What is a hero Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

What is a hero - Essay Example As Nanda would put it, a hero need not be somebody of dignified importance, a common man be a hero (1). A hero can come in many different shapes and sizes. Male or female, child or elderly, family member or a complete stranger, there is no limit to who can be someone’s hero and anyone can â€Å"fit as aptly into the category as a king or an eli† (Nanda 1). In the selections that were read, hero came in various forms and even in unusual way. Perhaps, the closest to the stereotype of hero is the character of Hard Rock in the poem â€Å"Hard Rock Returns to Prison† by Etheridge Knight, where a tough guy is type casted to the typical mold of a hero. He is a big black man from prison that everyone knows as being rough and tough. He was â€Å"known to take no shit from nobody.† ( Etheridge Knight, 194) he would whoop on anyone who said anything bad towards anyone. So the other prisoners looked at him as their hero. One had said â€Å"he had been our Destroyer, the doer of things we dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do.† (Etheridge Knight, 195). In a way they all looked up to him, because he had the courage to do and stick up for what he believed in. Heroes need not to be as tough as Hard Rock also. They can be as gentle as our mothers but can become a hero in someone else’s eyes. This was the case in the short story â€Å"The Train from Hate† there is a completely different type of hero. The hero is a young boy’s mother where her character was not necessarily as tough and popular as Knight’s Hard Rock but rather of someone with steely disposition. This was evident when they were kicked off the train for being colored. Instead of causing a big scene she simply gets off. The boy was very upset they had to do this but she explained to him carefully it is has nothing to do with them. â€Å"She assured me that the conductor was not superior because he was white, and I was not inferior because I was black.† (John Hope Franklin

Decreased Regulation Essay Example for Free

Decreased Regulation Essay The relaxation of regulation laws though the program would result to various positive trends within the region. This is because the program is targeting to streamline regulations systems in the continent, that is, from the traditional models of using forcing communities and other stakeholders into using mechanisms developed at regional level. Using this new program, policies would be developed and implemented in accordance with local demands. This will remove inefficiencies that develop from the application of measures that are not meant for certain localities. In this regard, it shall be possible for communities to use only the measures that would have positive results. Having local communities develop measures that would lead to efficient implementation of pollution control plans in their respective providing incentives for local stakeholders to participates in these processes. For instance, the move from licences for waste management would help in attracting smaller players in the industry. It has to be understood that these small players could be the best positioned to meet local demands. In that regard, the communities would have aided in the implementation of measures that would have otherwise been a hard task. The inclusion of many players in the industry would foster competition that would further help in developing innovations in the pollution market, which has rarely happed historically. The innovation accruing from the practice of this medium would lead to greater efficiency in different segments of pollution control market. In addition, the innovation would lead to development of procedures that best meet the demands of the people—this develops from fact that individual communities have different needs that cannot be met by the traditional one size fits all model. In addition, having individual communities take care of their problems and employing best practices would lead to better solutions and in speedy manner. This is based on fact that communities will not have to go to the national and EU level to search for solutions. Indeed, they will just have top communicate to local leaders who would quickly adopt the necessary mechanisms leading to proper solutions. This means that local communities will be in a greater position to solve their own problems without having to run for external help. All these would lead to the empowerment of communities with responsibilities of their own affairs. Since communities would be the ones to pay costs of failure, there is high tendency for local leaders to ensure that pollution control through preventative measures become the bottom-line. In addition, it shall be possible for members of these communities to gauge their performance with other localities. This would most likely be achieved through competition among neighbourhoods, cities and nations. The decentralisation of decision making and implementation processes would further lead to greater participation of stakeholders at all level of pollution control. In this case, it shall be possible for localities to improve their performance of pollution control measures, reason being that member countries would enable their localities to deal with problems.

