The Ethic of Compassion 9/25/07

http://www2.nurseweek.com/Articles/article.cfm?AID=21378


Some of the most important character traits someone in the medical field, such as a nurse or doctor, should always be striving for as well as incorporating into their constant care of any given patient are compassion and empathy. These are important for many reasons, such as making the patient as comfortable as possible, relating to them in order for them to have an outlet and someone to talk to about their problems, and getting to know people better. It is always easier to give proper and sufficient care to someone if you put yourself into their position, seeing it through their eyes. The Dalai Lama speaks to some of these issues in his writings, especially in the 10th paragraph where he addresses the fact that it is one thing to care for someone who is related to you or very close in some way to your own life, but it is another thing entirely to have empathy and compassion for a total stranger who doesn't have any impact on your life or well being at all. Sometimes it can be difficult to show constant compassion for someone so detached from yourself, and even more so for people in the medical profession who have to do it all the time. He basically says that even if it is out of duty or guilt, it's better than no compassion at all, but many times, this behavior can leave you with despair and ultimate failure if you are forced into these feelings on a day to day basis. It becomes more like a job and less like a caring personal environment. He says that the only way to have true compassionate caring for every human being, not just people that are important to you, it must be an internal personal change. This is easier said than done, because everyone is human and doesn't have the capacity to really love everyone they come in contact with, but it is an admirable goal to be as compassionate as possible when dealing with the lives of other human beings.

Brave New World. Due 9/18/2007

I chose today to compare the first few segments of Brave New World with Lois Lowry's novel, The Giver. I believe these two books have very similar themes. Initially, the theme I get from BNW is that it is a society in which the authority is placed on people who have a desire for world domination and complete control over the choices people make, the education they receive, social status, and anything else that would require individual thinking or variety. Each social class is not only determined in a set sequence and quantity, but every human being is grown mechanically and uniformly to develop into whatever predetermined social class the Directors of the "hatcheries" and authorities above would have them in. The Giver also has a similar theme of ideas, coming from the egalitarianism and predetermined uniformity of the society. In both of these books, the dictatorship type government has gone so far to control and regulate society, that all human rights, thoughts, individualism, choices, etc. have been removed from society, and people are just robots working toward the goal of "perfection" and the "purification" of the social order. I haven't read more than the first 2 chapters of BNW, but I seem to get the idea that this book might come under the same criticism as The Giver has, such as concerns with the overpowering horrific suggestions and topics such as infanticide, euthanasia, and the idea that society can determine a person's worth and value to the world. This article attacks the critics of these harsh concepts by bringing out the fact that it is more important to educate children and discuss the topics, while emphasizing the idea that "in order to be fully human, people must share this knowledge, must be forced to make choices for themselves, must revel in their differences not fear them, must feel pain in order that they may feel joy, must comprehend the horror of killing the weak and the different simply to benefit the many. In the most profound sense, they choose life for the community, the tumultuous, challenging, maddening, often incomprehensible, too often violent, life that is Man's lot until we can learn to be truly good. For the community is not good; it is evil. It is, in the truest sense, anti-human."

http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/455/Giver.htm

Due 9/11/07 "Of the Education of Children"

In the piece "Of the Education of Children," Michel Eyquem de Montaigne places much emphasis on the strictly detailed way of education that should be used when tutoring young pupils. He encourages things like giving the child all the information needed to make the correct learning assumptions, and to acquire sufficient skills and knowledge, but allowing the child to come to these conclusions on their own, as if equipping the children for every subject, but letting them learn personally. He also places emphasis on not just shoving information and facts into them using memorization tactics and repetition, but allowing them to explore and learn through things like life experience and creativity with structure. Reading this essay, and exploring the issues of education that we are faced with today, it is easy to realize the shortcomings of not only our education system here in the united states, but also around the world. If it's impossible for children to even have sufficient resources for learning, such as educated professors, supplies for teaching, adequate facilities and so forth (some things we might take for granted in the United States), there is no way for children around the world to even have a chance to experience the type of learning Montaigne suggests. Furthermore, if the children have any type of impairment where stereotypes and discrimination is involved, especially in countries that are less fortunate, they have little chance of succeeding. This article about changing the attitudes of children in Hungary with visual impairment, I believe, addresses this issue. It reminded me of the subject of education that Montaigne was writing about, and it speaks to an issue that is still facing the world today.

http://jvi.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/18/2/61