Personal Identity and Secret Surveillance

Monday's conversation was in regards to personal identity and what makes a person. What really stood out to me that day was the fact that changing any part of your material or mental continuity makes you a completely new person, and you can't charge a person for a crime someone else did. I have an objection to this. When we punish someone, we should only consider the part of that person that prompted him or her to commit the crime and neglect any other part of that person. If hair color has nothing to do with a robbery, then don't incarcerate a person with the same hair color as the robber. If the robber's thievish personality has something to do with the crime, then this is the person that should be locked up, regardless of any changes to their material or mental continuity.

Although the panopticon's architectural structure is no longer prevalent in modern society, the resulting psychological effect it had on inmates is similar to the psychological effect that today's discipline mechanism has on everyday citizens.

While still on the topic of punishment, I want to consider how society monitors bad behaviors. The topic of the preceding week bought up a very good point: we are always being watched. In modern society, people are constantly being monitored by the authority, or so that's what they want us to think. In this panopticon surveillance system we are ruled under, we never know who is watching or when they are watching us. In fact, we often times forget the prospect of being watched because we never know if we are watched until we get caught. However, all the rules that we follow becomes internalized; they become a part of us since we are so used to follow them in order to avoid being caught. I believe this is a very strategic way of ensuring that everyone follows the rule. Following the rules becomes habitualized and ceases being a matter of doing what's right and not doing what's wrong.