In his book, A Guide to the Good Life: The
Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, philosophy professor William Irvine says many
people have trouble naming their grand goal in living. Do you? In other words,
of the things in life you might pursue -- fame, fortune, love, self-realization,
social change, escape, wisdom, power -- which is the thing you believe to be
most valuable? Why? Is it related to your professional goals? How? Do you consider your grand in living to be ethical? Is that part of why
you desire it? I
Please read the links I sent in an e-mail earlier in the week before attempting a response, which is due, incidentally, on Monday, Sept. 24, on or before 4 p.m.
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Saturday, September 22, 2012
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
25 comments:
I have to agree with philosophy professor William Irvine in his theory that “many people have trouble naming their grand goal in living.” I definitely believe that individuals have a hard time finding themselves and don’t know what they are trying to achieve. This is especially seen in college students who continue to change majors, transfer schools and/or change partners frequently. There’s a piece of that individual that is always missing. Something that will separate them from everyone else. It sometimes takes a lifetime to find it. We continue to strive for something that many of us don’t understand. I have seen and encountered people who continue to work hard on a daily basis, but don’t understand why they’re doing it. Is it for fame, fortune or power? Although many of us would say that fortune, love and fame would be ideal in a perfect life, I have to say that self-realization is much more important than all the others. There are many people who go about life successfully but wished they chose a different path or lost themselves on the path to success. I think that although my professional goals do include fame and fortune, I strongly suggest that students shouldn’t lose themselves when trying to gain their professional goals. In fact, they should find themselves if they haven’t done so already. Much of today’s millionaires are unhappy, lose compassion and act less humane according to “The Money-Empathy Gap,” an article by Lisa Miller. According to the article, researcher Paul Piff revealed through his experiment of monopoly, “...the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interest above the interests of other people. It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics... assholes.” Why would an individual want to treat others as aids or less than human just because they are at the bottom of the wealth pyramid? My professional goals do include being a journalist; however, I’m interested in human interest stories. Stories that pull on the heart strings of individuals. I believe I found myself and who I want to be as a person in order to establish these goals as a journalist. I do consider my grand in living to be ethical at least in my view. I rather be rich as opposed to being poor. However, I also rather find myself and continue to be myself over being less compassionate or less empathetic.
I agree with Professor William Irvine's quote, "Many people have trouble naming their grand goal in living." I believe this is true because people do not know what they want in life. Some want fame, some want fortune and others just want to be happy with their life. Life is what you make it.
I think self realization and honesty are the most valuable. Self realization is bout accepting who you are and not changing for anybody. This is important because if somebody does not have this or value it that person will not succeed in life.
This is seen in the article "How We Teach Students to Cheat" by Michelle Blake. In the article one girl sees her friend cheating on a test. The girl is shocked that her friend would cheat and the other girl is embarrassed when she finds out her friend knows. By knowing her friend knew she cheated she felt a different way. The article states, "Years later she told me that getting caught had changed her." Also, "It had to do with appreciating the difference between seeming to be successful and actually being successful." This shows that she realized what she had done was wrong and she wanted to be proud of herself for her own work and not for getting a good grade by cheating. She also was not being honest with herself and her guilt got to her.
Self realization and honesty are related to my professional goals because I feel that to get a job and to get ahead in life you have to know yourself. You have to know what qualities you have and what you are good at. If your a liar and you can not be nice to others, than maybe you should not be working with other people. If you do not like how a situation is being handled you have the right to stand up for what you believe in ans speak your mind.
I consider self realization and honesty to be ethical. "Honesty is the best policy." Wasn't that the saying growing up? It was because it is true. No body is going to trust you if you do not tell the truth. A manager does not want to hire someone who is going to lie and a manager is not going to hire someone who thinks it is OK to lie.
I feel by it being ethical I do desire it. Everyone needs and should know right from wrong, but some people don't.
This goes along with the article "Harvard Says 125 Students May Have Cheated on a Final Exam." The article is about students who had a take home final and many of them cheated on it. The students did not admit to cheating they were caught. This shows they do not have any self realization and that they are not honest. They cheated on a final just so they could pass the class, but they did not think about the bigger consequence if they got caught.
