Mahatma Gandhi Essay Example for Free

Mahatma Gandhi Essay An acquaintance of mine is a highly paid professional lacking none of life’s luxuries. He plays the violin as a hobby and frequently plays in a public space, placing a jar in front of him so that passers-by can contribute money to show their appreciation. Other musicians play in that space, but they move on if another musician is already there. His actions suggest, to me, that he’s a struggling musician in need of financial assistance, but he’s collecting dollar bills from people who may be less fortunate financially than he. Your thoughts on the ethics of this? NAME WITHHELD, NEW YORK The reason this strikes you as problematic has to do with your view of what this man is doing. You see his actions as a request for undeserved charity. He sees his actions as a performance that has potential value. And he is correct. Part of your argument is based on the premise that your acquaintance is occupying a common space that could better serve a less fortunate peer. That contention would make sense if the guy were panhandling. But that is not what he’s doing. He’s creating art for public consumption; he is, by the strictest definition of the term, a professional musician. While not charging for this work, he’s still saying, â€Å"I believe my music has value — and if you agree, pay me whatever amount you think is justified.† He’s not expecting people to give him money just because he’s standing there. That people less wealthy than he is might be generating his revenue is irrelevant. If you go to a Metallica concert, you would have a hard time finding one person in the entire arena who’s richer than the band’s drummer. Does this mean Metallica should provide free tickets to every member of their audience who makes less money than they do? I suppose you could make the case that they should. But it wouldn’t be a very good one. THE GRAPE THIEF A man goes to the supermarket and passes a table of fruit. His eye meets a luscious bunch of seedless grapes. The man puts the grapes in a plastic bag and proceeds to eat one, before having them weighed to determine the price. Is this an unethical act? Is it stealing? Why is stealing even unethical? MAYA AZOURI, TORONTO The first two parts of your question are not particularly meaningful. Is this stealing? Yes (the man took something he didn’t pay for). Is it unethical? Yes (although the value of one grape is so minor that it impedes on the livelihood of no one). The third aspect of your query, however — why is stealing unethical — is intriguing. The answer seems so obvious that it’s almost never questioned, even though it might not be obvious at all. I approached this question by working though all the existing reasons people don’t steal on a regular basis. The first is that it’s illegal; we don’t steal things because we’ve communally agreed that there is a justified, enforceable penalty for doing so. Another reason has to do with the influence of religion; pretty much whatever religious text you accept tautologically states that stealing is wrong because â€Å"stealing is wrong.† A third reason is tied to the design of our economic framework: If people can just pilfer whatever they desire, nothing will have monetary value (in the example you cite, the man who harvests the grapes can’t earn a living if those grapes can be freely taken by whoever wants them). But let’s keep going. Let’s move into a â€Å"Mad Max† scenario: If we lived in a lawless, secular, money-free society, would stealing still be wrong? It would. And this is because the alternative would make us nervous and unhappy. Part of this problem has to do with the philosophical concept of ownership. Can objects truly be â€Å"owned† by someone, or is this just a word we use to describe an unreal proviso? The more you think about that question, the more complicated it becomes. But it ultimately doesn’t matter, because we’ve collectively decided to live as though ownership isreal. We believe our possessions are extensions of ourselves. So if stealing were an acceptable practice — if we lived in a world in which people just took whatever they wanted, simply because there was no clear argument for doing otherwise — our lives would be consumed by anxiety. We would live in constant fear and spend all our energy protecting our possessions. Traveling would become impossible, because we couldn’t go anywhere without bringing along everything we owned. People would be less motivated to create things, because they would have no way of stopping others from taking away those creations. Violence would increase exponentially. Though I’m not sure if we’re ethically obligated to make the lives of others better, we are ethically obligated not to make the lives of others worse. And that’s what stealing does: it makes it impossible for other people to pursue their own happiness. It destabilizes society. In your supermarket example, the level of instability is so negligible that there’s no impact; it’s almost as if that level of theft is built into our lives as a release valve from morality. But if you extrapolate the grape thief’s actions outward and upward, it doesn’t take long before

