Society

The myth of a “classless” American society coupled with social stratification impedes race relations in the U. S. far more than any racial differences. The never ending struggle of the “have-nots” to become one of the “haves” produces a frustration and feeling of oppression that acts as a catalyst for spawning racial tensions. Minorities see the majority of wealth in the hands of the white population and feel that the wealth is unevenly distributed. Whites hear of government programs for minorities and feel as if they are lazy or just looking for a handout. This occurs and stereotypes are formed.

Combine all of this with the United States system of “dual welfare”and the perfect environment for racial strife is created. In our “classless”society of false hope the working class and poor are continually seeking opportunities to excel that just aren’t there. They have been led to believe that intelligence and ambition are key contributors to one’s success. This belief lays blame on the unsuccessful themselves, even if they do possess ambition and intelligence. These people are in a never ending cycle of struggle, followed by minimal rewards, which eventually produces a frustration that sometimes leads to desperate measures.

Cornell West expands on this with the following statement : “. . . homicidal assaults by young black men on one another are only the most obvious signs of this empty quest for pleasure, property, and power” (Race and Racism p. 123). This statement shows the extremes one will go to in his “empty quest” for a better life. This is not only happening 2 to blacks by blacks. It is happening to all races by all races. People hear of events like these and categorize them as a racial crime or a racially motivated crime just because the victims may be of a different race.

As West’s statement demonstrates the killings ccur as a means to an end, the end being a better life. In our ever diversifying melting pot of a country, same race victim and criminal crimes are becoming less and less statistically likely anyway. Events such as these don’t occur because of race. They occur because of the frustration and desperation bred by the false hope that hard work and determination leads to success. It is no mystery that most of the wealthy people in America are white. West again points out (Race and Racism p. 124) that 86% of the wealth in the United States is owned by only 10% of the population.

In this 10% the number of minorities is minute. The wealth owned by this few is there because they have kept it in their families throughout the generations. These are the same super-rich bloodlines as that of 150 years ago. These families were rich when no minorities (and hardly any whites for that matter) were. Almost everyone was working class or poor besides them. Minorities are aware of this uneven wealth distribution and this leads to resentment. Our government tries to compensate for this through special programs for minorities.

When this occurs whatever groups are not receiving compensation see the other as lazy or as taking a handout. In 3 turn this leads to resentment. Different groups begin stereotyping each other due to the resentment which evolved through unequal wealth distribution, which itself is a product of our “classless” system. So in turn stereotypes that Mexicans are lazy, African Americans steal, Whites cannot dance and White men have small penises, Jews are ultra- thrifty, Lesbians are men haters, Gay men all like antiques, and Asians are shrewd at business and all stick together, are in all probability (definitely) unfounded.

Despite the fact that these stereotypes are unfounded, much of the resentment may not be. Here in the United States as much, if not more, money is spent on programs for the rich as is spent on programs for the poor. Donna Langston points this out with the following statement: “We have a dual welfare’ system in this country whereby welfare for the rich in the form of tax- free capital gain, guaranteed loans, oil depletion allowances, etc. , is not regarded as welfare” (Race And Racism p. 129).

Here Langston compares the welfare of the poor (food stamps, w. i. c. edicaid, etc. ) with the welfare of the rich (tax-free capital gain, guaranteed loans, etc. ). These few examples of “welfare” for the rich are just the tip of the iceberg. Before you come to any premature conclusions consider the following. The majority of corporations in the United States are owned by Whites. Each year these White owned corporations get $125 billion dollars in the from of corporate welfare. 4 This is money that could be used on the less fortunate, who are mainly minorities, but instead it is funneled into primarily White owned corporations.

People hear of this and once again assume that this is based on race, thereby making it a racial issue. It’s not, it is a class issue. Billions and billions of dollars are spent each year on national defense for the United States. Who really benefits from this the most, the wealthy or the poor? Of course everyone benefits somewhat, but the rich benefit considerably more. If the United States was invaded and taken over by another country the decrease in the quality of living for the rich would be far greater than that of the poor.

In all actuality the lifestyle change of the poor would probably be somewhat minimal. Consider the millions and millions of dollars that are spent each year on the United States Coast Guard (which is under the D. O. T. ‘s budget, and not the national defense budget) and the waterways that it protects. How often is it that you see a yacht traveling on the U. S. waterways filled with poor people or minorities? How many poor people even own a boat? These waterways are mainly used by the United States White upperclass. And what about the tax dollars spent on police and fire protection?

Of course these are necessities, but who benefits more? The rich have more material possessions that can be stolen or destroyed. And last but not least is our countries system of social security. Every race in the country pays the same percent of social security at about six percent. The only people 5 exempt from this standard six percent is the “green minority”. Once a person reaches the income level of $60,000 or more they top out, that’s as high as one can go. The higher the income above $60,000, the lower the percentage they pay.

If someone makes 50 billion dollars a year they pay the same amount as someone making $60,000 a year, or roughly about $3,600. So theoretically, if you were to take a husband and wife that each make $30,000 a year, the combined amount that they pay in is equal to the amount that Bill Gates pays in. There’s something about this whole system that just doesn’t seem proportionately correct. It seems like the percentage sacrificed should be the same across the board. All the examples I have given may seem like this paper is about the wealthy and the poor, and not about racial differences in the United States.

If it does there is a reason for that. The upper class or super rich, whichever you want to call them, receive more benefits than the poor. The upper class is mainly white and the poor and working class are a mixture of all races. This gives the appearance that assistance is based on race, when it’s not. It is based on class. People see these events and make generalizations and this in turn leads to racial tension. If steps are taken to make “classless America” a reality, then these racial tensions would ease.

There are many types of cults in the world, cults are everywhere but you just do not see them. Every person in the world has been in contact with them in one way or another in many cases you cannot see them. The closest cult we know of is on Rice Lake called the Moonies led by Reverend Myung, where I have currently visited. Cults can be involved in churches and even are earliest religions are called cults. Cults are not the strongest groups’ sects are the strongest group. When you join a sect you cannot get out of them but a cult you can leave without having any problem or commitment.

Sects will not let you out because many times it’s illegal and they are afraid that you will say something to the public. Cults sometimes are illegal to. Religious cults are in every town and village there is no definition of a cult that is accepted by sociologists and psychologist or religion many types of activities will take cult like structures, an example would be any popular trend like physical exercise this is called the physical fitness cult. Famous athletes are a big figure when it comes to cults, many times Movie stars, professional athletes will endorse a product and a trend will start, making it turn into a cult.

Also people who generate beliefs of something like flying saucer, aliens or any unknown figures can be cult. In religion when people call a church they are referring to a sacred organization having a highly structured or formalized dogma and hierarchy, but also allowing a bit of flexibility about membership requirements allowing you to go to a church and leave church when you want to. Although sects are against church attempts to accommodate to secular society. Sects believe that they are protecting a true faith or belief.

Sects tend to stay away from world events , and also they believe in a strong strict behavioral code and demand a commitment out of their people. The differences between cults and sects are sometimes the same. Many scholars do not make distinctions between the two. Cults are different because they do not expect as much commitment. Many times’ cults do not expect couples to become apart. Cults do not last as long as sects. Many times’ cults survive through a decade, and also cults allow you to come and go as you want.

Leaders of cults build around a charismatic leader who has a lifestyle dedicated to a specific spirituality group that they know other people will follow. The word Mormonism began as a small cult then grew bigger until it became a sect and eventually into a church. All the new religions followed the same thing by beginning small and getting bigger than becoming a church. Contemporary Cults Cults go back as far as we know of life, cults began to get bigger and be known throughout the world in the late 1960’s and early 70’s as people were better educated and better understood how they were formed and how they were run and people began to join.

During this time Youths and middle class people began to join cults because of the in thing to do and they felt more secure about themselves. Cults really started to fascinate people when Jimmy Jones cult began in November of 1978 when all attention was focused on the mass suicide in Jonestown, a similar event happened in 1993 when federal agents engaged in a shoot out with cult leader David Koresh. Modern cults have many different practices and many different ways of leadership.

Some cults have a flexible functional leadership, like the groups in the charismatic movement coming from the mainland Christian religion, other cults have people who run and orchestrate cult events, like Reverend Myung Moon leader of the unification church. The reason people are attracted to modern cults because it puts emphasis on community and on direct experience with the divine. In cults’ participants often find a level of social support and acceptance that they do not find in a nuclear family.

This makes and generates a sense of belonging to something profound and a feel of being somebody. People who often join cults such as this, join because they think they are getting something the world did not give them. Several factors have been looked at to figure why people like are modern youths join cults. Factors that were looked at were drug’s war assignation of many unpopular presidents. Cults have been questioned about brainwashing people, and found it to be true. Cargo Cults Cargo cults are usually neutralist and are in it for money.

The word cargo refers to foreign goods possessed by Europeans. Cult members believe that goods belong to themselves and that , with the help of ancestral spirits, the goods can be returned to them through magic religious means. Brainwashing Brainwashing is the process of deliberately subjecting people to physical and psychological hardship in order to alter their thoughts and attitudes, and actions. It also is a process of totally cleaning a mind of one set idea and replacing them by another thought or belief.

This is called to indoctrinate cleaning a thought and putting a completely new thought in mind. Indoctrinating can take place without brainwashing. There are 2 aspects of brainwashing they are confessions of past crimes or errors of the past and re-education to new beliefs. Prisoners sometimes are made to confess by lack of sleep and food and other forms of intense physical discomfort, also isolation from victims’ families and from familiar surroundings. Cult leaders show obedience, and humility and make other members give social pressure to the new member to make them join.

And the last thing they do is make mutual criticism and self criticism sessions, which make them have a generalized guilt feeling that all people have acceptance of new ideas is again fostered by group pressure and the anticipated reward of freedom. People who have a better understanding of psychology and neuophysiology have made larger groups create extremely effective brainwashing programs. Their techniques however have been used for centuries as inquisition making people give excited confessions from alleged heretics.

Religions sometimes use these methods like scourging, rhythmic dancing and drumming and sometimes inducing a trance like state in which the individual is open to conversion. In the 20th centuries, most noticeably by the people’s temple of Guyana, whose membership committed mass suicide. Mystery Cults Mystery Cults are usually in the ancient times whose members believed that by means of the performance of particular secret rituals they would gain knowledge that people in the normal world would not have and that would make a mystical union with the divine.

Mystery cults make their members feel they are god and give them a feel of immortality that they cannot be destroyed. Many times in mystery cults, cult leaders feel they died and were brought back to be god or Jesus. Conclusion In today’s society, cults are one of the many unfortunate aspects endure in life. Leaders of Cults should be dealt with in a more serious matter. Cult leaders are con-artists and are people that like to control others. Cults should be controlled to protect innocent citizens from being taken advantage of.

Society’s role and how it defines each individual has always played a big role in how we as people are supposed to conduct ourselves. Back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the roles of men and women were defined specifically. Men were expected to be the “bread-winners”, the person that supported the wife and the children with no help from the outside world. The male role was defined as the superior and dominant gender in society that looked down on females. The female’s role in life was to be the child-bearer, or the person who took care of the house and raised the children.

That time period was the start of the women’s rights movement where women were not willing to accept second billing to the male gender. They wanted equal opportunities and equal treatment. The main problem at that time was the frame of mind that the male gender was in. They were taught to take no help from people and to be self-reliant and self-dependent. In the play A Doll House, society’s restraints and expectations on men and women created problems for many of the characters. At the beginning of the story, Nora reveals to Mrs. Linde that she has committed an illegal act and has broke the law.

Nora’s husband was very sick and the only way for him to get better was for him to go to Italy. There was no way that they could afford the trip on their income. To pay for the trip, she borrowed money from one of the bank employees, Krogstad. Then to pay him back, she worked odd jobs and bought the most inexpensive clothing, and used the money she saved towards paying Krogstad back. Nora has committed a serious crime by forging the signature of her grandfather. She did not want to go to him because she did not feel right going to see him in that condition.

Her intentions, however, for not telling anybody deal with living to her role that society has laid out for woman. Nora was not scared because she committed a crime, but she had helped a person of the “superior gender”. What would Tolvald think if he found out that Nora had paid for the trip and planned out this whole scheme? Tolvald would have been devastated by the news if he found out that Nora paid for the trip herself. Nora says, “For heaven’s sake no! Are you serious? He is so strict on that subject. Besides- Torvald, with all his masculine pride- how me. That would just ruin our relationship.

Our beautiful, happy home would never be the same. ” (1194) The last part of that quote is very interesting, because the “happy home” is a farce. Nora is telling a lie and has created a very deceitful relationship between her and Torvald. The only reason that Nora is telling the lie is to prevent a catastrophe that the truth will cause. The catastrophe would result because of society’s restraints and expectations placed on the characters. One of the big events of the story was whether Tolvald would consider not firing Krogstad. Tolvald had two reasons or motives not to hire Krogstad.

First of all, Nora was trying convince Torvald to keep Krogstad on the job, so that Krogstad would not reveal the truth about where Nora got the money. Torvald said that Krogstad was a crooked individual who does not have any respect towards him, “But I hear that he is quite efficient on the job. But he was a crony of mine back in my teens- one of those rash friendships that croup up again and again to embarrass you later in life. Well, I might as well say it straight out: we’re on a first-name basis. And that tactless fool makes no effort at all to hide it in front of others.

Quite the contrary- he thinks that entitles him to take a familiar air around me, and so every other second he comes booming out with his “Yes, Torvald! ” and “Sure Thing, Torvald! ” I tell you, it’s been excruciating for me. He’s out to make my place in the bank unbearable. ” (1212) Torvald was all about power, and made up an excuse about not wanting to hire Krogstad because he forged signatures and was a crooked individual. The real reason that Krogstad was not going to be rehired was because he did want anybody else to be placed on the same pedistal as him.

He thought he was so superior that Krogstad threatened his position as a superior being. Society’s expectations of the male being the independent, above all beings, was the main contributor to why Krgostad was never rehired or was allowed to retain his job. Another reason why Torvald was unwilling to keep Krogstad at the bank was because of the threat to his manhood. Torvald did not want a woman to dictate what decisions were made, because he was concerned with what the community would say if they found out. Torvald says, “And just pleading for him you make it impossibvle for me to eep him on.

It’s alrady known at the bank that I’m firing Krogstad. What if it’s rumored around now that the new bank manager was vetoed by his wife. ” (1212) Torvald all along was saying that he was a man of honor and did not want people who were crooked. He was not about to let a woman tell him what to do, and risk the dominance had a that time over woman. Men were expected to live on their own and receive no help from others, especially women. He fell into the trap of what society expected and tried fulfilling those qualities.

Another person who fell into the trap of society’s expectations was Nora. Nora, though could not accept that role and left before she was totally consumed. She had helped out the family in so many ways. Obviously she took care of the family and cleaned the house, but she contributed in so many other ways. She saved the family because Torvald, the bread winner, was on his way to mental and physical ruin. He was working so many hours and was heading for burnout. She, through incredible fortitude, saved enough money to save Torvald, but that was still not good enough.

Torvald could not accept the fact that Nora, a woman, was a factor in his recovery. Torvald wanted to recover on his own, with no assistance. Nora realized that no matter what, she was going to be a “doll” and that if she did not do anything she was going be controlled by her husband forever. Society’s rules at that time, stated that the female’s role was to raise the children and clean the house. They were to let the male bring in the money and take care of the family in tough situations. She wanted a personality of her own, “I must learn to be competent, Torvald. 1237) Nora could not accept the role Society had allocated her and so she left that identity in pursuit of a new one.

Society’s restraints and expectations placed upon the characters in the play led to many problems for the characters. The characters could not live up to what was expected of them. Back in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, females were considered the inferior gender and experienced many problems. The men, however, had to live up to a certain standard which they felt difficult to attain. When society determines how people should act, then they can never express their true identity, and problems are inevitable.

There are many problems right now in the society. Some of these problems can be easily solved, or can be impossible to solve depending how bad it is. Many people think these problems should be solved by the governments, since they are in charge. But we can also solve these problems if we get together. Not all the problems, but some that can be solved. I think the three major problems in the society today are: unemployment, violence, and pollution. The first problem in the society right now is unemployment.

Many people oday are either unemployed or underemployed. Some of these people just stay home and collect their welfare cheque every month, when they should go out and at least try to get a job. If there are more people like this, the country would be poor and therefore the government would have to collect more taxes. Also the standard of living would decrease because of their income that is way below the average income. Right now, there is also a big gap between the low income people and the high income people and this is becoming a problem.

Low ncome people are starting to get lower wages and higher income people are starting to get higher wages. Another problem in the society is violence. Today, there are many violence in the streets, some schools, and also in the media. These violence in the streets can cause the neighbourhood to become a bad place to live. This will cause people not to go there or move in there because of these violence. There are also many violence and gangs in some school, causing some of the school to be very unsafe to go.

With these violence and gangs, students will robably be afraid of these people. In addition, the media can contain violence too. These violence, can cause kids to do what ever is on TV. For example, my little brother likes to watch wrestling and he sometimes does wrestling moves on me for no reason and thinking it’s fun. Even though it doesn’t hurt me because I’m bigger than him, he might hurt someone smaller in school or something. The third problem in the society today is pollution. Many things these days cause pollution such as cars, air conditioners, refrigerators, factories,

CFC cans, etc.. All these things together can cause a pollution problem in the society today. The CFC cans used to be a serious problem to the ozone layer, but luckily it was taken off the market. Refrigerators and air conditioners are also a problem to the zone because of the liquid called freon. These machines use this liquid that makes it cold, but when these liquids are released from damaging the machine, it releases a gas that breaks down the zone layers. In addition, cars also can cause a lot of pollution because of the carbon monoxide t produces.

This would cause the air to be bad, cause global warming, which would cause the earth to have longer summers or vice versa, longer winters, and would also cause acid rain. In conclusion, unemployment, violence, and pollution would consider to be the three major problems in the society today. People and the government should get together and try to solve these problems in order to make this planet a safe and good place to live. If these problems are not solved, there might not even be an Earth in the future to live on.

In his most famous book On the Origin of Species, Darwin included four major arguments: that new species appear; that these new species have evolved from older species; that the evolution of species is the result of natural selection; and “that natural selection depends upon variations and the maintenance of variation in spite of the tendency of natural selection to eliminate ‘unfit’ variants” (403). After Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, Herbert Spencer(1820-1903) took hold of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and applied it to society as well as evolution.

He strayed from biology to society. Spencer’s ideas became known as Social Darwinism. The theory of natural selection holds that only the most well-adapted individuals in a population will survive and reproduce. These successful individuals pass on their adaptive advantage to their offspring. Over many generations, the process ensures the adaptation of the entire population to its environment. This holds true in the jungle, but it was Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” to describe the competition among human individuals and groups.

He argued that human progress resulted from the triumph of more advanced individuals and cultures over their inferior competitors. Wealth and power were seen as signs of inherent “fitness,” while poverty was taken as evidence of natural inferiority. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Social Darwinism was used to argue for unrestrained economic competition and against aid to the “unfit” poor. The theory was also used to justify racist and imperialist policies in Europe and the United States.

Social Darwinist ideas fell from grace in the early 20th century; Herbert Spencer’s reputation as a philosopher and social theorist toppled with it. Spencer once wrote of society. These are the traits that societies have in common with organic bodies. And these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with all the things entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such distinctions being scarcely greater than those that separate one half of the organic kingdom from the other. The principles of organization are the same and the differences of application.

Having exhaustively spelled out the elements of the analogy between society and the features of biological organisms, he concludes that there is more than an analogy between them. Societies are organisms. Beyond the exact definition of Darwinism, many people found personal applications to the scientific doctrine. Not only was survival of the fittest an established truth in nature, it was also more than evident in human society. Many people, after reading the benefits associated with reproduction of the strong, began to place human activity under the scrutiny of science.

Those who found that the principles of Darwinism advocated their personal goals in society took great lengths to spread the word of Social Darwinism. This was a doctrine that called for free competition among humans and a setting in which the dominating class was the major contributor of offspring. A further example would be: We see that in the rudest state of society, the individuals who were the most sagacious, who invented and used the best weapons or traps, and who were best able to defend themselves, would rear the greatest number of offspring.

