A WILD MAZE

A reader might judge me as wise or lame! How then is it possible to guess who I am? I am not the only one thinking on the same line. But there are times when I think I am the only one with such brains. I am even capable of imagining myself in the lowest pit of the society. I seek help, I seek knowledge, I seek pain, I seek comfort, and I even seek undefined love. I know I'm a human-but wait; is not mass the quantity of matter a body contains? Am I that large mass of cognizance? Who knows? -I do! -How come? - Oh nonsense, why because I am a man!

It is a wild wild maze. Am I one of the stereotypes? They say a bride needs to look pretty so makeover is essential. They say US is a super power so it is reverent to bow. They say it is mundane to go to church, mosque, synagogue or any other place of worship and so it is! They say that having milk over fish causes stuff like –itis, -emia, -omas or –megaly and I believe them?! ‘You are such a priest’, they say, and that is the final word. They say ‘Wow it is an Italian glass and it becomes unique.

Ever heard of Jeremy Bentham? He designed the famous panopticon style prison consisting of several cell blocks interconnected by main administrative block. What exactly is a “panopticon”, anyway?

The means by which the abstract space of the machine and the social space represent a unifying theme of utopia spatial organization. Bentham struggled for decades to promote his vision of how reconciliation might be accomplished through the construction of his architectural and social experiment; the panopticon (all seeing place) – each cell would be separated by walls on either side, so that the prisoners are “secluded from all communication with each other”. A window on the wall facing the building’s exterior and an iron grating facing the buildings interior would ensure constant surveillance over the activities of each individual by an inspector who was located in a tower at the center of the panopticon. This surveillance was unidirectional however as a set of blinds covering the windows in the inspector’s power would prevent prisoners from watching their captors.

In the modern times Bentham’s panopticon concept could be integrated into many social functions. The organizations of our private relation, “are like so many cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.” Like the prisoners in the panoptiscopic penitentiary, the citizen “is seen, but he does not see; he is the subject of information, never a subject in communication”.

We have so rigidly created our own worlds that we forget that this phenomenon should not focus on the structure of the architecture but on “the space between the lines”.