Self realization is knowing when you did something wrong and admitting you are wrong. This is a very important quality to have. It is also very important when you go out looking for a job because that is what mangers look for. They want someone who knows the business, is honest, and who knows when they are wrong.
This seems like the sort of question that should be asked of an older crowd---one whose members are in the dusk, not the dawn, of their life's. My point is, one has to experience the majority of their life, THEN figure out what their goals are. That is not to say that one can only begin to pursue one's goals at this moribund stage. Instead, I'm suggesting that you need to live various lives and hash out existence to figure out what is right for you. As Ted Bayles suggested in "Art & Fear," the best way to figure something out is not through abstractly pondering it, but instead living out various options and possibilities and experiences in the real world. As Coelho opined in "The Alchemist," the goal in life is FIGURING OUT what the goal is.
In other words, I have no idea. My 'goal' is to try out different things until I find something I like. I feel that at this point in my life, I herald romantic love, truth and knowledge as some of the most important things to pursue.
However, above all these, at the acme of my goal-pyramid, is personal happiness. This is a vague thing to consider the most important, but it's abstractness is its point; there are many paths to this one goal.
This view also explains why I think modern society is a bad idea. Being better-educated (or at least better-informed), more comfortable, safer, and living longer have little to do with happiness, and might actually decrease it. To be less tangential, I will say that my grand goals do NOT include comfort or safety.
I suppose that I'm pretty solid in the opinion that happiness is my goal in life, to the extent that I would rather be ignorant and happy than knowledgeable and miserable (sign this Delta up for some Soma). The REAL question is how does one (AKA everyone on earth) make themselves happy?
I agree with Professor William Irvine in that “many people have trouble naming their grand goal in living”. I believe that it takes a while for people to know what they want in life, and some never figure it out at all. There are also people who work hard every day and are still unable to reach their goals. Part of the reason I think it is hard for people to know what their goals are is because they are not sure of what they want for themselves and are still trying to figure out who they are. Of the list of things in life people might pursue, I believe that love and self-realization are the most important. However, after reading the articles, I have come to think that people generally consider fame, fortune, and power to be the most important and should be what each person strives for. This became especially clear to me after reading the article “The Money-Empathy Gap” by Lisa Miller, in which she writes about the Monopoly experiment by Paul PIff. In the article, it is shown that the players with more money and property have no problem treating their “poorer” opponents like dirt. It really amazed me that people are so concerned with money and power and will do what they can to bring others down, even while playing a board game. While I am not yet sure exactly what my main goals in life are, I know that I hope to lead a life that is as ethical as possible. While fame and fortune would be nice things to achieve, I could not see myself stepping on others or treating them badly to achieve it.
I believe that William Irving brings up a valid point by saying that most people struggle to find the true meaning or purpose in their lives. This of course is a very open ended question and could be argued over by philosophers for hours without arriving at some universal truth. Instead, I believe that every person has some abstract idea of how they believe they should live their lives so that there is some meaning and purpose assigned to it. Whether they achieve this grand ideal is another story, but it is possible that a person’s feeling of purpose can change over time as well. In my own case I believe that I have a very solid sense of what my life’s purpose is and I have been working to achieve my goal through my college career as well as my every day activities. When I was in high school, and was trying to decide what I would study in college, I was torn between music and environmental studies. I believe that my decision was rooted in my own ethics although I did not call it that at the time. I ultimately decided that music seemed like a selfish pursuit and that I could have a much greater positive impact if I dedicated my life to the environment. It is my goal to go into the environmental communications field doing public relations or policy. I believer that I will always be able to justify working hard in this field because I will know that whatever I am doing, it is for the good of mankind rather than simply the economic pursuits of an individual. I think that with that said, it is most appropriate for me to fall into the “social change” category.