The tribes, which included the largest number of men thus endowed, would increase in number and supplant other tribes. (Crook, 23) The primary supporters of Social Darwinism included the hard-nosed capitalists who fought for laissez faire. These people wanted an economic market that was free from outside regulation. They contended that the system itself, like nature, had inherent systems of checks and balances. Favorable variations would be preserved and unfavorable ones would be destroyed. Because the stronger and more cunning fox survives, he passes on his positive traits and furthers the entire species genetically.

Similarly, the stronger and more successful businessman weeds out his unskilled competitors. This allows the entire system to progress and provides positive examples for future generations to follow. If there was a “natural order” to nature which, if left alone, would progress to the survival of the fittest, then any tampering with that order would strike against natue and weaken society. If nature had an iron law, then justice, equality, and natural rights were fiction. There were no rights against a nature which sanctions ruthless competition. Any principles not found in the jungle, should not be found in society.

This justification through scientific law promoted acceptance because science was held in high regard at the time. When lectures, publications, and even private conversations tackled the controversial issue of business regulation, people cited the principles of Social Darwinism time and time again. By providing firm scientific principles that could be used as evidence on popular issues, Social Darwinism consumed discussions and spread wildly. These concepts and laws that Social Darwinism entails were obviously more widely accepted by the upper classes and business men who would benefit most by this organization of natural selection.

While this didn’t leave the lower classes with nothing, it did increase competition and productivity in economic society. But although the idea and theory of Social Darwinism is relatively straight forward, its impact on the progress of man and society is not so easily seen. As social Darwinism supports “survival of the fittest,” it is only through this that we can see what influence it had on societies progress. The theory contends that all human progress depends on competition. Social Darwinists believed that this competition was a natural process and any interference with this process would have perilous results.

Because society is made up of a number of different people, who fall into different classes, social Darwinism worked for some but not for all. It brought the men who were already in power into greater control, but kept the lower classes and minorities at a stand still. A friend of Darwin once wrote him, saying: Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turks hollow in the struggle for existence.

Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the highest civilized races throughout the world (Crook, 25) William Graham Sumner(1840-1910) was a Yale professor and was influential on economic matters in the United States in the second half of the 19th century. Also a Social Darwinist he believed that “The millionaires are a product of natural selection. ” Like Spencer before him, Sumner, wrote many essays about his firm belief in laisse-faire, individual liberty, and the innate inequalities among people.

He viewed competition for property and social status as a good thing that eliminated the ill adapted and preserved racial soundness and cultural strength. For William Sumner, the middle class Protestant values of hard work, thrift, and sobriety were worthy of high praise because the set the stage for wholesome family life and sound public morality. He was against any reforms to help the poor because, in his view, creation of a welfare state would put excessive economic burdens on the middle class whose members would have to pay for it through taxation.

Social Darwinism still, and always will, exist in the present day, in some respects. Although now is not a period known as Socialy Darwinistic, it can be found in the modern day class system. “Survival of the fittest” is still a theory that drives many a man to succeed and strive for greatness. It is not such a solid or segregated system as was in the past, but it is none the less there. If a man is born into wealth, he usually retains that wealthy status of high society his entire life. But in the modern nation, the chance to achieve greatness is given to all, regardless of the class the are born into.

But as these people come to power and others fall, the are positioned in classes, which usually leads to marriage and breeding inside those classes. Because of this children are still born into segregated positions in society. This is unavoidable in any structured society. In this respect, Social Darwinism has always existed in our society and this specific incident did not have a positive or negative effect on society. As a whole Social Darwinism inevitably served as an aid to social progress, because it had an impact on modern society.

Along the lines of Darwinistict thought, a species must evolve to adapt to his surroundings. Humans follow the same pattern as all species in this effect. Society as a whole is always changing and evolving to fit its surroundings, and in doing so, is progressing, whether in a positive or negative direction. When the question is asked, “Did Social Darwinism have a positive impact on society? ,” there is no way to answer, because society is a constantly changing organism. The only thing that can be taken as fact is that Social Darwinism did have a large impact on today’s modern society.

Living in a society with limited freedom of expression is not, in any case, enjoyable. A Totalitarian society is a good example of such a society, because although it provides control for the people, it can deny them a great deal of freedom to express themselves. The fictional society in George Orwell’s “1984” stands as a metaphor for a Totalitarian society. Communication, personal beliefs, and individual loyalty to the government are all controlled by the inner party, which governs the people of Oceania in order to keep them from rebelling.

Current society in America is much more democratic. It contrasts with Orwell’s society of 1984 because communication, personal beliefs and the people’s loyalty to the government are all determined by the individual. In order to keep the people of Oceania in conformity with the desires of the governing Inner Party; the Inner Party controls several aspects of the people’s lives. Communication, for one, is controlled for the benefit of the nation. Newspeak is a modified version of language that is enforced upon the people in order to limit their expression.

Syme and Winston, two middle-class workers in Oceania, discuss the concept of Newspeak. Syme reveals that he supports the system, demonstrating how he has been brainwashed by the Inner Party who enforces the system. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words… You haven’t a real appreciation for Newspeak, Winston… Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thougtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. (p. 46)”

One can detect from this quotation that the people of Oceania, as a group, have been brainwashed by the Inner Party to use only Newspeak. Syme, for one, understands the purpose of it, and he still complies with the system because he has been trained to do so. The concept of Newspeak is designed to control personal beliefs of the citizens by limiting their form of expression as Syme explains. But when the governing system is not followed, Thought Police are used to prevent thoughts that oppose the nation. “How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.

It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. (p. 6)” There is no doubt that – through both Newspeak and Thought Police – the system of government in “1984” has adequately prevented the people from thinking against it. When all this surveillance is placed on the people, they learn to comply with their country and eventually begin to value it automatically. At the end of the story, after Winston is accused by the Thought Police of thoughtcrime and is tortured, he finally conforms to the general thoughts of Oceania. “He had finally won the victory over himself.

He loved Big Brother. (p. 245)” This quote indicates that the inner party has done everything that was necessary to preserve Winston’s loyalty to the nation. Even Winston, who at one time was against his government, has now been “fixed” to support it and love his leader. The government of Oceania has gone to great lengths to change Winston’s mind, and as always, they have gotten what they desire. America in 1999 is much different from Orwell’s 1984 because, for one, freedom of expression is a dominating factor in American communication.

In conversation as well as newspapers and magazines, a variety of views and opinions are openly expressed. Censorship is not enforced to a high degree. As an example, demonstrations and protests are often held which counter certain governmental policies; laws or propositions are often spoken out against in public. The fact that these rebellious actions are not punished by the government proves that the government of America is much more lenient than that of “1984”. The expression of such a variety of beliefs comes from the freedom of individual beliefs.

The government does not maintain the thoughts and opinions of the individual; the government does not have a system to control the thoughts of the individual. This is why one commonly sees such a variety of beliefs and ideas spread in advertisements and media. For instance, while there are often advertisement for meat, leather or fur products in magazines and such, other advertisements often try to suggest a more humane treatment of animals, therefore contradicting the idea that animals should be killed for human consumption.

The modern American government fully allows any given belief of the individual people. And because our beliefs vary, our opinion of the government can vary. While some people support their nation, others defy it because they have the independence to do so. Neo-Nazi skinheads traditionally wear an American flag upside down on their clothing or burn the flag. There is no policing that prevents people from doing this because the government gives them the freedom. All in all, modern Americans have an extremely high level of freedom regarding all forms of expression.

The story of “1984” reflects a society that totally contrasts with America today. While Orwell’s objective was primarily written to exaggerate the Totalitarian/Communist and other conditions of society surrounding him, “1984” presents an important guide to life for modern Americans. Just as a major objective of learning American history is to ensure that we do not repeat our mistakes, “1984” can give warnings to both government systems and individuals regarding how society should not be controlled. The vigorous control system presented in the book stands as a method by which no American would want to live.

The West was a form of society rather than an area. It is the term applied to the region whose social conditions result from the application of older institutions and ideas to the transforming influences of free land. By this application, a new environment is suddenly entered, freedom of opportunity is opened, the cake of custom is broken, and new activities, new lines of growth, new institutions and new ideals, are brought into existence. The wilderness disappears, the \”West\” proper passes on to a new frontier and, in the former area, and a new society has emerged from this contact with the backwoods.

Gradually this society loses its primitive conditions, and assimilates itself to the type of the older social conditions of the East; but it bears within it enduring and distinguishing survivals of its frontier experience. Decade after decade, West after West, this rebirth of American society had gone on, and left its traces behind it, which reacted on the East. The history of our political institutions, our democracy, is not a history of imitation, of simple borrowing; it is a history of the evolution and adaptation of organs in response to changed environment, a history of the origin of new political species.

In this sense, therefore, the West has been a constructive force of the highest significance in our life. The West, as a phase of social organization, began with the Atlantic coast, and passed across the continent. But the colonial tidewater area was in close touch with the Old World, and soon lost its Western aspects. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the newer social conditions appeared along the upper waters of the tributaries of the Atlantic. Here it was that the West took on its distinguishing features, and transmitted frontier traits and ideals to this area in later days.

On the coast were the fishermen and skippers, the merchants and planters, with eyes turned toward Europe. Beyond the falls of the rivers were the pioneer farmers, largely of non-English stock, Scotch-Irish and German. They constituted a distinct people, and may be regarded as an expansion of the social and economic life of the middle region into the backcountry of the South. These frontiersmen were the ancestors of Boone, Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Lincoln. Washington and Jefferson were profoundly affected by these frontier conditions. The forest clearings have been the seed plots of American character.

Here then, is the problem of the West, as it looked to New England leaders of thought in the beginning and at the end of this century. From the first, it was recognized that a new type was growing up beyond the mountains, and that the time would come when the destiny of the nation would be in Western hands. The divergence of these societies became clear in the struggle over the ratification of the federal constitution. The interior agricultural region, the communities that were in debt and desired paper money, opposed the instrument; but the areas of intercourse and property carried the day.

The most obvious fact regarding the man of the Western waters is that he had placed himself under influences destructive to many of the gains of civilization. Remote from the opportunity for systematic education, substituting a log hut in the forest clearing for the social comforts of the town, he suffered hard-ships and privations, and reverted in many ways to primitive conditions of life. Engaged in a struggle to subdue the forest, working as an individual, and with little specie or capital, his interests were with the debtor class. At each stage of its advance, the West has favored an expansion of the currency.

The pioneer had boundless confidence in the future of his own community, and when seasons of financial contraction and depression occurred, he, who had staked his all on confidence in Western development, and had fought the savage for his home, was inclined to reproach the conservative sections and classes. To explain this antagonism requires more than denunciation of dishonesty, ignorance, and boorishness as fundamental Western traits. Legislation in the United States has had to deal with two distinct social conditions. In some portions of the country there was, and is, an aggregation of property, and vested rights are in the foreground.

That in the conflict between these two ideals the government has always held an even hand would be difficult to show. But free lands and the consciousness of working out their social destiny did more than turn the Westerner to material interests and devote him to a restless existence. They promoted equality among the Western settlers, and reacted as a check on the aristocratic influences of the East. Where everybody could have a farm, almost for taking it, economic equality easily resulted, and this involved political equality. Western democracy included individual liberty, as well as equality.

The frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He knew how to preserve order, even in the absence of legal authority. If there were cattle thieves, lynch law was sudden and effective: the regulators of the Carolinas were the predecessors of the claims associations of Iowa and the vigilance committees of California. But the individual was not ready to submit to complex regulations. Population was sparse; there was no multitude of jostling interests, as in older settlements, demanding an elaborate system of personal restraints. Society became atomic.

There was a reproduction of the primitive idea of the personality of the law; a crime was more an offense against the victim than a violation of the law of the land. Substantial justice, secured in the most direct way, was the ideal of the backwoodsman. He had little patience with finely drawn distinctions or scruples of method. If the thing was one proper to be done, then the most immediate, rough and ready, effective way was the best way. It followed from the lack of organized political life, from the atomic conditions of the backwoods society, that the individual was exalted and given free play.

The West was another name for opportunity. Here were mines to be seized, fertile valleys to be preempted; all the natural resources open to the shrewdest and the boldest. The United States is unique in the extent to which the individual has been given an open field, unchecked by restraints of an old social order, or of scientific administration of government. The self-made man was the Western man’s ideal, was the kind of man that all men might become. Out of his wilderness experience, out of the freedom of his opportunities, he fashioned a formula for social regeneration, –the freedom of the individual to seek his own.

He did not consider that his conditions were exceptional and temporary. Under such conditions, leadership easily develops, –a leadership based on the possession of the qualities most serviceable to the young society. In the history of Western settlement, we see each forted village following its local hero. Clay, Jackson, Harrison, Lincoln, were illustrations of this tendency in periods when the Western hero rose to the dignity of national hero. The Western man believed in the manifest destiny of his country.

On his border, and checking his advance, were the Indian, the Spaniard, and the Englishman. He was indignant at eastern indifference and lack of sympathy with his view of his relations to these peoples, at the shortsightedness of eastern policy. The closure of the Mississippi by Spain, and the proposal to exchange our claim of freedom of navigating the river, in return for commercial advantages to New England, nearly led to the withdrawal of the West from the Union. It was the Western demands that brought about the purchase of Louisiana, and turned the scale in favor of declaring the War of 1812.

Militant qualities were favored by the annual expansion of the settled area in the face of hostile Indians and the stubborn wilderness. The West caught the vision of the nation’s continental destiny. It is important to bear this idealism of the West in mind. The very materialism that has been urged against the West was accompanied by ideals of equality, of the exaltation of the common man, of national expansion, that make it a profound mistake to write of the West as though it were engrossed in mere material ends.

It has been, and is, preeminently a region of ideals, mistaken or not. It is obvious that these economic and social conditions were so fundamental in Western life that they might well dominate whatever accessions came to the West by immigration from the coast sections or from Europe. Nevertheless, the West cannot be understood without bearing in mind the fact that it has received the great streams from the North and from the South, and that the Mississippi compelled these currents to intermingle. Here it was that sectionalism first gave way under the pressure of unification.

Ultimately the conflicting ideas and institutions of the old sections struggled for dominance in this area under the influence of the forces that made for uniformity, but this is merely another phase of the truth that the West must become unified, that it could not rest in sectional groupings. For precisely this reason the struggle occurred. In the period from the Revolution to the close of the War of 1812, the democracy of the Southern and Middle States contributed the main streams of settlement and social influence to the West.

Even in Ohio the New England leaders soon lost political power. The democratic spirit of the Middle region left an indelible impress on the West in this its formative period. After the War of 1812, New England, its supremacy in the carrying trade of the world having vanished, became a beehive from which swarms of settlers went out to western New York and the remoter regions. These settlers spread New England ideals of education and character and political institutions, and acted as a leaven of great significance in the Northwest.

But it would be a mistake to believe than an unmixed New England influence took possession of the Northwest. These pioneers did not come from the class that conserved the type of New England civilization pure and undefiled. They represented a less contented, less conservative influence. Moreover, by their sojourn in the Middle region, on their westward march, they underwent modification, and when the farther West received them, they suffered a forest-change, indeed. The Westernized New England man was no longer the representative of the section that he left.

He was less conservative, less provincial, more adaptable, and approachable, less rigorous in his Puritan ideals, less a man of culture, more a man of action. As might have been expected, therefore, the Western men, in the era of good feeling, had much homogeneity throughout the Mississippi valley, and began to stand as a new national type. Under the lead of Henry Clay they invoked the national government to break down the mountain barrier by internal improvements, and thus to give their crops an outlet to the coast. Under him they appealed to the national government for a protective tariff to create a home market.

A group of frontier States entered the Union with democratic provisions respecting the suffrage, and with devotion to the nation that had given them their lands, built their roads and canals, regulated their territorial life, and made them equals in the sisterhood of States. At last these Western forces of aggressive nationalism and democracy took possession of the government in the person of the man who best embodied them, Andrew Jackson. This new democracy that captured the country and destroyed the older ideals of statesmanship came from no theorist’s dreams of the German forest.

It came, stark and strong and full of life, from the American forest. But the triumph of this Western democracy revealed also the fact that it could rally to its aid the laboring classes of the coast, then just beginning to acquire self-consciousness and organization. The next phase of Western development revealed forces of division between the northern and southern portions of the West. With the spread of the cotton culture went the slave system and the great plantation. The small farmer in his log cabin, raising varied crops, was displaced by the planter raising cotton.

In all except the mountainous areas, the industrial organization of the tidewater took possession of the Southwest, the unity of the backcountry was broken, and the solid South was formed. In the Northwest this was the era of railroads and canals, opening the region to the increasing stream of Middle State and New England settlement, and strengthening the opposition to slavery. A map showing the location of the men of New England ancestry in the Northwest would represent also the counties in which the Free Soil party cast its heaviest votes.

The commercial connections of the Northwest likewise were reversed by the railroad. The West broke asunder, and the great struggle over the social system to be given to the lands beyond the Mississippi followed. In the Civil War the Northwest furnished the national hero, –Lincoln was the very flower of frontier training and ideals, –and it also took into its hands the whole power of the government. Before the war closed, the West could claim the President, Vice-President, Chief Justice, Speaker of the House, Secretary of the Treasury, Postmaster General, Attorney General, General of the Army, and Admiral of the Navy.

The West had furnished the leading general of the war. It was the region of action, and in the crisis it took the reins. The triumph of the nation was followed by a new era of Western development. The national forces projected themselves across the prairies and plains. Railroads, fostered by government loans and land grants, opened the way for settlement and poured a flood of European immigrants and restless pioneers from all sections of the Union into the government lands.

The army of the United States pushed back the Indian, rectangular Territories was carved into checker-board States, creations of the federal government, without a history, without physiographical unity, without particularistic ideas. The later frontiersman leaned on the strong arm of national power. We are now in a position to see clearly some of the factors involved in the Western problem. For nearly three centuries the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. With the settlement of the pacific coast and the occupation of the free lands, this movement has come to a check.

That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would be a rash prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an interoceanic canal. For a revival of our power upon the seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the movement will continue. The stronghold of these demands lies west of the Alleghenies. In the remoter West, the restless, rushing wave of settlement has broken with a shock against the arid plains.

The free lands are gone, the continent is crossed, and all this push and energy is turning into channels of agitation. Failures in one area can no longer be made good by taking up land on a new frontier; the conditions of a settled society are being reached with suddenness and with confusion. The West has been built up with borrowed capital, and the question of the stability of gold, as a standard of deferred payments, is eagerly agitated by the debtor West, profoundly dissatisfied with the industrial conditions that confront it, and actuated by frontier directness and rigor in its remedies.

For the most part, the men who built up the West beyond the Mississippi, and who are now leading the agitation, came as pioneers from the old Northwest, in the days when it was just passing from the stage of a frontier section. And now the frontier opportunities are gone. Discontent is demanding an extension of governmental activity in its behalf. In these demands, it finds itself in touch with the depressed agricultural classes and the workingmen of the South and East. The Western problem is no longer a sectional problem; it is a social problem on a national scale.

The greater West, extending from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, cannot be regarded as a unit; it requires analysis into regions and classes. But its area, its population, and its material resources would give force to its assertion that if there is a sectionalism in the country, the sectionalism is Eastern. The old West, united to the new South, would produce not a new sectionalism, but a new Americanism. It would not mean sectional disunion, as some have speculated, but it might mean a drastic assertion of national government and imperial expansion under a popular hero.

A world of system designed to keep people in unjust and unequal positions is held in place by several interrelated expression of power over: political power, economic power, physical force, and ideological power (Bishop, 1994: 36). So, we can say power is defined as a possession of control, authority or influence over others. In terms of power of dominant groups over subordinate groups, we define power as domination of one group of people over another in major important spheres of life.

Power inequities have been in existence throughout the history of humanity and the ways of manifestation evolved from extreme overt oppression to subtle, covert oppression. Three major forms of power inequalities discussed in this paper are based on property (class), domination whites over others (race) and men over women (gender). Property owners as a dominant group have power over a subordinate group who do not own property. Karl Marx, one of the greatest economists of the XIX century, defines domination from the purely economic point of view.

