Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Major Differencies Between Eastern Essay Example for Free

Major Differencies Between Eastern Essay Western philosophy has its roots in Athens, Rome and Judeo ­Christianity while Eastern philosophy is derived from Confucianism, Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism. As Greek and Latin are to Western civilisation, so classical Chinese is to East Asian civilisation. I will focus on four major differences between Eastern and Western philosophies. 1. Western Individualism and Eastern Collectivism In the Greco? Roman tradition, the image of Prometheus powerfully illustrates the struggle for individual freedom. Prometheus had gone against Zeus, the all powerful god who ruled the sky from Mt. Olympus. Prometheus annoyed Zeus by creating human beings. To protect the human beings from Zeus, he stole fire from Hephaestos, the blackmith god and gave it to the human beings. This angered Zeus to the extent that Prometheus was chained to a rock and an eagle tore out his liver. In European consciousness, Prometheus had become the hero who: defied the patriarchy in the name of individual freedom, who brought light into our darkness. He was the saviour who sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, the benefactor who brought the gift of technology down from heaven, the teacher who taught us that we are not at the whims of the gods any more, who showed us how to use our intelligence to take control of the world. The Christian tradition has also reinforced the notion of individual rights. The Bible speaks of God creating Man in His own image and letting him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth (Genesis 1:26). By comparison, the Chinese live in a world of obligations: obligations to serve the ruler, obligations to work for the family, obligations to obey elders, obligations to help relatives, obligations to do well to glorify the name of ancestors, obligations to defend the country in times of trouble, and obligations to oneself to cultivate ones own virtue. It would also seem that rights only belong to one individual ? the Son of Heaven. Confucianism promotes conservatism and this stifles creativity and robs the people of self? introspection. 2. Fragmentary and Holistic According to Fritjof Capra, the emphasis of rational thought is epitomised in Descartes celebrated statement,Cognito, ergo sum ? I think, therefore, I exist. This has forcefully encouraged Westerners to equate their identity with their rational mind rather than with the whole organism. This division between the mind and the body has led to a view of the universe as a mechanical system consisting of separate objects, which in turn were reduced to fundamental building blocks whose properties and interactions were thought to completely determine all natural phenomena. This mechanistic conception of the whole world is still the basis of most of our sciences and continues to have a tremendous influence on our lives. Academic disciplines become fragmented and this has served as a rationale for treating the universe as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different groups. The essence of the Eastern world view is the awareness of the unity and the mutual inter? relation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestation of a basic oneness. All things are seen as independent and inseparable parts of a cosmic whole, as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. The Eastern traditions refer to this ultimate, indivisible reality as Brahman in Hinduism, Dharmakaya in Buddhism and Tao in Taoism. 3. Conflict and Harmony The Marxist view of history saw change as arising from a dialectic interplay of opposites ? hence class struggle and conflict. Western civilisation based itself on the struggle between the Good and Evil, God and Satan or Psyche and Cupid. Eastern philosophical thought is based on this notion of the Yin and the Yang. Frithjof Capra describes the Yang as the strong,male creative power associated with Heaven while yin is the dark,receptive, female and maternal element. The dark yin and the bright yang are arranged in a symmetrical manner. They are dynamic ? a rotating symmetry suggesting very forcefully a continuous cyclic movement. The two dots in the diagram symbolise the idea that each one of the forces reaches its extreme, it contains in itself the seed of the opposite. Life says Chuang Tzuis the blended harmony of the yin and the yang. Taoism permeates the economic and social lives of the Chinese through geomancy, qigong, Chinese medicine and idol worship. As Chan observes:Almost every hotel, office and commercial building that has gone up within the last decade adheres to certain principles of geomancy or Fengshui ? the art and science of harmonising man and nature. 4. Idealism and Pragmatism. The Western idea of democracy does not fit into the Eastern scheme of things easily. In an interview by the Daily Telegraph on 16 October 1989 the former Prime Minister remarked that: I think in a mainly Chinese electorate, the idea of a loyal opposition and an alternative government does not come easily. Youre either for or against the government. The Confucianistic idea of social hierarchy where a persons existence is relational, extending from his family, society and country. The pragmatism of the East is exemplied in the way Confucianism has been used to emphasize order through social hierarchy and the rules and conventions. Taoism provided the meaning of life and thus compliment Confucianism. Confucius preached the doctrine of the here and now. The emphasis is one of life and life and not life and death. The sage hoped to hear the right way in the morning, and die in the evening without regret. What lays the foundation of life for the Chinese is the family and the continuation of the family also means the passing on of experience, culture and thought. The Taoists has an equal view of life and death seeing life and death as the coming out and going back of a human form of existence. Chuang Tsu talks of coming and going . Lao Tzu said,out to life, in to death. The crux of the matter is to make the best of the present.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Diabetes :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Since diabetes is such a complex disease with many different forms, I decided to focus on diabetes type I. This is known as insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). This type of diabetes includes people who are dependant on injections of insulin on a daily basis in order to satisfy the bodies insulin needs, they cannot survive without these injections.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In order to understand the disease you need to know about insulin. Insulin is a hormone. The role of insulin is to convert the food we eat into various useful substances, discarding everything that is wasteful.