When I read the article about students cheating on tests at the ivy league level, it was very disturbing to me. It seams to me that these students have not yet found what their purpose in life is, and if they have, I do not believe that they are being honest with themselves. Receiving a grade on a test, regardless of whether it is high or low, is really meaningless if the student does not come away knowing the content. I would say that I am less worried about individual grades and more worried about how I will be able to utilize them to realize my life’s goals. I think that I feel this way because I have come to understand the meaning of my own life on my own rather than having it told to me as I suspect many of these students have.
I have grown up my entire life always moving around. I have moved houses 11 times, changed schools 8 times, and moved countries 5 times. Learning the new culture, environment, and language was extremely difficult. However I learned to adapt to new cultures and fit into new places. What I lack, and is finally starting to understand is something that i should most value is myself. Self realization and wisdom would be one of the most important value in my life.
There are countless times where I had moved to a different country, didn't know the cultural value or cultural "common sense" and did something that was considered completely ignorant in that country. To try to stop embarrassing myself, I started to become adapted. This made me confused of who I really was. I was a different person everytime i was in a different community, country, school, and home. What I should do is to understand each of the cultural values or a environmental value, understand it, acknowledge it, then pursue living life my own way with my own wisdom.
This is not related to my professional goal. I am still in the middle of trying to figure myself out. The word "Ethics" is a very difficult word for me to live with since I have moved around so much. What I grew up knowing was right is completely wrong in a certain country.
In the article about plaigarism-- America is extremely strict about plagiarism. We are constantly taught about the consequences. However, in Japan, we do not need to have any citations on our papers, nor do the teachers check whether a paper has been plagiarized or not. I do believe that living ethically is important, however, to know what ethics is in that certain area that you are in, you must have wisdom and self realization to know what to do and how to do it in the right place, at the right time.
don't have a problem naming my grand goal, but I do struggle with living it. At this point in my life I feel that having a positive impact on the people in my life should be my grand goal. I think this encompasses a lot of other important ideas about living life in general. For instance, being able to support myself, or even striving for wealth would put me in a position of being able to help people or a cause. In that aspect I guess being self sufficient is a major part of this goal. Indubitably, a selfish person and wish I were rich so I could buy some excellent car or even afford to drink something other than Rolling Rock once in a while, but I also know that giving feels really damn good. I also believe that things such as being in good health or well educated have a dual benefit to yourself and those you encounter.
This absolutely applies to my professional goals in life. As long as I pursue a career in journalism, which is at least until the end of this blog post, I want to empower people by giving them information or even simply entertaining them. I'd also say this is part of why I desire it because a journalist that genuinely helps the public is not only successful but probably pretty happy. Also, to be honest it makes me feel pretty great when people like my stuff, and I'm hoping I may even make a little money at some point.
The people in the articles provided dont' seem to have had this concept in mind, at least not by plaguerizing or cheating. As a college student I know how tempting it can be to take the easy road out, however as a journalist (which I still almost completely want to be) I can safely say I will not claim someone else's work as my own.
Also, am I a communist?
http://youtu.be/CIpJ9PcP67Y
"People Make The World Go Round" - Marc Dorsey
http://youtu.be/ofurRlfJ_Ys
"People In Search of a Life" -Marc Dorsey
Coming from where I'm from, this is how I see it -what he talks about in this song, if you have a chance to listen to it.
My conclusion to the articles.. we are people in search of a life.
To answer your question:
I believe that my grand goal in life has always been to simply create an existence. I would use someone like Tupac Shakur as an example of the type of legacy I wanted. Coming from the "ghetto," I identified more with people like him - his philosophical views. I just wanted to see the world, live a life beyond the limits of the environments I grew up in. I'm grateful that I have been able to even think beyond those limits, because most people where I'm from haven't, can't and don't. My mom was a young parent. She got her GED, and wanted me to get my high school diploma. I did. She wanted me to attend college. I am. What I've always pursued, or thought I was pursuing was freedom. Money or material never really made me happy because I knew those things wouldn't be consistent. It was temporary happiness. I knew from young that I needed something more soul fulling to invest in.
