In his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke argues that every citizen is entitled to his or her own civil rights, and that religious toleration is an aspect within this that must respected by everyone, including the magistrate. He further explains the role of the magistrate, the difference between church and state, and proposes the limits for toleration. By doing so, he attempts to introduce an idea that at the time was not yet formally formulated, otherwise known as the separation of church and state. Because modern society has, for the most part, an acknowledgeable separation between church and state, Locke’s idea of religious toleration can be applied at distinct degrees.
A degree to which Locke’s idea of religious toleration can be applied to would be on societies. A societal religious toleration example would be that which was alluded to in class, Flat-Earthers. Anyone could infer, as the name probably gives out, Flat-Earthers base their ideals on the sole belief of Earth being flat. They do not identify themselves as a religion, given that the concept of a religion involves believing in a superior being, but rather a society. Locke’s first limit on toleration states that “No private person has any right to encroach in any way on another person’s civil goods because he declares his allegiance to another church or religion”(or society), for we cannot act as the civil magistrate and intervene, or strip, a person of his rights because he is not compliant with a country’s majoritarian belief. Another degree to which Locke’s idea of religious toleration can be applied to would be on minor religious groups, such as Nuwaubianism. Nuwaubianism is an identified minor religious whose religious basis is built on societies such as that of the Freemasons and the Shriners. Some of the Nuwaubian beliefs rely on ideas such as that in which humans were once perfectly symmetrical and ambidextrous, but then a meteorite struck Earth and tilted its axis causing handedness and shifting the heart off-center in the chest, the belief that each human has seven clones around the world, that Tesla came from planet Venus and that the Illuminati has a child that was born to the Kennedy’s and raised by former United States President Richard Nixon. These ideas might seem a bit off to some of us, in fact, most of these seem to be none other than matters that merit no questioning, for they appear to be just “there”. Locke’s second limit on toleration, which relies on the belief that if a person is worshipping or revering a superior being or ideal in a manner that does not intervene with another person’s civil rights, then the act should be tolerated, can be applied to this example. Finally, the last thought-of example of a degree to which Locke’s idea of religious toleration can be applied to would be on church as a whole, which is the ultimate goal in Locke reasoning, as derived from his statement, “A church starts as a free and voluntary society.” His third limit on toleration can be referenced to in this situation, “What I say about toleration between private persons who differ in religion applies also to particular churches; they relate to one another pretty much as private persons do, with none of them—even ones to which the civil magistrate belongs—having any kind of jurisdiction over any other.”, for a follower of a religion, or a church for that matter, cannot deem the practicing of another society or religious group not legal for being distinct to their own. That being said, I agree with Locke, in the sense that ideal practices distinct to personal ones should be tolerated, and in this case, it includes the Flat Earth society. On another note, I do not know if Locke would necessarily agree with Flat-Earthers being religiously tolerated given that they, like atheists, do not have a book to swear on, and can be deemed as non-reliable or untrustworthy, but that is another argument for another blog post. References: 1. John Locke's A Letter On Toleration 2. Extremely Weird Religions http://listverse.com/2009/09/10/10-extremely-weird-religions/
0 Comments
It is nearly indisputable to argue that Machiavellian strategies will get you anywhere else but to the top of the “Most Powerful Countries” list in modern day times. Even though some of us on a personal level may or may not agree, it is evident that most of the word rulers assess matters in a Machiavellian manner. However, there is a certain sense of doubt I presence from this fact if I place it in modern day context. Machiavelli’s rules describe a prince’s way to accomplish power, to be respected, to serve thy country and to maintain it. He says that it is better to be feared than loved, and that a prince must be at the masses’ disposition yet able to turn to cruelty if necessary. Then again, I question, are Machiavellian rules competent in modern day politics? By this, I mean, is it more practical to be a country who is feared and who assumes a definite political standing, or is it better to be a loved, neutral country instead?