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It is the job of insulin to see that the useful substances are put to best use for our well-being. The useful substances are used for building cells, are made ready for immediate expenditure as energy and also stored for later energy expenditure. Insulin comes from the beta cells which are located in the pancreas. In the case of diabetes type I almost all of the beta cells have been destroyed. Therefore daily injections of insulin become essential to life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The cause of diabetes is an absolute or lack of the hormone insulin. As a result of this lack of insulin the processes that involve converting the foods we eat into various useful substances does not occur.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the products that is of vital importance in our bodies is glucose, a simple carbohydrate sugar which is needed by virtually every part of our body as fuel to function.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Insulin controls the amount of glucose distributed to vital organs and also the muscles. In diabetics due to the lack of insulin and therefore the control of glucose given to different body parts they face death if they don't inject themselves with insulin daily.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Since strict monitoring of diabetes is needed for the control of the disease, little room is left for carelessness. As a result, diabetic patients are susceptible to many other diseases and ser-ious conditions if a proper course of treatment is not followed.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Other diseases a diabetic is open to: Cardiovascular disease, stroke, Peripheral artery disease, gangrene, kidney disease, blindness, hypertension, nerve damage, impotence etc.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Comparing The Golden Pathway Annual to Blue Remembered Hills Essay

In the autumn term of 2006 I performed as Enid and The Head in The Golden Pathway Annual, a play by John Harding & John Burrows, for my scripted performance. The class was split into groups of three (which was very fitting as in The Golden Pathway Annual most scenes have only three characters, only the odd few scenes had four) and then given different extracts from the play. My group was exceptionally conscious in keeping the props, costumes and especially acting appropriate to the time period, so some brief research was done using the Internet to give us a better understanding of, for example, what statuses the mother and father would have in relation to each other, or what costumes should be worn. Obviously, a reading of the entire play was done prior to any rehearsals, so that the scenes that we would be performing made sense to us. We also read through Blue Remembered Hills, by Dennis Potter, as a class. The Golden Pathway Annual is almost completely non-naturalistic. The same actor plays Michael, the lead role, throughout all his ages – from the age of two-and-a-half into his adulthood. Also, two of the four actors play a range of characters, as opposed to one actor playing one character, as they would in a naturalistic play. At first glances, Blue Remembered Hills would seem to be a non-naturalistic play. Firstly, the characters are all children, whereas all the actors are adults, similar to The Golden Pathway Annual, where an adult actor would play the role of the child Michael. However, the scenarios in Blue Remembered Hills are completely naturalistic – everything that happens could happen in real life. In contrast, The Golden Pathway Annual has moments, such as the fantasy sequences, where Michael is a dog with members of the Famous Five, which are evidently not naturalistic. The other very naturalistic thing about Blue Remembered Hills is that the play is in ‘real-time’ – â€Å"one incident after another without the imposition or intervention of memory in the form of flashback† in Potter’s words. The play is set in one day, unlike The Golden Pathway Annual, which spans a time period of more than 20 years – there is even an instance in the beginning where the transition between two scenes indicates the change of several years, where a child had been born and raised to the age of two-and-a-half – not naturalistic in the slightest. The emotions in Blue Remembered Hills are very naturalistic. This is because the play shows realistic emotions and how the different characters would react, for instance when Donald dies towards the end, all the characters are â€Å"badly shaken†. If the emotions were non-naturalistic, such as in a comic style, the emotions would portray Donald’s death as humorous. The Golden Pathway Annual also has very naturalistic, touching moments, such as: Enid: What’s going to happen to us? George: When? Enid: When we die. Enid feels upset and slightly pessimistic now that Michael has left home, a natural reaction for a mother to feel. George, in the following lines, tries to be brave and attempts to convince Enid she’s â€Å"not talking sense† – an also natural thing for a husband to do. A noticeable difference between the two plays is the themes. The Golden Pathway Annual mainly has the theme of expectations, where Michael is pressured throughout his life, by his parents and by his school. He works hard, however this is only to find that all he worked for amounted to nothing. The main theme of Blue Remembered Hills is, in my opinion, childhood (other people may think differently – it depends on a person’s interpretation). The play goes through the emotions and activities of children, with an ending showing how all fun and games can end in catastrophe. Basing the two plays on their main themes, it could be said that they are divergent, however the two plays have other themes, which do relate the two of them. Nostalgia seems to be portrayed in both of the plays. A sense of looking back can be seen in both Dennis Potter’s and Ed Thomason’s (the director of the first The Golden Pathway Annual productions) introductions; â€Å"Every event in the script which had sparked off a personal memory, a moment of recognition for me, would do the same for an audience† (Ed Thomason). It is clear that The Golden Pathway Annual was written with the intention of nostalgia and Blue Remembered Hills was written using Potter’s memories. Both the plays similarly experience the theme of fantasy, however one experiences it naturalistically and the other non-naturalistically. Blue Remembered Hills has times when the children will imagine they are Indians and cowboys, for instance, running through the forest wailing and shooting each other with their imaginary guns. This is naturalistic, as the audience sees the children â€Å"playing