...Cognitive Dissonance Paper Donnie Robertson is a man that has always worked diligently to provide for his family, and was a well-respected man in his community. The following is a narrative on how this dedicated and honest father, husband, and friend made resolutions based on the circumstances in his life that would encroach on his values, beliefs, attitudes, and morals. The areas of social, cultural, and spiritual impacts on his conduct will be discussed, along with his personal ethics. Furthermore, a reciprocal relationship between his attitudes and behavior will be addressed. Finally, it will be illustrated how Donnie applies cognitive dissonance theory to justify his actions. Describe Situation Donnie Robertson started working at one of the top automobile industries in his area right after college. He married his high school love, and over a twelve year period had three children. Everything in his life was perfect until economic issues caused the company to shut its doors. Although many in the community lost their jobs to, most came from wealthy families and did the face the strains of the loss as Donnie and his family did. Donnie was able to draw unemployment for a while but during this time his wife passed away from an aneurysm. What little he was getting from unemployment was not enough to cover the medical and funeral bills. After several months of trying to pay, everything off he ran out of unemployment, and he could not find work because he did not have...
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...Divorced, beheaded, survived Divorced, beheaded, survived is a story is a story where we follow the narrator and her memories about, her loss of her brother Terry. The author Robin Black is focusing on the topic death in a number of different aspects. The first person narrative style is used by the author to structure the story with flashbacks of Sarah’s childhood and present. This structure makes the story very intense and because it is memories, it also makes it very personal, therefore we have a high authenticity within her. Even though we have a very personal and emotional subject as death is, the language used by the author is very neutral and objective, as if the death is of no personal meaning to the narrator, where you would expect a more emotionally charged narrator, if Terry was close to her. Even though we don’t see the emotions from the narrator, we still see emotions in the actions she does, for instance she chooses to wait to have her second child so the age difference would not be the same as her and Terry’s, she hints to that being a reason of too why Terry died, the age gap between them. This indicates that she is becoming superstitious, thus being irrational in her actions. The story is written in present tense, but with a lot of flashbacks from Sarah’s childhood, these flashbacks are written in the past tense. The first flashback we begin with is the one where three of their friends; Johnny Sanderson, Jeff Mandelbaum and Molly Denham, Her brother and she...
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...Otherness: Essays and Studies 1.1 October 2010 Haunting Poetry: Trauma, Otherness and Textuality in Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days Olu Jenzen Early conceptions of trauma are intimately linked not only with modernity but specifically with the height of industrialisation (Micale and Lerner 2001). This is converged in the opening of Specimen Days particularly in the image of an industrial accident at the ironworks where a young man is killed by the stamping machine. His young brother, replacing him at the machine after the funeral, then experiences an apparition of the dead brother still trapped inside the machine, which leads him to believe that all machines house entrapped ghosts of the dead. Writing on the Victorians’ anxieties about internal disruption caused by the advent of the railway, Jill Matus (2001, 415) has pointed out that, Freud himself remarked in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), [that] there is ‘a condition [which] has long been known and described [and] which occurs after severe mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of traumatic neurosis’ (12). Freud’s remark brings to the fore the traumas of the industrial age as both individually and publicly experienced and negotiated. This condition of trauma as private and public, individual yet also societal is held in tension throughout Cunningham’s novel. Reflecting on the otherness of trauma and its vexed relationship to representation...
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...What are the most important therapeutic uses of Scripture in counseling? Scripture is the Word of God and is a fountain of wisdom. In the book of Hebrew says “the word of God is alive and active.” The most important therapeutic uses of scripture are: when personal problems arise, for example when there are feelings of guilt, anxiety, when there is suffering, trauma, stress and depression. Another therapeutic use of scriptures is in interpersonal conflicts, for example resentment family issues, marriage issues. Another important therapeutic use of the scriptures are when unfortunate events occur, for example the loss of a love one, financial problems, crisis caused by catastrophes. According to McMinn (1996) some counselors advocate using Scripture as a Therapeutic intervention for recovery groups with codependence problems, to help couples recover from sexual affairs, in child therapy using Narrative therapy and cognitive therapy using Scripture memory and meditation. In the book of Timothy, Paul says: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”. In the book of Philippians 4:8 say “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable if anything is excellent or praise worthy think about such things.” What are some cautions or possible...
