The Last Good Place Left

http://globalgrind.com/news/michael-skolnik-trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-race-sanford-florida-photos-pictures

A Short Response to Michael Skolnik’s article, ‘White People, You Will Never Look Suspicious Like Trayvon Martin!’

            I’ve just read Michael Skolnik’s sincere assessment of what he thinks led to the death of the “17 year old, black, innocent, murdered” Trayvon Martin, a boy who was shot in the chest by the self-appointed vigilante George Zimmerman for the simple act of “looking suspicious”. According to Skolnik, who replicated Martin’s attire the day he was killed by wearing a hoodie, Air Force One sneakers and a pair of jeans, Trayvon Martin was killed for the simple fact that he was black. He was perceived as a “suspicious looking person” by Zimmerman for the simple fact that he was black. If a Caucasian was similarly dressed and walking around alone in that neighborhood at that time, Skolnik believes the odds that he will be harassed and even killed by another self-appointed vigilante is slim to none.

            Is racism alive and well in America? Yes, it goes without saying that it is. Is this the only reason Trayvon Martin was shot in the chest and killed on that sidewalk? That I cannot answer, but I agree that race and stereotyping played a very key role in the events that occurred that day. We live in a world that is still sharply divided by ethnicity, race, religion, class and sex. There is a pervasive bias against certain types of people who do not fit the “ideal”. We’ve all heard it before, we all think it too from the time to time- there are certain African Americans that fit this “ideal” vision, like Halle Berry, or Viola Davis and especially Barack Obama. They don’t go around wearing hoodies and white sneakers. They sound educated and intellectual and “white”. They are accepted into society but still face daily prejudices and hate for the simple fact they were born black.

            Let’s look at the media. Let’s look at Hollywood, almost populated entirely by Caucasian males and females. Few roles are written for African Americans, and the ones that usually are always the depict the same stereotypical idea of how white people think black people behave, or how white people WANT black people to behave. This is the same with the media and newspeople. I quite frankly can count on my two hands the number of times I have seen a black newsperson on TV that wasn’t there to deliver the news on sports or the weather.

We are yet to fully address the impact racism, economic disenfranchisement and oppression has (and is) having on the lives of blacks all over the world. It is evident; it is right in front of us. There really is no need to deny the obvious. But there is also a need to express caution when addressing this issue. It is always so tempting to simplify a very complicated situation.

            The widespread unrest that has engulfed the Middle East in the past couple of months came as a surprise. This shock isn’t because the events themselves and the tensions that led to them were unforeseeable, but rather because it was difficult to create an image of just one successful massive uprising, much less several uprisings happening simultaneously.[1] These revolutionary protests and demonstrations began on December 2010 and have led to the relinquishing of power by rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.  There have been other major demonstrations and in some cases severe fighting in other countries like Syria, Bahrain, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Oman. Minor protests have also occurred in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Lebanon, Mauritania and Western Sahara. Most of these countries have/had one thing in common; long term ruling families. Many of these rulers have/had held the reins of power for several decades with few serious challenges, and a significant amount of Western support.1

            Years of corruption, nepotism, financial oppression, objective and subjective violence, social and economic disenfranchisement as well as repression finally led Mohammed Bouazizi of Tunisia to set himself on fire and spark a world-wide revolution. Bouazizi, in a non-too-peculiar situation, found that he was desperately poor, living in an impoverished town without a college education and having to rely on income earned from selling vegetables to make a living.[2] On December 17 2010, his livelihood was threatened by a policewoman and feeling humiliated, dejected and maltreated, Bouazizi poured fuel over himself and set himself on fire. He did not die immediately but was treated in a hospital till Jan 4 2011. There was so much widespread outrage and protests over Bouazizi’s ordeal that the President at the time, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali visited Bouazizi in a vain attempt to stem the outrage. Throughout the protests, Facebook pages and blogs were emblazoned with the revolt’s slogan, “Ben Ali, Out”.  On Jan 14 2011, 10 days after Bouazizi died, Ben Ali’s 23-year old rule of Tunisia was over. 2

In his book, “Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square”, Steven A. Cook does a remarkable job of conveying to the world the shameful decaying autocracy of the Arab World. Cook contends that Egypt’s leaders never had a goal or ideology for Egypt. Instead, they frequently resorted to an increasingly cruel apparatus of coercion, bullying the citizenry into consent but failing to create any positive pro-government sentiment within the people. So it did not come as a shock when inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, protests in Egypt began in January 252011 and lasted for 18 days. A flood of internet photographs and videos showed a massive presence of protesters in Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities. The internet-savvy youth used Twitpic, Facebook and YouTube to disseminate videos and photographs and called on more Egyptians to protest.  Around midnight of January 282011, the Egyptian government at the time attempted, somewhat successfully, to eliminate internet access across the nation in order to limit protesters’ ability to organize through social media.[3] That same day, President Mubarak dismissed his government and appointed the first Vice President in 30 years after tens of thousands of protesters gathered on the streets of Egypt’s major cities. On February 10 2011, Mubarak relinquished all presidential power to the appointed Vice President but declared that he would remain President until the end of his term. This did not appease the protesters who demanded that he step down immediately from office, so the next day Mubarak resigned from the presidency and transferred power to the Armed Forces of Egypt.[4]  

