**TL;DR - People associate power with violence and repression, but this just power in its most obstructive form. People are less likely to notice normalizing power, which is far more capable of predicting and regulating our behavior. Normalizing power is not good or bad, but it's certainly everywhere in society and our lives have been influenced by it more than repression.** When we think of institutions using power, we usually think of police officers using force to handle a protest, or an angry boss telling his employees to work harder, or a powerful country using military force to invade a weaker country. We think of power through repression, it's the most visible form of power, and this can be manifested in the form of physical, mental, and political violence. However, these acts of violence are not the use of power but rather the failure of institutions, if police officers have to use force against protestors it’s because protestors decided not to follow the law or at least were perceived not to do so. A boss that has to yell at their employees about what to do is not really in control. If a powerful country has to go through the trouble of invading another country, it means they failed to get what they wanted from the weaker ones. Although violence and repression are the most visible form of power, if an institution had normalizing power, they would not need to use violence. Normalizing power is influencing people to behave, accept information, and do as they are told without questioning authority [1]. Repressive power forces people to do actions they do not want to do, normalizing power makes people want to do whatever society believes they should be doing. Normalizing power is not only preventative but also subtle and compelling. For example, very few of us will ever steal something from a store, and we're not likely to go to jail for it. Most are not afraid of stealing because of going to jail, in fact, most of us simply don’t think about stealing at all. This is due to the efficiency of our parents and educational institutions at normalizing and teaching us not to steal to the point we prevent ourselves from even thinking about it. You don’t need to use repressive power to threaten people not to steal if they already do what is right and not do it [2] [3]. Our lives had rarely been influenced by repressive power or the threat of repressive force, but every corner of our lives has been drastically influenced by normalization. This power doesn’t only come from institutions like the government alone; it's exercised by schools, families, hospitals, mental clinics, and businesses. There is no powerful few that normalizes society, it's society itself that normalizes society [3]. Society gives an employee an idea of how an employee should behave, but the boss is also given an idea about how a boss should behave. Everyone has some role in society thanks to normalizing power. References: [1] Means of Correct Training https://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/jbell/foucaultcorrecttraining.pdf [2] Discipline and Punish (1975) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish [3] Foucault: power is everywhere (excerts) https://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/foucault-power-is-everywhere/