Mesothelioma

Asbestos was one of the most common industrial materials put to use in the twentieth century. It has also proven to be one of the most lethal, as inhaling asbestos fibers can lead to a wide range of pulmonary problems such as asthma and asbestosis - and can also be the direct cause of mesothelioma.

What is mesothelioma? It is a lethal cancer that attacks the membranes around the lungs, the heart and the abdominal cavity. Mesothelioma cancer of the lungs is by far the most common form. Perhaps its most unusual characteristic is that mesothelioma diagnosis usually occurs decades after the initial exposure to asbestos.

It takes years for the asbestos fibers to work their way into those membranes; after an extended presence they begin to cause fluid accumulation and tumor development. However the first mesothelioma symptoms are such afflictions as a persistent cough or shortness of breath - symptoms that are often mistaken for evidence of more common lung problems, which delays the mesothelioma diagnosis even further.

Living With Cancer

Cancer is often a disease that lasts a long time, and people may be treated for it for many years. Sometimes, people close to the patient who were very involved at first grow distant as the treatment continues over the course of months or years. It is understandable that you can become "burned out" when supporting a person with cancer. Still, people with cancer need emotional support throughout the entire course of their illness. Remember that the encouragement and support of those around them can help people with cancer get a new perspective and even have more hope when they feel beaten down by cancer or its treatment. Also, the support of family and friends helps people with cancer try to get on with their old activities and return to as normal a life as their illness will allow. So if you are going to be a support for a person with cancer, try to hang in there for the long term. Being there and then leaving can be very painful for your loved one, and can feel even worse than not ever being there at all.

It is often hard to know if you are crossing boundaries or treating the person with cancer too much like a "cancer patient" and not like your friend or family member. Encourage the person with cancer to let you know if you cross this line. Every person with cancer appreciates the friend or family member who remembers that they used to be a person without cancer -- that they had, and still have, strengths and weaknesses, interests, and parts of life that have nothing to do with cancer. Sometimes being the person in the "cancer patient's" life who remembers the whole person is a special gift.

Work vs. Happiness

What is happiness? Does money necessarily bring happiness? Many people think that when become rich and successful, happiness will naturally follow. But let me tell me tell you that the world is full of very rich people who are as miserable as hell. We have been reading stories about movie stars committing suicides and dying from drugs.

Then what is the key to happiness? I believe that long- term happiness is based on productive work, honesty, and self-esteem. Happiness is not an end; it is a process. It is a continuous process of productive work that makes a real contribution to others that makes you feel like a worthwhile person. As Dr.Wayre wrote, " there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way". If you wait for certain things to happiness and depend totally on the external conditions of life to make you happy, you will always feel unhappy.

Some may argue that if one have enough money to spend and can live a comfortable life without any real work, why should he have to work to make himself happiness? Yes he may live a comfortable life, but a comfortable life doesn’t mean happiness. I have a female friend who married a very successful businessman. Money is not at all the problem to her. People around her all think that she is lucky. Some even envy her of her wealth. But the fact is that she is far from happiness. She told me that once in a party one of her friend drew a picture of her jokingly: there suddenly stopped a very luxurious car. The door was open. Then came down a Pekinese followed by a well-dressed lady. After seeing that, instead of felt flattered and envied, she got a very strange feeling. She felt that her life was so meaningless and that she almost lost her own her. So she started her own business all by herself. Thou she is now very busy and have to work very hard but she felt most happy.

Long-term happiness is a process of moving towards worthwhile goals and contributing to happiness of others. It does not mean you should give away your own wealth. It means that continuously creating values for others through productive work. It means doing what you love and loving what you do. It mean achieving you goals and challenging yourself to bigger and better things. It means always striving for more, learning and growing. "Doing nothing means death. Activity means life". Find your purpose, set some goals, do what you love and love what you do, work honestly and productively. In the long-term, that is what it is all about.

Does Absolute Understanding Exist?

An elephant was brought to a group of blind men who had never encountered such an animal before. One felt a leg and reported that an elephant is a great living pillar. Another felt the trunk and reported that an elephant is a great snake. Another felt a tusk and reported that an elephant is like a sharp ploughshare. And so on. And then they all quarreled together, each claiming that his own account was the truth and therefore all the others false (traditional parable).

None of the accounts that the blind men made about the nature of the elephant are absolute truths, nor are the accounts false. An absolute truth, or one that is true for all, can not be achieved because of the constant motion of circumstances of who said it, to whom, when, where, why, and how it was said. Instead of absolute truths, the concepts or beliefs that the blind men claim are viewpoints that each one clarifies the nature of the elephant.

