Advanced Composition Essay: Tolerance For Dummies.

"That's a good thing; that's a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place."

- Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest
[Speaking about the KKK in 1867]

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"O Christian Martyr,
who, for truth, could die -
when all about thee
owned the hideous lie!
The world, redeemed
from superstition's sway,
is breathing freer
for thy sake today."

- John Greenleaf Whittier
[Inscription on a monument marking the grave of Rebecca Nurse, one of the condemned "witches" of Salem]

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"Quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur.”

Translation [from Latin]:

“For punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit."

- The Handbook for Inquisitors
[Written in 1528]

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From public figures like Mother Theresa and Ghandi, to John Lennon and Lady Gaga; from the Suffrage Movement in New York [1912], to the hippie-youth "Peace Riots" all across America [1964 - 1969] -- the issue of equal human rights has been more adamantly pursued and publicly debated in the past one hundred years than in all of human history. What exactly are human rights? Why are they so important? How does this affect us in this day and age? Why should we take a stand for tolerance even in our every day lives?

More importantly, why should we give a damn?

In a very basic nutshell, human rights are "international norms that help to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. Examples of human rights are the right to freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial when charged with a crime, the right not to be tortured, and the right to engage in political activity," according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Let's imagine a world without these things.

That should be easy. Open up a history book.

As you can see, I've taken the liberty of citing a few brief examples for you in the opening to this essay -- but just in case that was not enough of a reminder of the dark history surrounding prejudice, intolerance, and hatred, here are a few more warm and fuzzy reminders:

After 1945, the holocaust during WWII, by the hands of the Nazi Regime, roughly about six million European Jews [as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals] were rounded up, tortured and murdered -- these targeted groups were thought to be "flawed", therefore being a defective fit in the "master race" [a.k.a., the "Aryan" race]. Though only Jews were gassed, thousands others died of starvation and disease; some were even subjected to cruel medical experiments, such as twins; some were shot by a firing squad; some were hung for hours by their arms, tied behind their backs, outside on wooden poles; some were stripped naked outside in the freezing cold winter with cold water from buckets poured onto them; some were forced to walk on death marches -- those who managed to stay alive the entire walk were forced into the sea and shot.

Also during WWII, Joseph Stalin was responsible for the mass execution of tens of millions of ordinary people in the Soviet Union - many were shipped onto boxcars and placed into forced labor camps, similar to the concentration camps used by Nazi Germany.

Also in the first half of the 20th century, the United States was very anti-Japanese after the bomb attack on Pearl Harbor - roughly about 110,000 Japanese-Americans were placed into "War Relocation Camps" all across the Pacific Coast. It was finally admitted by a legislation signed by President Reagan in 1988 that the reasons behind this were nothing short of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".

A little more recently - in 1994, The Rwandan Genocide was all over the news. Many of us are old enough to at least remember the very basic details - roughly about 800,000 people were murdered in an ethnic fight between the [majority] Hutu and the [minority] Tutsi people.

Intolerance and hate crimes have been commonplace since the dawn of society, and many of us have read stories like the ones I have briefly cited above – and similar others – in their history books.

Is it only in history books?

Far from it:

• Canada: Make Human Rights a Priority [May 9, 2011]

• Honduras: Stop Efforts to Discredit Human Rights Prosecutors [May 31, 2011]

• Sudan: Stop Abyei Abuses, Hold Forces Accountable [May 26, 2011]

• Rwanda: Justice Compromised - Mixed Legacy for Community-Based Genocide Courts [May 31, 2011]

• Nigeria: President Should Make Rights a Priority [May 28, 2011]

• Saudi Arabia: Free Woman Who Dared to Drive [May 23, 2011]

• Israel: Investigate Killings During Border Protests [May 20, 2011]

• Liechtenstein: Say ‘Yes’ to Same-Sex Partnerships [May 25, 2011]

• Sri Lanka: Military Conference to Whitewash War Crimes [May 23, 2011]

Every single one of the above articles are all from Human Rights Watch [hrw.org] - just to mention a few very recent human rights issues going on all around the world right now.

Would you like to be forced into a religion? Would you like to be told where to live? Would you like to be tortured by a violent mob over your skin color and denied a fair trial? Would you like to be denied your voice when treated with injustice? Would you like your sister to? Would you like your mother and your father to? Would you like your 75-year old grandmother to? Would you like your children to?