            The uprising in Egypt occurred simultaneously with that in Libya. Soon after the success of the revolution in Tunisia, protests broke out in Libya on January 14 2011 which resulted in protesters clashing with the police and attacking government offices. Official anti-government protests began in Libya on February 15 2011. Three days later, the protesting opposition controlled most of Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city. The protests quickly spread to other major cities, including the capital Tripoli. The fighting and killings sparked a nation-wide fear that Libya could descend into civil war. With a rising death toll numbering in the thousands, Muammar Gaddafi’s regime drew international condemnation that resulted in the resignation of several Libyan diplomats.[5] On March 17, the United Nations Security Council authorized a no-fly zone over Libya, and two days later, France, the United States and the United Kingdom “intervened in Libya” with a bombing campaign against Gaddafi forces. The battle between pro and anti-Gaddafi fighters lasted for several more months until Gaddafi was eventually killed on October 20 2011. Social media played a minor role in the revolution in Libya.

            The protests in Yemen which started in mid-January 2011 took a similar form to that in Egypt but resulted in a more devastating loss of lives. After mass gatherings of protesters, continuous calls for his resignation and an attempt on his life and several other high-ranking Yemeni officials, President Ali Abdullah Saleh handed over power to Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi. Saleh was immediately evacuated to Saudi Arabia for treatment, but kept hinting that he would return to power. Three months after the attempt on his life, he returned to office in Yemen but agreed to step down from power 2 months after. A presidential election was held on February 21 2012 where Vice President Hadi won by an overwhelming margin. He was sworn into office on February 25 2012 and by February 27 2012; President Ali Abdullah Saleh had resigned from office and handed power over to his successor marking the end of his 33-year rule.[6]

            Again, following the path Tunisia had set, protests in Syria started on January 26 2011 when a case of self-immolation was reported. The protests in Syria have been very brutal. It has led to the torturing and killing of children, women and men calling for the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad. The Free Syrian Army has launched a full-scale attack against the al-Assad regime. There have been attempts by the United Nations and the International community to stop the violence, but there has also been a great deal of reluctance by other international key players to step in. The situation has been extremely chaotic, with President Bashar al-Assad refusing to step down and the Free Syrian Army refusing to stop fighting until he does. Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian diplomat has been summoned to put an immediate stop to the violence. He has come up with a six-point plan that has been accepted by the Syrian government. The world is currently watching, waiting to see how the events unfold.

            Against unfavorable odds, pervasive skepticism and brutal violence, these uprisings have already resulted in a number of significant and dramatic victories, as well as a great deal of world-wide attention and solidarity. 1 Before I continue, it is important that I define clearly what “New Media” is. New Media refers to the growing number of electronic forms of communication made possible through computer technologies.[7] We observed an unprecedented use of social networking sites throughout the course of the Arab Spring, with young people literate in their uses resorting to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and cellular phones to help spread the news in their various countries. Access to such media outlets allowed for the quick dissemination of information worldwide, and an international outcry for justice for the loss of lives of the oppressed caught on camera. There were several tweets, Facebook updates and YouTube clips portraying police brutality, unrest and imminent street protests. Let there be no mistake, by many accounts the new arsenal of social networking helped accelerate Tunisia, Egypt and to a lesser extent Yemen and Libya’s revolutions. There has been an ongoing debate on the effect of new media in recent events in the Middle East, with the more infotainment-oriented media largely missing the point of these effects but preferring to sensationalize them instead. The observed preference is to reduce these events to sensational terms like “Egypt’s Twitter Revolution” or “Syria’s YouTube Revolution” rather than discuss how the quick exchange of information via new media has contributed to the increased vulnerability of activists, civil society and government officials. New Media has led to a new era of internet activism which has shown itself to be a double-edged sword. Many of these “internet activists” have had to risk their lives to get their stories out to the world. There is also the problem of verification and reliability of news that comes in this format. A lot of information can be misconstrued, misinterpreted and prematurely acted on because new media has an almost unrivaled ability to sensationalize news. According to Graber, a vast majority of new media news providers produce very few, if any, original stories. She asserts that they largely feed off news collected from traditional media outlets but elaborate on these stories and give them their own unique interpretations.7 A vast majority of people get their news from the internet these days, because they are either too busy to watch the news on TV, read a newspaper or listen to the radio. This new media phenomenon is mostly directed towards people aged 13-30 and is really phenomenal in how powerful it can be. I remember the feeling of solidarity that came upon Twitter users during the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. It was like the global community was a part of the fight for the immediate end of oppression. It appeared that the proletariat was finally proving Marx wrong by mastering the art of information dissemination.

            One of the benefits of new media is that there are a lot of providers of digital news, so in times of conflict when government regimes seek to keep a tight control over news stories by conventional media sources, these new media news distributors step up to give the stories an independent perspective.[8] Another advantage new media has over traditional media is speed. There have been numerous cases where Blog, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter users have spread news about an event within minutes of its happening while conventional news sources take much longer to broadcast the news. This could be for a number of reasons. It could be a problem of news verification (something a lot of new media news providers don’t concern themselves with), news worthiness or limited access to information by traditional news providers.

            Most news consumers within the United States are not very interested in international events, and seldom profess to follow them very closely. The few that are interested in international news usually have short-lived interest in it. [9] Because of this trend, newspeople within American seldom focus on reporting international news. Instead, they focus a great deal of their coverage on the weather, education, the local community, the environment, the nation, the economy, local government, health, sports and religion. 9 What this does is create a vacancy that is filled by new media news distributors. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that the vast majority of news on the Arab Spring came from international newspeople and the protesters themselves.