Everybody has learned to see things from his or her own sense of reason and logic. The many things that people experience throughout their lifetimes, help to determine the judgments toward the different issues and objects that they encounter. Because individuals has his or her own sense of reason and logic, the perceptions that people encounter are ultimately true, and not false. Life does not contain one truth for any idea or object, but truths can be found in one's perception. It is difficult to determine that anything is the absolute truth. One should not prove that any object contains a true meaning, but should develop conceptions surrounding the object.

Attempting to prove anything then would be difficult, if not impossible. Our senses from smell to values to reality may differ from person to person. What may be true to one person may be different for another. Because everybody has different perceptions about life, it is difficult to weigh the content of any concept. Every account, of its own, is formed to be the truth of the one individual who assumes it. The variety of concepts may have the virtue of being considered. This is how people develop a deeper sense of understanding for all objects.

Truth is achieved through the concept and not the object itself. Because many individuals hold different perceptions, they have many truths to consider, or not to consider. For example, it would be impossible to determine, whether or not, the cutting of trees is either "good" or "bad." One might have the conception that cutting trees destroys homes for birds and other animals. Another person might have the conception that cutting trees is necessary to satisfy the need to provide homes for humans. Whatever concept is understood from the object, may be the truth. Just because there may be other viewpoints to this situation, does not mean that there has to be false statements. The tree can be used for many uses from medicine to paper to boats and none of these views would be wrong. The tree remains to be a tree, but the values of the tree can differentiate, depending on who is using it.

The conception of God, or the non-conception of God, is another issue that many people make the mistake of trying to prove. A well recognized philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard states, "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it; and if he [or she] does exist it would be folly to attempt it." Demonstrating the existence or non- existence of God only produces reasons for belief, not the actual proof that God exists. Kierkegaard also claims, "...between God and his works there exists an absolute relationship: God is not a name but a concept"( Kierkegaard 72). The relationship between man and God is a concept. A person with belief in God, cannot prove its existence through his or her own relationship with God. Kierkegaard adds again, "The works of God are such that only God can perform them" We have no basis of proving God's works, nor do we know what kind of works God uses on different individuals. Yet, some religious groups have made the mistake to try to enforce their own religion upon different individuals. Some religious groups claim that their religion is the only "true" religion, which is very untrue. This may be a reason why religion has been a major factor in previous wars and movements. The attempt to follow one truth, instead of freely allowing individuals and societies to follow their own truth, has led many people into frustration and hostility.

All concepts are so dynamic that the truth that one believes may appear to be self-ironic. A person may believe that television promotes violence in kids, exposes the use of profanity, and stupidity. Another person my believe that television may be educational because the exposure of all these problems will form into understanding. Although both may be perfectly true to each other, the two issues are found to be to be contradictory. The disagreement does not make the other statement false, but establishes another truth.

If each of the blind men spend less time on proving his own account and spend more time understanding the different truths that exist, they may discover that all perceptions of the elephant can be taken into consideration. The men may discover that the elephant is a great living pillar, a great snake, and like a sharp ploughshare at the same time, or at different times. The blind men may even come to the conclusion that the elephant may be neither of these. The opinions of the blind men may be constantly in motion because of the acceptance of the many viewpoints that currently exist and may exist in the future. Although the elephant may stay the same, opinions about it may change and adapt.

Darwinism and Materialism

Most people think the theory of evolution was first proposed by Charles Darwin, and rests on scientific evidence, observations and experiments. However, in the same way that Darwin was not its originator neither does the theory rest on scientific proof. The theory consists of an adaptation to nature of an ancient dogma called materialist philosophy. Although it is backed up by no scientific evidence, the theory is blindly supported in the name of materialist philosophy.

This fanaticism has resulted in many of disasters. That is because together with the spread of Darwinism and the materialist philosophy it supports, the answer to the question 'What is a human being?' has changed. People who used to answer: 'Human beings were created by God and have to live according to the morality He teaches' have now begun to think that 'Man came into being by chance, and is an animal who developed with the fight for survival.' There is a heavy price to pay for this great deception. Violent ideologies such as racism, fascism and communism, and many other cruel world views based on conflict have all drawn strength from this deception.

This article will examine this disaster Darwinism has brought to the world and reveal its connection with terrorism, one of the most important global problems of our time.

The Darwinist Misconception: 'Life is conflict'

Darwin set out with one basic premise when developing his theory: 'The development of living things depends on the fight for survival. The strong win the struggle. The weak are condemned to defeat and oblivion.'

According to Darwin, there was a ruthless struggle for survival and eternal conflict in nature. The strong always overcome the weak, and this enables development to take place. The subtitle he gave to his book The Origin of Species, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life", encapsulates that view.

