Applying Utilitarianism in Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Applying Utilitarianism in Business - Essay Example Businesses have to apply this theory as its application is more realistic in ethical situations because the likelihood of doing actions that lead to greatest harm is more than that of greatest good and they lead to serious consequences. Businesses are required to use this policy in determining the most efficient way to release its negative externalities. Despite all the advantages in the application of utilitarianism in business, this theory has criticism that the businesses need to consider to facilitate their efficient application of the theory to maximize utility. Utilitarianism theory has difficulty distinguishing between different types and degrees of happiness. It is, therefore, the business duty to categories the types and degrees of pleasure in their application of this theory of utility. Categorization will solve the ethical dilemma in choosing between short-term happiness and long-term happiness. Businesses need to identify the degree of happiness that is preferable. Utilit arianism concept assumes that the pleasure is neutral between different types of people. Many criticize this assumption since the pleasure of a sadist cannot match that of the altruist. Businesses are required to evaluate the degree of happiness they inflict in the different types of stakeholders they associate within their application of utilitarianism since individuals respond differently to happiness. Businesses are required to consider the interests of the minority in their application of utilitarianism.

Violence, the American Creed and the Rulling Class Essay

Violence, the American Creed and the Rulling Class - Essay Example The following essay forwards the thesis that the American Creed, either wholly or in parts, has historically been used by the elite ruling class of whites for their own gain, primarily as an ideology used to explain and excuse the use of violence to oppress other racial minorities in the process of consolidating power for their own gain. Evidence for the use of the American Creed in this manner is easily seen in several instances in American history, most notably from the end of the Civil War to the time of World War I, a period of time from the 1860s to the 1920s. The essay will take a chronological approach in the discussion while pointing out the specific use of violence with regards to preserving the power of the ruling class. The essay will use three particular instances in American history when the American Creed was used as a justification for racial violence against three separate races: the post-Civil War Reconstruction and violence against the former black slaves, the perio d of the Western frontier and violence against the Native Americans, and finally the excessive violence and torture used on Filipinos by American soldiers during the Filipino-American War. The essay’s first example of the misuse of the American Creed occurs after the Civil War. America entered into a period termed as the Reconstruction, during which white Southerners secured amnesty from then President Andrew Johnson and after taking an oath of allegiance were restored their political and property rights (sans slave ownership) prior to the Civil War. Many blacks who were formerly slaves had found themselves freed as a consequence of the war, and legislation headed by politicians such as Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner and Pennsylvania representative Thaddeus Stevens were making it so the blacks were granted political rights equal to whites.1 However, racial hatreds and the belief that black people were inferior to whites led to those legislations eventually being disrega rded in all but name and the prevalence of discrimination, racially-motivated violence, and segregation. In a bid to seemingly uphold these laws of equality, the concept of â€Å"separate but equal† was devised, with the facilities and services for blacks being highly inferior to non-existent. To enforce this â€Å"separate but equal† rule, an oppressive system based on violent reprisals for breaking social hierarchy was informally established. It became common for blacks who had violated the established hierarchy by speaking or acting out against the whites to end up dead either through beatings or at the hands of a lynching mob.2 Indeed, lynching became a common occurrence which continued well into the middle of the 20th century. In the first example, the portion in the Creed pertaining to equality is put into play. The â€Å"separate but equal† ruling allowed the ruling whites to keep their distance from people they viewed as being lesser than them while upho lding the equality referred to in the Creed. Anyone trying to bridge the separation was seen trying to break the equality, disrupting the Creed and therefore deserving of punishment and violent reprisals. Following the Reconstructio

ESSAYS PAPER Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

