| 2007/07/07 16:40:26 PDT by jscalice Edited at 2007/07/07 16:40:38 PDT |
What follows is an example of a essay aimed at persuading its audience - a persuasive essay. Read it closely.
Write a two paragraph response in your personal weblogs. Public questions about the essay may be raised in this forum. Writing pika incessantly will not be tolerated *cough*Andrew*cough*
You may want to address some of these questions: What does the author claim are his premises? Is there a flaw in his argument? Are you persuaded? If so, why? If not, why not? If you were to write such an essay what would be the basic premises of your worldview?
You do not have to answer these questions they are just suggestions to get you going. You must, however, address the substance of the essay in your two paragraphs.
For extra credit [::chuckle::] find at least one grammatical or writing error in the essay and append it to your two paragraph response.
Good luck.
Joseph
PS I hope that you noticed that I referred to the author as male. If I did not who the author was, I would not have used masculine language. In this case I do know the author - quite well actually; he is me. Please feel free to disagree with me in strident tones if you wish; just be sure to support your opinion.
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Worldview
The underlying foundation of my worldview can be simply stated: there is an absolute, ultimate grounding to human existence. My worldview is thus an intensely ethical one, filled with a sense of responsibility for the overwhelming mass of society's victims and outraged at the worn-out and shallow pleasantries with which we have chosen to cloak injustice.
Such ethical commitment requires defense. As I see it, this justification can fall into one of two camps. It can be a personal and individual conviction in the midst of a universe of meaninglessness in which every possible persuasion is both equally valid and equally invalid. Conversely, it can be grounded in a reality that goes beyond human convictions and provides a definitive norm for ethical behavior. My worldview falls firmly in this second camp.
As a Christian, I would further identify this absolute ethical grounding with God revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. However, this particularity is not crucial to the validity of the universal and absolute ethic. Humans of all religious beliefs and of none can all recognize this absolute ethical grounding: it is the voice of the 'other,' the outcry of our fellow humans - their demand upon our conscience. To respond to this cry is our human obligation; to ignore it, our fundamental guilt. Apathy can never fully deaden this sense of guilt. This ethical demand is absolute. Such is the first premise of my worldview.
With the recognition of an absolute ethic comes an overwhelming realization, and this is the second premise of my worldview: present society is fraught with and founded upon unimaginable human misery and suffering. This suffering and misery is not a sad twist of fate, not the result of unfortunate circumstances - it is caused. Oppression and exploitation have caused hunger, suffering and death in the world. This causal link between oppression and suffering means that what is at stake is not merely that many humans do not have enough - enough food, sufficient shelter, potable water, basic medical care, safe working conditions - but that others have far too much. This is a world at once defined by distended, hungry bellies and $100 a bottle champagne, by massive death from curable diseases and cosmetic surgery research.
This blatant inequality does not completely touch the heart of fundamental human guilt, however. The system of injustice reaches further. All of this nauseating excess has been taken from the sweat of laborers. World capitalism labels 'profit' the appropriation of the unpaid labor of millions upon millions of workers. It is their sweat, their blood, and their life which have produced the symbols of selfishness that are mansions and Hummers.
To combine these two fundamental premises of my worldview: there is an ethical absolute grounded in the cry of our fellow humans to our conscience, and that ethical absolute is being violated to an immeasurable degree.
Right and wrong are very real categories then, and our present society is unspeakably in the wrong. It does not have to be. This is the third and final premise of my worldview. The current world of injustice has been humanly constructed. The hierarchies and structures of power, of class exploitation, and all of the centuries of gender and racial domination, are all humanly constructed and can be humanly undone.
The challenge to live ethically can actually be met, both personally and collectively. To behave sanely, to fulfill our ethical obligation, to truly be free, we must build a world where each person receives according to their needs and labors according to their abilities.
A dramatic tearing down of existing structures and the building of new, just, ones; the rebirth of compassion; in the words of Ezekiel, the replacement of our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh: only in this way can we move beyond our guilt and see the realization of a truly human world, good beyond all hope.
Absolute responsibility, fundamental guilt and genuine hope. It is in the struggling journey from responsibility and guilt to hope that my worldview is daily re-forged into a life-long commitment to compassion and justice.
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"The important point is this: There is always among people an underlying deviation, a mistrust, a readiness to trample upon the other. This can be strengthened and increased till it becomes in Sartre's words, "the feeling that we have the fundamental right to kill." But whether it reaches this point or not, it is this basic deviation that causes the hell that we call human civilization.
But, we repeat, this deviation can be eradicated. If it could not - if we were not free to be otherwise - we would not experience it as guilt."
- Jose Porfirio Miranda
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. - KM