Furthermore, Darwin proposed that the 'fight for survival' also applied between human races. According to that claim, 'favored races' were victorious in the struggle. Favored races, in Darwin's view, were white Europeans. African or Asian races had lagged behind in the struggle for survival. Darwin went further, and suggested that these races would soon lose the 'struggle for survival' entirely, and thus disappear:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

The Indian anthropologist Lalita Vidyarthi explains how Darwin's theory of evolution imposed racism on the social sciences:

His (Darwin's) theory of the survival of the fittest was warmly welcomed by the social scientists of the day, and they believed mankind had achieved various levels of evolution culminating in the white man's civilization. By the second half of the nineteenth century racism was accepted as fact by the vast majority of Western scientists.

Darwin's Source of Inspiration: Malthus's Theory of Ruthlessness

Darwin's source of inspiration on this subject was the British economist Thomas Malthus's book An Essay on the Principle of Population. Left to their own devices, Malthus calculated that the human population increased rapidly. In his view, the main influences that kept populations under control were disasters such as war, famine and disease. In short, according to this brutal claim, some people had to die for others to live. Existence came to mean 'permanent war.'
In the 19th century, Malthus's ideas were widely accepted. European upper class intellectuals in particular supported his cruel ideas. In an article titled 'The Nazis' Secret Scientific Agenda', the importance 19th century attached Europe attached to Malthus's views on population is described in this way:

In the opening half of the nineteenth century, throughout Europe, members of the ruling classes gathered to discuss the newly discovered "Population problem" and to devise ways of implementing the Malthusian mandate, to increase the mortality rate of the poor: "Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations," and so forth and so on. [3]

As a result of this cruel policy, the weak, and those who lost the struggle for survival would be eliminated, and as a result the rapid rise in population would be balanced out. This so-called 'oppression of the poor' policy was actually carried out in 19th century Britain. An industrial order was set up in which children of eight and nine were made to work sixteen hours a day in the coal mines and thousands died from the terrible conditions. The 'struggle for survival' demanded by Malthus's theory led to millions of Britons leading lives full of suffering.

Influenced by these ideas, Darwin applied this concept of conflict to all of nature, and proposed that the strong and the fittest emerged victorious from this war of existence. Moreover, he claimed that the so-called struggle for survival was a justified an unchangeable law of nature. On the other hand, he invited people to abandon their religious beliefs by denying creation, and thus aimed at all ethical values that could prove an obstacle to the ruthlessness of the 'struggle for survival.'

The dissemination of these untrue ideas that led individuals to ruthlessness and cruelty, cost humanity a heavy price in the 20thcentury.

The Role of Darwinism in Preparing the Ground for World War I

As Darwinism dominated European culture, the effects of the 'struggle for survival' began to emerge. Colonialist European nations in particular began to portray the nations they colonized as 'evolutionary backward nations' and looked to Darwinism for justification.

The bloodiest political effect of Darwinism was the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

In his book Europe Since 1870, the well-known British professor of history James Joll explains that one of the factors that prepared the ground for World War I was the belief in Darwinism of European rulers at the time. For instance, the Austro-Hungarian chief of staff, Franz Baron Conrad von Hoetzendorff, wrote in his post-war memoirs:
Philanthropic religions, moral teachings and philosophical doctrines may certainly sometimes serve to weaken mankind's struggle for existence in its crudest form, but they will never succeed in removing it as a driving motive of the world… It is in accordance with this great principle that the catastrophe of the world war came about as the result of the motive forces in the lives of states and peoples, like a thunderstorm which must by its nature discharge itself. [4]
çýýÖÖçþIt is not hard to understand why Conrad, with that ideological foundation, should have encouraged the Austro-Hungarian Empire to declare war. Such ideas at the time were not limited to the military. Kurt Riezler, the personal assistant and confidant of the German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, wrote in 1914: 'Eternal and absolute enmity is fundamentally inherent in relations between peoples; and the hostility which we observe everywhere… is not the result of a perversion of human nature but is the essence of the world and the source of life itself.'

Friedrich von Bernardi, a World War I general, made a similar connection between war and the laws of war in nature. "War" declared Bernhardi "is a biological necessity"; it "is as necessary as the struggle of the elements of nature"; it "gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things."

As we have seen, World War I broke out because of European thinkers, generals and administrators who saw warfare, bloodshed and suffering as a kind of 'development', and thought they were an unchanging 'law of nature', The ideological root that dragged all of that generation to destruction was nothing else than Darwin's concepts of the 'struggle for survival' and 'favored races'.

World War I left behind it 8 million dead, hundreds of ruined cities, and millions of wounded, crippled, homeless and unemployed.
The basic cause of World War II, which broke out 21 years later and left 55 million dead behind it, was also based on Darwinism.

The Fruit of 'The Law of the Jungle': Fascism

As Darwinism fed racism in the 19th century, it formed the basis of an ideology that would develop and drown the world in blood in the 20thcentury: Nazism.

