“Anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively, without reflecting, to a new situation” – On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder
To follow and to react without consideration for your environment and your actions is the idea of anticipatory obedience is, and is what I believe allows for dictators to take power. PLP 12 has just completed our first Humanities project all about authoritarianism and dictatorships. From analyzing historical leaders to looking at the North Korean Kim regime, this project pushed us to not just know the actions and strategies these people used, but to understand the effects there choices had in regards to psychology, government and freedoms that stem from these movements.
To begin this project, we refreshed ourselves with some important of ideology definitions. We analyzed various government and economic systems and the basic structures that hold these societies together for the future keystones of this project. It was very important that we understood these ideologies and systems as without proper knowledge, building our own dictatorship would be very difficult.
Ultimately the goal of this project was to create both a keystone presentation and a debate with a partner of our choice. The keystone presentation would outline our very own plan to take over not fictional or nonfictional state using the tactics we learned from dictators. on the other hand the debate would be a 3 minute scripted argument between two partners that would represent the voices of reason versus the speech of a dictator.
In this project I worked with Jakub and we believed that the best course of action was to apply our learning to an environment we are familiar with, our school. We decided that in our presentation, that we would plan to take over using a similar program to PLP that would corrupt the youth as they are still with undeveloped minds. Our party would Target these youth using a plethora strategies from creating hierarchies to inventing fictional problems that we made our followers believe had an immediate urgency to solve. Here is our presentation if you want to read about it some more:
Our speech did not have to be related to our presentation but since me and Jakub are very confident in our idea we decided to follow through. I represented the voice of democracy while Jakub would preach the Bright Beginnings community brainwashing agenda. We chose to include many similar phrases that politicians or dictators have used in the past to show our understanding and to also parody these effective rhetorics. You can read our speech here:
Ms. Madsen:
Good morning Seycove. Welcome to the annual student council presidential debate. We have 2 candidates vying for your vote today. The incumbent president Jordan Lo, and the challenger, Jakub Hoffman.
Jakub:
Good morning my fellow Seyhawks, my name is Jakub and I’m here to talk to you about something very serious; your education and our future.
Do you really have power over your education?
Can you really decide your future?
Or are the lazy teachers and incompetent school board the ones who have the power?
The power to change your grade or your career path by the whim of their pen.
We can change the system. We will build something where the focus is the students; and instead of being lead by an incompetent school board and unfair teachers, the power will be with us.
Jordan:
Our school system, like this great country, is rooted in democracy, you – the students, have the power over the school. While this strength is far from being direct, we need to preserve democracy by using your voices to enact the changes you want to see. We walk, we study, we prosper.
Jakub: (to audience) And how has that been working for you so far?
Seycove is a small school within our district, and with their greater numbers, other schools steal the resources that are rightfully ours. It’s the worst problem Seycove has ever seen! I have come to realize that we are victims of this system and we must rise up from this oppressive system in order to prevail. The schools take our families’ hard earned money to lavish the teachers and the board under the banner of “education”. They overcharge cafeteria prices and give us the worst food. I will make sure that we the students will never eat overpriced soggy sandwiches again.
Jordan:
This man is trying to control you but I know you are smarter than that! His iron fist is not the answer, when we can push for change ourselves? We decide how we use our money and under our educational democracy, we can alter the budget of the board. It’s morning in Seycove, we have so much to learn from our teachers and comfortable allowances to live. Rather than follow a dictator who invents issues from the figments of our imagination, use our logic to think before we believe.
Jakub:
Crooked Jordan is part of the elite! Do not listen to him and his comfortable allowance. He does not understand you. He does not understand us! We need to rise up against this system if we want to have any chance at making Seycove great again.
Right now we are divided. We are lonely within the school society and need a community. The Bright Beginnings Community will solve loneliness within Seycove by building a strong and robust community of us Seycove students.
Jordan:
Jakub’s lonely because nobody is here to entertain his nonsense. While our Seycove society might not be perfect, preservation of our democratic roots will be corrupted by his commanding nature. He tries to make us riot in a peaceful community. He takes away personal freedom. He wants us to follow him to salvation which he may not realize is actually our demise.
How does democracy guide you? Isn’t that just you guiding yourself?
Democracy leads to a more equal and inclusive society. In the long run, it’s more stable. I hope we can continue with it.
Honestly, I found that this project was more than the learning I was used to as I felt very connected with topic we were studying. Reading the book, On Tyranny, provided examples of what to look out for in my own life. this project made me feel the importance of democracy similar to our PLP 11 project “School Like Society”. If I was to take one thing away from this project, it would be that no matter how good of a influencer a dictator you are, if people stop to think, it would be impossible to control them. This is how we can prevent our own system from ever breaking down.
Thank you Ms Madison for the last month and I hope to whomever is reading this, to have a nice Christmas.
Thank you.