Confucius’ Social and Political Philosophy Essay Example for Free

Confucius’ Social and Political Philosophy Essay These days we are focusing on the topics of Confucius’ social and political philosophy. After finishing readings of this section, I would like to give reflections that mainly about Confucius’ view on governing and analyze the traditional culture and administration of our country. This essay will present my opinions about the merits and demerits of nowadays Chinese society’s government. First, let us deal with something that Confucius would say that Chinese society is currently doing well. According to Confucius, when the population is already numerous, make them wealthy will further improve them, and once they are wealthy, to instruct them will improve them further more. [1] I think this passage is suitable for making appraisals to nowadays Chinese society, because China has a large population and Chinese government is taking the road of common prosperity, these are very similar to passage’s description. The road of common prosperity means, for the purpose of enabling more and more people to become prosperous, some people are encouraged to become prosperous first, and at last all people will become prosperous. In my own understanding, I think this passage did not show that Confucius think wealth is more important than education. I think what Confucius want to said is, to make people wealth does not means just make people hold a lot of money, actually it means to let people live a peaceful and wealthy life, which is important to build a harmonious society. In addition, Chinese government also focuses on education, like the government increases the input of fund for rural compulsory education. In another passage, Confucius said â€Å"If common people’s need are satisfied, how could their lord be lacking? If the common people ‘s needs are not satisfied, how can their lord be content?† [2] These above passages show Confucius think it is important to satisfy common people’s needs, to let them live a wealthy life is necessary for reaching this goal, so he would be pleased to see Chinese government is paying efforts to improve people’s life and education. However , it is obvious that there is also something Chinese government is currently not doing well. In recent years, human flesh search engine became very popular. According to Wikipedia, human flesh search is a primarily Chinese internet phenomenon of massive researching  using Internet media such as blogs and forums. What made human flesh search became famous is misconduct in public office were exposed frequently through this way, this means the government is not honest enough. When this kind of things happened, it usually begin with some public servants wearing or using luxuries in public activities, then people think it is suspicious that public servants can afford those kind of luxuries, so they begin human flesh search to find out what happened. Confucius would be displeased, because the dishonest behaviors of some public servants are damaging government’s reputation. According to Confucius, he said he would sacrifice armament and food, but he though a state cannot stand once it has lost the confidence of the people.[3] That means Confucius regard the confidence of the people as the most important thing for a government. There is also an old saying that the lord is a boat and common people is water, means when a lord gain the supports from his people, it is like the water make the boat float over water-surface. And it works both ways. The correct attitude towards common people will gain people’s support, the bad reputation cause by dishonest governing will lose people’s support, it is no doubt that Chinese society is not doing well at this point. Confucius also said â€Å"Raise up the straight and apply them to the crooked, and the people will submit you. If you raise up the crooked and apply them to the straight, the people will never submit.† [4] When we understanding this passage and relating it to nowadays society, I think the â€Å"straight† can be understand as the public servant who work honesty and really care of common people’s interests. Likewise, â€Å"crooked† can be understand as the public servant who abuse power and damage common people’s interest. Chinese government did not build up a complete supervise system to punish the corrupt officials and it is what government should do in the future. The key to adopting Confucius’ philosophy centers on discarding the dross and selecting the essence. Chinese society is doing a good job in striking a balance between social improvement and inheritance on traditional culture, like the idea about building up a harmonious society. I think Chinese society should be as Confucian as it is today, because although we can carry forward things from tradition, we cannot carry forward everything from tradition, we need to keep pace with the times. Some of Confucius’ view on governing cannot accommodate itself to the Chinese society’s development. For example, Confucius said, let the lord be a true  lord, the ministers true ministers, the fathers tr ue fathers, and the sons true sons.[5] In this passage, Confucius was only requiring the lord to fulfill his obligation, but he did not require any democratic rights which are extremely important to nowadays society. In ancient China, People did not have their right to choose a lord they want, but nowadays people are supposed to have their democratic rights and choose the government they want. The Chinese society must comply with the world development trend. We should accept the good things showed in the passage, like the idea â€Å"to do what you are deemed to do†, but for governing, we are not supposed to take its idea like â€Å"people serve their lord and cannot against the lord† Chinese society does not take the wrong way and its governing is becoming more and more democratic, so it is Confucian enough and it just need to keep this style. In conclusion, there is still lot of things that we can use the experience of Confucius for reference, the view on governing is just a part of it, and Confuciusâ€℠¢ philosophy is always the important asset for us.

