Immortality Is Granted To The Individual Through Social

In response to Bernard Williams’s The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality, I will argue in agreement with Williams’s claim that immortality, where humanly conceivable, is not desirable. In order to do so, I will first discuss categorical desires and the two conditions for an immortal life to be desirable, as defined by Williams. Next, I will assess Williams’s illustration of Elina Makropulos and consider why categorical desires are vital to the value one finds in life. Finally, I will recognize the theist’s objection to Williams’s argument and explain how Williams would respond.

Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th century, influenced by national syndicalism. Its movement is based on nationalism and militaries, combining more typically right-wing positions with elements of left-wing politics. Also, it emphasizes the importance of the state and individual’s overriding duty to it. Fascism opposes to liberalism and communism and it seeks to regenerate social, cultural and economic life, by installing strong national identity and complete loyalty to the state and the leader. Secret police and propaganda were used to manipulate the citizens and the suppress opposition.

This theme of suffering can apply to the social identity theory. The social identity theory proposes that a person's sense of self stems from the groups in which they surround themselves with. According to Tajfel and Turner in 1986, we think well of and act similarly to the groups we belong to, and we are sometimes motivated to go against competing groups (as cited in Harwood, 2007, p. 44). Social identity theory is validated through in-groups (person perceives themselves as part of the group) and out-groups (person does not identify to a group). Through the in-groups and out-groups there lies three processes: social categorization, social identification, and social comparison.

The Holocaust is one the most notable examples of the psychological phenomena known as groupthink. As a result of the human instinct to adapt to the people and their culture, individuals begin to think and act in a similar manner. When many different elements such as discrimination against racism come into play, groupthink occurs. Unfortunately, many disastrous events soon follow. The Nazi regime utilised anti-semitism to unify Germany, propaganda to control society’s way of thinking, and fear to oppress individualism and encourage collectivism. Anti-semitism, propaganda, and fear all contributed to the subconscious occurrence of groupthink, that ultimately set the stage for “The Final Solution”, the Holocaust.

The Nazis, short for National Socialists, are sometimes considered to be the most infamous people in history. They managed to utilize an immense, young, nationalistic population to carry out their plans through the notions of mass suggestion (O 'Shaughnessy, 2009). Nazis, who were composed of half World War I veterans and half young adults around college age, used many different tactics to have a strong appeal towards the latter. First, the young person’s brain is not fully developed, and was therefore manipulated in various ways by the Nazis (Pauer-Studer & Velleman, 2011). Second, at this stage in life, adolescents’ emerging identities can be compromised by their environment (Feldman, R.S., 2015, p. 281). Finally, most humans, especially adolescents, constantly seek conformity to a group while maintaining some individual differences (Pagaard, 2015). Therefore, the perpetrators of Nazi crimes often aimed many aspects of their campaign towards teenagers and young adults in order to take advantage of their vulnerable positions in society.

And, therefore, fascism and the governing and publicising industry, moreover, exploit individualism and the masses, which accept their fabricated destinies. This mental depravity while it antagonises free singularity and personality of the mind promulgates sham hopes as hierarchical superiority; furthermore, it advocates hostility and war when fear prevails.

485). Immigrants who are legitimized as “white” within the racial definition can be seen to have greater access and considered a lesser threat than those who are considered non-white immigrants (p. 507). The ideology can be construed, the more a group’s ethnic appearance conforms to the perceived whiteness of society in the United States; the less likely they are to suffer from obvious institutionalized bias. The work of Hagan, Shedd and Payne: Race, Ethnicity, and Youth Perceptions of Criminal Injustice (2005), makes an argument of the correlation between the amount of encounters with law enforcement officials and adolescent minority groups, and the psychological effects of those encounters. Events, based on the frequency and outcome of those encounters, which leads to a continuation or hypersensitivity to the feelings of bias and discrimination. The recall of these events, which may in actuality be an exaggeration of the contact, brought on by the experiences in early childhood, serve as a reminder of the individual’s lack of “whiteness”. The basis of the internal conflict would be continuous, even if the non-white individual were able to change their socio-economic status, the effects of their social ethnic stratification in early life formed their world view (p 385). Changing minority social location, being located within a multi-diverse or white communities with whom non-whites

