Meaghan Sempowich

Professor Rodrigues Rangel de Assis

Global Connection 2102-248

27 February 2017

Paradise to hell

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced

anything but a hell. This quote is from an Anglo-Austrian philosopher

named Karl Popper. This quote is about making a promise to make the

world go round and filling promises leaders make to their people. In the

end leaders do what they want regardless of the peoples voices and

make the place they live a living hell. Often times one see this type of

promise made in dictatorships. According to Dictionary.com a dictator

is a person excessing absolute power, especially a ruler who has

absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary

succession. Dictators are the ones who promise to make the world like

paradise but just make it hell.

A time in history that is related to this quote is the Holocaust and

how Hitler was a dictator. Hitlers goal was to make Germany perfect

by killing all the Jews. This included having gas chambers, doing

physical labor, starving them to death, and many more gruesome

things. In order to do that he needed to gain a lot of power. In the

book The Evolution of Economic System it talks about how the

distribution of power affects everything. It says that the reason some

people have more power over others is because they control the

resources and have more political influence. Hitler had many people

under his control. His troops would go into houses and rip people from

their homes and tear families apart without questioning it. He

collapsed the Jewish peoples wealth by taking over their stores and

making them poor. He would steal their jewelry, china, anything with

value. He also had supporters who supported all his decisions to hate

the Jews and get rid of them. He did this through empty promises to

the people about having a perfect life. He believed that all of these

things were justified because he was creating a better Germany after

the World War destroyed his countrys pride. This picture of a new

paradise on the horizon for his country captured many peoples hearts,

and they did not care what methods he needed to go to in order to

achieve it. These methods unfortunately contributed to creating a

living hell for many people, and in the end did not fulfill the promise of

a paradise for his people.

Another dictator that represents this quote is Joseph Stalin. He

was a ruthless ruler out of the Soviet Union who ruled by fear. Million of

people died under his control and many were left scarred by the things

he did. When he became in power he forced people into labor camps or

just executed them on the spot. Stalin controlled all the farms. This led

to millions dying from famine. He didnt allow freedom of speech about

the government and if he found out that people were rebelling against
him he would execute them. Stalin would use secret police and

convince people to spy on one another. His dictatorship is much like

the one in the book 1984 with Big Brother. Big Brother controlled

everything in his society and made others spy on each other and

report back to him. Those who went behind Big Brothers back were

tortured and killed. In the end the readers came to the conclusion that

the type of ruling was a dictatorship and the citizens were not happy.

When comparing Stalin to Big Brother one sees many similarities.

When Stalin got into office he promised his people many things but in

reality made it a living hell for all who lived in the Soviet Union.

A final example of a dictator that fits in with this quote is Mao

Zedong. His efforts to rapidly advance the economy also created a

widespread famine that killed an estimated 30 million people.

Although he instituted many programs that were good for the

advancement of the country, they had many negative effects such as

leading to things like class struggles and were very destructive to the

country. His vision and intention of creating a better China, or making it

a paradise, was arguably overshadowed by the many deaths and

negative effects these advancement programs created.

As we see through these many examples, dictators who exercise

absolute power may have good intentions, but end up inevitably

building a living hell. All three of these men wanted to increase their

countrys national pride through improving them, whether it was

picking them up after a war or pushing them to keep up with the

advancements of the rest of the world. But it is nearly impossible to

stay under control when one has complete power over a large group of

people, and this limitless authority eventually led to deaths of many

people in these three cases. Karl Poppers quote has rang true through

time, as these leaders show that you simply cant create paradise

through absolute rule.

Work Cited

Clark, Barry Stewart. The evolution of economic

systems: varieties of capitalism in the global

economy. New York: Oxford U Press, 2016. Print.