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... Literary Features and Techniques This literary analysis is of 2 Samuel 24:1-25[1], which depicts a literary plot. The main characters in the narrative are the Lord, David, Gad, Joab, and Araunah. The characters in this chapter of the Bible come from categories ranging from a mixture of round, fully developed, characters, such as David, and the Lord Himself, to flat characters with a basic quality or specific function such as Gad, Joab and Araunah. The Lord's sovereignty is highlighted in the story wherein He is depicted inciting David and judging David for the sin he committed. He gave David a choice in the type of punishment to be imposed, and imposed said punishment. He stayed the Angel's hand before the destruction of Jerusalem, and instructed David, by way of Gad, to build an altar and atone for his sins. David was Israel's king; he was incited by the Lord and he sinned by directing Joab to conduct a census. When given a choice by the Lord, he chose the punishment and went on to repent by building an altar and making sacrifices to the Lord. It is this fullness of character and the storyline dedicated to the Lord, as well as King David, which inevitably renders them as round characters in the narrative. Gad was a prophet who was appointed within David's court to act as his seer. Gad’s role in this narrative was to be the messenger between the Lord and King David. Joab, who was the Commander of King David’s Army was tasked with, and carried out, the census...
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...Final Paper Beginners The movie Beginners, released in 2010, based on the experiences that Mike Mills, who wrote the script and directed the movie, went through after his mother died. The story builds around the main character, Oliver, who just one week ago had to bare with the death of his mother who had died due to a cancerous brain tumor. Now, one week after his mother has died, Oliver’s father sits across from him and tells Oliver that throughout the many years of his parent’s marriage, his father has secretly been gay. Oliver’s father, Hal, has been living in secrecy for the entirety of his life, because homosexuality was not socially accepted when he was younger and later his marriage prevented him from being free. Hal, now that he is unbound, tells Oliver “I don’t want to be just theoretically gay, I want to do something about it” (Beginners, 2010). Confronted with this Oliver reflects on his life growing up with two parents that never seemed to be the way he thought they should have. Writer and director Mike Mills experienced precisely this, when his father, shortly after his mother died because of brain cancer in 1999, opened up to him about being gay throughout his entire life. At this point, Mills’ father was at the age of 75 years and had been married to his wife for 45 years. Five years later, his father died due to cancer of the lungs. Mills wanted to share this story with the world, because he was so baffled by the adventure that he had lived through, as...
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...American Naval hero John Paul Jones. Though Jones did reside in the city for two years while the warship America was being outfitted, it is merely a place where he rested. It is a bit of an exaggeration to call the city his home. However, the naval accomplishments that were made by Jones are something that Portsmouth should be honored to have been part of. A local historian in the Portsmouth Herald article reporting on the celebration was quoted with describing Jones as a murderer, pirate, slave trader, and rapist. The writer went on to say in an almost cynical tone that Jones “fled” to France, where he died, only to be resurrected as some sort of political crutch by Teddy Roosevelt to back America’s “great white fleet.” This primitive narrative does not do justice to a man of Jones stature, who lived in a bitter time....
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...Handout 1 - Overview of Casework Defining Casework Casework is one of the oldest professional forms of community service practice. Its form and focus has changed over time in response to the environment but its fundamentals remain the same. Casework is that part of community service practice, which is concerned with assisting individuals. Within the case management model it is the component of practice which offers a direct service to individuals. In the case management model this is called counselling. However unlike therapeutic counselling, the service of casework includes everything from practical assistance, resolving a resource issue, through to interpersonal interventions to assist with an emotional or personal problem. While casework is an old form of practice and while the fundamentals remain the same, it continues to emerge and develop. In 1937, Gordon Hamilton wrote: "When we think of fundamental concepts we are inclined to imagine a static practice. The truth is that casework concepts are dynamic. They change, grow and develop as they are shaped by new experience and knowledge" (Roberts and Nee 1970: 35) This statement while written some seventy years ago remains true today. How is Casework different from Case Management? This is not a simple question to answer. The lines between case management and casework are very blurred. Perhaps a better analogy is that of overlapping circles. However for our purposes here, we have defined them in the following way: ...