What example are we setting?

What are we doing about it?

Believe it or not, we can do more than read about it, watch reports on the news, and complain about it. We can actually do something about it. Does this mean standing in front of tanks? Putting flowers in cops' guns? Setting yourself on fire in protest? Getting involved in riots and marches? It doesn't at all have to be anything that shocking and dangerous -- not at all! Whether you realize it or not, you can have a very powerful impact on the world around you. Yes, you. Your words, your actions, and the way that you simply live your life, can go so much farther than you may even imagine.

It's quite simply, really.

How tolerant are you of yourself?

Think about it for a moment: Do you set a bar so high for yourself, that you often fail to reach it? Do you put yourself down, or even hate yourself, for making mistakes in the past? Do you often compare yourself to others? Do you feel that you can never let your guard down around others, in case they ever see through you? Is it extremely important for you to be right all of the time?

You cannot be tolerant of others, if you cannot even be tolerant of yourself.

So learn to be okay with who you are - flaws, quirks, scars, fears, mistakes and all; remind yourself that it's okay to not be perfect. Accept that you are an ever-growing and ever-changing individual. Once you can accept yourself, it is much, much easier to be more accepting of others. Give yourself permission to not know something; to have made a bad decision; to be yourself; to simply live your life. You might very much surprise yourself with how much more liberated you feel, and the less anxious that you are, when you learn to let go of the hatred that you feel towards yourself for simply being a human being.

Isn't it nice knowing that you have room to falter?

Everyone should know that feeling.

With so many people in this world, we could all use a little more breathing room. Would you like your decisions and beliefs to be respected? Wish more people would stop telling you what to do? What to say? What to think? How to feel? -- there's a quote from Ghandi that I believe is famous: "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." This is where it starts. It starts with how we treat ourselves. It starts with how we treat our friends. It starts with how we treat our family. Are you sick of how cold and the violent the world can be? -- then help break the chain. You can make a difference -- what are you waiting for?

Break the chain.

Be the change.

Advanced Composition Essay: The Importance of Tolerance.

TOLERANCE.

How many people know what that word even means?

More importantly, how many care?

Turning on the news, reading up on history, or even just drawing back from my own past, in my parent's home [I grew up in a highly religiously intolerant household] - the world is filled with intolerance, prejudice and hatred, and for the life of me, I will never be able to understand it. It's a mentality as old as humanity itself - point the fingers at the ones who are different than we are.

Not only does it boggle my mind that racism, sexism, ageism, etc. still go on in this day and age, but that it is still rampant in a country that is supposed to live up to its ideals of "liberty, equality and justice for all".

There is a saying credited to George Santayana that I believe is famous: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

• Native Americans are slaughtered and forced to abandon their lands; when European settlers establish the country, only white male land-owners have the right to vote.

• According to the McGraw-Hill School Group, "For much of American history, women were not considered equal to men and were denied equality in many areas of life. Most women had no legal identity apart from their husbands. Married women could not hold property in their own names, sue or be sued, make contracts, sit on a jury, write a will, or vote. Nor did women have the same opportunities for education and careers that men did." Only in 1920 were women even allowed the right to vote.

• "He didn't look like one of us..." To many residents of Atlanta, Georgia in 1913, this was reason enough to suspect Leo Frank of murder, according to the book, The Shadow of Hate - for some, it was reason enough to hang him. Not until The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did African-Americans have rights in this country.

• On August 1, 2007, Robert Maltby and Sophie Lancaster were attacked by a number of males in their late teens while walking through Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Rossendale in Lancashire, England. As a result of her severe head injuries, she went into a coma, never regained consciousness, and later died. Her fiance, Robert Maltby, barely survived. The reason that they were attacked? The couple's wearing gothic fashion and being members of the goth subculture.

• Throughout history, homosexuals have had to go into hiding to avoid persecution and discrimination. Sexual acts between persons of the same sex have only been legal nationwide in the US since 2003, and only five states and one district currently offer marriage to same-sex couples.

How is any of this relevant today?

