Origins Of Totalitarian Hannah Arendt Summary

The week’s reading is The Origins of Totalitarian by Hannah Arendt. In this reading, she talks about the origins of a totalitarian state and how they, the power holder, strive for control. Some of the ways the power holders hold power is through the gullibility of the people being ruled and that the fear of their “freedom” being taken. From this reading, there were some questions that I had about it ranging from the rationale to her thinking to the freedoms that each citizen's had under a totalitarian state.
One of the first questions that I had was about how does creativity still exist in a society where everything is outlawed by the state? It’s my belief that in a totalitarian state that even the slightest of creativity or any sorts of freedom will be immediate grounds of imprisonment. She mentions this through “those crackpots and fools whose lacks of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” However, if a state of this forms then there is a slight possibility that the most intelligent will purposely pretend to have a lack of intelligence and creativity. If a large enough population of these people are formed then it will create a bubble of a false sense of …show more content…
In this reading, there were some questions that I had about it. One of the questions was about creativity and that no matter what type of society a leader has there will always will be creativity in some shape or form. Another was about gullibility where states have to find a cozy spot between too much or too little gullibility in society. The army defending the land was another one where I believe is the right of them to overthrow the current state. The last one was about fear equating to freedom which in every sense is wrong. Reading and understanding the material will help me in the long term to think critically and thoughtfully of other forms of