Brave New World Critical Lens Essay Example for Free

Brave New World Critical Lens Essay â€Å"I have freedom,† you say? Do you really? Perhaps, in some ways, you do. But in the end, you’re just another puppet being controlled by invisible strings whether you know it or not. â€Å"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,† Jean-Jacques Rousseau once said. In society, man is â€Å"chained† and controlled by the government, by pressure of conforming to the social norms, by wealth and social class, and by one’s desires and emotions. Prior to birth, man is not restricted by such factors but that is merely a fleeting moment as he is slowly exposed to more and more of the world. I agree that â€Å"everywhere [man] is in chains,† but on the contrary, I believe man is already chained from the start—that man is never free. In the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, babies are â€Å"decanted† and conditioned to play out their predestined roles in the World State. As early as the embryonic stage, babies-to-be already have their fates determined for them. In addition to conditioning, a drug called soma that induces a false sense of happiness dominates these people’s lives. As long as there is society, there will be shackles. Subjects of the World State were pre-separated into specific caste levels through processes such as the Bokanovsky Process, hypnopaedia, and Pavlovian conditioning. As mere embryos, they were already being trained for their predestined fates. By the time they reached the end of the â€Å"assembly line,† freedom did not exist anymore. They were enslaved to society. They were conditioned to strictly love and enjoy the aspects of their own castes and dislike the aspects of other castes. â€Å"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers†¦ (13)† stated the Director of Hatcheries matter-of-factly. How can man be born—or in this case, decanted ¬Ã¢â‚¬â€free if he can’t even make his own major life decisions or think for himself? Aside from conditioning, World State citizens so easily obeyed the government because they lived in such a â€Å"perfect† world that there just wasn’t anything to complain about. Generally, they didn’t have any problems in regards to sickness, death, desires, old age, passion, relationships and other issues that were often associated with an â€Å"unstable† society. â€Å"People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get.  (220)† If anything â€Å"bad† happened, all they had to do was take a tablet. â€Å"And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn. (55)† The World State government kept their people in â€Å"bottles.† â€Å"’Each one of us, of course†¦goes through life inside a bottle,’ stated Mustapha Mond. (222-223)† The government expected everyone to act according to the standard of infantile behavior—of simple satisfaction, ignorance, and lack of self-restraint and they condemned anyone who acted otherwise. Citizens of the society were encouraged to take soma when distressed and attend social events and activities and so on. It was through such ways that the people were kept distracted and obliviously controlled. These â€Å"socialized human beings† were so ignorant of the shackles around their limbs that they didn’t even try or think to take them off. When a man is born with chains—metaphorically speaking, of course—he is unaware of them. And if he is unaware of them, then there is no way for him to escape them. Such is the case with the people of the World State. They are conditioned to accept and even enjoy whatever path that is laid out in front of them. In this illusion of a perfect world, everyone is happy and without a care as the government does all the thinking for them. Ultimately, people of the World State are permanently trapped in a stage of â€Å"infancy†Ã¢â‚¬â€even upon their deathbeds.

Destiny :: essays research papers

Pre-Destination vs. Self-Determination People like to believe that they have the freedom to choose to be or do whatever it is that they want to be or do; it is, however, quite the opposite. This sense of freedom is called self-determination. At the other end of the spectrum, when no matter what we do seems to make any difference or when events just seem to happen and we think about them as being out of our control or somehow planned by some force unknown to us (such as a God), that is called pre-destination. Self-determination has its limitations as to what people are allowed to do, but pre-destination has no limits of any kind. Self-determination is, in fact, used to mask pre-destination, to keep people content in following a pre-set path that life offers. Without pre-destination, how do we know what the weather will be like, or if the sun rises, or if someone will stop at a red light? Without these paths where would our lives be going? People do these every day things that are simply there to keep them going down the pa th that they have always been on. When people get off that path, such as when they stop doing drugs, then their lives are on a new track. But the new track doesn’t necessarily have anything unique about it, it’s just a new path and already pre-determined. And once on a path, it is very difficult to veer away from the pre-determined, pre-disposed activities that a particular lifestyle requires. Smith 2 Pre-destination, not our life choices, guides our lives. There is no other way to explain things such as people who grow up poor yet somehow manage to create a multinational company and become multimillionaires. Although some might say that these people chose to follow a particular path that led them to their fame and fortune. Instead, it should be argued that even if these people were born poor, they were they were destined to create that company. They were given the drive to make that company into what it was. Anyone can choose to start a company, but few actually have the ability to make that company a success. Choice does not have anything to do with ability: I choose to be a billionaire but I do not have the bank account to be one. Predestination explains almost ninety percent of what happens in the world, from birth to death, and even pure luck.

