Voyeurism, Society and Mark Foley: Ask Bill Clinton for Advice About Facing the Truth
Brock A. Shaver
October 04, 2006
Voyeurism is one of the most amazing control mechanisms that we have as a society. What truly made us voyeurs was television. It played nicely into the migration from living with the land to the sterile suburbs, where we have little connection with the real world. It has been converted into business work, housework and life on the asphalt.
Television is the cigarette of choice for voyeurism. Right now, society rushes to satellite TV with 1000 channels and massive flat-screen plasma television sets with symphonic surround sound. Radio may have started the electronic trend in the 1920’s, but it wasn’t until television caught our eyes that the voyeur culture really took off.
Voyeurism is safe. It involves choice. We can direct our pleasures without risk; the images tucked away like concepts, disposable, without using much else but our brains to do some stimulating.
It is the reversal of our experience in the workplace. There, our employers treat us as objects, as they watch us produce to make them money. We know if we don’t entertain, they will switch the channel to another employee and we won’t be able to perform for money any longer.
Voyeurism removes us from the world we live in. Modern society detaches us so that we can get control of our lives. We live in protest, and we seldom realize it. The anonymity of the suburbs is a rebellion to the social controls that small town gossip formerly had over our lives. Now we have control to choose, from this small plot of land in the middle of our sterile neighborhoods.
Privacy is so important. You have to visit poorer neighborhoods to see street life. Middle class society chooses to invite a few neighbors over for a barbeque and a beer. But without some kids playing street hockey, the boulevards in front of our houses would be empty. It is so nice to avoid the unpleasantness of neighbors. When was the last time we noticed how devoid of humans our suburbs are?
Our older version of television was church. Once a week we would travel from the farm to the religious theatre, hear a lot of strange words that sounded good, and then go home and cut the chicken’s head off for Sunday supper. Working on the farm wasn’t theatre. You weren’t removed from it. You were part of it. And you knew the land in all its seasons, which connected your work with your life and nature. Life was more 'whole.' It wasn’t considered theatre, objectified reality. You felt it in your bones every day. But in the office cubicle one's reference points are severely limited. Hopefully you make enough money to purchase some escapism at the theatre, bar, or on that new TV you are eyeing. The Superbowl and Tiger Woods are on Sunday, remember?
Voyeurism. Let’s watch our bodies transform at the gym. Let’s feel beautiful, alive, energized. Surrounded by other bodies doing the same, working the machines, getting healthy to enjoy life. Running on the treadmill watching the dozen TV’s in front of us. Quite an accomplishment to see how we can control our bodies.
Voyeurism involves entering into someone else’s structure. It makes us feel good to take the kids to their countless activities. They are supervised, safe, controlled and learning so many things. They need this time to learn social skills and find out who they are in these after-school classrooms. Learn the skills of sports while you follow the rules and listen to your coach. Build self-esteem by mastering the structure provided for us. Its how we learn to control our lives in this artificial environment we were born into. It teaches freedom, learning who we are in relation to civilization. How do you stack up? We need to constantly be aware, watching our feelings, what we want, to maintain who we are in this man-made world of business, concrete and numbers.
If you cannot master voyeurism, it will master you. Watching, responding to the demands of the human environment on you. Is there any other way of experiencing life? Ministers complain there is this spiritual yearning out there, but their theatre just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Images. Control. Information. The breakthrough of the Internet revolution. The illusion that we can connect with human beings anywhere in the world. The anonymity gives us a sense of control and relief with little investment and a lot of freedom at our fingertips. It is glorious. We create our own theatre in the structure of Windows and bandwidth. So many people have to be mindful of becoming addicted to it. Video games, online gambling, virtual friends, porn, give us theatre at a new level. Control over the restrictions placed on us by living in this kind of artificial environment. The human environment of the Western world. We take it for granted.
The Islamic world feels it invade the very sense of themselves and don’t know what to do with its freedoms and restrictions on life. What is this world where all the reference points about life have been changed? There is no need for God because we can now do everything we historically used Him for. Sin’s rules don’t seem to have the bite it used to. We have learned to manage the pain. Isolate it, like everything else, apply technology, and then start to pursue the next pleasure. What other objects can we find to entertain us? The whole human and the whole world is conceptually broken down and managed as objects.
