Stepping off Maslow's Escalator

1) If all our your desires and goal for life are not met, does that make you a failure?

2) How did getting married, having 2 kids, living in a perfect house with a white picket fence, and a BMW become what most people think of as the ideal life?

3)Will our "selves" ever truly be happy without meeting all of our goals and desires we set for our lives?


Question #3
When I think of the things I want out of life, quite a few things come to mind. I want to transfer and graduate from a university, I want to get married, I want to have children, I want a job that I love, and I want to leave this world knowing that I loved as much as I could. Now then I look at the beginning of all those statements. They all begin with "i". It's just interesting that we all have these visions of what we want out of life and we have the choice and the power to make those things a reality. Some people may know exactly what they want and work their asses off to make it happen, and they may succeed. If they get all the things they ever wanted does that guarantee that they'll reach "self-actualization" and happiness? Well if that's what they wanted then ya! But I think that our desires for life are always changing. I think back to the things u thought I wanted out of life when I was 12 and now they're totally different. As Carl Rogers described the "real self" I think that is always changing.

C.S. Lewis, "Vivisection"

1) Even in times when pain is argued as necessary, is it right still?

2) Is man more important than animal?

3) In a world where Christian theological thinking, Darwinian, and Naturalistic frames of mind occurs, how do all those different types live peacfully?

4) Is it selfish for us as men to take the side of our own "species", simply because we ARE men?

I want to respond to question #2. It is intersting that this article was assigned this week. I'm in the process of reading the Bible. Im in the old testiment in the book of Leviticus. It is not my favorite book of the books of the Bible but it is necessary for me to read educate myself of the history of the Bible. Most of the book speaks of the traditons and many animal sacrifces that happened. Part of me didnt really understand why God would ask his children to sacrifice animals when they are "His creation and His creatures". I, like Lewis, was reminded in the gospel of Matthew chapter 6, verse 26,

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

God tells us that we are more valued than animals. But when people hear that, then they may think the God is cruel and doesnt value animals as well. I choose to belive that God does in fact value animals very much. He created a heirarchy that puts humans above animals. We were his most valued and precious creation of all his works. It says in Genesis,

"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." 

So although, we are placed higher on the heirarchy, God still does not want us to have evil in our hearts. I liked that excerpt from Shakespeare, when the Queen wanted poison tested on "such creatures" and the doctor says, "Your Highness Shall from this practice but make hard your heart." I loved that. I think thats how God sees vivisection. We shouldnt be using animals like they are despensible and have no pity when they experience pain but also take ownership of the fact that we are more valued in Gods eyes. We can't harden our hearts and not have sentiment.

Ethical Argument: Beauty Pageants and their UGLY TRUTH

Lura Hills

Professor Brown

English 1B

15 April 2013

Beauty Pageants and their ugly truth

We all remember the tragic death of JonBenet Ramsey. She was a 6-year-old little girl who was murdered and found in her family home in Boulder, Colorado. Jon Benet was trained and groomed to be a beauty pageant princess, a child star in the role of a dazzling woman. Her mother was driven to promote JonBenet through pageant competition that attracted a lot of adult attention to such a little girl. Was her killer made more aware of her more because she was more in the spotlight, obsessed with her because she shined and stood out in beauty pageants?  Does anyone believe she would have been killed as she was if she had never been in the pageants?   Even if her pageant "career" had nothing to do with her death, could she have had a happier and higher quality of life in her short time in this world if she had not spent so much of her time trying to be perfect instead of just a little girl? I want to address the social issue of beauty pageants and its affect on little girls in their later life. Many things stem from this problem of beauty pageants. While it may seem harmless, and to some people it may seem beneficial to children, there is a strong ethical argument that the small child beauty pageant industry exploits parents and children in a way that causes emotional injury and social adjustment problems.   

Childhood is a time of being nurtured, of innocence, and being protected from avoidable risk of injury. Childhood free of hardship and stress is seen as pure and very highly valued. But it can be taken away in an instant when children are given more exposure and scrutiny than they can handle and cope with, and the effects could last a lifetime.   Beauty “contests” are slowly but surely stealing the innocence from the youth of this nation one by one. 

Thus, a show on TLC called, “Toddlers in Tiaras”, is a show that gives viewers an inside look at the lives and the beauty pageant process by following certain little girls and their parents and their journey. Most of the little girls are under 8 years old, they are whining, and don’t seem happy about the task of competing. Some little girls are airbrushed, have spray tans, false eyelashes, get their eyebrows waxed, and some even have fake teeth! After that they are then put on stage to dance around in little skimpy outfits to be judged on their “beauty”. 

Their whole self worth is put out there on the line to be dissected and then told whether or not they are up to the standard of the judges. One can only imagine what that must do to their innocence and confidence. Being judged and told at a young age that what you look like and your talents are what makes you important and matter can do major damage to your way of thinking and view of yourself. The affects are not limited to just the children on TV. Children at home are viewing it. They see the way these girls are getting praised or rejected and put in the spotlight and they think that’s what is beautiful. One of the little girls on the show Daisey Mae actually said, "Facial beauty is the most important thing, in life and in pageants”. I almost fell out of my chair when she said that! Daisey Mae’s thought process has to be very similar to the rest of her peers that are participating in these pageants. This warped way of thinking will drastically change the way they see themselves and can lead to major problems.

 The message from parents and adults is that to be valued kids need to satisfy a standard that cannot be sustained.  Inability to be perfect or close to it lowers self-esteem, which makes it more imperative to “win” on and of the pageant stage. According to the National Institute of Mental Health,  “Certain psychological factors predispose people to developing eating disorders. Most people with eating disorders suffer from low self-esteem, feelings of helplessness, and intense dissatisfaction with the way they look. Adolescent and young women account for 90 percent of cases of eating disorders.”

A lot of the routines of these girls are highly sexualized and ultra-inappropriate for their age. Their midriff is showing, the skirts are way too short, and their gyrating dance moves just send it over the top on the inappropriate scale. Even if they are just “performing” they are still absorbing the feeling of “acting” older than they are. This tells them that they are more of an adult rather than a child. So, the sexualization of theses little girls can be another factor in harming their later lives. “A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) released found evidence that the display of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development.”

Childhood is complicated enough, so simplicity and challenges that young people can handle are better than holding them to age inappropriate adult standards.

Shooting an Elephant

How are there people in the world that do not feel bad about torturing animals?

Was it really peer pressure that drove the European to kill the elephant?

Could have there been another way for him to feel like he could’ve been accepted by the people and not have killed the elephant?

This article reminded me of this movie that I watched when I was little, Mighty Joe Young. It was about a woman, Jill, who raises a giant gorilla that has been being hunted by poachers. For their safety they relocate to the US, but there Joe is still hunted by another group of people running a fake wildlife preserve and selling the animals organs on the black market for money. Watching this as a little girl, I just didn’t understand why someone would want to kill animals for money and have no remorse. I think that the only reason we should kill animals is for food, even then I don’t like to think of animals being killed for me to eat. But that’s the point, I feel bad thinking about that, and its not for money like these people do. Poachers kill animals for money and get a sort of sick pleasure out of doing so. That’s what confused me when I was little and to this day reading the article it made me angry that there are people who don’t have any regard of the animals. It made me angry that the European killed the animal just to make himself look better. He looks more weak in my eyes that anything because he thought that only way to please the people was to do what he did. If he was really brilliant he should have found some other way, or not have cared what they thought.