ESSAYS PAPER - Essay Example The younger generation would be facing much complex time than ours. The more they work hard and study better, the more helpful it would be for them in the future. Exceptional qualification is the basis of better job and secure career. But for these professional qualifications, higher sum of money is also required. That is why many students move towards the universities as they provide good education with scholarships and financial aids as well. This matter of obtaining quality education gives serious troubles to most of the people. At times, students themselves are not willing to study irrespective of realizing the ultimate importance of education. In addition to that, when they find limited available resources and non-cooperative families, they go in wrong directions. These acts harm their career resulting them in doing odd jobs. I don’t want myself or my siblings to go astray therefore I want to try my best in injecting myself and my siblings in good colleges and universities. Good education not only shapes better and secure career but learning also changes the behaviour of individuals. Therefore, interruptions and hurdles coming along the way of acquiring education must not be considered as blockages and should be overcome as soon as possible in order to avoid wasting precious time of students and money of their parents. Students should also cooperate with their parents by presenting good scores and high grades to them. Universities like Texas A&M University provide huge opportunities even to those students who cannot financially aid their studies therefore struggle on the part from students and younger generation is required to make the most of those opportunities. My family has been going through severe financial crisis as my father is unemployed for past 5 years. Our only source of income is rent income that comes from our one apartment that has been provided to tenants for rent. Daily household expenses are covered through

Conflict Resolution at the Place of Business Essay

Conflict Resolution at the Place of Business - Essay Example This complexity must be understood and overcome in order for both parties to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. The facts of the case are as follows: Our company (for this paper, "USCo"), a large, Midwest-based American medical company, had recently decided to increase its direct presence in the European healthcare market. Up to now, our company had some distributors in Europe, and some European countries in which we used distributors. While we intended to keep distributors in the smaller markets, such as Eire and Greece, we regarded the nine "major" countries as too important to leave to a distributor. The company we were negotiating with (for this paper, "FrenchCo") had been distributing our product, a line of sophisticated automation instruments for microbiology, for over 10 years in Italy and France. USCo had been successful with its automated instruments throughout the world, but was lagging against other key competitors in the European market. Of particular concern was our market share in Germany, France and Italy. In some European countries, such as the Nordic countries, we were direct and enjoyed a number one position in the automated segment of the market. We felt that FrenchCo, despite its strong reputat... Their ability to gain market share was unimpressive. We felt that FrenchCo's managers were hidebound and focused on "traditional" manual technologies. FrenchCo's viewpoint: FrenchCo had started with Louis Pasteur, and defined microbiology not just for France, but for the world. FrenchCo's mission was to offer the very best microbiology products, be they automated or manual, to the global market. Although FrenchCo was a smaller company than USCo, it was nevertheless a leader due to its history, its emphasis on quality, and its deep understanding of the science of microbiology. Expectations for the meeting: We at USCo could only guess what FrenchCo's attitudes were. We guessed that they knew we were unhappy with our current distribution results, and that they had watched us develop direct distribution in European countries around them. We felt that they were trying to develop their own automated instruments, but did not know how far along they were in the development. After the negotiations were completed, we hired one of the FrenchCo managers, and learned a good deal about FrenchCo's expectations. As it turned out, FrenchCo was developing an instrument, but did not want us to know that. While they were also unhappy with the business results, they felt that they could learn about our technologies and use that knowledge to effectively compete against us. They also felt that we would fail if we came to the French market without them. They were not particularly concerned about the Italian market. Start of the Negotiations We suggested the meeting time, but FrenchCo chose the venue. We met in a leafy suburb of Paris. The President met us at the door after a 40-minute wait. We were expecting to be led to a conference room.

