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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2013-11-12 16:03
I wrote an essay for PACS and since my grammar is kind of bad, can you guys check and see if it's ok?
[FONT="Arial"] Happiness is the highest intrinsic value: Aristotle and Mill may disagree on the definition of happiness, but they agree on its value, and happiness is the foundation of my definition of peace. I believe peace is the equilibrium of two variables: happiness (h) and discontent (d). Circumstances bring discontent over happiness until the difference exceeds tolerance t(h,s). Tolerance is a function depends on two variables: happiness and social values, as happiness increases, the level of tolerance decreases due to people having higher expectations in life, and social values that promote peace will also increase the tolerance level. When d - h > t(h,s), conflict will appear, at which point something will be introduced into the equation to bring it back to the state of equilibrium. It is my understanding that the three approaches toward conflict resolution are power, right and interest [1]. When people deny or ignore the right and interest approach, power is used to resolve conflict, and that often means violence. In conclusion, my definition of positive peace is the state of equilibrium between people’s happiness and discontent, my definition of negative peace is the state when d – h > t(h, s), but has not yet reached a violent approach.
PACS 201 categorizes peace into direct (negative) peace, structural (positive) peace, and cultural peace.[2] Direct peace refers to the state of peace without direct violence. Direct violence originally encompasses physical violence lethal or otherwise, but recently, verbal violence is also recognized as direct violence. Direct peace is the final stage before violence in conflict, and is undesirable compared to structural peace, or cultural peace. Positive peace is not only the lack of violence, but also an environment that favours people’s well-being. In essence, compared to direct peace, people not only avoid using violence, but they also don’t want to use violence. Cultural peace is much like structural peace but more deep rooted. Cultural peace is the peace of value, when people’s upbringing favours a state of peace. Following the examples above, cultural peace is the state of mind when people never considered using violence as an option.
There are many similarities between my peace definition and that of the class. I believe my peace equilibrium hypothesis can describe all three types of peace in class definition. A state of conflict is represented by d - h > t(h, s), and if the approach to said conflict does not involve violence, then direct peace is achieved. Structural peace and Cultural peace would be when d – h < t(h, s), the difference between structural and cultural peace is the value of s, which represent the presence of peaceful social values. The main differences between the two sets of definitions are how I categorize direct and cultural peace. My equation doesn’t distinguish between direct peace and direct violence because it only describes a state of conflict. Cultural peace is a separate state of peace. My equation represents the social values in the form of a variable for tolerance function, when s is high, the tolerance value is also high, I believe it acts as a modifier which counteracts happiness value’s negative effect on tolerance level due to higher life expectation.
My peace definition is a collection of many past experiences. I learned the value of happiness from PHIL 215[3], which is the basis for my peace equilibrium. Then I was introduced to the fact that moral actions cannot be explained by logic in PHIL 145[4]. I thought about why moral actions cannot be explained by logic and came up with my own conclusion. Based on what I learned about John Stuart Mill’s idea of social utility maximization and individual utility maximization.[4] I deduced that moral actions are actions that don’t benefit people individually, but rather benefit society as a whole, to fit the bill of moral action, said action must be selfless. That is why logic cannot explain moral actions because there are no direct reasons for people to engage in moral actions; however if we bring social standing into the equation then it is quite logical. Moral actions invoke praises from one’s peers and possibly raise one’s status in society, thus indirectly, moral actions are still self-serving. This conclusion became the basis of my view on the importance of social values. If peaceful morals are introduced, it becomes self-serving for individuals in said society to follow these values, and thus promotes cultural peace.
Peace equilibrium is quite hard to achieve as conflicts will always arise and it is unhealthy to stop conflict from happening when there are problems. What we can do is optimize our approach to conflict, thus minimize violence in conflicts. If we can improve social values on an international level, we can increase the tolerance level and making conflict resolution more peaceful. The formation of UN is a good step towards establishing a sense of global community, but even today most countries still don’t view foreign nations as part of a bigger community they all belong to. According to my theory on morality, without a sense of community, there are no benefits for performing moral actions, which means currently countries perform moral actions largely based on their self-interests, and the interests of their allies. I believe a presence of global community will increase the incentive for moral actions dramatically. My proposal will not stop conflicts from happening, but I believe it is a powerful tool we can use to establish more peaceful values on a global scale and decrease violence when conflicts do arise.[/FONT]
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Yogurticecream wrote on 2013-11-13 04:04
I suggest using some kind of word checking program. Not going to read through the whole thing, but I see something odd in this one.
