Modern civilization has become one that
is centralized around fear: fear of the unknown terror, fear of the neighbor,
and fear of the alien. Fear is an extremely powerful tool that governments and
rogue individuals can employ at a whim in order to establish dominance over
those claimed by fear’s death-like embrace. Lao-Tzu, a well-established sixth
century writer, warns us that fear is not the way by which those in power
should govern their people. Instead, he glorifies the benevolent and calm ruler
who does not seek to empower himself over the people, but instead allows the
people to empower him. While agreeably an ideal scenario, the time of Daoist
philosophy is gone. Those currently in power instead choose to adopt
Machiavellian codes of conduct, where they can use fear to their advantage.
While not necessarily inspiring fear in their subjects, these modern leaders
choose to manipulate our darkest
fears against their enemies. A random attack on a nation is taken and
manipulated by the government to forge a weapon of anger and hate against an
alien whom the common individual still has yet to understand. An unprovoked
school shooting is taken by the government-controlled media and is again
reshaped and reformed so that now we have no choice but to fear our own
neighbors. In a broader setting,
governments are able to take information that rests at the forefront of the
population’s minds, for example cancer and other health risks, and conform that
information to feed the fear that rests in the darkest corners of our
subconscious: the terror of that which we do not yet know about. Machiavelli’s
ideals are practiced today because they are the most practical; governments can
use our own fear to rally people against a singular threat. Our nation has been
asked to “speak softly, but carry a big stick”, and as Roosevelt requested, it
is doing just that.
Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteThis is great. Complex, interesting, well developed. I definitely think you're on the right track, though I do have some suggestions for improvement.
The main thing is you could probably benefit from a slightly stronger thesis statement. Machiavelli's ideals are practiced today because they are the most practical. True, but maybe address whether you agree with their practice. It's practical to use our fear to control us, but is it right? Is there a difference? Maybe tweaking or adding to your thesis ever so slightly could allow you to bring your own bias into the argument a bit more.
The other suggestions are minor. First, this might be a two paragraph intro. It's full of complex ideas, which is good, but that also makes it very weighty. Just glancing at this, maybe splitting it at "Those currently in power instead choose..." might be a good idea? Play around with it and see where you think.
Finally, the language is slightly too flowery in a couple of places. There's a fine line between eloquence and fluff, and you want to try to stay on the eloquent side. For the most part, you do, but look at "fear's death-like embrace." That idea is actually more poetic and interesting if you just say "fear's embrace." The "embrace" itself is already a metaphorical idea, since fear doesn't literally embrace us, so "death-like" just stacks metaphors on top of metaphors. Another example, you describe Lao-Tzu as a "well-established" writer. What does that mean? That kind of description requires more explanation than it's worth your time to give. If you want poetry, it's fine to overwrite in a rough draft, but then go back and cut out 80% of the excess language. Good writing's less about knowing what to put in and more about knowing what to leave out.
Overall, though, this is a great start.