Aung Sang Suu Kyi - "Freedom from Fear"

It is simply not debatable that Aung Sang Suu Kyi speech, “Freedom from Fear” should be included in the category of “Communities and contexts: how ideas are generated through words”. I will show you why this is. Aung Sang Suu Kyi uses a substantial amount of pathos in her speech. When she combines pathos, antithesis and a lack of fear, she forms a speech that reaches out to people not only in her own country of Burma but also the whole UK Government and its allied nations. This is evident through her quote, “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” Through this we can see that she is calling the audience to think and therefore engaging the listeners to hear more about what she has to say. Also in the title of the speech in its self it portrays antithesis, showing that “Freedom from Fear” implies that there is always another way to go.

In the Buddhist teachings on which Aung San Suu Kyi draws there are four ways in which we can forget our principles and be corrupted. We may be led by our selfish desires, by ill will and a desire to harm our enemies, by ignorance or by fear. She shows us that fear is most ominous and it’s certainly the greatest weapon of any cruelties. Aung Sang Suu Kyi tells us how the Burmese government subdue people by instilling fear of arrest, torture and death, aiming to foster the apathy and subservience that add up to a kind of moral corruption. In saying this Pathos is employed in a way, which Aung Sang Suu Kyi connects with her audience, for example, “If ideas and beliefs are to be denied validity outside the geographical and cultural bounds of their origin, Buddhism would be confined to north India, Christianity to a narrow tract in the Middle East and Islam to Arabia.” By mentioning different countries Aung Sang Suu Kyi helps to personify the worlds sorrow, and also shows the fear of Xenophobes.