Humanity Essay

People non only fall in a responsibility to others in the world, however an obligation to follow through,a s much as is possible, to shape a emerging(a) world where conditions provide the best opportunities for all mint to secure safe(p)ty and happiness. Such a view has often been looked as utopian or highly imagelistic, but it may be the case that substantial conditions on the planet earth lead reveal that utopianism is actually a form of pragmatism and that idealism, at least to some degree is a infallible comp sensationnt of social and political thinking.I regard this belief as a form of social responsibility. Social responsibility stomach be define as balancing the pursuit of unrivaleds individual goals with the needs of others in establishing a safe and just world and ensuring the continuation of a democratic society. (Robinson, and Hayes, 2002, p. 6). The challenges of the 21st century, whether economic or environmental, heathen or biological allow for req uire in the raw methods of thinking and behaving at some(prenominal) the individual and social levels. on that catch moldiness be an emphasis on changing the perceptions, particularly in twenty-first century America, which umpteen people shit about the nature of somebodyal responsibility and personal empowerment. While it work outms obvious plenty to say, as President Barack Obama asserted in his book The Audacity of Hope, that new generations of Americans are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish in the midst of what can and cannot be compromised (Obama, 2004. . 42) the ramifications of such a politics of maturity and realism extend to legion(predicate) important areas of American society including economics, applied science, and philosophy and pietism. What is necessary for America to meet the challenges of the incoming is a social cultural acceptance of the position that responsibility, and not scarcely the pursui t of self-interests, is a path to personal empowerment. This last carryment may seem contradictory to many Americans.A great number of people view themselves in purely materialistic terms and involve what they can get out of society without taking any personal responsibility for the consequences. For some people, emotional state holds no meaning outside of its material dimension and this loss of meaning in American finish has consequences beyond the immediately personal We experience no choice, we are constantly told, because of economic forces, our unconscious, or our genes. Yet, at the same time, we live in a world that presents us with endless choices (Sardar, 2006, p. ). As strange as it sounds, the only way to break the cycle of endless anxiety over our limitless granting immunity is by accepting responsibility for the choices we make. This is a kind of paradox in American society, We want to have it both ways, and so we end up confused and cynical. Our obsession with ind ividuality and self-interest further erodes personal and collective responsibility (Sardar, 2006, p. 3) which means, the less one begins to place their own existence the less responsibility they give witness for their actions.To accept responsibility is, in itself, to accept that life is meaning(prenominal) and to accept that life in meaningful is an act of self-empowerment. we must learn to understand that Freedom is both a gift and a challenge. It has value only when we respect it and enhance it individually and collectively. And when we exercise it with responsibility. (Sardar, 2006, p. 3 ). In this way, a change in the basic philosophical vision present in American culture may help us to begin to make inroads against the challenges which face us in the new world.Wendell culls persuasive parameter that many youthful conceptions of progress and happiness are rooted in ignorance and self-deception adjusts substantial trial impression in even a cursory glance of modern me dia and political discourse. Looked at to a greater extent closely, the misconceptions aptly identified by Wendell Berry in the Western (and particularly American) vision of life and life responsibilities, aver an illuminating light on contemporary government, American foreign policy, and many urgent social crises. nearly obvious is the relationship between Berrys observation that The higher aims of technological progress are money and ease and the recent al approximately epidemic instances of collective corruption (and corruption in government) whereby chief operating officers have garnered massive bonuses and pay-increases whilst robbing their shareholders and workers of loot and pensions. The corresponding downfall of powerful political figures in the unify States Congress, as well as their lobbyist counterparts for racketeering, bribery, and other financial crimes indicates how widespread is the oligarchical strain of political ethical motive in contemporary society.Wastefu l projects such as the 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-publicized Tyco and Enron financial scandals affirm Berrys affray that far from securing a worthy futurity, the immediate greed and gratification of big money has motivated corporate and political leaders to sacrifice the future and well-being of myriad other individuals and the nation as a whole in favor of selfish, personal gain.This type of greed, based on the fallacious assumption of preserving ones future extends throughout the social hierarchy of America, with most, if not all industries and pursuits subordinated to it as Berry remarks sure the aim cannot be the integrity or happiness of our families, which we have make subordinate to the education system, the video recording industry, and the consumer economy (Berry,1990. p206).The reality is that most families are useful to the controlling inte rests of the American economy as charted demographics which stomach individual economic resources to be targeted at tapped by the said controlling interests. Corporate America, the media, and the governments themselves function as subsidiaries of the boilersuit obsession with wealth and the increase of personal fortunes. The quest for personal enrichment, the acquiescence to greed, predicated on the transcendent future is self-rationalizing behavior.Ironically, it is also self-destructive behavior and also portends the possible destruction of the orbiculate environment. Were humanity real concerned for the future, Berry argues, we would embrace the good things we know about the present such as water, oxygen, trees, oceans, mountains, and wildlife, and see to it that these good things endure If we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received sufficient justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountain s, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now (Berry,1990. 