We live in a world with very different people, with very different opinions, from very different cultures, with very different beliefs, and with very different backgrounds. How long do we have to see history repeat itself -- genocide after vicious genocide; wave after wave of bitter persecution; evacuation after heartbreaking evacuation; massacre after bloody massacre; attack after violent attack; prejudiced viewpoint after prejudiced viewpoint -- when does it end? I don't know about a lot of other people out there, but personally, I'm really sick of all of the hatred, gangs and violence. I want to believe that, as time goes by, the human race can better itself -- strive to become better assets to society, while not having to sacrifice everything about who they are, and without persecuting others for who they are. With so many different kinds of people, kindness, respect, sympathy, and courage are essential to life. I especially think this for America, which is not only a "salad" of races, religions, cultures and backgrounds -- but also a country that was 'supposedly' founded on the freedom of all men. How do we give freedom? -- definitely, not through prejudice and blind hatred.

Everyone has their own belief; ethnicity; tradition; race; heritage; culture -- who wants to be forced to change their own? Who has that right to do that to anyone else?

I want my children to be able to safely grow up in a world where they are free to express their individuality.

But it starts with us, right now.

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Credits - [I'll properly source this later]:

http://blog.glencoe.com/blog/2010/04/01/history-of-women%E2%80%99s-rights-in-america/

How Do You Know If He or She Really Loves You, or Just Needs You?

[Yangki Christine Akiteng]

Picture this:

You meet this person who seems to meet your every need and the relationship flourishes for a while - but suddenly and out of nowhere, he or she needs some time to think and figure things out; or, has so many doubts about him or herself, you, or the relationship; or, he or she just stops calling and rarely returns your calls. You are left stunned and confused over his or her sudden change in behavior: What happened? What did I do?

What happened, is that you developed an attachment based on need to that person, and got it confused with love.

So many men and women often use the word “love", when they really mean "need". I have many clients who come to me with a broken heart - "I really love him/her" - but when we analyze what he or she really means, the person realizes that what they really meant was, "I really need him/her."

What’s the difference?

Have you ever had a crush on / “fallen in love" with a woman who seems so gorgeous and wonderful - and one month or year later, looked at that person again and saw only 'butt ugly' and “she has serious emotional problems"? - or have you ever had a great sexual relationship with a man that you are not compatible with, and - although it is so obvious that your relationship is just a ‘booty call" in which you feel used - you are still willing to put yourself out there to be used, misused, abused, and reused again and again?

That is attraction based on need, and not love. When you are driven by an unfulfilled psychological need for validation; an obsession about the romantic stuff; or, are pushy about getting into a relationship - you’ll typically develop an affinity to a member of the opposite sex who seemingly meets whatever need it is. Your emotional state [fear; anxiety; low self-esteem; desperate; drunk; superficial; unrealistic; broke, or struggling financially; angry; lonely; etc.] at the time you meet, makes the person appear more attractive and desirable than he or she actually is. In a way, that person temporally alleviates those “feelings" by providing temporary comfort - making you feel good about yourself.

The same applies to when someone is attracted to you because they think or have convinced themselves that you will make them feel good.

How can we determine whether what we feel is love, or attachment based on need?

1. Love based on need is often based on unrealistic expectations of perfection: "We had very much in common. In fact, he/she is perfect!' The irony is that our object of unrealistic expectations is often also looking for the perfect man or woman. Go figure!

2. Love based on need is often based on opinions like good looks, status, material possessions, race [including “loving" someone just because he or she is of a different race], etc., which may be quite irrelevant, or even become obstacles for being able to live happily together.

3. In love based on need, your feelings are a “little" exaggerated in that you are caught up in uncontrolled and overwhelming emotions which run from one extreme to another – from feeling deeply in love and being loved to feeling uncertain and even depressed.

4. When you need rather than love someone, you feel fear, anxiety, worry or jealousy especially when separated from him or her. This kind of “love’ often leads to possessiveness and possessiveness leads to FEAR of losing, fake affection out of fear, over-protection, craving or even the feeling: I can't live without her/him.

5. There is a sense of "owing to" in the relationship. In love based on need, how much each person “loves" is measured by and dependent on how much the other person fulfills a need or indulges a desire. We often close our eyes to the negative qualities.

6. Being in “love" based on need feels very exciting but it is also mixed with a fair amount of “pain" and the feeling that you are somehow “suffering" or not being appreciated and valued - enough.