            As the situation in the Middle East continues to unfold, new media and the internet continue to be instrumental in connecting activists and the citizenry in general and have had more practical and immediate applications. It goes without saying that if harnessed correctly, new media is a great avenue for attracting the world’s attention to much neglected issues that need to be promptly and adequately addressed. But there are many issues that come with it, as have been mentioned throughout the course of this essay. It is important to focus less on sensationalizing new media but more on in depth discussions about the global impact new media and social networking sites are currently having on the way information is disseminated.

           The first issue I would like to address about the Kony 2012 campaign/film and other related new media influence on public policy is the nature in which they present their news to their audiences. They tend to manipulate facts and reduce serious issues to infotainment that really fails to properly educate the public about the facts on the ground. With Kony 2012, what we see is a slick Hollywood-style presentation of a much-outdated situation in Uganda that circles around the Lord’s Resistance Army and their leader Joseph Kony. Kony is a man who has terrorized eastern Africa for more than 20 years, abducting children and forcing them into his army to carry out crimes against humanity. The major issue I have with Invisible Children’s approach, the organization behind Kony 2012 is their warmongering, their narcissism, their exaggerated claims and manipulation of the facts, their commercialization and the reductive one-sided story they tell. They fail to mention the origins of the LRA and how the Ugandan military and government who they support played a vital role in exacerbating a lot of the issues and crimes committed against the Ugandan people.

            This new media phenomenon fails to stick with conventions of impartial journalism. Invisible Children’s approach to sharing their news through their films is partisan, tactless and bold. It falls under manipulative journalism because it doesn’t accurately and impartially present the facts, with the clear purpose of mobilizing the American public to stand behind their cause. They were successful in getting the Obama Administration to authorize the deployment of 100 US army advisers to help the Ugandan military track down Joseph Kony, an initiative that has had no positive results to date. This campaign which feels strongly like a pseudo-event is distracting from the real issues in Uganda like the need for secure social stability, health and education. Also, the issue of displacement around the country makes provision of housing for the displaced and land conflicts much more important than supplying the Ugandan military with millions of dollars and expert advice to hunt down a man that isn’t even in Uganda.

            Kony 2012 and similar campaigns sound great on the internet. It gives “internet activists” and concerned youth the chance to demand the attention of their public officers on issues they consider important, but it neglects to mention that this really isn’t at the top of the list of most troubling issues in Uganda. Invisible Children uses new media to appeal to people’s emotions but fails to enlighten them about the facts on the ground.

            There is also the added fact that Uganda discovered world class oil fields in 2006 along its border with DRC. Deceased LRA deputy leader Vincent Otii once said that the LRA’s fight with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was about money and oil and not some senseless violence. This is also a fact Invisible Children failed to mention in their video. What we see here is the hidden power Invisible Children uses through new media to limit the public’s attention to just their cause and not the full back-story that explains in detail what the LRA is, how is started, what role the Ugandan government and military has played all along and the serious issues Northern Uganda is facing at the moment.

            Finally, this new media phenomenon that is mostly directed towards people aged 13-24 is really phenomenal in how powerful in can be. There has been a lot of response to Kony 2012, from both American and Ugandan public officials to influential American celebrities and youth activists all over the globe. If harnessed correctly, this is a great avenue for attracting the public and policy maker’s attention to serious issues that need to be urgently addressed. But if used incorrectly, this could result in the making and implementing of short-sighted policies by public officials under pressure by the public and exacerbation of issues for the people of Uganda.  

Capitalism is an economic system where means of production are owned privately and used to buy and sell commodity in a “free” competitive market. The main goal in a capitalist economic system is the use of labor in the creation of goods and services for profit in a market. According to Marx, capitalists rely on the labor power of workers to produce more capital. Workers treat their labor power as a commodity and in turn sell this power to capitalists for money they can use to buy other commodities. The more labor power and time a capitalist is able to squeeze out of his workers, the higher his chances of making a profit on the market (Capital, pp. 344). Division of labor plays a significant role in the emergence of the capitalist economic system. Division of Labor refers to the specialization of labor. It is a process whereby the production process is broken down into several minute stages, and workers are assigned specific tasks in these stages of production to hone their dexterity in the aforementioned stage. Division of labor is closely associated with the growth of total output and production, and an increase in profit for capitalists.

According to Adam Smith, there are three very evident effects of division of labor; increased dexterity in every workman, time efficiency and technological advancement (The Wealth of Nations, pp. 7). The increased dexterity of the workman results from specializing his efforts into the completion of one task. This dexterity will increase the quantity of work he can perform given his level of proficiency. Division of labor will also lead to saving of time at the work place. The amount of time that is lost from having a worker pass from one sort of work to another is cut off and the amount of time that will be required to train him to handle new equipment is cut off. He will be able to create more commodities at a much faster rate if all his energy is put into the completion of one task. And finally, division of labor leads to technological innovation. Adam Smith claims that the more a man is made to do the same task over and over again, the quicker he’ll find more efficient ways to complete the task. He claims that men are more likely to discover easier ways to do work, and this will inevitably lead to the invention of machines that aid efficient output (The Wealth of Nations, pp. 9). He tells a story of a boy who was employed to open and shut the valve between the boiler and the cylinder in a fire engine. In his story, this boy loved to play with his companions so much that he tied a string from the handle of the valve to another part of the machine, so that the valve would open and shut automatically without his assistance, giving him the opportunity to have more play time with his friends (The Wealth of Nations, 10).

