The world roughly hold about seven billion people. People from different backgrounds, nationality, race, but there is a high percentage of people in this world that struggle to make moral decisions on their own because they are scared of becoming an outcast, an enemy. In addition, this cycle causes people to be controlled by the society and not make decisions that would possibly better them but rather turn them into the society’s robot. In essays such as, “‘Repent Harlequin’ Said the Ticktock Man” and “Shooting an Elephant,” written by Harlan Ellison and George Orwell, respectively, each character faces a conflict with themselves by not using their own moral sense and getting faced with challenges. In the essay “Civil Disobedience,” written …show more content…
Places like Pakistan, places with high percentage of poverty, children are being forced to work extreme numbers of hours making soccer balls for the rest of the world. It is ironic that almost all around the world children are playing with soccer balls but in high poverty areas like Pakistan children are not going to school but rather making soccer balls all day long. “About 7,000 children between the ages of 5 and 14 have no time for school because they work full-time manufacturing soccer balls, earning about 50 cents for each ball they produce” (CNN). A child does not wake up excited to make soccer balls every day. They are forced to do it because the family with those children belong to are generally poor and that is why they have every person in the family working to help each other bring food to their table. During the 1998 world cup sales for soccer balls increased “25 percent” (CNN) because of the hype that is drawing attention to the upcoming World Cup. Even though the world cup games were held in France and a lot of money was generated by FIFA not much was passed down to the families who worked on the equipment that was essential for a soccer game to be conducted. From the player’s outfit to the footwear everything was being generated by poor families that are getting paid less than minimum wage. This kind of situation spreads like wildfire. “Efforts in the 1990’s to expose abuses in the assembly of soccer balls in Pakistan pushed businesses into India, where children continue to work in this industry. The report shows that industry initiatives have failed to improve the lives of thousands of children forced to work in Meerut, India to pay off the debt of their parents. For years, companies have said that they have extensive monitoring programs to make sure child labor is not used in the production
The books Brave New World by Aldus Huxley and Anthem by Ayn Rand are both valuable twentieth-century contributions to literature. Both books explore the presence of natural law in man and propose a warning for what could happen when man's sense of right and wrong is taken from him. In this essay, I hope to show how these seemingly unrelated novels both expound upon a single, very profound, idea.
As Madeleine L’Engle aptly said, “because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person,” taking away freedom of choice is equivalent to stripping off humanity. Mankind has evolved to have the ability to use the mind for reason and understanding, which separates humans from beasts and machines. It is this ability that allows man to analyze and formulate different choices, and have the freedom over them. Despite the knowledge that freedom of choice is fundamental in making humans human, social control has always been one of the leading reasons to justify the removal of that freedom. Through showing the need for the loss of freedom for social stability and the resulting problems, both The Unincorporated Man and A Clockwork Orange highlight the conflict between control and freedom.
While we, as Americans, are currently living in the most advanced civilization up to this time, we tend to disregard problems of exploitation and injustice to nations of lesser caliber. Luckily, we don't have to worry about the exploitation of ourchildren in factories and sweet shops laboring over machines for countless hours. We, in the United States, would never tolerate such conditions. For us, child labor is a practice that climaxed and phased away during and then after the industrial revolution. In 1998 as we approach the new millenium, child labor cannot still bea reality, or can it? Unfortunately, the employment and exploitation of children inthe work force is still alive and thriving. While this phenomenon is generally confined to third world developing nations, much of the responsibility for its existence falls to economicsuper powers, such as the United States, which supply demand for the cheaply produced goods. While our children are nestled away safely in their beds, other children half way around the world are working away to the hum of machinery well into the night.
Civil Disobedience occurs when an individual or group of people are in violation of the law rather than a refusal of the system as a whole. There is evidence of civil disobedience dating back to the era after Jesus was born. Jesus followers broke the laws that went against their faith. An example of this is in Acts 4:19-20,”God told the church to preach the gospel, so they defied orders to keep quiet about Jesus,” In my opinion civil disobedience will always be needed in the world. The ability to identify with yourself and knowing right from wrong helps to explain my opinion. Often in society when civil
Nike publicizes itself as one of the leading industries in corporate responsibility. However, they do not comply with several human rights obligations overseas in countries like Thailand, Pakistan, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. In these countries, production facilities called sweatshops have been running for almost 35 years employing workers as young as 13 years of age. The conditions of these factories are adverse to say the least and deprive workers of the moral human rights they should be entitled to. Sweatshops are unethical, immoral and demonstrate Nike’s ignorance towards their social responsibilities abroad. Within these facilities, workers endure stressfully long days under undesirable conditions, often with no breaks and very little pay. While this is going on overseas, sponsored athletes are being paid million dollar salaries here in North America. Although Nike’s reputation has been foiled through the tabloids regarding this issue, they have been making a substantial effort to “clean up” production messes in the East.