It can be a sobering experience when one deeply reflects on what we normally describe as “love".

Try this experiment:

Ask the man or woman you are dating: “What kind of person are you looking for/interested in?". If that person is driven by need, than he or she will say something along the lines of: “I want a man/woman who looks like… makes me feel… who does this or that for me…". Notice how many times the word 'me' is used. He or she will run you a list of their 'needs' [often very unaware], and will look specifically for the kind of person who they believe will fulfill those 'needs' [read between the lines - you’ll not miss it!]. Better yet - go online and pull up a profile of a potential mate, and you'll see what I mean by 'looking for a person to fill a need'.

A person driven by real love, on the other hand, may think something along the lines of: “I am interested in a man/woman with these qualities… I can do this and that for… I can do this or that with… ". These people send the message that they feel that they have something about themselves that is valuable, and want to share it with a deserving person.

So if you have a crush on someone or have been dating him or her, the potential for something very special could be there… but you must be willing to take the risk of finding out what the person thinks, wants and needs - in another person, and in the relationship [what makes him or her tick]. Doing that may be risking rejection, but knowing is much better than just guessing or creating bonds that may turn very unpleasant!


Akiteng, Yangki Christine [June 5, 2007]. "How Do You Know If He or She Loves You Or Just Needs You?" Retrieved from here.

Kant: The Moral Order.

From Kritik der practischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason, 1788).

From Good Will to Universal Law.


We begin with the concept of that which can be conceived to be good without qualification, a good will. Other good features of human nature and the benefits of a good life, Kant pointed out, have value only under appropriate conditions, since they may be used either for good or for evil. But a good will is intrinsically good; its value is wholly self-contained and utterly independent of its external relations. Since our practical reason is better suited to the development and guidance of a good will than to the achievement of happiness, it follows that the value of a good will does not depend even on the results it manages to produce as the consequences of human action.

Kant's moral theory is, therefore, deontological: actions are morally right in virtue of their motives, which must derive more from duty than from inclination. The clearest examples of morally right action are precisely those in which an individual agent's determination to act in accordance with duty overcomes her evident self-interest and obvious desire to do otherwise. But in such a case, Kant argues, the moral value of the action can only reside in a formal principle or "maxim," the general commitment to act in this way because it is one's duty. So he concludes that "Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law."

According to Kant, then, the ultimate principle of morality must be a moral law conceived so abstractly that it is capable of guiding us to the right action in application to every possible set of circumstances. So the only relevant feature of the moral law is its generality, the fact that it has the formal property of universalizability, by virtue of which it can be applied at all times to every moral agent. From this chain of reasoning about our ordinary moral concepts, Kant derived as a preliminary statement of moral obligation the notion that right actions are those that practical reason would will as universal law.


Imperatives for Action.

More accurate comprehension of morality, of course, requires the introduction of a more precise philosophical vocabulary. Although everything naturally acts in accordance with law, Kant supposed, only rational beings do so consciously, in obedience to the objective principles determined by practical reason. Of course, human agents also have subjective impulses—desires and inclinations that may contradict the dictates of reason. So we experience the claim of reason as an obligation, a command that we act in a particular way, or an imperative. Such imperatives may occur in either of two distinct forms, hypothetical or categorical.

A hypothetical imperative conditionally demands performance of an action for the sake of some other end or purpose; it has the form "Do A in order to achieve X." The application of hypothetical imperatives to ethical decisions is mildly troublesome: in such cases it is clear that we are morally obliged to perform the action A only if we are sure both that X is a legitimate goal and that doing A will in fact produce this desirable result. For a perfectly rational being, all of this would be analytic, but given the general limitations of human knowledge, the joint conditions may rarely be satisfied.

A categorical imperative, on the other hand, unconditionally demands performance of an action for its own sake; it has the form "Do A." An absolute moral demand of this sort gives rise to familiar difficulties: since it expresses moral obligation with the perfect necessity that would directly bind any will uncluttered by subjective inclinations, the categorical imperative must be known a priori; yet it cannot be an analytic judgment, since its content is not contained in the concept of a rational agent as such. The supreme principle of morality must be a synthetic a priori proposition. Leaving its justification for the third section of the Grounding (and the Second Critique), Kant proceeded to a discussion of the content and application of the categorical imperative.