Good Food Industry :: essays research papers

GOOD FOODS INCORPORATED   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Good Food, Incorporated (GFI) is a company founded on the belief that children can grow up healthier and live longer if they are fed a natural, nutritionally balanced diet starting earlier in life. GFI’s goal is to increase awareness of this link between diet and health.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Good Food Industry was a start up business with three principals presently involved in its development. GFI’s principals have researched and developed a line of unique children’s food products based on the holistic health concept. The holistic concept, which health food consumer determined was widely accepted among adult consumers of health foods, was new to child-care field. Hence GFI planned to take advantage of the opportunities for market development and penetration that its principals were confident exists. GFI also believed that the existing baby-food industry paid only cursory attention to providing high quality, nutrition products, and that the limited number of truly healthy and nutritious baby foods created a market void that GFI could successfully fill.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Market Research During its market research phase, GFI engaged â€Å"Vick Product Sales Research Corporation† as its marketing and advertising consulting company. Vick prepared reports on industry trends for the traditional children’s food industry and healthy food industry.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Vick’s market research showed that the United States was entering a â€Å"mini baby boom† that would increase the potential market base for its products. Health food products would approach the market place primarily through the health food stores and nature food centres in major supermarket chain stores, initially in the northwest and California. Acceptance of the GFI concept in these areas would enable The Company to expand to a national market. Market Definition   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  GFI planned to direct its efforts to the sale of its health care products through the health food retail outlets and natural food centres located within major supermarkets. Geographically, the company would initially direct its efforts in two key areas: Northeast, especially around New York City: and particularly in the Reno, Nevada and Sacramento, California area. Both areas had a high concentration of adult health food consumers who GFI had found, through market research and analysis, to be most receptive to health concepts for children. According to this market research the specific target markets that GFI would approach through these outlets were: †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Parents who were concerned about their health and their children’s health and who thus demand higher quality and more nutritionally lanced foods and products. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Operators of child-care centres who provide meals to children. Good Food Industry :: essays research papers GOOD FOODS INCORPORATED   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Good Food, Incorporated (GFI) is a company founded on the belief that children can grow up healthier and live longer if they are fed a natural, nutritionally balanced diet starting earlier in life. GFI’s goal is to increase awareness of this link between diet and health.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Good Food Industry was a start up business with three principals presently involved in its development. GFI’s principals have researched and developed a line of unique children’s food products based on the holistic health concept. The holistic concept, which health food consumer determined was widely accepted among adult consumers of health foods, was new to child-care field. Hence GFI planned to take advantage of the opportunities for market development and penetration that its principals were confident exists. GFI also believed that the existing baby-food industry paid only cursory attention to providing high quality, nutrition products, and that the limited number of truly healthy and nutritious baby foods created a market void that GFI could successfully fill.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Market Research During its market research phase, GFI engaged â€Å"Vick Product Sales Research Corporation† as its marketing and advertising consulting company. Vick prepared reports on industry trends for the traditional children’s food industry and healthy food industry.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Vick’s market research showed that the United States was entering a â€Å"mini baby boom† that would increase the potential market base for its products. Health food products would approach the market place primarily through the health food stores and nature food centres in major supermarket chain stores, initially in the northwest and California. Acceptance of the GFI concept in these areas would enable The Company to expand to a national market. Market Definition   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  GFI planned to direct its efforts to the sale of its health care products through the health food retail outlets and natural food centres located within major supermarkets. Geographically, the company would initially direct its efforts in two key areas: Northeast, especially around New York City: and particularly in the Reno, Nevada and Sacramento, California area. Both areas had a high concentration of adult health food consumers who GFI had found, through market research and analysis, to be most receptive to health concepts for children. According to this market research the specific target markets that GFI would approach through these outlets were: †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Parents who were concerned about their health and their children’s health and who thus demand higher quality and more nutritionally lanced foods and products. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Operators of child-care centres who provide meals to children.