We become managers of every object we can perceive. Hopefully our parents trained us enough to be able to take advantage of controlling all the levers that are available to us. Process the information effectively and have a good life.
Religion screams at modern society. In fact, they are torn apart by it, trying to control the meaning in modern ways, and create a structure to help others control their lives too. It can’t use fear, pain, or threats. Only a promise of joy and a dazzling, bizarre story to keep us wondering about the possibilities of the fantastic in our mundane world. They hope to spark some sort of intensity of happy, contented living, re-awaken some kind of ‘spiritual’ awareness, and isolate your problems to get you hooked. Whether it is Benny Hinn healing through ecstasy, the wow of some mega church preacher, or creating the concept of ‘community’ in mainline denominations, somehow they have to get the ignition of Salvation going in a society that is unlike any other history has created. How do you seduce voyeur-man without using overt eroticism or fear?
Voyeurism gotch’ya! Voyeurism seduced ya! Voyeurism sold ya! How to make this mundane world dazzle us? Advertising, business, and entertainment all depend on passive, domesticated humans taking in their information to produce a profit. No one really wants to think. They prefer to be confirmed in their views. Stretching the individual flies in the face of comforting and nurturing. We prefer the pablum of gratification to the insecurity of our worldview being disrupted. It is how we stay calm, organized, and happy.
Reality is what we can see and control. If it works, we’ll buy into it. Voyeurism is the obvious. Voyeurism is the visual. We must be observant at all times. Education tells us how to do this within its structure of thought. It is how we learn, not what we learn, the subtle structure to put us on autopilot. Contentment, enculturation, and prosperity by buying into the system that prevents us from fully grasping the box of civilization we are in. History is becoming irrelevant. Wisdom is a lost language. The iPod and Blackberry are carried around instead of the tether of guilt that the Church used to control us with. Information, technology, equation- and conceptual-thinking, the invisible god that we do not have to worry about because we are naturally part of a survival system based on numbers: science, business, money, management, production, distribution, technology. Our possibilities are endless in mathematics and relativism. We have the freedom and choice to experience life as voyeur managers. Civilized humans manage life like birth control, controlling how much life we let penetrate who we believe we are. The meaning of our life that we procreate.
Porn pays for the Internet. Congressman Mark Foley goes down for being an Internet voyeur, a virtual sexual participant, safe behind his monitor, having a ball with his desires. It was the alcohol he says. It was because he was molested as a teenager by a pastor, he said. There is some excuse for his voyeurism. Does he know who he is? Does he define himself by his actions?
He’s a victim, and can’t be responsible for his actions. He’s a Republican! It is someone else’s fault that he is a hypocrite. He is a victim because he is part of a voyeur society, disconnected and managing his reality, always in control. Oops. If he could just outlaw porn he could have saved himself from his truth! We must feel sorry for him. Pity him. A man out of control, not knowing what he is doing or where he is.
It is scary facing one’s sexual truth, especially in the full view of the public. The Republican congressman needs to consult Bill Clinton on how to handle the truth of one’s sexuality in the full glare of the public viper. The president denied the truth of himself at first too. But he garnered the character to face it full-on in front of the Religious Right. The truth set Bill Clinton free. The true mark of a man’s character.
Can the congressman do the same? Bill tried to say heterosexual fellatio was not real sex. Will Foley use the same excuse? Can voyeurism be a crime? Can a gay Republican, molested by his religion’s leader, suffering horrendous shame and acting it out on teenage boys hope to face his own truth about himself, let alone his relationship with his party and ideology?
Foley is lucky. The children killed in Pennsylvania this week by a pedophile that feared his own out-of-control truth in himself, has muted public attention to his situation. The public is watching something else on TV. We are dazzled by the greater horror. Everything else seems tame compared to it. This true-life horror penetrates us far more than the predictable hypocrisy of a politician. What does that say about life in the 21st century?