This mentally, this idea of making the work process faster with the use of machines is the basis of how production is increased in a capitalist economy. The drive to make enough goods and services to sell on the market for profits which can then be used to make more goods and services and then more money is capitalist cycle. The capitalist is first and foremost interested in maximizing profits, and there are several ways of doing this. He can hire more labor power to make more products, he can seek a larger market to sell his commodities to, or he can invest in new technology to increase production efficiency to unprecedented levels. The more products he’s able to make, the more he’s able to sell and the more money he’s likely to make. So with this economic logic of capitalism, which is to make profit through mass production, the creation and diffusion of technology becomes inevitable.

There are several important social effects of a capitalist economy one of which is commodity fetishism. Commodity fetishism is a concept coined by Karl Marx that explains the representation of human relations in the context of trade. Since the emergence of the capitalist economy everything is brought down to the context of commodity, money and exchange (Capital, pp. 320). When a man offers another man his labor power for a price, he is offering him the opportunity to buy his labor, use it to create more commodities, and sell those commodities for a profit. With division of labor and capitalism, people begin to view themselves not as they are, but as a commodity they can sell for more commodities. The capitalist doesn’t view his workers first as humans, but as commodities he can use to make more capital. With capitalism, everything gets reduced down to the basics of value and this causes everything to be grouped into two categories of value; its use value, and its exchange value. The usefulness of a commodity is its use-value, a value which is intrinsic to the commodity. On the other hand, exchange-value is the value of a commodity in relation to other commodities through exchange. There is also the concept of the surplus value which is the extra value of a product created by workers that is in excess of their labor-cost (Capital, pp. 344). That is, the profit to the capitalist that comes from “selling” a commodity at a higher price than it took to create. This is what drives capitalists to increase the working hours of their workers, because the more a worker can be made to create for the same wage, the more profit the capitalist can make for himself. The major downside to commodity fetishism is that with humanity devalued to the point where it is viewed as a commodity, it’s easier for capitalists to treat their “less productive” workers appallingly and excuse their behavior by convincing themselves that they have paid for the right to abuse and exploit their workers. This exploitation can come in the form of forcing workers to work longer hours at the lowest possible price in order to generate surplus value. For a capitalist to generate profit through surplus value, the working day must be kept at a certain length. A part of the day is spent generating value that matches the amount of labor cost involved in the production process, while the remainder is spent creating surplus value which goes straight to the capitalist – hence leading to exploitation of labor power. Another adverse effect of capitalism is that the workers themselves begin to become suspicious of each other, because they are competitors in this tough labor market. The less a worker is willing to earn for a specific job, the more threatened another worker in a similar trade becomes because the capitalist will usually hire cheaper labor. For example, in several countries in Asia, people are employed to work long days in horrible conditions for wages that barely keep them alive because there is no legislation limiting the working day, and because capitalists are willing to break the rules to turn a profit.

Another important social effect of a capitalist economy is the introduction of railway transportation together with the rise of factory which gave rise to the standardization of time at a supralocal level. A capitalist economy requires new technology to speed to process through which goods and services are shipped from their place of production to the area which they are in demand. The need for standardized time was first given by the British Post Office, which started to deliver its mail throughout Great Britain in accordance with a uniform standard time (Zerubavel, pp. 6). The rise of the railway transportation system and the factory was responsible for the spreading of punctuality and timekeeping among people (Zerubavel, pp. 6). This is because railroads operate on strict timetables where it counts down to the minute how quickly a train arrives at its destination. The major need for the standardization of time across different locations was the integration of business and higher communication between different communities. Once the railway transportation system between these locations was established, it was almost inevitable that time would have to be coordinated between the various different communities. Increased interdependence among communities necessitates further temporal coordination (Zerubavel, pp. 7). The cumbersome nature of the first railroad timetables also contributed to the standardization of time because there was a lack of a single uniform time throughout the network. The timetables were a mix of so many different local standards of time and included footnotes on how the local times were to be converted to GMT (Zerubavel, pp. 7).  The standardization of time was one of the most remarkable accomplishments of the 19^th century. So with the need for improved means of transportation for a more efficient means of distribution of goods and services in a capitalist economy came the invention of the railroad system, the rise of the factory, and the inevitable need for standardization of time.

Finally, another social effect of the capitalist economy is the wide-range acceptance of exploitation as the standard way of conducting business. By this, I mean the exploitation of nature and our environment to satisfy our wants and needs. In a capitalist economy, we never stop when we’ve produced enough but instead we keep making more and more in the hope that we will find new market to buy more of our commodity. It is because of this that we end up wreaking havoc on the environment without showing any signs of slowing down. Cronon talks about how forest/nature was converted to capital through the use of the White pine as lumber to build the city. White pine was strong and easy to use, and could be transported very easily on through the railroads and the water transport system. The tallgrass prairie was one habitat that people sacrificed for human progress, the north woods was another (Cronon, pp. 151). Cronon talks about how Americans passing through didn’t see white pines for what they were but saw them as the lumber they could be. This was the same with the discovery of bison as a great commodity. With the rail providing access to the buffalo territory easily and quickly, these technological innovations made the bison more profitable and this greatly affected the Native Americans, as bison was an essential resource to them.