A strong Darwinist influence can be seen in Nazi ideologues. When one examines this theory, which was given shape by Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, one comes across such concepts as 'natural selection', 'selected mating', and 'the struggle for survival between the races', which are repeated dozens of time in The Origin of Species. When calling his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler was inspired by the Darwinist struggle for survival and the principle that victory went to the fittest. He particularly talks about the struggle between the races:

'History would culminate in a new millennial empire of unparalleled splendor, based on a new racial hierarchy ordained by nature herself.'

In the 1933 Nuremberg party rally, Hitler proclaimed that "a higher race subjects to itself a lower race… a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right."

That the Nazis were influenced by Darwinism is a fact that many historians accept. The historian Hickman describes Darwinism's influence on Hitler as follows:

(Hitler) was a firm believer and preacher of evolution. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his psychosis, it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important because] … his book, Mein Kampf, clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and the extermination of the weak to produce a better society.

Hitler, who emerged with these views, dragged the world to violence that had never before been seen. Many ethnic and political groups, and especially the Jews, were exposed to terrible cruelty and slaughter in the Nazi concentration camps. World War II, which began with the Nazi invasion, cost 55 million lives. What lay behind the greatest tragedy in world history was Darwinism's concept of the 'struggle for survival'.

The Bloody Alliance: Darwinism and Communism

While fascists are found on the right wing of Social Darwinism, the left wing is occupied by communists. Communists have always been among the fiercest defenders of Darwin's theory.

This relationship between Darwinism and communism goes right back to the founders of both these 'isms.' Marx and Engels, the founders of communism, read Darwin's The Origin of Species as soon as it came out, and were amazed at is 'dialectical materialist' attitude. The correspondence between Marx and Engels showed that they saw Darwin's theory as 'containing the basis in natural history for communism'. In his book The Dialectics of Nature, which he wrote under the influence of Darwin, Engels was full of praise for Darwin, and tried to make his own contribution to the theory in the chapter 'The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man.'

Russian communists who followed in the footsteps of Marx and Engels, such as Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, all agreed with Darwin's theory of evolution. Plekhanov, who is considered as the founder of Russian communism, regarded marxism as 'Darwinism in its application to social science'.

Trotsky said, 'Darwin's discovery is the highest triumph of the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter.'

'Darwinist education' had a major role in the formation of communist cadres. For instance, historians note the fact that Stalin was religious in his youth, but became an atheist because of Darwin's books.

Mao, who established communist rule in China and killed millions of people, openly stated that 'Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution.' [12]

The Harvard University historian James Reeve Pusey goes into great detail regarding Darwinism's effect on Mao and Chinese communism in his research book China and Charles Darwin.

In short, there is an unbreakable link between the theory of evolution and communism. The theory claims that living things are the product of blind chance, and provides a so-called scientific support for atheism. Communism, an atheist ideology, is for that reason firmly tied to Darwinism. Moreover, the theory of evolution proposes that development in nature is possible thanks to conflict (in other words 'the struggle for survival') and supports the concept of 'dialectics' which is fundamental to communism.

If we think of the communist concept of 'dialectical conflict', which killed some 120 million people throughout the 20thcentury, as a 'killing machine' then we can better understand the dimension of the disaster that Darwinism visited on our planet.

Darwinism and Terrorism

As we have so far seen, Darwinism is at the root of various ideologies of violence that spelled disaster to mankind in the 20thcentury. However, as well as these ideologies, Darwinism also defines an 'ethical understanding' and 'method' that could influence various world views. The fundamental concept behind this understanding and method is 'fighting those who are not one of us'.

We can explain this in the following way: There are different beliefs, worldviews and philosophies in the world. These can look at each other in one of two ways:

1) They can respect the existence of those who are not one of them and try to establish dialogue with them, employing a humane method.
2) They can choose to fight others, and to try to secure an advantage by damaging them, in other words, behave like a wild animal.

The horror we call terrorism is nothing other than a statement of the second view.

When we consider the difference between these two approaches, we can see that the idea of "man as a fighting animal" which Darwinism has subconsciously imposed on people is particularly influential. Individuals and groups who choose the way of conflict may never have heard of Darwinism and the principles of that ideology. But in the final analysis, they agree with a view whose philosophical basis rests on Darwinism. What leads them to believe in the rightness of violence is such Darwinism-based slogans as;

'In this world, only the strong survive',
'Big fish swallow the little ones',
'War is a virtue',
and 'Man advances by waging war'.

Take Darwinism away, and these are nothing but empty slogans.

Actually, when Darwinism is taken away, no philosophy of 'conflict' remains. The three monotheistic religions that most people in the world believe in, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all oppose violence. All three religions wish to bring peace and harmony to the world, and oppose innocent people being killed and suffering cruelty and torture. Conflict and violence violate the morality that God has set out for man, and are abnormal and undesired concepts. However, Darwinism sees and portrays conflict and violence as natural, justified and correct concepts that have to exist.