The Impact of Nazi Policies on the Position and Role of Women in German

The Impact of Nazi Policies on the Position and Role of Women in Germany, 1933-39 The Nazi regime aimed to utilize the family for its own needs. Women were obligated to marry and have children, instead of having their own personal decisions. The functions of the family were reduced to the single task of reproduction. They aimed to break the family, and to place it as a breeding and rearing institution completely in the service of the totalitarian state. The main objective of Hitler and the Nazis was to increase population to help with 'Volksgemeinschaft'. Germany had a declining birth rate, so they wanted to promote higher birth rates among the Aryan race. This was another key element of the policies adopted. Women were encouraged to have as many children as possible, however this was not acceptable with 'undesirables' like Jews and Black people, only 'Aryans'. The policies used like financial incentives-marriage loans and birth grants, meant that women were placed better when having children. Their role was to maintain high birth rates, and their position and situation was desirable for this role. However all women did not accept this and many did not gain from the measures taken. Underpinned in the policy was the fact that it would restrict women to the home and reduce employment with women, which is what the Nazis wanted. However this was not the case as there was actually a growth in female employment from 1933-39. This was very ironic, the Nazis set out their policies for women to be able to gain from them in having children, however by having less children and getting jobs, women still gained as employment levels rose. Not all... ... for with Nazi beliefs, but were actually disagreeing with the traditional, rural beliefs. From this a mixed picture emerges, some women gained as a result of the personalised and individualised nature of the evidence. Even though the Nazi theory and policy were clear, there were significant contradictions and conflicting issues in practise. The roles issued to women were self-undermining and had logistical inconsistencies, for example, they could not have all the men out fighting and women home, who runs factories etc? These contradictions show some of the irony of Nazism. Some women felt more valued and appreciate and felt more stable, whereas others were sterilised, outlawed, and divorced on spurious grounds. The role and position of women varied between different groups because of the impact of Nazi Policies.

English literature Essay

For Locke, all knowledge comes exclusively through experience. He argues that at birth the mind is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, that humans fill with ideas as they experience the world through the five senses. Locke defines knowledge as the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of the ideas humans form. From this definition it follows that our knowledge does not extend beyond the scope of human ideas. In fact, it would mean that our knowledge is even narrower than this description implies, because the connection between most simple human ideas is unknown. Because ideas are limited by experience, and we cannot possibly experience everything that exists in the world, our knowledge is further compromised. However, Locke asserts that though our knowledge is necessarily limited in these ways, we can still be certain of some things. For example, we have an intuitive and immediate knowledge of our own existence, even if we are ignorant of the metaphysical essence of our souls. We also have a demonstrative knowledge of God’s existence, though our understanding cannot fully comprehend who or what he is. We know other things through sensation. We know that our ideas correspond to external realities because the mind cannot invent such things without experience. A blind man, for example, would not be able to form a concept of colour. Therefore, those of us who have sight can reason that since we do perceive colours, they must exist.

How Secondary Qualities Can Fit Into The Theoretical...

In this paper, I will consider whether experiences of secondary qualities can fit into the theoretical framework of functionalism. I will begin this discussion by thoroughly explicating functionalism and the threat posed to it by secondary qualities. I will then consider Nida-Rà ¼melin’s inverted qualia argument and will contend that it employs a false conception of color perception. Finally, I will argue that experiences of secondary qualities may be analyzed through the functionalist model only after Lewis’ stipulation of the appropriate population is redefined. But first I must explicate functionalism itself. Functionalism broadly construed rests on the identity claim that concepts of mental states are concepts of functional states. In other words, the mental state that we call pain is defined causally by its functional role. We know that pain is apt to be caused by certain stimuli, such as pain or extreme heat, and is apt to cause certain responses, such as wincing and wishing for the pain to stop. Mental states, furthermore, are only contingently identical to their corresponding physical states. Though human pain may be identified with its neural state, the overarching concept of pain is non-rigid and may be applied to all states that are apt to be caused by certain stimuli and are apt to cause certain responses. This non-rigidity is a key feature functionalism, as it allows for creatures biologically unlike humans to experience pain. 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Professional Military Ethics Essay