The Categorical Imperative.

Constrained only by the principle of universalizability, the practical reason of any rational being understands the categorical imperative to be: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." That is, each individual agent regards itself as determining, by its decision to act in a certain way, that everyone (including itself) will always act according to the same general rule in the future. This expression of the moral law, Kant maintained, provides a concrete, practical method for evaluating particular human actions of several distinct varieties.

Consider, for example, the case (#2 in the text) of someone who contemplates relieving a financial crisis by borrowing money from someone else, promising to repay it in the future while in fact having no intention of doing so. (Notice that this is not the case of finding yourself incapable of keeping a promise originally made in good faith, which would require a different analysis.) The maxim of this action would be that it is permissible to borrow money under false pretenses if you really need it. But as Kant pointed out, making this maxim into a universal law would be clearly self-defeating. The entire practice of lending money on promise presupposes at least the honest intention to repay; if this condition were universally ignored, the (universally) false promises would never be effective as methods of borrowing. Since the universalized maxim is contradictory in and of itself, no one could will it to be law, and Kant concluded that we have a perfect duty (to which there can never be any exceptions whatsoever) not to act in this manner.

On the other hand, consider the less obvious case (#4 in the text) of someone who lives comfortably but contemplates refusing any assistance to people who are struggling under great hardships. The maxim here would be that it is permissible never to help those who are less well-off than ourselves. Although Kant conceded that no direct contradiction would result from the universalization of such a rule of conduct, he argued that no one could consistently will that it become the universal law, since even the most fortunate among us rightly allow for the possibility that we may at some future time find ourselves in need of the benevolence of others. Here we have only an imperfect duty not act so selfishly, since particular instances may require exceptions to the rule when it conflicts either with another imperfect duty (e.g., when I don't have enough money to help everyone in need) or a perfect duty (e.g., if the only way to get more money would be under a false promise).

Kant also supposed that moral obligations arise even when other people are not involved. Since it would be contradictory to universalize the maxim of taking one's own life if it promises more misery than satisfaction (#1), he argued, we have a perfect duty to ourselves not to commit suicide. And since no one would will a universalized maxim of neglecting to develop the discipline required for fulfilling one's natural abilities (#3), we have an imperfect duty to ourselves not to waste our talents.

These are only examples of what a detailed application of the moral law would entail, but they illustrate the general drift of Kant's moral theory. In cases of each of the four sorts, he held that there is a contradiction—either in the maxim itself or in the will—involved in any attempt to make the rule under which we act into a universal law. The essence of immorality, then, is to make an exception of myself by acting on maxims that I cannot willfully universalize. It is always wrong to act in one way while wishing that everyone else would act otherwise. (The perfect world for a thief would be one in which everyone else always respected private property.) Thus, the purely formal expression of the categorical imperative is shown to yield significant practical application to moral decisions.


Alternative Formulæ for the Categorical Imperative.

Although he held that there is only one categorical imperative of morality, Kant found it helpful to express it in several ways. Some of the alternative statements can be regarded as minor variations on his major themes, but two differ from the "formula of universal law" sufficiently to warrant a brief independent discussion.

Kant offered the "formula of the end in itself" as: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means." This places more emphasis on the unique value of human life as deserving of our ultimate moral respect and thus proposes a more personal view of morality. In application to particular cases, of course, it yields the same results: violating a perfect duty by making a false promise (or killing myself) would be to treat another person (or myself) merely as a means for getting money (or avoiding pain), and violating an imperfect duty by refusing to offer benevolence (or neglecting my talents) would be a failure to treat another person (or myself) as an end in itself. Thus, the Kantian imperative agrees with the Christian expression of "The Golden Rule" by demanding that we derive from our own self-interest a generalized concern for all human beings.

Drawing everything together, Kant arrived at the "formula of autonomy," under which the decision to act according to a maxim is actually regarded as having made it a universal law. Here the concern with human dignity is combined with the principle of universalizability (← Jae Steele: Is this even a word? O.o) to produce a conception of the moral law as self-legislated by each for all. As Kant puts it,

A rational being belongs to the kingdom of ends as a member when he legislates in it universal laws while also being himself subject to these laws. He belongs to it as sovereign, when as legislator he is himself subject to the will of no other.

