Does surveillance make us morally better?

Central argument: The use of surveillance can help society follow the rules more closely but it harms a person’s moral education and development.

I agree with Emery Westcott’s argument about the use of surveillance and its effects on our society. He says that surveillance can help people follow rules and regulations, but it puts a block on people’s moral development and education. Everyone including me knows the difference between the level of satisfaction you get when you want to do the want thing and when you have to do the right thing. Like the author mentioned in his article, what would happen if god placed a close circuit camera on the tree of knowledge, we would still be living in a utopian garden of Eden, but the point is that god wanted humans to act upon free will and often surveillance undermines that free will. German philosopher Emanuel Kant said “ our actions are right when they conform to the moral rules dictated to us by our reason, and they have moral worth insofar as they are motivated by respect for that moral law. In other words, my actions have moral worth if I do what is right because I want to do the right thing.”

In many instances of our lives, moral development is slowed down due to the use of surveillance. I still remember the tea time monitor in my elementary school. One day a student helped clean up all the cups and plates left behind after tea time, he was rewarded with praise and a candy by the tea time monitor for his good deed. In the following weeks almost every student in the class helped clean up the tea time area when the monitor was watching, but no one cared about cleaning up when the monitor was not there. The first student to clean up did it out of sheer good will but what about the others. Just because someone was watching, just because there was surveillance the kids decided to the right thing. Due to the presence of that monitor, the children missed out on the opportunity to get influenced by that first student and clean up out of free will. They even missed out on the opportunity to get true satisfaction and pleasure from what they doing as there was someone watching and there was an anterior motive to cleaning up. Basically “increased surveillance may carry certain utilitarian benefits (in this case there was a clean tea area)… But it also stunts our growth as moral individuals.”

As the use of surveillance crams into every nook and cranny of our lives, when we drive we are being watched, when we shop we are being watched, wherever we go there is a small camera watching us somewhere. As we grow older, and as generations to come are more and more influenced by the use of surveillance, many fear that “the little voice inside telling us that we should do what is right because it is right. As surveillance becomes increasingly ubiquitous, however, the chances are reduced that conscience will ever be anything more than the little voice inside telling us that someone, somewhere, may be watching.”