The Self-Surveilling Society
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1. Introduction
2. The Eye
3. Self-Awareness: Type A vs. Type B
4. Art and Reality
5. Internet and Social Didactics
6. Conclusion
Introduction
We can complain about atomization all we want, but we actively choose it. We would rather work from home than have to commute to the office, order our food from our phones rather than drive to the supermarket, get on a video call with our family for an hour rather than plan and meet in person, and forgo so many social activities in favor of voluntary isolation. We call this isolation freedom and the technology that enables it progress.
Technology is not just convenient, it is convenient for an individualistic culture. Convenience is manufactured to cater to those individualistic concerns: time, effort, pleasure, freedom, etc. When these concerns are prioritized, the requisite conditions for socialization are regarded as being cumbersome, alienating, and arbitrary. We are isolated because — whether we like it or not — we would not have it any other way. This is our fault.
This is by no means an original insight, but it sets the stage for another side of this discourse that has yet to be explored to its potential extent. In this world of atomization and isolation, our social instincts are quite mangled, but not subdued. In their contorted state, these instincts resort to elaborate and strange measures to satisfy their needs. When an instinct builds pressure in a den of repression, it can take control of our self-awareness, and drive us like a vehicle operator in the direction of its gratification.
Our instincts are lashing out in neurotic fury after being forcefully kept down by our current circumstances. People are increasingly tribal, formal, and afraid of desisting from group values. When we are on the Internet, when we are in a crowd, when we are in a group, when we watch television, etc. we experience The Eye: the reassuring collective judgment that embraces us and excludes others. That aura of “officialness” we feel with television, the Internet, or any other mediated social collective is a vapor of the superego, layering reality with the gaze of our moral category.
This is where everything we have said ties together: as the transcendent moral order is receding in favor of atomized freedom, our moral instinct — which naturally expects the presence of such an order — is trying to summon an order it will tolerate around itself at all times.
Our instincts articulate themselves in the available language of culture. Using the articles available in our culture, our moral instinct is manifesting as what we will here call the Eye.
Our culture is obsessed with expanding the reach of this Eye as much as possible — expectedly. Where this Eye is absent, we feel the true weight of the isolation we have made for ourselves and are forced to rely on our own private judgment alone. The anxiety we feel as a result causes spasms in our instinct, leading it to take control and summon the Eye.
All cases of “cancellation” or “exposition” on the Internet consist of situations where an individual acted while following their private judgment, without reference to the rules of the Eye. We are terrified of that unwatched world; the one beyond formality, manners, discourse, and the references of social cohesion.
Oftentimes, we will look down on theocracies or other authoritarian regimes, especially on those who kiss the boots of their oppressors. However, it is hard to do so when you see how enthusiastic people are to subject themselves to the strict and elaborate self-surveillance of the Eye.
The social tension that arises from this kind of enthusiastic self-surveillance is happening across all of society, in schools, at work, with your family, on the Internet, in the media, in art, etc. We are trying to transcend our fear of isolation through the sterile, apparitional order of a primitive and neurotic instinct.
This warrants a thorough examination. This text will not be this thorough examination, but it should suffice to establish the significance of the Eye. In light of the current decline in social associations, this social instinct is holding society hostage, desperately clutching for its needs in a barren world — needs we have forgotten we are designed to satisfy.
The Eye
The Eye activates to make the individual feel the security of being observed and supported by the group. We fear situations where the gaze is not involved; situations where our tribal instincts fear that — without a gaze to keep them in line— people who are a threat to moral unity could fester.
Those intimate experiences away from a watchful community where — either alone, with someone else, or in a small group — conventions, rules, values, standards, and moral behavior are a product of mutually negotiated judgment between the people involved; the Eye is terrified by this, and it does anything in its power to manufacture surveillance in these situations.
Everywhere we can, we put a commentator, an announcer, a camera, a reminder of the reassuring judgment of the Other. We are reassured when — in a group of people — there is a common language of references; when the discourse is asserted and made presential. We are reassured when we bring people back into self-awareness.