To Marx, a class is defined according to the ownership and control of the means of production; and therefore two major classes present in capitalism are bourgeoisie and proletariat. Bourgeoisie owns and controls the means of production. Proletariat, on the other hand, owns nothing and it sells its labour as a commodity in return for money. The power presented here is this constant antagonism between those who own and control and those who do not possess the means of production. By possessing control over these means of production, they ultimately control labour force itself.

Bourgeoisie makes proletariat to work long hours with less pay, makes workers comparative with jobs, and alienated workers just make enough for living. For if you are forced to sell your labour force as a commodity in order to survive, you are treated by those who buy this same commodity not differently that any other commodity available on the market that is necessary for the multiplication of capital. In Marx’s time, workers lacked bargaining power through unions, legal strikes or sabotage (Grabb, 1997: 17). As a result, they could not form a united front against employers, and give themselves a power of collective resistance.

In our society, we still can recognize basic elements of Marx’s theory. Today, at the end of twentieth century, capitalism is still a strong and developed system that will most likely remain to be so for some time. One thing that has changed is that through the establishment of workers unions, the gap between bourgeoisie and workers has narrowed. The 8-hour work – 8-hour rest – 8-hour sleep system that Marx proposed seems to be in place in many of the countries around the world. Despite these accomplishments, the power over subordinate group still exist.

Grabb argues that oppression on the class basis may seem absent in capitalist societies today, because workers are legally free to choose whether or not to accept to work for a capitalist (Grabb, 1997: 16). But, are workers really free to decide? In other terms, what are their options? For a worker who, by definition, does not own means of production, there is no other choice to earn a living than to sell his/her labour to the capitalist. Contrary to Marx’s theory that bases class inequality only on the economic ground, Webber adds two more components, prestige, and political power.

He argues that those who are members of dominant classes, status groups, and party associations are able on the whole to exact compliance to their wills, on a regular basis, from the remaining population (Grabb, 1997: 54). In the previous centuries, this compliance was accomplished by physical force when violent social action was absolutely primordial(Grabb, 1997: 54). However, in the late twentieth century, different forms of domination emerge, i. e. control over communication and media, control of innovation and developments etc. Therefore, we can conclude that class antagonism is present, only it is changing in form.

Today, the capitalist class owns and controls the media, and therefore controls what information is disseminated to the rest of the population through TV, newspapers, Internet, etc. According to Anne Bishop, ordinary people are constantly exposed to the version of the truth carried by these information media, a version of the truth acceptable to the owners of the media (Bishop, 1994: 38). The large businesses are the ones funding the research and development activities, and they are in a position to control the direction of innovation and the impact of the innovation of our society.

For example, large business owners contributed funds for the developments in the computing field and made it impossible for an individual to function at the end of this century and not own a PC. Another example, large corporations that move to countries which do not have law about minimum wage so in that countries workers are paid less. And also neither politicians nor capitalists influence our thinking, such as actors, writers or athletes. Power inequalities related to racism issue have its base in one, dominant group-whites, labeling the other groups as inferior and restricting their rights.

According to Miles a society that is dominate by white is racist (Class notes). Beliefs and images categorize people of real or attributed differences when compared self whites (subject) with other(object) (Miles, 1989: 11). Racism is socially constructed by white over the course of history. The way racial power over subordinate group were manifested range from institutionalized overt racism to covert polite racism that is very common in our society. The example of the institutionalized racist system is the apartheid system in South Africa.

In that society, all whites, regardless of their origin enjoyed comparatively greater rights, simply based on their skin color. Legal policies, laws and regulations were created to visibly separate population of black people from whites. This system was a combination of an institutionalized racism and red neck racism, because not only was it legal to discriminate against blacks, but the people were proud of doing it. However, black people as a subordinate group of South Africa provided resistance through various actions; sabotage, protests, strikes, riots and finally won the fight for their freedom.

According to Henry Frances, racism is, and always has been, one of the bedrock institutions of Canadian society. The most obvious example is the treatment of Aboriginal people. Besides introducing the system of indirect rule and segregation through various Indian Acts, British (whites) as dominant group imposed norms from their society on Aboriginal people. British failed to recognize that Aboriginals have their own culture, customs, social organization and values that guide their everyday living.

All Aboriginals were labeled Indians not recognizing the diversity of various tribes. To justify their actions toward Aboriginal people, British used stereotypes to label them as uncultured and uncivilized, and decided that it is their job to bring Aboriginal people to the greater states of civilization by enforcing European norms in Canadian society (Frances, 2000: 121-123). One of the policies in 1857 even allowed for the voluntary release from the Indian status for the individuals of good character, which was a direct attack on the integrity of the Aboriginal community.

This attempt to destroy the identity and the firm land base of the Aboriginal community was recognized and was resisted by Aboriginal people through a non participation in this process (Frances, 2000, 129). The above oppression of Aboriginal people by British (whites) was a systemic type of racism that is deep rooted and built in the system to a degree that it was normalized. Another example of racism in Canadian history is a Canadian immigration policy that for a long time favored white people, predominantly West and North Europeans.

Asian and South Asian people were allowed to enter the country only if there was a temporary demand for unskilled labour. However, the workers were never allowed to bring their families since this was viewed as a threat in terms of increasing numbers of Asians present on Canadian soil (Frances, 2000, 67-75). In 1960s, the immigration policy was changed to a point system, so that people are not discriminated by their race, but admitted to Canada on the basis of their education, age, knowledge of language, skills, etc. Nevertheless, covert racism on the society level still exists.

One of the most common instances is a requirement of Canadian work experience for any type of employment in Canada. This is discriminatory practice that targets racial minorities and prevents them from getting suitable employment. Their work options became limited to positions for unskilled labour, even though the studies show that immigrants on average have higher level of education than Canadians. The reason for this is that Canadian system fails to recognize the education and credentials obtained in immigrants’ country of origin (Frances, 2000: 93-95).

These unwritten policies present barriers for new immigrants and reserve the high earning positions for white Canadians. The way the racial minority immigrants resisted the domination of the white Canadians is by creating their own communities that provide them with a security and support lacking outside of their community borders. Oppression of women is evident in past centuries as well as in today society. Previously, women were believed to be the property of men, and they were considered to be subordinate to their husbands and to men in general.

This domination was so strong that at the certain point in history it was a husband’s right to kill a wife or to physically molest her if he so wished. Men as a domination group determined what roles are suitable for women and what are not, and excluded women from any form of power in the society. This concept of a women’s role was socially constructed by men so that is naturally defined to fulfil roles that are important for men’s well being (Hubbard, 1998: 32). Power relationship and inequalities on the basis of gender are present in all spheres of life because norms and rules are defined by the dominant group: men.

An obvious example of this is a question of a gender-based language. Analysis of the language shows that it has sexism deep rooted in it; words such as woman has it root in word man, or he makes males linguistically visible and she linguistically invisible, and another word is history but not herstory and so on. This clearly shows the domination of males and ignores and negates an existence and significance of female population. Other aspects of gender inequalities are skills and body. Masculine skills are more mechanical and logical, better paid and males enjoy higher status.

On other side feminine skills are delicate and more soft which lead to low paid and low status. Third one inequality is gender bodies. Woman’s body is seen as a sexual and woman is sex objects in males’ eyes that can lead to sexual harassment. Again sexual harassment is way of male domination and controlling woman trough sex. There have been attempts to change the gender-based nature of language, differentiation trough skills and stop sexual harassment. However, it is difficult to do this because our environment is based on dominant culture values and attitudes, which are again determined by male population.

As a result of oppression, women formed an active social movement: feminist movement. Only in the second part of the twentieth century has this movement gained strength, since women previously were dependent on their husbands economically and in other way, and their awareness was not on the appropriate level to provide organized resistance to the oppression. At a certain point in history, women organized unions in order to fight for better work conditions and salaries for women. However, the tradition union organizations showed their limitations since they were based on labour process in the male domination workplaces (Curtis, 1993: 306).

In today’s society, when men and women are considered to be equal by law, a systematic sexism is still present. Work of women, as a housewife is under valued since it does not have a specific financial value assigned to it. This is automatically degrading since ours is a male dominated society in which everything of value has a financial value. Women in the workplace still have a glass ceiling that prevents them from obtaining a position of power in the hierarchy created and dominated by man.

Some attempts have been made to address this issue, i. Employment Equity Policy, a policy created by government, still dominated by man. In order to come to final liberation, women need to fight for it on the united from, and attempt to gain equality on all aspects of life, from recognition of their housewife role to access to the positions of power. However, the power struggle between genders will always exist, for once females become equal, the male populations will start feeling endangered and oppressed, and will start providing resistance to female domination.

Inequalities on the basis of class, race and gender still exist today as they existed long time ago but they are not so ready visible as before. One has to get inside the society and get more involved in it to truly experience the nature of this relationship. Nevertheless, we learn everyday about many successes in fighting racism, fighting job related inequality between a male and a female, and in my opinion this society is on the right track. By openly discussing many issues that until recently were not allowed to be discussed, we are in better position to understand each other and our society as a whole.

Throughout time the debate upon which is the best system of government has been an ongoing debate. Somewhere between the realms of democracy, socialism, fascism, communism, and monarchism lies the answer to the perfect system. Traditionally speaking, North America has always tried to remain democratic in ruling. The democratic system, unlike it’s alternatives, encourages equality and liberty among the people which in modern society, makes it the most attractive system of government today. Arguably, equality is the goal of many governments today.

But what one ust realize is that equality cannot be reached without giving someone else inequality. While democracy influences equality, communism and socialism frown upon the very idea that all people should be treated equal. The very idea that all men are created equally is very misleading. All men are not created equally. Human beings are unequal in essence because they are unequal in most physical and psychological characteristics along with health, intelligence, and emotional balance. For most of us, living amidst inequality is common. Equality is said to be having the same rights and freedoms as everyone else.

In modern society this is very true to a certain extent. The only thing equal about people is that we are all born and eventually we all die. In North America, I believe that equality among people is nearly impossible. The education is the main source of the problem. Education itself created inequality between children at an early age. Since no two persons are created equally, they will not have the same opportunities, nor will they make use of opportunities offered to all people like the education system. One of the most important things to a person living in North America is liberty.

LibertyLiberty can be defined as limited only be laws established on behalf of the community . To a certain extent, this enables people to be in control of their own lives. The individual has the right to choose how they conduct their lives. In the U. S. people rely on the Bill of Rights to protect themselves from government and other people. This bill of rights includes freedom of speech, press, and assembly. Among these freedoms is also the freedom of religion and freedom from unreasonable searches by the law. In Canada we have a similar system called the Bill of Rights and Freedoms that s made up with similar beliefs of it’s counterpart.

Liberty is possibly the most important attribute in American and Canadian society. What people want is the ability to make their own decisions and go about life with the freedom to do so. In a democratic society, people are able to voice their opinions to government and ultimately play an important role in the make up and organization of society. To a new nation, these attributes of our society are quite attractive. Many new nations today are making the switch to democratic government. The problem with this is that most of these nations have never been emocratic before.

Therefore, new nations are having great difficulty because such a switch is not easily accomplished. To develop a democratic society it has taken some more more than an entire century. These new nations tend to rush the change and in the end they become frustrated because such a switch is not as easily accomplished as thought. The features of a modern democratic state are firstly a society dedicated to the preservation of rights and freedoms. From that, a government system must adhere to developing a form of government which encompasses the values of a working society.

In other words, a government for the people, run by the people, and a system into which they have invested. An excellent example of a nation that comprises the rights and freedoms of its people is Canada. As a nation we live by our rights and freedoms and use them as a guide to act accordingly. We the people, as part of Canadian society, are able to participate in the workings of our country. This is represented in our political cycle. I call our political system “the feedback cycle”. In this cycle, demands and supports are inputted into the administration, voted on, and ventually outputted into society and the cycle continues.

Our political system enables us to have our say through representation of an elected official in government. Ultimately, the power is not solely in the hands of government. When people are unsatisfied with government they take the necessary steps to replace the person or people that are not doing their job properly. Affirmative action programs are put in place to increase the number of minorities in the work place. But again, this creates inequality because there is not an equal opportunity for all races to get the job is they still practice iscrimination. By this I am referring to the discrimination of white males.

I agree that there are not enough ethnicities represented in our work place but I also strongly believe that if a person is qualified for a job than skin color shouldn’t matter. This statement can work both ways too. If a person of black skin applies for a job, and is better qualified for the job than a white person, but still is not granted the job than not only is it racist but by not hiring the black person the position is not being properly filled. Nothing is gained accept for an insufficient worker. Since we live in a democratic society, people are assumed to have the same opportunities and chances as the next person.

So in my belief, affirmative action is failing society and causing more inequality. Affirmative action will never be a solution to racism. It is more a way of controlling racism. Ideologically, affirmative action is a great idea but in our society racism plays such a major role that it only makes the problem of racism worse. To racists, when things like affirmative action show up it only enrages them further. Seeing a person with white skin losing a job to omeone who looks different is the last thing some racist wants to see. To the disbelief of many there is such a thing as equal opportunity.

We are told we are all equal by our government but why aren’t we all treated equally then? The answer is because it has taken far too long for goverment to step in and state that all men deserve the same opportunities despite their skin color or race. And in the end it doesn’t matter how much power a government has. It will never be enough to abolish hundreds of years of racism. Government is the most powerful institution crated by man. Power is limitless. Since government cannot be under the same moral limits as individuals there are two limits on power; 1-moral, 2-constitutional.

Morally, a government has its limits just as you or I have ours. Constitutionally, the government has it’s rules and we must follow them. Social order would collapse if private individuals considered themselves free to break the moral law when their interests require it. Since constitutionalism is how we arrange to situate our liberty to the state, then constitutionally speaking we are in charge of ideals and conduct preached to us by government. So in way government s a way of telling ourselves that although morally we know what is correct we are not capable of doing so without outside interference.

In other words we know that it’s wrong to commit a crime but we choose to have police watch over us to make sure we don’t break the law. The whole idea that society needs police to watch over us to keep us from doing what we already know is wrong is absurd. This leads me to believe that society is incapable of moral thinking. Why would someone do something they know is wrong. The answer is because society makes it ok for people to make mistakes. Perhaps punishments are not trong enough but I tend to agree with the theory of natural law.

Our society will never overcome its barbaric ways if we do not use morals and our better judgment. When speaking about freedom it is necessary to state that although being able to live your life as you choose, no person is ever guaranteed freedom. Yes we are free to make our own choices but the word freedom leads you to believe one may do what ever they please. But that is not the case. You are free to make your own choices but when you make the wrong one and break the law your liberty is taken away. Without one’s liberty you are in control of the state nd unable to make your own choices.

It is almost like freedom is suppressed. When a person is no longer at liberty they cannot make their own decisions and they fall under government restraints. The only way you may be able to guarantee freedom is to follow certain conditions specified by government which tell you how to conduct your life. The structure of government provides a constitutional system to show us how to act accordingly. Liberty is far more likely to be attained if all conditions are abided by a society as a whole instead of for instance a place that does not meet these conditions. A democratic society cannot function properly without liberalism.

Liberalism is an ideology. It is a whole way of thinking. To be liberal means you are optimistic. Liberty and equality are the two things that separate our society from that of a communist or fascist government system. With things like the civil rights movement our society is slowing becoming more aware of the world beyond that our immediate environment. Ethnic groups and minorities are better represented our society than they were fifty years ago. You can no longer discriminate against someone because of there skin color which makes our orld a more politically correct environment.

Being democratic gives all people an equal chance to prove themselves in life. One thing I have learned about democracy is that is important to be open and not to think in the same mind set. Rules are meant to be broken. I have always thought that part of being democratic means making room for new ideals and theories that make society function better as a whole and in the end be more capable in handling problems in society. With all this in mind, freedom is in the hands of the individual and it is their choice what to do with it.

Why do women and men communicate so differently? Could it be that genetics play a factor? I believe so. In general, males are much stronger and more aggressive than females are. This directly effects how the two genders communicate. For example, women tend to offer suggestions and give reasons, whereas men tend to give demands without reason. We live with these differences everyday, and although we do not always understand these differences, we have come to accept them. We stereotype women as the weaker more emotional gender. They are the homemakers. Men are seen as the caretakers of their families, the financial providers.

They are stronger and more dominant gender. What importance does this have in society? How does it effect society? Many women feel that they do not have the same privileges as men. On the other hand, some men say it is unfair that so much more is expected from them compared to what is expected from women. To me these sound like simple complaints. Stereotypes should not be seen as wrong, because in most cases they simply highlight the differences between men and women, unfortunately there are always exceptions, and sometimes stereotyping can result in conflict.

Primarily stereotypes are not wrong, they exist because of the very istinct differences between men and women. Almost all stereotypes hold at least some truth. For instance, men say women want to talk too much and are too emotional. Deborah Tannen explains in her article “Put Down That Paper and Talk to Me” that women feel the need to talk with those they are close to in order to compromise and build relationships (Tannen, 229, 9). So the men are right, women do feel the need to talk a lot in relationships.

What is so bad about a stereotype that is true? Yes, there are those men and woman who do not reflect the set image. For instance, some men stay home nd take care of their children, which is traditionally known as a woman’s job, and some women are the financial providers for their families. Just because the stereotype claims women stay home and men go to work, does not mean this is the case in every situation. Our society has come far over the past decade. Stereotypes today have very different meaning than they did many years ago.

Stereotypes mean most do, not all do. It is perfectly acceptable in today’s day and age for a woman to work and leave her husband home with the kids. In fact may people respect it. Unfortunately, there are instances in which stereotyping does create problems. Some people over emphasize the existence and legitimacy of stereotypes as a whole. For example, the men or women who openly express their disapproval for those who do not follow traditional male and female roles have caused severe conflict with feminists and male advocates.

According to them, men and women should never pursue a life outside of the traditional setting. These beliefs are completely outdated. Very few people continue to live such old fashioned lifestyles. On the other hand, the feminists and male advocates who say that stereotypes are unfair and believe men and women should be considered equal, are just as guilty of tereotyping society. In the article “Real Men Don’t, Or Anti-Male Bias in English,” Eugene August argues that it is unfair that our society excludes males as parents (August, 217, 7).

Those such as August are accusing everyone of being completely biased against the opposite sex. It seems hypocritical that they would fight for equality and then label our entire society as being sexist. Our society has changed so much over the years. Most do not feel that male and female roles are set in concrete. Except for the few situations which result in conflict, stereotypes should not be seen as unjust. Men and women are very different, and stereotypes simply highlight the most common differences.

Feminist and male advocates fight to say we are all equally alike, but this is untrue. Science can prove we are both physically and mentally different. Why would we want to be equal? What fun would it be if we were exactly alike, if we spoke the same “language. ” The little games men and women play with each other while conversing would be lost. The question everyone asks himself or herself after talking with someone of the opposite sex, “I wonder if there’s something there? ” would cease to exist.

Try and imagine our society without a common language. This could be quite a hard idea to fathom. Allow me to assist you. If this hypothetical idea were in fact true, a typical conversation between two individuals would be as follows: one of the two would begin the conversation by making noises representing their language, the other person would not understand these noises and respond with unrecognizable noises to the first individual. As you can well imagine, this would get quite frustrating.

Rita Mae Brown describes literacy as, “a social contract, an agreed upon representation of certain symbols” (420). If he symbol’s (letters) meanings are not agreed upon by those attempting to communicate, then interpreting one another becomes difficult. Simply stated, literacy is very important. Society has proven time and time again, it will reward those individuals who are competent and impede those who are not, whether expressed in terms of employment opportunities (job success) or just on a social level.

One need look no further than their everyday activities in order to realize how important literary skills are. Without adequate literary skills one may not be able to identify on a label the correct amount of medicine to give a hild, or read and interpret a sign giving instructions on what to do in case of a fire. These two examples bring perspective to literacy’s importance. Nevertheless, recent surveys have indicated that, “4. 5 million Canadians, representing 24 percent of the eighteen-and-over group, can be considered illiterate” (“Adult Illiteracy” 5).

Illiteracy is truly a problem within Canada. Although many groups are working to render the problem of illiteracy, much work still lies ahead. As our society moves on into the next century literacy is proving vital to economic performance. Without basic literary skills in one’s possession they ill become lost in our rapidly changing society. The modern worker must be able to adapt to the changing job-scene. This often means gathering new skills and knowledge from printed material, whether instruction manuals, computer programs, or classroom training (text books).