The problem is that sometimes I don't know exactly what that is. As most of us do, I feed off of passion, the things that come natural to me that I'd like to think are God given gifts. My compassion (reference to the article "How Money Makes People Act Less Human") is one of my most valuable gifts. It took a lot of pain and suffering to achieve, but I'm grateful for it because it makes me a better human. I would never want to have so much that I loose my humanity.
This quote I read once in a book about LIFE, acronym for "Living Intentionally For Excellence" by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady - "Success is elusive to most people because they spread it over too many endeavors" - explains why I sometimes have trouble identifying my grand goal. Sometimes I want to be a star (dancer, movie actor) because I feel I'd be good at, and it seems like the easy way out. You make millions, and you're idolized by millions.
My grad goal is related to my professional goal in a way that I will not change who I am to be a journalist. I don't feel I have to. The reason I wanted to become a journalist was to be able to do what I love (writing, sharing ideas), travel and see the world. My grad goal is ethical because it is all about being a better me and discovering why I'm here in the first place. At a point I begin to feel that school was taking that pursuit of purpose from me and throwing me off of my spiritual journey because of the pressures it put on me. There were times I got so lost in school I felt like I didn't even know who I was. But, I am just as much a hazard to myself at times. I love the opportunities college provides, the people I meet, the things I learn, the experiences. I believe in the power of knowledge and I am proud that I made it this far. I believe I deserve my grand goal(s) if I work hard enough for it.
People cheat to get ahead, that's just the world we live in. It's a "persona that is perfectly suited to a 21st century media environment," as the article about Fareed Zakaria states. I personally have never felt that "looking successful was more important than being successful," Michelle Blake article) but some people do. I do agree, as her daughter is quoted saying the the article, that "truth is a second-class citizen in the glittering world of winning."
I agree with professor Irvine’s idea that people have trouble naming their grand goal in life. I think that I do have a problem naming my grand goal in life. I think by grand goal it is alluding to real self desire. I think that is most difficult to discover. If a person can find their ultimate need to satisfy them I think professional goals would take a backseat. I think people are wired to work that way. I don’t that a person who is perfectly happy with their life would throw it away for personal desire. Of the things you listed that one may pursue in life I would seek out self-realization. In my personal situation my professional goals matchup well with my grand goal in life, if you have become a well-balanced individual than everything else will fall in place. If you are not constantly trying to grow as a person and constantly better yourself than you are missing the point of why you are here.
As far as the majority of society, I think people are geared to fear power and so they crave it and the media deifies those with fortune and so money is sought out. I consider my grand goal in life to be ethical because it does not impose on anyone else and is an individual matter. If my goal were that I acquire a great deal of power or fame and I do this in a thievish or malevolent way than that would certainly be unethical. Any goal, which is dependent on somehow tearing a person down is unethical because you are ruining another person so you can live in personal excess. There is a different standard for each of the goals listed in the prompt because ethics depends on the actions taken to get to that point.
I think ethics weighs heavily on how I live my life. I see no reason to not focus energy or attention inwards and I do not mean self-indulgent behavior. People focus on other people so much whether it is celebrities or another icon, it’s time for them to sit back and just close their eyes and think about what they really need in life.
Before reading the other articles, I was convinced that my grand goal would be to achieve ultimate happiness. Some of the articles made me think that living a life of honesty and truthfulness is what I would want to achieve. But the New Yorker article made me go back to my original grand goal of happiness. I think that everyone should want to achieve happiness because why wouldn't anyone not want to be happy? This idea of reaching happiness, whatever that may be, definitely relates to my professional goals, whatever that may be as well. Eventually I want to be able to wake up every Monday through Friday for work and be happy about it. If someone is miserable about going to work then why bother working? You will only do something 100% if you are happy about it, because then you are putting in your all. Of course wanting to be happy is ethical, but the way you go about to achieve your happiness may be unethical. The way I will achieve my happiness is still unsure to me. Either way, I don't think any other goal someone has can be achieved without being happy. Money can't buy you happiness but it can buy you pretty much anything else that will make you happy, like a new car or a nice, relaxing vacation. But, like in the New Yorker article, money can make you numb to the rest of the world as well. That's why I want to achieve ultimate happiness because there is no price for happiness.