16) One implied badinage in Berrys observations is that technology, the science which is supposed to bring our society to a great modern crest, has actually pushed us further into primitive superstition and savagery.Our modern totems are money and power and we offend the environment rather than protecting it. We use our knowledge to destroy rather than preserve, and, at its pinnacle, technology, so Berry insinuates, has as one of its outcomes, the utter destruction of human thought. If one motives are money, ease, and haste to arrive in a technologically determined future, then the answer is foregone, and there is, the fact, no question, and no thought (Berry,1990. p17). The most philosophically dense and relatively unsupported point which Berry attempts to make is the connection between a rejection of dehumizing technology and religious faith. If ones motive is the love of family, community, country, and divinity fudge, then one will have to think, and one may have to decide that thee proposed innovation is undesirable (Berry,1990. p17).With this conclusion, Berry seems to depart from the more elongate and persuasive argument he previously offered. After all, if, as he insists, 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 of God or any moral or political belief predicated on the existence of God is in like manner an article of faith. Taking Berrys comments another way that religious faith comprises a nostrum to an abiding though sorely misplaced faith in technology, the argument seems more tenable if no less anecdotal and emotionally based.However, it is the emotion of Berrys remarks which lends them a convincing and urgent air, which is worthy for the topics at hand. Unfortunately, outside of a faith in God, a dedication to ones family, and a respect and love for the earth and its environment, Berry offers very 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 common or national prosperity seem well reasons and are substantiate by contemporary facts.His arguments against technology seem a bit less well-reasoned and incomplete, based on emotional rather than evidential criteria. though Berrys imploring tone seems to fall short of providing even the slightest recommendation of pragmatic applications to prohibit or undo the environmental and cultural damage that has come from Americas mortgaged future, his overall diagnoses of the problems facing our Plutocracy are persuasive and articulated with aplomb.As Barack Obama points out, economics in the twenty-first century no longer function along the same models they had embodied for years. He writes that In this more competitive globose environment, the old corporate formula of steady profits and stodgy management no longer worked (Obama, 2004, p. 156). What Obama is driveway at with this statement can be considered an aspect of humanizing economics, a must-needed step for America in the twenty-first century.By accepting responsibility 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 always human responsibility. We begin to understand ourselves much more clearly and understand our challenges more clearly when we admit that we live in a world which desperately needs fixing and in which denial is seductively easy and cheap, at least for a time.We must acknowledge and seek to understand the connection between poverty, social injustice, and environmental degradation. (Orr, 2002, p. 89) Barack Obam as 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 view of business and corporate responsibility which will have to be embraced in American society as we move forward to accept our responsibilities and meet the challenges of the future. rather of viewing purely money and material growth as the only forms of profit in business, corporations of the future will begin to realize that business behavior and government policy toward business requires, more than ever, an taste sensation of the firms 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 shaped by not only market forces but by societal ones (Tomer, 1999, p. 9) and in so recognizing other forms of success and profit namely, the maintaining of ethical and environmental standards which set in to the overall growth and well-being of humanity may over-ride present-day obsession with self-interest and materialistic profit.If Barack Obamas writings in 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 understand leaders who can summon a bold-enough vision as well as present workable solutions to meet the challenges we have at least partially created for ourselves.Obviously, I disagree with the suggestion that all the worlds problems and injustices can be eliminated, but I do believe that positive change can be made and that bring out 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 difficult to assign a single challenge as most crucial or important.However, because the challenges of the twenty-first cent ury, 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.In my opinion, it is not only possible, but morally imperative, that the social in correspondities 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 formation of an ideal society, would be the individual liberties of each of the citizens in that society.To me, a society which contained too may laws or rules, whether intended to ensure liberty or simply to oppress people, would be contrary to a utopia. Any ideal society must ensure the freedom of its citizens while simultaneously preserving their safety and the productivity of the society as a whole. Therefore, although it may sound middling far-fetched, the most important reform in my ideal society would be concerned with educational reform.In my vision of utopia, knowledge would be considered the most important 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 someones life to determine where their particular strengths and talents are centered and then that person would be encouraged to accompany these talents and aptitudes without regard of race, sexual orientation, religion, political or cultural biases.Due 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 fo r it or not, but all should be encouraged to find their inner-talent and special 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.Because 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 utopias are defined, not in terms of practicality and pragmatism, but on imaginative erudition and vision, so that the influence of utopian writings has generally been inspirational rather than practical. (Utopia, 2004) This allows for utopian thinkers to dream away, as it were, and this liberty allows me to offer my second most critical element in an ideal society.This second point falls squarely under the category economic utopia. In my vision of an idealized society, money would be completely eliminated. The reason that money would be eliminated is because econo mic interests traditionally have displaced moral ideals in capitalistic societies. Corporation work to obfuscate moral responsibility 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 civil ethic would replace what has in the past been seen as a religious ethic.Because 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 peoples lives. Because self-determination would be the highest priority in my utopia, family conflicts and other interpersonal relationships would also round a less-permanent role in peoples lives,encouraging them to view all people as equal rather than those of their family or race or region being more familiar and subsequently more preferred or sympathized with.Most 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.