We become more vulnerable to social influences and the impacts of social rules when we are deindividuated. In a certain study people were given different rules, guards, and inmates. When put to the “task” of acting their new identity, many people became violent, harsh, and acted out of their original identity. This study is known as the Stanford Prison Study: Chaos in Palo Alto. Although indidvual differences in personality do play a key role in conformity, many people still showed signs of aggressive change in their personality like others. in conclusion deindividuation does not make us initially bhave badly, we are more likely to conform to the situation that is at hand. A loss of identiy is likely to make people engage in prosocial or helping behavior when others are too helping. Despite being anonymous sometimes we are more likely to assist others. deindividuation helps us to nderstand why crowd behavior is so unpredictable. In most cases the actions of crowds depend largely on wehther others are acting prosocially or antisocially. Inittally depending on prevalling social nomalitys, deindividuation can in contex make us less aggressive or more

The Nazi and communist movements in Europe after 1930 exploited this phenomenon, of which the rise of these movements included the recruitment of members straight from the masses, thus, creating a situation in which the majority of members were people who had never been involved in politics before, allowing Nazi leaders to introduce new desired methods into their political propaganda (Arendt OT, 311-12). As a result of the increase in unemployment that followed the loss of World War I, the numbers of the masses of desperate men increased accordingly in Germany and Austria however, a development can be seen in the attitude of the mass man into a feeling of selflessness, in which the main characteristic of the mass man became his isolation and lack in normal social relationships (Arendt OT, 317). “The old adage that the poor and oppressed have nothing to loose but their chains no longer applied to the mass men, for they lost much more than the chains of misery when they lost interest in their own well-being: the source of all worries and cares which make human life troublesome and anguished was gone” (Arendt OT,

My name is… well I suppose my name is irrelevant. What does matter is the truth. People these days will tell you anything and everything they think you want to hear just so you’ll buy their crap. They would even tell you that if you could live forever you would be the happiest person on earth. Well they’re wrong. How do I know? Here let me tell you how I came upon this knowledge.

In a 2012 article published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, University of Kansas researchers, Daniel Sullivan, Mark J. Landau, Nyla R. Branscombe, and Zachary K. Rothschild, explored the effect of threats made to an ingroup’s moral identity on defensive strategies for restoring the ingroup’s moral image. Before delving into their experimental findings, the researchers begin with an epigraph by Vamik Volkan, Turkish Cypriot Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia: “They began by reciting past injuries…as if competing to see who had suffered more.” This quote effectively introduces the experimental research by setting a tone for the concept of “competitive

Support for this statement can be seen through Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. When placed in the position of being a prison guard, individuals were more likely to assert violence on the prisoners. Individuals in the experiment were not predisposed to harming other human beings; however, once they became labeled as a guard, they conformed to the group and were aggressive towards inmates. This can also be seen regarding the prisoners of the study. The review states that “when an individual’s sense of self becomes fully integrated with that of their group, a state of being called identity fusion occurs become more willing to fight or die for their group, and more supportive of extreme behavior that will benefit the group” (Littman and Paluck 89). As the experiment went on, the prisoners began to experience deindividuation. Prisoners began to rebel against the guards in an attempt to better their group’s

Researchers view conservatism as a form of motivated reasoning. That is, a person’s psychological tendencies, rather than their objective assessment of public policy, is what drives conservatism. Following this argument, we might expect that conservatives would be less objective in their discussion of politics than liberals. While this hypothesis is plausible, there are other possibilities to consider. A growing body of research, coined the ideological symmetry hypothesis, indicates that motivated reasoning may inform both conservatism and liberalism. In other words, conservatives may be just as objective as liberals while reaching different conclusions. What we have are two competing hypotheses. On one hand, we have research indicating that

Plato has roused many readers with the work of a great philosopher by the name of Socrates. Through Plato, Socrates lived on generations after his time. A topic of Socrates that many will continue to discuss is the idea of “an immortal soul”. Although there are various works and dialogues about this topic it is found to be best explained in The Phaedo. It is fair to say that the mind may wonder when one dies what exactly happens to the beloved soul, the giver of life often thought of as the very essence of life does it live on beyond the body, or does it die with it? Does the soul have knowledge of the past if it really does live on?

There were no real evidence on the existence of an everlasting life. Humans have never went to this extent because of aging and diseases that cause death. The reason why people are desperately aiming for an eternal is fear of the death, more especially the unknown of what comes next. That fear triggers many to believe there must be an upcoming of events right after death. However, this suggests that there is no evidence of immortality, but it is a set of belief created by mankind to reassure death, and many philosophers such as David Hume disapproved it.