In conclusion, the capitalist economic system has played an undisputable role in shaping the way our world currently is but perhaps the biggest social effect it has had is that is has changed our view of nature and our surrounding. We have an insatiable drive to find new commodities, and insatiable need to amass capital and wealth, and it is almost inevitable that every new discovery we make will ultimately be converted to a commodity.

Should we judge actions only by their consequences? Is pleasure the only intrinsic good of any outcome? Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham are quick to answer that it is indeed. In very simple terms, utilitarians strive to maximize net pleasure/net good, placing it firmly above any other value.  On the other hand, we have philosophers like Bernard Williams and Robert Nozick who take a different stance on these questions. Nozick believes that pleasure is not the only intrinsic value for human beings, and that in fact, as humans we seek varying kinds of gratification. Likewise, Williams was vehemently critical of Utilitarian ethics, going as far as to say that as humans, we do not and should not judge actions only by their consequences. In my paper, I argue that actions should not be judged only by their consequences, and that pleasure isn’t the only intrinsic good.

The utilitarian ethical system focuses on actions according to their consequences. Utilitarians believe that the moral status of an action depends only on its consequences, and not based on any internal/specific features of the situation. They are teleological; that is, they believe that the moral status of an action depends solely on the final outcome, and not the features of the action itself (Pojman, Tramel, pp. 156). With the Utilitarian, as long as the outcome is the best possible outcome, your actions, however unethical, are justified. According to Mill, Utilitarianism is any form of ethical thinking that evaluates actions as right in proportion with how much happiness said action provides (Pojman, Tramel, pp. 159). Mill posits that action is wrong if it results in the reverse of happiness. By happiness, Mill is referring to the absence of pain. The theory emphasizes that pleasure is the only desirable end in any given circumstance. At the time, many other philosophers viewed this theory as entirely too simplistic. They believed that people who followed this doctrine were primitive in nature.As a result of this harsh criticism, Mill went on to define the term “pleasure” in a context that is less exposed to condescension and ridicule. He describes a pleasure that is of the intellect; that is of the imagination. This type of pleasure is of higher value than a mere pleasure of sensation. He does point out that the reason some utilitarians have placed mental pleasure over bodily pleasure is not because mental pleasure is intrinsically better than physical pleasure, but because they have circumstantial advantages over physical pleasure (Pojman, Tramel, pp. 159). Mill posits that the intellectual being requires more than just base physical pleasure to make him happy. He asserts that the intellectual being is more accessible to suffering than a being of inferior intelligence, but he is still qualitatively better off than that person (Pojman, Tramel, pp. 159). After all, he most famously said that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied (Pojman, Tramel, pp. 160). He does recognize that there have been instances where men have preferred the “lower” type of pleasure over the nobler, more sophisticated kind. He reckons this is because they give in to temptations, and just go for the next best thing, but that under circumstances where they can make a clear choice devoid of any temptation, they will most likely prefer the nobler form of pleasure than the baser form. Ultimately, in Mill’s opinion, the greatest act is that which brings general happiness for the majority.

In the same vein, Jeremy Bentham asserted that pleasure, and the avoidance of pain, is the ultimate purpose of any man’s life. He suggested a procedure for estimating the moral status of any action, which he called the Hedonistic calculus. This calculus would be used to test the happiness factor of any action. An individual using this calculus would have to analyze an action’s moral worth by considering the value its pleasure or its pain through a number of elements, its intensity, its duration, its certainty, its remoteness, its fecundity and its purity (Pojman, Tramel, pp. 121). The calculus essentially requires us to perform a cost/benefit analysis of any action, based solely on the level of pleasure or pain derived from that action, as a means of determining its worthiness. According to Bentham, if an action turns out to be pleasurable after careful application of the calculus, then it is desirable and good.

Robert Nozick criticizes utilitarianism, stating that pleasure is not the only intrinsic value for human beings. He says that if it were, we would have an irrepressible urge to hook ourselves up to a pleasure machine and never hope to be unplugged. In this machine, we would be able to experience the pleasure of desirable experiences without actually doing anything to achieve said pleasure. He argues that one of the reasons people would prefer to remain unplugged from this “pleasure machine” and actually live life is because we want to experience these pleasures by actually doing actions that result in the pleasures. Another reason he provides for the desire to remain unplugged is that the machine limits us to a man-made reality, a world devoid of depth and meaning. A world devoid of actual or real contact only simulated contact with the outside world. He posits that there are more things that matter to us than the experience of pleasure.

Like Nozick, Bernard Williams also has an issue with the consequentialists. He criticizes their analyzing of a situation only from its results. He posits that we do not, in fact, judge actions by their consequences. For instance, to solve the problem of a small number of people smoking at the train station, the act utilitarians would favor shooting these rebelling individuals if that were the only way to bring about satisfaction for the majority. Utilitarians would argue that if a few smokers were shot, then other people would be deterred from smoking, and there would be happiness for the majority. Williams argues that any theory that simplifies any issue to this extent should be rejected, no matter how plausible it feels to argue that we do judge actions by their consequences. He also argued against Bentham’s utility calculus. He said that any system that attempts to show us how to calculate the level of pleasure or pain that comes out of an action, with complete disregard for the action itself should be rejected as fallacious. He said that we should reject any system that reduces moral decision-making to a few algorithms, because reductionism distorts the moral complexity of a situation (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 1985, p. 117).