Blockbusters and Star Wars Essay Example for Free

Blockbusters and Star Wars Essay If one views the top grossing films of all time, it becomes easy to see that most of the films rely heavily on computer generated images, whether to enhance live action or the animation of popular animated features. Many cinematic experts cite the fact that blockbusters in the last thirty years have relied increasingly on special effects to the point that they overshadow the plot, which in essence becomes superfluous. However, this is hardly the case, and most blockbuster films feature plotlines and ideologies that date back to the earliest days of cinema when special effects were scarce. One of the most popular film franchises in history, Star Wars contains not only special effects that helped change movie making, but it also features a plot with many of the same elements as classic western films, including the ideological battle of good versus evil, the wild frontier, and archetypal characters. In the first few years of its existence, cinema was nothing more than a novelty that possessed little artistic value. The idea of moving images was more than enough to attract audiences, though like all novelties, the public would soon grow weary of the invention without the efforts of men like Edwin S. Porter. Undoubtedly, Porter can be said to be the creator of the first blockbuster in movie history, with 1903’s The Great Train Robbery. The film advanced filmmaking in many regards, as not only the first western, but also by incorporating action, violence, frontier humor, color, special effects, and a full-screen closeup of a bandit firing his pistol at the audience. While a short film featuring only one reel of action, it soon led to the proliferation of the nickelodeon as the most popular and commercially successful film of the pre-nickelodeon era, establishing the idea that film could be a commercially-viable medium. This realization that films could make money would eventually become the driving force behind the Hollywood film industry, and the conventions of the western would serve as the perfect template for plots to the present day. When the Hollywood studio system emerged in the 1910s and 1920s, films were produced much in the way of automobiles, with an assembly line mentality and factory-based production operations that allowed the studios to dominate the movie industry in the U. S. and abroad. The impact of the western formula on the success of film was apparent and by the mid-1920s, nearly half of Universal Studio’s annual output of feature films was westerns. After remaining the most profitable genre of film for decades, by the 1960s the western had peaked both as a viable Hollywood commodity and as a national myth to ease Americas rural-urban transformation, in part brought low by a combination of market saturation and generic exhaustion. However, many of its familiar conventions would find their way into the plots of some of the biggest blockbusters in history. Over seventy years after Porter’s blockbuster, George Lucas would also change the face of cinema, relying on the basic plot techniques developed through the evolution of the western. Stars Wars is credited as ushering in not only the era of dominating special effects, but also remains one of the highest grossing blockbusters of all time, with a worldwide box office take of $797,000,000, not to mention another few billion from its subsequent sequels and prequels. While Star Wars contains amazing artistry in the scale and scope of its special effects, its plot still relies on the simple conventions of the western film, which are designed to be accessible to all audiences. Often considered the first blockbuster to star one of cinema’s greatest icons, John Wayne, the film Stagecoach is an adult drama that had deep roots and moral lessons that helped make it a timeless classic, whose plot is about a group of strangers thrown together on a journey and put under stress so that the strengths and weaknesses of the character within them is revealed; this same basic formula has been seen in blockbuster films like Apollo 13 and the biggest blockbuster in history, Titanic. While both of these later films are heavy with special effects, they feature these proven plot techniques, much like Star Wars. The first time viewers see the heroic Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, it almost looks like a scene from a western. The classic desert landscape, the flat, expansive land and the big sky are all classic icons of the western genre. It is this vastness that is a key characteristic in Star Wars and westerns. Specific settings for westerns include lonely isolated forts, the isolated homestead, the jail, or small frontier towns that are forming at the edges of civilization. Luke, much like the young heroes of westerns, yearns only to get off the farm and lead a life of greater excitement. It is only when the Empire storms through and kills his family is he forced to become a man and take on the evil forces conspired against him. Usually, the central plot of the western film is the classic, simple