...does not come through the consumption of things.” He persists that happiness only comes when one is free from materialistic desire.. The monk also suggests suffering is crucial to perceive true happiness. Brave New World embodies the same concept, does true happiness exist without suffering? Aldous Huxley purposed soma to be the object that eliminates suffering and, consequently, the characters think they are happy due to soma and conditioning. In the consumer utopia of Brave New World, citizens are conditioned to be happy, but do not experience true happiness because they are not willing defy the utopia, are not suffering, and are not liberated from soma. Defying the utopia is not in the best interest of the citizen considering genetically breeding requires little to replace them, but they are conditioned to believe they are in the best situation. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them” (Huxley 234). In chapter two, the Director used a mild-electric shock to condition the children to not like books. If the children would have not been shocked, they would...
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...Econ 301B Winter 2012 Problem Set 1 Due date: Monday, January 23 in class 1. Suppose the country of Utopia has a population of 1,000 and produces only three goods: T-shirts, cars and pineapples. Assume that Utopia does not trade with other countries. The production amounts and prices (in US Dollars) for 2009, 2010 and 2011 are given in the table below: Year 2009 2010 2011 Quantity of Tshirts 10,000 9,500 10,500 Price of Tshirts Quantity of cars Price of cars Quantity of pineapples Price of pineapples $10 $10.50 $11 75 85 90 $15,000 $16,000 $15,500 50,000 60,000 45,000 $4 $4.50 $5 a) Using 2009 as base year, calculate nominal and real GDP per capita for 2009, 2010 and 2011. b) Keeping 2009 as base year for prices, compute Utopia’s inflation rates for 2010 and 2011 using both the CPI and the GDP deflator. When calculating the CPI, assume that the representative consumer purchases in any given year 10 T -shirts, 1 car and 100 pineapples. c) Explain why the computed inflation rates are not the same when u sing the two different methods. 2. For this question assume that we are within the short -run goods market framework developed in Chapter 3 in Blanchard. Suppose that the economy is characterized by the following behavioral equations: Note that in this economy investment, I, depends positively on output, Y. This mirrors the fact that firms in the real world will increase their investment expenditure...
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...despite the fact that such an ideal life has stayed in people’s mind, not too many people believe a real utopia exists. It is similar to when audiences watch a romantic movie with a perfect ending and tell themselves this can only happen on the screen where all the lines have been written and edited carefully. Without any hope for any possible alternatives, eventually, no one would strive to create a peaceful and fantasy world according to their dream. However, there is a country that is making the dream of a lot of people come true. In a recent decade, Singapore has been moving towards the idea of improving their social and economic problems through constructing the modern building projects. Needless to say, their significant achievement in economic social development has brought them opportunities to become one of the most stable economies in the world regardless of a limited space and sacred natural resources. Singapore is among the countries that has the lowest rate of unemployment, highest adequate living conditions and social pension, and fastest economic growth in Asia. Furthermore, it is also well known for the green environment and energy efficiency. Although Singapore is believed to be a clear example of how a utopian plan has improved human development, there are critics argue that its government is directing people in an oppressive setting through a so called utopia and that there is lack of innovation in a too stable economic organization. The rigid of the government...
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...commercial nuclear reactors in use worldwide are currently helping to minimize our consumption of fossil fuels, but how much bigger can nuclear power get? In an analysis to be published in a future issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE, Derek Abbott, Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia, has concluded that nuclear power cannot be globally scaled to supply the world’s energy needs for numerous reasons. The results suggest that we’re likely better off investing in other energy solutions that are truly scalable. As Abbott notes in his study, global power consumption today is about 15 terawatts (TW). Currently, the global nuclear power supply capacity is only 375 gigawatts (GW). In order to examine the large-scale limits of nuclear power, Abbott estimates that to supply 15 TW with nuclear only, we would need about 15,000 nuclear reactors. In his analysis, Abbott explores the consequences of building, operating, and decommissioning 15,000 reactors on the Earth, looking at factors such as the amount of land required, radioactive waste, accident rate, risk of proliferation into weapons, uranium abundance and extraction, and the exotic metals used to build the reactors themselves. "A nuclear power station is resource-hungry and, apart from the fuel, uses many rare metals in its construction," Abbott told PhysOrg.com. "The dream of a utopia where the world is powered off fission or fusion reactors is simply unattainable....