For this reason, if some people commit terrorism using the concepts and symbols of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the name of those religions, you can be sure that those people are not Muslims, Christians or Jews. They are in fact Social Darwinists. They hide under a cloak of religion, but they are not genuine believers. Even if they claim to be serving religion, they are actually enemies of religion and believers. That is because they are ruthlessly committing a crime that religion forbids, and in such a way as to blacken religion in peoples' eyes.

For this reason, the root of the terrorism that plagues our world is not in any of the monotheistic religions, but is in atheism, and the expression of atheism in our times: 'Darwinism' and 'materialism'.

Business Ethics

Business has created wealth that has given numerous individuals financial freedom, yet at the same time, it has widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The philosophy of business considers the primary principles that underlie the operations of an enterprise. Developing a balanced business ethic between profit-taking and honesty is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks for a corporation. In the wake of post-communism, we are now living in triumphant times of global capitalism; but the inevitability of corporate greed and deception in this system can create devastating results like Enron, WorldCom and Arthur Anderson. These corporations failed because of the people that work there; a series of deceptive operational decisions left these billion-dollar corporations and their millions of investors in demise. And there are many other examples of smaller companies undergoing “corporate restructuring” in an effort to save themselves. What business ethics involves is the plundering of natural resources, exploitation of labor in lesser-developed nations, unfair competition, impacts on the environment, treatment of employees and social responsibility. Business managers must keep all of these points in mind when making decisions on behalf of their organizations. This paper will look at the different factors a manager ought to look at when making informed decisions, with consideration of the stakeholders – the manager him/herself, the corporation and greater society. Through the use of the role-differentiated model, the utilitarian model and the professional contract model, I contend that a business manager has moral right but not the moral obligation to act up to the limits of law in any situation; in other words, the manager will be considered amoral only if he/she has broken the law.
First we must understand that all business is anchored in the subjective viewpoints of the manager, of the corporation and of society. Each of these distinct and interconnected entities hold their own beliefs on what businesses ought and ought not to do, and these beliefs often conflict with one another. What we need is a practical method of resolving morality in business dilemmas, and I feel the best way to do it is by reducing business ethics to the law. Legal reduction gives us a more practical way of resolving black and white issues, whereby the grey area is significantly reduced in size. The law gives managers a clear view of the limits of a corporate decision.
An opponent of this view might step in and argue that many business situations cannot be resolved to law. For example, if a business is giving customer ABC a favorable discount but not to customer XYZ, although not legally wrong some opponents would suggest that this is ethically wrong because all customers ought to be treated equally. However, we must recognize that this is part of regular business deals. Capitalism and wealth is created by imbalances of assets between countries, businesses and peoples. There is a certain amount of wealth in this world created by the perception of value by different groups of people. The imbalance of perceived value has made countries like USA and Canada richer than countries like Uganda and India. In addition, most business managers are smart people, they know how to develop relationships and how to make money for their organizations or they would not be where they are. Their decision to treat a specific customer favorably is calculated risk that they have decided to take on behalf of their organizations. Hence, giving one customer a favorable discount is simply a part of doing business in the global economy. According to the definition discussed in this paper, the above situation is not morally wrong because the business has not violated any legal rules.
I will limit my discussion to business managers within corporations in North America because these seem to be the highest group of people that are scrutinized when the issue of business ethics arises. In addition, different cultures have different business practices that we may not completely agree with (bribery in countries like China and India are common); limiting our discussion to what we know will make the topic more applicable to the North American business culture. However, do keep in mind that the concepts covered are more or less applicable to all businesses regardless of size, location and authority. I will also assume that all business managers make decisions based on the best interest of the organization.
Before going into the details, I will discuss some background basics of business ethics. A corporation is “an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.” Hence, a business is distinct from the individual; it has different social, legal and ethical rules from any human being. Many large corporations have a “corporate code of conduct” which is a set of company policies that define ethical standards for their conduct. This code is normally a reflection of a company’s culture, values and a representation of the law. It is completely voluntary, and can take a number of formats and address any issue. Fundamentally, the code is dependent on its credibility taken by industry, unions, consumers and governments. In most organizations, business managers make decisions based on this code because it’s simply the easiest thing to do, and it is likely to be what is best for the corporation. In some cases however, managers will choose to violate the code to gain a favorable position; this often results in moral dilemmas.
Role differentiation is a concept often employed by professionals of law, medicine and business. Role morality is based on the idea that there are certain moral responsibilities that change as we move between roles within society. These duties may conflict with those acceptable by reference to ordinary citizenry morality. For example, a defense lawyer because of her role must defend her client wholeheartedly even knowing that her client has committed the crime and is capable of repeating the crime if released. Similarly in business, decisions ought to be made based on the professional role of managers, and not the individual managers themselves. A corporation is owned by shareholders; managers are professionals representing the company who have special business acumen that majority of the population do not have. As a result, similar to how doctors are professionals of the medical system; an executive should practice in the interest of the business with the end-goal of benefiting the shareholders. A manager acting on behalf of the business may feel morally obligated one way toward a decision, but because she is acting on behalf of the business, the decision she makes is by no means an immoral one. If the manager does not take action because his personal morals overpower the professional morals, then he is not a good manager, which means that he may be penalized by the system – i.e. fired by management, decreased salary & bonus etc.