A rational being must always regard himself as legislator in a kingdom of ends rendered possible by freedom of the will, whether as member or as sovereign.

In this final formulation, the similarity of Kant's moral theory with his epistemology should be clear. Just as the understanding in each of us determines the regulative principles of natural science that all must share, so the practical reason in each of us determines the universal maxims of morality that all must obey.


Autonomy of the Will.

In fact, this final formula for the categorical imperative brings us back to the original concept of the will itself as that which is good without qualification. At this point in the argument, Kant can provide a more technical statement of its intrinsic moral value by distinguishing between autonomy and heteronomy of the will.

A heteronomous will is one in obedience to rules of action that have been legislated externally to it. Such a will is always submitting itself to some other end, and the principles of its action will invariably be hypothetical imperatives urging that it act in such a way as to receive pleasure, appease the moral sense, or seek personal perfection. In any case, the moral obligations it proposes cannot be regarded as completely binding upon any agent, since their maxim of action comes from outside it.

An autonomous will, on the other hand, is entirely self-legislating: The moral obligations by which it is perfectly bound are those which it has imposed upon itself while simultaneously regarding them as binding upon everyone else by virtue of their common possession of the same rational faculties. All genuinely moral action, Kant supposed, flows from the freely chosen dictates of an autonomous will. So even the possibility of morality presupposes that human agents have free will, and the final section of the Grounding is devoted to Kant's effort to prove that they do.

Human Freedom.

As we might expect, Kant offered as proof of human freedom a transcendental argument from the fact of moral agency to the truth of its presupposed condition of free will. This may seem to be perfectly analogous to the use of similar arguments for synthetic a priori judgments in the First Critique, but the procedure is more viciously circular here. Having demonstrated the supreme principle of morality by reference to autonomy, Kant can hardly now claim to ground free will upon the supposed fact of morality. That would be to exceed the bounds of reason by employing an epistemological argument for metaphysical purposes.

Here's another way of looking at it: Each case of moral action may be said to embody its own unique instance of the antimony between freedom and causal determination. For in order to do the right thing, it must at least be possible for my action to have some real effect in the world, yet I must perform it in complete independence from any external influence. Morality requires both freedom and causality in me, and of course Kant supposes that they are. I can think of myself from two standpoints: I operate within the phenomenal realm by participating fully in the causal regularities to which it is subject; but as a timeless thing in itself in the noumenal realm I must be wholly free. The trick is to think of myself in both ways at once, as sensibly determined but intelligibly free.

Kant rightly confesses at the end of the Grounding that serious contemplation of morality leads us to the very limits of human reason. Since action in accordance with the moral law requires an autonomous will, we must suppose ourselves to be free; since the correspondence of happiness with virtue cannot be left to mere coincidence, we must suppose that there is a god who guarantees it; and since the moral perfection demanded by the categorical imperative cannot be attained in this life, we must suppose ourselves to live forever. Thus god, freedom, and immortality, which we have seen to be metaphysical illusions that lie beyond the reach of pure reason, turn out to be the three great postulates of practical reason.

Although the truth about ourselves and god as noumenal beings can never be determined with perfect certainty, on Kant's view, we can continue to function as responsible moral agents only by acting as if it obtains. Things could hardly have been otherwise: the lofty dignity of the moral law, like the ultimate nature of reality, is the sort of thing we cannot know but are bound to believe.


Morality and Peace.

Kant's interest in moral matters was not exclusively theoretical. In Die Metaphysik der Sitten (Metaphysics of Morals, 1797) he worked out the practical application of the categorical imperative in some detail, deriving a fairly comprehensive catalog of specific rules for the governance of social and personal morality. What each of us must actually will as universal, Kant supposed, is a very rigid system of narrowly prescribed conduct.

In Zum ewigen Frieden (On Perpetual Peace) (1795), Kant proposed a high-minded scheme for securing widespread political stability and security. If statesmen would listen to philosophers, he argued, we could easily achieve an international federation of independent republics, each of which reduces its standing army, declines to interfere in the internal affairs of other states, and agrees to be governed by the notion of universal hospitality.


Kant's Third Critique.