Does modern life ‘feel’ good under our control? What is it doing to help us understand the wild parts of who we are as domesticated humans? As voyeurs, we like to choose, but we also like to be seduced. We would choose seduction over choice any day. Then it just feels natural.
Television is the cigarette of choice for voyeurism. Right now, society rushes to satellite TV with 1000 channels and massive flat-screen plasma television sets with symphonic surround sound. Radio may have started the electronic trend in the 1920’s, but it wasn’t until television caught our eyes that the voyeur culture really took off.
Voyeurism is safe. It involves choice. We can direct our pleasures without risk; the images tucked away like concepts, disposable, without using much else but our brains to do some stimulating.
It is the reversal of our experience in the workplace. There, our employers treat us as objects, as they watch us produce to make them money. We know if we don’t entertain, they will switch the channel to another employee and we won’t be able to perform for money any longer.
Voyeurism removes us from the world we live in. Modern society detaches us so that we can get control of our lives. We live in protest, and we seldom realize it. The anonymity of the suburbs is a rebellion to the social controls that small town gossip formerly had over our lives. Now we have control to choose, from this small plot of land in the middle of our sterile neighborhoods.
Privacy is so important. You have to visit poorer neighborhoods to see street life. Middle class society chooses to invite a few neighbors over for a barbeque and a beer. But without some kids playing street hockey, the boulevards in front of our houses would be empty. It is so nice to avoid the unpleasantness of neighbors. When was the last time we noticed how devoid of humans our suburbs are?
Our older version of television was church. Once a week we would travel from the farm to the religious theatre, hear a lot of strange words that sounded good, and then go home and cut the chicken’s head off for Sunday supper. Working on the farm wasn’t theatre. You weren’t removed from it. You were part of it. And you knew the land in all its seasons, which connected your work with your life and nature. Life was more 'whole.' It wasn’t considered theatre, objectified reality. You felt it in your bones every day. But in the office cubicle one's reference points are severely limited. Hopefully you make enough money to purchase some escapism at the theatre, bar, or on that new TV you are eyeing. The Superbowl and Tiger Woods are on Sunday, remember?
Voyeurism. Let’s watch our bodies transform at the gym. Let’s feel beautiful, alive, energized. Surrounded by other bodies doing the same, working the machines, getting healthy to enjoy life. Running on the treadmill watching the dozen TV’s in front of us. Quite an accomplishment to see how we can control our bodies.
Voyeurism involves entering into someone else’s structure. It makes us feel good to take the kids to their countless activities. They are supervised, safe, controlled and learning so many things. They need this time to learn social skills and find out who they are in these after-school classrooms. Learn the skills of sports while you follow the rules and listen to your coach. Build self-esteem by mastering the structure provided for us. Its how we learn to control our lives in this artificial environment we were born into. It teaches freedom, learning who we are in relation to civilization. How do you stack up? We need to constantly be aware, watching our feelings, what we want, to maintain who we are in this man-made world of business, concrete and numbers.
If you cannot master voyeurism, it will master you. Watching, responding to the demands of the human environment on you. Is there any other way of experiencing life? Ministers complain there is this spiritual yearning out there, but their theatre just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Images. Control. Information. The breakthrough of the Internet revolution. The illusion that we can connect with human beings anywhere in the world. The anonymity gives us a sense of control and relief with little investment and a lot of freedom at our fingertips. It is glorious. We create our own theatre in the structure of Windows and bandwidth. So many people have to be mindful of becoming addicted to it. Video games, online gambling, virtual friends, porn, give us theatre at a new level. Control over the restrictions placed on us by living in this kind of artificial environment. The human environment of the Western world. We take it for granted.
The Islamic world feels it invade the very sense of themselves and don’t know what to do with its freedoms and restrictions on life. What is this world where all the reference points about life have been changed? There is no need for God because we can now do everything we historically used Him for. Sin’s rules don’t seem to have the bite it used to. We have learned to manage the pain. Isolate it, like everything else, apply technology, and then start to pursue the next pleasure. What other objects can we find to entertain us? The whole human and the whole world is conceptually broken down and managed as objects.
