Who Controls You?

Hello, this is about as cynical as my last one. I wrote this for a school assignment relating to the book 1984 and the control you have over yourself. And now, here's what I turned in:

In today's society everybody is dependent on something. It may be a job, activity, commitment, or other person, but we all have some controlling factors in our lives. My life is controlled by many different individual people, groups of people, and factors.
In school and most of my free time my teachers control me. They tell me what I can and can't do, what work I must do, when to do it by, and how little free time I will have in the next few days. Although their intentions are to give us the opportunity to have a better education, their leadership ends up having the exact opposite affect on students. Many students do what the teachers tell them to do out of Fear of getting in trouble or getting bad grades. Students are controlled by the administrators and teachers through fear. We do assignments so we don't get a bad grade and so that our parents don't get mad at us, not so that we get a better education. I am trying harder and harder to try and learn instead of just worrying about getting a good grade, but that just isn't very possible with the present expectations of students. We all follow the rules out of fear of being sent to the office or in some other way getting in trouble. This example of leadership by fear is very similar to adults in the working world.
From what I see, hear, and know about the working world, I can synthesize that many people are controlled by their bosses with both fear and opportunity. Some jobs offer the opportunity for a promotion so workers work harder while some people work out of fear of being fired and not having the money to have the newest car or the fanciest house.
While at home, I am controlled usually with opportunity and then when that doesn't work, with fear. My parents reward me with their trust, future opportunities, and sometimes material goods when I have done something that they want me to. This is a very effective way to control people in a friendly manner, unlike Big Brother's control through fear. When I do something they want me to do, my parents let me do something I want to do such as going places or having people over. When this tactic doesn't work my parents must resort to control through fear. If I refuse to do something that must be done, such as washing the dishes, then my parents control me through fear, on a much smaller scale than demonstrated in 1984. They 'threaten' to make me buy dinner at a restaurant that night if they don't have the clean dishes to cook with in time. Although this is not anywhere close to the severity of the way The Party controls their people, making a teenager pay for dinner is still an effective way to lead through fear.
In the few moments that I am not at school, at home, or doing something directly controlled by one of the two(e.g. homework or chores ), I have found that even though it should be my own personal time, I am still controlled someone or something at all times. While cycling I am controlled by fear of being hit by a car or given a ticket for not riding in the right places. When I am hanging out with people everyone is indirectly controlled by each other through fear. In any group of people there is almost always some sort of pressure not to say or do anything too far from what is normal for fear of not being being accepted by the other people.
Although this isn't part of the writing prompt, I have also noticed that control through fear or opportunity are merely a mater of perception. Even though this wasn't part of the prompt I realize the you want us to learn and spark our thinking. These prompts you gave us are very good at sparking thought, they just don't ask us to then vocalize the thoughts triggered by these questions. I am now going to assume that you would like to hear the other thoughts and deeper understandings of life I have gained from reading this book, discussing in fish-bowls, and writing the above part of this paper.
The way I see it, weather you are being controlled by fear or by opportunity is merely a mater of perception. If you are a "glass half empty" sort of person then it seams as though you must do something you don't want so that you don't punished or beaten by the current controller. If you are a "glass is half full which so close to being full we might as well say that we have enough water to last us forever," kind of a person that is almost annoyingly optimistic, then you might see the situation as follows: if you do what they say then you have the amazing opportunity of not being punished or beaten. However, this is not a very common outlook I have notice because people realize that without the controller there wold be no punishment, so it is not really an opportunity to not be punished. Depending on your outlook, control through fear can be seen as control through opportunity.
Another point I would like to bring up is that I believe that no one truly has complete control over themselves, including me. People as a whole are governed by laws and authority and controlled by everything and anything even as simple as 2 plus 2 equaling 5. As much as we would like to think it, no one has control over every aspect of their life. If we had true control of our own lives we would be able to float off the floor like a soap bubble, even if The Party didn't want it to happen. The most basic and obvious things that keep people from controlling every aspect of their lives are the laws laid out by each areas' governing bodies. The next level of controlling groups are then parents and spouses followed closely by jobs and schools. Together, all of these limit our actions and give us less control of how we live.
Another factor that may control my life, as much as everyone else's is the societal norms and the unwritten laws of society. As mentioned before, the fear of nonacceptance controls nearly every aspect of life. What "the cool" people do sets the standard of what everyone else should be like and how people are expected to act. The mass media is one other great factors that control us all by setting a standard that no one can live up to that nearly everyone tries to reach.
While talking to the Regional Director of South Metro Abercrombie stores at 2:30 in the morning this weekend I began to realize how much the media and industry Own us and control every aspect of our lives. He told me that they sell sex, not clothes. The whole purpose of their advertisement campaign is to make people think that they will have more sex if they shop at Abercrombie, Abercromie & Fitch, Hollister, or Ruehl 925. This is a perfect example of media controlling people by giving them the opportunities to fit in with everybody else or to have more sex. Another example of how much the corporations control us as a society is the amount people are willing to steal just to have the opportunity to fit in. At one local Abercrombie store, every 30 days about 30% of all merchandise is stolen by people that just want to fit in and, largely, by the staff at Abercrombie stores. Some other statistics that the Regional Director told me are that 90% of all thefts are done by employees and that more than one in three employees have stolen from their store. At this point Abercrombie realized that they needed to subtly rule with fear. Beginning May 1, 2007 all clothing will have an RFID security thread sewn in that is so small there is no way to find it. A computer system in Ohio can then keep track of the purchase of every piece of clothing from any of Abercrombie's many brands in any store across the world just with this one thread in each piece. Abercrombie can continuously check at each employees house through the Verizon Wireless Network if there are more than ten RFID threads in items that are marked as "unsold". If there are, then the system will notify local offices of the problem. Abercrombie security can then go the the employee's house, and with hand held scanners, find the exact location of all unpaid for items. After this, each Abercrombie employee that lives in the house will be audited and then, in most cases, fired. If this system does not remind you of the Thought Police in any way, then something is wrong. This is one of the many examples in society and 1984 of how we are controlled through both fear, and opportunity.
What I have learned from the book is that fear is by far the most effective way to control a group of people. A person's natural instincts are to maintain and improve upon one's own health, pleasure, and safety. When any of these are threatened to be taken away, people are willing to do anything, depending on the severity of the punishment. All Hail Big Brother (and Abercrombie).