I agree with Professor William Irvine that “many people have trouble naming their grand goal in living.” I think people are trying to find themselves and their purpose their entire lives. I personally don't know what my ultimate goal is. Professionally I hope to be successful and help people and animals with my work, but I cannot pin point the one goal. People change their careers all the time to find what will make them truly happy. Maybe that is everyone's ultimate goal though; to be happy, through whatever means bring happiness to them. But in society today, with all of the stresses and pressures to succeed, is it possible to act ethically at all times? The articles related to cheating really challenge the idea that acting ethically will help you achieve your goals. If your goal is to succeed in an academically challenging school and make your parents proud but you don't feel you have the skills, such as in the story opening Michelle Blake's article "How We Teach Students to Cheat," can cheating be the only solution?
Personally I think ethics has a direct correlation with happiness. Anyone would agree that their are pros and cons to every decision and every outcome has its risks and rewards, but they are different from person to person based on their individual moral code which dictates when a decision is good or bad. If a person is making bad decisions, even if they help to reach their goal, they will not be happy with themselves, as we saw the remorse from the cheater in Blake's story when she was confronted. Without abiding to our own ethical code we cannot have happiness because in order to be happy with our career, our relationship or any other aspect of our lives we must first be happy with ourselves. I may not yet know what professional field I'd like to enter or where I'd like to live yet, and I certainly don't know what the grand goal of my life will be, but I do know I will want to achieve happiness everyday, and in order to do that I must act ethically, I must earn all of my success and treat those around me with respect and dignity.
I agree with professor William Irvine and the opinion that people have trouble identifying and naming their ultimate goal in life. I don’t think that happiness, making money, having people that care about you, or having kids, are some ones’ own distinctive goals because almost everyone strives to have those things. I think someone’s ultimate goal in life is something that isn’t broad or stolen from someone else it’s specific and special to that person. For me personally I know what my ultimate goal in life is, ever since I was 4 years old, I have always wanted to be a professional baseball player and since then my goal hasn’t changed. It is related to my professional goals because that’s what I want my profession to be, although it is a tough route to take I have a back plan to coach or become an athletic director. I think I consider my grand living to be ethical because I’m not willing to cheat to get what I ultimately desire and I would have to say that’s why I desire it. Just like in the second article where she makes her friend promise her not to cheat anymore, I promised myself not to cheat and enhance my abilities beyond what I can control like taking performance enhancing drugs. If I’m going to achieve my ultimate goal in life I want to earn it on my own hard work and ability. I don’t want to have to look back and know I had to cheat to get what I wanted, I would rather work hard and fail, than cheat and get what I want like in the Harvard cheating scandal. You learn more about yourself when you fail and become a stronger person. The articles had to do with Harvard cheating scandal, a friend cheating, or a writer using same speeches and I think it goes back to, do you want to look successful or do you want to actually be successful?
This is the time in our lives when we should be formulating our "grand goals in living."
I believe that a university education was primarily intended to provide individuals with the knowledge necessary to do answer these questions for themselves. However, the model of higher education has diverged from this path, choosing instead to embrace a model that values skills-based training for future employment.
The conception of the individual as being a member of society who is responsible to a larger community has also changed. We are in an era that embraces individuality, consumerism and self-pleasure above all else. The sense of social responsibility is at an all time low.
The dominant media culture has embraced this cult of the individual. It permeates through television, magazines and music, sending the message that "your" happiness should be the main goal; the cliche "do what makes you happy" comes to mind.
I believe that this culture marginalizes social good and that this has detrimental effects on human relations and our environment.
I like to think that I am driven by a sense of responsibility to promote social change, but I know that as a product of the culture that I'm trying to change, I unwittingly undercut my efforts every step of the way.