pretend†. The Golden Pathway Annual has non-naturalistic fantasy sequences. Michael’s fantasies are much more like dreams – the audience views a dream where Michael is a dog or is James Bond; it is not Michael pretending he is James Bond. Although Blue Remembered Hills was written for television, a successful stage adaptation has been made of it. A problem posed by this, which is overcome in different ways, depending on the production, is the staging. There is a section towards the end where there are instant transitions between inside a barn and outside a barn. On television, this is easy to do, however on stage this is harder. Therefore, the staging must be unnatural – the stage could be split, for instance. This is alike to The Golden Pathway Annual, where the staging is very unnatural – such as in a scene I performed – a â€Å"Granny’s footsteps† scene, where Michael’s parents advance on him in the ironic fashion of this child’s game. As a group, we decided to stage it abstractly, similarly to the way Blue Remembered Hills would be staged. The Golden Pathway Annual is set during the 1940s and 1960s. Our group established this time period in many ways; one was the way the two parents related. I performed as Enid in a way that allowed George to be the more dominant character, reflecting on the main beliefs of that time, that men still seemed to be the â€Å"superior† gender. The Golden Pathway Annual begins just after the war, whereas Blue Remembered Hills is set during the war. It is interesting to see that just the two years changes the historic period entirely, making the two plays acted very differently. There is a similarity in time periods between the plays, and that is that the time period is a given circumstance – it is set, and cannot be changed. The reason Blue Remembered Hills cannot be changed is quite obviously as it is during the war, and the context of the play wouldn’t make sense without the time period. The time period in The Golden Pathway Annual is essential to the characters, plot and emotions; without the time period, the nostalgia of the play would be lost. In addition, the production notes stress the time period heavily. One difference I notice about the style of how the two plays are written is the freedom the writers allow for the production, and what given circumstances there are. Blue Remembered Hills seems to be more flexible with how the play can be performed. Potter gives an option of what Willie can be doing in the first scene, whereas Harding & Burrows have much more strict given circumstances, where the props, as examples, are much more set – the placing of the two chairs (which are the props that create the illusion of many other items in the play) is stated. Society and culture is a significant difference between the two plays. The Peters family in The Golden Pathway Annual is of working class. The family was hard-hit by the war – literally; their house was bombed and they lost â€Å"everything†. Society in the times of the beginning of when The Golden Pathway Annual is set had the popular belief that the future would get better, the high hopes due to the recent winning of the war. It was also believed that the young generation should make the best of what they have offered to them, a culture reflected deeply into Enid and George’s parenting, which is shown through all the pressure applied on Michael to do well at school and get good qualifications, so he can succeed in life. However, as the play progresses, we see that cultures change and Michael finds that â€Å"like the pound, his degree has devalued†. The class and culture are both very different in Blue Remembered Hills. The children spit, threaten and fight regularly in the play, something that Michael is never known to have experienced. Michael is always made presentable, as his parents believe that they need to fit in with the society. It is likely that the same case occurs in Blue Remembered Hills, however the culture is different – the entire town is likely to be of the â€Å"lower† agricultural class, working on the farms; the way the children behave is normal in the society they are in. It is clear that the upbringing of the children in Blue Remembered Hills is not to get a degree and do well in life and to better themselves, as Michael is in The Golden Pathway Annual; the children are parented in a sort of ‘the present matters’ mentality, in contrast to The Golden Pathway Annual where Enid and George have firm beliefs that it is the future that matters, and that everything is done for a child to better themselves in the future. In conclusion, I have learnt that although the two plays are very different in where they are set and the way the characters behave, similarities still lie in the themes and some of the styles, such as staging.

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Gangs A Problem That Society Faces - 2622 Words

Gangs: A problem that Society faces The roaring 20s was known as period in American history that was known for its extravagant parties, prohibition, and illegal speakeasies. It was a period where criminals joined together to sell and transport illegal liquor. Every gang wanted a piece of the action which led to an increase in violence during this time. Little did America know that this issue of gang violence would affect present day America 100 years later. A report from the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment stated that, â€Å"There are approximately 1.4 million active street, prison, and OMG (outlaw motorcycle gangs) gang members comprising more than 33,000 gangs in the United States.† Gang violence still plagues America nearly after 100 years since the first gangs formed back in the 1920s; however, Gangs today are much different than the 1920 because of the use of updated weapons and different criminal activities that gangs have ventured into. Gang violence has not only expanded into a worldwide issue, but it has gotten worse because of the extreme measures that gang members are willing go. According to C. Wright Mills’ Social Imagination Theory is the ability of seeing the relationship from someone’s personal problem and how it affects larger society (Kendall 6). This theory is also true for people who face gang violence because is not just a problem that ghettos face; moreover, gang violence has become a worldwide social problem that is becoming unstoppable that no oneShow MoreRelatedSociety’s Needs for Criminal Justice Practitioners Essay1046 Words   |  5 Pages Criminal justice practitioners are necessary for a civilized society. Without those who form boundaries to our freedom, and the ones that reinforce those laws, our community would be chaos. Some of the main social issues our society faces are drug abuse, gang violence, child abuse, and terrorism. 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