First and foremost, I completely oppose the point of view that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. Nozick makes a very compelling argument against the hedonists and the utilitarians when he says that if pleasure were the only intrinsic good, then people would only work towards achieving pleasure. We would all consume any kind of drug that is known to induce a pleasurable state and never choose to be aware of any other type of reality. We would plug in to the “pleasure machine” with no thought for anything else but our base quest for pleasure. Although Mill tries to provide a nuanced defintion of pleasure by grouping it into 2 broad categories, he still holds pleasure above everything else, and this is where his stance becomes flawed. The utilitarians fail to give credit to pain, and some of the benefits that come from feeling disappointment, anger, hurt and betrayal. There is a great deal of knowledge and experience that comes from trying and failing which the utilitarians and the hedonists disregard completely. I believe that in order to have a well layered and balanced life, there should be equal parts of pleasure and pain. One shouldn’t be deemed more important than the other, because they are both so intertwined in our everyday reality. There is a great deal of satisfaction one feels from having succeeded at something through sheer will and hard work.  We often appreciate adversity and obstacles because they enable us the ability to put things in perspective; the ability to prioritize our lives. It is this benefit that makes pain an intrinsic good in itself.

With regards to judging an action based solely on its consequences, I am once again inclined to disagree with the utilitarian’s entirely myopic view of people’s actions and the intricacies of varying situations. As tempting as it is to embrace the Machiavellian outlook on an action, we must exercise caution when analyzing a situation. Using the aforementioned example of smoking at the train station as our primary example, the utilitarians would argue that there is nothing wrong with shooting a bunch of smokers if it was the only way to lead to the overall good and satisfaction of the majority. They forget to take into account things like human rights and basic entitlement when the happiness of the majority is at the threat of being compromised. And an even more pertinent question is who determines what the greatest good is? Who determines what the majority is? Unless a thorough questioning of every single person in the world is carried out every single time for every single issue, there can be no way to accurately determine what the majority is. And should we overlook some of the irrational choices of the majority in our quest to keep them happy? Utilitarians will be hard pressed to convince us that we should overlook the specifics of a person’s actions as long as it leads to the happiness of the majority.

In conclusion, if the Utilitarians were to modify their stance to include the relevance and importance of pain, they would have a much more balanced perspective. In addition, it will be unwise for our sole focus to be on the consequences of a person’s action or the happiness of the majority when there are deep unethical behaviors being overlooked. There can be no simple approach to morality and ethics. Each situation is laden with intricacies and difficulty. So once again, I believe that actions should not be judged only by their consequences, and that pleasure isn’t the only intrinsic good.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/oct/31/zanzibar-islamic-scholars-contraception-population

“Society is a religious phenomenon.”  — Emile Durkheim.  

The extent to which religion shapes our society is of great interest if we are to understand its pervasive effect on the human condition. Religion has inspired, and continues to inspire great social changes in our world. In nations, ranging from the developing to the developed world, religion plays a significant role in politics, education, medicine and family. The article above centers on the role religion plays in family planning in Zanzibar, a predominantly Muslim state in Tanzania. According to its most recent census, the total population of Zanzibar is roughly around 1.2 million people, with about 400 people per square kilometer, making it one of the most densely populated states in Tanzania. As stated above, the most commonly practiced religion in Zanzibar is Islam, with roughly around 95% of its total population following its laws. Its main sources of economic income are tourism, the production and exportation of cloves and the exportation of spices, seaweed and raffia.

In recent times, religious scholars in Zanzibar have been trying to tackle serious societal issues and concerns, ranging from the use of contraception in family planning to HIV and AIDs. Their basic aim is to convince the masses that contraception is not a sin, contrary to popular religious belief. Their aim is to try to use verses in the Qur’an to endorse the spacing of children in families. According to the Qur’an, a woman giving birth should breastfeed for two years which reinforces the belief that the Qur’an demands a spacing of almost three years between births. Compared with many other states in Tanzania, Zanzibar has half the rate of use of contraception, with only a recorded 13% of fertile women using any form of contraception in 2011. While the fundamental motive by religious leaders might be to recognize the fundamental right of a woman to control the size of her family, the probable cause is that of population density. At its current rate, Zanzibar has way too many people to sustain, given its economic capability and structure. If its economic prospects were to transform positively, then perhaps there would be less need to see this revolutionary initiative through. As it stands, the population of Zanzibar is growing at a rate of 3% a year, with an average of five children per woman.  The work done by these religious leaders is beginning to have an impact; contraceptive use has increased from 9% to 13% in the past four years in Zanzibar. The religious leaders are creating a parallel between the use of condoms, and the traditional withdrawal method. Historically, the decision to have a child has always rested firmly in the hands of the husband, but now religious leaders are teaching that the Qur’an actually gives that right to both partners. Religion is one of the most influential tools in Zanzibar, along with its leaders. The people of Zanzibar adhere strictly to the Qur’an, both its traditional and modern interpretation. They shape their lives around the words written in that book, making it one of the most important books in that part of the world.