It is quite commonly the case that highly skilled jobs require a high level of literacy. Therefore, literary skill level is an important factor in predicting an individual’s economic success. It will affect an individual’s income, their employment stability and whether they even receive employment opportunities. Presently, our world revolves around literacy. Simply being literate allows one to continuously upgrade one’s literary skills to a higher level. It allows one to stay informed of happenings in and around the world through mediums such as newspapers and magazines.

Knowing current news about what is going on in this ever changing world of ours is the key to staying ahead. Another thought to ponder is this, we rely on those with high literacy levels to record and document findings and happenings for future generations to reflect on. These writings would most likely be dull and inaccurate or would not exist at ll without our current levels of literacy. When viewed from a social standpoint, literacy remains just as important as when viewed from the economic standpoint.

Linda Macleod of the National Associations Active in Criminal Justice, points out that, “65 percent of people entering Canadian prisons for the first time have trouble reading and writing, low literacy is part of a constellation of problems that can limit choices in life and thus lead people to criminal activity” (20). Somebody in possession of a high level of literacy will most likely be well informed and tend to make wiser decisions. By obtaining this level of literacy they have also gathered a large vocabulary giving them many words to choose from to express their ideas and feelings.

Conversely, many would agree that a conversation with one who has a good grasp of the English language is always more delightful than with one who is less educated. Literacy can act as a window, opening one’s view to the world. Presently, we are being bombarded with information, news, trivia and gossip (not that this is always a positive feature in our lives). Without sufficient literary skills one cannot even absorb any of this information. These people ill miss out on many of life’s benefits, socially as well as economically. Without sufficient literary skills one would have a tremendously difficult time functioning in our current world.

Think about your average day, consider how many times you refer to your literary skills to aid you, could you function without those skills? Finding an address, reading a map, reading a menu, performing a bank transaction, these are just a few common tasks that require your literary skills. Also, when looking at the importance of literacy to our nation, its value is evident. High levels of literacy throughout all sectors of Canada’s orkforce are necessary, “low literacy levels of workers’ affect Canada’s ability to perform in the increasingly competitive international marketplace” (“Literacy” 7).

Literary skills become building blocks. First creating a well- educated society, then a highly skilled labour force which can compete and adapt to the changing market. These factors lead to an increase in economic growth within the nation which in turn, results in a higher standard of living for its people. As our society moves forward into the future, a higher level of literacy will become more important to one’s level of success. Where would our society be without our ability to exchange knowledge and information?

How many times have you made a purchase that read on the outside – instructions inside? You and I think nothing of this, and in a sense take our gift for granted. For many, deciphering written instructions is a near impossible task, asking for assistance does little more than to further lower their self esteem. Literacy is important. To truly seize the benefits possible in one’s life it has to be accepted that literacy is the key. Society will continue to reward skilled individuals and disadvantage those who are not.

We live in an age where the brutality and the vigilante justice of the knight errant is no longer acceptable for people with positions of stature in society. While courage and honor are still praised by society, one rarely finds a man true to his word regardless of cost. Chivalry towards ladies is sometimes mistakenly decried by those supporting equality for women. And Courtly love, in it’s modern form, is frowned upon. Those who might have a keen sense of justice often have only indirect methods of fighting for the right — legislation just can never be as satisfying as clouting a knave over the head with the flat of a lade.

It seems that justice in American society is often tempered by compromise, rather than a blacksmith. Skill at arms is more often attained as an exercise, rather than a useful tool, and strength of body, while glamorized, is degraded by large numbers of “men of the mind. ” Chivalry is a lot like ethics; it is a governing principle concerning fair play as far as medieval combat among your peers was concerned. Do not attack an unarmed knight – allow him to arm himself first, if you unhorse your opponent and your opponent is still able to fight, get off your horse to fight, etc. air play with honor and respect.

At the end, there still was a winner, and the winner ended up with more respect and admiration from those concerned that had he fought without chivalry. What am I getting at? Capitalism can be much the same way. American businesses have taken advantage of this system though, a system that one can cheat in and get away with, instead of being honorable and respectable institutions that children could look up to. So many things are like this that I just shake my head and sigh when I think about them – is American just a scam?

Where did all the honor and respect go? In “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Gawain made a promise to the huntsman to give him whatever gifts he received that day in exchange for whatever gifts the huntsman received that day. On the third and final day of Sir Gawain’s visit, he received a green girdle from the huntsman’s wife, who was his secret lover. The only reason that he accepted it was because he, like Lancelot, had fear in his heart; only Gawain’s fear was dying.

The huntsman’s wife told Gawain that the girdle had magic powers and would protect him from his ate, for the next day Gawain was going to fulfill a promise that he had made to the Green Knight and get his head chopped off. At the end of the day, when Gawain met the huntsman to exchange gifts, he did not give the huntsman the girdle, and broke his promise so that he would fulfill his promise to the Green Knight. He, like Lancelot, betrayed the code of chivalry for their own purposes. The most prominent example of Arthur’s “great” honor is depicted in the story “Day of Destiny.

In the story King Arthur and his knights have one the arduous battle against his half son Mordred’s army. The only one’s left standing on the field is King Arthur and two of his knights Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere. Lucan says to Arthur “sir, let him be,” “for he brings misfortune. And if ye pass this unfortunate day ye shall be right well revenged. And, good lord, remember ye of your night’s dream and what the spirit of Sir Gawain told you last night, and God of His great goodness hath preserved you hitherto.

And for God’s sake, my lord, leave this battle field, for yet be here three alive, and with Sir Mordred is not one alive. And therefore if ye leave now, this wicked day of destiny is past! Arthur’s response to Sir Lucan’s speech is “Now come death, come life,”. What this proves is that Arthur shows his honesty and loyalty to his promise; the purpose of the killing was to kill Sir Mordred and that exactly is what transpired in the end.

In the movie “Excalibur” that we had viewed in class, Lancelot attempts to be honest by refusing the love and attention of Guenevere. Nevertheless he becomes enchanted by the beauty and charm of the lady and he falls for her. Although obviously disobeying the Knights code of honor he continues his affair with Guinevere. Although people lways endeavour to be as honest and just, a honourable knight cannot afford to deceive anyone, because consequences could have an adverse affect on them later. Honor is not a virtue.

It is the essential quality that accrues to a man when other people view them as being virtuous-i. e. they honor them. The drive for honor earns a knight or man-at-arms renown, his fame, his good name. It is always a very strong motivator for some soldiers. Honor in a personal sense is often confused with such ‘public’ honor, but I say rather that this is not honor but integrity. Chivalry is a romantic ethic, doomed to failure; Arthur fails ecause he had too much pride in himself although his heart was in the right place his mind never was.

But I come away from good events with a heart full of courtesy and generosity, with a strengthened sense of my own honor, and with a little more courage and persistence in the face of a less than ideal world. That is the reason that during the Middle Ages warriors and rulers at their leisure turned to dreams. That is the reason we today are drawn to these virtues of chivalry. We may never live out a romantic ethic, but it is a food as nourishing as any at the table, and a wealth as dear as any coin of the time.

The Godly beliefs and punishments followed by the Puritans stemmed from their English experience and complete involvement in religion. The Puritan society molded itself and created a government based upon the Bible and implemented it with force. Hesters act of adultery was welcomed with rage and was qualified for serious punishment. Boston became more involved in Hesters life after her crime was announced than it had ever been beforethe religious based, justice system formally punished her and society collectively tortured her.

Based upon the religious, governmental, and social design of the society, Hesters entire existence revolved around her sin and the Puritan perception thereof; this association breaks way to society significantly becoming involved in her life. The importance of a social framework for the new society, where the Church would be all encompassing, developed from the teachings of such religious reformers as John Wycliffe and John Calvin. The Church would be directly involved in the running of the community and its regime.

Enforcing such laws established by scripture read from the Bible, the government disciplined Hester for her committed sin. The Puritans considered the Bible as the true law of God that provided guidelines for church and government. They wished to shape the Church of England to meet their ideals, emphasizing Bible reading, prayer, and preaching in worship services. They simplified the ritual of the sacraments and also wanted more personal and fewer prescribed prayers. The Puritans stressed grace, devotion, prayer, and self-examination to achieve religious virtue while including a basic knowledge of unacceptable actions of the time.

Obtaining virtue was expected to secure order and peace within the Puritan community. The Church officials, who played a direct role in the government, calculated the penalties for various sins. When sins arose, the government took the role as chief executive of corrective punishment and instituted castigation. Hester found herself very much a part of the local Church and governments heavy hand. Everyone was aware of her sinful act, for she was placed on a scaffold amidst the entire people for a painful viewing.

The religious morals instilled in the Puritan society caused her much pain long after the public humiliation. Permanently symbolized as a sinner, Hester was branded for life with a cloth letter worn on her bosom. For years after the letter was first revealed on the scaffold, Hester was associated with the sin and the scarlet letter. Because the Puritans contoured religion, social life, and government together, each member of the society was involved in the religion, social life, and governmenteverybody in Boston saw the A on Hesters chest in the same light.

Also, each member thought alike and quipped at Hester and her child. The two became objects for jest and were made fun of as an exhibition every time they ventured into town. Hester furthered her interaction with society and in doing so also increased the amount of ridicule she received. With the motive to penalize herself, Hester set forth towards her social life, which she thought God had appointed to her [as] punishment for her sins.

The chastisement received by Hester in the novel was based upon the Puritan religious, social, and governmental beliefs, structured into a single ideology, which was formed from their English experience and complete commitment to religion.

The Church and the government, one in the same, sentenced Hester to a life of embarrassment, first upon a scaffold, later with a symbol. The cloth letter presented on Hesters chest opened a door for continuous public humiliation and involvement. Hesters sin enveloped her and caused the Puritan society, because of its moral and collective structure, to become the most significant aspect of her life.

Of the many chatted words in the social reform vocabulary of Canadians today, the term workfare seems to stimulate much debate and emotion. Along with the notions of self-sufficiency, employability enhancement, and work disincentives, it is the concept of workfare that causes the most tension between it’s government and business supporters and it’s anti-poverty and social justice critics. In actuality, workfare is a contraction of the concept of “working for welfare” which basically refers to the requirement that recipients perform unpaid work as a condition of receiving social assistance.

Recent debates on the subject of welfare are far from unique. They are all simply contemporary attempts to decide if we live in a just society or not. This debate has been a major concern throughout history. Similarly, the provision of financial assistance to the able-bodied working-age poor has always been controversial. On one side are those who articulate the feelings and views of the poor, namely, the Permissive Position, who see them as victims of our society and deserving of community support.

The problems of the poor range from personal (abandonment or death of the family income earner) to the social (racial rejudice in the job market) and economic (collapse in the market demand for their often limited skills due to an economic recession or shift in technology). The Permissive View reveals that all participants in society are deserving of the unconditional legal right to social security without any relation to the individual’s behaviour.

It is believed that any society which can afford to supply the basic needs of life to every individual of that society but does not, can be accused of imposing life-long deprivation or death to those needy individuals. The reason for the needy individual being in that situation, hether they are willing to work, or their actions while receiving support have almost no weight in their ability to acquire this welfare support. This view is presently not withheld in society, for if it was, the stereotype of the ‘Typical Welfare Recipient’ would be unheard of.

On the other side, the Individualists believe that generous aid to the poor is a poisoned chalice that encourages the poor to pursue a life of poverty opposing their own long-term interests as well of those of society in general. Here, high values are placed on personal choice. Each participant in society s a responsible individual who is able to make his own decisions in order to manipulate the progression of his own life. In conjunction with this opinion, if you are given the freedom to make these decisions, then surely you must accept the consequences of those decisions.

An individual must also work part of his time for others (by means of government taxing on earned income). Those in society who support potential welfare recipients do not give out of charity, but contrastingly are forced to do it when told by the Government. Each person in society contains ownership of their own body and labour. Therefore anything arned by this body and labour in our Free Market System is deserved entirely by that individual. Any means of deducting from these earnings to support others is equivalent to criminal activity. Potential welfare recipients should only be supported by voluntary funding.

For this side, welfare ultimately endangers society by weakening two of it’s moral foundations: that able-bodied adults should be engaged in some combination of working, learning and child rearing; and secondly, that both parents should assume all applicable responsibilities of raising their children. (5) In combination of the two previous views, the Puritan View basically nvolves the idea that within a society which has the ability to sufficiently support all of it’s individuals, all participants in the society should have the legal right to Government supplied welfare benefits.

However, the individual’s initiative to work is held strongly to this right. Potential welfare recipients are classified as a responsibility of the Government. The resources required to support the needy are taken by means of taxation from the earnings of the working public. This generates an obligation to work. Hence, if an individual does not make the sacrifice of his time and energy to ontribute their earnings to this fund, they are not entitled to acquire any part of it when in need unless a justifiable reason such as disability is present for the individual’s inability to work.

The right to acquire welfare funds is highly conditional on how an individual accounts for his failure in working toward his life’s progression by his own efforts. Two strong beliefs of the Puritan Position are; Firstly, those on welfare should definitely not receive a higher income than the working poor, and secondly, incentives for welfare recipients to work must be evident. The distinction between the “deserving” and “non-deserving” poor is as vident now as it was in the Poor Laws of the 16th and 17th centuries. 1)

The former were the elderly, the disabled, the sick, single mothers and dependent children, all of whom were unable to meet their needs by participating in the labour force and, therefore, were considered worthy of receiving assistance. The latter were able-bodied adults who were often forced to do some kind of work as a condition of obtaining relief as a means of subsistence. Those who refused this work requirement were presumably not really in need.

Throughout our own history of public assistance, the non-deserving poor always got harsher reatment and fewer benefits than their deserving counterparts. Due to it’s mandatory nature, historically, workfare has been viewed as a forceful measure. Two other program strategies are now in use as well. Namely, a service strategy, and a financial strategy. (8) The former includes support services for the work participant, such as counselling, child care, and training. The latter includes a higher rate of benefits for those who participate in work programs than someone would receive from social assistance alone.

To actually show that workfare does not work, we must observe the United States, which has had federally mandated workfare programs for welfare recipients since 1967. Although the research on American workfare programs is inconclusive to some extent, many findings suggest that workfare is ineffective in reducing welfare costs and moving people from the welfare rolls into adequate employment. It was found that low-cost programs with few support services and a focus on immediate job placements had extremely limited effects.

These did not produce sizable savings or reduce poverty or reduce large numbers of people from welfare. (9) Furthermore, While expensive programs with xtensive supports and services were more likely to place people in employment, there was a definite point of diminishing returns where the expenses outweighed the benefits. (10) Even the limited success by some American workfare programs is highly questionable. Largely missing from the research is the discussion of workfare’s major limitation: The lack of available adequate jobs.

In the wide scheme of things, it doesn’t matter whether the program is mandatory with no frills or voluntary and comprehensive if there are no jobs to fill. This is the “Achilles Heel” of all workfare programs. Even if some individuals manage o find jobs and get off welfare, if the unemployment rate for the area does not change, it is obvious that there has already been a displacement of some people in the workforce. What actually occurs is a shuffling of some people into the workforce and some out, with no net increase in the number of jobs.

Workfare only increases the competition for jobs, it doesn’t create them (except for those who manage and deliver the programs, generally not welfare recipients). In addition, the few jobs that workfare participants do get tend to be either temporary, so the person returns to welfare, or low-paying with inimal benefits, so that people are not moved out of poverty, but merely from the category of “non-working poor” to “working poor”. (11) Another issue largely ignored in Canada as well are health and safety conditions affecting workfare participants.

For example, in New Brunswick an unusually high accident rate has been reported among welfare recipients who took part in provincial work programs. Given the overall failure of workfare programs to reduce welfare expenditures, reduce poverty, and move people into adequate and permanent jobs, workfare should not even be discussed as a viable social reform option today.

Politicians and the business establishment only call for workfare because it helps to protect their privileged positions in our society. Workfare serves to preserve the status quo by: i. reating the illusion that politicians are actually doing something meaningful about the deficit and welfare. ii. increasing the reserve pool of available labour which can be called upon at any time to carry out society’s dangerous and menial jobs. iii. increasing the competition for scarce jobs, which tends to keep wages down and profits up. iv. reinforcing the attitude that people on welfare are largely responsible or our economic and social ills, that they are lazy, deviants who will not work unless forced to do so.

Workfare creates the assumption that unemployment is caused by personal choice or lack of work ethic. However, due to the fact that we have well over one million people in Canada actively looking for work, this is a ridiculous assumption. Fifteen thousand people lined up one day in Oshawa in January to apply for one of a few hundred possible jobs at General Motors. The problem is not one of a lost worth ethic or personal pathology. The problem is a lack of jobs, and workfare undoubtedly does nothing to compensate or eliminate this problem.

American society has been described as maintaining a stereotypic and often negative perception of older adults. This negative and/or stereotypic perception of aging and aged individuals is apparent in such areas as language, media, and humor. For example, such commonly used phrases as over the hill and an old fart denote old age as a period of impotency and incompetence. The term used to describe this stereotypic and often negative bias against older adults is ageism.

Ageism can be defined as “any attitude, action, or institutional structure, which subordinates a person or group because of age or any assignment of roles in society purely on the basis of age”(Webster 25). As an ism, ageism reflects a prejudice in society against older adults. The victims of bigotry and prejudice are generally referred to as minorities. This is not because they are necessarily fewer in number, but because they are deprived of the rights and privileges of the majority (the Aged 4). Ageism, however, is different from other isms (sexism, racism etc. , for primarily two reasons. First, age classification is not static. An individual’s age classification changes as one progresses through life.

Therefore, age classification is characterized by continual change, while the other classification systems traditionally used by society such as race and gender remain constant. From this we can conclude that denial of old age is a principal source of bigotry against those who are old now (the Aged 4). Second, no one is exempt from at some point achieving the status of old. Unless they die at an early age, they will experience ageism.

The later is an important distinction as ageism can affect an individual on two levels. First, the individual may be ageist with respect to others. That is they may stereotype other people on the basis of age. Second, the individual may be ageist with respect to self so ageist attitudes may affect the self-concept. We live in a culture that reveres youth. To be young is to be alive, sexy, and full of energy. To be old is to be “senile,” “worthless,” and having “one foot in the grave”(Online 1). This is the attitude most often seen in modern society.

In general there are at least nine known major stereotypes that reflect prejudice towards senior citizens. These include illness, impotency, ugliness, mental decline, mental illness, uselessness, isolation, poverty and depression(Ageism 20). This discrimination allows the rest of us to separate ourselves from older people and view them as less than fully human(Online 1). So how old is old? Where do we draw the line? Well, around the 1900s in the United States old age began in ones thirties because the life expectancy was about forty-seven. In todays society most younger people define old age as somewhere in the sixties.

When people get into their sixties, however, they define old as ten years older than me (Discrimination 6). When it comes to employment old age, there is a slight difference, especially when jobs are tight. Ageism may start at age forty-five or even younger. Companies can usually cut costs by replacing top older workers with younger, cheaper employees. Once fired, workers over the age of forty-five often face permanent employment because of todays ever-changing technology(Discrimination 14). This form of ageism has come to be referred to as economic ageism.

Research on ageism has come a long way. It is still relatively problematic, however. The use of primarily younger populations to study ageism represents a problem with ageism research. The bulk of ageism research utilizes children, adolescents, or young adults as subjects and examines their perception of older adults. Only a small amount of studies have examined the views of the population whom the construct affects most, older adults. Those studies, which have used an older subject population, have unfortunately used mainly institutionalized individuals as subjects.

As a result, they do not represent the vast majority of older adults. Another problem with much of ageism research is that it only examines the negative stereotypes of old age. More recent studies have suggested that while attitudes toward the aged are increasingly positive, they are still stereotypic. Therefore, ageism has been expanded to include positive stereotypic images. Elders have made substantial gains in status. Critics have recently begun to declare that various programs and services for seniors only have become positive ageism.