Albert Carr is a supporter of role morality. Carr’s game theory suggests that business is much like a poker game whereby bluffing is a sort of business strategy used by businesses to win the game. Carr’s theory is that if a business does not take advantage of a legal opportunity, then others will; hence, it is in the interest of the business manager to take the advantage up to the limits of law. For example, let us say that you are in the middle of a deal that if goes through would boost the company’s earnings significantly. Yet the deal is very tough to make because your buyer has five other vendors competing for the same contract. You know the buyer likes to watch the Los Angeles Lakers and you are confident that if you are able to accommodate his wishes - fly him down for the game with court-side seats, you will have a great shot at closing the deal. However, one of your personal values is to never bribe for anything, and to always earn it with hard work. What should you do?
We must evaluate this situation on the basis of a manager and not on the basis of the person. As a manager of the company, she has the obligation to grow profits for the company. It would certainly be in best interest of the company to send the buyer down to Los Angeles, with potential upsides of millions of dollars. Although the manager may not be happy with the decision personally, it is not his personal life that is at stake, but his professional life. He has a professional obligation to the shareholders and to all the employees of the organization, and as a result his role morality commands him to take action. In addition, if he does buy the tickets, likely one of the other vendors will, and he would lose the deal for his company. Consequently following Carr’s game theory, it would be more advantageous for him to act.
An opponent might argue that role-morality and the game theory are limitless in terms of how much a manager can do to gain the advantage. For example, if everyone else is depositing the vendor with millions of dollars into his personal bank account, should the manager also do the same knowing that this is clearly unethical? To answer this question, we must go back to our original argument that business decisions are moral up to the limits of law. Stuffing millions of dollars into someone’s bank account in hope of getting a business deal is clearly illegal. A good business manager would not risk the reputation and image of the organization and hence would not commit such fraudulent activities. The other vendors that are doing so are simply not good business managers, and they will eventually be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Another criticism to role-differentiation might be that that it’s simply too easy of a response to complex professional dilemmas in denying any notion of individual personal responsibility. Opponents might say that role morality is simply an expression of the way that humans are divided into separate segments which make up the general morality of our existence. They may argue that business dilemmas ought to be resolved by normal human morals because these are the ‘true’ morals that we must appeal to in all situations. Yet, these objections are faulty for many reasons. First, they are impractical. Appealing to broad morals makes the evaluation of a decision much tougher than targeted role morals. For example, in evaluating whether to dump chemical wastes in the nearby river, it would be much tougher to introduce one’s personal morals along with the business morals than to use business morals alone. Secondly, normal morality fails to account for professional roles that have specific responsibilities and expectations attached to them. Role differentiation helps to distinguish between these responsibilities so that a more specific moral dealing can be defined; in addition, it seems inappropriate to use normal values that lie outside of the professional context. If all business managers reduce their decisions to normal morals, then it would seem inevitable that equality would be restored to the capitalist system because normal values generally do not endorse taking an advantageous position over another person, company or country. In effect, this would collapse the entire global economy which is predominantly based on inequality.
Another common theory used in professional ethics is teleology – utilitarianism. Teleology focuses on the consequences of actions. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory stating that one ought to act as to produce the greatest good for everyone. Many utilitarian believe that this theory follows egoism – the belief that one should make decisions that maximize their own self-interest.3 Because business managers will likely make decisions to promote the good of that individual or organization, utilitarianism seems like a good model to ensue. This theory offers a straightforward method of deciding the morally right action in most situations. First, we must identify the various courses of actions we can perform. Second, we must determine all of the potential benefits and harms that would result from each action. Finally we must choose the action that provides the highest overall benefits subtracting out all of the costs.9
The calculated decisions that managers make will create the greatest happiness, sometimes with higher happiness to the corporation, and sometimes with higher happiness to society. We can see how that using the utility model, decisions can be morally justified to the limits of law. For example, what should the manager do in deciding whether or not a company should outsource its manufacturing to India so that it can be more price competitive? In this example, the manager would have to determine all of the advantages and disadvantages associated with this decision from the business’s point of view, and not his personal morals. Advantages may be that it boosts profits, improves productivity, and increases the developing country’s employment and training etc. Disadvantages may include that it increases globalization, widens the gap between the rich and the poor, slashes jobs in North America etc. After evaluating these items and recognizing that outsourcing does not violate the law, and that the potential upsides of outsourcing outweigh the potential drawbacks, then the decision to outsource operations abroad is morally qualified. If on the other hand, the manager discovers certain clauses in the agreement that violates North American law, then outsourcing is amoral, and the manager should change the clauses or withdraw from the action completely.