I can recall two instances of cheating and plagiarism that I heard about through teachers in middle school and high school. One happened in a Technology class, where the teacher told my classmates and I that a student had copied the text of a Wikipedia article into a Word document and turned it in as a paper. Figuring out he’d plagiarized was as simple as noticing the citations and references to nonexistent diagrams in the text. The other came about when my senior year English teacher was grading papers for another class. She handed one to one of my classmates and had him read out the first sentence to she could type it into a search engine. Sure enough, the student had plagiarized one of the top Google hits on the subject.
Both of these instances have stuck in my memory as astounding glimpses into both desperation and what I can only describe as stupidity. I understand where the desire comes from—the delicate balance between succeeding and looking like you’ve succeeded described by Michelle Blake. Fortunately, I’ve never been desperate enough to plagiarize, desperate enough to believe I won’t get caught. It’s beyond me how an eighth grader thought they could pass off a Wikipedia article as their own work, just as it’s beyond me how the Christine Haughney article describes two cases of fabrication in journalism as mere “laspes” in judgment, instead of serious errors.
I’ve said before that I try to internalize examples of behaviors I do and don’t want to imitate. Plagiarism and fabrication are certainly behaviors I hope never to participate in, either in my work as a journalist/reviewer or a writer of fiction. My grand goal in my writing career is certainly to be ethical; I hope to never profit from the hard work of others, rather than my own.
I’m not sure how easily this goal would transfer to my life as a whole—are any of us ever entirely ethical? Don’t we all tell a white lie every once in a while? Doesn’t everyone disobey the occasional traffic rule? (Another instance of ethical misconduct firmly imprinted in my memory is being driven to a play rehearsal by the directors, seniors in high school at the time. “No cop, no stop!” the passenger said to the driver, as she stopped at a stop sign on a deserted road.) If we make it our life goal to be ethical, are we committing ourselves to complete perfection, or to about as much ethics as we can personally manage? I think most of us would say the latter.
Since I’m not entirely certain that my goal to be entirely ethical in my writing career is realistically transferrable to real life, I think my most important future goal would have to be love. I don’t say this for the simple pleasure of having someone to love in my future—I say this with the hope that having friends and family who love me around me in future will hopefully inspire me to act as ethically as I desire to be, for fear of letting them down. Complete and utter ethical conduct is, in my opinion, an impossibility, but so long as I keep my personal goals in mind and am surrounded by people that love me, I believe I can try my hardest.
By saying that "people have trouble naming their grand goal" Irvine is implying that all people should have a grand goal. This puts a lot of pressure on us in terms of the value of reflection. I read all the articles and while they were interesting, my opinion is the same as it was before I read them. If I were required to name a 'grand goal' I would say happiness. We as humans don't know enough about what happens before or after our life on earth to make an informed decision about what is the most important.
In terms of Ethics: My desire to be happy, now and at the end of my life, does not mean I consider all the other goals useless. Instead I think of them as interconnected and fluid. Being happy includes not hurting others, and as you continue to find out what makes you happy, it may mean helping them. Because if you harm people who are on this journey through this life with you, you cannot be truly happy. I think that sounds very ethical.
As Michelle Blake says in her blog post, “we seem to have created a culture in which getting what we want is more important than doing what we should.” But why can’t we have both.
By picking one goal I wouldn't be allowing for future experiences to change my mind. If I had it all figured out at the age of twenty two, what would I do with myself? There would be no more reasons for trial and error. Each of our life resumes are in our heads- travel, accomplishments, successes and failures and relationships. Nobody else will ever know us completely, which is why we should be honest with ourselves, and by extension, others.
Self-awareness or self-realization is a valuable concept, but I think it should be a factor in whatever your grand goal is, not just a goal in itself. “While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything, “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people.” Said Piff in the article by Lisa Miller. Self interest and self awareness go hand in hand and agree with the idea of helping rather than harming others on your way to fulfill your personal goals.
