jail. The idea was that punishment should improve the person and society. Instead, we now see a currency denominated in time: every crime is measured by the same currency just as every good is measured by money. If your efforts are pro-social, you gain money; when they’re antisocial, you lose time and freedom. It’s capitalism, but for punishment, the criminals being currency arbitrage artists. The modern view that prison should teach them skills to help them re-integrate into society isn’t a new idea.
The downside of imprisonment, is it’s largely private. People can and have assumed that all manners of injustices happen there. In the Soviet Union, the laws running the country were quite reasonable, but the reality was quite different. California prisoners swallow razors and have to be rushed to the hospital. This pattern even has its own acronym: IIFO (intentional ingestion of foreign objects). What kind of environment would cause someone to swallow a razor? Then again, it’s probably easier to escape a hospital than a prison.
We went from having the condemned serve as spectacles and triumphs of justice, to the panopticon where one guard can surveil nearly all prisoners at once. On one hand, it’s sickening that Western society had gruesome public rituals of punishment that included drawing and quartering, breaking people on the wheel, and all manners of torture. Have public executions have gone away for the same reason that white table cloths have disappeared from restaurants? White table cloths are difficult to keep clean, and serve as a sign of cleanliness. The point of making executions public is to hold power accountable.
It’s telling that prisons didn’t come into being until Protestants began to dominate. Protestants don’t set up monasteries. In fact, the schism came about in part as a rebellion of monastic life in general. Martin Luther, having dedicated his life to the monastery after having almost been killed by lightning, prayed to St. Anna to spare his life. He promised to dedicate himself to monastic life. We see an inversion. A prison is a monastery you’re forced to go to. You must wear special garments, it’s sex segregated, and you’re fed. The place where the holiest go becomes the place where the worst criminals spend their entire lives. Once again, the saint and the sinner both see the same ends.
The architecture of the panopticon is also reflected in the digital: many people are watched by a small number of organizations. This panopticon’s tentacles reaches out from the prisons and into the wider world. Peter Thiel describes this as the West’s future if we follow China’s lead of installing a complete surveillance state, but it’s difficult to imagine an alternative. The state’s telos wants to make everything legible (see Seeing like a State). The internet gives us access to the world’s information, but it also gives centralized organizations tools by which to surveil its subjects.
If we look at people as autonomous bundles of information, the digital world reflects the physical. Information vital to informing the democratic process get’s censored. Both misinformation and essential information often meet the same ends. Information can be censored (imprisoned), controlled, banished. Our digital avatars are perpetually tracked. In the physical world, we have natural privacy. In the digital world, someone always has the keys. It’s telling that when you forget your password, you need to request for it to be reset. You call up the guard and they open your cell for you. For now, the guard always complies with your request.
Urbit and crypto aim to democratize money and digital sovereignty. Crypto does this at the expense of making every transaction you make publicly legible. Urbit aims to give each user digital sovereignty.
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Links:
Discipline and Punish, by Foucault
Intentional ingestions of foreign objects among prisoners: A review
The analogy between prisons and monasteries is very interesting (is that in Foucault?) The picture of the Anamosa prison and school reminds me of the weird way in which schools, prisons and supermarkets look indistinguishable in many American towns – are they all institutions of surveillance and control?