goal of maintaining law and order on the frontier in a fast-paced action story: â€Å"It is normally rooted in archetypal conflict good vs. bad, virtue vs. evil, white hat vs. black hat Often the hero of a western meets his opposite double, a mirror of his own evil side that he has to destroy† (Dirks). For Luke, the good, his opposition is Darth Vader, the evil. This point is even illustrated by the color of the clothing they wear, as Luke dresses in white and Vader is decked out in ominous black. This element of good versus evil, or white hat versus black hat is a key to western films and make it easy for viewers to delineate between good characters and bad characters is traditionally easy in conventional western movies. There is little question as to who the good guys and bad guys are. And, this is even seen in Luke’s sister, Leia, who begins the movie wearing an all-white dress. The white clothing of Luke and Leia link them through their apparent goodness, even though it is not revealed until later that they are brother and sister. The only character that is seen in both white and black is Han Solo, who wears a white shirt with a black vest. Unlike Luke and Leia, Han has elements of mischief and is also an outlaw. The white shirt signifies his goodness, while the black vest hints of his less than admirable qualitieshis greed, selfishness, and willingness to deal with shady characters. When Han is introduced into the movie, he kills an alien within the first few minutes. According to author Stephen D. Greydanus, this scene is typical of western films: â€Å"The saloon shootouts, of course, come from that other great American mythology, the Western. (So does Han Solo’s general cowboy look and demeanor. ) By the 1970s, though, the Western no longer enjoyed the hold on the popular imagination it once had, though its influence has continued to be felt in films [like] Star Wars†. With all the element of classic westerns, including cowboy-type characters, evil villains, and a plot filled with action, it would only seem appropriate that Star Wars also possessed a classic theme, as many popular westerns do. However, Han’s goodness is finally known and he becomes one of the rebels’ greatest assets and is one of the movie’s best examples of a western style cowboy. While Star Wars could be considered a western set in space, it certainly possesses more elements and intricacies of plot than are given credit. While none of the conventions are new, they helped infuse the modern blockbuster with the spirit of old Hollywood, to very profitable results. A few true westerns have become blockbusters in the past thirty years, most notably Dances with Wolves, which grossed $424,200,000 worldwide, and featured many of the same elements as Star Wars, including good versus evil, the encroaching omnipresent technological power, and the perseverant hero. Ironically, Dances With Wolves even won the Academy Award for best film, beating out the film Goodfellas, which actually ended with an homage to Edwin S. Porter’s original western; it featured one of the most sinister mobsters in the movie shooting his gun directly at the audience at the end of the film, almost exactly duplicating the ending of Porter’s film. This just goes to show that regardless of what genre today’s Hollywood blockbusters fall under, the plot elements of the American western permeate most, from the simple battle of good versus evil to the ultimate victory enjoyed by the pure-hearted hero. Bibliography All-Time Worldwide Box office, Internet Movie Database, 2008, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://imdb. com/boxoffice/alltimegross? region=world-wide. Dirks, Tim, The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Greatest Films, 2008, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://www. filmsite. org/grea. html. Dirks, Tim, Western Films, The Greatest Films, 2008, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://www. filmsite. org/westernfilms. html. Eyman, Scott and Gianetti, Louis, Flashback: A Brief History of Film, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1991. Greydanus, Steven D. , An American Mythology: Why Star Wars Still Matters,† Decent Films Guide, 2007, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://www. decentfilms. com/sections/articles/starwars. html. Levy, Emanuel, Oscar History: Western GenreBest Picture, EmanuelLevy. com, 2008, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://www. emanuellevy. com/article. php? articleID=7193. Lucas, George. Star Wars. Hollywood, CA, Twentieth Century Fox, 1977. Schatz, Thomas, Cowboy Business, The New York Times, November 10, 2007, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://www. nytimes. com/2007/11/10/magazine/ 11schatz. html? _r=1ref=magazineoref=slogin. Schatz, Thomas, Studio System, Film Reference, 2007, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://www. filmreference. com/encyclopedia/Romantic-Comedy-Yugoslavia/Studio-System. html. Williamson, Ed, John Waynes First Blockbuster Movie, Epinions, 2002, retrieved 2 April 2008, http://www. epinions. com/content_75406675588.