"Why are we here?" "What is the point of life?". These kinds of questions have been asked by people in every generation in and before history. To me, it seems the definitive answer is that there is not only one answer to these questions. By nature life is a completely subjective experience. It's difficult to know for sure if what we experience is even real. On top of this, I think the thought of life just being some arbitrary phenomena has always made man uncomfortable. Lately I've come to see a bit of beauty in the idea of life having no objective purpose (although I can’t say for sure that it doesn't). It's up to every individual to decide what is important to them (that's what I need to write about). Hmmmm, I am definitely one of those people who have a hard time deciding what my "grand goal" in life is. Life is short though, so I suppose it would be a good idea to make some kind of grand purpose for myself. That way I don't waste too much time that I could be spending on a path to fulfillment. I can’t say that I have a definitive grand purpose at the moment, but I definitely know the way in which I want to live my life.(I can least control how I live-for the most part). I know that I want to do well onto others. I know that making other people happy makes me happy and makes life easier to go through. I also know that I really want to create things (art, music, written material). It’s in my nature. I know that I need other people around who care about me, and I feel much more fulfilled when I have other people to care for. I know that I value the truth, and I enjoy sharing it with others. I know that it disappoints me when people experience life in a way that doesn’t bring them fulfillment. I enjoy doing subtle things to help people reach a bit of happiness. Sometimes minds just need to be enticed gently to open. Usually they tighten up when forced like those Indian finger things…
I am not a person who knows what his grand goal in life is yet. I can agree with Professor William Irvine in that "many people have trouble naming their grand goal in living". I have always worked multiple jobs ever since i was a teen, never knowing where they were leading me, i was just seeking money. I sold my soul for money years ago, love has always screwed me over, and fame/power has been in reach but i am too fearful and weak to embrace it. I am in the pursuit of self-realization and wisdom. I realize money, love, fame, escape, and power are negative factors and i need to void them in my life. I believe i am on the right path so far. I am fresh out of a long term relationship, moved into a new apartment by myself, lost a job, have not hung out with friends and family in months, and am now only focusing on me and my new school. I want to focus on my studies and improving my well being, everything else is malarky. I believe if i ever want to be fully ethically inclined, i need to reach self-realization and have much more wisdom. Thankfully, i am ethically inclined enough to know plagiarism/cheating is wrong. I'll never reach self-realization and be wise if i cheat.
I don’t think I have one over-arching goal in life but many small goals I have been working on. I have my own moral code I try to adhere to while working on these goals because I feel my morals are equally as important as the achievement. That’s not to say I haven’t had lapses. We all make mistakes and make decisions that are less than savory at times. I think the problem arises when a people begin to consciously make immoral decisions regularly as a means to advance themselves. The journalists in the articles are a good example. Their goals got in the way of their own moral principles, assuming they had some to begin with. I found the “Money-Empathy Gap” article particularly interesting in that it shows that money, which is perceived as success in our culture, can distract people from their morals to focus on further attainment of their goals. Money may even change which goal a person pursues. People do have different morals and backgrounds so it is hard to judge people who make what I might call a bad or immoral decision. Some people who don’t care about those around them or who don’t feel the need to be completely honest may be acting within their morals. It’s just not the way I feel people should live or conduct themselves professionally, especially journalists or those with the power to influence others lives on a large scale.
I agree with professor Irvine, that "many people have trouble naming their grand goal in living." I think I'm fortunate because, while I may not know exactly where life will take me, right now I have a clear idea of where I want to go: I want to be an author and I want to be happy. I have no idea how I'll get there, just that that's where I want to get. Maybe I'll go into journalism, PR, or Publishing. I don't know, but I find that I have a better sense than most do of where they want to end up.
I think most people (including myself) instantly answer "happiness" as their life goal. The problem is that once you ask people what makes them happy, and from there getting more specific, things further tangentialize. For instance, I would say that no matter what happens in my life, if I find true love and lead the most ethical life I can, then I'll be happy. But what is true love and an ethical life? People have different opinions.
As for the ethicality of getting what you want, I think it's accurately adressed in the "Money-Empathy" article . People view being happy as a goal and therefore when you attain your goal, you "win". According to that article and human nature, people may sacrifice any number of ethical principles to win.
The quote that stood out the most for me of all the articles was in the parent article: "TRUTH is a second class citizen in the glittering world of WINNING."
