Surveillance and Thought Police

I really enjoyed the TV series, “Person of Interest.”  Great fun.  The premise, if you are not a fan, is that everyone is monitored all the time everywhere and a super computer informs the good guys when bad things are going to happen.  Rescue ensues.  It is a little creepy to think about being monitored all the time, but the premise is not new.  Orwell’s 1984 may have spawned movies like “Enemy of the State”, “Minority Report”, “Colossus:  The Forbin Project,” “Eagle Eye,” “The Net,” and others that follow the same theme.  Big Brother is watching all the time.  Spooky.  Close the drapes.

And yet we rely on surveillance footage to stop crime.  Even cops wear cameras to monitor the bad guys and the cops.  One cannot go to a convenience store or an ATM without being recorded.  Even couples engaging in a little PDA at athletic events may find themselves on the big screen.  Our phones and our cars can be located by GPS.  (I am so grateful I was not tracked or monitored to that extent while I was dating in high school and college.) 

That is our issue, privacy versus security.  Clearly, if everyone were monitored all the time we could dramatically reduce crime.  On the other hand, do we really want to live in a nation where everyone is always on candid camera?  I do not wish to live in such a state.  We even set up cameras in the woods to track game, zombies, Big Foot and other creatures.  Amazing.  Is my computer spying on me?  Should I turn off my web cam so if I have to scratch I can do it in private?  Or should I simply acquiesce to universal voyeurism?

I have serious concerns about these issues, and I suspect you do too.  It is not enough to say only bad guys and folks with evil intent should fear monitoring or searches or whatever practice invades privacy.  One is not known to be a bad guy until the monitoring.  So we are all suspects until proven innocent.  And how many of us could literally be monitored our entire life and not have a police record?  I stole bubble gum from a convenience store when I was in 3^rd grade.  Thank goodness the statute of limitations has expired, though such a confession may make me a candidate for future surveillance. 

For now, our only surveillance is of behaviors and speech.  I can be monitored in many ways, but my thinking, my beliefs, my feelings, my fantasies and my nightmares are not subject to scrutiny unless I make such thoughts public.  A world where not only are all my behaviors recorded but my inner most thoughts and processes are also monitored is a truly frightening place.  Worse, I might be held accountable for a thought that never became action.  Is that not scary?

Welcome to the concept of God.  Jesus made it pretty clear that if you think a sin you have committed a sin.  Wow.  Check out Matthew 5: 27-28, Matthew 15: 17-20, Mark 7: 20-23.  Yep.  If you think it you have sinned.  God is the thought police.  I have a real problem with that sort of totalitarian scrutiny.  I would never support such scrutiny of humans by humans.  How could I possibly support such scrutiny by a deity?  Worse, it is not just the scrutiny, but if one does not seek forgiveness for a thought one may be burned in hell for all eternity for his or her thought sins.  That’s a considerably worse sentence than 5 to 10 in the state pen.  Such punishment, such risk, such surveillance does not sound like the behavior a loving deity to me.  It is the ultimate fascism.

And I have a hard time loving or even believing in a supernatural being who would practice such atrocities.  Why give me free will if I am to be damned for eternity just thinking about what I might do with that free will?  God bless Jimmy Carter who confessed he had sinned because he had lust in his heart for another woman.  Holy cow.  Why wire humans to be sexually attracted to each other then send us to hell if we simply think, “what if?”

Sounds to me like such a deity is mean spirited, controlling and totalitarian.  I do not see the love in this, I see fear mongering.  If God knows all my thoughts why should I even bother to pray?  He knows.  So why doesn’t he answer?  Oh yeah, he has a mysterious plan for each of us that we seek to stumble on because he won’t just come out and tell us.

Really?  Worship such a being?  Pray to such a being when I am damned before I start?  OK, the fervent among you will argue that once forgiven by God we are eternally forgiven.  But that makes no sense.  Is that a license to lust forever?  I thought the commandment was you are forgiven, now go and sin no more.  So sin, seek forgiveness, sin seek forgiveness is an eternal loop we cannot escape instituted by a being who is determined to be worshipped using fear and punishment as the motivator.  And if one wants to argue he loves all of us, then why did he allow his own son to die a horrible death?  If he is willing to allow that, what chance do I have?

Nope, such a being is more like a child’s nightmare, a fairy book fable designed to scare us all into being good all the time.  I choose to be good out of love, out of respect, out of integrity, not fear.  I will screw up.  Perhaps caught on a camera when I do.  But I refuse to believe that there is a supernatural being who is monitoring all my thoughts. 

Jesus, give me some privacy, will you?  Or, if you are monitoring, how about granting some of those wishes for a change.