We are now living in an era of materialism and sensual gratification from which most of us cannot escape. This has affected to a great extent the defining of one’s moral conduct. Henceforth, in the military’s environment, we cannot take for granted and assume that military ethics are given for the people who solemnly take their oath of office as military personnel. In order to serve our tenure as professionals, we have the responsibility of inculcating into our soldiers the importance of military ethics and by identifying it as a core value of our military profession. A professional is a person whose member of a vocation; an occupation for which an individual is specially drawn and for which they are suited, trained and qualified (Manuel,1981). Professionalism thus involves the process of giving a service to a client and is therefore governed by a standard of professional ethics meant to ensure that the interests of both parties are well catered for. The military professional is under the ethical and moral standards that are inherent to the occupation, and his duty extends to both the civilian society from which the military is drawn and the civilian society in which he may be discharging his duties. Ethical standards are established through the moral values of the society, and as the society evolves towards higher degrees of liberalism, moral expectations also change and these ethical standards expected of the military professional need to be adjusted accordingly. The boundary between what can be considered ethically correct and what cannot is becoming more and more blurred as the value system which governs individuals’ lives in society changes with time. What was considered to be ethical yesterday may not have the same status today or tomorrow since the world is fast moving towards levels of liberalization not thought possible a few decades ago, and the need to adapt to these changes therefore arises. It thus becomes important that in military establishments all over the world, great care needs to be taken to ensure that the military ethics that military personnel reflect the current-day societal situation. Military personnel should not be forced to live by ethical standards which are given and rigid. There needs to be a degree of flexibility in the definition of what is ethically correct and what is not, otherwise conflicts are bound to arise. It is equally important that respect for these ethical standards to be emphasized and ensure that the delivery of service by the military is above expectations. The degree of maneuverability of the ethic standards should not give military personnel a greater leeway to a degree which may be considered too immoral by the civilian society. Torture has been and is still is an ethical question which seems to be plaguing military establishments throughout the globe. In attempts to draw out useful information from prisoners of war, the military is more often than not accused of going beyond the line of interrogation and torturing prisoners of war in the pretext of carrying out interrogation. The argument usually degenerates into a war of words between the military and human rights groups; with each party in the contest presenting what it believes to be justifiable grounds for its stand. To a third party, this becomes a clear   illustration of the indistinct area between what is considered ethical or unethical since it is very difficult, maybe impossible to establish who is right or wrong. This also brings out the different situational environments that exist in the military, especially in war zones and those that exist in the ordinary peacetime civilian society. These two environments are totally different and attempting to evaluate them on the same ethical value system may not be fair. The act of interrogation is generally accepted to be ethical provided that it follows the set legal procedures. This is the reason why in many developed nations, police interrogations are generally viewed as ethical because there are clear policy guidelines that govern the procedure. In the military, however, general approval from society regarding its interrogation techniques is lost though military interrogators repeatedly defend themselves from accusations of torture by stating that they followed the set military procedures for such interrogations. In the fourth Geneva Convention, to which many nations are signatories, it is stated that â€Å"no physical or mental torture or any form of coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from the in information, of any kind whatever.† This rule, however, falls short of making a clear statement of when an act of interrogation changes to torture. The legal boundaries set by this rule are blurred and therefore the rule can be bent to great extremes to justify any interrogators actions which may be considered torture. A good example would be the use of tricks and lies to     influence the extraction of information from prisoners of war. Though the use of tricks and lies may be within the confines of law, they may be laced with threats of physical or mental harm or may even be lies with subtle and indirect threats made to coerce individuals to give information. Threats to prisoners of war that their civilian and innocent family members will suffer a dverse consequence if they do not divulge particular pieces of information may not have any basis in truth, and the interrogator may not have the least intention of making real the threat. All this will be an attempt to obtain useful information. This act will have civilian rights groups raising their arms in protest citing human rights infringement, the military will reply that it has acted within the law and this will present a dilemma on whether the act is ethical or not. This may also leave many questioning other ethical values in the military such as its honesty, sincerity ang integrity. A case on point will be the treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq. Human rights groups claim that the American military uses torture to obtain information from captured insurgents. The military defends itself by making reference to the policy guidelines that it has developed regarding interrogation, thereby implying that whatever methods it uses in its interrogations are legally sanctioned. The American legislature passed the Military Commission Act of 2006 for the purpose of regulating interrogations. Many nations have also passed these kinds of laws to ensure that interrogations that may border torture are within safe legal confines. The different social settings in which militaries operate also present problems in defining torture and interrogation. Military establishments may operate in social settings that are different from those that they are drawn from and the value system existing in such societies may be different depending on culture and religion among other factors. In pursuit of its set standards of a value system, military units may find themselves unknowingly violating a foreign society’s ethics. An example of this difference would be a comparison of the Chinese and the American military. The two operate in different cultural settings and the extent to which methods of interrogation are considered torture may be different. Human rights apply to all people but the very concept of human rights may be blurred in some societies. The military thus needs to adapt its ethical standards to reflect an attempt to fit in the societies they operate in. Situational settings in which a military carries out interrogations which may be viewed as torture need to be examined before any ethical standards are applied to the military. War zones and real battlefields are different situations and cannot be comparable to a peacetime civilian society. Some extreme methods may be justifiable to a certain extent under the adverse situations which may be facing a military. It is the primary duty of the military to save lives and property of both the civilians and the military personnel themselves. This important function may be compromised if some of what is considered ethical is followed. The American military operating in Iraq is usually faced with this difficult situation of choosing what may be considered extreme measures of interrogation to extract information torn prisoners of war and the risk of losing civilian and military life. The fact that they dealing with extremists who are ready to la y down their lives for any flimsy ideology further compounds the problem and this illustrates the question of whether the military should follow set ethical standards. It is becoming a debatable issue whether the military should outsource its interrogation services from nonmilitary civilian entities. (Jennifer, 2009). Due to the disrepute that arises to the military whenever accusations of torture are brought against it, the military finds an easy way of avoiding this by letting civilian organizations carry out interrogations for it. This is a convenient way of shifting any blame that may be directed to the military. Ethical questions however arise from this method. Is it ethically correct for the military to transfer what is considered its duty to parties that may not be part of the conflict? Private security firms have been on the service of the American military in Afghanistan for a better part of the conflict and the American citizenry has very differing opinion on the matter and this further reflect the changing ethical expectations from the military. The military has a very well established hierarchical structure. The set chain of command is strictly followed and orders that have their source from the higher levels of the chain have to be followed by the members of the junior ranks that receive them. This may also arise in cases involving torture where the methods to be used in interrogation are prescribed from higher in the military chain of command. This poses an ethical question as to whether military personnel should abide by their professional code of conduct which emphasizes on obedience of orders or whether they should follow the general ethical standards which are set by the society. (Mark, 1999) Training forms an important part of professionalism and in the military; it is through training that the core values of the military establishment are taught to the potential members of the military. This training is also done to potential military interrogators who learn about the methods and procedures that are used to obtain information from prisoners of war. Application of these methods learnt from military schools later results in claims of torture and the military personnel are at loss on whether to trust the professional ethics which demand that one follows what is learnt in training or to follow the civilian way of thinking which may view certain acts as torture. (Jessica, 2007) From the above scenarios it can be argued that there needs to be greater flexibility in defining what is professionally ethical in the military. Situational considerations of the operational zones of the military need to be critically examined before any verdict are given on the ethical standards of the military. The order of doing things in the military also needs not be rigid and should be constantly reviewed to ensure that the professional ethical standards that are expected of the military personnel conform to the existing ethical values of the society.   Better understanding of military operations by the civilian society is also needed to avoid biased and uninformed judgments on the professional ethics of the military. References Christopher, C. (2008). Ethics and war in the 21st century. New York: Rutledge Jenifer, K. (2009). Private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: legal issues. Congressional research service Jessica,W. (2007). Torture and the military profession. University of Virginia: Macmillan, Palgrave. Manuel, M. (1980).Journal of professional military ethics, Association of the United States army Mark, O. (1999). Obeying Orders. New Brunswick: Transaction publishers

