"What makes the gaze of authority special is that the watched voluntarily simplify and order their own behavior to prepare to act on the desires of the watcher.
This is the reason authority induces power. Just by looking, it turns what it sees into a ready and waiting instrument capable of enacting its intentions within a space of desires. Authoritarian seeing is like a magnetic field acting on a domain of free agency."
...
"Why? Because authority exercised through direct coercive action is inefficient to the point of being useless beyond a certain scale. But authority expressed and exercised through the authoritarian eye is nearly infinitely scalable. The source of this leverage is of course the fact that humans (and agents in general), unlike non-sentient matter, can recognize and respond to being seen."
...
"The condition of a social system that has submitted to authority is a sort of self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating collective learned helplessness."
This is the reason authority induces power. Just by looking, it turns what it sees into a ready and waiting instrument capable of enacting its intentions within a space of desires. Authoritarian seeing is like a magnetic field acting on a domain of free agency."
...
"Why? Because authority exercised through direct coercive action is inefficient to the point of being useless beyond a certain scale. But authority expressed and exercised through the authoritarian eye is nearly infinitely scalable. The source of this leverage is of course the fact that humans (and agents in general), unlike non-sentient matter, can recognize and respond to being seen."
...
"The condition of a social system that has submitted to authority is a sort of self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating collective learned helplessness."
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/03/22/social-dark-matter-on-s...