'Humanity Essay\r'

' throng not sole(prenominal) support a function to some others in the gentlemanness, besides an duty to follow through,a s much as is possible, to shape a futurity earth where conditions provide the best opportunities for all masses to secure natural rubberty and rapture. Such a member of belief has often been obedienceed as â€Å" Utopian” or passing nonesuchistic, but it may be the case that veritable conditions on the planet earth volition utter that utopianism is actually a form of pragmatism and that judgementlism, at least to some degree is a essential comp sensationnt of neighborly and policy-making intellection.\r\nI regard this belief as a form of loving responsibility. Social responsibility butt joint be defined as â€Å"”balancing the sideline of wiz’s individual goals with the needs of others in establishing a safe and just world and ensuring the continuation of a popular golf club. ” (Robinson, and Hayes, 2002, p. 6). The challenges of the 21st century, whether frugal or environmental, ethnical or biological leave behind require overbold methods of thinking and behaving at two the individual and favorable levels.\r\n in that respect moldiness be an emphasis on changing the perceptions, particularly in twenty-first century America, which numerous an(prenominal) mess be in possession of ab start the nature of somebodyalised responsibility and face-to-face empowerment. While it memorisems obvious plenteous to say, as President Barack Obama asserted in his parole The Audacity of Hope, that new multiplications of Americans ar â€Å"waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to hear amongst what can and cannot be compromised” (Obama, 2004. . 42) the ramifications of such a politics of maturity and realism extend to many an(prenominal) pregnant areas of American society including sparings, engineering, and philosophy and godliness. What is necessity for America to meet the challenges of the next is a social cultural acceptance of the incident that responsibility, and not yet the pursuit of self-interests, is a path to personal empowerment. This croak bring upment may seem contradictory to many Americans.\r\nA great number of people go through themselves in purely materialistic terms and lack what they can get out of society without winning any personal responsibility for the consequences. For some people, animateness holds no meaning outside of its material property and this loss of meaning in American destination has consequences beyond the immediately personal: â€Å"We yield no choice, we are constantly told, because of sparing forces, our unconscious, or our genes. Yet, at the same time, we live in a world that presents us with unfailing choices” (Sardar, 2006, p. ). As strange as it sounds, the only way to break the cycle of endless anxiety over our limitless exemption is by acceptin g responsibility for the choices we make. This is a kind of riddle in American society, â€Å"We want to have it some(prenominal) ways, and so we end up confused and cynical. Our arrested development with individuality and self-interest further erodes personal and incarnate responsibility” (Sardar, 2006, p. 3) which means, the less one begins to judge their aver existence the less responsibility they impart quality for their actions.\r\nTo accept responsibility is, in itself, to accept that flavor is meaningful and to accept that life in meaningful is an act of self-empowerment. we must learn to light up that â€Å" emancipation is both a gift and a challenge. It has value only when we respect it and enhance it individually and collectively. And when we cipher it with responsibility. ” (Sardar, 2006, p. 3 ). In this way, a change in the basic philosophical visual modality present in American culture may help us to begin to make inroads against the challenge s which face us in the new world.\r\nWendell pick’s persuasive line of business that many late conceptions of progress and happiness are rooted in ignorance and self-deception reins substantial cogent evidence in even a cursory discern of modern media and political discourse. Looked at much(prenominal) closely, the misconceptions ably identified by Wendell pluck in the westward (and particularly American) vision of life and life responsibilities, soma an illuminating light on contemporary government, American foreign policy, and many urgent social crises.\r\n near obvious is the relationship amid Berry’s observation that â€Å"The higher aims of â€Å"technological progress” are money and ease” and the recent al close to epiphytotic instances of merged corruption (and corruption in government) whereby chief executive officer’s have garnered massive bonuses and pay-increases whilst robbing their shareholders and workers of scratch a nd pensions. The alike(p) down ignite of powerful political figures in the fall in States Congress, as swell up as their lobbyist counterparts for racketeering, bribery, and other pecuniary crimes indicates how wide pass out is the oligarchical strain of political morality in contemporary society.\r\nWasteful projects such as the â€Å"”Big Dig” in Massachusetts (estimated at $2. 5 billion in 1985, over $14. 6 billion had spent in federal and state tax dollars by 2006), as well as the highly- creationized Tyco and Enron financial scandals affirm Berry’s line of reasoning that far from securing a worthy future day tense, the immediate rapaciousness and gratification of â€Å"big money” has motivated corporate and political leaders to sacrifice the future and wellbeing of myriad other individuals and the nation as a whole in favor of selfish, personal gain.\r\nThis sheath of greed, base on the fallacious assumption of preserving one’s futu re extends throughout the social hierarchy of America, with nearly, if not all industries and pursuits subordinated to it; as Berry remarks â€Å" sure the aim cannot be the integrity or happiness of our families, which we have do subordinate to the education system, the television system industry, and the consumer economy” (Berry,1990. p206).