Sunday, May 17, 2009

What is Power

Power is control over a group of people, an item, or an object. There is a large variety of power, and this power can be misused by everyone, even by the leaders who started out with good intentions for society. Some examples of these would be political power, and economic power.

Economic power is an excellent way to trade and boosts the entire country. It is a way of westernizing the poor countries by trade and efficiently creating highly crafted objects. It brought in the idea of capitalism, where the division of poor and rich kicked in. The bigger countries said that they where only trying to westernize the undeveloped countries but the real reason was to benefit the rich and cause the rich to become richer. Another example is for globalization. It is evident that globalization is good because it allows us to get merchandise for the cheapest and efficient way. This is why we have McDonalds in India, and other stores. But this power also harms the others around them. It increases poverty because the rich hire cheap labor and pay insufficient wages for the workers, giving the rich a bigger profit at the end of the day.

Another type of power would be political power. Many historical events happened because of power. Some examples would be Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin. They all had a good intention for society but their ideas went wrong because they had too much power. Stalin wanted to make everyone equal; as did Lenin, but whilst doing that he lost his original intention because he had too much control over people. Hitler was a lunatic, and he had no good intentions from the start of his leadership till the end of it, his intentions to begin where to unite all Germans, get more land, and to take over the world. He went mad with the amount of power he received which is mainly why his plan had failed. More examples of political power would be Marie Antoinette, a woman who abused her power to benefit herself, Louis XV a man who cared less for the people he ruled over. Even more examples are Tsar Nicholas, a man who enjoyed the rich life and never understood the poor, and finally Sadam Hussain, a man who used brutal techniques to hurt those around him.

Power is when you know your limit, and when you know what is right. To have a good control over people, and to know when to say when, and to understand that there are always consequences for what you do to whatever you are in control of. Power can be misused easily, and it is a difficult ability to posses, but once you have it, there is no stopping what you can do with it. In the end it can either make you or break you. You can be a Hitler, or you can be someone people look up to. The choice is yours.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

End of Pop

Three things that i learned from population project are time management, using a stronger voice and interpreting data. Time management will help me in high school so i will not fall behind in my classes. Using a stronger voice helps me in the future by improving my writing and allow me to use an academic tone in my writing. And also interpreting data will increase my understand about numbers and relationships between two sets of data

Power or Control

In my novel, Hunger Games, both themes of power or control are present because the capitol has the power and controls the districts, but since I must choose one, I would choose control. In the Hunger Games, the Capitol has control over the people and what they are meant to do. For example, District 11 is in charge of agriculture and District 12 is in mining. The capitol had decided this and that gives them control over the twelve districts. Another way that control is shown in the book is on page 82 of the novel. On this page is a brief description of the Avox Girl being taken away by a hover craft because she did something the capitol was against. They took her away, made her a worker, killed her friend, and cut up her tongue. This is one other way the capitol has power of the people. one more example that control is shown throughout the Hunger Games, is when Katniss, the main character, is in the arena. She has no control over what happens such as, fires, or storms, or the rules that the Game-Makers decide upon. She only has to survive. and the Game-Makers have complete control over how they want to affect the games and meddle around as much as possible. In my novel I believe that control is the main theme and it is the capitol who has complete control over the people in Panem.