The main differences between the two sets of definitions are how I categorize direct and cultural peace
You might want to revise it to
The main difference between the two sets of definitions will be how I categorize direct and cultural peace
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800mans wrote on 2013-11-13 06:48
I am totally digging the mathematical diction in this essay<3. But from a quick glance, one of the general underlying assumptions is that a utopian society cannot exist? As in one where humans don't have this trait which compels them to always want the status quo to improve? Ie there seems to be an implication that humans have some distaste for perfect society put into reality. And I'm sorry but I have a natural bias against the UN. I treat the UN as a western imperialist system so yea.. But I guess most of my comments are more opinion-based comments than they are valuable. Ie they dont really help you with the logical flow/structure in your essay. Ill try to look at it tmrw (never taken PHIL before) after my physics midterm. Just realized you were asking for a grammar check nvm! I fail at grammar too:c
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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2013-11-13 17:48
Quote from 800mans;1168996:
I am totally digging the mathematical diction in this essay<3. But from a quick glance, one of the general underlying assumptions is that a utopian society cannot exist? As in one where humans don't have this trait which compels them to always want the status quo to improve? Ie there seems to be an implication that humans have some distaste for perfect society put into reality. And I'm sorry but I have a natural bias against the UN. I treat the UN as a western imperialist system so yea.. But I guess most of my comments are more opinion-based comments than they are valuable. Ie they dont really help you with the logical flow/structure in your essay. Ill try to look at it tmrw (never taken PHIL before) after my physics midterm. Just realized you were asking for a grammar check nvm! I fail at grammar too:c
Interesting, I never thought about the end goal when I wrote this. Human came a long way in term of the structure of our civilization and we are still at infancy in term of social structure, cold war was not that long ago. The goal of peace and conflict is to find a way to peacefully resolve conflicts arise in the process of improving our civilization, so the natural assumption is that there are problems.
As for UN, it is quite ineffective imo and riddled with biases and unbalanced power distribution, so I agree it is far from perfect. But in term of achieving a global community, it is a step in that direction. My goal is to create a sense of society on the international scale which according to my theory will improve the implementation of morality in international conflicts. As long as countries think there is nothing above the state, they will feel no obligation to be moral, and violence will be more likely.
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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2013-11-15 22:32
Here's the second part of the essay, care to give me some critique?
Over the years I learned a lot from courses like PHIL and PACS, and I manage to compile a rather complex list of what I think peace and conflict is all about. In order to present my peace paradigm in a readable manner I decided to cover stages of a representative conflict and explain my thoughts on the causes, approach, escalation, and finally resolution of a typical conflict.
Conflict is the symptom of problems. Much like how people heat up during a fever, conflict signals the beginning of problem confrontation. Often time people despise conflict and think it is best if conflicts don’t exist, but knowing what conflict really is: symptom of problems, I think it is a very important part of our lives, one which we cannot live without. If conflict is the symptom of problems, the question becomes what causes problems, and that is simply too big and complex to summarize. It is noteworthy that the threshold of conflicts varies from person to person, some people are quick to anger, and others are not. Personally I devised an equation to describe the threshold of conflict initiation. Let “h†be happiness, “d†be discontent, “c†be culture and conflict is initiated when (h - d) > f(h, c) where f is a function that calculates the threshold, f is affected by h and c where more happiness increase people’s standard and decrease f, culture values can either increase or decrease f depends on the values society encourages.
Once a conflict initiates, naturally people want to deal with the issue and resolve the conflict. Generally there are three ways to approach conflicts: interest, right and power [2]. Interests are needs, desires, concerns, things beneath people’s position in a conflict. For example a father and his son are arguing over the son’s girlfriend, father says he can’t date that girl, son says he will. On the surface both parties are arguing about son’s relationship but the underlying interest for father may be to protect his son from bad influences, while the son’s underlying interest is more freedom to do what he wants. Interest approach identifies people’s underlying interest in a conflict and attempt to resolve it by appealing to their interest. Interest approach to conflict resolution is not easy, sometime identifying people’s underlying interest is quite difficult, which is why professional mediation are needed to resolve conflicts sometime. Interest approach to conflict is possibly the best way to solve conflicts; it reduces hostility, resolves dispute on a basic level which prevents similar conflicts from occurring in the future, it is basically a win-win situation.
Right approach is the second approach to conflict resolution; this kind of approach relies on independent standard that has perceived legitimacy, or fairness. A country’s legal system is one of the best examples of right approach to conflict. The problem with right approach is that, it is often time very difficult to judge who is right and who is wrong. Legal system often relies on a list of concrete logics that roughly fits the bill in order to determine the outcome. For example, a woman was hit by a drunk driver while jaywalking and died as a result, normally the driver would take full responsibility but due to the speed limit on that street, there was no reasonable way for him to stop and prevent the accident even if he wasn’t drunk; cases like this appears often, and despite what people think is right or wrong, law must operates in a confined manner in order to logically and consistently choose who is right. Right approach is less efficient than interest approach, the disputants often leave feeling lack of resolution, but it is still a very definitive way to resolve conflicts.
Power based approach is the last approach to conflict resolution. Power by definition is the ability to force someone to do something he/she would not do otherwise; it is arguably the easiest way to resolve conflicts because the other party has no way to dispute the result; this however is a very short sighted way to solve conflicts and often time leads to blow backs. The core of the issue has not been addressed, so power approach is at best a band aid that covers the wound. Often time power approach to conflict resolution will lead to the party with no power to obtain more power either trying to bring opposition onto the negotiation table and properly address the problem or to crush opposition all together. This process can appear in the form of union strike, violent outbreaks, even revolution. From these actions one of the most ingenious ways to balance power is introduced: Non-violence resistance. First introduced in China by Mohism [3], non-violence resistance is a way to achieve power by using non-violence non-cooperation. The idea is that power is not real, it is an abstract concept created by people’s consent, if people no longer consent to said power, then the party with power will cease to be powerful. In conclusion, power approaches really doesn’t resolve conflicts in my opinion, it merely delays the resolution, and it is sometime dangerous since violence can easily be employed in either keeping the status quo or gaining more power for the powerless.