This current phenomenon ties in effortlessly with Fustel de Coulange and Durkheim’s conclusion that religion is the basis of society. Through vast research and analysis, Fustel has shown that every aspect of society, ranging from politics, to education, to rights to property and family are structured by and around religion and rituals. Fustel also suggested that the process of social change can only be brought about by transformation in the nature of religion (Collins, pp. 205). In “The Ancient City”, Fustel explains how society initially emerged as a religious cult. He emphasized how a ritualistic community is the basis of morality. To a certain extent, Durkheim agrees with Fustel’s emphasis on the importance of religion in society. Durkheim explains how the primary economic institutions are at first moral and religious. An aspect of Fustel’s analysis that Durkheim neglects is Fustel’s treatment of politics. According to Fustel, politics is very closely connected with ritual, but this was a hypothesis almost completely neglected by Durkheim. Although Durkheim approved of the non-utilitarian aspect of Fustel’s explanation for society initially emerging as a religious cult through rituals, he found the explanation itself quite inadequate. So although Durkheim was inspired by Fustel’s notion of the social significance of religion, he felt religion was more synonymous with a community of shared moral beliefs and practices.

Another key point that Fustel asserts is that religion not only establishes the politics of a society, but its morals and social groupings. This is very evident in countries that are torn apart by ethnic and religious differences. In a country like Nigeria for instance, that is sharply divided into religious territories, issues of law and human rights are dictated by religious leaders and books. The Nigerian religious landscape has a great effect on how economic resources, jobs, opportunities and laws are established in the country. The North is dominated by the Muslims, who settled there from North Africa in the fourteenth century. On the other hand, Southern Nigeria is overwhelmingly Christian as a result of European contact with the coastal areas. This religious divide plays a significant role in politics, elections, economic distribution, information dissemination and freedom of education in the country, with Sharia law being the accepted law in the Northern states. At the moment, the North is waging a war against western education in Nigeria, resulting in the loss of many lives in its quest to make Sharia law the only law in Nigeria. With regards to the significant role religion plays in the legislative bodies of various countries, a death sentence for homosexual acts has been included officially into the laws of various developing natures, advocated mostly by religious leaders. In Nigeria specifically, a man accused of homosexuality is stoned to death, an act justified by Sharia.

To say that society’s structure purely results from its religious beliefs is to minimize the effects that other aspects of our daily lives play in determining how we conduct ourselves, but religion plays such a key role in establishing the strict rules of conduct that guide society that it is impossible to ignore its impact. Its effects are so pervasive that it forces people to act according to strict guidelines that they may not necessarily understand, but still obey. This is why Durkheim and Fustel see it as a tool above all others that is capable of uniting people in an extremely powerful way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/national/class/MARRIAGE-FINAL.html?pagewanted=all

                The article above attempts to analyze some of the issues that come up within cross-class marriages. These issues can range from a clear difference in the financial and educational backgrounds of the married couple in question, to the differences in their approach to child-rearing, gift-giving, vacations and their feelings about financial security. It posits that in a cross-class marriage, one partner will inevitably have more money than the other, and this will lead to an imbalance of power in the relationship.

                It does this by analyzing the relationship between Dan Croteau and Cate Woolner.  Dan first met Cate six years ago when he was selling cars at a Mitsubishi car lot, and she was with her 11-year-old son Jonah waiting for her car to be serviced. They hit it off immediately, finding that they had a lot in common. Both had two previous failed marriages and two children. They liked the same kind of music, they were both liberals, and had a fondness for motorcycles. After they began dating, they found that they also had some differences. There was the religious difference, which posed no real problem and then there was the class difference; Mr. Croteau came from a working class family, whereas Ms. Woolner came from money.

                Dan grew up in an old mill town in southern New Hampshire. He quit school at 16, married his 19-year-old girlfriend and had two daughters by the age of 24. He was raised in a close-knit family, with relatives living very closely together. On the other hand, Cate comes from a world of wealth. She grew up in a comfortable home, had a high school and college education. She came into an inheritance at the age of 21, and has two sons from her first marriage. Dan didn’t take too well to the fact that Cate was much wealthier than he was, and this came across in his insecurity when he was introduced to her mother, and when he had to introduce her to his mother. He had to deal with his pride and his integrity when it came to taking money from her to buy a new car and pay off some debts because he didn’t want to feel like a gold digger. It was very evident, based on their financial and social statuses, that Cate had the upper hand in the relationship. She was the one making most of the decisions, the one who was providing financial support for both his and her families, a role that is traditionally played by the man. They had to attend workshops on cross-class relationships; a workshop that Dan later admitted really helped him in coming to terms with the dynamic of their relationship. The imbalance of power also had an effect on the relationship between their kids. On the one side, Dan’s daughters had been raised to constantly work hard in order to survive. They were financially frugal, and they set aside their own personal dreams for financial security, unlike Cate’s sons who were a little more spontaneous. Her sons pursued their own personal passions to the fullest of their abilities, while paying minimal attention to financial security.

                The imbalance of power that we observe in this relationship can be explained using George Homan’s “Social Exchange theory”. The theory posits that individual interactions are characterized by exchanges they make with one another. The theory suggests that relationships are guided by what interested parties have to offer one another. If the grounds for exchange are unequal, the parties will be less likely to deal with each other, or the relationship will be dominated by the person that has more to offer. Sociologist Willard Waller further applies this exchange theory to marriage. While researching high schools, he came up with a dating process he called the “rating and dating complex”. He pointed out a kind of market in the high school dating world, where kids were stratified by their resources, from how good-looking they were to how rich their families were. They used their statuses to attract other girls and boys of equal standing. This behavior was then applied to the marriage market, and was used to explain why people tended to marry other people within the same social class, often with the same ethnicity and level of education as themselves. Class endogamy is even more evident in modern society, where parents have less influence on who their children choose to marry. It seems that the “Invisible Hand” of this market keeps the social classes distinct. We find that within this marriage between Dan and Cate, there is indeed an imbalance of power, and that is because Cate has more to offer in the relationship than Dan does. He is forced to give her the upper hand in the decision making in order to balance out their relationship.

