The text by Michel Foucault provides an outline of the security measures taken in a certain town that was facing a plague. The design of the tower is in such a way that the guard can watch all the prisoners from a strategic point at the middle. The prisoners were not in a position to see neither the guard nor their colleagues. With such a confinement, all the prisoners had to maintain discipline. The design of the tower and the quarantine measures imposed on the citizens of the town is clear indication of the influence of power.
This introduces us to the various effects of power in the society and the change that power can bring in a societal setting. In the current world, it is evident to see that power has overtaken individual freedom and ability to address freewill among members of the society. With power, we have been reduced to mere citizens who have to submit to the laws and regulations without even questioning on the consequences of what we are being forced to oblige to.
Interrogation room is a perfect example of Panopticism in the modern world. In an interrogation room, the person being interrogated is seen by officers from the outside but does not see them. This reflects on how power should be seen as visible whose presence can never be verified. The mirror plays an important role of a sociological machine that influences the thinking of the person being interrogated and gives the officers a sense of power within the confinement.
Under such an environment, it is likely that the subject will temporarily lose their innate identity and oblige to accusations that might be false. Just as how Michael describes it, the interrogation room can be likened to a laboratory where the officers bring people to derive information and observe their behaviors during the interrogation. Depending on the behavior portrayed by the subject being interrogated, the officers in charge believe that they are in a position to gauge the validity of the information being given.
Looking the piece from a religious perspective, it is evident that the piece depicts the role of religion in the society. Biblically, God is all knowing than any other living creature. At a lesser scale, Michel depicts how God influences our behaviors. From religion, we know that God is in heaven and watches all our deeds on daily basis.
We all believe that God is always watching us, near us, and knows what we think. This makes us have a constant fear that God is always watching us and therefore we should be showing good deeds at all times despite the circumstances. However, none of the living creatures is sure about the criteria used by God in watching us. No human being has the evidence that God is always watching us but we always believe that he is always watching us.
With this fear in our minds, our behaviors are influenced and we will always want to impress God in our actions. This is due to the religious teaching that the people who disobey God and do actions against his will burn in eternal hell. With these issues in mind, I see Panopticism being good. It is an intellectual way of maintaining order where individuals rule themselves by the fear of dire consequences believed to befall the victims.