However, this is rarely acknowledged, much less studied(Ageism 17). Two additional problems are mainly theoretical in nature. First, ageism research rarely examines or attempts to understand the causes of ageism. So, while much theoretical work has been conducted concerning the factors contributing to ageism, little experimental research has been conducted in this area. Second, ageism research rarely examines the interaction between ageism and other isms. As many individuals are in a position to experience more than one prejudice, the interaction between these prejudices needs to be examined.

For instance when ageism is combined with sexism, it is called double jeopardy. The term for ageism, sexism, and racism collectively against one person is triple jeopardy(Ageism 11). Ageism, along with every other prejudice, is an appalling subject to face. It is not just going to go away. Great advancements toward ending ageism have been made in the United States. Congress passed a bill called the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which prevents people from getting fired for being too old. Various groups such as the American Association of Retired Persons have been formed to fight for senior citizen rights.

Life expectancy has risen thirty years in the past century. Since 1960, there has been a 100 percent increase in those over the age of sixty-five and a 274 percent increase of those over eighty-five. The so-called baby boom generation, those Americans born in the 1950s are seventy-six million strong and will make up sixteen percent of the population in at least ten states by 2020(the Aged 251). It is expected that the life expectancy will exceed 100 by the end or the twenty-first century. That is just something to think about. We have no choice but to deal with the ageing process as individuals.

With all this in mind, I believe the following quote sums up the entire paper and my values instilled in me as a younger person. We are all growing older, every day. Which means, if you live long enough, someday you too, are going to be a senior citizen. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to approach everyone you meet with kindness and respect, no matter what their age. We all have something to contribute and when we look beyond labels, we include people of all ages within the circle of our community. That way all of us become richer as we share in each other’s life experiences(Online 1)

Every town all over the world has different classes within the community; some are rich, some are poor, some have a better reputation than others. Whether you’re working in an office building and have the highest education or you’re working at the local McDonalds and earn 5$ an hour, everyone is important making a working community. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee however, the different classes are not treated equally and because it is in the 1930’s, there is also a race issue.

The Cunningham’s have a good reputation although they are really poor the citizens of Maycomb respect them for who they are, as Scout describes The Cunningham’s never took anything they can’t pay back- no church baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody; they get along on what they have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it” (Lee 20). People mostly leave them alone. Dolphus Raymond is a white man married to an African American woman and everyone just leaves him alone.

Dolphus Raymond explains to the two kids “I try to give’em a reason you see. When I come to town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whiskey – that’s why he won’t change his ways. He simply can’t help himself, that’s why he lives the way he does” (Lee 228). Dolphus Raymond is considered a low part of the community, because he is married and had kids with an African American woman, yet he is a “class” higher than African Americans because he is white.

The Finches, the main characters of the book, is a very well respected white family in the community, and most likely one of the wealthiest too. The Finches also have a long family history in town, back to one of the oldest in Maycomb. They are also looked upon a little different because Mr. Finch, the father to the two children in the book defends Tom Robinson an African American against a white man for raping his daughter. The children also experience some sort of racism at school because their dad does what he does.

Tom Robinson, a well working African American, and works so much to keep food on the table for his family, is well respected throughout the community. He obeys the laws and pays his bills, but his word can not be taken over a white man such as Mr. Ewell; the poorest white man in the ommunity, with little over half a dozen children, living in a dump. In the book, there is a testimony about Tom Robinson raping Mr. Ewell’s daughter, Mayella. Everyone in town knows that Mr. Ewell is lying, and that he made it up, but Tom Robinson is convicted guilty because he is African American and Mr. Ewell is white. It was proven that Tom Robinson did not rape Mayella, and even though Tom Robinson had a better reputation, worked well, and cared well for his family and others, even the poorest white man with the worst reputation, had the word over a black man’s in the 1930’s. Mr. Finch made it clear that the Jury thought about saying he was innocent “That Jury took a few hours.

An evitable verdict, maybe, but usually it takes’em just a few minutes” (Lee, 253) All the characters in the classes have an important role in the book, some more than others. In Maycomb, Alabama, these people are all important to each other and they mostly help each other. Some like to be left alone, while others enjoy being in company. The fact is that the most poor, lying, white man could send an African American that has done nothing and is actually proven so, to jail, because it is a white man saying so, is true acism can be in a little town like Maycomb, where everyone knows each other.

Even today’s day there is racism in communities, not so much because of skin color, but their class, and their reputation. But without different classes, a community wouldn’t exist. They are both important. In To Kill a Mockingbird the people are looked down upon if they are an African American, but if they are poor but have a good reputation, such as the Cunninghams, they will get along fine, but if they have a bad reputation such as the Ewells, they might not receive any help from any neighbors.

The Progressive Era was a period that showed the goals and contradictions found in American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Theodore Roosevelt summed up the Progressive/Reform feeling in his “Square Deal” speech – that it was all about morals, not economics. His goal was the “moral regeneration of the business world. ” He preached that it was wrong for some people to get ahead in business and politics by tricks and schemes, while others were cheated out of the opportunity.

This was the kind of talk that millions of Americans from all areas of society could understand and respond to. Roosevelt simply acted in the interests of the common working man, fixing things that they found unjust. For years, the poor and immigrants were unhappy with treatment from their big-business employers. Their long working hours and exploitation of children were, among other things, exposed by the Muckrakers. The Muckrakers were journalists who exposed corruption in business and politics and made many of their readers angry.

These new reformers took over the old Populist idea that the government should work for the public’s economic well being. Reform groups near the turn of the century were interested in the moral changes of the way the government and businesses were run. They wanted the government to be more open and listen to the people. Also, they wanted the government to put more effort into protecting the well being of all citizens. This would require government action to regulate business, improve public health and safety and make sure that every citizen had the chance to succeed and to be happy.

Today there are also many reform groups. Just like the progressives of the early twentieth century, modern reformers are trying to change things for the better. One modern reformer is Ralph Nader. Nader is a leader in the consumer-protection movement. He organized investigative teams of young lawyers, consumer specialists, and students, popularly called Nader’s Raiders, to conduct surveys of numerous companies, federal agencies, and the U. S. Congress. Nader is a controversial man; his investigations have at times been criticized as biased against big business and government.

Cesar Chavez was another modern reformer. The issues that he dealt with included: Women Farmworkers, Farmworker Health Issues, and Migrant Labor. Many issues that progressives of the early 1900s dealt with are the core of many of todays issues, however there are still some reforms that are different than those of a hundred years ago. American reform movements have generally been started as a rebellion against the control of big businesses and corrupt government. The poor conditions of schools and the entire education system at the turn of the twentieth century were a major cause for reform.

That reform movement has influenced the entire education system and has made it better and more suitable for students. Civil rights for African-Americans and women was just beginning to become an issue in the late 19th century. Many progressivists spoke out for suffrage for women and equal rights for black people. Today, civil rights for minorities is still a big cause for reform. There are many different oraganizations whose goal is to reform the way society, the government and businesses treat any type of minority, including Hispanics, homosexuals and Native Americans.

However civil rights is just one of the many causes of modern reform groups. Others include reform of huge companies and monoplolies, welfare programs, education systems and many, many other issues. A reform movement is a shout against people, businesses, governments or ideas that are morally corrupt. Not all reform movements are successful in making an actual change, however even if a significant change isnt made their message is still shared with the public. Reform group leaders are usually involved in the government and have a strong charisma, which helps them convey their message.

Jesse Louis Jackson is one of America’s strongest political figures. Over the past three decades he has played a major role in just about every movement for empowerment, peace, civil rights, gender equality, and economic and social justice. Reverend Jackson has been called the “conscience of the nation” and “the great unifier,” challenging America to establish just and humane priorities, and bringing people together on common ground across lines of race, class, gender, and belief.

Years before they were common positions, Reverend Jackson was advocating national health care, a war on drugs, dialogue with the Soviet Union, and negotiations in the Middle East. His strong stand against apartheid in South Africa in 1984 made it an issue on the national conscience. Jesse Jackson’s two presidential campaigns broke new ground in U. S. politics. His 1984 campaign won 3. 5 million votes, registered over a million new voters, and helped the Democratic Party regain control of the Senate in 1986.

A strong point of Reverend Jacksons work has been his commitment to the youth. He has visited thousands of high schools, colleges, and universities, encouraging excellence, and challenging your people to stay in school and away from drugs. Jesse Jackson has also been a major force in the American labor movement. He has worked with unions to organize workers, mediated labor disputes and he has probably walked more picket lines and spoken at more labor rallies than any other national leader. In 1986, Jesse Jackson founded the National Rainbow Coalition of which he is President.

The Rainbow is a national social justice organization devoted to empowerment, education and mobilization. Reverend Jackson is also the author of two books: Keep Hope Alive and Straight from the Heart. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Civil rights leader, and one of the world’s best-known advocates of nonviolent social change. In December 1955, after Montgomery civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to obey the city’s policy over segregation on buses, black residents launched a bus boycott and elected King as president of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association.

His house was bombed, and he and other boycott leaders were convicted on charges of conspiring to interfere with the bus company’s operations. But, in December 1956, Montgomery’s buses were desegregated when the Supreme Court declared Alabama’s segregation laws unconstitutional. In 1957, seeking to build upon the success in Montgomery, King and other black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president, King emphasized the goal of black voting rights when he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.

Southern black college students started a series of sit-in protests in 1960. Although King sympathized with their movement and spoke at the founding meeting of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee SNCC in April 1960, he soon became the target of criticisms from SNCC activists. Even King’s joining a student sit-in and his arrest in October 1960 did not calm everyone down. Then King and his staff started a major campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, where white police officials were notorious for their anti-black attitudes.

In 1963, clashes between unarmed black demonstrators and police with attack dogs and fire hoses generated newspaper headlines throughout the world. Mass demonstrations in many communities came together in a march on August 28, 1963, attracting more than 250,000 protesters to Washington, D. C. Addressing the marchers from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech. In 1964 King received the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite the praise, King faced strong challenges to his leadership. In 1966, King encountered strong criticism from “black power” spokesperson Stokely Carmichael.

Shortly afterward, white counter-protestors in Chicago physically assaulted King during an unsuccessful effort to transfer nonviolent protest techniques to the North. Nevertheless, King remained committed to nonviolence. After his death, King remained a controversial symbol of the civil rights struggle, revered by many for his martyrdom on behalf of nonviolence and condemned by others for his rebellious views. Jacob Riis was America’s first journalist-photographer and one of the first muckrakers. He was known as the “Emancipator of the Slums” because of his work on behalf of the urban poor.

His brutal documentation of sweatshops, disease-ridden tenements, and overcrowded schools stirred up public indignation and helped effect significant reform in housing, education, and child-labor laws. Riis lived in poverty in New York City for some time before he found a job with a news bureau in 1873. He became a police reporter for the New York Tribune and the Associated Press in 1877. Horrified by immigrant life, he began a series of exposes on slum conditions on New York’s Lower East Side. In 1884 he was responsible for the establishment of the Tenement House Commission.

In 1888 he left the Tribune for the Evening Sun and began work on his book How the Other Half Lives. Riis was among the first photographers to use flash powder, which let him photograph interiors and exteriors of the slums at night. He worked at first with two assistants but soon found it necessary to take his photographs himself. Mainly a writer, he wanted pictures to document and authenticate his reports, and to supply the vividness that would ensure attention. Sections of How the Other Half Lives appeared in Scribner’s magazine in December 1889.

The full-length book attracted immediate attention upon publication some months later and was reprinted several times. It had a powerful and lasting effect on movements for many kinds of social reform. For the next 25 years Riis continued to write and lecture extensively on the problems of the poor. He published over a dozen books, including his autobiography, The Making of an American (1901), and many articles. He became known as “the father of the small parks movement” after his success in creating a park in the infamous Mulberry Bend section of lower Manhattan.

Jane Addams wrote eleven books, one of the most famous being Newer Ideals of Peace. She also wrote hundreds of articles on a variety of subjects such as, industrial conditions, suffrage, civil rights, child welfare and many more. The legacy of Jane Addams began with a trip to Europe with two college friends. A stop in Londons East End showed her terrible poverty that came with industrialism. In England she also saw Toynbee Hall, a settlement house where students form Oxford and Cambridge helped to teach workingmen.

This made Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr read every piece of literature on the works of social reform that they could find. When they returned from Europe, both Addams and Starr considered the possibilities of setting up settlement houses in the many run-down streets of Chicago. After visiting many locations, they decided on the former mansion of a wealthy businessman that was serving as a rooming house in an Italian neighborhood in Chicagos overpopulated West Side. This became known as Hull House.

The main reason for doing this was for the poor, but another factor that played a role in this was to break away from the traditional roles given to women of that time. The Hull House was given plenty of work to do. Addams and Starr took care of the children of working mothers, they arranged for medical care of the sick, and they even tried to fight against the waste and rubbish in the streets which had spread disease throughout the neighborhoods. Addams and Starr tried to enlighten and educate the women and children who struggled with daily poverty.

Over time, interest in helping the poor had risen greatly. Addams traveled and spoke to womens clubs, church groups, and college students. Addams was unique not because she was helping the poor, charity was fairly common, but because of all that she gave up to live and help in the slums of Chicago. The impulse to reform strengthened in the 1890s, as settlement houses became more known and widespread. Addams pioneering efforts made her an obvious leader as her lectures and writings gave her the loudest voice of reform.

Settlement houses demanded recreation facilities in crowded cities, better sanitation facilities, and protection for female workers, abolition of child labor, improvement of education, and womens suffrage. In the Spring of 1898, Addams became more involved not only with community concerns, but national concerns as well. After the US declared war on Spain, violent crime had immediately risen in the streets of Chicago. Over time, her complaints and protests reached the top as Charles R. Crane, a close friend of President Woodrow Wilson, sent the President a letter urging him to meet with Addams after he returned from Europe in 1915.

Of course she is the best we have and has been received everywhere as a spiritual messenger…. Added to her great spiritual power is wonderful wisdom ad discretion. Every woman in the land and most men would be cheered by knowing that you and she were in conference. As the US entered World War I, it seemed as if those who tried to stop the war, including Addams, became more hated than applauded for their efforts to prevent worldwide involvement. She declined to work with the Red Cross because it had become part of the military and used to war to rally for their own support.

Despite recurring illnesses, Jane Addams worked for a way to give women a strong role in society as well as a sense of patriotism by keeping peace achievable but not seeming to go against the nation. Her dream was to give every child the happy childhood she had by giving them the safe feeling of, being held up in a pair of dusty hands to see the heavy stone mill wheels go around. Theodore Roosevelt was an historian, a biographer, a statesman, a hunter, a naturalist, and an orator. His emormous amount of literary works include twenty-six books, over a thousand magazine articles and thousands of speeches and letters.

In 1889 President Harrison appointed Roosevelt as a member of the Civil Service Commission of which he later became president. He kept this office until 1895 when he became the director of the Police Department of New York City. The New York City police department was extremely corrupt when Roosevelt took over his post. Roosevelt would find as an ally in his war against this corruption, Jacob Riis, the author of How the Other Half Lives, a book on the poor living conditions in New York’s slums.

Riis was familiar with the city and its corrupt police force and how it operated. Bribery was not only rampant, but accepted behavior, with the payments being divvied out from patrolman up through the ranks. This was made all that much more apparent when the Rev. Charles Parkhurst, from the Presbyterian Church on Madison Avenue began a crusade against the corruption of the police force. With Roosevelt in charge, this behavior would no longer be acceptable. In 1897 he joined President McKinley’s administration as assistant secretary of the Navy.

While in this office he actively prepared for the Cuban War, which he saw was coming, and when it broke out in 1898, he went to Cuba as lieutenant colonel of a regiment of volunteer cavalry, which he himself had raised among the hunters and cowboys of the West. He became very famous as the leader of these Rough-Riders; whose story he told in one of his most popular books. Roosevelt was elected governor of the state of New York in 1898, he would have sought reelection in 1900, since much of his work was only half done, had the Republicans not chosen him as their candidate for the second office of the Union.

He held the vice-presidency for less than a year, succeeding to the presidency after the assassination of President McKinley on November 14, 1901. In 1904 Roosevelt was elected to a full term as president. The ideals of the twentieth century were built on the work of reform groups. Reform groups still play a large part in changing the way large corporations and the government are run. Because of the constant need for change and reform, the turn of the twentieth century to the twenty-first could be called a progressive era just like the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century was.

Does entertainment influence society’s attitude towards violent behavior? In order to fully answer this question we must first understand what violence is. Violence is the use of one’s powers to inflict mental or physical injury upon another, examples of this would be rape or murder. Violence in entertainment reaches the public by way of television, movies, plays, and novels.

Through the course of this essay it will be proven that violence in entertainment is a major factor in the escalation of violence in society, once this is proven we will take all of the evidence that has been shown throughout this paper and come o a conclusion as to whether or not violence in entertainment is justified and whether or not it should be censored. Television with its far reaching influence spreads across the globe. Its most important role is that of reporting the news and maintaining communication between people around the world.

Television’s most influential, yet most serious aspect is its shows for entertainment. Violent children’s shows like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and adult shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide almost always fail to show human beings being able to resolve their differences in a non-violent manner, nstead they show a reckless attitude that promotes violent action first with reflection on the consequences later. In one episode of NYPD Blue three people were murdered in the span of an hour.

Contemporary television creates a seemingly insatiable appetite for amusement of all kinds without regard for social or moral benefits” (Schultze 41). Findings over the past twenty years by three Surgeon Generals, the Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence, the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other medical authorities indicate that televised violence is harmful to all of us, but particularly to the mental health of children (Medved 70-71).

In 1989 the results of a five year study by the American Psychological Association indicated that the average child has witnessed 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television by the time he or she has completed sixth grade. In further studies it was determined that by the time that same child graduates from high school he or she will have spent 22,000 hours watching television, wice as many hours as he or she has spent in school (Bruno 124).

In a study by the Centers for Disease Control, published by the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), it was shown that homicide rates had doubled between the introduction of television in the 1950’s and the end of the study in 1994. In that same study other possible causes for the vast increases in violence were studied, “the ‘baby boom’ effect, trends in urbanization, economic trends, trends in alcohol abuse, the role of capital punishment, civil unrest, the availability of guns, and exposure to television”(Lamson 32).

Each of these purported causes was tested in a variety of ways to see whether it could be eliminated as a credible contributor to doubling the crime rate in the United States, and one by each of them was invalidated, except for television. Children average four hours of television per day, and in the inner city that increases to as much as eleven hours a day, with an average of eight to twelve violent incidents per hour. It is also interesting to note that violence occurs some fifty-five times more often on television than it does in the real world (Medved 156).

FBI and census data show the homicide arrest rate for eventeen-year-olds more than doubled between 1985 and 1991, and the rates for fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds increased even faster. Movies also add their fair share to the problem of violence in society. “Researchers have established that copycat events are not an anomaly. Statistically-speaking, they are rare, but predictable, occurences. Television shows, novels, but especially movies-all can trigger copycat violence” (Medved 72).

As recently as November of 1995, New York City officials believed that the burning of a toll-booth clerk was a result of copycat violence, resulting from similar scene in the movie Money Train. In 1994, Nathan Martinez shot and killed his stepmother and half sister after watching the movie Natural Born Killers at least six times. “Later, Martinez, who had shaved his head and wore granny sun glasses like Natural Born Killer’s main character Mickey Knox, reportedly told a friend, “It’s nothing like the movies”(Purtell 57).

In a 1993 film, The Program, there was a scene showing college football players lying in the center of a highway in an attempt to show their courage and dedication to their sport. This movie was later blamed for inspiring eal-life imitators; (one of whom died). In numorous experiments based at pre-schools, researchers have observed children playing before and after seeing violent movies and television shows. “Following the violent program the children’s play is invaribly more aggressive. They are much more likely to hit, punch, kick, and grab to get their way.

In other words, violent entertainment teaches children how to use aggression for personal gain” (Medved 75). It is also hard to believe that movies like Rambo III with one hundred and six killings and Terminator 2 which showed countless killings lus a nuclear holocaust have at one time had their own line of children’s action figures even though both movies are rated R. One must seriously consider the idea that the movie studios are targeting a younger and easily influenced main audience. The ancient Greeks believed that violence should never be shown on stage, because people imitated what they saw.