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...among the many faces of a single human. We will also discuss the theme of deciding. What crucial decisions have lead to the life we now live, and what could have been, if our stories had taken place just a tiny bit differently. Last but not least we will go into depth with Quinn’s mental disorder and how it is related to the other characters in the novel. Can a single, presumably random incident change the entire course of our lives? We all have one or more events that changed the entire direction of our own personal tales of existence. It can be a moment of clarity, where we realised we had lived our lives wrong the entire time. It could be the moment we bumped into that special someone, and fell in love. Or maybe it was that day when you received a rather odd phone call; let us say that perhaps you got a phone call from someone who looked for a detective? In Paul Auster’s “City of Glass” this is exactly what happened to the main character, Daniel Quinn. In the narrative “City of Glass” we hear the tale of an ordinary author who writes potboilers. Daniel Quinn is a 35 year-old man, who lost his spouse and child five years prior the novel’s timeline. In his youth, likely while he still had his wife and son, he had been a very productive...
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...Hughes paints a picture of himself as a little boy whose decisions at a church revival directly reflect mans own instinctive behavioral tendencies for obedience. A young Langston whose congregation wants him to go up and get saved, gives into obedience and ventures to the altar as if he has seen the light of the Holy Spirit. Hughes goes on to say: " So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd rather lie, too, and say that Jesus had come ,and get up and be saved ." In saying this, Langston has obviously overlooked his personal belief to meet the level of obedience laid out by the congregation. It leads us to fact that people may believe strongly in an idea or thought but will overlook that belief to be obedient. One can make a justified assumption that everyone in society has at one time or another overlooked his or her personal feelings to conform this occurrence whether it is instinctive or judgmental is one that each individual deals with a personal level. He was a young boy who wanted to see Jesus, who wanted to earn salvation, but when he couldn't see Jesus, when everyone else saw,he found himself in the terrible position of disappointing not only himself but everyone in his community.He finally "saved" himself by pretending to see Jesus . He was saved not by love of Jesus as a congregation or preacher intended but by pretending to be other that who he was. One wanders what would have happened if he didn't stepped forward? Would they have seen a frightened boy? It...
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...American poet of the 20th century Robert Frost’s influences that made him the honored American poet of the 20th century Robert Frost was the most widely admired and highly honored American poet of the 20th century. His occurrences throughout his life inspired his poetry, most of which were inspired by his own life story. For that reason many of Frost’s poems have the same or similar topics to what Frost was dealing with in his life. Robert Frost’s main influences for his poetry came from his experiences in life. He used his relationships, nature, and the religion that surrounded him to create the poems that have made him the recognized poet that he is today. Robert Frost had many important relationships throughout his life that affected many of his choices as well as his poetry. In several of his relationships he suffered devastating losses including the death of his father, his mother, his sister, two of his children, and his wife. The loss of each of these important relationships influenced his career and affected poetry in a different way. Robert Frost’s relationship with his father, William Frost Jr., impacted Frost’s life which in result affected his poetry. Frost’s father was a journalist and a teacher that moved his family out to San Francisco to earn his fortune as a journalist (Poirier and Richardson). His dreams of becoming wealthy didn’t come true and he began gambling and drinking excessively...