If we are alone with a friend and they begin playing music — getting lost in their playing — , we would feel the Eye disappearing, and it easily could feel awkward. It is common for someone to crack a joke in response to this kind of situational malaise, but this is not done only to “relieve the atmosphere”, but to return the social atmosphere to a well-regulated and surveilled one. We are reassured when we watch a comedian give a voice to a crowd by exemplifying a public judgment we can all find security by affiliating with.
The mechanism whereby the Eye is injected into everyday social interactions is “formality”. Through formality, etiquette, propriety, and convention, social rules can colonize what would otherwise be an unsupervised intimate interaction. The Eye grips all cultures where the population is too high to be mediated by intimate social relations.
However, when we try and look for formality in today’s society, we still expect it to look like the 1950s or the Victorian era, and as such we do not recognize our own brand of contemporary formality. Instead of looking for formality where we disagree with it, we should look for formality where we agree with it. If we are beset with formal zealotry, we will agree with it.
We always expect formality to manifest as old people stuck in their old ways, while younger generations — like rebellious poets — live beneath the old artificial masks, pursuing moral authenticity as free agents. However, the species of formality I am trying to expose right now is coming from this younger generation. When I think of the formality, convention, etiquette, and social stiffness of today, it is being upheld by young people.
If we want to see it, we must look at self-awareness — today’s behavioral incarnation of self-surveillance. Self-awareness is thought of as intelligent, cool, and a sign that someone is well-adjusted and intelligent. It is precisely in those well-perceived qualities that I believe we can find the Eye.
Self-Awareness: Type A vs. Type B
We use the word self-awareness to mean two different things. At first glance, we take the word to mean “a capacity for controlled introspection”. Colloquially, however, we will often use the word self-awareness to mean something like “the ability to read the room”.
We may think the word social-awareness would be a better fit for this second one, but I disagree. When someone cannot read the room, it feels to us as though they lack an internal agency, a soul: self-awareness. It is this sensation we use the word self-awareness to express that I am referring to.
The “read the room” self-awareness I call “Type A self-awareness” and the “introspective” self-awareness I call “Type B self-awareness”. Mistakenly, we use the same word to describe two very different “things”. Everyone has a share of either kind of self-awareness, but each has a different proportion of both. The Type A individual is different from the Type B individual, and the Type A person is much more prone to having their Eye lash out.
Those with Type A self-awareness are anxious about taking too much space in a conversation, they preface their opinions with acknowledgments of their lack of expertise, they make sure to communicate how self-aware they are in every situation, etc. When we look closer at the psychological origin of this kind of self-awareness, we notice that it is not a complex of free gestures, but rather a complex of neurotic spasms directed towards fitting in. This kind of self-awareness is not a form of introspective control, rather it is a kind of social anxiety and neurotic slavery where mental spasms veer you toward self-effacement such that you become either a “member” of the group or an agent of normativity upholding the Eye.
Type A individuals is fearful of being misinterpreted, seen as someone they are not, or dismissed by the group; they are a conformist, keenly aware of the discourse, conventions, and what is “cool”. In fact, “cool” is the most important word we must understand if we wish to grasp what Type A self-awareness is. “Cool” is the accepted formal order of a younger group, and conforming to it is a matter of great preoccupation and distress to them. Type A awareness is — in the end — conformity anxiety.
As people age, their Type A awareness withers — this results in the person’s native levels of Type B awareness taking charge.
On the other side, people with Type B self-awareness are characterized by having the introspective freedom to think and act however they want with a complete disregard for any social recognition. Some people may say they don’t care what other people think while actively trying to come across as impressive, interesting, unique, and otherwise seem like a protagonist. This is a Type A person; they have a crowd inside their head. Even if they end up isolated and ostracized, the Type B person will do what they want. Type B people are ostracized by Type A people.
Type A refers to the neurotic self-imposition of “acting right and not standing out” and Type B refers to the liberated gestures of introspection, enjoyed by people whose minds are free. For our purposes, Type A self-awareness is far more interesting.