Feminism in Sophocles Antigone and Shakespeares Othello Essay

Feminism in Antigone and Othello  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Feminism has been one of the most important forces in shaping our modern-day society. Thanks to the women's rights movement, females today enjoy rights and freedoms that are unprecedented in the history of Western civilization. However, it was not always this way. Whereas modern literature that contains feminist messages barely gets a second thought, readers in our time are intrigued and impressed by feminist works coming from a decidedly male-biased past. Two of the greatest works of Western literature, Antigone and Othello, written by the two great dramatists Sophocles and Shakespeare, have been said to illustrate feminist ideals in the "distant" past. Antigone, which embodies these ideals throughout and is primarily concerned with the inequity of gender roles, is such a play. Othello, while it contains occasional feminist sentiment, still keeps its women in conventional female roles and thus is not a feminist work. In order to determine if these plays are feminist, we first require a working definition of the term. This alone is rather complicated, because the word itself is popularly used and misused in many different ways. In its simplest form, feminist doctrine states that women and men are equal and deserve the same rights and privileges. This, although widely accepted in our time, was not in the past. However, feminism also has been seen as the belief that men are the inferior sex, a belief that might more accurately be termed "anti-masculinism". This belief has never been widely espoused in Western society, and probably never will be. It can also be said that "feminism" is any belief or idea that is meant to improve the well-being and social standing of females: for ex... ...e does not, and this is seen clearly in the play. We are driven to sympathize with Antigone, and we see that she finds a way to be powerful that does not fit in with the classical male-driven power structure. She is also powerful in the structure of the play: she is its most well developed character and the play takes its title from her name. Finally, Sophocles shows us that feminism works, at least in Antigone's case: she gets what she wants. Unfortunately, this happens to be death, but her attempts at power still get her what she desires.    Works Cited Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square Press, 1993. Sophocles. Antigone. The Theban Plays. Ed. and trans. E. F. Watling. London: Penguin Group, 1947: 126-162. Watling, E. F. "Introduction." The Theban Plays. London: Penguin Group, 1947: 7-22.

Workplace Feminism

Logan Rogers ENG 102 Childless Women; Victims At Their Jobs? In today’s economy there are many women beginning to enter the workforce; mothers and childless women both. However, are childless women victimized in the workplace? Often times working mothers have to work half days or leave the workplace suddenly to go care for their children. Childless women tend to feel that working mothers are given priority to requested time off.The result of these aspects are childless women feeling that they have to take on more hours, denied personal and vacation time, resented by working mothers, and not offered special benefits that working mothers receive. When one commits to a full time job, he or she only plans to be working an average of forty hours per week. However, that is not always the case with childless women in the workplace. Studies show that childless women are working more hours on average than working mothers.They feel that extra work is often put on their shoulders, a cons equence of working mothers having to leave the workplace due to time conflicts with their children. A situation where this is a problem is when working on a group project. Every member of the team is given their own responsibilities and if a working mother has to leave because of her child, the rest of the team is burdened with her tasks.Kristen Bossert, a graphic designer who is sick of feeling like a second-class employee, states, â€Å"I’m the one who always gets stuck at work,† she says, â€Å"If you have no kids, you have no excuses. † (Backaitis) Many childless women feel that workplaces are less strict on working mothers because they have to balance between work and family. In an article by Wendy Williams, she presents statistics that show females without children work an average of more hours per week: â€Å"As can be seen, for each child a female professor has, she works slightly less at her academic job each week.A female professor with 3 children wor ks†¦2. 5 hours less than her childless female colleagues† (Williams) Therefore childless women feel that working mothers get special treatment in the workplace because childless women have to take on extra work and more hours when mothers must leave to take care of their children. On top of taking on extra hours, working childless women often feel that they are deprived of personal and vacation time to which they are entitled.When asked about the subject, Lori Hanes, a working mother of two children, said â€Å" In my workplace, childless women continuously complain that working mothers get priority to vacation time due to wanting to spend time with their children. † The following situation shows that working women get precedence over childless women: When she asked her manager if she could leave early to go to a doctor’s appointment, Diana Antholis expected to get an unequivocal yes.After all, her co-workers were always coming in late or taking off ahead of schedule because their kids needed to get vaccinated, didn’t feel well at day care, were in a performance at school and so on. So when the boss gave her a hard time and suggested that her medical appointments be scheduled for her â€Å"own time,† the media-agency associate almost lost it. First she thought of asking when her â€Å"own time† was, given that she typically put in more than 12 hours a day. And, second, she wanted to know why the mothers she worked with were getting time off for the asking. (Backaitis) It may not be fair but that does not mean it is not widespread. As the workplace has become more family-friendly over the years, there has been an unintended consequence: complaints from childless women that they are second priority to those who have chosen to have a family. Some childless workers complain that their lives outside of work seem to be irrelevant to both their coworkers and their employers. Childless workers’ completion of a triat hlon, participation in a community chorus, or volunteerism do not merit the same informal celebration as little Johnny’s first Little League hit.The Center for Talent Innovation performed a study that shows that 46 percent of childless women say that their outside commitments are perceived as less important at work than that of working mothers’. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president of the Center for Talent Innovations, states this: â€Å"Not only are [working women without children] denied easy access to flexibility, but they’re made to feel like their lives aren’t significant and they get very little recognition of their non-work activities. (Hewlett) Childless women feel that working mothers often get priority to requested time off over them and that their achievements outside of work are not important. Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, and former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, are all highly respect ed, successful women. They are all also childless women. Greater success may be one reason for the resentment that childless women feel working mothers have towards them. Studies show that childless women are more successful professionally than working mothers.Childless women also report feeling constantly judged by working mothers because they do not have children. Findings show that 25% of professional women without children feel that working mothers refer to them as hardened career women for not being mothers. Childless women also feel envy from working mothers due to the significant amount of less stress that they have to deal with because they are not balancing a full time job and a family. Another reason for this resentment is the disparity in wages between working mothers and childless workers.Kelly Hagen stated in her article, that â€Å"Mothers are 44 percent less likely to be hired than women without children, and they are paid $11,000 less, according to a 2005 study from Cornell University. † (Hagen) Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director of MomsRising. org in an interview with â€Å"Good Morning America. † stated that, â€Å"Women without children make ninety cents to a man's dollar, while women with children make only seventy three cents to a man's dollar†. Less stress, greater success, and more pay are all reasons that are causing resentment of childless women by working mothers.Many companies offer an array of benefits for their full time employees. However, many of these benefits favor soley working mothers rather than all women in the workplace. For example, companies give working mothers benefits that go beyond their essential needs. These include maternity leave and phase-back programs, programs that allow working mothers to work part-time for full-time pay after childbirth. Many companies also offer working mothers what are called family days. These paid days off are designated for use if a child is sick or has som e kind of appointment.Therefore, childless women have less availabe paid time off than working mothers. New mothers must lactate three or more times per day. Several companies are now giving these new mothers designated times throughout the day to take care of this issue and special rooms are being put in place for this reason only. This special care is resulting in three more breaks during the day for new moms, not childless women. Childless women are never granted such generous benefits like these, making the benefits between them and working mothers unequal. Working women who have chosen not to have children often feel victimized in the workplace.Statistics show that they work significantly more hours on average than working mothers and that working mothers resent their greater amount of success. Childless women also feel that working mothers have priority to paid time off and company benefits. The consequence of all of this is growing tension between childless women and mothers in the workplace. Work Cited: Hagen, Kelly. â€Å"Childless Women Succeed More. † ABC news. N. p. , 22 Aug 2012. Web. 8 May 2012. <http://abcnews. go. com/GMA/JobClub/study-shows-childless-women-succeed-mothers-worplace/story? id=11448102 2012. Web. 8 May 2012. <http://www. ypost. com/p/news/business/jobs/mommy_and_me_FXFHi8ikTY2FHG8xEimnSJ Hanes, Lori. Personal Interview. 5/3/2012. Williams, Wendy. â€Å"Teacher-Facilitator materials for Cornell Institute for Women in Science video series, Defining the Problem. † www. human. cornell. edu. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 May 2012. <http://www. human. cornell. edu/hd/upload/CIWS-video-Defining-the-Problem. pdf>. Lepore, Meredith. â€Å"The Woman With Kids In Your Office Does Resent You. † The Grindstone. N. p. , 18 Jan 2011. Web. 8 May 2012. <http://thegrindstone. com/mentor/the-woman-with-kids-in-your-office-does-resent-you-190/>.