In order to explain my reasoning, I will use the example of a country viewed as politically neutral all else equal, and to some extent, loved, Switzerland, and that of a politically definite, publicly feared country, Russia. Switzerland declared its perpetual neutrality during the 1815’s Congress of Vienna. Following this, the country has passed on to be a prosperous and modern market economy with low unemployment, a highly skilled labor force, and a per capita GDP among the highest in the world. Switzerland's economy benefits from a highly developed service sector, led by financial services, and a manufacturing industry that specializes in high technology, knowledge-based production. Its economic and political stability, transparent legal system, exceptional infrastructure, efficient capital markets, and low corporate tax rates also make Switzerland one of the world's most competitive economies. On the other hand, Russia remains a predominantly statist economy with a high concentration of wealth in officials' hands. Economic reforms in the 1990s privatized most industry, with notable exceptions in the energy, transportation, banking, and defense-related sectors. The protection of property rights is still weak, and the state continues to interfere in the free operation of the private sector. A combination of falling oil prices, international sanctions, and structural limitations pushed Russia into a deep recession in 2015, with GDP falling by close to 2.8%. The Swiss government’s military expenditures in total form less than .8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, while a powerful country such as Russia invests approximately 5.4 percent on military expenditures. After this brief summary of Russian and Swiss economy and transnational issues, we could infer that Russia follows Machiavellian rule to a greater extent. Now, in attempt to analyze effectiveness, we must analyze the countries’ opportunity costs if a war were to break. Swiss opportunity cost will be minimum, given that a neutral country will have little to no military expenditures, a stabilized economy, and nearly no deaths that could have a negative effect on human capital and the country’s marginal product of labor, generally speaking, while Russia struggles with entirely the opposite situation. However, Switzerland’s economy is dependent on trade for raw materials, machinery, chemicals, vehicles, metals, agricultural products, and textiles, and has politically defined countries as trading partners, which means that in the case of war, their economy could become unstable at any moment. Meanwhile, Russian economy’s only major depend is oil, yet it also has politically defined countries as trading partners. I was not able to draw a sole conclusion to my question, therefore I call on whoever might read my post this week to comment their opinions and propose their own conclusions to the question. References
In Machiavellian context, any explicit statement or idea usually has two or more meanings. Why? No one knows. However, as an attempt to understand what Niccolo Machiavelli meant with the statement “Let us leave to one side, then, all discussions of imaginary rules and talk about practical realities." I focused on mass thinking rather than putting myself in the prince’s shoes, as I had to do to understand the book during my first exposure to Machiavellian literature.
I must deduce that Machiavelli’s basis for this statement relies on the idea that he recognized, at a given point throughout the book, that he was disclosing an enduring amount of advice and that some of it, even though preferred, might be considered not feasible. The reason for this thinking relies on how he argues further in the chapter this previously established reasoning by implementing a set of comparisons in pairs of antonym qualities as so: “one is reputed generous, one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere, another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous; one religious, another unbelieving, and the like.” He then realizes, that he must propose a contradicting stance given that he can, at some point, be overwhelming in all of this and must narrow it down. Consequently, he implies, “And I know that every one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose him his state.” This then credits him with certain trust given that readers will share his vision in a way: even though the perfect prince will possess all the qualities thoroughly mentioned in the book, it is often not attainable, or quite impossible, given that these qualities are not yielded by human nature. I must confess that I do agree with his stance in this chapter. He recognizes human flaw and human nature by expressing so, yet also exalts human capability and continues to stress his point as to what a prince must do to overcome this “law of nature”. Additionally, I comply with his advice, in a sense, given that a successful prince must be most of which he notes (i.e. being compassionate, yet having the capability to turn to cruelty if necessary, being faithless yet faithful, being sincere, but also master cunning and deceitful attitudes if necessary, etc.) but perhaps not all. I do not agree with the phrase of the previously quoted statement in which he mentions that a prince must be “effeminate and cowardly, yet bold and brave”, and this relies on the context in which he utilizes the word “effeminate”. Throughout the listing of antonym qualities, Machiavelli lists what he understands to be the vulnerabilities first, anyone who gets the gist of Machiavellian literature would understand so, and then he also accompanies this word by “cowardly”, which right form reading it provides a vulnerable connotation. Machiavelli completely disregards the figure of a woman throughout the development of the storyline, and further diminishes femininity by comparing virtue to women in a condescending and derogating manner. There are various factors and methods as to why and how a person can express femininity, and personally, I do not think that a ruler, or in this case a prince, expressing any form of femininity would provide any reason for the masses to think less of him. My reflection for this week does not focus on anything dealt with in class but rather a situation that arose from a conversation I was having with one of my classmates that seemed irrelevant at the moment, but apparently is a misconception that all “Americans” have. This is a map of America; the continent is composed of thirty-five sovereign countries. If a person was born in any one of those thirty-five countries, or belonging territories, the person is American. A person may, however, consider his or her demonym to be that of the country in which he or she was born in, but generally speaking, a person’s demonym is usually determined by the continent in which he or she was born. Allow me to explain myself by these