\r\nThe reality is that most families are useable to the controlling interests of the American economy as charted demographics which intromit individual frugal resources to be targeted at â€Å"tapped” by the said controlling interests. Corporate America, the media, and the governments themselves function as subsidiaries of the overall obsession with wealth and the increase of personal fortunes. The quest for personal enrichment, the acquiescence to greed, predicated on the un hit the hayable future is self-rationalizing appearance.\r\nIronically, it is also self-destructive behavior and also portends the possible destru ction of the worldwide environment. Were humanity sincerely concerned for the future, Berry argues, we would embrace the good things we know close to the present such as water, oxygen, trees, oceans, mountains, and wildlife, and see to it that these good things endure â€Å"If we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received climb justice from us. A good future is unspoken in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now” (Berry,1990. 16) One implied satire in Berry’s observations is that technology, the science which is sibyllic to bring our society to a great modern crest, has actually pushed us further into primitive fanaticism and savagery.\r\nOur modern totems are money and power; and we indulge the environment rather than protecting it. We use our fellowship to destroy rather than preserve, and, at its pinnacle, technology, so Berry insinuates, has as one of its outcomes, t he utter destruction of human thought. If one’ occasions are money, ease, and haste to arrive in a technologically mildewd future, then the declaration is foregone, and there is, the fact, no question, and no thought” (Berry,1990. p17). The most philosophically dense and relatively unsupported bear down which Berry attempts to make is the connection between a rejection of dehumizing technology and religious confidence. â€Å"If one’s motive is the love of family, community, country, and deity, then one will have to think, and one may have to decide that thee proposed renewal is undesirable” (Berry,1990. p17).\r\nWith this conclusion, Berry seems to depart from the more elongated and persuasive argument he previously offered. subsequently all, if, as he insists, â€Å"We cannot think about the future, of course, for the future does no exist: the existence of the future is an article of faith” (Berry,1990. p17) then surely the substantiation o f God or any moral or political belief predicated on the existence of God is in addition â€Å"an article of faith. ” Taking Berry’s comments some other way: that religious â€Å"faith” comprises a catholicon to an abiding though sorely misplaced faith in technology, the argument seems more tenable if no less anecdotal and emotionally based.\r\nHowever, it is the emotion of Berry’s remarks which lends them a convincing and urgent air, which is commensurate for the topics at hand. Unfortunately, outside of a faith in God, a dedication to one’s family, and a respect and love for the earth and its environment, Berry offers rattling few insights into how the prevailing destructive beliefs and practices he describes may be combated or changed. His arguments about selfishness and the hollow pursuit of material wealth as opposed to communal or national prosperity seem well reasons and are substantiate by contemporary facts.\r\nHis arguments against t echnology seem a bit less well-reasoned and incomplete, based on emotional rather than evidential criteria. though Berry’s imploring tone seems to fall short of providing even the slightest recommendation of pragmatic applications to filch or undo the environmental and cultural persecute that has come from America’s mortgaged future, his overall diagnoses of the problems facing our â€Å"Plutocracy” are persuasive and articulated with aplomb.\r\nAs Barack Obama delegates out, economics in the twenty-first century no longer function along the same models they had corporeal for years. He writes that â€Å"In this more competitive globose environment, the old corporate formula of steady shekels and stodgy management no longer worked” (Obama, 2004, p. 156). What Obama is madcap at with this statement can be considered an sight of â€Å"humanizing” economics, a must-needed step for America in the twenty-first century.\r\nBy accepting responsibil ity for our actions we will understand the connections between the injustices and disparities in society and the damages which have been inflicted upon the environment. Though some of our challenges may be economic and some may be based in moral and ethical issues, the unifying factor is continuously: human responsibility. We begin to understand ourselves much more assortly and understand our challenges more clearly when we accredit that we live in a world which â€Å"urgently needs fixing and in which denial is temptingly easy and cheap, at least for a time.\r\nWe must acknowledge and seek to understand the connection between poverty, social injustice, and environmental degradation. ” (Orr, 2002, p. 89) Barack Obama’s insistence that the new economics has paved a way clear of the old economics which stressed only self-interests and profits is a key to understanding the kind of watch of business and corporate responsibility which will have to be embraced in Americ an society as we move forward to accept our responsibilities and meet the challenges of the future.\r\n sooner of viewing purely money and material ingathering as the only forms of â€Å"profit” in business, corporations of the future will begin to realize that â€Å"business behavior and government policy toward business requires, more than ever, an taste perception of the firm’s human dimensions, the dimensions left out of the neoclassical theory” (Tomer, 1999, p. 1). The future corporation will accept responsibility for its actions and view itself as do by not only â€Å"market forces but by societal ones” (Tomer, 1999, p. 9) and in so recognizing other forms of â€Å"success” and â€Å"profit” namely, the maintaining of ethical and environmental standards which sacrifice to the overall growth and well-being of humanity may over-ride present-day obsession with self-interest and materialistic profit.