St. Augustine Confessions

St. Augustine’s Confessions St. Augustine lived during a period in which the Roman Empire was in deep decline and Christianity was taking root as the official religion. It was a time of great political stress and widespread religious concern. The Confessions reveals much about his formative years, when he strove to overcome his sensual desires, find faith, and understand religious and philosophical doctrines. Augustine treats this autobiography as much more than an opportunity to narrate his life, however, and there is hardly an event mentioned in his autobiography that does not have an accompanying religious or philosophical clarification. St. Augustine’s confessions also provide one with a critical aspect of the Christian Bible. Augustine’s confessions form a work that corresponds closely to its content and achieves what it set out to achieve, which is redemption from sins for Augustine and a revelation for the readers. His writing is basically an idea of the return of creation to God; its aim is to inspire others to actively seek this return and to believe in the creation of God. The relationship St. Augustine has with love and God is undeniably irrevocable due to the fact that he cannot distinguish love and God with out one another. Augustine often experiences darkness, blindness, and confusion while attempting to find truth in God, but he knows that when he eventually finds him his confused heart will be redeemed. Augustine started out in childhood with a state of confusion because he had to live in two different worlds. These two worlds consisted of that of his mother’s (Monica) religious faith and teachings, and the rest of the outside world. The two worlds confused Augustine as a child because his mother praised Christ and Christianity and about the almighty God who helps humans to go to heaven. In the outside world, it was completely nonreligious. The talk was about striving to achieve. In Carthage, while successfully pursuing his studies, he abandoned his Christian moral teachings of his early years and took in a mistress, with whom he lived with for 10 years. Augustine’s relation to his mistress focuses primarily on the problem of restless love, while showing that Augustine had the desire to love and wanted to be loved. Many young men stayed with a woman until the time came to marry them back then. This is what Augustine performed. He states that, â€Å"In those days I lived with a oman, not my lawful wedded wife but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason but that my restless passions had alighted on her. But she was the only one and I was faithful to her† (Confessions, IV). This is just one of the many aspects in his life that he considered sinful. Later in his writings, when Augustine talks about his conversation to Neo-Platonism (all actions a re considered good or evil) and then Christianity that he classifies his previous behavior as sinful and regrets many of his previous actions. By the time he converted, he viewed every act in which he put himself ahead of God as sinful. One sin that he mourns greatly and faults himself for is allowing him to be sexually free and having various partners. Although Augustine was regretful for his sin, he also mentions that it was the hardest sin to give up when he was trying to determine if he wanted to convert to Christianity completely. Augustine also attempts to provide another explanation for his previous actions by speculating that his actions were a result of his love for God being somehow misleading; â€Å"To him I was led by thee without my knowledge, that by him I might be led to thee in full knowledge† (Confessions, XIII). One of the biggest struggles that Augustine faced was his belief in God and how God exists. His concern was how we can seek God without really knowing what he is or what we’re exactly looking for. â€Å"Within me I had a dearth of that inner food which thyself, my God—although that dearth caused me no hunger† (Confessions, I). He constantly questions the existence of God and his belief in Him. Asking God to â€Å"come into me†, Augustine again questions what that phrase could really mean when expressed to God. Later on in the writing, Augustine came across a book, in which he referred to as â€Å"books of eloquence† (Confessions, IV), called Hortensius by Cicero. He admired this book very much and its philosophical ways which he proclaims it â€Å"changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward thee, O Lord, and gave me new hope and new desires† (Confessions, IV). The reading caused him to reach toward God, even though he had only learned of God seriously through Monica, his mother whom was of Christian faith. It helped him to develop a different outlook on God and take life more seriously. Furthermore, the death of Augustine’s friend made him realize that all love should be rooted in God. His friend became very ill with a fever and eventually passed away. Augustine felt extreme grief and sorrow for his friend’s death. He believes that the main cause of his misery lies in the fact that he loves his friend with the type of love that should have been reserved for God alone. Therefore, he felt that all human love is going to fade unless this love is grounded in the eternal God who never changes and will always remain. While love exists between two souls with whom we want to be with, this type of love will always have a basis from God. Throughout the Confessions, love and wisdom, his desire to love and be loved, are all driving forces for Augustine’s desire to find peace in God. Augustine often experiences darkness, blindness, and confusion while attempting to find peace in God and peace within himself, but he knows that when he eventually finds him his restless heart will be saved. Augustine felt that love might help him have a solid purpose in life and would guide him through his time of conversion. Love is a natural feeling for human race and becomes a necessity for all people. For Augustine, the first love has to be for the love of God. It must come before all others. He states that â€Å"the thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you† (Confessions, I). Holding God as love’s priority, it helped Augustine to shape his life, his mind and his beliefs. He never realized what a big difference it makes in one’s life when it is opened up to love and to love Christ. For Augustine, the answer to his questions and confusion lies in God’s grace. These answers are to the most difficult questions on life and faith. Throughout his writing, there was no time where he had been without love, but he had loved in pieces, hidden, and conflicting ways. He had loved his mother, Monica, from the beginning. He had also loved the name and image of Christ, but was in state of confusion many times therefore doubting his faith and beliefs. Through the Confessions, Augustine leaves himself and his past to praising God and loving him because he felt guilty with himself and his importance of God in his life. He found a place in God that he never imagined could happen. His guilty mind and heart finally found rest in God. Love also played a significant role during his conversion. It helped guide him towards God and Christ in a positive way that influenced the rest of his life. All these various themes of love helped and guided Augustine through his conversion. This formation was the discovery of a new self and the discovery of the new world he sees now through his conversion. The conversion taught him truth and to believe in God. His desire to understand wisdom, which was through the readings by Cicero, brought about a new view for Christ. Though he converted, Augustine’s full connection with the love of Christ was still yet incomplete for him. His mind was not satisfied with any one direction. The most critical and influential form of love that Augustine had was love for God and the love for Christ. It was almost as if he was exposed to a new realm and he opened up his life up to God more and more each day by praising him, telling God how much he loves him now. Augustine states, â€Å"then, O Lord, you laid your most gentle, most merciful finger on my heart and set my thoughts in order, for I began to realize that I believed countless things which I had never seen or which I had taken place when I was not there to see† (Confessions, VI). The Confessions tells a story in the form of a long conversion with God. Through this conversion to Catholic Christianity, Augustine encounters many aspects of love. These forms of love guide him towards an ultimate relationship with God. His restless heart finally finds peace and rest in God after the conversion. Augustine finds many ways in which he can find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for having turned away from God, the one source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely thankful for having been given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as his gate to God’s grace. All in all, the Confessions can be read as Augustine’s way of redemption from his sins and his revelation of love to God and Christ. Augustine’s transition from a sinner to a faithful Christian was also evidence to God’s greatness. Even though Augustine committed unacceptable sins, it was a good thing for him in that he found the strength to believe and love God. This is because of what he has obtained from analyzing texts, such as Cicero’s writings, and Christian philosophy and the fact that he can truly understand the root causes of his sins that he committed instead of simply implying them based on what a book says.