People say they want to be ethical (or want to lead a "good" life), which entails a certain code of respect towards others; however, at what point is it unethical to look out for ones self? I think the question people struggle with is, When does the responsibility to oneself supersede the responsibility to others? It's a fine line that many cross, but it's also a line of competing perspectives. I know that I have on several occasions behaved questionably towards my close friends in favor of someone I had very strong feelings for. I think part of it is that I know my friends are always around and the risk of loosing this other person--and in consequence the happiness they do and could continue to provide--may exit my life is far greater than the risk of loosing them. Sometimes we're spoiled. Sometimes you can only realize how unethical you were in hindsight when in the initial moment, all I cared about was me and my happiness.
I think most people want to be a force for good, have an impact and change certain aspects and elements of society, culture, or their environment. I think my grand goal in life can be put pretty plainly: change the world. Have an impact. Do something good that positively affects the world around you in a significant way. But the complications associated with actualizing this goal are prevalent.
My ideas about pursuing journalism as a career were explicitly tied to this goal of inspiring change. However, I’ll admit that as I continue my college education and new realizations unfold, my aspirations seem pretty idealistic, and my passion for the profession had dropped into dangerously cynical territory. My plan was to write news stories that would expose wrongdoing, reveal what is right and true, help get the bad guys, and make people think. I think wanting to use the brief period of time I have on Earth to help re-shape the direction in which humanity is headed is ethical, if the definition of ethical is unselfish, conscientious and moralistic.
The only trouble is, the more I learn about the industry, the more depressing the situation is. There’s plagiarism, favoritism, quote approval, composite characters and money-hungry newsrooms. 4 out of 6 Americans distrust the media. The media consistently proves why they can’t be trusted. The news that matters goes unreported, and Snooki’s baby pictures get millions of hits on Google. If you have the guts to write anything hard-hitting, that questions the system or goes against the grain, you risk getting fired. Or sued.
So maybe what’s most valuable to me, when it comes to long-term goals and aspirations and the meaning of life, I don’t have figured out yet. Maybe William Irvine was spot-on.
I know it definitely took me a long time to figure out what I wanted my ultimate life goals were to be. I think that now that I'm getting more into my 20s now I've got a better sense of what I want out of my life. Career-wise I know what I want for sure, but who knows if that will change one day. You never really know what the future is going to bring and life could throw you a curve ball at any moment. I think that is probably one of the reasons that people do have such a difficult time deciding what they want out of their life, because the future is so unclear.
Happiness I think is something that everyone most likely desires. Whether this happiness is achieved in an ethical way really depends on how the person was raised and taught. Obviously a dictator isn't striving for their live goals in the same ethical ways that a person who just desires a family would. Unless they're so desperate the result to kidnapping or something of the sort. I think that wisdom is also a very important goal to achieve because I feel that the more you know the better and more well-rounded your life will be.
As Professor Irvine stated, "many people have trouble naming their grand goal in living," I have to agree. However, the definition of "living" must be taken in to account. Does being alive mean that you're receiving oxygen, simply going through the motions day to day, and following the ethical rules of society? Is one's spirituality a factor in the definition of living? Are we waking up and making the most out of each day? I would like to think that my definition of being alive is being genuinely happy with my existence my relationships with those around me. I base my grand goal in life on ethics. Knowing that I am a good person and keeping my promises means the most to me. I dream of fame and fortune; thoughts of the “American Dream” motive me in my day-to-day life. However, that is all for nothing if we cannot feel at ease with ourselves as a result of the decisions we make on a daily basis. The trend I noticed in the articles we had to read was that our culture is cheating to get ahead: cheating on exams, plagiarizing, recycling work. If the students at Harvard didn’t get caught and all received high test scores, it would be their own consciences that they would have to live with. They would have to deal with their guilt every day. As stated before, I consider my personal and professional goals to be based on ethics. I would like to attain my goals in the most honest and ethical way possible, even if that means not reaching as high of a social status as a dishonest person. At least I could live each day knowing that I can respect myself and have the respect of those close to me who have the same set of morals as I do.
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