The Lives of Others Essay

The Lives of Others and Goodbye, Lenin are two movies cleverly depicted about the fall of Communism. One director chooses to portray humor as the base of his movie, while the other chooses a more dark and serious tone. Both directors clearly want their viewers to understand the seriousness of what the fall of the Berlin Wall meant and the importance of Germany’s East West unionization for the citizens of the GSD. However, a hidden truth in both movies is revealed. Truth about a culture that once existed, but has since been swept under the carpet of change. The late 80s brought on the fall of the Berlin Wall signifying the end of the Stalinist regimes that had once held so much power. Outlined below are two movies that, while so different in their delivery, end with the same clear message.

Should people put the value of life into monetary value or should life be kept solely as an emotional quantity? People and societies throughout the ages have been trying to answer the problem of putting the value of life into terms of dollar bills. The ancient Egyptians buried their dead with all of their worldly belongings. They believed a person’s monetary worth on Earth was over, and they should take all of that earthly worth with them to the afterlife. Modern day Americans are different from the Egyptians. Today people believe that the families of the dead should be compensated for “their” loss.

The concept of living “the good life” means something different for everyone. There is a general understanding that living “the good life” is associated with unyielding happiness and lasting satisfaction. The exact meaning of this desired life was pondered by thinkers and philosophers for hundreds of years. They constructed principals of behavior, thought, and obligation that would categorize a person as “good”. Although some of these ancient philosophies about “the good life” had overlapping ideas, their concepts varied widely. This contrast of ideas can be examined through two major characters in two famous works: Aeneas in “The Aeneid” and Socrates in “The Apology”. Aeneas exemplifies the philosophy that the direct route to “the good life" is through faith, trust in the Gods, and family, while Socrates in “The Apology” emphasizes free will, and vast knowledge of life.

238,900 miles away, the earth’s moon is one that is truly unique. With a given age of about 4.5 billion years the Earth serves a major role in real life and in the book Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. When catastrophe strikes, Earth takes a turn for the worst and great natural disasters occur. Thousands die, but there are a number of survivors. If there are survivors, how beneficial is the moon actually? What would happen if the moon had been destroyed? How necessary is it for human survival? The Moon, is a great benefactor to human survival because of the benefits earth gets from it.

What scale is being used to determine what a life is essentially worth? And who determines this? For most of our lives, we have grown up being taught that ‘All lives are created equally’ while this is important it is not entirely true. You would think that when you die your family could finally be at peace with no worries or fears but they tend to worry how you’re valued is being determined by law. I believe that everyone should be treated equally, even after death.

“…do you think we would be able to just borrow a little something..just until I get paid. I’ll give it right back.” I hear my mother in the restroom of our one bed motel room, faintly making phone call after phone call to every relative or family friend that she could flip to in her black book, pleading for just enough money to pay for our stay in the motel for another week. She made this phone call every week that her paycheck went to buying clothes for me for school, buying an excess of groceries because we had gone so long without food, bus fare for when our tried and true car went in for maintenance or other out of the budget expenses. We didn’t have much and being just the two of us, we struggled severely. I look outside the motel window, at the seedy parking lot littered with trash, at the uninviting people loitering, at the dimly lit motel sign with certain letters just barely illuminating and I hopelessly and silently cried, wondering just how long our circumstances would persist. Why did I have to be the homeless child? Why couldn’t I live a normal life in a big house with a loving family like all of my friends? Why did everything bad have to happen to me?

The Lives of Others was a film that chose to display the notion of lies through the other side. The filmmaker chose to use a committed worker instead of using a citizen trying to get away from the East German regime. Wiesler the focal character is a very serious and committed officer of the East Berlin government. He fought with himself the entire film about what type of person he would be. The filmmaker chose to compare and contrast the feelings of Wielser.

“These Shining Lives” is about the lives and telling the story of those women with strength who work in a watch factory. This happens during the period when women increasingly starting working. This play is interesting of the aspect that how it starts in comic, but ends with tragic look at how women find jobs concerned with profit rather than safety.