Analysis of the Swamp in Psycho

Analysis of the Swamp in Psycho Adrian Secter Murder, Candy and Chains: An Analysis of the Swamp in Psycho â€Å"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.† Carl Jung Understanding a swamp is to understand what exists in shadow. Not the shadow of night or shroud, but that of the mute. The marginal. To know the scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho where Marion Crane’s corpse-filled car is disposed of, is to know the film. Bogs have always been a place in flux, the last remainder of a primordial ooze. They serve as a place where strange organisms, many of which cannot survive elsewhere, can breed and grow. The same holds true for ideas. For a man such as Norman Bates, the swamp affords him (and his mother) the luxury of anonymity. Removed from the scrutiny of dry land, the rigors of reality, Bates’ imagination does as swamp creatures do. It experiments, it mutates and most importantly, it uses its natural habitat to dispose of any outsiders who threaten it. Given that the absorptive nature of the swamp scene is both literal and metaphorical, Michael Fried’s â€Å"Absorption and Theatricality† readily lends itself to this analysis. While Fried ostensibly concerns himself with Denis Diderot and 18th century French paintings, the case he presents all but begs to be deftly applied to film. A plea heard anachronistically by Psycho. This 1960 film is replete with striking scenes, and indeed it could be argued that the movie is comprised entirely of such scenes. It is however, the alluded to â€Å"swamp scene† that is most pertinent. In this scene, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) hides the car that his most recent victim, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). After murdering Crane in her motel room and disposing of all the evidence thereof, Crane’s body and 1957 Ford remain. Cleverly vanishing both corpse and car, Bates wraps Crane in a shower curtain, dumps her in the trunk and rolls the car into a nearby swamp. All of this exposition appears fairly straightforward, and would be, were the film not directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With Hitchcock behind the camera, the scene is elevated beyond mere plot and into a realm worthy of Fried and analysis. The crucial point of this scene is that the only remaining proof of Crane’s murder, the car, does not go quietly into the swamp. In filming this descent of woma n, Hitchcock positions the car on a controllable platform, allowing him to adjust the speed with which the car is lowered into the murky gloom. The car is swallowed up, but only piecemeal. At first it proceeds smoothly, as the muddy waters seep into the front of the car. Then it stops. Half of a bone-white car still sticks out of the darkness. The trunk, with Crane inside, stares back at a watchful Bates. He stares back, munching on candy corn. The water finds its strength again and consumes more of the car. Then it stops. The trunk lies like a Nile crocodile, its back above the water. On the shore, Bates continues watching. At last, the water covers the trunk and its morbid contents. The camera lingers on the last bubbles, expiring as they flee towards the shore. With this knowledge of the scene itself in hand, it is now possible to delve deeper into the swamp. Fried begins â€Å"Absorption and Theatrically† with an explanation of the prevailing Rococo style which he neatly summarizes as being â€Å"exquisite, sensuous and intimately decorative†. Fried contrasts the ostentatious and often dull (an artistic combination of decided difficulty) Rococo style with its artistic antithesis, the return to imbuing paintings with absorptive qualities. Fried defines absorption as an â€Å"†¦.insistence on the unity of the painting and the insistence on the irrelevance of the beholder (Fried also reminds his readers that the effort to establish the unity of the painting must itself be understood as nothing but an effort to affect the beholder). Reading Fried with Hitchcock’s film in mind results in a fascinating adaptation of Fried’s explanation of relationship between Rococo and absorption. While cognizant of the perils analogies present, a careful cinematic examination of the dynamic between Rococo and Absorptive art sees a similar dynamic in the dynamic of the studio system and Psycho. Psycho follows in the artistic footsteps of painters such as Chardin and thus stands apart from the studio system of classical Hollywood films. On a very practical level, Psycho can also been seen as at odds with the prevailing system. