Maybe the IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn thought he was wearing the Ring of Gyges, a mythical piece of jewelry which allows the wearer to become invisible. It shows up in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates posed the question whether the owner could behave himself. His interlocutor, Glaucon, suggested that, once invisible, few could resist stealing things, taking sexual liberties, engineering prison breaks, and even murdering enemies.
Apparently, DSK thought he could rape a hotel maid in New York without detection, save that of the poor woman. Armed with the confidence he could get away with it, he played the monster.
In this connection, 18th-century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham brought an interesting suggestion to the table. Understanding that the sense of being watched critically had a strong antiseptic effect on one’s behavior, he designed the “panopticon” for use in “prisons, houses of industry, work-houses, lazarettos [for quarantine], manufactories, hospitals, mad-houses, and schools.”
He designed an essentially hollow circular building with rooms or cells ringed about the circumference. At the center stood an “inspector’s lodge,” from which a warden could see into the cells without himself being seen, his privacy protected by carefully arranged blinds and lighting. The inmates’ continuous fear of observation kept them on their toes and tended to awaken in them a conscience, whereby they more readily became penitent, as in “penitentiary.” (Stateville Correctional Center, near Joliet, Illinois has four of these panopticons, each four stories high.)
It sounds as though DSK could use a season in the panopticon.
Perhaps, as he maintains, he is innocent. Unfortunately, he “has long had a reputation for salacious advance” and a “well-advertised randiness,” as Patricia Williams puts it in her Nation blog (where she, nevertheless, laments his rough treatment at the hands of the Americans). It’s just not looking good for Dominique at this point.
“Looking good” is important to most people, which explains the intimidating power of a publication I just picked up at a gas station not far from here. It’s called Just Busted News, and it features mug shots, names, and charges of over 300 individuals arrested recently in Middle Tennessee. There’s a charming photo of Douglass C_____, detained for “poss cont sub drug para unlawful registration plate decal removal” and Sarah E_______, for “trespass public drunk.” The spectacle is enough to make the rest of us think twice about stealing a license plate decal or walking inebriated onto someone else’s property.
You’d think that the threat of that sort of public humiliation would curb DSK’s “randy” inclination toward “salacious advance,” but here’s the hitch: The French are more laid back than we rustic provincials on sexual matters. There eyes are not so readily disapproving as ours. I think my favorite quote comes from a French Jewish leader named Marc Djebali: “I know him well. I’ve even seen him seduce a woman, but it was always with gentleness.”
How nice.
The joys of tweaking decadent Frenchmen aside, we know we all would be put to the test if we had no fear of judgment for our sins. Even the regenerate would be sorely tempted to stray, which is one reason it’s so wonderful that we have within us a fear of the living, holy, omniscient, and omnipotent God. It’s the “beginning of wisdom,” you know.
With it, you don’t need a panopticon or the threat of a widely-publicized “perp walk” to keep you squared away.
Pity the man who lacks it. Indeed, pity the nation which has lost it.