Because of this they would only show the results of violence in order to deter any violent activity. The Greeks slowly but surely moved away from this idea as did other playwrights, and by the late 1500’s a new writer with a new view on violence was beginning to write plays. His name was William Shakespeare. Many critics were bothered by Shakespeare’s failure to follow the rules of the ancient Greeks, especially the rules concerning violence, but they also objected to Shakespeare’s comic sexual passages, which they considered vulgar.

Shakespeare was a writer during what has historically been called the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare’s plays reflect the shift from optimism to pessimism in Elizabethan society. “Elizabethans were keenly aware of death and the brevity of life” (Info Find), but death and violence fascinated the Elizabethans. “They flocked to the beheadings of traitors hose heads were exhibited on poles and watched as criminals were hanged, and they saw the rotting corpses dangle from the gallows for days” (The Student Handbook 2: 591). Elizabethans, literature and lives were very violent.

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet all the main characters die through murder or suicide, all of which is shown on stage. Those critics who say excessive violence has only become a common occurence in today’s entertainment, should watch Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus with its’ stage direction, “Enter a messenger with two heads and a hand” (Klavan 98), or they should atch as quarts of stage blood are poured all over the “victims” in that same play. Novels, just like television, movies, and plays can cause violence. Throughout history novels have been the cause of violent behavior.

Those who say people can’t be influenced by books, should really look into the influence that a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin had ten years prior to the Civil War. In 1851 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe was published. The novel told of the hardships and cruelties faced by African-American slaves in the south. The novel popularlized the abolitionist movement and is believed to have been a major ause for the Civil War, which even though a noble cause, resulted in over 500,000 deaths (The Student Handbook 2: 592). In 1980 Mark Chapman, a former mental patient, shot and killed John Lennon.

When asked why he did it, he indicated that he got the idea to kill Lennon from J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye (590). He felt that he and the main character in the story, Holden Caufield, were very similar because they were both angry social outcasts, who were recovering from a mental breakdown (590). Violence is prominent in children’s novels too. R. L. Stine’s novel The Babysitter III, tells of decapitating a baby and in Christopher Pike’s novel, Monster, there is a graphic description of the effects of a shotgun being fired at a person’s head at close range.

Roderick McGillis, a professor of English at the University of Calgary and author of a book on children’s literature, has written that, “What disturbs me is that we’re developing in our culture, in our cities, a kind of siege mentality. A lot of thes books reinforce this, make it sort of normal to think that the world is a place in which violence can erupt at any moment” (Gray 54). With all of this evidence t is hard to ignore the fact that violence in entertainment can cause violence in society. This paper has now shown that there are copycat kilers who get the idea for their crimes from entertainment.

It has also been shown that the more violent movies and television children watch the more likely thay are to become aggressive and violent. Violence in entertainment and society is not isolated to the present, it was also very prominent in the writings of Shakespeare. With the evidence showing that violence in entertainment causes real life violence, it is very hard to say that violence in entertainment is justifiable. When little children and adults alike, fall victim to entertainment’s violent influence it is not justifiable and it is especially not justifiable when violent entertainment creates real life victims.

Is censorship the answer to the problem of violent entertainment? Should we tell people what they can or can’t read or watch? The simple answer to this question is no, we can’t censor violent entertainment. The First Amendment clearly states that: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the ress, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The instinct to censor is the tragic flaw of utopian minds. “Our first job,” said Plato in his classic attack on the democratic system , “is to oversee the work of the story writers, and to accept any good stories they write, but reject the others” (Klavan 96). If the government ever did censor violent entertainment who knows where they would stop, or even if they would. Perhaps they would try to censor violent speech or try to censor the speech of those who disagreed ith the actions of the government.

The simple message is don’t promote censorship, because it could easily get out of hand, and as the old saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions. ” There are then only two ways to get rid of the violent entertainment in our lives: we could shame those who make the violent movies, television shows, books, and plays, into having a social conscience, making them be less prone to creating violent entertainment; or we could simply solve the problem ourselves, with a push of a button, or the turn of a page.

In today’s society, a lot of emphasis is placed on how you look. Almost everybody wants that “perfect body”. But with all the things people have to do, not many are willing to put in the time to get it. So there must be an easy way to get it. Right? Not too long ago people steroids. They injected horse testosterone into their veins to increase the amount of muscle mass produced from lifting. But after a while, some professional athletes and high profile people started showing the side effects that are associated with them. For example, Lyle Alzado, a popular star in the NFL, developed a brain tumor and died.

This scared lot of people and the recreational uses of steroids decreased. With the dangers of steroids well known people started looking for other substances to give them an edge. Bee pollen, carnitine and chromium picolinate, were among the things people tried. Of course none of these worked. But now there is a product on the market that has been proven to significantly enhance athletic performance in the areas of power, strength, and muscle mass. This substance is Creatine Phosphate. When you exercise you obviously burn energy. There are many things involved in this process. The energy that you burn is called Adenosine

Triphosphate, ATP. This molecule has very high energy bonds between the phosphates and the rest of the molecule. Your body breaks these bonds releasing the energy for use and changing the molecule to ADP (di-phosphate). Since the body has a relatively low supply of ATP, it needs to convert the ADP back into ATP. Creatine helps to speed this process along. Creatine is an amino acid made in your liver and stored in In the diet it is found in milk, steak, and some fish. Although scientists have known about it for about 160 years, studies on it have After the publication of test results in 1990, the area of creatine upplementation has exploded.

Now almost everyone knows what it is and someone who is using it. As was stated earlier, creatine helps speed up the process of converting ADP back into ATP. So it is logical that if you increase the amount of creatine you should increase the conversion rate. The daily requirement of creatine is about two grams. Most of the creatine supplement products recommend taking ten times that amount for the first week or so to saturate your muscles, and five grams a day to maintain it. In most published studies the logic is correct; if you increase dietary creatine you increase stored creatine.

With the increase of stored creatine there should be an increase in conversion time. In most of the studies that I have seen this is true. There is also a relationship between the amount of hydration in a muscle cell and the amount of work it can do. Creatine makes the cell retain water and therefore should increase the amount of work individual cells can do. But this is not all that it does. In many studies, along with increased recovery time, creatine showed to increase muscle mass, explosive power and strength. In one study groups of athletes put on five to seven pounds of lean muscle mass in a month.

These results were far better than athletes receiving a placebo in the same study. Some critics state that the increase in muscle mass is mostly water, but there are studies that say there is an increase in the size of Type II muscle fibers. With the increase in mass there should be an increase in power. In the same study the athletes saw a thirty percent increase in bench-press. With an increase in strength and recovery time there is an increase in Although creatine supplementation has shown results in particular areas, it doesn’t help everyone. The supplements are pretty expensive and ith the recommended dosage, they go pretty fast.

If you are not serious about training or are a weekend warrior you may see results but you will pay for them. But if you are seriously into bodybuilding, creatine will help you see gains. Also, athletes that perform short burst sprints with little recovery time will benefit from creatine. Basketball and football players in particular. But if you are an endurance athlete such as a marathoner or a sprinter there are studies that show that creatine supplementation may slow you down. Some think it is from the weight gained. There are also people ho are immune to its effects.

They are officially called “nonresponders”. These people are studied little and it is not known why they are immune or who these people are. Since studies on creatine loading have only been going on for less than a decade, it is still unknown what long term effects the extra creatine will have. Some researchers fear that, with the amount of extra creatine contrived through the diet, the body might stop producing it. The only way we will find out the negative effects of long term use is time. The sales of creatine supplements are very strong, so a lot of people are using it.

On our planet, there are almost six and one half billion people, and more are being born every second. Some estimates say that every second, twenty-eight people are born, while another ten die. This results in a net gain of eighteen people every second of every day, non-stop. Humans, homo sapiens, have been in existence for at least ten thousand years, although it has been disputed exactly how long. Now consider that over 90 percent of our species population growth has occurred in only one percent of our existence. These are staggering facts.

Surely we see signs of such growth in our own communities, perhaps in the form of a new supermarket or neighborhood where weeks earlier stood a forest. However drastic something like this may seem at our local level, it absolutely pales in comparison to what is happening at the global level. In the United States we have an extremely high standard of living, and are able to accommodate such growth by consuming ever more resources. But what about the poorer developing nations that have thrice the rate of growth, and not even a fraction of our available resources?

In order to ease the strain on the planet and ourselves, the issue must be addressed that the global population explosion is way out of control. Why have the population levels risen so sharply in the last few centuries, and particularly, decades? There are several reasons, many of them associated with newer technologies. Drastic improvements in the areas of medicine, sanitation, and nutrition have meant people are living longer and consuming more resources throughout a lifetime. Also, infant and child mortality rates have gone way down in most countries due to these advances.

So there are more people living into and past their reproductive years, thus intensifying the cycle. But overpopulation does not simply mean there are many more people. It means that the giant escalation in the number of humans is becoming more than what the Earth is capable of providing for with the available resources. It so happens that we are at a perilous crossroads: as our numbers are becoming more and more, our resources are not increasing to accommodate the masses, but rather are becoming less and less.

Valuable topsoil reserves are being depleted at an alarming rate, making available less farmland to grow food for the burgeoning masses. By the end of this century, the amount of arable land will be less than half of what it was in 1951. While the US and other developed nations are beginning to make the transition to become less reliant on fossil fuels, the demand is only projected to increase due to the many other poorer nations that will not be able to institute expensive new technologies while in the midst of their ongoing growth and industrialization.

Even water, the most basic and vital human resource of all, is becoming a valuable commodity in places like Africa and the Middle East, where the large amounts of people are contributing to the polluting of already scarce water supplies. Developing nations, often known as third-world countries, are the first to feel the real impact of overpopulation. As they are usually suffering economically, this prevents them from instituting effective educational systems and technologies to attempt to conserve resources. There is also a correlation between poor countries and higher birth rates due to several reasons.

Since many of their economies are agriculturally driven, parents tend to have large families, reasoning that another mouth to feed is acceptable when it means two more hands helping with the labor. Also, since the educational systems are substandard, many people either are ignorant of or do not have access to methods of birth control. The end result is the dire scenario explained earlier: increasing people depending on decreasing resources. So what are we to do in order to combat this encroaching global catastrophe?

First of all, the United States needs to stop being so hypocritical and set an appropriate example. While we chastise other nations for wanton environmental destruction and skyrocketing birth rates, we continue to expel more harmful emissions than all the other nations on the list of the top five polluters combined. Just to pose a rhetorical question: does it seem right that a nation with 5 percent of the worlds population consumes 40 percent of its resources? Just because we as a nation are aware of this problem sadly does not necessarily mean we are willing to alter our comfortable lifestyles to combat it.

Only by changing our wasteful ways will we help lead the rest of the world in the ongoing battle against overpopulation. Argument on Global Overpopulation On our planet, there are almost six and one half billion people, and more are being born every second. Some estimates say that every second, twenty-eight people are born, while another ten die. This results in a net gain of eighteen people every second of every day, non-stop. Humans, homo sapiens, have been in existence for at least ten thousand years, although it has been disputed exactly how long.

Now consider that over 90 percent of our species population growth has occurred in only one percent of our existence. These are staggering facts. Surely we see signs of such growth in our own communities, perhaps in the form of a new supermarket or neighborhood where weeks earlier stood a forest. However drastic something like this may seem at our local level, it absolutely pales in comparison to what is happening at the global level. In the United States we have an extremely high standard of living, and are able to accommodate such growth by consuming ever more resources.

But what about the poorer developing nations that have thrice the rate of growth, and not even a fraction of our available resources? In order to ease the strain on the planet and ourselves, the issue must be addressed that the global population explosion is way out of control. Why have the population levels risen so sharply in the last few centuries, and particularly, decades? There are several reasons, many of them associated with newer technologies. Drastic improvements in the areas of medicine, sanitation, and nutrition have meant people are living longer and consuming more resources throughout a lifetime.

Also, infant and child mortality rates have gone way down in most countries due to these advances. So there are more people living into and past their reproductive years, thus intensifying the cycle. But overpopulation does not simply mean there are many more people. It means that the giant escalation in the number of humans is becoming more than what the Earth is capable of providing for with the available resources. It so happens that we are at a perilous crossroads: as our numbers are becoming more and more, our resources are not increasing to accommodate the masses, but rather are becoming less and less.

Valuable topsoil reserves are being depleted at an alarming rate, making available less farmland to grow food for the burgeoning masses. By the end of this century, the amount of arable land will be less than half of what it was in 1951. While the US and other developed nations are beginning to make the transition to become less reliant on fossil fuels, the demand is only projected to increase due to the many other poorer nations that will not be able to institute expensive new technologies while in the midst of their ongoing growth and industrialization.

Even water, the most basic and vital human resource of all, is becoming a valuable commodity in places like Africa and the Middle East, where the large amounts of people are contributing to the polluting of already scarce water supplies. Developing nations, often known as third-world countries, are the first to feel the real impact of overpopulation. As they are usually suffering economically, this prevents them from instituting effective educational systems and technologies to attempt to conserve resources. There is also a correlation between poor countries and higher birth rates due to several reasons.

Since many of their economies are agriculturally driven, parents tend to have large families, reasoning that another mouth to feed is acceptable when it means two more hands helping with the labor. Also, since the educational systems are substandard, many people either are ignorant of or do not have access to methods of birth control. The end result is the dire scenario explained earlier: increasing people depending on decreasing resources. So what are we to do in order to combat this encroaching global catastrophe? First of all, the United States needs to stop being so hypocritical and set an appropriate example.

While we chastise other nations for wanton environmental destruction and skyrocketing birth rates, we continue to expel more harmful emissions than all the other nations on the list of the top five polluters combined. Just to pose a rhetorical question: does it seem right that a nation with 5 percent of the worlds population consumes 40 percent of its resources? Just because we as a nation are aware of this problem sadly does not necessarily mean we are willing to alter our comfortable lifestyles to combat it. Only by changing our wasteful ways will we help lead the rest of the world in the ongoing battle against overpopulation.

I wrote this to try and take the reader on a journey. What you read here is a direct reflection of the current state of our society. I want to point out to you, the reader, exactly what is happening in the undercurrents of the digital frontier. Each image and video clip that you witness is part of the greater whole of the new Internet society that we all live in. It is your voice that has made this view popular. We are all fed up with the bland and tasteless media that is shoved down our collective throats day after day.

When you go outside and see a billboard for GAP clothing or SONY consumer devices you may not realize that you are being programmed with each glance. We are constantly being molded, and we’re so used to it that we don’t even realize it anymore. It is their job to make you consume. To think up the most captivating and alluring commercials to imprint the memory of the specific product they are offering to your mind. Each individual mindshare, or thought that they imprint on you is considered a capitalist victory. To convince us who are already content with what we already own that we need what we don’t already have.

When you call up your mother and ask her if she has seen the latest commercial advertising khaki slacks, and you tell her how much you enjoy it when the image freezes then pans around like magic… you are doing exactly what they want you to do. We vote actors into office to make decisions pertaining to the survival of our race — our race being humanity. There is no longer black or white, yellow or brown. The glorious gift of mass communication has eradicated any once standing belief that one tribe is superior over another. That is a benefit, not a fault.

I am a firm believer that any form of prejudice against another person based on sexual preference, physical makeup or material wealth is an inbred weakness in our genetic programming. The next step in our evolution is to expand past this floating ball of dirt and spread outwards. We have done all that we can on this rock and now it is time to move on to bigger and better things. Our lives may be meaningless as individuals (it is our own ego that makes us think we are important) but as a whole we do have some importance in the Grande scheme of things.

If we could only overcome our ignorance based on cosmetic differences, the time that we spend on this festering piece of crap would be far more rewarding. Whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha, atoms or gargoyles, it makes no difference. When you are dead, you are dead. You revert to where you originally came from, so don’t try and fight it. We all have the choice to end our lives when we see fit, but suicide is just used as a means of escape for those of us too weak to continue.

We get into a state of mind — our brain is flooded with self-terminating chemicals that make us truly believe that now is the time to end things, when in fact it is just the lack of serotonin or other chemicals in our brain that makes us believe that we are doing what needs to be done. Suicide is useless unless you are 80 years old and dying of cancer. If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like something like the following: h 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth h All 6 would be from the United States h 80 would live in substandard housing h 50 would suffer from malnutrition h 1 would have a college education When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent. (Phillip M Harter, MD, FACEP Stanford University, School of Medicine) Let me reiterate in laymen’s terms: Screw the status quo. Live for yourself. Be independent from what the mainstream dictates what you should and shouldn’t do. Above all, survive.

Revenge and vengeance are basic tools of human instinct. Whether society chooses to accept or blind itself to this fact, it is an indisputable truth. Francis Bacon examines this truth in “Of Revenge”, a view of society and literary characters that reflects the strive for vengeance. However, “Of Revenge” deeply underestimates the corruption of the human spirit and soul. It completely disregards the presence of the basic human instinct which thrives on the manipulation and destruction of others, for the sake of satisfaction.

Though Bacons inferences to the book of Job or Solomon are perfectly viable to a character that chooses to take revenge after they have been wronged, to believe that “no man does evil just for the sake of evil” annihilates any complete sense of credibility that Bacons thoughts imply. The authors aspirations of the seeking of revenge solely as a means of retribution for oneself, and not to satisfy the evil within the human soul, is a beautiful and idealistic hope which belongs in some earthen utopia.

Unfortunately, it has no bearing on the modern world. Though the beliefs of Bacon expressed in “On Revenge” fulfill the traits of characters such as Medea, they neglect the human thrive for meaningless vengeance in characters such as Shakespeares Iago. Euripidess Medea uses the theme of the search for revenge in order to instigate the downfalls and deaths of many characters. This theme is expressed through the character of Medea, who fits directly into the mold laid out in the guidelines of “Of Revenge”.

Medeas search for revenge commences after her husband, the famous Greek hero Jason, leaves her for the power and prestige of the daughter of the King of Corinth. Medea becomes distraught over the news, especially after she reflects upon all that she had destroyed for Jason. She murdered her brother, was willingly ostracized from her homeland, gave Jason two sons, and killed most of Jasons enemies using her knowledge of black arts. In short, Jasons inability to remain faithful to a woman who obsessed over him, causes Medeas search for vengeance.

The wrongs committed by Jason with respect to Medea mirror Bacons belief that “revenge makes a man but even with his enemy” as well as “we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends”. In this case, Medea cannot forgive her husband and takes revenge by murdering the king of Corinth and his daughter, Jasons fianc, as well as murders Jasons two sons. Though this form of revenge is cold-blooded and sadistic, Bacon would have believed that Medeas actions were justified due to the wrongs Jason committed against her.

It is for this reason that the character of Medea is carefully crafted to fit Bacons mold of a person seeking revenge, as well as illustrates the importance of the theme of revenge in the play. Though Bacons views are illustrated through Medea, they are grossly disproportional to the character of Iago in Shakespeares Othello. Bacon quotes, “there is no man doth a wrong for the wrongs sake”. However, Iago is considered one of the most disgusting and vengeful characters in literature that destroys the lives of innocents for his own behalf.

In fact, the only substantial ploy for revenge in the case of Iago is Othellos appointing of Cassio to the position of lieutenant, and disregarding Iago, thinking of him only as his “ancient”. Granted, this is a viable sore spot for Iago, but by no means justify his actions in the play. Iago also claims he suspects Othello had slept with Emilia, Iagos wife, but later in the play admits that he knows this fact is not true. However, Iago devises a plot to destroy the relationship between Desdemona, Othellos wife, and Othello, which leads to the deaths of nearly every character in the play.

Meanwhile, Iagos plot is eventually discerned and he is placed in jail, but the deaths of Desdemona and others far exceed Iagos punishment. As illustrated through the search for revenge of Iago, Bacon disregards the evil longings present in many human souls. As taken directly from Much Ado About Nothing, Don John, a mirror of Iago, convincingly declares he chooses to “do evil for the sake of doing evil”. This fact is overlooked by Bacon, who instead believes that revenge is always justified by the wrong committed against the vengeful party.