Type A self-awareness is the refuge of those with the social neurosis I have described up to this point. Those who fear the absence of the Eye impose or demand it. Instead of conversations being intimate, personal, and confined to how the individuals involved are feeling, every conversation must feel as though a crowd is watching them; they must always bring in references, jokes, and memes to affirm the presence of the Eye; a larger social order to supervise the activities taking place.
Reputation, discourse, trends, and other such relational phenomena must always be put at the forefront of conversations for Type A people. One cannot mention an artist, a work of art, a news story, or anything really without the conversation taking a turn to discuss the reputation or the “discourse opinion” of that chosen topic. If you mention the name, Jordan Peterson, the Type A person is no longer listening; if you mention Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, the Type A person will mutter “Les Miz” under their breath to “discoursify” the topic; if you mention any piece of information, the Type A person will articulately and giddily regurgitate the current discourse opinion regarding that specific piece of information.
Type A people cannot stand to be away from the crowd, so they have to conjure it around themselves at all times by adjusting the conversations they are a part of to incorporate the Eye in order to alleviate their tribal anxiety; they are fanatic apostles of the Eye. When the Eye is absent, the Type A person compulsively succumbs to the machinations of their tribal instinct and — just like machines — follows the motions of summoning the Eye so the situation feels safe to them. You may try having a personal interaction with someone only to find a crowd following them in their heads; they have become the crowd and lack any individuality whatsoever.
You cannot share something with someone without their normative awareness evaluating your taste by the metrics of their own respective group. If you show them food you like, comedians you find funny, music you like, or things you find sad, intelligent, interesting, impressive, or otherwise noteworthy, you are setting yourself up to be judged by their group’s normative standards. If what you like is perceived as stupid, limited, or below the standards established by their group, you will be seen as less self-aware than them.
taste is intimately bound up with our personal life and moral identity. It is part of our rational nature to strive for a community of judgement, a shared conception of value, since that is what reason and the moral life require. And this desire for a reasoned consensus spills over into the sense of beauty.
as Hume says: character defines your aesthetic taste, because it is your character that reacts to the aesthetic object.
— Roger Scruton, Beauty
If you are predominantly a Type A person, you have experienced many situations where someone showed you something they thought was really impressive while you thought it was dull, played out, and predictable. With that sensation of judging superiority, the Type A person will perceive the other person as lacking self-awareness.
There is a moral incentive to like the right thing. What you like reflects your values and standards. Through your standards, others can gain insight into very important details regarding your viability as a cultural companion. If someone finds the wrong things sad, funny, intelligent, impressive, beautiful, or interesting, our social instincts predict that this person will not be a valuable companion, which triggers the exclusionary tactics we use against people we view as “uncool” and not “self-aware”.
Art has always been a core ingredient in all cultures. In the context being currently discussed, we can observe art’s tribal function as an agent of affiliative factionalization. Now that we are experiencing a tribal growth spur, these old functions are appearing once more; now that we need art’s role of social delimitation, we can observe “taste profiles” becoming hints of a person’s viability as a social partner.
Implicit in our sense of beauty is the thought of community.
— Roger Scruton, Beauty
However, art is not what it once was. Instead of elevating reality through transcendent craftsmanship, art today merely continues and extends reality. Since art occupies such an important function in any social formation, it should be unsurprising that a distressed social instinct would impose its neuroses upon it before engaging with it. Just as transcendent codes are eradicated in culture and just as traditions are thought of as alienating in today’s culture, art has been stripped of its transcendence and traditions, leaving it to merely assert the current world and the discourse to crowds of contagiously afflicted Type A people.
Discoursification is a gesture very frequently performed by people whose Type A awareness predominates. The desire to subsume a situation that is taking place in front of you under a meme, the desire to photograph the situation, the desire to inject references from the discourse inside conversations, etc. all of these gestures serve to transform an “under-surveilled” situation into one that is surveilled by the Eye.
The discourse is a kind of pseudo-transcendent order. While transcendent codes are completely impersonal and based on top-down traditions, the discourse is a kind of democratic order; though we absolutely use it as a weak substitute for what our brains are designed to engage with. Today, art is no longer transcendent, it only ever reflects the discourse; it only ever reflects, reinforces, proliferates, and proselytizes the rule of the Eye.
