In the “Pilot” episode of Breaking Bad I took away the lesson that, people will do anything for their families regardless of something being “right or wrong”. When Walter White finds out he has cancer he does his best to begin setting things up so that his family will be taken care of after he is gone. Even turning to the idea of making drugs for money. This, I believe, is a common theme with humans. We will do anything to protect and take care of our families, regardless of the outcome for ourselves. Just as Walter realizes that he could go to jail for what he is doing, he preservers in the interest of taking care of his family. Morality and right/wrong play a small part in a person’s mind when their main goal is taking care of their family.
The overall message of Star Trek: Into Darkness is that ethics is complex, with multiple possible interpretations and often no clearly delineated boundary between definitively right and wrong. Spock often reasons from a utilitarian perspective, and yet at the same time seems to hold to a Kantian-duty principle of never lying. Kirk saves Spock, violating the Prime Directive by reasoning from a care ethic, but later risks his life seemingly on utilitarian grounds. Khan deeply cares about his crew, but is often willing to do just about anything to achieve his own interests, with little to no regard for the welfare of others. This is the ultimate message of the film: that ethics is complex, different situations can often call for different ethical viewpoints, and that ethical decisions must be considered carefully.
Is High School football a sport, or is it more than that to some people? Recent newspaper headlines include such items as coaches abusing student athletes; fathers of athletes murdering coaches, and mother’s disabilitating cheerleading candidates to assure their daughters make the cheerleading team. In Odessa, Texas high school football is a major contributor to the society of a small town in Texas society. Every Friday night, 50,000 people fill the stadium to see high school students put their lives on the line to win a football game. H. G. Bissinger writes a novel called Friday Night Lights, about a year in 1988 where High School players prepare and play on the High School team, and what an impact they have on a small city in Texas.
Glee: Defying the Mainstream The herd will take care of it” (Glee). This is not a reference to cattle but rather a reference to high school students; this quote was said by a teacher on the show Glee, indicating that students enforce the status quo. Ironically, this show does the opposite. The episode “Pilot” from the show Glee by Ryan Murphy is unique for television shows because it reverses the stereotypical views of society, and this essay will analyze it by summarizing the show, applying the Rhetorical Method and the Gender & Sexuality Method, discussing an outside source to further explain the creators motives regarding the show, and evaluating the text as a whole.
Stocker highlights the constraints that motives impose on both ethical theory and the ethical life in order to show that only when justifications and motives are in harmony can people lead the good life. Stocker believes that mainstream ethical theories, like consequentialism and deontology, make it impossible for people to reconcile their reasons and motives because these theories demand that people perform acts for the sake of duty or for the good, as opposed to because they care about the people who are affected by their actions.
The popular Netflix series, BoJack Horseman, follows a star from a hit 90s sitcom, “Horsin’ Around.” The star has fallen down the rabbit hole of self destructive tendencies as he’s an arrogant alcoholic that is too revolved around his own past success to relate to people today. In Season 3, Episode 11, “That’s Too Much, Man!” Bojack and a previous costar go on a bender fueled by copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. On this bender Bojack attempts to mend old wounds but only breaks the stitches further.
Along with Walt being compassionate for his daughter’s mental health he is responsible when it comes to his line of work. Back in 1968 Walt served in the Vietnam war as a Marine inspector. With the job, he had in Vietnam he took responsibility not just for himself but for others that were around him. On page 85 Walt says, “Take me with you to Khe Sanh” he is taking his responsibility as an investigator and making sure he got his mission done. (Johnson) Even though Walt is responsible with all the cases he receives he also wants to make sure that he shows respect to the people of the investigation.
A highly debated topic concerns whether criminals commit crimes because of a social pressure or an individual urge. The strain theory supports crime as a social pressure because, as Frank Schmalleger suggests in Criminology Today 222, crime is an adaptive behavior that coincides with problems caused by frustration or unpleasant social surroundings. Also, culture conflict theory states the cause of delinquent behavior is because different social classes conflicting morals of what is appropriate or proper behavior, (Schmalleger 228). Other people believe blaming crime on the economy or where they grew up is making an excuse for criminals instead of making them take responsibility for their actions, as stated by CQ writer Peter Katel. These different views started with statistics taken on crime in the early 1800s. Andre Michel Guerry of France was one of the first examiners of “the moral health of nations” in the early 19th century, (Schmalleger 35). Another early crime statistician was Adolphe Quetelet of Belgium . Quetelet evaluated the crime rates between weather, sex, and age. His findings that climate contributes to high or low crime rate is a main factor in today’s fight against crime. It is doubtful this issue will ever be settled since there are too many pros and cons to each side. However, while specialists’ dispute this, crime is not stopping. There needs to be a way, or possibly several ways, to reduce criminal activity. It is doubtful criminal activity will ever be put to an end. The same is to be said about why people commit crime, but knowing if it is done socially or individually can help with the fight against it. In the end, individuals should take responsibility for their actions, but...