The image of a man seeking revenge for his own enjoyment, “thorn that pricks only because it can do no other” hardly scratches the surface of the character traits of Iago or Don John. It is the complete neglect for the existence of people who do a “wrong for wrongs sake” that denounces Bacons views of the justification and means surrounding revenge. After revenge is thoroughly dissected into its means, actions, and results, the substance of the act reverts back to a characters morals and strengths, which in turn are overshadowed by the unending battle of good versus evil. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson claims that every man is really two men, one good and the other evil. The good gives man his morals and values whereas the evil gives man his strength and tenacity. It is the combination of these two men that make up the traits of a person. In “Of Revenge” Francis Bacon considers the good and evil sides of man, and thus draws conclusions given the relationship between the good and evil in a character is equal. Therefore, a character such as Medea, who possessed many virtuous qualities, as well as detestable ones, fits the mold of Bacons beliefs of the justification of revenge.

However, Bacon disregards the fact that in some men, their is more evil than their is good, and the strength and tenacity of that man override moral views. It is this imbalance that leads characters like Iago to do “evil for the sake of evil” and though they are not justified in their search for revenge, they endlessly endeavor to disrupt the natural flow of good to satisfy their evil cravings. Bacon discounts this amoral view of the human race which irrevocably overshadows the conclusions he draws as to the justification of human vengeance.

The social pact comes down to this; “Each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole (Rousseau: 61)”. The general will can itself direct the forces of the state with the intention of the whole’s primary goal – which is the common good. The general will does not allow private opinions to prevail. The union of the people, in its passive role is known as the State and is referred to as the Sovereign in its active state.

Associates of the body politic are communally known as the people, and individually referred to as citizens or subjects. The primary problem to which the social contract holds the solution is based on the total alienation of each associate to the entire community. Rousseau proposes that every individual give himself absolutely and apply the same conditions for each and every one to result in an agreement where it is in no ones interest to make the conditions burdensome for others.

The critiques of this contract are so specifically determined by ones actions, that the slightest amendment must make the agreement invalid; it is crucial to obtain a unanimous recognition and admittance by the whole. If the social pact is desecrated, every man regains his inborn rights to recover his natural freedom, and loses the civil freedom in which he bargained for. Stop. The existence of natural freedom is the argument in which I intend to pursue against Rousseau. This thought shall be revisited in a short while.

Rousseau implies upon freedom the definition of the sovereign; it is a reason; a collaboration with others; a civil expression of the general will. Rousseau’s conclusion stipulates the absolute surrender of ones rights into a union; also referred to as the republic, the body politic, the state, the sovereign and as the power when compared to others of its own kind. His conclusion is however split into three subsets. Rousseau first states that since everyone in the social pact is summoned to the same conditions, it will be of no ones interest to inconvenience others.

Secondly, he states that since the alienation is unconditional, no individual citizen has any rights to claim of their own. If these rights were left to the individuals, they would revert to their natural state of own judgements in the absence of authority. And finally, Rousseau adds to his conclusion by affirming that “since each man gives himself to all, he gives himself to no one”(Rousseau:61); meaning that since there is no associate that he doesn’t gain the same rights as others gain over him, each man regains the equivalent of everything he loses; gaining more than what he initially had.

The first premise that Rousseau puts forward is that during a lifetime, each man will come to an obstacle that will endanger his safety and that he will not be able to conquer within his state of nature because it will have a power greater than his strength. What he implies with this premise is that if solitary men were continually facing the obstacles alone, the human race would eventually perish. Rousseau presents this premise as an assumption. It can be safely assumed that most people come across obstacles during their lifetime.

These obstacles are hidden within births, deaths, illnesses, monetary based issues, education, relationships, weather, governments, war, etc. The meaning of an obstacle is anything that will hinder ones performance; an impediment that has the power to abolish the human race. The second premise provides that since men cannot create new forces to overcome these obstacles, they can combine and organize their existing forces to protect themselves. Meaning that by uniting their separate powers, they can achieve a congruent force strong enough to prevail over any form of obstruction.

This second premise follows Rousseau’s first premise adequately. First, he presents the inevitable obstacle and then he follows to state that a sum of forces is required to overcome barriers that are too strong. Succeeding the premises, he poses the following question, “How to find a form of association which will defend the persons and goods of each member with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys no one but himself and remains as free as before (Rousseau:60). How can these men be expected to neglect their own security and merge with others? This is the elementary predicament to which Rousseau’s social contract holds the solution to. Rousseau’s premises are plausible. They successfully lead to and support the conclusion; which is that individuals should alienate themselves totally into the community to establish a supreme power directed by the desire of the general will; a common ego. There is good reason to believe that Rousseau’s conclusion is true because he has convinced the reader of the need for a social contract with his premises.

His argument is valid because it is impossible for his conclusion to be false while his premises remain true. Substantial obstacles need association to be beat. Given his form, a social contract seems to be the key to man’s problems. In reality, the social contract is needed for the survival of the human race. Humans need two basic elements to survive: nutrition (as in food and water), and shelter. These two elements are acquired by man only through the alliance of others. A house is needed for shelter. A house requires teamwork to be constructed.

Today, food and water are seldom available from nature; they must be processed by others and then purchased with money that was gained as income through commerce. Rousseau views the social contact as the perfect solution to man’s security and common goodness. By uniting with others, he gains a civil goodness geared towards his public interests and has the collective power to confront any obstacle. If a subject of the social contract wishes to have a conversation, he cannot use his linguistic powers without the facilitation of others.

He “cannot do anything except through the cooperation of others (Rousseau: 85)”; however with this cooperation, he can do whatever he aspires. The social contract theory is a proposal that appears to work well within a given society. Rousseau’s argument flows well and is pleasingly convincing. My argument against his theory is the mere existence of natural rights. In this writer’s opinion, they do not even exist to begin with. So, if these inborn rights do not exist, they cannot be surrendered in exchange for an association with the social contract. Rousseau has constructed his social pact with the assumption that natural rights are real.

To prove this false assumption will contradict the elements of the social contract’s theory. Rousseau assumes that natural freedom is the expression of ones desires without the cooperation of others; it is the unrestricted performance of ones distinct actions. What he has failed to realize, is that we are born with civil freedoms, already within the form of a social contract. We naturally cannot do anything without the assistance of another. The sheer occurrence of birth is not possible without the uniting of a sperm and an egg, from within the action of intercourse between two persons.

These two persons needed another four persons to provide their existence. The earliest human did not appear on his own; it was through the aid of an almighty power that man was created. Upon birth, the newborn is instantaneously in need of care from that of an already developed human. The baby cannot survive without the help of others. It cannot grow to fulfill its purpose as a genetic perpetuate without the initial aid to be nurtured. This infant is immediately emerged into a family with traditions and religion. We naturally obey laws and allow others to determine our actions and desires.

Anything that we do as individuals is in relevance to someone else’s prior work: To eat, one must consume what is prepared by others. To take a walk, one must progress along the streets constructed by others, or along the earth that exists due to a supreme power. To have a conversation, one requires another to communicate with. To comprise a single thought, reverts back to the need to even exist as a human. The examples are endless while the fact is simple: to do anything of an individual desire requires the direct or indirect partnership of another. This sole principle ruins the basis of the social contract.

If people are aware of their existing group efforts, they may be reluctant to give up natural rights that they do not have, for a society in which they’ve already established. In reality, Rousseau’s theory is that of natural existence; he just made it sound appealing by adding a few accents. In response to this reality, Rousseau may propose that a social contract must be enforced upon a society to encourage security, general will and proper law regulations. This response may be sufficient enough to blind a society into conformity, but it does not change the natural fact that as a single being, we can do nothing alone.

Bib: The Social Contract by J. J. Rousseau. Rousseau Social Contract The social pact comes down to this; “Each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole (Rousseau: 61)”. The general will can itself direct the forces of the state with the intention of the whole’s primary goal – which is the common good. The general will does not allow private opinions to prevail.

The union of the people, in its passive role is known as the State and is referred to as the Sovereign in its active state. Associates of the body politic are communally known as the people, and individually referred to as citizens or subjects. The primary problem to which the social contract holds the solution is based on the total alienation of each associate to the entire community. Rousseau proposes that every individual give himself absolutely and apply the same conditions for each and every one to result in an agreement where it is in no ones interest to make the conditions burdensome for others.

The critiques of this contract are so specifically determined by ones actions, that the slightest amendment must make the agreement invalid; it is crucial to obtain a unanimous recognition and admittance by the whole. If the social pact is desecrated, every man regains his inborn rights to recover his natural freedom, and loses the civil freedom in which he bargained for. Stop. The existence of natural freedom is the argument in which I intend to pursue against Rousseau. This thought shall be revisited in a short while.

Rousseau implies upon freedom the definition of the sovereign; it is a reason; a collaboration with others; a civil expression of the general will. Rousseau’s conclusion stipulates the absolute surrender of ones rights into a union; also referred to as the republic, the body politic, the state, the sovereign and as the power when compared to others of its own kind. His conclusion is however split into three subsets. Rousseau first states that since everyone in the social pact is summoned to the same conditions, it will be of no ones interest to inconvenience others.

Secondly, he states that since the alienation is unconditional, no individual citizen has any rights to claim of their own. If these rights were left to the individuals, they would revert to their natural state of own judgements in the absence of authority. And finally, Rousseau adds to his conclusion by affirming that “since each man gives himself to all, he gives himself to no one”(Rousseau:61); meaning that since there is no associate that he doesn’t gain the same rights as others gain over him, each man regains the equivalent of everything he loses; gaining more than what he initially had.

The first premise that Rousseau puts forward is that during a lifetime, each man will come to an obstacle that will endanger his safety and that he will not be able to conquer within his state of nature because it will have a power greater than his strength. What he implies with this premise is that if solitary men were continually facing the obstacles alone, the human race would eventually perish. Rousseau presents this premise as an assumption. It can be safely assumed that most people come across obstacles during their lifetime.

These obstacles are hidden within births, deaths, illnesses, monetary based issues, education, relationships, weather, governments, war, etc. The meaning of an obstacle is anything that will hinder ones performance; an impediment that has the power to abolish the human race. The second premise provides that since men cannot create new forces to overcome these obstacles, they can combine and organize their existing forces to protect themselves. Meaning that by uniting their separate powers, they can achieve a congruent force strong enough to prevail over any form of obstruction.

This second premise follows Rousseau’s first premise adequately. First, he presents the inevitable obstacle and then he follows to state that a sum of forces is required to overcome barriers that are too strong. Succeeding the premises, he poses the following question, “How to find a form of association which will defend the persons and goods of each member with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys no one but himself and remains as free as before (Rousseau:60). How can these men be expected to neglect their own security and merge with others?

This is the elementary predicament to which Rousseau’s social contract holds the solution to. Rousseau’s premises are plausible. They successfully lead to and support the conclusion; which is that individuals should alienate themselves totally into the community to establish a supreme power directed by the desire of the general will; a common ego. There is good reason to believe that Rousseau’s conclusion is true because he has convinced the reader of the need for a social contract with his premises.

His argument is valid because it is impossible for his conclusion to be false while his premises remain true. Substantial obstacles need association to be beat. Given his form, a social contract seems to be the key to man’s problems. In reality, the social contract is needed for the survival of the human race. Humans need two basic elements to survive: nutrition (as in food and water), and shelter. These two elements are acquired by man only through the alliance of others. A house is needed for shelter. A house requires teamwork to be constructed.

Today, food and water are seldom available from nature; they must be processed by others and then purchased with money that was gained as income through commerce. Rousseau views the social contact as the perfect solution to man’s security and common goodness. By uniting with others, he gains a civil goodness geared towards his public interests and has the collective power to confront any obstacle. If a subject of the social contract wishes to have a conversation, he cannot use his linguistic powers without the facilitation of others.

He “cannot do anything except through the cooperation of others (Rousseau: 85)”; however with this cooperation, he can do whatever he aspires. The social contract theory is a proposal that appears to work well within a given society. Rousseau’s argument flows well and is pleasingly convincing. My argument against his theory is the mere existence of natural rights. In this writer’s opinion, they do not even exist to begin with. So, if these inborn rights do not exist, they cannot be surrendered in exchange for an association with the social contract. Rousseau has constructed his social pact with the assumption that natural rights are real.

To prove this false assumption will contradict the elements of the social contract’s theory. Rousseau assumes that natural freedom is the expression of ones desires without the cooperation of others; it is the unrestricted performance of ones distinct actions. What he has failed to realize, is that we are born with civil freedoms, already within the form of a social contract. We naturally cannot do anything without the assistance of another. The sheer occurrence of birth is not possible without the uniting of a sperm and an egg, from within the action of intercourse between two persons.

These two persons needed another four persons to provide their existence. The earliest human did not appear on his own; it was through the aid of an almighty power that man was created. Upon birth, the newborn is instantaneously in need of care from that of an already developed human. The baby cannot survive without the help of others. It cannot grow to fulfill its purpose as a genetic perpetuate without the initial aid to be nurtured. This infant is immediately emerged into a family with traditions and religion. We naturally obey laws and allow others to determine our actions and desires.

Anything that we do as individuals is in relevance to someone else’s prior work: To eat, one must consume what is prepared by others. To take a walk, one must progress along the streets constructed by others, or along the earth that exists due to a supreme power. To have a conversation, one requires another to communicate with. To comprise a single thought, reverts back to the need to even exist as a human. The examples are endless while the fact is simple: to do anything of an individual desire requires the direct or indirect partnership of another. This sole principle ruins the basis of the social contract.

If people are aware of their existing group efforts, they may be reluctant to give up natural rights that they do not have, for a society in which they’ve already established. In reality, Rousseau’s theory is that of natural existence; he just made it sound appealing by adding a few accents. In response to this reality, Rousseau may propose that a social contract must be enforced upon a society to encourage security, general will and proper law regulations. This response may be sufficient enough to blind a society into conformity, but it does not change the natural fact that as a single being, we can do nothing alone.

In this paper I will try to explain the puzzle of whether individuals are products of society or society is a product of individuals. I believe that in general, and in the beginning, the answer to this question, is that society is a human product. I will start by presenting early man, the hunter and gatherer as an early form of society, but lacking critical qualities of a society. Then I will continue to support my theory by analyzing the beginning of known society some three and one half thousands years ago. I will present the individual as creation of society, or more precisely, an ongoing social recursive conditioning.

I will also present society as creation of individuals. Finally, I will conclude my paper with some thoughts on the paradox of who is the product and who is the producer of the individual and society. EARLY MAN According to Charles Darwin, man developed from the ape. Darwins theory of evolution appears to be unsupported though, because for thousands of years these apes have been there, but none of them have developed into human beings nor did Darwin ever find the missing link. Although unproved, there must be a process of evolution.

And if there was evolutionary process, a few of the steps in-between still must be missing. Since man is not asexual, man did not, and could not, survive or prosper by himself. Early man grouped together with other hunters and gathers to form a family which brought order, direction, and stability to his life. According to Rousseau, the earliest and only natural societies are families (Primis 192). The point here is that the individuals choose to become a part of something larger than the individual. But if Rousseau is correct, there was a time when the individual gave up certain freedoms to find security within a group.

This is contra to Thomas Hobbes view. It was not until significant scientific advances in the nineteenth century that the view of this seventeenth century philosopher Hobbes has his views rejected. Hobbes stated that the life of early man was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Hobbes thought that early man was scarcely even human and a club-wielding savage. At either rate, early man lacked the qualities that were considered by John Locke as necessary to begin a society even though it is believed that groups and families existed.

Society as Product of Individuals Some three and one half thousands years ago a group of individuals gathered their resources together to form the first civilization named Sumer. The people that lived there were called Sumerians. The Sumerians began as a primitive race stemming from the hunters and gatherers who came to the area known as southern Mesopotamia to form the first permanent human settlement. By the end of their occupation in Mesopotamia, they had created the beginnings of society as we know it today.

It has been said by the locals that this place is the fabled Garden of Eden and also according to tradition, Eden existed in the marshes of this fertile land that is today known as Iraq today. The lands of Sumer were fertile and in close relationship to two major rivers which are known as the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers today. The fertile lands were feed by the rivers and allowed the settlers to stop the migratory habits of their predecessors or early man. The constant migration of early man had prevented any real education to exist as they were always on the move in search of food and shelter.

Early man was only concerned with survival, which meant that they did not have the leisure time to give thought to the development of academia. The Sumerians, which found the development of agriculture an easy task in this land, found that they had time to develop culture and devote time to academic studies. The Sumerians conceived and began development of mathematics, reading, writing skills and the written text on cunieform tablets, the wheel and agricultural technology, which are heavily relied upon in today’s society. By 3,000 BC, the written script of the Sumerians had evolved into a full syllabic alphabet.

The Sumerian’s gift of writing made possible for the recording of history for the first time. The recording of literature, science, society and history is a lasting legacy of the Sumerians and our society. The individuals in the Sumer originated the development of society through the codes of law that was written as, and to be, social policy. These were the first written laws and law is what defines the norms within our society. This is a defining point as to whether individuals are products of society or society is a product of individuals.

Since these individuals conceived what society shall represent, then it is clear that originally society is a product of individuals. It was not only the codes of law that were created by the Sumerians, but tens of thousands of cunieform texts that contain lullabies, poetry, ledgers, administration and property records. The theory that John Locke presents is that man must agree to join society and the community living peaceably and secure in the fact that his personal property is protected by the community by the laws and property records against any that are not of the community.

The social concept that began in Sumer would change the face of history. Individuals as Product of Society Society is the unconscious collective of the morals and values of individuals that formed that society, but society is only a word. It was there before the individual was born, and it will be there after their death. Society is not tangible although individuals that formed it are. Society has no soul and the individual would find it hard too change anything about it. Yet society has the ability to change the individual based on previous individuals influence on society.

The social effect as far as the individual is concerned, I envision as a ceaseless externalization of the individual in the course of their perpetual edification while society is absorbed through social control. But, I also see society is an outgrowth of the individuals particular previous generations, or more precisely, an ongoing recursive human production through which social institutions manifest themselves without intervention of the individual. Therefore I feel that social institutions clearly have a coercive power over the individual.

Individuals that adhere to the morals and values cannot be created instantaneously or by using the same edification principals for great lengths of time. There is no magic that will create the perfect individual based on the norm, nor is there any institution that is capable of doing this. This is where continuing education plays its social role. Education as well as other social institutions always has a history, of which they are the products, but they also must be able to adapt to the constant change of the social environment.

Understanding the historical process that produced a social institution is needed before it is possible to understand the institution. Part of that history is that institutions control the individuals conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct, which are channeled against the many other deviations that are ideological possible. The given existence of an institution is basic proof of social control of the individual and as such proof that the individual is a product of society, but only of the society past individuals have created.

That is, man and his social world interact with each other by which the product acts back upon the producer and the producer act upon the product. Society is a human product and society and an undeniable reality, but the individual is by themselves a social product. Although this is external to the individual, institutions are there, whether the individual likes it or not and inescapable persistent reality. The existence of institutions is not diminished if the individual does not adhere to its social constraints for it has far reaching power.

Who is the Producer The paradox of whether individuals are products of society or society is a product of individuals is controversial at least. It is the case that the individual is capable of producing a world that the individual experiences as something other than a human product. It is argumentative the individual is the producer of society or that society is the producer of the individual, but maybe they are so inter-linked that they are indistinguishable. This is a different situation when an individual separates themselves from society.

It is apparent that an individual in isolation could not conceive of or build a society. Society is built upon the collective of the morals and valves of the individuals within society, but a singular individual does not have a collective opinion. An individual in isolation can only look at the world from an internal perspective. Only through individual externalization can an individual view the social world as their others that transcended into social conformity. For society to persevere, society must perpetuate its values to further too present and future generation.

I have tried to explain the puzzle of whether individuals are products of society or society is a product of individuals. I then presented early man, but have shown that early man was not the product or producer of society. I have shown that Sumer was the beginning of society and that society was a human product. I then presented the individual as a product of ongoing social conditioning of the institutions of society. I feel that presented difficulty in trying to solve the paradox of who is the product and who is the producer of the individual and society.