Art and Reality
We went from radio to Johnny Carson, to reality T.V., to YouTube, to Twitter, and now to live streaming. There seems to be an appetite for closing the distance between ourselves and artists. Even spaces that were previously kept ritualistically separate are now increasingly merging together; we work, watch movies, and speak to our friends all from the same device: our phone. The subject matter of art is increasingly about topical, trendy, or relatable quotidian matters. I believe that, as the means of artistic distribution change, the incentives of artists change as well. One change I find particularly interesting is the increasing tendency for art to concern itself with reality. Before, art used to transport us, and now it merely corroborates reality.
A first example of art’s increasing concern with “being about reality” is the quantity of works whose purpose is to serve a social function. Whether through ethnic, sexual, political, or any other kind of representation; a lot of narrative content seeks to represent, exemplify, or solve the conditions of the real world. Movies often have the goal of representing a community and making said community feel as though they are recognized, validated, and given real-world dignity on the screen.
Another example of when art is concerned with reality is when it aims to represent a utopia according to our current cultural ideals[1]. Such works seek to strengthen our moral web or to inspire change in the world. They have no aesthetic autonomy from the current world.
A second example would be the trend in which works are more about social exchanges with a crowd than they are about transporting the audience away from the world. We can imagine music that consists of references to real-world situations, jokes[2], events, etc. Songs where the singer speaks[3] to the listener or gives a political opinion, songs about a current cultural event, movies about a trendy thing, relatable books, T.V. shows that appeal to in-group references, etc. all have as a goal to reach a level of social intimacy with their audience rather than to provide an experience of imaginative significance.
Whereas art, in former days, used to try and transport you outside of your familiar life into a world where you could explore complex emotions and ideas that were distilled by form; now, art commonly insists on being viewed on the same phone you use for work, and on being about things that you experience every day. An archetypal example of “Reality music” would be a live stream of a band improvising humorous songs about the news; this would be quite normal in our culture.
There truly seems to be a distinction between art that keeps you in the world and art that transports you away from it, and while such imaginary works still exist, they run uphill against the incline of our current culture. It is as though we are terrified of letting go of the reassuring warmth of self-awareness; when we are self-aware, we can feel the group around us. Art, by contrast, seeks to isolate you into your private convictions, which provokes distress, fear, anxiety, and discomfort to those whose souls are particularly dependent on the group for identity, meaning, and security.
Although, I must grant that art has always had a social function. Heidegger said that art is the process of bringing to form a community’s identity and priorities. Whether through patriotism, architecture, temples, religious works, or totemic cultures; art has always had the function of invigorating a community’s self-esteem. Musicians, poets, artists, and playwrights all at one point served as emblems of a culture’s triumph.
We can therefore recognize that art has always had a role in the real world and that, perhaps, it is this imaginary kind of art that is a historical anomaly, and not the one I have presented thus far. It might be that our cultural predicament as well as our means of artistic distribution has led us to recover a more authentic relationship with art. Still, one must wonder whether we lost something in that process.
On the other side, we have art whose purpose is not so much to enact social change, but to create something eternal, or to capture the individual/cultural neuroses of people and express them like a dream would through symbols or allegory. In this category, works have aesthetic autonomy. Alice in Wonderland, 1984, and The Catcher in the Rye all reference the real world, but they are not really “about” the real world; they appeal to our dispositions for what feels aesthetically significant. Their quality rests not on their references to the real world. Such stories endure because of the historically resilient and genuine aesthetic content woven underneath their form. If you compare “The Odyssey” with “The Song of Achilles,” you will see that one is more about the real world than the other; I suspect that one will endure, and the other will not.
Art, nowadays, never lets us forget we are in the real world. I find that our spirits are starved for imagination and for art to represent collective anxieties with vitality and imagination. Although I could speak of aesthetic decline, my real point is that artists are rewarded for appealing to reality. With increasing democratization in production and distribution, such incentives affect the artistic landscape. When artists are given the incentive of being a celebrity or of appealing to the crowd, their artistic integrity suffers and the permanence of their works is compromised. There is an appetite for rich and imaginative wonder, exuberance, and virtuosity. I believe we best satisfy that hunger by making art that stands for itself.