Choicepoint - 3743 Words

Introduction Based in Alpharetta, Georgia, ChoicePoint was formerly a struggling insurance services unit of Equifax. Derek Smith successfully trimmed its labor-intensive operations and replaced them with technologically based ones, which resulted in both higher growth and higher margins. This allowed the company to spin off from Equifax and become publicly traded in 1997. The company’s initial focus was data services for the insurance industry. As its business matured and expanded, ChoicePoint also entered into non-insurance markets and was able to consolidate fragmented industries through acquisition and integration. ChoicePoint tapped various public and private sources to gather data, assembled it into proprietary databases, and†¦show more content†¦Criticism 2: Data Inaccuracies Another issue from critics focused on inaccuracies in the industry’s records. Examples show that based on false information provided by ChoicePoint one employee had been fired from a company and another applying for job have been denied employment. â€Å"Another incident involved a ChoicePoint subsidiary charged with having supplied the state of Florida with a list of individuals mistakenly identified as felons. The state used the list to purge its voter roles in the 2000 presidential election—thus depriving individuals of their constitutional right to vote.† (CP, 5). Organizational Security Gaps: Organization Critical Infrastructures ChoicePoint claims that they gave employees (but not independent contractors) a training manual which taught â€Å"investigatory procedures,† but when this was examined during a court case, the process was declared to be â€Å"opaque.† Clearly, if ChoicePoint had procedures in place that only applied to employees and not independent contractors working for the company, they left a big gap in the organization cornerstone. It would appear as though â€Å"senior management’s role to provide the leadership that establishes security as an important issue in the organization,† (Dutta, 77) was not in place. In addition, the proper scrutiny was not given to security procedures, to ensure that they would serve their purpose. Also, basedShow MoreRelated$55 Million Dollar Data Breach at Choicepoint1077 Words   |  5 Pages$55 Million Dollar Data Breach at ChoicePoint Abstract Personal data breaches have become epidemic in the U.S. where innocent citizens sensitive information is being left unprotected and subsequently disseminated between hackers. ChoicePoint is an organization that is a premier data broker and credentialing service in the industry. The company was guilty of failing to fulfil their own policy of thoroughly evaluating prospective customer organizations which resulted in a major breach. 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