Jeremy Bentham

England was in the throes of a convulsion not the less profound because it was silent.

Bentham had at last come into his own, and under the stress of his urgent protests, English institutions were being transformed into the organs of a middle-class state.

The relics of feudalism had at last submitted to the assaults of Ricardo and his school, and the newborn industrialism, even if to an observant eye it seemed but the grim doctrines of Calvin translated to an economic sphere, completely altered the atmosphere of social life.

The revolution, indeed, did not achieve its purpose without suffering.

As early as 1805, Charles Hall had uttered a remarkable protest against the implications of the new civilisation and that half-forgotten school of economists who form a link between the individualism of Bentham and the co-operation of Owen were riddling its protective armour in the name of social justice.

The masses had regarded the Reform Act of 1832 as the prelude to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and their disappointment expressed itself in the revolutionary activity of the trade unions and the formation of the Chartist movement.

Thinkers like William Thompson and J. F. Bray, noble-minded agitators like Francis Place and William Lovett, are every whit as indicative of the new capitalism as the great merchants and the incredible machines of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Anyone who reads the history of the industrial struggle in Colorado or West Virginia will find it difficult to discover a limit of unreason which capitalism is not willing consistently to overpass.

So just to illustrate and provide a kind of evolution of the ideas that define liberalism.

You've got John Locke, you've got John Stuart Mill, you've got Adam Smith, you've got Jeremy Bentham.

You do a brilliant job.

Anybody who wants to think or get a sense of political thought over the last 200 years should read this essay.

That is what the cloud wants us to forget, that, like, there are people and institutions and, and, like, flesh and blood people doing things to make things happen and make things be remembered.

In the last episode, we mentioned utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

He's the panopticon guy, if you recall.

And as it turns out, he took institutional remembrance further than maybe any human being on record ever has.

This was called the Panopticam.

Of course it was.

It watched the people looking at him, the panopticon guy watching us all at last, which means Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian philosopher, panopticon designer, dead since 1832, was also one of history's first 24/7 live streamers.

And to think, he came up with this idea two centuries before Twitch.