“Reality art” does not survive; it is continuously replaced by new “Reality art” that expresses the ever-changing present cultural mood. What I call “Imaginary art”, on the other hand, endures because its aesthetic merit is independent of our relating to it. A work of “Reality art” can eventually appeal to nostalgia, but it will never do so as well as a work dedicated to being an aesthetic accomplishment. Works that properly tackle subjects such as depression are not preachy, nor do they reference topical opinions; they use beauty, for quality alone dignifies art. I hold that our spirits wane when lacking in profound imaginary stimulation.
Here, we find that humans have destroyed the ritualistic haze that was formerly cast upon artistic experiences. We are terrified when the Eye is not watching us. This takes various forms. If a movie goes for real-world references, it is trying to pull you out of the contemplative dissociation that we have all experienced while watching an aesthetic movie.
We still have works of aesthetic contemplation, but there is a growing public neurosis that is slowly infecting art as it incentivizes creations that cater to our neurotic fear of independence. We thus make sure that any area previously dedicated to secluded experiences is opened up to the Eye by involving our phones, injecting real-world references, adding a commentator, or pulling the audience out of a contemplative state by asking the crowd to interact with one another. This happens in restaurants, museums, music shows, video games, etc. Any place where someone could possibly have an experience away from the Eye, its supervision will be enthusiastically added.
We still have the cultural apparatus for art that commands us into isolation, but we use it less and less. If we think of dressing well and going to a theater or a movie premiere where, suddenly, the lights go out and throughout the course of the movie you forget you even exist, this would be a situation that is away from the eye. Even though the activity is carried out in an admittedly public environment, you are called to be within yourself. If we compare this with watching a music event on television, a commentated sports match, or a livestream with a chat on the side, all of these viewing activities will in most likelihood be carried out alone but feel much more socially involved because of the Eye’s involvement. In fact, watching this content with another human being will feel “less” social and more isolated because of the intimate nature of being one-on-one with somebody else where the Eye is not watching.
Internet and Social Didactics
The Internet is known for its self-surveilling culture and strict morality, but less so for being a space where poorly socialized youths have manufactured a marionette world of social didactics.
To clarify what I mean, let us ask a question: How did it get to this? How did it get to the point where everyone online sounds the same, has the same opinion, and has the same level of humor? Why are we finding the same enforced etiquette everywhere? Whatever first caused it, now, Internet celebrities are at the forefront of the ever-increasing behavioral policing on the Internet. When someone on a screen represents what we think is cool, important, interesting, or funny, they define the available factions. the Internet is very “celebrity-centric,” and it appears like celebrities not only factionalize the Internet but also determine the range of acceptable tones on there. These celebrities and their communities define the available social affiliations you can choose from. Your affiliation signals your levels of awareness out into the world to everyone, which will attract or repulse the people who see it.
Society, on the Internet, is a place of strict behavioral, intellectual, and moral etiquette; it is also a simplified reality where poorly socialized young people vicariously learn how to talk to people by watching these socially competent celebrities go through the motions of social interaction in front of them.
You may think you are watching someone playing a video game or someone having a conversation with somebody else, but one main though incidental function of this content is to teach minimally socialized 13–25-year-olds how to behave in social situations. This is not the intentional goal of the content, but much of its popularity is owed to the fact that these youths incentivize this kind of content by watching it. Over time, the incentives shape the content until it just starts looking like their needs being solved on the screen.
The astronomical success of Among Us streams for younger demographics during the early years of the COVID pandemic can hardly be understood as anything else than accidentally didactic social education obtained. You watch interesting people, each with their characteristic personality, together, going through the motions of social interactions.
This is vicarious socialization. It is especially didactic because the people who are being watched are well-adjusted and talented public speakers who do well in social interactions. A large percentage of online content consumed by younger people is consumed with the aim of vicariously learning how to behave in social situations. You can see this by how audiences consume this content; in YouTube comments and Twitch chats, and then on Twitter, Reddit, and Discord as it then proliferates through the culture.
