Suffering holds the key to the prison of constraints. Vaneigem's chapter on suffering begins with a historical narrative of human suffering – its origin in natural alienation, its subsequent transformation into social alienation, and its eventual appropriation by the bourgeoisie. The revolutionary bourgeoisie, according to Vaneigem, kept the historical system of suffering in place and merely changed the names of the myths. All this history, of course, brings us to the spectacle, which Vaneigem characterizes as "an organisation of suffering, stemming from a social organisation based on the distribution of constraints" (Vaneigem 44). We suffer because we are the mercy of constraints – because we cannot live freely. The modern spectacle has evolved passed the point where the constraints need to be obvious and overbearing; there are few Gulags and Pogroms in the first world any longer (and only one industrialized county still executes its own citizens). But though the constraints are less visible, they are more numerous – and how much bloodshed will it take to show that "a hundred pinpricks kill as surely as a couple of blows with a club" (Vaneigem 24)?

Please cross between the lines only when the little strange man permits you.

I'm sorry, but you'll have to tuck your shirt in to proceed.

No, you can't ask that question at this point in time.

The free speech hour is between twelve and one.

What are you smoking, young man?

I'm sorry, that area is closed and guarded at night.

Do you know how fast you were going?

ad nauseum... Of course, you and I will say, are some of these constraints not justified? Do they not serve the greater good? Yes, indeed they do. But Vaneigem does not contend that constraints are biased or anti-utilitarian, merely that they devalue humanity. Constraints apply to objects, not subjects. Thus, to be constrained is to be objectified. You are yourself no longer, a human reveling in your humanity, but merely an object of constraints, listlessly wandering through your own existence in whichever manner is allowed. If woman were a subject, and treated as such, she would have restraint: in considering the safety of others, she would choose to curtail her speed. The prerequisite for such a world, a world often labeled "Utopian", is a mass reversal of perspective. Such a reversal would assert each person's subjectivity, so each woman could design her own goals and restraints with everybody else's humanity in mind. Once you stop seeing yourself as an object, stopping to see others as objects isn't far off. Vaneigem challenges us to stop seeing such a world as Utopian, and to start seeing our world as Dystopian instead.

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