In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau uses the idea of humanity and machines throughout the essay. At one point, he uses them together, asking whether the soldiers marching toward a war they know to be unjust are “men at all,” or instead “small moveable forts and magazines” (77). The defining characteristic of men, for Thoreau, is their conscience. When these soldiers suppressed their conscience, they in turn reduced their humanity. Conscience is the God-given faculty by which people can decide right from wrong. While government pushes people to follow the law, Thoreau claims that people should rather govern themselves through conscience. Altogether, Thoreau develops the idea that conscience preserves humanity, while the law suppresses it.
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience reflecting how this can be destructive in experiences of real life. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid hence useless.
A survey done every four years says that there has been less child labor in countries such as India and Morocco than in the United States (Barta and others). Some companies overseas have strict policies against child labor; for example, a toy factory in China will not accept children for work because they feel children should not be forced to do hard labor for any amount of money. On the opposing side, in some places child labor is a huge problem such as Africa and parts of Asia. For example, in Bangladesh several under 18 workers were found working in Rana Plaza and a 15 year old worker died in a factory accident in May, according to Kate O’Keeffe of the Wall Street Journal. O’ Keeffe also writes, “There is concern that child labor will go for the worse rather than for better, especially if Western economies rebound stronger.”
Pakistan has a per-capita income of $1,900 per year, so in essence, a typical person survives barely on $5 per day, and with the high rate of inflation it becomes difficult for a low-income population to survive. Nike’s child labor is spread all over Pakistan but has the greatest impact in the northwest of punjab province, that is Sialkot. Pakistan has a population of approximately 1 million and is an important center for the production of Nike’s goods for export to international markets, particularly sporting goods and shoes. Sialkot is one of the world’s most important centers for production of Nike’s sporting goods.
Are our decisions subject to the inclinations of our past actions, as behaviorist would proclaim? Or do we have governance over our actions, or in other words, free will, as Humanists would argue? Furthermore, what is “right?” Is it to succumb to the societal and religious expectations of “good?” Or is it to act on one’s own intent? These are the questions that Alex from Stanley Kubrick’s Film adaptation of Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” and Hamlet from Shakespeare’s celebrated tragedy both struggle in answering as they
“80% of the world soccer balls are made by Nike in Sialkot (Pakistan), a city of 3 million people”, according to David Montero in Is Doing The Right Thing Wrong ?( page 108). Nike’s contract with Saga Sports in March of 2007. Nike fears that Saga hiring children will violate laws,so Nike will not have Saga work for them. This will cost about 4,000 pakistani jobs. Also affects more than just the workers but their families.Although some say children are working in dangerous environments, people should buy products manufactured by child labor because children work so hard to make that product.
The pay of the children that work in these factors is very little. A lot of the kids get paid less than a dollar a day (John H. Cushman Jr.). “Mr. Knight’s pledges did not include increased wage, a major complaint of critics who say that Nike and other American companies pay workers in China and Vietnam less than $2 a day and workers and workers in Indonesia less than $1 a day” (John H. Cushman Jr.). Children are doing jobs meant for adults and they get
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs. These children worked long hours, were frequently beaten, and were paid a pittance. In 1979, a study shows more than 50 million children below the age of 16 were considered child labor (United Nation labors agency data). In 1998, according to the Campaign for Labor rights that is a NGO and United Nation Labor Agency, 250 million children around the world are working in farms, factories, and household. Some human rights experts indicate that there are as many as 400 million children under the age of 15 are performing forced labor either part or full-time under unsafe work environment. Based upon the needs of the situation, there are specific areas of the world where the practice of child labor is taking place. According to the journal written by Basu, Ashagrie gat...
The industrialization and technology of the world’s higher income nations has a negative effect on the plight of the world’s poorer nations. The high-income nations’ industrialization encourages child labor, poor living conditions in exchange for material things, and higher world pollution. When the higher income nations became industrialized in the 1800’s, the lower income nations were slow to catch up. Now, the low and middle-income countries are trying to catch up to the rapid growth that the world powers had. One drawback to this is many families, to earn as much money as possible, encourage their children to go to work in sweat shops, for little pay. This puts them at a great risk of accident, and shortens their life span by causing them to toil endlessly in a hot, vermin infested, disease rampant factory whilst still children. The sociological inequality illustrated by the norm of living for children in different countries is astounding. In the United States, children spend their summers in front of a television or computer, swimming in the public pool, or “hanging out” with their friends. Children in low-income countries, such as those in Southeast Asia spend their summer days in a factory for ten hours, making tennis shoes on insufficient food, and for few dollars a day. If you were to walk down the street in one of the world’s middle-income countries, like those in Eastern Europe, you would see signs of the (wealthy) Western nations all around. Teenagers woul...