We become managers of every object we can perceive. Hopefully our parents trained us enough to be able to take advantage of controlling all the levers that are available to us. Process the information effectively and have a good life.
Religion screams at modern society. In fact, they are torn apart by it, trying to control the meaning in modern ways, and create a structure to help others control their lives too. It can’t use fear, pain, or threats. Only a promise of joy and a dazzling, bizarre story to keep us wondering about the possibilities of the fantastic in our mundane world. They hope to spark some sort of intensity of happy, contented living, re-awaken some kind of ‘spiritual’ awareness, and isolate your problems to get you hooked. Whether it is Benny Hinn healing through ecstasy, the wow of some mega church preacher, or creating the concept of ‘community’ in mainline denominations, somehow they have to get the ignition of Salvation going in a society that is unlike any other history has created. How do you seduce voyeur-man without using overt eroticism or fear?
Voyeurism gotch’ya! Voyeurism seduced ya! Voyeurism sold ya! How to make this mundane world dazzle us? Advertising, business, and entertainment all depend on passive, domesticated humans taking in their information to produce a profit. No one really wants to think. They prefer to be confirmed in their views. Stretching the individual flies in the face of comforting and nurturing. We prefer the pablum of gratification to the insecurity of our worldview being disrupted. It is how we stay calm, organized, and happy.
Reality is what we can see and control. If it works, we’ll buy into it. Voyeurism is the obvious. Voyeurism is the visual. We must be observant at all times. Education tells us how to do this within its structure of thought. It is how we learn, not what we learn, the subtle structure to put us on autopilot. Contentment, enculturation, and prosperity by buying into the system that prevents us from fully grasping the box of civilization we are in. History is becoming irrelevant. Wisdom is a lost language. The iPod and Blackberry are carried around instead of the tether of guilt that the Church used to control us with. Information, technology, equation- and conceptual-thinking, the invisible god that we do not have to worry about because we are naturally part of a survival system based on numbers: science, business, money, management, production, distribution, technology. Our possibilities are endless in mathematics and relativism. We have the freedom and choice to experience life as voyeur managers. Civilized humans manage life like birth control, controlling how much life we let penetrate who we believe we are. The meaning of our life that we procreate.
Porn pays for the Internet. Congressman Mark Foley goes down for being an Internet voyeur, a virtual sexual participant, safe behind his monitor, having a ball with his desires. It was the alcohol he says. It was because he was molested as a teenager by a pastor, he said. There is some excuse for his voyeurism. Does he know who he is? Does he define himself by his actions?
He’s a victim, and can’t be responsible for his actions. He’s a Republican! It is someone else’s fault that he is a hypocrite. He is a victim because he is part of a voyeur society, disconnected and managing his reality, always in control. Oops. If he could just outlaw porn he could have saved himself from his truth! We must feel sorry for him. Pity him. A man out of control, not knowing what he is doing or where he is.
It is scary facing one’s sexual truth, especially in the full view of the public. The Republican congressman needs to consult Bill Clinton on how to handle the truth of one’s sexuality in the full glare of the public viper. The president denied the truth of himself at first too. But he garnered the character to face it full-on in front of the Religious Right. The truth set Bill Clinton free. The true mark of a man’s character.
Can the congressman do the same? Bill tried to say heterosexual fellatio was not real sex. Will Foley use the same excuse? Can voyeurism be a crime? Can a gay Republican, molested by his religion’s leader, suffering horrendous shame and acting it out on teenage boys hope to face his own truth about himself, let alone his relationship with his party and ideology?
Foley is lucky. The children killed in Pennsylvania this week by a pedophile that feared his own out-of-control truth in himself, has muted public attention to his situation. The public is watching something else on TV. We are dazzled by the greater horror. Everything else seems tame compared to it. This true-life horror penetrates us far more than the predictable hypocrisy of a politician. What does that say about life in the 21st century?
Does modern life ‘feel’ good under our control? What is it doing to help us understand the wild parts of who we are as domesticated humans? As voyeurs, we like to choose, but we also like to be seduced. We would choose seduction over choice any day. Then it just feels natural.
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