The final component of Kant's critical philosophy found expression in his Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment, 1790). Where the first Critique had dealt with understanding in relation to reality and the second had been concerned with practical reason in relation to action, this third Critique was meant to show that there is a systematic connection between the two, a common feature underlying every use of synthetic a priori judgments, namely the concept of purpose. In the last analysis, Kant supposed, it is our compulsion to find meaning and purpose in the world that impels us to accept the tenets of transcendental idealism.

In aesthetics, for example, all of our judgments about what is beautiful or sublime derive from the determination to impose an underlying form on the sensory manifold. Like mathematics, art is concerned with the discovery or creation of unity in our experience of the spatio-temporal world. Teleological judgments in science, theology, and morality similarly depend upon our fundamental convictions, that operation of the universe has some deep purpose and that we are capable of comprehending it.

Kant's final word here offers an explanation of our persistent desire to transcend from the phenomenal realm to the noumenal. We must impose the forms of space and time on all we perceive, we must suppose that the world we experience functions according to natural laws, we must regulate our conduct by reference to a self-legislated categorical imperative, and we must postulate the noumenal reality of ourselves, god, and free will—all because a failure to do so would be an implicit confession that the world may be meaningless, and that would be utterly intolerable for us. Thus, Kant believed, the ultimate worth of his philosophy lay in his willingness "to criticize reason in order to make room for faith." The nineteenth-century German philosophers who followed him quickly moved to transform his modest critical philosophy into the monumental metaphysical system of absolute idealism.

Advanced Composition Essay: Stereotypes.

A stereotype is a commonly held oversimplified, generic image assigned to a group of people related to their race, nationality, age, sexual orientation, interests, etc. - to name a few. Generally speaking, they are not based on objective / verifiable truth, but on prior assumptions and prejudices. We’ve all heard them; some famous ones, by way of example, are:

• All white people are racist.
• All black people love watermelon and only listen to hip-hop and rap.
• All blondes are stupid.
• All women with short hair are gay.
• All men who love the arts are gay.
• All women are complicated.
• All men are pigs.
• All teenagers are sex-crazed drug addicts.
• All Irishman are drunks.
• All Germans are Nazi-sympathizers.
• All Asians are bad drivers, but good at math.
• All Vietnamese paint nails.
• All Russians are Communists.
• All Hispanics are illegal.
• All Americans are fat, lazy and uneducated.
• All southerners in the U.S. have sex with their cousins.
• All Italians have mob connections.
• All Jamaicans smoke weed.
• All Cubans deal drugs.
• All Brazilians play soccer.
• All Muslims are terrorists.
• All Christians are anti-gay.
• All Jews are greedy.
• All Atheists and Agnostics hate religion and have no morals.
• All homeless people are homeless by choice.

ETC.

I chalk up the forming of stereotypes to ignorance and fear of the unknown. People fear what they do not understand, and when they feel threatened, they feel a need to become superior somehow; so certain one-dimensional characteristics are noted, and then turned into caricatures / labels that represent an entire group of people. As a result, most stereotypes are derogatory in nature, i.e., racist, sexist, ageist, etc.

These stereotypes can even lead to bullying in a very young age – for instance, in grade schools, there are famous cases of the jocks and the preps picking on the nerds and the geeks; the skaters picking on the Goths, and the Goths picking on the emos. Even sexual stereotypes are common in schools – the conservatives picking on the gay and bisexual; the feminine men are harassed for being gay, and the masculine women are harassed for being lesbian; supporters for gay rights are harassed for being gay – the list goes on and on.

Where do we break the chain?

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

- Mark Twain

There is such a thing as a positive stereotype, though [i.e., all black people are good athletes], but since stereotypes generally tend to not be based on truth, I disagree with treating them as such. We are all guilty of using stereotypes at some point; often, this is due to never having more than second-hand knowledge of a group of people while growing up.

However, once you have added knowledge to the contrary – and you are more aware of the uniqueness and individuality of the group, and yet, you still choose to categorize people in stereotypical ways – you are suggesting that you cannot accept anything positive about that group of people, and you are participating in prejudice. This is when stereotypes especially become damaging and offensive.

The bottom line is, judging a person based solely on preconceived notions will not only discourage another person to succeed – these stereotypes cause the enforcers of them to lead lives driven by hate, and the victims of these stereotypes to lead lives driven by fear. For these reasons, it is not only hurtful to stereotype– it is unethical, and creates a lose-lose situation.