examples, if a person was born in Italy, the person is Italian yes, but he or she could also be referred to as European. What if he or she was born in China or India? They are referred to as Asians, and so on and so forth. Sam case happens with Americans. A common misconception relies on the public belief that United States residents are the only Americans. In a chat I was having the other day, someone referred to the people or Puerto Rico as American Citizen but not purely American. I sat back and tried to go over what the person had just said, thinking I might have heard wrong. The person continues to say “The people of Puerto Rico are Puertorricans, not Americans, they were not born in America.” and that was the moment when I realized, no one has ever noticed what I’m trying to convey in this reflection. In another class, a teacher asked if we agreed or disagreed with her statement: “You need money in order to have power in America.” I disagreed. When the teacher asked for my reasoning, I answered referencing former President of Uruguay, José Mujica, and the fact that he has been denominated “the poorest president in the world” due to his extremely low net worth, yet he acquired power and a respected chair among co-workers because of his ideals. Many looked puzzled and stared at me, as if I had not answered the question. I then clarify that the professor said “America” and that if she were referring to the United States only, she would’ve said so. Once again, my classmates had never heard anyone reason the way I do, or the way geography and demonyms have been doing this entire time. Nonetheless, I do recognize that the word “American” is one of the most commonly misused words on a daily basis, and that most do not intend to use it as a discriminatory resource. Now, I can only hope that the next time you hear the word “America”, you’ll remember this blog post and be able to discern whether it is being misused or not (and possibly be able to correct the person. ) Note: I must reference the title of the blog post; full credit to designer Stella Nolasco for her New York Fashion Week theme. For those of you who read my sustantive titled "4,645", an article just came out in the New York Times and is casually relevant to my post. I think it reflects what the federal government thinks versus what the people of Puerto Rico actually see pretty well. Adjunct is the link to it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/us/trump-puerto-rico-maria-response.html Also, I want to thank everyone that commented in the last post. I really liked seeing your comments and opinions in regards to what you knew about the situation, what is actually new to you guys and how you can or cannot relate in certain things I talked about it the sustantive. I also appreciated the fact that some of you came up to talk to me about it and discuss your views on the situation itself; anything I receive from you guys as an opinion is certainly more or just as valuable as anything that you could get from reading it. In attempt to understand the rules of the game before proposing strategies, I figured that I had to employ my usual method of learning, intrapersonal logical style. This just means that I learn by analyzing and comparing subjects. In this case, I understood the game of risk by relating the rules to the principles of Microeconomics.
One of the main focus points of Microeconomics relies on the fact that incentives matter, meaning people respond to benefits and offers. This is also called rational self- interest, for people are drawn to act upon self-interest, may it be choosing whatever is simpler to them, whatever is most convenient or whatever benefits them the most, and this is seen all throughout the game. Whenever the World Council meets, they convene to come up with the lineup for the round, this is based on the teams’ best interest, given that the diplomats choose their positioning based on what works best. For example, being first may give you the opportunity of choosing your strategy first, but being last could give the team the winning move; same goes with the alliances (and future coalitions), we ally-up because the ally’s position could be a possible advantage for the team, right? The second main focus point states that tradeoffs are everywhere, and this involves a term called an opportunity cost. Opportunity cost can be defined as what you need to give up (may it be money, time, energy, materials, etc.) in order to receive. An example of this in the game is the Research and Development and the option to purchase an army. In the case of Research and Development, a team will invest in order to later receive the benefits of achieving the maximum, once again employing both of the main focus points I’ve explained so far. Moreover, similar is the case of that of purchasing an army, a team will invest in an army and position it strategically in the case a war breaks out. In the same manner, one of the teams purchased an army in the city. Now, this could have been a strategic move, but it is most likely that teams will be drawn to buy armies in the city because the price the team has to pay for it is not as expensive as an army in the rest of the country. This, furthermore, exemplifies the principles in the sense that the monetary adjustment the team has to make is small, therefore the team’s attention is drawn to this offer. Finally, Microeconomic principles discuss the idea of thinking at the margin. This relies on the fact that people compare costs and benefits to the small adjustments they might have to make. As a professor once explained, an example of this might be the fact that people are willing to spend more on diamonds than on water. And why is this, if a person’s need for water is greater than a person’s need for diamonds? His explanation relied solely on the fact that there is more demand on water, but at the same time, there is abundance of this resource, unlike that of diamonds, therefore, people are willing to make adjustments in order to outweigh marginal benefits over marginal costs. An example of this in the game could be that there are teams that invest in Research and Development first, making this their top priority, because the marginal benefits of being the first ones to accomplish maximum Research and Development outweigh the cost the team has to pay at some point. I would say that my understanding of Microeconomics did help a lot in my on-going understanding of the game while it has also aided in understanding how and why people react the way they do. I look forward to seeing how other principles might come up as we keep playing Microeconomic Risk. “There is no reparation great enough to substitute for what was stolen.” And what was stolen? Four thousand six hundred and forty-five lives. “Get over it”, some said, “It’s been a year”, others argued. “I have learned no amount of vengeance can replace what I lost.”