A concept that may be employed in the utility calculation is stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder is an individual or group that affects the organization and in turn, is affected by the company’s actions and decisions. Stakeholder management goes beyond the traditional production and managerial views of the company and calls for a broader view of the parties involved including shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, banks, government and NGOs.4 In the example above, the utility calculation would involve everyone that is affected by the outsourcing.
An opponent might argue that utilitarianism fails to take into account considerations of justice.5 Using the above example, a business decision might very well produce the greatest happiness by going into India and enforcing child labor, so that all of its workers are less than eighteen years old with wages much lower than the norm. Critics might argue that this is clearly wrong and utilitarianism still sanctions it. Yet the critics are missing an important point in this paper – producing the greatest happiness up to the limits of law. Child labor is legally wrong, and no matter how much happiness the business might create, it is not morally right; hence, the utility calculation in this case would not sanction such actions.
Another objection might be that happiness is difficult to measure and compare. It is tough to determine the values of certain benefits and costs. For example, how would we go about assigning a value to life? How do we compare money to the value of time, or to the value of human worth? And how can we be sure that our subjective measurements are an objective view of the decision to be made? In looking at these questions, we must consider that just because measuring the utility of a decision is tough does not mean that it is wrong or invalid to do so. In addition, the opponent uses objectivism to defend his argument, but we can counter by saying that almost everything in this world is subjective. Even the law is formed based on individual subjectivism – adopted based on the values and beliefs that humans have developed over thousands of years. For example, the legal sanction that one not to kill is not objective in nature, but rather a subjective value that most of us have developed over our lifetimes. This illustrates that evaluating moral situations will inevitably fall in the hands of subjectivism. Hence, objectivism itself shouldn’t be a huge concern. What does matter is that the manager tries his best to asses the situation with as little bias as possible.
Building on the role-differentiation and utilitarian models of business managers, it seems likely that a contract model would best describe the relationship between a manager and a corporation. A manager enters an employment contract with the organization whereby the organization pays the manager for her services in growing the business. The manager enters the relationship voluntarily aware of the restrictions imposed by the business; the manager also retains a level of accountability and has a right to ask for justifications from higher-ups and from shareholders. Moreover both the manager and the organization can exit from the relationship at anytime in the process.10 As a result, the contract demands the wholehearted devotion of the manager to the business, similar to the contractual agreement between a lawyer and his client. Evaluating decisions based on the contract model involves looking at all of the stakeholders and their relationships with one another. The manager enters a contract with the organization; the organization is in contract with the shareholders, the suppliers, the consumers, and the government etc. Hence, working down the chain of contracts, the manager’s decision must include many parties both internal and external of the organization itself.
An example might best illustrate this model. A business manager is looking to hire an analyst for his team to work on a long-term project for one his clients who is Asian. He knows that hiring a Chinese person would benefit his team much more than hiring another race. He currently has two candidates to choose from: one is a Chinese person who graduated from Boston College with an Arts degree, while another candidate is Caucasian who graduated from the Wharton School of Business. What should he do? In looking at this situation, first we must decide how much hiring power this manager has over the HR department according to his contract with the organization. He should then evaluate the hiring policies of the organization and what the criteria are for evaluating candidates; using these contractual criteria, the manager should then evaluate both candidates and objectively come out with a solution based on the advantages and disadvantages of hiring either applicant. The manager should also understand the legal boundaries for human resources and ensure that he does not violate any rules.
An opponent might argue that a contract model often does not cover what has not been expressly agreed upon. This creates many problems in terms of moral and legal disputes because a situation was simply not covered in the papers. In the above example, if the contract did not tell the manager what his role is in hiring for the organization, and what the evaluation criteria is, then what should the manager do? Yet this criticism is unfounded; just because a term is not covered does not mean that moral evaluations cannot be made. If the criticism is true, then it would mean that most models are false because not all of their terms are clearly defined – e.g. the fiduciary model, the paternalistic model etc. A certain level of subjectivity exists in the contract model. The manager should be able to infer based on other terms of the contract what she ought to do in such a situation. In the example above, the manager has many options: 1. discuss the circumstances with higher management or with shareholders. 2. Subjectively evaluate the situation and make a decision based on what she believes is most professionally correct. 3. Modify the contract to include the new terms. The manager also needs to keep in mind the legal risks that he and the organization may face and incorporate these risks into her analysis. Morally speaking, if it is not legally wrong to hire for the sake of benefiting the organization based on ethnicity, then it would be morally right to do so.
In this article, we have evaluated several practical methods of assessing the moral grounds of business decisions. In looking at the role-differentiated model, the utilitarian model, and the contract model, we have come to a consensus that it seems appropriate for business managers to evaluate decisions based on the law. In other words, the business manger is not considered amoral until he has broken the law. Yet we must understand that no single approach can offer answers to all of the ethical questions or to be immune from all problems and criticisms. Acknowledging this, we must continually refine our theories to enrich and amplify professional ethics to higher levels.

