#flyinggrayndeers

in feudalish times, people were more violent bc you had to be, like you had to carry a sword bc there was a fair chance of getting stabbed randomly and no formal police force and the royals were busy caught up in loyalty conflicts

but as time went on and things became more structured and in order to make sure power structures were solid and everyone didn't kill each other conflict had to be formalised? so for the nobles, court politics developed

simultaneously in exchange for the protection of the police force, the underclasses had to stop stabbing each other mostly and submit to the laws

and then, the middle classes start imitating the nobles so the nobles get even more formal and so on and so forth

and all this happens in order to and by it's effect, to make the ruling classes and government the only people who can truly enact violence

SO. hannibal having all the exquisite manners and cultural capital of that most elite european nobility, using the most formal dining systems, working with that police system to whose laws you submit for protection and then EATING PEOPLE

EATING THE RUDE

oh my god i can't deal with it

also also foucault has this thing called biopower which involves a lot of terms i cannot spell off the top of my head but basically goes - at the same time as the above, firstly the common people were a resource for taxing and wars, but then as that happened the government realised 'hey if we look after the workforce they won't die as much' so we get more and more care and health regulations and no smoking ads

and while we get awesome things like vaccines we also get more and more structures to exercise power over us and, y'know