I always feel strange when watching a live stream of someone cooking, and the entire chat is telling the streamer, every step of the way, how to be exemplary in what they are doing; as though those who watch want what they are watching to be exemplary. They are didactic T.V. broadcasts for unsocialized young people. When someone is having a mental breakdown, or someone has a mental disorder that is plaguing them, or someone is going through troubles, the entire ordeal is always expected to be handled exemplarily before their eyes. It feels like theater; as though the whole of the Internet is a space where we can play “real life” situations from a safe distance, like how dreams expose us to situations so our brains may learn how to handle them in the future.
The Internet is a great experimentation playground for people to learn life experiences by watching “adults” do so while at a safe distance. Like children who play tag do not know there are evolutionary incentives for them to practice hunting, the entire Internet seems to be one big game that serves the social needs of an unsocialized generation, and all of its content is incentivized to serve that purpose.
The solution these poorly socialized young people have come up with is to create a culture of formality where people are expected to “act right” and never rely on their own judgment. Young people are enthusiastically surveilling each other into acting appropriately for their age, as romantic partners, as friends, as employees, etc. The Internet is a large didactic performance that seeks to simplify the world; it is a technology that allows the atomized individuals of overcrowded cities to digitally satisfy their social needs. The Internet’s rules look like the authoritarian laws present in all immature societies.
If someone is having an anxiety attack, not only should they and everyone in their surroundings abide by a strict bullet list protocol of “how you are supposed to act in this situation,” but they should also contact a mental health professional, etc. I certainly do not advise against seeking the help of medical professionals, but the noticeable admiration of institutions is not an anodyne characteristic of the Internet’s attitude, it is a by-product of conformity; doing things on your own is frowned upon as antagonistic to the Eye.
If the Internet can serve as a form of didactic socialization for a generation of children and teenagers who are deprived of the necessary means for genuine socialization, then all the better. But obviously, the day must come when we outgrow its playground and learn to deal with how strange, difficult, chaotic, and intimate real life actually is. The Internet dreams of painting over reality a world that the Eye would like to see: a world of formality and protocol.
Conclusion
The tragedy in all of this is that we have grown incapable of having authentic and vulnerable interactions with other humans. Whenever silence or unawareness strikes, we seek out the Eye to remedy the situation. Intimate conversations are met with recoil since getting too close makes people uncomfortable. If someone brings up a controversial argument, instead of gracefully conversing with them we feel like we have to stand up for the values of a group that follows us around in our brains. Faced with someone being awkward, we would rather squash the awkwardness away by bringing in the Eye rather than be compassionate and lift them up in an act of complicity. But that is not how the Eye works; The Eye does not merely make us social, it makes us viciously social and we enforce its gaze when social order is needed. Independence of character is treated as moral disobedience.
Let us be clear, though it might not feel like we are collectively developing a self-surveillance society, the prints on the ground tell a different story. If we look at how the instinct for the Eye is making us act, it is clear that some deep tribal instinct is trying to unleash throughout the population in order to resolve the failed social order of our high population atomized society. The result is a large-scale community of people attempting to recover the comforts afforded to us in small-scale supervised societies. This means that, anywhere we can, we will append to or restructure our activities and customs in order to incorporate something to satisfy our desire to be supervised in the refuge of the Eye.
No society-wide solution is possible. Since our population is so large and since mass communication binds us into social relationships that would otherwise have been impossible at any other time in history, our tribal instincts are awakened at an unprecedented scale. The Eye is simply the result of the interplay between our instincts and our societal condition; our instincts will adjust depending on the condition. The one solution is only available for those of us who do not want to be drowned in tribal supervision at all times. For those people, you must push against the grain to demand authenticity and moral flexibility from the people you interact with. The Type A individual recoils with mocking laughter at the idea of a group of people who use discipline to avoid subjecting opportunities for genuine and intimate conversations, friendship, and love to the will of an invisible mob.
I want to talk to you, not the crowd.
[1] (Solar-punk Utopia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4
[2] (Song where singer sing/speaks about socially recognizable content): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoIEvrF3LPE
[3] (Song where singer speaks of relatable things): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ianu7PBhJck&t=808s
