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Example research essay topic: People In Power Age Of Enlightenment - 1,090 words

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Discipline is an action, or idea that has been around for hundreds of years. We are all familiar with it, as we experience some form of it every day. As Foucault describes, before the age of enlightenment, the ways of punishing deviants was pure physical torture. During this time, the person who had the ability to inflict physical pain on an individual had power over that person. As in most cases, the tormentors were part of the Kings staff, or a normal citizen outraged by the act the criminal committed against his beloved King. Lucky for us, the age of enlightenment came along.

People no longer blamed natural disasters such as a tornado or a flood on God, they were learning that things happened because of natural causes, and more importantly, could be logically explained. With this type of logical thinking, along came liberty and the rule of law with a democratic government. Laws were established and society became more structured into classes; upper, middle, and lower. With people divided into classes, power was easily distributed to the people with most knowledge, who coincidentally were mostly upper class.

They moved away from sovereign power, where the King was the authority figure, as well as the visible agent of power. When he ruled, the people knew who ruled them and in what ways he did so. By adapting a disciplinary power structure, the power figures were able to control all aspects of a persons life. They had the ability to mask the power, yet not the figure in power.

This was greatly to the governments advantage, due to the fact that it made it much harder to overthrow the government, because no one really knew who was in charge. So the power was distributed to many people, not just one as with the King. The government had a hard time watching every citizen all the time, so the idea of conformity was brought in. This worked so well because citizens would govern each other into acting normal, or in other words, the way the people in power wanted them to act. People became afraid to act in a way that might make people think that they were odd, so they gladly acted like everyone else and didnt cause any trouble. In such a process, the one in power usually isnt a conscious factor in an individuals process of self normalization, due to the fact that they make themselves invisible and instill their norms in subtle ways.

This is a prime example of panoptic ism, a theory developed by Jeremy Bentham. In panoptic ism, the people govern, or normalize themselves, because they never know if the people in power are watching them. It turns the society into an orderly, mechanized, productive group. It is much easier to do the right thing, rather than risk the chance of getting punished by government. The government scare the people so that they dont misbehave.

But you never really know if they are watching you or not, so you assume that they are for the majority of the time. This makes the people in power invisible to the common citizen. They dont know exactly who is governing them, but they know they are there. This concept worked very well, as it is still happening today. We dont need the government to teach us how to act because we do it ourselves, and to each other. We are always very willing to point out a person who acts or looks different from us.

In homes across America, children are being taught how to act and fit in with the rest of society. Everytime a child is born they are put through the process, and they then grow up with the same general ideas that their parents had. The best example of disciplinary power in work are in the incidents that occurred at Waco, Texas. In this specific engagement, the government really did a good job of pulling the wool over the eyes of America. A group of people who believed in a rare from of religion, were put under torture much like some described by Foucault. The bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms went in hoping for a nice easy clip of themselves being heroes, yet turned the whole unnecessary ordeal into a killing field.

They then tried to cover it up, and were extremely unsuccessful once again. In the end, a large group of people, including many children, had died for no good reason at all, save all the great publicity the ATF received. The reason that this incident caused no problems for the ATF was because the media was denied coverage of the standoff. The public heard only what the federal government wanted them to hear, and of course they werent going to let the people of America know how badly they had screwed up. So, they portrayed David Korea as a mad man and leader of a strange, suicidal cult, and we bought it. And why not?

People love to hear about crazy wackos because it makes them feel a little more sane, and of course, a little more normal. When certain agencies of the government decided to investigate the incident at Waco, they uncovered the truth. So it turns out, none of these branch divisions were really crazy, or even a cult, and there were no illegal activities taking place at their compound, save a few illegal firearms. (Give me a break, they were in Texas! ! ) They found no reason that could justify why these people had died so unjustly, because there wasnt one. So a hearing began, and they tried to find out how this had happened, and just who was responsible for this mess.

But guess what? Everytime they had someone pinned, they pointed a finger at someone else. They could not find exactly who was responsible. In the end, the government boldly lies to people who knew better. They get away with it because they know that no one will fight for the people at Waco, and if they did, where in the hell would they start?

So in this, we view panoptic ism in its full glory. We know that people were governed, they carried their charred bodies out of the building after it had burned to the ground. But whose exactly is to blame for this? We wont ever know because this panoptic ism is at work under a government run by disciplinary power, which is everywhere around us, yet at the same time, is nowhere.


Free research essays on topics related to: due to the fact, people in power, group of people, age of enlightenment, disciplinary power

Research essay sample on People In Power Age Of Enlightenment

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