Cara Ketcham
Blog 3
Weber discusses power, domination, discipline, and there differences and dependence on each other. He describes power as a term that is “used to refer to every possibility with in a social relationship of imposing one’s own will, even against opposition without regard for the basis of this possibility”. What he is saying is that an individual in a relationship with others, has the ability to make others do what he/she wants them to do. Even if someone doesn’t want to do what the individual wants them to do, the person with the power will try and impose it anyways. Anyone can possess the qualities needed for power depending on what the situation is and who is involved. This is the broadest of the three terms Weber discusses and in order to have dominance and discipline, you need power. Next, we have domination which is more specific. Weber describes this as “the possibility of finding a specified group to obey a command of a determinate content”. What this means is that an individual can gain power over a certain select group of people, but it’s up to them to go along with it. An example could be your boss. They tell you to come in on Saturday for work and you do it. A teacher would be another example. They say you have a test on Monday, so you go home to study and come back on Monday to complete the test. But the thing with domination is that there is always the possibility that someone will say no. With this concept, the person being dominated still has to give their consent to be dominated. People still have their own minds, morals, and limits to what they will or will not do. This brings us to discipline. Weber describes discipline as “the possibility of finding a specifiable number of people who in virtue of a habitual attitude will obey a command in a prompt, automatic and unthinking manner”. This is the most extreme version of power. Weber is saying that with discipline someone will do whatever is asked of them without any thought process. They will disregard their beliefs, values, and morals to do whatever was asked of them without resistance. Weber uses the term habit to help compare discipline, with the difference of a habit being something that’s usually done on an individual level while discipline refers to large groups of people. Some examples of discipline would be cults like Jonestown. Jim Jones had the people in the cult drink poisonous Kool-Aid and almost a thousand people willingly died (though some articles claim some of the people were forced to drink it, but that can’t be confirmed and audio tapes found appear to show otherwise). They even had dry runs where people would practice drinking poisonous Kool-Aid. Another example would be the Holocaust during WWII. Many of the Nazi willing did horrible things to the Jews, which they probably never would have done if it wasn’t for their disciplined behavior. In short, power and domination, in my opinion, isn’t a bad thing. We need leaders and we need direction, but we also need the ability to say no and have limits. When we get into discipline things get scary. From my understanding, I see discipline as almost on the same level as brain washing. When you lose what makes you your own person, such as your own morals and beliefs, you become someone else and if someone needs to force you and large amounts of people to do something, chances are it’s not something you should be doing.