\r\nIf Barack Obama’s writing s in â€Å"The Audacity of Hope” are any real indication of the politician of the future †or the President of the future †it si clear that America still has the capacity to grown and recognize leaders who can summon a bold-enough vision as well as present possible solutions to meet the challenges we have at least part created for ourselves.\r\nObviously, I disagree with the suggestion that all the worlds problems and injustices can be eliminated, but I do study that positive change can be made and that correct conditions can be achieved. Here is why. My generation faces so many different challenges, ranging from war to global poverty, from the impact of technology to the scarcity of natural resources, that it is punishing to assign a single challenge as most crucial or important.\r\nHowever, because the challenges of the twenty-first century, whether economic or environmental, cultural or biological will require new methods of thinking and behaving at both the individual and social levels, the biggest challenge that faces my generation is one of changing the perceptions which many people have about the nature of personal responsibility and personal empowerment. I see changing this essentially self-perceptive issue as a key for facing the specific, concrete challenges that we will face in the future.\r\nIn my opinion, it is not only possible, but morally imperative, that the social in make upities and injustices of the world be addressed with an eye toward influencing productive change in the world. It is, in fact, possible to make the world a better place. The most important factor, in my opinion, regarding the physical composition of an ideal society, would be the individual liberties of each of the citizens in that society.\r\nTo me, a society which haveed too may laws or rules, whether intended to ensure liberty or plain to oppress people, would be contrary to a utopia. any ideal society must ensure the freedom of its citizens whil e simultaneously preserving their safety and the productivity of the society as a whole. Therefore, although it may sound slenderly far-fetched, the most important reform in my ideal society would be concerned with educational reform.\r\nIn my vision of utopia, knowledge would be considered the most important â€Å"possession” or accomplishment. Instead of testing people for aptitude in a hierarchical fashion, I belive IQ and other tests should be sued early on in someone’s life to determine where their particular strengths and talents are centered and then that person would be encouraged to take after these talents and aptitudes without regard of race, sexual orientation, religion, political or cultural biases.\r\nDue to the fact that individual liberty is the keystone of my utopian beliefs, no-one in an idealized society should be forced to pursue any endeavor whether they have aptitude for it or not, but all should be encouraged to find their inner-talent and spe cial interests as the highest achievable goal in life. That and respecting the rights of all others to pursue their individual talent and skills and interests.\r\nBecause I realize that the first and foremost plank of my utopian platform necessitates changing deeply rooted racial, gender-based, and cultural prejudices, it is worth pointing out that â€Å"utopias” are defined, not in terms of practicality and pragmatism, but on imaginative understanding and vision, so that â€Å"the influence of utopian writings has generally been inspirational rather than practical. ” (â€Å"Utopia, 2004”) This allows for utopian thinkers to â€Å"dream away,” as it were, and this liberty allows me to offer my second most exact element in an ideal society.\r\nThis second point falls squarely under the category â€Å"economic utopia. ” In my vision of an idealized society, money would be completely eliminated. The reason that money would be eliminated is because economic interests traditionally have displaced moral ideals in capitalistic societies. Corporation work to obfuscate moral responsibility: â€Å"levels of complexity are added by confusion between descriptions and prescriptions of social responsibility, between what is and what ought to be, and between moral obligation and legal obligation” (Besser, 2002, p. 4). In my ideal society, religion would be primarily left to the individual and there would be no government sanctioning or endorsement of any single religion. Again, this is an impossible social requirement, but the vision of utopia I have would not contain the existence of exclusionary religions, religious ideas taught in public schools or religious ideas being used as a basis for common morality. Instead, a complaisant ethic would replace what has in the past been seen as a religious ethic.\r\nBecause my ideal society would contain neither organized religion or money, I believe that the two most important barriers to personal liberty and happiness would be removed from most people’s lives. Because self-determination would be the highest antecedence in my utopia, family conflicts and other interpersonal relationships would also profligacy a less-permanent role in people’s lives,encouraging them to view all people as equal rather than those of their family or race or neighbourhood being more â€Å"familiar” and subsequently more preferred or sympathized with.\r\nMost of the social changes in my utopia are probably unachievable and yet I believe by making only a few, albeit radical, changes in social vision and structure, a better world could be realized and a wider spread of happiness and contentment might be embraced; it is the idea that these changes could happen, even if they are unlikely, that defines a utopia.\r\n'