Guilherme Haddad Lewandowski

Mr. Robert Arnold

INTL 3111
The Hunger Circle
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. In the course of history we
have seen several examples of leaders, governments and revolutions with
strong and healthy ideals as fundamental pillars, but these same ideals were
proven to be very much bendable under a mans strong will. Many of the
biggest atrocities committed in history started with faire and understandable
nationalistic ideas of improvement to one certain country or people, but in the
path to fulfilling those goals, those ideals were found so far from the initial path
that they couldnt be recognized. It is very easy to think of nationalist leaders
that had an impeccable sense of duty and ideals to their country or even
regular people with harmless ideas that had massive consequences to their
actions. These leaders believed so strongly in their ideas that they actually
though to have that one single purpose to fulfill in this world and nothing or no
one would stand in their way. And in the case of regular people, they just didnt
know or didnt understand the consequences of their actions. People like Joseph
Stalin or Adolf Hitler didnt start gaining popularity by advertising the mass
murder of Jews or the purge of classes and genocide. They rose to power by
advertising how they had the key to achieve greatness for their countries.
Hitler wanted to drive Germany back to its glory and powerful days, for him the
solution to the German economic crisis was to get rid of the impure links that
were bringing the country down, mainly the Jews, homosexuals and anyone
that wasnt part of the Arian race that held high status positions in the nations
economic system. Walking side by side with him, Stalins ideas of equality and

cult of personality seemed pretty reasonable at first. The Russian people were
suffering and starving, by preaching equality, Stalin came to power and in the
process of improvement he performed state terror and the purge of the
bourgeoisie. Throughout this essay I will analyze and compare the power
ideology behind The Circle and The Hunger games and how the book,
The Circle by Dave Eggers presents us that same danger of powerful ideals
supported by good intentions. Out of the three wise man, Stanton and Bailey
really believe that the circle will make the world safer and better in general if
everyone has the same access to all the information and conform to the
companys requirements. But the real danger is in how much resemblance
there is between the ideals of Hitler and Stalin and their blindness to any
consequences that will eventually turn out once the circle is complete. In the
same note, I will intertwine the peace keeping notion that president Snow, the
leader of the Capitol in the series of movies by Suzanne Collins, bases his
ruthless actions on. I will also try to show how the Hunger Games is most
likely a possible outcome to the future of the circle company when there is no
one left to challenge its absolute power.
Joseph Stalin was one of the worst genocidal leaders in all history right
next to Mao Zedong and Hitler. But Stalinism as stated before was based on
pretty desirable and reasonable ideas. The Stalinist industrialization was
designed officially in order to speed things up towards communism, at that
time Russia was much weaker economically in comparison to other countries so
rapid industrialization was needed. Such rapid industrialization was also
deemed necessary to face the challenges represented by internal and external
anticommunist ideas. Fast industrialization came hand in hand with rapid
urbanization and mass collectivization of agriculture, and many small villages

were quickly transformed into big industrial cities by these implementations. In

the beginning his ideas were very appealing and Stalin even signed several
contracts with foreign enterprises such as Ford Motor and other American
private enterprises according to Richard Overys book, The Dictators. In order
to install his ideal of equality, Stalinism utilized state terror to cleanse the
society of bourgeoisie supporters that were claimed to threat the communist
revolution Terror, however, is only in the last instance of its development a
mere form of government. In order to establish a totalitarian regime, terror
must be presented as an instrument for carrying out a specific ideology; and
that ideology must have won the adherence of many, and even a majority,
before terror can be stabilized1. All these atrocities were justified by Stalins
good ideologies in favor of his country, which included also a centralized
strong state, cult of personality and collective agriculture. In the end his good
intentions got conservatively guessing twenty million killed2.
Following the same path was Adolf Hitler, one of the worst human beings in all
history. He came to power in 1933 and was chancellor of Germany until 1945
when he committed suicide to avoid capture by the red soviet army. Hitler
received popular support mostly by attacking the Versailles treaty, which
basically forced Germany as the loser of the First World War, to give up on all
economic aspirations and besides paying a huge debt to the winners of the
war, had to help restore all the damage caused in WWI. Besides this ideal that
Hitler used to bring the German people to his side, he also preached Pan1 Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New ed. New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1966. 6-17. Print.
2 Overy, R. J. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W.
Norton, 2004. Print.