How people get involve in society is one of the issue that is interesting to observe, because there are multiple factors that influence this kind of behavior. One important aspect of society is political participation and which are the variables that make a person to get involve in political decision. One of this influences might be spiritual life or how the people relate with a superior force and how that impact in political participation. It is important to have present that when we talk regarding spiritual life is a concept broad than religion, because spiritual life focuses on the belief in a superior force, instead religion focuses on follow a series of norms.

Though our society has adapted and developed, inequality remains prevalent all around the world. Our society assigns value to human live based on ethnicity and gender. Currently around the world there are over 30 million slaves in which 60,000 are in the United States. Even though slavery has been abolished in nearly every country many people still measure the value of individuals in cents and dollars. Should life be calculated in terms of money? How should we as a society assign value to a persons life? I personally believe that you can't assign a price to someones life and you shouldn’t It’s both politically and morally unjust.

     I can remember as a child always asking myself the “why” questions of life. What is the purpose of life? Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Why do certain things happen? And is there really a God? I had always kept these questions to myself and eventually pushed them out of my mind altogether. I was raised in a Christian household and you just were not allowed to ask questions of that nature and doubt the faith. The world is the way it is because God made it that way and that is all there is to it. I was really excited to take this class because it would finally give me the opportunity to exercise my personal thoughts and beliefs. I have come to agree with Socrates that “the unexamined life is not

Care for others. The way this will help you achieve happiness is that when you help others it gives you a warm feeling inside. It makes you feel as if you have done something right. This feeling is almost unexplainable. Helping others is one of the best things you can do. For example, when you complement someone the best feeling is when you see the look on that persons face and see how happy you made them. Also, if you do not care for others you will live a lonely life. Without care for others no one will want to be around you. So, if you care for others you will have a joyous life.

Where a person lives can influence the trajectory of their life. Access to quality education and opportunities depend on zip code which divides us all. I reminisce of the access and opportunity gap when I reflect on my high school graduation in June 1991. Experiencing childhood in Wellston, Missouri, a highly segregated, poverty-stricken community in Saint Louis, my mother instilled the importance of education to all her children. When my mother was at work, watching television was not permitted. Instead, books from libraries and secondhand shops were our source of entertainment. I cannot tell you how many times I read Roots, Gone with the Wind and a variety of science mystery novels. My mother socioeconomic status varied differently from others in my family and community. She graduated from high school and gained a secretarial certificate to work on a US Army base. However, my aunts and uncles did not graduate high school nor did my grandmother. Possessing a secretarial certificate allowed her to uproot her family from Wellston before the school district lost its accreditation. After moving from school to school, we finally settled in my junior year. This was the sixth high school that my siblings and I attended and we were surrounded by middle and upper class families that resembled us. Mathematics and science became my obsession and I immersed myself in this new community, taking part in various clubs, learning, inventing and experimenting. Crossing the

I can remember as a child always asking myself the "why" questions of life. Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Why do certain things happen? And is there really a God? I had always kept these questions to myself and eventually pushed them out of my mind altogether. I was raised in a Christian household and you just were not allowed to ask questions of that nature and doubt the faith. The world is the way it is because God made it that way and that is all there is to it. I was really excited to take this class because it would finally give me the opportunity to exercise my personal thoughts and beliefs. I have come to agree with Socrates that "the unexamined life is not worth living." In my opinion life is a combination of

I grew up in a small Midwest town called Anderson Indiana. Whenever people ask where I’m from and I say Indiana they think corn fields and country living but that’s far from the truth. In my experience I have seen corn fields everywhere but my home state. I have yet to see any farms or anything that would suggest country. One could question the dialect of Indiana residents. It has been said that most of the people migrated from the south to work at Guide Corp, a car plant that was the one good job in the city. Throughout the years Anderson has changed. The one good job that we had has left and with that so have the people. Most people