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...because you did something illegal, like keeping a shelf full of books? This concept, along with others, is displayed throughout the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 is about a utopia gone wrong and converted into a dystopia due to an over-ruling government and a corrupt society where man’s best friend is his TV. One man, named Guy Montag, is a firefighter who burns books for a living, but learns to disagree with the ways of society when he meets a girl named Clarisse McClellan. Although this society sounds a little strange, our society today can relate, but still differ from their idea of a “correct” society. But in the end, both societies have their own views on the way people should...
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...Sociology should abandon the task of acquiring truth about an objective reality and accept all sociological accounts have equal validity. No one theory can point the way to a modern Utopia. Developments now occurring are profound. What’s happening is a movement beyond modernity and a postmodern era is arriving. Modern societies took their inspiration from the idea that history has s shape, i.e. that it goes somewhere and leads to progress. The possibility of gaining knowledge of the world is known as modernism. The destruction of this optimism is an origin of postmodernism. It’s argued it’s not possible to arrive at a final truth about society and attempts to do so are dangerous, e.g. Marxist doctrine led to regime in Stalinist Russia. Lyotard argues there are no longer grand narratives which make sense. In a postmodern world where structural theories are obsolete and it’s inevitable that multiple claims for truth compete with each other. Therefore postmodernists claim knowledge is pluralistic. Postmodernists celebrate relativism and pluralism, emphasising people work through who they are in different ways, rather than finding out who they are on the basis of science and moral absolutes. Recently there have been changes which have caused a debate about the future of modernity: * Intellectual life is dominated by a crisis of faith in the big modern ideas of science, progress and reason * Rapid population growth and urbanisation taking place in underdeveloped world...
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...The essence of neoliberalism | As the dominant discourse would have it, the economic world is a pure and perfect order, implacably unrolling the logic of its predictable consequences, and prompt to repress all violations by the sanctions that it inflicts, either automatically or - more unusually - through the intermediary of its armed extensions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the policies they impose: reducing labour costs, reducing public expenditures and making work more flexible. Is the dominant discourse right? What if, in reality, this economic order were no more than the implementation of a utopia - the utopia of neoliberalism - thus converted into a political problem? One that, with the aid of the economic theory that it proclaims, succeeds in conceiving of itself as the scientific description of reality?This tutelary theory is a pure mathematical fiction. From the start it has been founded on a formidable abstraction. For, in the name of a narrow and strict conception of rationality as individual rationality, it brackets the economic and social conditions of rational orientations and the economic and social structures that are the condition of their application.To give the measure of this omission, it is enough to think just of the educational system. Education is never taken account of as such at a time when it plays a determining role in the production of goods and services as in the production...
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...THE PROBLEM WITH WORK A JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN CENTER BOOK THE PROBLEM WITH WORK Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries KATHI WEEKS Duke University Press Durham and London 2011 © 2011 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper co Designed by Heather Hensley Typeset in Minion Pro by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH LOVE TO JulieWalwick (1959-2010) Contents ix Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION i The Problem with Work i CHAPTF1 37 Mapping the Work Ethic CHAPTER 2 79 Marxism, Productivism, and the Refusal of Work CHAPTER 3 113 Working Demands: From Wages for Housework to Basic Income CHAPTER 4 151 "Hours for What We Will": Work, Family, and the Demand for Shorter Hours 5 CHAPTER 175 The Future Is Now: Utopian Demands and the Temporalities of Hope EPILOGUE 227 A Life beyond Work 235 255 Notes References 275 Index Acknowledgments thank the following friends and colleagues for their helpful feedback on versions of these arguments and portions of the manuscript: Anne Allison, Courtney Berger, Tina Campt, ChristineDiStefano, Greg Grandin, Judith Grant, Michael Hardt, Stefano Harney, Rebecca I would like to Karl, Ranji Khanna, Corey Robin...
