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The Negative Use of Torture
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The Negative Use of Torture
Torture refers to the deliberate as well as the systematic dismantling of an individual’s individuality besides humanity by subjecting them to physical or emotional pain plus suffering. The main of torture is destroying a sense of community, elimination of some leaders for example from society or nation and also it is aimed at creating an environment of fear in a specific culture. Many adverse effects usually characterize the use of torture, and thus it should exist as a forbidden tactic in any war. It is not an adequate method of interrogation as it does not typically result in useful or straightforward information. For where torture is to be used, it has to be used ethically (Jervis, p.34). For example, it can exist as an effective mean of counter-attacking terrorists whereby it can be used in controlling them.
Moreover, when the terrorists are caught and found guilty of conducting some terrorists’ activities, torture can serve as a form of punishment. An excellent form of torture is rendition which can denote to the criminals, for example, terrorists being taken from one nation to another nation by extradition or by deportation. Also, it can refer to the method of holding individuals like criminals and then questioning them on foreign country whereby it will be hard for pesky convicts’ rights issues to come into the way (Sullivan, p.391). Under this situation, there is a high risk that the individual might be tortured or subjected to other ill-treatment and therefore, human rights act typically forbids the use of torture besides inhuman or demeaning treatment or chastisement.
The Rendition movie tends to explain this phenomenon well as it encompasses all these happenings of torture. In the film, there is a chemical engineer known as Anwar who the U.S government believes that he has some connections with some terrorist group, and when he is caught he is subjected under severe torture. Thus the whole movie is centered on torture. There exist several ways by which criminals like the terrorists are tortured by certain governments for example, in the film, “Eye in the Sky,” the drone technology is used to kill the terrorists whereby Katherine Powell who is a military officer leads an operation to capture terrorists. Drones are used to subject the terrorists under torture, but during their process of wiping out the terrorists, a young girl is killed. The killing of the young girl triggers an international dispute over the effects of drones in modern warfare.
Therefore due to the adverse consequences which drones have been attributed to having caused to humanity there usage and effectiveness in modern warfare remains a question. From ethical perspectives, the use of drones in warfare is not good for the well-being of individuals as it can also affect even the unintended group of people as with the case of the film, “Eye in the Sky.” The effects of drone attacks are usually worse, and therefore it should be discouraged especially as a form of torture towards the opponents.
Works Cited
“Eye In The Sky – Official Site”. Bleecker Street, 2018, https://www.bleeckerstreetmedia.com/eyeinthesky. Accessed 6 Dec 2018.
“Rendition (2007)”. Imdb, 2018, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804522/. Accessed 6 Dec 2018.
Jervis, Robert. “The torture blame game.” Foreign Aff. 94 (2015): 120.
Sullivan, Christopher Michael. “The (in) effectiveness of torture for combating insurgency.” Journal of Peace Research 51.3 (2014): 388-404.
The Negative Influences on Workers at the Gilded Age
The Negative Influences on Workers at the Gilded Age
The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth and industrialized expansion. After the Civil War, there were significant developments in railroads, coal mining and modern steel factories in America. The rich accumulated massive wealth from these growing industries but the working class people received negative influences. The skilled workers lost their advantages, and the terrible working environments caused diseases among workers. Numerous children worked in dangerous factories to make livings. The laborers earned less than before while the rich made huge profits. In all, the Gilded Age was a terrible time for the treatment of workers.
First, the skilled workers lost their advantages due to the mechanization in industries. In 1885 Winslow Homer created the painting, the fog warning, in which a skilled fisherman who could catch fish with a few tools was left far behind of the main ship, and the smoke-like shades were approaching him like threatening fog. Through smoke-like shades, which symbolized the development of modern industries, Homer suggested that the skilled workers had lost their advantages at that age of industrialization. The reason was that there was a rise of mechanization in big industries in the Gilded Age and the machines replaced the skilled workers to complete the most technical works. The skilled workers had been “strong, even arrogant, in their indispensability.” Their advantages were their skills that were crucial in factory operations such as steelmaking. However, their “sharp sense of independence disappeared in the later years,” because each man “was training for the next higher job,” also, “usually capable of filling it.” The mechanization made complex works so simple that “no workman was irreplaceable.” Consequently, it was unpractical for the skilled laborers to ask the factories for favored treatment such as higher wages or better working conditions since the factories did not have to meet their requirements to retain them and their skills. The managers were more willing to hire cheaper unskilled laborers such as foreign immigrants including “Slovaks, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Croatians and the Roumanians,” because they could also complete work with machines but demanded less.
Second, the poor working conditions of laborers at the Gilded Age threatened workers’ health and safety. An article published in 1894 “In the Depths of a Coal Mine” documented the harsh working conditions of coal miners at the Gilded Age. The author described the factory as “huge and hideous monster” where “a might gnashing sound filled the ears,” and “the dust lay deep on every motionless thing, and clouds of it made their air dark as from a violent tempest.” These descriptions showed vivid images of one cacophonous dirty coal factory. Undoubtedly, there was no perfect sanitary, and noise control in this coal factory and the workers exposed in this dirty and noisy environment could get diseases physically and mentally. The conditions were similarly awful underground. The author wrote that the coal mine inside was “inscrutable dark” and a “soundless place” with “a subtly strong odor of powder-smoke, oil, wet earth.” The workers underground were likely to catch lung diseases when they breathed such feculent air daily. The dangers for underground workers were more than their poor physical health because such a working environment might threaten their life safety as well. There were not thorough safety facilities in the coal mines at that time, and as the author suggested “sometimes their enemy becomes exasperated and stuffs out ten, twenty, thirty lives,” the workers had little chance to escape when natural disasters like collapsing happened.
