Photography and Ethics January 9th

                          

One of the things I am passionate about is photography. Photojournalism is a branch of photography that involves the taking of pictures of current events for news or other publications. For my extended essay I did a research paper on a particular war photographer who captured some gruesome scenes. Which brings me to the issue at hand, the ethical implications of publishing a photo containing graphic images, without the permission or consent of any particular individual involved in the image? The photographer I researched for my EE was named Don McCullin. He is an English born war photographer who worked primarily for the Sunday times in England. Covering a multitude of wars, you would expect a majority of his photos contain some graphic images of soldiers and civilians. But does McCullin have the right to publish images of dead or dying people in a major publication in England? It can be argued that it is necessary to spread the message that war is bad. So it’s a case of does the ends justify the means. Therefore we have to look at the results of his publishing of these images. McCullin was responsible for providing images during the Vietnam that helped sway the public’s opinion on the Vietnam War. So we could justify the usage of the graphic images.

What else could justify the use of such graphic images?

Materialism and happiness (emotion) January 7th

http://www.vox.com/2014/12/24/7447727/materialism-psychology

Materialism and happiness (emotion)

So i follow a TOK website on facebook, and one of the articles they had posted lately is on the subject of materialism. This caught my interest as living in Korea, what i consider a highly materialistic country, it would maybe give me more understanding into the psychological factors of Korean society and its ongoing journey into an inescapable abyss of materialism.

One of the major emphasised points made in this article is the fact that materialistic individuals are generally less happy than those of less materialistic individuals. Straight away this brings emotion into the equation. Emotion has power over the way we, as individuals, view the world. I think its interesting that an object has the power to influence our emotions and even our physical health. In my opinion, people are trying to fill a void inside themselves with physical items in an effort to raise their self esteem and what others think of them, But this is the least effective way of achieving this, as stated by the article. So what should someone do in order to improve their emotional state? Another fact stated in the article, is the use of social networking sites and materialism are directly related. People who use social media in larger amounts tend to have a more materialistic personality. This may be because of the need for materialistic individuals to flaunt their possessions, otherwise what’s the point in being materialistic? This is in order to seek the appraisal from other people that the materialistic individual requires. almost like a high that doesn't actually help in anyway.

Is materialism a result of people being afraid of being rejected in society?

ETHICS IS IT WRONG TO DRAW RACIST COMICS? January 8th

You may have heard of the recent tragedy that occurred in France.  On Wednesday two masked gunmen stormed into the Charlie Hebdo offices in france then proceeded to shoot and kill 12 people and injuring many others. Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical newspaper most well known for their depictions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.  

The issue I want to look into the ethics involved in drawing satirical comics about another religion.  Even if islam is quite often misrepresented as a “terrorist” religion due to a small number of radical islamists. The major issue here is the ethical implications of satirical cartoons depicting Islam as a terroristic religion. Just because a small number of muslims belong to radical groups who carry out acts of terrorism, is it justifiable to mock the entire religion based off of a select few? Satire is a subgenre of literature that ridicules an individual, corporations or society. The most common satire is in the form of satirical comics found in newspaper publications or magazines. Most of the time, satirical comics are based on corrupt individuals, politicians or the rich. But Hebdo is known for their racial satire comics depicting The Islamic prophet Muhammed. The argument on whether this is ethical or not can be argued, this is also a case of “does the ends justify the means?”. Satirical comics main goal is to shame an individual by attacking their image. So ethically is shaming an individual wrong or right? Let alone an entire religious group.

Questions

is it ethical to mock a religion as a whole through the use of satirical comics?

Does free speech give someone the right to be offensive?

Prescribed Title Essay Blog Post 6th January 2015

  VERSUS 

Chosen PTE: “There are only two ways in which humankind can produce knowledge: through passive observation or through active experiment.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

MY chosen PTE was chosen because it is an interesting concept to explore in my opinion. We, as humans, rely heavily on knowledge and the acquiring of knowledge, but what this question is asking is asking is to explore the idea that there are only two ways of acquiring knowledge: through observation and experimentation. My initial approach to this was to investigate whether there actually was more than two ways of producing knowledge. But this did not help much because as I was exploring the internet I wondered, what is defined as knowledge? Is it the ability to be able to know lots of information about a single thing? There is a general idea which is shared across many cultures that with age comes knowledge. The core idea of this statement though is that older people have had more experiences than those of a younger individual. That would mean that knowledge could also be gained through experiential knowledge.  Some ways of knowing that I chose to discuss in my essay also include Reason, Faith, Memory and sense perception. The reason for these chosen WOK’s are because of the different methods that people acquire knowledge or claim to knowledgeable because.  Like I discussed before, memory fits into the experiential knowledge as individuals who have had more experiences have more memories of certain problems or solutions. Reason is also another way, in my opinion, of acquiring knowledge without the use of experimentation or observation. If we recall the time in TOK class when we were learning about logical deductive reasoning, we are able to come to logical conclusions that make sense, by relating two different statements together. Ex. “I am a human being” “human beings are mortal” “therefore I am mortal”. The final deduced statement is true and makes perfect sense to anyone. Probably the most controversial of them all though is faith. Faith relies heavily on simply believing something to be true without needing solid evidence. People believe in God although there is no direct evidence that he is real, but because of their faith, they “know” he is real. To conclude this blog post I would like to pose some questions on the topic of my PTE.