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...In the age where media inhabits numerous conduits for the production of culture it is difficult to imagine culture without its mediated form, from television and comic books to fashion and postcards, culture is derived through a range of diverse vehicles. We experience our cultural life through media in various ways. Modern society is founded on universal law, enlightenment of reason and science is solution to social problems, utopia is possible (except the poor will always be poor); Western-centric humanism will save the world; mass consumption means mass employment and modern society contained in the grand narrative of history. Progressive social transformation of the post-modern turn will take us on new adventures; resituating science, technology, society & capitalism into a multi-perspective and multi-disciplinary framework. One attempt to account for the emergence of post-modern condition is the shift during the 20th century of the economic needs of capitalism from production to consumption. Reality is what we see fit by these various forms of seductive illusion. The prefix ‘post’ clearly implies a break, a relation to a period that has happened before. In the case of post-modernism the previous period is undoubtedly ‘modernism’. Thus, postmodernism refers to a breakdown of the distinction between culture and society - emergence of a social order in which the importance and power of the mass media and popular culture means that they govern and shape all forms of social relationships...
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...Subject Code: APBL20045 | Subject Name: City Future | Student ID Number: 563013 | Student Name: Joel Madeira | Assignment Name or Number: Final essay | With reference to at least one work of fiction, critically discuss how science and technology feature in utopian or dystopian planning of future cities. The city of the future needs to change. With the population increasing at a rapid pace, more and more people favor to live in urbanized area. The result of the urban population explosion means that there is a need to change the physical dimension or space in cities, in order to cope with such a large amount of people. Cities will be dramatically restricted with the aid of science fiction and technology. This paper investigates how Ecumenopolis, the science fiction concept of city layout could be implanted or influence the future of cities, followed by how technology such as: transportation and telecommunication, could help satisfy social needs, which may again reshape the structure of cities in the future, finally by using examples from science fiction theme movies and novels to illustrate how humans could reshape their future cities and whether these advanced innovations would lead to a utopian or dystopian society. The most crucial element that cities of the future would face is in relation to the increasing population. It is unavoidable that for the next few decades, global population growth will escalate intensely. According to Vidal (2012), by 2050, 7 billion of...
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...Names Professor’s Name Course Number Date Utaboopia Utopia is seen as a fantasy place or an indefinitely isolated region. Thus, a taboo is considered as being communal or spiritual traditions that prohibit a particular practice (“Modern Death: Taboo or not Taboo Par 1”). Utaboopia can be defined as the restrictions that are placed in an imaginary universe concerning certain things. This paper is going to respond to alternate questions about the imaginary facts. Consequently, the paper will answer questions concerning personal experience in the Utaboopia world. According to the manuscript “This book is Taboo by Randall Eggert,” It is clear that it talks about the prologue of linguistics. Randall also explains that individual acts can not be performed in some parts of the world because they will be termed as a taboo. Taboo can be explained through alternate examples whereby basing on “James Sullivan” article titled “7 dirty words” it is seen that when his son was expelled from a basketball team for conducting a foul. The son’s reaction as he advanced the bench was to shout the phrase “damn it.” But this did not go well with one woman as well as several other people who were watching the match since the insisted on an apology. From this, it is right to say that the crowd might have professed the son’s linguistic character as being a taboo although they did not investigate the reasons as to why he had to employ that idiom (Sullivan Pg...