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Paramount contract guaranteed the studio another Hitchcock film (his previous Paramount film being Vertigo in 1958) but studio executives found Hitchcock’s latest proposal to be repugnant and refused to finance it. Undaunted, Hitchcock produced the movie in cost-cutting black white, using his own television production company and filming at Universal Studios. It is fascinating and relevant to note that reviews of Psycho were decidedly mixed, with the New York Times praising the horror movie’s depiction of â€Å"†¦the little details of ordinary life, a virtue in keeping with the lesser genres†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Or so it would have been had that quotation not pertained to a Baroque critique of Chardin in the 1730’s. Taking quote from art critics in the 18th century and applying them to the Salon of 1960 prompts an examination of the qualities of the film that are reminiscent of Chardin’s â€Å"Soap Bubbles† and thus it’s theatrical and absorptive qualities. The swamp scene is an excellent case study for this as the previously articulated manner in which it is constructed allows the beholder to become a subjective character within the scene. The technique used to achieve this are very similar to those used in â€Å"Soap Bubbles†. Fried identifies this the painters (or directors) â€Å"choice of a natural pause in the action which, we feel, will recommence a moment later†. The result of these choice is paradoxical, as Fried goes on to say that a static painting or a film’s (static in its celluloid repetition) â€Å"stability and unchangingness are endowed to an astonishing degree with the power to conjure an illusion of imminent or gr adual or even fairly abrupt change.† Within the scene currently under analysis, this paradoxical choice is further amplified by the unique way film as an artistic medium can be re-watched. Despite the fact that an aesthete can (and many do) return to a certain museum to view a particular painting as many times as they please, and the fact that viewing and watching are for all intents and purposes synonyms, it cannot and is not said that an individual who has gone to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa fifty times has â€Å"re-watched† the Mona Lisa, regardless of the pedantic truth of that statement. But film, and Psycho more pointedly, is a â€Å"re-watchable† form of art. It is not a petty quibble over semantics, but rather speaks to the manner in which knowing the inevitability of the outcome mutates the audience’s conscious viewing experience. When the swamp scene is watched for the first time, the viewer is struck with a tense and remarkable feeling. Despite just having witnessed the jarring murder of Crane in the infamously jarring shower, the audience finds itself wanting the car to go into the swamp. Hitchcock masterfully creates a situation of such deft tenseness that the audience is placed in the same mindset they have when watching a hero character disarm a bomb (always with one second left). The mastery of this scene is that it takes that expression of bomb-disarming relief and channels it for the benefit of a man who just brutally murdered a woman. A woman whose death has now been covered up, to the relief of the audience. In this crucial moment, the viewer does not want Bates to be caught. Upon re-watching the movie, and armed with knowledge of absorptive techniques, theatricality and French paintings of the mid-18th century, Hitchcock’s masterpiece offers up even more. Gazing (but never re-watching) paint ings such as Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s â€Å"La Pià ©tà © Filiale† with the Bates’ Motel’s swamp in mind, one realizes that they are lost in the scene because of the manner in which Norman absorbs himself in his task. Much like Greuze’s painting, wherein Fried says that â€Å"the primary emphasis is no on the variety and multiplicity of individual responses to a central event so much as on the merging of those response in a single collective act of heightened attention†, the audiences’ and Norman’s responses to the slow descent of a hearse into the swamp merge into an â€Å"act of heightened attention. Fried illustrates what is at the heart of the â€Å"absorptive state†. It creates and maintains a fiction, a fiction the beholder, the viewer, the audience, call it what you will does not exist at all. Both the family in Greuze’s painting and the candy-corn eating Bates are depicted in such a way that they not only forget themselves, they forget us too. Furthermore, there is a direct relationship between the degree to which the fiction of the viewer is omitted and the ability of the actual viewer to emerge themselves in the world of the art. In turn, the reality created by Greuze or Hitchcock sees more real because it seems to be, regardless of whether or not it is being beheld. But at the same time, the tension that manifests itself in aligning with Norman results from not being absorbed. This is in line with â€Å"Absorption and Theatricality† as the very same tension that absorbs the audience also results in the problems Fried makes out for Parisian salons in the 1750 and 60s’ when he says that the â€Å"illusion of negating the spectators presence creates both the absorption and the undermining of the images reality.