Fated to be Free

Fate, is it fact or fiction? Do we believe that we are completely free to do what ever we want and that we alone create our destiny, or are we fated to follow some decided path and no matter what we do we are predestined to live out our life according to someone's plan? Now maybe the bigger question is how do we justify which way is right and which is wrong. I believe that each person develops their own opinion through personal encounters and experiences, and the only correct path is the one that the person believes in and lets that person live their life to its fullest.

The people who truly believe in the whole concept of fate are the ones who have it easy. They can look at any situation and say that the outcome, whatever it may be, is because of fate and was meant to be. These are the people who can go skydiving with no fear because they believe that if it is their fate to live, great, if it's their fate to die, well hell it was meant to be. They take the responsibility of their life out of their own hands and put it into the hands of a mystic force called fate. Now that is one hell of a concept. Personally, if I 'm going to do something crazy and stupid, I will be sure all the proper precautions are taken and not count on fate to handle all the details.

Then there are the people who believe that their life is completely in their hands and they themselves mold their destiny through their choices and actions. To me this opinion requires way too much worrying and stress on their part if they truly practice it in their daily lives. But it also provides a sense of freedom and independence to do with your life as you please and live your life how you want it. To me, these types of people generally don't take as many risks as the others because they are worried about the consequences that might damage the life they have created. It is like when you build a pyramid out of playing cards. You pick out the best looking cards, the strong and secure ones, and are always ever so careful placing each pair on so that you don't knock down the entire thing. A life like that is what heart attacks and ulcers feed on. I just think that life is too short to worry about all of life's little things.

Now what I believe in is a little different. I believe in fate very much so, but also in living our life freely to make our own decisions to mold our life. I conceive fate not as some imaginary mystic force, but a very alive power in all our lives, God. I don't want to sound preachy and I don't think God decides everything, but I do believe that certain things happen for a reason. I sense that we are free to live out our lives how we see fit and that we help to shape our destiny through our actions and our experiences, but I strongly believe in another force out there intervening from time to time and makes things happen for whatever reason. This is where the concept of fate comes in.

Whether you live your life throwing caution to the wind or like a house of cards, you should simply live your life out to its fullest and not take either belief to an extreme. There is a healthy median out there, so find it, live it, and love it. Live out live however you see fit and govern your actions accordingly, because after all it is your life and you only got one.

I Heard A Bird Sing

I heard a bird sing in the dark of November,
A magical thing, and so sweet to remember.
The wind started blowing so bitterly cold.
But still the bird sang so loud and so bold.
Snow heavily falling, turning all around white.
The day was retreating, bringing on the long night.
I stood there in wonder as the bird sang his song.
Such heart warming chirping did not seem to belong.
For this was November that cold time of the year.
When all the earth slumbered; with all the trees bare.
The bird sensed my presence then he turned to see.
A man standing in the snow, enjoying his melody.
The bird spread his wings and flew off into the sky.
My eyes could not follow, I thought I would cry.
So there I stood lonely, on this frigid November eve.
Remembering that bird, and his brief winter reprieve.
As I walked away wishing, I was lost in my thought.
Of that brave little bird, and the song that he brought.
So now this November will not seem as cold.
As I think of that bird, and his sweet song so bold.

Friends with Disabilities

Everyone needs friends. Friends are people who support us emotionally and morally, who see things from our point of view, who give us feedback which allows us to grow. We think of our friends as people who choose us for ourselves, not because they have to, and who will be there for us when we are facing a crisis. Friends allow us to see things in different ways, spark the imagination, and better exposes us to the world. Friendships between people with and without disabilities enrich the lives of both, in several ways.

If we want the people we love to be connected to others and a part of their society as adults, we must think about their relationships when they are children. Their classmates and neighbors will grow into their coworkers and friends later in life.

Integrated classrooms and recreational activities are important first steps: in these settings children with and without disabilities get to meet each other. But many parents have found that even though their child is integrated in school, she or he has few non-disabled friends.

Many individuals with disabilities live largely in a world made up of their family, the people who take care of or provide services to them, and others in the programs they participate in. These relationships can clearly be significant and should be encouraged. But outside of family members, people may have no freely given and chosen relationships.

Relationships with those that are disabled shouldn't be viewed as burdensome or demanding, but as enriching and fulfilling. The level of care that comes of it truly constitutes as "unconditional love".