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...parts, the actual numbers used will be changed for the Tutorial tests. 7. You will have 30 minutes to complete your Tutorial test. 8. A non-programmable calculator may be used. 9. Answer sheets will be provided. 10. Since the following questions will be used in an exam; lecturers, tutors and PASS leaders will not provide help in directly answering the questions. Pool of Short-Answer Questions for Tutorial Tests Explain the three different approaches that can be used to calculate GDP. Briefly indicate why all three approaches should give the same estimate for GDP. (3 marks) Is GDP a good measure of a country’s economic welfare? Discuss. (5 marks) Consider the following National Accounts data for the calendar year 2010. $Bill Private Consumption 1200 Imports 600 Government Purchases 600 Gross Taxation Receipts 800 Exports 500 Government Transfer Payments 300 Beginning-of-year Inventories 200 Net Interest Payments on Government Debt 40 End-of-year Inventories 100 Sales of Existing Houses and Flats 600 Business Fixed Investment 500 (a) Use the above data to calculate GDP for 2010. Explain how you arrive at your figure for GDP (1 mark) (b) Use the above data to calculate National Saving in 2010. Explain how you arrive at your figure for National Saving. (1 mark) (c) Use the above data to calculate...
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...Globalization and its Aftermath By Douglas Kellner Globalization has been one of the most hotly contested phenomena of the past two decades. It has been a primary attractor of books, articles, and heated debate, just as postmodernism was the most fashionable and debated topic of the 1980s. A wide and diverse range of social theorists have argued that today's world is organized by accelerating globalization, which is strengthening the dominance of a world capitalist economic system, supplanting the primacy of the nation-state by transnational corporations and organizations, and eroding local cultures and traditions through a global culture. Contemporary theorists from a wide range of political and theoretical positions are converging on the position that globalization is a distinguishing trend of the present moment, but there are hot debates concerning its nature, effects, and future. Moreover, advocates of a post-modern break in history argue that developments in transnational capitalism are producing a new global historical configuration of post- Fordism, or postmodernism as an emergent cultural logic of capitalism (Harvey 1989; Soja 1989; Jameson 1991; and Gottdiener 1995). Others define the emergent global economy and culture as a "network society" grounded in new communications and information technology (Castells 1996, 1997, and 1998). For its defenders, globalization marks the triumph of capitalism and its market economy (see apologists such as Fukuyama...
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...Assess the view that religion was once mainly a conservative influence but today is more a force for social change (30 marks) In the past religions role as a conservative force was portrayed by the monarchy, ruling the divine rights in medieval Europe, and the Egyptian pharaohs were considered as almost God-like figures and so no one questioned their authority. Feminists and Marxists both agree that religion is a conditioning device that oppresses people, diluting the demand for social change to protect the interests of the men and the ruling class. This is partially supported by the Functionalist approach, Durkheim expressed the belief that religion provides social cement, reinforcing traditional beliefs chosen by religious moral code; such as the 10 commandments for Christianity, for the good of society. However there are numerous examples of ways where religion has acted as a force of change, such as the war in Palestine, the wars in former Yugoslavia and in a positive way, the actions of religious leaders, such as Ghandi and Martin Luther King. In today’s society religion has acted as both a conservative force and a force of social change, as shown by ‘Islamic Fundamentalists’ in Iran and Afghanistan, and Christian fundamentalism reintroducing the teachings of creationism in the US. Religion is also seen to be a conservative force because it functions to preserve things as they are, it stabilises society and maintains status quo. Most religions have conservative moral...
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...some non-monetary way. This concept is widely used in environmentalism to explain that, while conventional goods and services are less expensive than those that are eco-friendly, there are often unseen non-monetary costs associated with them. We have both been interested in managing our environmental impact for quite some time, and have found ways to overcome some of the challenges of going green in order to receive some of the benefits. Knowing the challenges of becoming environmentally friendly, in addition to the benefits, will help you make a better informed decision whether to “go green.” Environmental friendliness is, of course, not without its difficulties. If it were, we would almost certainly be living in an environmentalist utopia right now. You may even find it to be more expensive an investment than you are willing to make, but, as with any potential investment, it is important to know all of the facts before making a decision. Environmentalism is expensive, at least initially. In his April, 2009 presentation at a DFL Education Foundation event, environmentalist David Morris explains that, “If you buy green energy… it will cost you about 15% more than conventional power. Organic food can cost twice as much as conventionally grown food. You’ll pay a 10-15 percent premium for a hybrid car” (Morris). The median installed cost of residential solar panels in 2011 was $6.10 per watt (Chen), or about $12,200 for a system capable of supplying the average power requirements...
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