Personal Power example essay topic

Relationships at all levels involve complex power play All human history, thought and action has what Nietzsche describes as 'the will to power' at its core. An individual's desires are best explained within the context of power, as their realization more often than not necessitate the exclusion of other's desires. This can be seen in George Orwell's novel 1984, in which he uses a fictional totalitarian Government (modeled on the USSR, Nazi Germany and to a lesser extent the Medieval Catholic Church) to give an exaggerated account of how individuals and regimes use misinformation and fear to gain power over people's words, thoughts, actions and labours. The manifestations of man's quest for power are evident in all levels of relationships. People seek power in their communities, in their families, in their peer groups, relationships and institutions.

From mass revolts to domestic violence, mankind is intoxicated with the idea of gaining personal power. Orwell, in 1984, offers are simplistic, but useful, explanation of the division of power through history. There is the upper class, whose motivation is to maintain it's power, the middle class, that wishes to replace the upper, and the lower class, that wishes to eliminate the classes above it, the classes that hold power and exploits their labour potential. Throughout history, mechanisms have been employed by each of the classes to gain or maintain power.

The Upper class tried to maintain it's power by claiming a divine mandate, and creating a Monarchic personality cult. The middle class used commerce and capitalism to elevate themselves up the social ladder, and the lower classes adopted socialism with the hope of creating a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. But despite the evolution of these different mechanisms, there still remains distinct class divisions, in our society. The three different classes have changed their colours, methods and membership over time, but there still remains a minority in power, and a majority that aspire to gain power. Once one has power, however, there remains the question; how does one maintain it?

Orwell provided his own answers in 1984 through the character of O'Brien, an Ingsoc party official. The maintenance of power in Oceania has numerous facets. One was the creation of a personality cult centered on a mythical leader known as 'Big Brother'. In all likelihood Big Brother had never existed, had died, or had grown old, but in the party mythology, he was immortal and infallible; the personification of the body politic. He is used in the same manner as religions use God; he is the focus of the people's love, the giver of rewards, and the punisher of wrong deeds, all the beneficial aspects of society are attributed to him. In all practicality, he is a figurehead, the state is not administered by him at all, but from the four ministries of Love (fear), Peace (war), Plenty (scarcity) and Truth (lies).

And also, as with religion, all that is bad is blamed on a Satan-like figure, in Oceania, he is Emmanuel Goldstein. In the USSR, Stalin achieved the same result through mythologizing his own life and character, and demonizing that of his former party colleague Leon Trotsky. Another way Ingsoc maintains power is through it's involvement in a state of permanent and fruitless war. This serves as both a propaganda tool; it engenders hatred for the enemy, as opposed to their own regime, and through the use of atrocity stories, inciting an emotional response in the public, and giving moral legitimacy to war effort. This 'atrocity story' tactic is not a fictional tactic, it was used in 1990/1 by the US Government to legitimize it's war in Iraq, the American press hounded upon the story of a Kuwaiti hospital in which three hundred premature babies were killed by Iraqi soldiers. The New York Times revealed, after the end of the war that "Some of the atrocities that had been reported, such as the killing of infants in the main hospitals shortly after the invasion, are untrue or have been exaggerated" (2/28/91).

The Howard Government also used this tactic in the run up last year's federal election, when they revealed 'proof' that refugees had thrown their children overboard as their vessel was challenged by the Australian Navy. It has since been revealed that this 'evidence' was misinterpreted, or at worst, fabricated. So one can see that even democratic Governments use misinformation to maintain power and legitimacy; George Bush Snr. did it to maintain support for his war in Iraq, Howard, to draw the public mind off domestic issues and secure an election victory. Another form of power dealt with in 1984 is that of the individual over his own autonomy; freedom of thought and the power to shape one's own destiny. One of the most important manifestations of power is that of freedom. Winston Smith was motivated by this need for personal power.

He felt alone and overwhelmed by the power of the state, so he attempted to counter it by maintaining a heretical state of mind. O'Brien acknowledged the significance of this personal autonomy as a thorn in the side of the State's aspirations to permanent and all pervading power; "it is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be". The state in 1984 is one that imposes a consensus, revisionist reality, with a history that is constantly altered and corrected to suit the party line. Any deviant from this reality are punished by "vaporization". The effect is that the individual is alienated from his peers, family and friends, yet at the same time assimilated into an organic machine fueled by the thirst for power of the Oligarchy that controls it. In this reality, the only power an individual can grasp is power over that which lies between one's ears; one's thoughts.

In the film American Beauty, husband, father and white collar worker Lester Burnham feels very much in the same boat as Winston; he is dissatisfied with his job, his life, and feels oppressed in his relationship with his wife. He gains personal power for himself in the same way as Winston, by rebelling against that which he feels powerless. He quits his job, buys a sportscar, and takes up marijuana. In his home he finally explodes at the dinner table, throwing his plate at the wall, and for the first time in the movie, he has power in the household. His wife, feeling powerless herself, rebels against him by having an affair and taking up sharp shooting.

His daughter, feeling oppressed and powerless in her relationship with her parents and her best friend, seeks her own personal power through a relationship with the son of her neighbours, whose father fights to overpower his own latent homosexuality by becoming a bigot and violently asserting authority over his son, who he suspects of giving sexual favours to Lester. What we see is a harmful and often violent web of powerplay within a familial context. In 1984, Ingsoc subverts the rebellious instinct of children by encouraging them to spy on their parents and betray them to the thought police if they display unorthodox behaviour. The character Parsons was betrayed in this manner for denouncing Big Brother in his sleep. Ingsoc takes advantage of the child's own thirst for power in the household; Lewis Mumford, an American Humanist philosopher observed that "every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers"; in the case of 1984, Ingsoc has replaced the idea of a grandfather with that of Big Brother, it could be theorized that in Oceania, most outer party members do not live long enough to become grandfathers.

O'Brien has this to say for personal power; "alone, free, the human being is always defeated", this is true for both Lester and Winston, they were both destroyed in the end, the former by a bullet, the latter through prolonged torture and brainwashing. 1984 offers a chilling picture of power, and the potential for great injustice in it's acquisition. It is by no means pure fiction; there were obvious elements of Oceania in Nazi Germany, the USSR, and regimes like the one set up by the Communists in Cambodia were terrifying emulations of Ingsoc. Have no illusions about human nature, power can corrupt anyone. Bill Clinton once said "politics gives guys so much power that they tend to behave badly around women. And I hope I never get into that" - a fairly self explanatory example of the corruption of power.

Even in Democratic countries we see Politicians misleading the public for the sake of personal and political power. Mankind can veil his desires with noble intent, but what really exists is only the will to power, In 1984, O'brien dismisses the rhetoric of all the socialist and fascist revolutions before his, and offers this maxim; "one does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship... The object of power is power.".