International Monetary Fund And The World Bank - 1561 Words

THE WORLD BANK AND IMF - HIPC International Monetary Fund and The World Bank, though has a good purpose of their existence, they have come under lots of criticisms as to how they use the leverage of being in a position of helping poor countries to either recover from economic collapse or give them debt relief and economic boost from loans they give out to them to impose policies and condition that those poor countries has to implement. These loan conditions and policies structured by these international financial power institutions are geared towards moving resources from the poor countries to the rich western countries. The end result is creating a situation where the poor countries sunk into more economic suicidal condition in which†¦show more content†¦In order to rebuild Europe after a devastation second world war, common sense would tell you that the institutions would not like to deplete its resources. So the question of exploiting loan seekers or poor countries who later became part of the countri es seeking financial help from the world bank and the IMF. The main function of the International Monetary Fund according to IMF fact sheet (2016, March 23) â€Å"To ensure the stability of the international monetary system—the system of exchange rates and international payments that enables countries (and their citizens) to transact with each other†. Simply put, the organization beginning with 44 countries and now 189, has one aim, to make sure there is a global or international stability in the world economy by monitoring resources and exchange rates across goods and services trading among member countries and ensuring that there would not be an economic collapse in respective member countries. Same IMF factsheet do more elaborating on their term surveillance as stated as â€Å"To maintain stability and prevent crises in the international