No other democratic society in the world permits personal freedoms to the degree of the United States of America. Within the last sixty years, American courts, especially the Supreme Court, have developed a set of legal doctrines that thoroughly protect all forms of the freedom of expression. When it comes to evaluating the degree to which we take advantage of the opportunity to express our opinions, some members of society may be guilty of violating the bounds of the First Amendment by publicly offending others through obscenity or racism. Americans have developed a distinct disposition toward the freedom of expression hroughout history.

The First Amendment clearly voices a great American respect toward the freedom of religion. It also prevents the government from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ” Since the early history of our country, the protection of basic freedoms has been of the utmost importance to Americans. In Langston Hughes’ poem, “Freedom,” he emphasizes the struggle to enjoy the freedoms that he knows are rightfully his. He reflects the American desire for reedom now when he says, “I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.

I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread. ” He recognizes the need for freedom in its entirety without compromise or fear. I think Langston Hughes captures the essence of the American immigrants’ quest for freedom in his poem, “Freedom’s Plow. ” He accurately describes American’s as arriving with nothing but dreams and building America with the hopes of finding greater freedom or freedom for the first time. He depicts how people of all backgrounds worked together for one cause: freedom. I selected Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 s a fictitious example of the evils of censorship in a world that is becoming illiterate.

In this book, the government convinces the public that book reading is evil because it spreads harmful opinions and agitates people against the government. The vast majority of people accept this censorship of expression without question and are content to see and hear only the government’s propaganda. I found this disturbing yet realistic. Bradbury’s hidden opposition to this form of censorship was apparent throughout the book and finally prevailed in the end when his main character rebelled against the practice of urning books.

Among the many forms of protests are pickets, strikes, public speeches and rallies. Recently in New Jersey, more than a thousand community activists rallied to draft a “human” budget that puts the needs of the poor and handicapped as a top priority. Rallies are an effective means for people to use their freedoms effectively to bring about change from the government. Freedom of speech is constantly being challenged as is evidenced in a recent court case where a Gloucester County school district censored reviews of two R-rated movies from a school newspaper.

Superior Court Judge, Robert E. Francis ruled that the student’s rights were violated under the state Constitution. I feel this is a major break through for students’ rights because it limits editorial control of school newspapers by educators and allows students to print what they feel is important. A newly proposed bill (A-557) would prevent school officials from controlling the content of student publications. Critics of the bill feel that “student journalists may be too young to understand the responsibilities that come with free speech. This is a valid point; however, it would provide an excellent opportunity for them to earn about their First Amendment rights that guarantees free speech and freedom of the press. In his commencement address to Monmouth College graduates, Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School defended the broad right to free speech.

He stated, “My message to you graduates is to assert your rights, to use them responsibly and boldly, to oppose racism, to oppose sexism, to oppose homophobia and bigotry of all kinds and to do so within the spirit of the First Amendment, not by creating an exception to it. I agree that one should feel free to speak openly as long as it does not directly or indirectly ead to the harm of others. One of the more controversial issues was the recent 2 Live Crew incident involving obscenity in rap music. Their record, “As Nasty as They Wanna Be,” was ruled obscene in federal court. They were acquitted of the charges and quickly became a free speech martyr. Although many stores pulled the album, over two million copies sold as a result of the incident. I feel that in this case the principles of free speech have been abused because young children can purchase and listen to this obscene music.

The American flag, symbol of our country’s history and patriotism, has also become a opic of controversy. The controversy was over the right to burn the flag without punishment. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan offered the response that “if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. ” Burning the flag is considered a form of symbolic speech and therefore is protected under the First Amendment.

As in the 2 Live Crew case, I feel that we are protecting the wrong people in this case. The minority is given precedence at the sacrifice of he majority. The book, American Voices, is a collection of essays on the freedom of speech and censorship. I chose to put this collection of essays into my book because they represent the strong central theme of freedom of expression as the cornerstone of American government, culture and life. Each essay strongly defends a case for free commercial speech. Each was generally in favor of fewer limitations on freedom of expression.

The American voice on freedom has been shaped throughout the course of history by the initial democratic notions of the immigrants to the same desire for greater freedom that we have today. The reedom of speech has constantly been challenged and will continue to be challenged in the future. It is important that we learn from the precedented cases of the past of our constitutionally protected rights so that in the future authority will not violate our freedoms or oppress our liberty. Ever since colonial times, the protection of personal freedoms in the United States has been significantly important.

Even in the early stages of American history there was an urge to put legally protected freedoms into written government documents. The result was the drafting of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, by James Madison. The applications of the personal freedoms described in the Bill of Rights, particularly the freedom of speech, have been challenged repeatedly in American courts of law and elsewhere. These incidents and challenges of authority reflect the defensive American attitude toward the ever important freedom of expression and the growing significance of personal rights throughout American history.

In Colonial America, members of diverse nationalities had opposing views on government, religion, and other subjects of interest. Serious confrontations were prevented because of the vast lands that eparated groups of varying opinions. A person could easily settle in with other like believers and be untouched by the prejudices and oppression of others. For this reason, Unitarians avoided Anglican or Puritan communities. Quakers and Anabaptists were confined to Pennsylvania and Rhode Island while Catholics were mainly concentrated in Maryland.

As the United States grew larger and larger, these diverse groups were forced to live together. This may have caused individual liberties to be violated because of the distrust and hostile feelings between ethnic and religious groups. Most of the initial assemblies among the olonies considered themselves immune from criticism. They actually issued warrants of arrest, interrogated, fined, and imprisoned anyone accused of libeling the assembly as a whole or any of its members. Many people were tracked down for writing or speaking works of offense.

The first assembly to meet in America, the Virginia House of Burgesses, stripped Captain Henry Spellman of his rank when he was found guilty of “treasonable words. ” Even in the most tolerant colonies, printing was strictly regulated. The press of William Bradford was seized by the government when he printed up a copy of the colony’s harter. He was charged with seditious libel and spent more than a year in prison. A more famous incident was the trial of John Peter Zenger which established the principle of a free press. In his newspaper he published satirical ballads regarding William Cosby, the unpopular governor, and his council.

His media was described “as having in them many things tending to raise seditions and tumults among the people of this province, and to fill their minds with a contempt for his majesty’s government. ” The grand jury did not indict Zenger and the General Assembly refused to take action. The defendant was cquitted on the basis that in cases of libel the jury should judge both law and the facts. James Alexander was the first colonial writer to develop a philosophy on the freedom of speech. He founded the American Philosophical Society and masterminded the Zenger defense.

Alexander’s chief conviction was “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar in a free government: when this support is taken away, the constitution is dissolved and tyranny is erected on its ruins. ” The original Constitution did not contain a bill of rights because the convention delegates felt that individual rights were in no danger and would be rotected by the states. However, the lack of a bill of rights was the strongest objection to the ratification of the Constitution. Less than a decade after the Bill of Rights had been adopted it met its first serious challenge.

In 1798, there was a threat of war with France and thousands of French refugees were living in the United States. Many radicals supported the French cause and were considered “incompatible with social order. ” This hysteria led Congress to enact several alien and sedition laws. One law forbade the publication of false, scandalous or malicious writing against the government, Congress or the President. The penalty for this crime was a $2,000 fine and two years in prison. The public was enraged at these laws. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison pleaded for freedom of speech and the press.

The alien and sedition laws became a prime issue in the presidential election of 1800. Soon after Jefferson was elected, the Sedition Act expired and those who had been convicted under it were immediately pardoned. The next attack on the First Amendment occurred in 1835. President Andrew Jackson proposed a law that would prohibit the use of mail for “incendiary publications intended to instigate he slaves to insurrection. ” John C. Calhoun of South Carolina led a special committee that opposed the proposal on grounds that it conflicted with the First Amendment. The proposal was defeated because it was a form of censorship.

The next violation of the principles contained in the First Amendment came on January 2, 1920. Under the direction of A. Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, about 500 FBI agents and police raided 3,000 Russians and other European immigrants, looking for Communists to deport. The victims were arrested without warrants, homes were ransacked, personal property as seized, and they were hauled off to jail. An even more vicious episode was known as “McCarthyism,” an incident in the 1950’s when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin proclaimed that the federal government had been thoroughly infiltrated by Communist agents.

His attacks on United States information libraries abroad led to the burning of some books accused of being Communist propaganda. Reduced congressional support caused many librarians to resign and the closing of libraries. On the morning of December 16, 1965, thirteen year old Mary Beth Tinker went to school in Des Moines, Iowa. She and er fifteen year old brother, John, had decided to wear black armbands as a protest to the Vietnam War.

In advance to their arrival, the principal had decided that any student wearing an arm- band would be told to remove it, stating that, “The schools are no place for demonstrations. If the student refused, he would be suspended until the armband was permanently removed. On December 16, the Tinkers refused to remove their armbands. They were suspended and did not return to school until after January 1, when by a previous decision the protest had ended. The students brought suit in federal court to onfirm their First Amendment right to wear the black armbands. They lost in The Federal District Court on grounds that this type of symbolic expression might disturb school discipline.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit was divided equally (4-4) so the decision remained unchanged. On February 24, 1969, the United States Supreme Court decided in the students’ favor by a vote of 7 to 2. The Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District decision was a landmark case for students’ rights and liberties. Speaking for the majority of the Court, Justice Abe Fortas wrote, “It can hardly be rgued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. During the sixties and early seventies a new wave of court battles for First Amendment freedoms emerged.

The freedom of speech was recognized as a vital element in a democratic society. Censorship and the infringement of First Amendment rights, especially among students and their newspapers, could not and would not be tolerated. American citizens took a firm stand against the government and authority at important times when they could have yielded to the oppressive violations of their rights.

In this paper, I am going to summarize the Johnson Behavioral System (JBS) Model (Johnson, 1980, 1990), explain the perspectives for nursing practice, and explore its applicability in nursing practice. First, I am going to talk a little about Dorothy E. Johnson the nurse that wrote the Model. Dorothy E. Johnson was born August 21, 1919, in Savannah, Georgia (Lobo, 1995). She received her A. A. from Armstrong Junior College in Savannah, Georgia, in 1938; her B. S. N. from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1942; and her M. P. H. from Harvard University in Boston in 1948 (Conner, Harbour, Magers, and Watt 1994).

Johnson was an instructor and an assistant professor in pediatric nursing at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing from 1944 to 1949. From 1949 until her retirement in 1978 and subsequent move to Key Largo, Florida, she was an assistant professor of pediatric nursing, an associate professor of nursing, and a professor of nursing at the University of California in Los Angeles (Conner et. al. 1994). In 1955 and 1956 she was eligible to go on a sabbatical and went to the Christian Medical College School of Nursing in Vellore, South India, were she was interested in starting a baccalaureate program which was received well Lobo, 1995).

Dorothy Johnson has had an influence on nursing through her publications since the 1950s. Throughout her career, Johnson has stressed the importance of research-based knowledge about the effect of nursing care on clients. Johnson was an early proponent of nursing as a science as well as an art. She also believed nursing had a body of knowledge reflecting both the science and the art. From the beginning, Johnson (1959) proposed that the knowledge of the science of nursing necessary for effective nursing care included a synthesis of key concepts drawn from basic and applied sciences.

In 1961, Johnson proposed that nursing care facilitated the client’s maintenance of a state of equilibrium. Johnson proposed that clients were “stressed” by a stimulus of either an internal or external nature. These stressful stimuli created such disturbances, or “tensions,” in the patient that a state of disequilibrium occurred. Johnson identified two areas that nursing care should be based in order to return the client to a state of equilibrium. First, by reducing stressful stimuli, and second, by supporting natural and adaptive processes.

Johnson’s behavioral system theory springs from Nightingales belief that nursing’s goal is to help individuals prevent or recover from disease or injury. The “science and art” of nursing should focus on the patient as an individual and not on the specific disease entity. Johnson used the work of behavioral scientists in psychology, sociology, and ethnology to develop her theory. The model is patterned after a systems model; a system is defined as consisting of interrelated parts functioning together to form a whole (Conner et. al. 1994). Johnson states that a nurses should use the behavioral system as their knowledge ase; comparable to the biological system that physicians use as their base of knowledge (Lobo, 1995).

Theory The reason Johnson chose the behavioral system model is the idea that “all the patterned, repetitive, purposeful ways of behaving that characterize each person’s life make up an organized and integrated whole, or a system” (other). Johnson states that by categorizing behaviors, they can be predicted and ordered. Johnson categorized all human behavior into seven subsystems (SSs): Attachment, Achievement, Aggressive, Dependence, Sexual, Ingestive, and Eliminative.

Each subsystem is composed of a set of behavioral responses or tendencies that share a common goal. These responses are developed through experience and learning and are determined by numerous physical, biological, psychological, and social factors. Four assumptions are made about the structure and function of each SS. These four assumptions are the “structural elements” common to each of the seven SSs. The first assumption is “from the form the behavior takes and the consequences it achieves can be inferred what drive has been stimulated or what goal is being sought” (Johnson, 1980).

The ultimate goal for each subsystem is expected to be the same for all individuals. The second assumption is that each individual has a “predisposition to act, with reference to the goal, in certain ways rather than in other ways” (Johnson, 1980). This predisposition to act is labeled “set” by Johnson. The third assumption is that each subsystem has available a repertoire of choices or “scope of action” alternatives from which choices can be made. As life experiences occur, individuals add to the number of alternative actions available to them. At some point, however, the acquisition of new lternatives of behavior decreases as the! individual becomes comfortable with the available repertoire. The fourth assumption about the behavioral subsystem is that they produce observable outcomes-that is, the individuals behavior (Johnson, 1980).

The observable behaviors allow an outsider to note the actions the individual is taking to reach a goal related to a specified SS. In addition, each of the SSs has three functional requirements. First, each subsystem must be “protected from noxious influences with which the system cannot cope” (Johnson, 1980). Second, each ubsystem must be “nurtured through the input of appropriate supplies from the environment. ” Finally each subsystem must be “stimulated for use to enhance growth and prevent stagnation. ” As long as the SSs are meeting these functional requirements, the system and the SSs are viewed as self-maintaining and self- perpetuating. The internal and external environments of the system need to remain orderly and predictable for the system to maintain homeostasis. The interrelationships of the structural elements of the subsystem to maintain a balance that is adaptive to that individual’s needs.

Johnson’s Behavioral Subsystems The Attachment subsystem is probably the most critical, because it forms the basis for all social organization. It provides survival and security. Its consequences are social inclusion, intimacy, and formation and maintenance of a strong social bond. The Achievement subsystem attempts to manipulate the environment. Its function is control or mastery of an aspect of self or environment to some standard of excellence. Areas of achievement behavior include intellectual, physical, creative, mechanical, and social skills. The Aggressive subsystem function is protection and preservation.

It holds that aggressive behavior is not only learned, but has a primary intent to harm others. However, society has placed limits when dealing with self-protection and that people and their property be respected and protected. The Dependency subsystem promotes helping behavior that calls for a nurturing response. Its consequences are approval, attention or recognition, and physical assistance. Ultimately, dependency behavior develops from the complete reliance on others for certain resources essential for survival. An imbalance in a behavioral subsystem produces tension, which results in disequilibrium.

The The Ingestive and Eliminative SSs “have to do with when, how, what, how much and under what conditions we eat, and when, how, and under what conditions we eliminate”. The Sexual subsystem has the dual functions of procreation and gratification. It begins with the development of gender role identity and includes the broad range of sex role behaviors (Johnson, 1980). When there is an alteration in the “equilibrium” that exists, Johnson’s Model tends to diagnose to a subsystem rather than a specific problem. Johnson’s Model states that it is at this point when the nurse is eeded in order to return the client to homeostasis (Conner et al. , 1994).

Application in Nursing Practice The application of any nursing model to practice requires three conditions: the model’s congruence with practice requirements, its comprehensive development in relation to practice requirements, and its specificity in relation to practice requirements. These conditions governing a nursing model’s applicability should be understood to enable practitioners to appropriately and effectively use models in practice (Derdiarian, 1993). What is nursing practice and what are requirements of the practice?

Nursing practice derives its definition from that of professional practice, the action or process of performing something, the habitual or customary performance of something (Random House College Dictionary, 1988). Professional practice has three main requirements: perspective, structure and scientific substance. The first requirement is the perspective, or a mental view, of facts or ideas and their interrelationships pertinent of the professions’ practice. In nursing, the perspective of the practice refers to nursing’s view of the patient and its role in relation to the patient (Derdiarian, 1993).

More specifically, the profession’s perspective clarifies the nature, goal, focus, and scope of its realm of its science and practice (Derdiarian, 1993). By so doing, the profession’s perspective distinguishes nursing’s realm of science and practice from those of related fields. At the same time, the perspective identifies appropriate alignments between nursing’s research and practice and those of other professions. In other words, the professional perspective provides the professional with a knowledge base and a mind-set about the patient, about her/his ole in relation to the patient, and her/his actions necessary to fulfill that role (Derdiarian, 1993). The second requirement of professional practice is a structure for practice to organize and standardize practice and, thus, render practice habitual and customary. Professional practice is structured to evaluate a client’s well-being, identify problems, and provide solutions. The latter require organized and scientifically rational processes of assessment, diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation of outcomes. In nursing, this structure pertains to the Nursing Process (Derdiarian, 1993).

Finally, the third requirement of professional practice is the coherent scientific body of knowledge that underlies it or the profession’s actions and processes. The scientific body of knowledge includes facts, theories, hypotheses, and precepts, and assumptions underlying both the perspective and structure of practice. In nursing, this body of knowledge includes the facts, theories, hypotheses, and precepts about nursing, nursing practice actions, and nursing practice methods. Stated more specifically, nursing practice requires a body of scientific knowledge that rationalizes its view of the client, its role, nature, goal focus, nd scope. Furthermore, nursing practice requires a body of scientific knowledge that rationalizes the nursing methods of assessment, diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation of outcomes (Derdiarian, 1993).

The JBS model meets the professional perspective requirements because of its interaction between the SSs. The SSs are interactive and interdependent, restoration in one subsystem could effect restoration of behavior in another or others. Thus requiring diagnostic and interventive action directed at all the SSs (Derdiarian, 1993). The model as it stood before did not meet the practice structure requirements well Derdiarian, 1983), but interaction and studies into the model prompted Johnson to add five types of interventions-nurturance, stimulation, protection, regulation, and control (Derdiarian, 1993). It still leaves a gap in where to actually look for the problems that exist.

The JBS model does not meet the scientific substance for practice well because it needs to be tested on its concepts, propositions, and assumptions. Despite the obvious overall failure of the JBS model to pass the professional requirements, the model is always being tested by someone, and some! day maybe conclude its worth and add to its value.

Summary as related to Nursing, Person, Health, and Environment Nursing is a force acting to preserve to organization of the patient’s behavior while the patient is under stress by means of imposing regulatory mechanisms or by providing resources(Conner et al. , 1994). An art and a science, it supplies external assistance both before and during system balance disturbance and therefore requires knowledge of order, disorder, and control (Johnson, 1980). Nursing activities are complementary of medicine, not dependent on. Person is viewed as a behavioral system with patterned, repetitive, and purposeful ways of ehaving that link him to the environment (Johnson, 1980). Man’s specific response patterns form an organized and integrated whole (Conner et al. , 1994). Person is a system of interdependent parts that requires some regularity and adjustment to maintain a balance (Johnson, 1980). Health is perceived as an “elusive, dynamic state influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors.

It focuses on the person rather than the illness (Conner et al. , 1994). Health is reflected by the organization, interaction, interdependence, and integration of the SSs of the behavioral system Johnson, 1980). Man attempts to achieve a balance in this system, which will lead to functional behavior. A lack of balance in the requirements of the SSs lead to poor health (Conner et al. , 1994). Environment consists of all the factors that are not part of the individual’s behavioral system but that influence the system and the nurse to achieve the health goal for the client. Conclusion Johnson’s theory could help guide the future of nursing theories, models, research, and education. By focusing on behavioral rather than biology, the theory clearly differentiates nursing from medicine.

But do we need to separate the behavioral from the biological. It can be an asset, and it can work, that has been proven by Johnson and some of her followers. In order to focus on the holistic idea of nursing, it is important to think of the behavioral and biological together as health. We cannot look at one without looking at the other. There is not sufficient research to substantiate the real applicability of this model. This theory does provide a conceptual framework to work from, but this model will never be the standard for nursing.