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...Michelle Zhang Dr. Bloomquist 2/13/2015 Rhetorical Analysis A Whole New World: Construction and Destruction in The Things They Carried While the Vietnam War was a complex political pursuit that lasted only a few years, the impact of the war on millions of soldiers and civilians extended for many years beyond its termination. Soldiers killed or were killed; those who survived suffered from physical wounds or were plagued by PTSD from being wounded, watching their platoon mates die violently or dealing with the moral implications of their own violence on enemy fighters. Inspired by his experiences in the war, Tim O’Brien, a former soldier, wrote The Things They Carried, a collection of fictional and true war stories that embody the struggles that soldiers who fought in the war faced before, during, and after the war faced. These stories serve as an outlet for O’Brien, allowing both a cathartic release of his experiences and a documentation of the significant experiences that shaped him. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the psychological destruction that fighting in the war encompassed while he was still a soldier as well as many years after being out of the war. In one of the stories, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien encapsulates the psychological devastation he faced after he kills a Vietnamese soldier, his first time ever killing a man. However, in revealing his experience, he attempts to remove himself from the situation by using the third person to portray...
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...The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0025-1747.htm Crises, scenarios and the strategic management process David Pollard and Sabine Hotho Dundee Business School, University of Abertay, Dundee, UK Abstract Purpose – The aim of this exploratory paper is to consider the strategic importance of crisis management and integration of crisis planning with the organisation’s strategy processes, in particular the utilisation of scenario planning as a crisis planning activity. Design/methodology/approach – A review of the crisis management literature was undertaken and key issues identified, subsequently strategic aspects of crisis management were developed in the context of scenario planning. Findings – The paper contains a discussion of major factors related to a strategic approach to crisis management and a more proactive approach to building relationships with the media. Particular attention should be given to the roles and responses of the media and agencies acting on behalf of the company, as both should been treated in the same way as other relatively powerful stakeholders. The authors suggest that firms can obtain significant advantages through proactive preparation for major relevant contingencies, and its incorporation into the strategic management process. Originality/value – This paper brings together the debate on the strategic position of crisis management with scenario planning processes to provide a mechanism for...
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...An Argument for Israel-Palestine Resolution: Comparing and Contrasting Factors of Religious and Non-Religious Arguments Avoiding a historical discussion of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict might be advantageous for now given this paper is meant to argue, while comparing and contrasting the two nations, that resolution to the conflict in contemporary times can not be achieved so easily, as simple as it may seem to supporters on both sides of “the cause”. The situation between these two highly conflicted states is complicated by elements that must be addressed. These warring nations have a rough history tracing back all the way to before the time of the Islamic Caliphate in the 7th century[1]. However, “putting aside their differences” is an idea that does not seem as practical as it sounds. It is my assumption that both states are threatened by and threatening to each other so long as they act out of religious intolerance. Struggling to determine which side is more or less at fault only further complicates the issue and does little to actually help resolve the conflicts. It is my argument that, instead of a resolution coming externally, the struggle must begin with issues of cultural and ethnic identity at the state level and among its constituents. This concern reinforces the necessity to understand one’s own culture before the door can be opened to allow for improvement and more favorable conditions on both sides of the conflict. It would be unreasonable to suggest...
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...Redemption as a means to Salvation Is the story of Jesus mainly about his death and a life that leads to it, or is the story of Jesus mainly about his life and a death that flows from it? On one view, it hardly matters: these are just two ways of looking at the same thing. On a more combative view, the difference is as great as night and day. Does the cross belong on the sleeves (and hearts) of Christians, as the glorious core of their faith, or does it belong in the repair shop, in need of drastic repairs, the primary Christian embarrassment for believers and an offense to outsiders? The disagreement is not over Jesus’ death as a fact. Both sides largely agree about the reality and circumstances of the crucifixion and, for that matter, of the resurrection. At least, the disagreement within one side on these issues is as great as the disagreement between the sides. No, the conflict revolves around a theology of the cross, a theology that says Jesus’ death is the supreme saving act, and that the equation of guilt, punishment and grace worked out through the execution of the innocent, divine victim in place of a rightly condemned humanity provides the essential sum of Christianity itself. This theology is composed of many elements in scripture and tradition -- references to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, ideas of redemptive suffering, and a deep tradition of eucharistic remembrance that Jesus died "for us." These elements appear in all branches and eras of Christian tradition...
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