Tragedies In Political Movements Throughout History example essay topic

The Wave is a video about a classroom experiment gone way out. The teacher tried to answer a student's question about the likeness of the ignorance of the German public on the Nazi's actions during World War II, like the holocaust of the Jewish people. As an experiment he started an organization called the Wave, which focused on three basic statements: Strength through discipline, Strength through community, Strength through action. To his surprise, the students accepted and responded to the organization with great ease and devotion. Out of curiosity he decided to go further and wilder with the limits of the experimentation and soon it became a mess. Students fought physically in the name of the Wave, and started to get aggressive and insensitive, as though they all have been brainwashed.

As the show progressed, we see obvious changes in the character's personality. At first, most people seemed enlightened by the movement, and inspired to be something greater, having a sense of a greater purpose than themselves. But as the experiment progressed, some people began to show signs of aggression and abuse, while some people realized that the movement had moved from what they thought it would be in the first place. Unfortunately, the latter seemed to be an extremely minor fraction of the population. Although the reason of change and the results of the changing of personality may be different to each individual (like social outcasts may find a new sense of being in the movement, or bored individuals seeking for a new purpose), they generally become less aware of who they were originally, and indulged into a world where they THINK they are doing things for the good of the whole movement. A good theory to the reason for this may be that social movements like this one may seem sensible and meaningful at first, so individuals feel a sense of a truly working harmony that inspired everyone, but after a while things fall apar because of flaws in the concept and individual's greed and hidden nature of evil.

Individuals may be ignorant of this because they compromised themselves to the way things are in the movement and cannot go out to see the big picture. Such ignorance is what caused many tragedies in political movements throughout history. Although in the video, the teacher eventually brought back the sense of everyone with the help and warning of two individuals who had the awareness of seeing the big picture of what's really going on, in real politics this is almost always not the case. People who had the sense are usually ignored of silenced. Form this video we can learn that we cannot give up our sense to anything and must always be alert of who we are, and what we are.

Let history not repeat itself, as the teacher had successfully demonstrated in the video.