Are there any more ways of acquiring knowledge as opposed to passive observation and active experimentation?

How do we know that what we “observe” or “experiment” is actually the truth, and not something that happens because of our interest?

Another Ice bucket challenge..... just kidding, its a post about the ALS ice bucket challenge! (TOK post)

Article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/aug/25/ice-bucket-challenge-drought-henan-california-animal-rights-rice


Another article ripping apart the ice bucket challenge, this article talks about the more serious effects of performing the ALS ice bucket challenge. For those who dont know, ALS also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a motor neuron disease in which the individual loses all control of motor functions in the body. A more widely known person suffering from ALS is Steven Hawking the famous english theoretical physicist who speaks with the assistance of a computer.

In my opinion this article is blowing this problem way out of proportion. They are trying to justify their claims with 1 in a million cases that probably happened because there was no caution practiced before performing the ice bucket challenge. Okay, this article does raise some points about the occuring drought in California, but there is one simple solution to this problem... Donate instead. But who am i to judge this, I was nominated for the challenge, but i never did it. Just purely out of not being bothered to. In a TOK perspective, this raises an interesting question of, is it ethically acceptable to perform the ice bucket challenge and not donate? well for some people, who arent in the most favourable economic situations, the ice bucket challenge is all they can do. They ask that if you dont do it, you should donate 100 USD, considering the main demographic that this is aimed at, young adults and teenagers, 100 dollars is a lot of money. I personally believe that you should do as much as you can without having to go out of your way or affect your life negatively in a sever way at all, and it would still be okay. But those are my morals. Other people are entitled to their own morals and may have different views, which is why this article is a perfect example of people expressing their views on the ethics of the subject. The ALS ice bucket challenge has been and will continue to be a heated topic in the ethics field. I would gladly initiate discussion on the subject with an opposing viewpoint.

TOK post: David Christian: History of our world in 18 minutes

In TOK class we watched a TED talk video by a man named David Christian. Christian is a well known historian responsible for a teaching method called Big History. Big history is a teaching method where we learn history on a large scale, like his TED talk, he covers the entire history of our universe and planet in a quick 18 minute video. While i thought his talk on the subject matter was very interesting and easy to understand, i cant help but think that his approach may be a bid vague. There is so much more history within the gaps of his explanation. So therefore it raises a lot of questions. TOK wise, it brings us into the matter of how do we know that his explanation is the correct one, as apposed to a religious explanation like the universe was created within 7 days. The problem with the theory of the big bang idea is that its only a theory, whereas the religious idea is also just written in a book that was written in more recent history to the big bang. Theres no cold hard factual evidence that something like this even occurred. So the problem it raises is essentially whether it is a true fact instead of theory. Is it okay to be teaching high school students something that cannot really be proven 100%? From my atheistic point of view, David Christians explanation makes more sense and i feel more comfortable believing it, but i would be interested in hearing what other people have to say. Maybe we could discuss this in TOK class one day?

Personal Post: Oscar Pistorius Trial

Anyone that has been following the news in anyway has most likely heard of Oscar Pistorius. If not, let me get you up to speed. Oscar Pistorius has been sentenced to 5 years prison for shooting and killing his girlfriend at the time, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius claimed he heard what he thought was a trespasser in his bathroom and grabbed his gun and fired shots through the bathroom door, hitting and killing Reeva. Although this incident occurred back in February of 2009, the trial has only recently ended in recent months. This article was extremely interesting to me as it was such a high profile and intense trial and no one other than Oscar really knows what actually happened. The final verdict delivered by the judge was that although Oscar no doubt shot and killed Reeva, It was unintentional and cannot be considered planned murder.
What i am interested in is how we can justify that someones life is worth five years in prison. It might have been unintentional, but the cost is a loss of a life, and the resulting mourning of the family. How the judge come to the decision to sentence Oscar to 5 years in prison? Do you think this was a reasonable sentence? Does his disability give him an advantage in this trial? This last question is one i would like to address. Oscar Pistorius is famous for being the "fastest man on no legs" or "the blade runner" as he is a double amputee below the knee but competes at a higher level with full bodied athletes. Would his athletic abilities give him less of an advantage over a normal double amputee in the same situation? will he be sentenced to an equal trial to an able bodied individual? Its a very insightful and interesting trial that raised a lot of controversy over his light sentence.