Germanism, anti communism and anti-semitism. All pretty reasonable ideals,

but that resulted in approximately 5.5 million dead Jews and 1 million others3.
Fortunately not all wrong ideals have such power to destroy lives, but regular
people have the capacity to do great harm in their ignorance as well. During
the middle ages how many innocent women were burned alive by well
intentioned men who did so in hope of ending epidemics like the black plague.
Or even the fact that around 1970 catfish farmers introduce the voracious
Asian carp with the intention of keeping the tanks clear of algae for healthier
fish. Today the carps have taken over the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, killing the
natural fish and flying into the air injuring fisherman on boats. If these carps
reach the big lakes, hundreds of species of fish will disappear.
It may seem a little too harsh to compare the Circle and the three wise man to
mass murderers or people who destroy ecosystems, but anything can be
accomplish with the power and wealth the company would have at its disposal.
The Circle is a futuristic utopia, but there are so many similarities between
the book in the future and the present day that it is worth mentioning it.
Starting with little harmless things like the Partyrank or zings, they dont seem
like a big threat for national security, but there are much bigger factors
involved. How the Partyrank program works, it measures all the activity a
circler would have and participate within the companys environment and place
that person in a rank. It can be very relatable to the digital tools available to us
today; the more comments you make the more followers you get and
subsequently your popularity rank grows. Very alike Facebook, where you
have a profile telling things about you and you send and accept friend requests
until you get a very high number making you popular. Or even zings, where
3 Ibid. 2

people just take a quick picture or massage and send it to all the friends just
like Snapchat. Then again there are some pretty frightening and dangerous
similarities like the Truyou and the Seechange cameras. The main idea behind
Truyou was to make peoples life easier, just a technological advance to
facilitate our lives; but it is much more than that. The Truyou program contains
all the possible information of a citizen: social security number, address, even
bank accounts so any transactions or contracts can be signed by using a finger
print. Yes that sounds amazing, but all your most precious information is in one
place, where any person with the right access could see it, making you totally
vulnerable. Now think about the Cloud, once you accept the conditions all the
information in your phone goes viral and available for everyone so to speak.
In the movie the Hunger games we have a very strict and hopefully far
future society controlled by one single dictator, President snow. The story
happens in Panem a state devastated by war that was once North America.
The war left the state almost entirely dead and inhabitable. The Capitol that
was the most advanced and technological winning side, mercifully allowed the
rebels to leave in twelve districts outside the city. The rebels live in extreme
poverty and horrible conditions but dont have much choice since they are
inferior in every single way and rebellion was a failure already tried once. The
only hope the outcasts have is the hunger games where if they are lucky they
will survive a fight to the death between the twelve districts. Hopefully this is a
farfetched utopia, but we cant help to notice how alike the methods used by
the Capitol and The Circle are. During the movie we see how there are
thousands of cameras positioned all around allowing the Capitol to have total
knowledge and vision at all times; pretty much like the seechange cameras and
the idea of the unknown being a crime. Also during the games the best way to

survive is to gain the medias favor, this way the competitors would receive
medicines and other things that could mean the difference between life and
death. In the book Mae is plugged in with the viewers almost twenty four hours
a day through her personal camera. Her transparency pleases a lot of people
and is intended to involve more people in the program like politicians and other
important people. Another huge similarity is the tracking microchip that is
inserted in every competitor of the Hunger Games. This microchip allows the
capitol to know where exactly its receiver will be at all times, pretty much like
the tracking device inserted in children by the circle company with the
justification of keeping them safe.
To conclude I want to go back to the sentence by Saint Bernard that
sustains the main idea behind my essay, the road to hell is paved with good
intentions. Every single one of us justifies our actions to ourselves; it is in the
human nature to act like this. The theory by Leon Felsinger of Cognitive
Dissonance shows that if we perform things that consciously go against our
own principles, we experience psychic distress. So all of us create justifications
in order to be able to sleep at night. The three wise man are not essentially bad
people, but as Kalden told Mae when he was trying to convince her the of
danger the closing of the circle represented, Bailey actually believes with all his
heart that privacy is theft and that all humanity would be safer knowing
everything. That ties perfectly with the idea of security violations by
surveillance agencies like the NSA. After 9/11 the NSA have been charged with
gathering civil data to find possible connections with terrorist attacks. Looking
at recent events like what happened in Paris or Saint Bernardino the Patriot Act
seems pretty reasonable; violating peoples privacy seems like a necessary
evil. But this bulk data gathering has had no proof as of today to work. The best

results gotten so far came from the FBI and good old investigation together
with legal monitoring of suspects. There are many protests going on against
the NSA but there are still many who agree with the violations. Baileys coupled
ideas with Mae of privacy is theft and secrets are lies, are disturbingly
similar to one of the main ideas of the NSAIf you have nothing to hide, you
have nothing to fear.. Now who is to say that when the circle is complete and
the circle obtains absolute power, the act of making privacy a crime wont
divide the world? There will be the circle and the people that are comply to its
rules but there will also be those like mercer that dont want that, they want
their privacy and ability to do things without everyone knowing about. In the
end all this could very easily lead to a war between the outcasts and the ones
who hold power. Eventually a scenario very alike The Hunger Games will be
created and all hope of free will will be lost in a totalitarian black whole.

Work Cited

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, 1966. 6-17. Print.
Overy, R. J. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W.
Norton, 2004. Print.
https://cdt.org/blog/ web
Psychologytoday.com web
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/resilience-bullying/201008/principlenumber-one-the-road-hell-is-paved-good-intentions
hrw.org web https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/23/us-reject-mass-privacyviolations