Some comment on how Awiti’s character was not quite as relatable as would have been preferred, while others mentioned argued that the hurricane situation was not the best technique to try to develop and discuss the trama. I for one, disagree. I am glad that most cannot relate, you wouldn’t want to either; I wish I couldn’t. It startles me to see the limited information that is provided to the public eye around here. I’m glad that the citizens in the states have not been in the midst of hunger, desperation, illness and death. I am glad that your government has not failed to provide the bare necessities during an emergency. I am glad that your government, for the most part, has not discriminated the area you’re in, may it be because of the people, their political standing, or the distance needed to travel in order to deliver the supplies. Your government failed the people of Puerto Rico; my government failed us, Awiti’s people failed her. I have friends that died. My then eleven-month-old brother had to be transported the morning of the hurricane to a hospital in Orlando because we had none on the island. He could have died. We were on a food shortage, no running water, no power, no working hospitals or first aid facilities and no viable roads for months, yet this continues to happen. In the midst of asking for help, most agencies said they could not do anything because we were “an island in the middle of the ocean” or that they could not provide services because we are not a state. Some said that the government had done it all because they were giving out plastic containers full of what we thought would be a meal (which was apparently what was advertised), but was actually a can of Carmela sausages and Skittles. Others argued that the President did such a charitable gesture when he stood on a platform and threw paper towel rolls at the crowd. The US government reported that the number of fatalities was sixty-four, and they were proud of this number, only to discover a few months later, that it was actually four thousand six hundred and forty-five fatalities. Who do we hold accountable? Can we really find peace after all the suffering? If my brother had not have made it out alive, I probably wouldn’t have been able to find it. I didn’t really have it as bad as some. I got to go to college, but most of us couldn’t. Some were left as orphans. Others still have no power. It takes time to find peace, maybe some cannot, and that has to be okay. People cannot be forced to make amends with those who were able to help, but decided against doing so. The fact that Awiti feels as if she has not found peace and is accepting that she possibly will not, is her way of complying with the situation. It’s been a year for me, but it has been centuries for her, and I have learned no amount of vengeance can replace what we lost. I have questioned terms whose definition I thought I knew by heart, I have made some correlations I never thought I would make and I have challenged a new perspective of thought itself, and we’re only two classes into the semester.
I found Monday’s introductory class unusual but thought provoking. The fact that the whole discussion sprouted from a comment on how service does not necessarily have to be non-profit was intriguing. I’ve questioned whether or not the act of paying for a service influences the mere act of it being a service, or if it turns into commerce once you pay for a service. I came to realize that there are so many different types of service, that I could only comprehend less than five. Nonetheless, what I most liked about this was the aftermath; I decided to call a friend back home and ask him what he thought about the topic… we engaged in a three-hour conversation that led to the conclusion I mentioned before, which is also, an inconclusive conclusion (if that makes any sense). The following class started out as a very confusing class given that we were having a conversation about how we were going to commence the conversation on the discussion of the book’s discussion. It was definitely confusing and eventually reached a dead end (given that we had to turn to dictatorship and have the Professor decide the best approach), but it made sense that it was an insight to the actual political world and how complex it is to come to conclusions on an international degree. However, what I felt got somewhat out of context was the discussion of the book, given that at one point we were focusing on how the book was written instead of why the book was written (the phrase itself was expressed by Katie because I couldn’t manage to put together the correct words), but I’ll definitely look more into that in my substantive post. Overall, it was a very interesting topic week, and I am definitely excited for the classes to come. |
Author's QuoteWell, if droids could think, there’d be none of us here, would there? Archives
December 2018
Categories |