The Job Description of A Budgeting Manager

One of the most important functions that budgeting accounts for is the planning function1. We will be arguing for the importance of the planning function in the overall budgeting activity and will be arguing for the many ways the budgeting planning function is coordinating with the company's strategic planning. First of all, the planning function in terms of budgeting refers to the planning activities that the company, starting with the financial department, needs to (1) determine what the company's long-term strategy is, (2) determine what projects bring most added value to the company and (3) determine what priority these projects should have. Let's refer to each of these steps in part and determine how they impact the budgeting strategy of a company. The long-term strategy for a company is essential in determining the overall objective of a company. For the long run, this may be increasing the volume of sales or increasing the market share or promoting the company's image. In any case, these differ in terms of the projects they will imply and the ways they will be affecting the budgeting strategy. For example, increasing sales will perhaps only include increasing spending on advertising and the promotion budget, while promoting the company's image may include costly promotion campaigns that will have a significant impact on the company's budgeting management. The second issue is a project portfolio management issue. The economic theory tells us that the resources are always limited, while the needs are not. Applied in this particular case, this means that we are always likely to have a greater number of projects we will wish to perform than the financial resources the company will have at a certain point. This is where the selection issue, corroborated with the budgeting strategy comes in the game. The top management, working with the financial department, will need to establish which are the projects that bring highest added-value to the company and spend the company's budget on those alone. The selection phase can only come hand in hand with a proper planning of the budgeting activity. On one hand, we have the projects the company wishes to perform, on the other, we have the budgeting restrictions. In terms of budgeting planning, the company and the top management needs to ensure that projects deriving from the current selection will also have sources of financing. An example will properly elucidate this perspective. We will simply take a software project. In the beginning, the primordial activities refer to selecting the working team and creating a project on which work will be done (following the customer's requirements). On the other hand, while the initial part of the project is strictly related to the programming stage, one mustn't ignore the fact that, after the project is completed, a tester also needs to be hired in order to test the project's performances. This means that the initial budgeting scheme will need to be created so as to include several other subsequent factors, factors that are likely to appear at a certain time in the future. Finally, the third phase of the selection phase, correlated with the budgeting procedures, involves deciding on the projects' priority. This is basically an issue of deciding which of the projects bring added value to the company and to the company's activities. This means that planning your budgeting policy also needs to consider the future plans in the company. If the company will want to develop different areas into the future, then the budgeting campaign needs to be designed so as to cover any future needs of the company. This is practically what the planning function in terms of budgeting refers to. The argumentation we have previously presented practically comes forth so as to demonstrate the close connection existing between budgeting and budget planning and the company's overall planning strategies. Indeed, the budgeting policies serve to help the company fulfill its long-term plans and projects, as well as short-termed ones. In this sense, the company planning strategy needs to be fully correlated with the budgeting planning, otherwise there will be no financial support for those plans. Among the management functions we already know about we can also include the budgeting function because, in my opinion, all the others cannot properly function without it. You cannot have a successful planning or organizing within a company without correlating these with the budgeting function, in order to obtain the realistic backup of any project. Budgeting and planning go, in this sense, hand in hand, and you cannot really have one without the other in the company.

Advanced Corporate Finance - 4303 Words

University of Puget Sound School of Business and Leadership BUS 434 Advanced Corporate Finance Professor Alva Wright Butcher Tues-Thurs 11:00-12:20 McIntyre 107 Spring Semester 2012 Office: McIntyre 111 I Phone: 253-879-3349 FAX: 253-879-3156 Office Hours: T-Th: 1:00-1:50 Wed: 9:30-10:30 And by appointment Note that I am always willing to schedule additional office hours by appointment. I check email frequently, so that is also a good way to communicate. Do not hesitate to call me at home. If you cannot reach me, please leave a number so that I can get back to you. Email: butcher@pugetsound.edu Home: 206-285-3990 or 360-779-4706 Required Course Materials:†¦show more content†¦Click on access to free student content. Course Objectives: Valuation will be discussed as a unifying theme in this course. This includes such issues as how to value a firm that is not publicly traded, how to value a potential merger, how to value an investment project. We will examine the use of debt in a firm’s financial structure and ask if that has an impact on the value of the firm. If a firm pays dividends, does that increase the firm’s value? The key objective of this course is to build on the foundation of your introductory course in financial concepts and to apply more advanced concepts in corporate finance in a decision making context. Since computer literacy is essential to the application of finance theory, the course will incorporate a number of opportunities for the use of computer tools in a problem solving environment. After you have successfully completed this course, you will be able to: Apply value based management to guide valuation of a firm and valuation of a capital budget project. Be aware of the underlying factors that impact the value of a financial option. Understand the basic features of options contracts and how they are priced. Have an understanding of the use and misuse of derivatives. Understand how the firm’s mixture of debt and equity, the capital structure, can impact the value of the firm. Be able to apply theShow MoreRelatedAdvanced Corporate Finance Essay examples927 Words   |  4 PagesAdvanced Corporate Finance I SS 2012 Problem Set 1 Valuing Cash Flows Problem Set 1 Valuing Cash Flows Exercise 1 (Ex. 11.2 - 11.6 GT): Assume that Marriott’s restaurant division has the following joint distribution with the market return: Market Scenario Bad Good Great .25 .50 .25 Probability Market Return (%) -15 5 25 YR 1. 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