Hannah Arendt s Interpretation Of The Eichmann Trial

Term Paper: A Life on Trial: What Motivated Adolf Eichmann and How Have Future Generations Understood Him?†¨Ã¢â‚¬ ¨Abstract: In this term paper, I will be focussing on the contradictory reviews on Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of The Eichmann Trial. With information from her book as well as commentary from other authors specifically David Cesarani and Deborah E. Lipstadt, I will be focussing on arguments in relation to Eichmann’s war crimes and the role he played in the mass-murder of European Jewry.†¨Ã¢â‚¬ ¨Adolf Eichmann as a man was considered to be mediocre. The importance of understanding who he was as a person is much more than his anti-semitic values. He was raised in northern Austria, in a middle-class household where casual anti-semitism was nothing out of the ordinary. In 1920 Austria, Eichmann considered Jews to be acquaintances. He was employed by Jews as an Oil and Kerosene salesman. He had Jewish relatives through marriage. Arendt specifically a nalyses that Anti-semitism was not the root cause for Eichmann joining the Nazi Party in 1932. She stresses the reason that he was a joiner. Cesarani delves deeper into Eichmann’s personal connections and issues more, he rationalised that Eichmann admired the Nazi’s position regarding the Treaty of Versailles. But he also agreed with Arendt’s opinion that anti-semitism was not the reason that led Eichmann into the Nazi Party. †¨Ã¢â‚¬ ¨Ã¢â‚¬Å"Although she was wonderfully perceptive about the structure and working of the Third Reich and Eichmann’s