† For the Salons, Fried makes the case that the fact that the absorption was being admired by critics made the illusion of negation increasingly difficult. However, for Psycho’s swamp scene, the latter effect serves to prod the viewer into realizing they were enthralled by the film’s antagonist, one who had dispatched the supposed protagonist not a third of the way through the film. It is fitting to being to draw this examination to a close the way that Hitchcock brings Psycho to a close. At the end of the movie, it is not the penetratingly insane stare of Norman Bates the audience is left with, but rather a shot of car being pulled out of the swamp with chains. It is only right that as the viewer was pulled into the film watching the car sink deeper into the swamp, that they should be returned to their world as the car is pulled out of the swamp. While Psycho may appear to conclude with a bland and straightforward explanation of Bates’ psychotic condition by a psychologist, appears can be, and frequently are deceptive. Receiving a medically valid reason behind the events that they have beheld is a poor balm on the confusion and terror they have absorbed. Hitchcock is fully aware of this and it is the primary reason why the film does not fade to black after the doctor’s rational explanation. The last fleeting moments of the film are reserved for the swamp. The re-introduction of the swamp, and the rising of the car, with all its macabre and money contents, raises introspective questions for the audience. While the police will undoubtedly open the trunk to find Marion and most of the stolen cash, the audience is faced with the prospect of opening their own conscious self to examination. Through the use of Michael Fried’s â€Å"Absorption and Theatrically† and a subsequent examination of the parallels between the Rococo and the studio, the absorptive and Psycho, this analysis has taken the crucial scene following Marion’s murder and used it demonstrate the manner in which the film’s audience becomes a subjective role in the film. The residual horror of the film is not merely the product of jarring murders but rather showcases the power of the absorptive technique in creating within the viewer shifting identification with the film’s characters. Ultimately, the audience is left with haunting questions regarding their own motives for things such as wishing the swamp would cover the car fully. And as the above analysis concludes, the answer can be a bit unsettling. But there is no need to upset. After all†¦ we all go a little mad sometimes.

Assisted Suicide and the Right to Choose Essay -- Euthanasia Physician

     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Abstract: Religious or moral beliefs may prevent some of us from seeking the assistance of others to hasten our own death. But should we hold others accountable because of the standards that we choose to live by? With adversaries of assisted-suicide opposing the legalization of such acts, we are forcing our beliefs onto others who prefer peace and comfort at their time of death. As Christians, non-Christians, philosophers, teachers and laypersons, we all share one very key affiliation other than life and death itself. We are born with the "freedom of will", either by the Grace of God, or some other greater force. As such, it appears logical that we have some preconceived right to choose whether or not we aggressively seek death.   Throughout the centuries, there has been increasing debate regarding suicide and the acceptable reasons for committing such an act. Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and David Humes are just a sample of the many philosophers and theologians that have commented on this delicate subject - each with slightly differing views. For this essay, I will focus on assisted suicide as it relates to the development of acceptable standards that would be uncompromising to the beliefs and ideals of differing social groups. It is in this manner that I will attempt to outline some of the increasingly difficult dilemmas presented by this hotly debated subject. Do terminally ill patients have the right to choose death with the assistance of others? Do religious and political leaders have the right to intervene with a patientà ­s decision to die with the assistance of others? These two questions are some of the many about which this increasingly complex debate thrives. Society is often asked to answer each ques... ...on à ± The Second Year." Amy D. Sullivan, Katrina Hedberg, David W. Fleming. The New England Journal of Medicine. February 24, 2000. v.342, n.8 "A Right to Choose Death? Moral Argument for the Permissabilty of Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide." F. M. Kamm. Boston Review on the WEB. Summer, 1997. "Beyond the Call of Duty: A Daughter Reflects on the Meaning of Her Motherà ­s Suicide. Vivian Rothstein. Boston Review on the WEB. Summer, 1997. "Right To Die Denied" Online Focus(PBS Newshour). June 26, 1997. Books Uhlmann, M. (1998) . Last Rights? Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Weir, R. (1997) . Physician-Assisted Suicide. Indiana: Indiana University Press Shavelson, L. (1995) A Chosen Death. New York: Simon & Schuster Hamel, R., DuBose, E. (1996) Must We Suffer Our Way To Death? Texas: Southern Methodist University Press