Mahreen Munawar

September 2, 2020

ENG 1121

Word count: 359

The discourse community that I found the most problematic from the three on my list was the student council I became a part of in my senior year of highschool. I went to a small school and my senior class consisted of about 60 people. In theory it should have been easy to plan all the senior group activities such as, senior trip, prom, senior pranks and what not but that was the hardest part of senior year, even more complicated than filling out college applications. Thinking back at it I realized that most of the issues revolved around power play. Every student had different ideas and they wanted to be heard and have things done their own way and in order to achieve that goal they wanted to take control of every little thing which caused disturbance and kept us from being a productive team and because of that we could not get things done. This discourse community is just a small example and a part of the bigger discourse community that is made of people who want power over something or someone. The question remains why do they want this power? What do they gain out of controlling others? It’s their attempt to control themselves. “ A new study suggests that people who desire power are mostly looking to control one thing—themselves.” (The Atlantic, Beck). According to the article “People Want Power Because They Want Autonomy” people who try and control others subconsciously are trying to resist the influence of others around them. The study also reveals that once people get the power they’re craving they tend to become a lot more healthy and happy. To a certain extent I think we all can agree that having control makes us feel good but there’s no way of finding out what anyone’s true intentions are. The only healthy solution for this problem of craving power is to sit back and self reflect on why you want that power and is that want exceeding a healthy limit to the point where it can harm you or the others around you.