On Surveillance
Yesterday afternoon, I was driving around in my "loop" at work when I noticed a young lady out for a run. She was dressed revealingly (although the effect was ruined by the hideous scowl on her face, no doubt provoked by thoughts of "the patriarchy"), and her pace was closer to sprint than a jog; unthinkingly, I quipped aloud to myself: "That's rape level Expert." Immediately I regret my lapse in auto-conversational decorum, as I had forgotten that I'd been assigned a car equipped with the latest in-cab spy gadgetry. A few months back, the corporation announced its intent to install in-and-out-facing cameras throughout the fleet; the purpose of these devices was to record both audio and video during any instance of "distracted driving", in order that the safety team might "investigate" in the event of an accident. However, that is just the cover story—the real reason, undoubtedly, is to give themselves the power to eavesdrop on us at any time. I am discomfited by our current surveillance society, not least of which by the easy acquiescence with which people succumb. Personally, I don't like to look through people's online photo reels and, come to think of it, can't really stand to pose for pictures or record video or hear my own voice played back to me; of course, I am fairly unique in this regard, as such activity has become second nature for normies who identify with this culture. Most folks don't have a problem being monitored in this way because they are already used to being monitored at all times by phone apps, cookies, red light cameras, CCTVs, three-letter agencies, etc. In fact, all of the coworkers I've complained to about the issue have been so thoroughly conditioned that they actually defend the surveillance apparatus, saying things like, "They have better things to do than spy on us," or, "If you've got nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear." Meanwhile I've got to worry that I'm risking discipline and/or termination for involuntary comments that I make to myself, such as when I shout "Nigger!" at bad drivers (not because they're black, mind you). It seems as if there is an inverse correlation between technological progress and humanism, and that, if we assign any value to the abstract notion of “being human”, then we ought to defy and dismantle the global surveillance complex, before we end up, in the prophetic words of Richard Brautigan, "All watched over by machines of loving grace."