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Productivity In A Pill Argument Analysis

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It was June 2011 and I was sitting next to my mom on a plane on route to the Bahamas. As the flight attendant finished her safety procedures she stated that movies would be accessible on the monitor in our seats. As I was flipping through the selection I saw a movie called Limitless, which is about a struggling author whose life starts to take a negative turn as his financial situation plummets and his motivation to succeed subsides. When a man with a “smart pill”, which enables him to analyze information at a quicker rate approaches him, he takes the pill and results in his success financially and well-being. As a student of St. Lawrence University it is not uncommon to walk around Owen D. Young library and hear numerous students state they …show more content…

In a recent New York Times article, Workers Seeking Productivity in a Pill are Abusing A.D.H.D Drugs, Alan Schwartz addressed the issues of this phenomenon carrying over to the workplace, as college graduates continue this trend. Living in a country that is driven by competition and gaining advantages, workers are feeling the burden, but could this reoccurrence result in addiction and an overall result in a negative cause for society? Using John Stuart Mill’s, On Liberty, and Karl Marx, Selected Writings, I will use their theories, combined with my own analysis, to identify when these prescription pills should be considered a troubling trend, and when they should …show more content…

The rights that separate humans from animals. As Marx points out in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, private property deprives human beings of self-worth and identity, and as the relationship between worker and his work increases, he becomes a “slave” to his work. “The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes a cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces” and “this fact simply indicates that the object which labor produces, is an alien thing, an independent power of the producer” (Marx 59). While considering Marx’s point, I would like to applaud him for bringing up this point, but respectfully disagree. It is the 21st century and whether you like it or not, competition among peers is present in school, sports, and especially in career searches. Taking these pills is not used to get “high” as Schwartz points out, but simply to get “hired”. We live in a different time period, and if Marx were alive I believe he would retract his statements about alienation from our labor. Our labor is what allows us to enjoy other possessions and be financially stable, and without hard work and motivation it is nearly impossible to thrive in our economic and social

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