                Homan’s “Social Exchange Theory” and Willard Waller’s “Rating and Dating Complex”, while compelling, fall short of explaining certain anomalies within marriages. There are instances where one partner has both economical and educational advantage over the other, but is still obsequious to his/her spouse. There is a great deal of personal choice by the parties in a marriage that makes it entirely too difficult to fit every marriage and social relationship into one strict model or theory. And how does this theory apply to same-sex marriages? Who dominates in a marriage between two men with huge egos?

Renowned economist Gary Becker goes on to provide an economic explanation for the existence of marriage. He posits that people marry because they think they can achieve a greater degree of utility from that marriage than they will If they were single. He further posits that people divorce when they feel they can achieve a greater satisfaction from the divorce than from the marriage. With regards to this specific couple, Dan and Cate, following Becker’s analysis of marriage as a microeconomic market, it would seem that Dan would be more economically motivated to keep the marriage going, whereas Cate would gain no economic utility from agreeing to the relationship in the first place. But alas, they are married. And they are still together, working out the daily kinks in their relationship, which further suggests that these theories, while compelling in their scope, are not a given. Every situation is entirely too subjective to be fit into one particular model.

                In conclusion, the article, along with Homan, Becker and Waller suggest that with the extent that education serves as a proxy for class, the rate at which we see cross-class marriages will continue to decline. We are more likely to find people marrying other people of different ethnicities or religion, but still within the same level of education and financial bracket. This is not because they consciously seek out their equals, but because their relationships are guided by the exchange theory.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/8it1PC/www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152335

“Why, in a world that produces more than enough food to feed everybody, do so many – one in seven of us – go hungry?”  — Oxfam  

The question above, although deeply disturbing, is one that I find myself obligated to ask and analyze. Why is there so much poverty in our world? My concerns led me to this article. The article discusses poverty, famine and starvation in the horn of Africa, Somalia and some other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This poverty has persisted for decades. In recent news, the UN has warned that more than 750,000 people are likely to die from starvation in Somalia over the next four months. The facts show that over 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in Somalia over the course of just 90 days, with more than 640,000 children living in destitution and malnourishment. These figures are staggeringly appalling.

When one is faced with a dilemma as overwhelming as this, it makes it extremely difficult to discern the real cause of the unrelenting hunger and strife, but fortunately, this article attempts to do just that. The article claims that the hunger crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa has persisted for decades as a result of policies that were initiated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), twin intergovernmental pillars that were established for the purpose of strengthening the economies of their member nations. Virtually every country on earth is a member of both institutions. These policies enacted by the World Bank and the IMF, officially referred to as structural adjustment programs, were created with the purpose of reducing developing country’s debt to the developed world. The idea behind the program was to provide lower interest rates on existing loans taken by developing countries, with the stipulation that the borrowing country make its economic system more “free market” oriented, hence forcing them to focus less on agriculture and more on trade and production.

Following the implementation of these policies, the number of sub-Saharan Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled, and the number of food emergencies a year tripled. This trend has been linked to the fact that fewer resources within these impoverished nations are put towards expanding their agricultural sector than the amount of resources that is put towards servicing the country’s debt or exporting raw materials to the developed world. In addition, interest rates on these loans, especially those from the U.S, has soared to levels as high as 21 percent, making it virtually impossible for the borrowing country to focus its resources on actual development, but more on servicing of its debt. According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook Database, the African debt is just about $324.7 billion, with over half of this amount owed by sub-Saharan Africa.

Several connections can be drawn between the current state of sub-Saharan Africa and Immanuel Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”. In his theory, Wallerstein claims that the world is a complex system of economic exchange between core, semi-periphery and periphery nations, where the core nations such as the U.S have high level of technological development, while the periphery supplies raw materials and cheap labor to the core nations. This economic relationship is highly unequal, as the periphery are forced to sell their raw materials at a low price to the core countries, while in exchange they buy the refined/finished products that the core country supplies to them at a much high price. What Wallerstein has done is that he has drawn from Karl Marx’s theory on capitalism, as this self-serving economic system that thrives on human labor and accumulation of capital. Wallerstein’s theory can be viewed as a more global analysis of the economic struggle between the bourgeoisie, the owners of capital, and the proletariat, human labor who do not own capital, where the core nations act as the bourgeoisie and the periphery act as the proletariat.

Although there are other factors contributing to the current devastation in sub-Saharan Africa, such as a rise in food prices, record droughts and political unrest, it is very interesting to note how drastically these nations plummeted into poverty after the implementation of these so-called SAPs. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, Africa was able to export an average of 1.3 million tons of food each year, but today, most African countries are dependent on imports and food aid from foreign nations. It is ironic that the SAP initiative, which was aimed at improving the overall economic structure of sub-Saharan Africa, has ended up “sapping” the very life out of these nations.

I cannot conclusively state that this article or Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System” completely explain the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, the developing world, and other issues we’ve seen with the rise of globalization, but they certainly provide a very compelling analysis of our global condition.