Bernard Williams wrote A Critique of Utilitarianism in which he shows how Utilitarianism may require people to do wrong. He presents the readers with two examples of “cases in which, on utilitarian grounds, one would be forced to act in a way that violated one’s intuitive moral feelings” (224). The case of Jim is relatable to the stories of Hotel Rwanda. Jim is an honored visitor to a country and he comes across a captain with twenty Indian protestors who he is about to kill. The captain tells Jim that he can kill one Indian and the rest can be set free, otherwise the captain is going to kill all twenty Indians. The important point that Williams makes is that Utilitarianism cuts out the factor that Jim is responsible for what he does, not the actions of other people. Williams emphasizes the importance of integrity. Many of the characters in Hotel Rwanda are faced with this factor. Paul realizes the importance of integrity when he tells his wife and kids to go to the roof and jump because that is better than being killed by a machete. Utilitarianism does not consider that actions can be made based on what makes sense rather than happiness. Not every action people make are in the pursuit of happiness. People have other goals they are trying to pursue in life. Paul is acting in such ways to save innocent people from dying because that is what makes sense to him. Even when
We've come to a point where television has become so loaded with “vampire-this” and “werewolf-that,” that each show has begun to look like the reruns of another. Luckily, this definitely isn't the case for creator Vince Gilligan's, Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad follows the life of Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston), an ordinary high school chemistry teacher. With a loving wife and teenage son at home, over time, Walter has formed an exceedingly mundane routine for his life. After soon discovering that he had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, Walter decided to take extreme measures in order to secure his family financially. Eventually, he would descend into a world so dark and utterly twisted, that it would eventually consume him. Walter White became Heisenberg; the greatest drug lord the streets had ever seen. As he ascended in status within the drug cartel, the love and trust he had from his family and friends quickly descended. There are thousands of reasons that explain why millions of people tune into Breaking Bad. This series offers a much needed relief from the Dracula descendents, which frankly, are slowly diminishing any scope of variety existing on television. Because of the outstanding acting, seemingly distorted reality, and uniquely relatable storyline and characters, this hit show tops the charts as the best modern-day television series that cable has to offer.
Ethics are moral principles that can be used to help guide peoples decisions. We are all different and therefore our beliefs and opinions differ. There are many ethical theories, and according to Panza and Potthast (n.d.) the following are some that are widely used. Virtue ethics is one theory which states that personality is the most important thing. Living an ethical life, acting right, requires that one develops and demonstrates the quality of courage, compassion, wisdom, and temperance. It also requires that greed, jealousy, and selfishness is avoided. Utilitarianism states that the amount of happiness and suffering created by a person’s actions is what matters the most. As a result, acting rightly includes maximizing the amount of happiness and minimizing the amount of suffering around you. At times you may need to break some of the traditional moral rules to achieve such an outcome. Kantianism is another theory which highlights the principles behind actions rather than an actions results. It states that it requires to be motivated by good principles that treats everyone with respect. If you’re motivated by good principles, you overcome your animal instinct and act ethically. Another ethical theory is the Contract theory, which suggest that ethics should be thought of as terms of agreements between people. It suggests that doing the right thing means obeying agreements set by members rather than those of society. For this theory ethics isn’t necessarily about character, consequences, or principles. The last theory I’m going to mention is Care ethics. Care ethics focuses on ethical attention on relationships before other factors. As a result, acting rightly involves building, strengthening, and maintaining strong relationship...
In the moral dilemma of Heinz, the husband of his sick, dying wife is in desperate need of the single cure available, which is her only chance for survival. The researcher who developed this medicine invested money and time in order to create such a cure for this rare case of cancer and wants to make money off of his creation. Heinz does not have the amount of money the researcher is demanding and it is his wife’s only chance to live, so Heinz steals the cure from the researcher’s lab. The question at hand is, did the husband do the right thing by breaking into the lab to steal the drug.
This episode illustrates a major conflict throughout the story. As Walter dreams bigger and bigger he seems to leave the 'smaller' things such as his family behind. This movement away from the family is against the furtherance of the values and morals of the family. While his father would have been happy simply working and caring for his family, Walter is more concerned with becoming a 'mover and shaker' without thinking about the resulting consequences for his family.
Denies that the consequences of an action or rule are the only criteria for determining the morality of an action or rule. When applying this theory to healthcare decision making, each situation may have a different pattern that may result in moral decisions being made on a case-by-case basis.
Someone you love very much is dying from an illness. This person might be your significant other, a parent, a child, or maybe a close friend. Their only saving grace is a drug discovered and owned by a local pharmacist. There’s just one problem: you cannot afford the drug and must make a life or death decision on what to do next. This situation is known as the Heinz Dilemma, and most of the subtopics of this chapter can all be tied back to this core issue. Do you steal the drug and save a life, or follow the law and let someone you love die? Also discussed in this chapter is how moral development affects choice-making, the different stages of moral development, and how morality develops.
It is morally permissible to do an illegal act if the action is morally right and good. An action could be morally right and illegal at the same time, when it represents the lesser of two evils, or when the intentions of the person performing it are noble and have for goal to achieve his duty. An action can be morally right, but still illegal because in a situation where there is no good option, the lesser of two evils is the morally best option to do, even if it is illegal (Thomson 39). For example, in Dallas Buyers Club, Ron Woodroof acted rightly by choosing the lesser of two evils: sell illegal drugs to help AIDS patients feel better and live longer, instead of letting them suffer and die (Dallas Buyers Club). If he would have chosen to obey the law, a great number of AIDS patient would have suffered more and died of their illness, and he would have been guilty of not helping them according to the Harming by Omission Thesis (HOT) and the Equivalence of Evil Thesis (EET) (Mieth 17). These thesis affirm that omitting to help someone in need would be as bad as hurting the person directly. Thus, Woodroof acted in a morally permissible way even if he broke the law because he chose the lesser of two evils (Matheny 16). Also, someone can act justly e...