Abi Madrid

Emami

Humanities 1

Due: 1/10/19

1/9/19

The Unfairness of the Desire for Power

The desire for power is an enduring issue because when people have the need to have power over things people do, say, and feel it can lead to things becoming unfair, unequal, and unlawful. A ruler should never murder people that don’t believe the same things they do, support the same things they do, or go against the things the ruler believes should be happening. Shi Huangdi and Adolf Hitler were both autocrats who believed everyone should obey their orders and beliefs and anyone that didn’t would be killed or punished in cruel, inhumane ways.

An autocrat, or dictator, is a ruler who has absolute power. Based off of my understanding of the Some Characteristics of an Autocrat, 2012, document, autocrats are people that make all the decisions for the people. Autocrats control things like people’s religions, beliefs, and power making it unequal and unfair but not giving people the option to stand up for themselves or their families without punishment. Autocrats also make the laws and decide the punishments if the laws are broken, even if the law is unfair and the punishment is harsh people would still have to follow them. As a dictator there is so many choices that they make for people that people should be making for themselves, which is unfair because the people should make the choices for who’s in the government, what laws should and shouldn’t be passed, and what they can believe in or not. Autocrats have always been around and some nations today are ruled by dictators even though people shouldn’t have to live that way ever.

According to The Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian, 2017, the desire for power was what Shi Huangdi was known for, and among the most infamous acts of the emperor that were recorded were the “burning of the books,” ordered in 213 BCE, and the “execution of scholars,” ordered in 212 BCE. “The burning of the books,” was the order that all historical records, besides the ones of Qin, be burned because scholars were reading them and spreading the word to the people of all the bad things Shi Huangdi was doing, which made the people want to turn against Shi’s rules. Because Shi Huangdi’s desire for power was so strong he ordered that

all the books the scholars were reading be burned and never spoken of again. If anyone who was not a court scholar tried to keep the ancient songs, historical records or writings of the hundred schools then the documents would be confiscated and burned by the provincial governor and army commander. The people that would talk about or quote the old songs and records would be punished by public execution (460 rebellious Confucian scholars were buried alive in a giant grave and many others were stoned to death). The people that used the old laws to go against the new laws would have their families killed, and officers who knew people were doing these things but failed to report them were punished in the same way. If a person didn’t destroy their old books after 30 days of the issuing of the order the owners of the books would have their face tattooed and be condemned to hard labor at the Great Wall. the only old books that were allowed to stay were the books about medicine, divination, and agriculture. The people that wanted to study law would have to learn from officers. This is unfair to the people because people should be allowed to believe what they want to believe, read what they want to read, and say what they want to say without consequences. If the scholars and books are destroyed then all the past knowledge of what China was like before is gone, so people today can’t study life before Shi very well.

According to the 1938 – The Nazi SS in a Parade article from wikipedia, and my outside knowledge of the Nazi’s and WWII, in the 1930’s and 1940’s the Nazi’s took over Germany, led by a man named Adolf Hitler. The Schutzstaffel, or SS, was a protective squad that was an important tool of Nazi terror. The SS started off as a special guard for Hitler and in 1934, the SS became the private army of the Nazi party. They used ruthless tactics throughout Germany to find, arrest, and murder political opponents (like Jewish people) and had a goal to get rid of all people against the acts of terror. Sometimes they would even go door to door looking for Hitler’s enemies or anyone who had ever spoken against Hitler. Everyone against Hitler were held in concentration camps all over Germany where they were persecuted. Hitler was an autocrat just like Shi Huangdi was because they both took control over a certain place and started killing everyone that didn’t like the things they did or didn’t believe in/ support the same things they did. Shi and Hitler killed everyone that tried to go against them and felt no remorse for it.  Hitler’s actions during WWII were unfair to everybody because again, people should be able to believe in what they want, say and feel what they want, and do everyday things how they want without the fear that they would get murdered for doing it.

Autocrats have always been a common thing, like in 200 BCE when Shi Huang di was the ruler of the Qin Dynasty and murdered everyone against him and everyone that didn’t have the same beliefs as him, and in the 1930’s when Hitler took over Germany and killed everyone that went against him and didn’t believe the things he did. The consequences of these actions was that there would be people in the world that didn’t support his choice to kill everyone which would lead to people protesting, attacking, and Being an autocrat shows the great desire for  power some people have and how unfair they are willing to be that they will murder innocent people that get in their way of being in full control, people that don’t support the things they do, and people that believe things other than what the dictator does.