Check out my other posts in after the bomb-it may help to consolidate/clarify your understanding further
-Ok, in after the bomb, whenever you are unsure-refer back to the syllabus-because all the essay and creative questions can only be extrapolated from the syllabus. It is very important you don't refer to the paradigms as power paradigms-, paradigms, like ways of thinking-is categorised into four major categories-philosophical, scientific, religious, economic-and these ways of thinking must form the basis of most of the essays you write for this module
-the sense of powerlessness relates to the all paradigms/ways of thinking in a way, just to give you an example
scientific- so essentially the creation of scientific weaponry like nuclear bomb meant people would perish in seconds, so what was the point of preserving or prolonging one's physical existence when you can be a random statistical casualties of these mass destructive technologies(remember, the Cold War was constructed partially from the arms race which mainly involve the accumulation of nuclear arsenals by the two superpowers)
-economic- basically it also interweaves the political models of capitalism in the West and Communism in the east-communism basically meant that no matter how hard everyone worked, everything goes back to the state-so there was a sense of powerlessness at unable to get what you could call 'equal pay for equal work'-and there was a lot of oppression and persecution of any political dissidents, and for capitalism-businessman exploited the system-at the top of the hierarchy-and so despite a thriving post war economy, there was concern about the neglect of the welfare of the workers as capitalism rewards more profit, less cost, not better welfare, more costs- so again, people in the working class, called the proletariats-particularly in the Soviet Union-felt powerless to change-improve their working condition, in 1980s, Ronald Reagan's policies of economic rationalism as well as wall street mantra 'greed is good' serves to further accentuate this sense of powerlessness
-philosophical-basically existentialism and nihilism becomes very popular philosophies-a sense of helplessness emerged from the devastation of the atomic bomb left many people feeling a sense of disorientation and confusion at a world capable of annihilating itself to the verge of distinction- hence they tried to mediate that sense of helplessness by striving to discover a sense of meaning in their life/existence-but as texts such as waiting for Godot and related texts such as Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five tells us-such self-actualisation did little to alleviate personal existential conflicts on a social level
-religious-basically there was a strong secular divide, there was government propaganda aligning communism as 'Godless', and so those who were fervent anti-communist became even devout believers of the church, and other sceptics becomes increasingly detached from the social institution-basically the question was if God exist, why would he have allowed so many people to die randomly and suffer so much?- so any previous simplistic belief in the existence of a benevolent divinity was no longer possible-so again, a sense of hopelessness emerged from the loss of spiritual faith, and by extension, spiritual identities
-Basically, after the bomb-to gain a much better understanding-there is a book called success to after the bomb which helps, but most importantly as if you read my previous posts you will understand that it is preferable if you go to the State library, or access available articles on google scholar or google books to delve deeper into the ways of thinking from the primary sources of articles written at the time and books written about that time-self-studying is always the best way to holistically understand a module as immense as this one it will allow you to see how everything you learnt can be categorised and connected together-my posts are only to get you started-all the best of luck
