In Fiction

The panopticon is a model of authoritarian society. I think the fiction referenced in this song would be the works of Orwell, and Huxley, and Atwood of all those who foresaw dystopia in our future.

We would like to think that these stories are just that - fiction. The bones of the dead are only in our imaginations, not in the streets.

But our world is steadily progressing towards a workable facsimile of one of these stories. Go through your day and count up how many cameras get a look at you. Think about the concept of DNA registration that very nearly became a reality in Great Britain, largely through misinformation and the sheer apathy of voters. There's nowhere to hide. What was foreseen in tales of fiction is nowadays not so hard to imagine as a real future.

Here's my take on the song: The first 2 lines are pretty straight forward. We (as human beings) always imagine how the future might be. We even write novels and movies depicting what we imagine. Whatever we imagine the future to be is fiction, obviously, because we can't see into the future. The next two lines signify that dark underbelly of humanity. That darkside to the human psyche. We imagine possiblities, futures, new technologies and somewhere along the lines a negative thought, or idea works its way in. For example, someone develops a new technology that could stand to benefit mankind but someone poses the question, "How can this be turned into a weapon?". Like for example Lise Meitner, a physicist, who contributed to the discovery of nuclear fission. She wanted this technology to be able to help mankind while others wanted to turn it into a weapon. Or sometimes that "dark idea" is born out of fear, like in Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. He imagined a future with robots that might eventually be turned against mankind or turn against us of their own freewill. We see movies that take place in the near future where an asteroid or a comet is headed for the earth. We see more sci-fi movies that have aliens, robots or Artificial Intelligences that are malicious than movies in which they're friendly or benign. So even when we try to imagine a positive future for ourselves a lot of the times we end up imagining a dark future that contains some disaster awaiting us. Which leads to the last 2 lines. The sun is sort of the great observer, which ties in with the whole Panopticon theme. The sun is always there, it may set but it always rises again. But aslo the sun is used to measure the passage of time. Which has a lot to do with what the song is about. And the last line is pretty straightforward. We can't hide from ourselves. We can't hide from our true nature. Which has to do with the first 4 lines. Even when whe try to imagine a bright, positive future there's always some trial or obstacle to overcome or some disaster awaiting us. This is just human nature. It's part of who we are as a species. Which is why so many people write novels and movies about a future that contains some underlying darkness, catastrophe or "...bones. Ugly in their nakedness." because it appeals to us and who we are.

The best part of this song is the bass riff at the end...fucking orgasmic.

Hah i completely disagree with sinister morality and effpee, since when has isis ever wrote about the bible? Naw its more about the Superficialities in society and the predestined control like McDonald's commercials controlling a little kid. Its similar to what geofare wrote, the mortal sun wasnt the fiction, that's why they are seperated by paragraph and parts in the song, because and seperated with the association with panopticon and governmental control. People are in fiction, our mind sets, the sun is very obviously the one not part of it, watching over. At the same time the sun represents the panopticon tower... sooo its ALSO representing the opposite, what is really causing much of this.

Our estimates of a future are just as fabricated, illusory, and rationalized as our past. We invent our future to mask our disappointing present or deny our own mortality.

To me, this song is a quite straightforward take on religion....

'Through fiction we saw the birth Of futures yet to come.'

Religious writings, i.e. The Bible: a work of fiction, which told of things to happen in the future, i.e. Revelations

'Yet in fiction lay the bones, Ugly in their nakedness.'

Religious writings have no credence, they are hyperbole, they have no flesh, no materiality. The bones of some old fables, stories... Naked and without foundation.

'Yet under this mortal sun, We cannot hide ourselves.'

The Sun is real, it appears everyday. It will continue to do so - no one is immortal, or risen again, or anything like that. None of us can hide from the fact that each time the sun rises we are a day nearer our own demise. We won't be 'saved' or taken to some place up in the clouds....

It's a reality check, and a great song.

Once again there is nothing left to say except look at the person right above me.

i only have to disagree a little with Geofare. i think the song is about how the idea of the Panoptican came into being because their have been so many books written on the idea of a Panoptican and it shows that if we dream the future up, there is also the possibility that we can go down the path we just made for ourselves.

the last two lines signify the guard of the Panoptican. he is the "mortal sun" : he is always watching the prisoners worlds and will eventually pass on but for now the cannot escape his everseeing gaze.

geofare, I salute you!

I kind of disagree with Geofare. "Yet in fiction lay the bones, Ugly in their nakedness." seems to imply that the futures that we think up in our fiction, never come to pass. They are born in fiction and they die there, never given the chance to become truth. We dream of futures yet to come, but in the end we do nothing. Our ugly mistakes, what we should have done and what we didn't do, all remain clearly visible. We cannot hide this basic trait of humanity, hence we cannot hide ourselves.

But then again, that's just what I thought about it, and I'm probably wrong. But I don't care.