Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this.

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So last episode, we talked about the possibility of a digital penopticon emerging.

We talked about Foucault, the relationship between knowledge and power,

and an important follow-up on all that. For the beginning of this episode today,

is that one of the things Foucault's most interested in when he's doing his work,

is that he wants to figure out how exactly people's behavior is being controlled within a society.

What are all the ways that people are compelled to behave in a particular way,

and not just when it comes to the obvious ones that people typically think about?

See, because throughout the history of Western philosophy,

a lot of thinkers have looked at power and tried to understand how it functions,

and most of them looked at something like the government as the thing that's in power

that's passing the laws and controlling people's behavior.

It all seems very obvious. You got to follow the laws.

You don't follow the laws. Ultimately, there's a gun to your head forcing you to do it.

In philosophical terms, you could call that the sovereign power,

compelling people to do things under threat of violence, because they control the military.

And Foucault definitely acknowledges that that's a form of power in society.

He's just saying that if you only looked at the government as the thing that has power over people,

then you're going to be missing out on a lot of important ways your behavior is disciplined,

controlled, drilled, and normalized into particular lanes by institutions in society.

...