Third, child workers suffered from lousy factory environment, heavy workloads, and dangerous jobs. The author of “In the Depth of a Coal Mine” wrote that these coal mine child workers in “ragged shirts” “breathe this atmosphere until their lungs grow heavy and sick with it,” and “have this clamor in their ears until it is wonderful that they have any hoodlum valor remaining.” All child laborers worked in this situation without any special care regarding their young age. They were “slate-pickers” and needed to “grabbed deftly at the pieces of slate” to make sure the purity of the coal coming out. It was a hard job because as one picture in the article showed that these children had to bend their heads down in order to pick the slates. Their immature backbones suffered from keeping this position for a long time, which increased the possibility of deformation of the spinal column. Apart from the heavy workloads, certain risky jobs could left child workers with permanent pain. For example, one photograph from Lewis Hine’s collection in the 1880s, titled Boy Lost Arm Running Saw in Box Factory, showed a disabled boy with one arm left. The plain title might suggest that disabled child workers were prevalent at that time.
Last, the high concentration of wealth enlarged the gap between the rich and the working class. Andrew Carnegie wrote in Wealth that one of the problems of the Gilded Age was “proper administration of wealth.” Most of the wealth created at the Gilded Age was in the hands of the rich. Working people, as the creators of the wealth, could only receive a tiny part of it. For example, the Carnegie Steel Company’s net profits reached 4,000,000 dollars in 1894, but the same year the company had cut the wages in Homestead to half of the wages in 1892. Statistic revealed that the wage of rollers in homestead steel company was 12.15 dollars in 1982 and dropped to 6 dollars in 1894. Meanwhile “the increased cost of living,” made life harder for workers.
The Gilded Age was the symbol of progress and economic expansion in many people’s minds. It was undeniable that the wealth and the technology advancement in this era paved the way for future development of America. However, the terrible treatment of the laborers at that time was a reminder to modern people. Behind the surface flourishment of the Gilded Age, there were skilled workers losing jobs and poor working conditions that were harmful to workers’ health, and wide employment of child workers and the enlarged gap between the rich and the working-class. Reflecting the negative side of the Gilded Age is as important as learning from its developing side because it reminds people to solve similar laborer treatment problems in today’s society and prevent them from happening again.
THE NEGATIVE IMPACT ON TECHNOLOGY
THE NEGATIVE IMPACT ON TECHNOLOGY
The family of George and Lydia hadley is a typical American family this is because most American families have two children, a perfect house, all the new technology and also live in happy home. However according to Bradbury technology can destroy a happy home a good example is when peter tells his dad “I wish you were dead”
Human beings have been turned to objects of slavery by the technology. There are many inventions in the past that is helping in our daily lives but the inventions seem to be ruining human beings relationship sand destroying the minds of the children. As technology develops through the course of time humanity relies more upon it. In the present world technology surrounds humanity across the world from the cars that take people from one place to the next, to the cellphones that people carry. In the past families lived technology free-life: waking up by the sounds of birds, communicating face to face and walking in order to travel. Today it is almost impossible to find a means of entertainment that doesn’t involve a coloured screen. Despite the advantages of technology it has created an inactive generation that can’t think for themselves.
In the 1950’s family dynamics in post war period of WWII embodied the relationship between children and their parents. The suburban family lifestyle in the community centered on conformity-family togetherness involved parents taking interest in their child’s life. The co-existence of Americans in the fifties perceived the relationship between the children and the adolescents to their parents as rebelling against parent authority. A distant relationship between the parents and children is in “The veldt” where the children’s self-refinance on technology replaced the absent role in the family. The relationship between the parents and the kids is not good despite brad not telling us whether the parents have been abusive or demonstrated neglect towards the children. Actually both parents seem to be affectionate to the children who seem to care more about the nursery and the automated home. The parents spent so little time with the children that they don’t know them and more and have no control over them at all. The parents are to be partly blamed because they did not spend enough time with the children so they did not know that they had changed completely. Children raised with no parental supervision will never submit to discipline. Lydia Hadley has largely given the tasks of raising their children to the heir electronic house and in particular the nursery.
As young children grow their attitude dramatically transforms. They translate from loving their parents to disliking them especially if their normal lifestyle is adversely affected Human innovation can lead to their ultimate downfall. George is a good and loving father who buys his kids wendy and peter all the new and best technology including a nursery where the children thoughts are projected onto the walls. The nursery which is supposed to help the children actually causes them to grow hatred towards the parents. The hatred grows until wendy and peter murder their parents, an act which reminds the ready that not everything will have the effect that was foreseen. The children feel hatred towards the parents because they feel their parents are invading in their privacy with the technology. They spend more time with the technology than with their parents and obey the technology more than they obey their parents. George tries for the kids to respect him but they don’t actually wendy respects peter more than the dad because they mostly work together. The use of foreshadow hints at the fact that sometimes the things that we think may help our lives actually have a negative impact.
The love for a machine can never be real as the love of another human being. The fact that the children have more affection towards the machines means that the relationship between them and any other human beings is not strong enough therefore they distance themselves from the rest of the world
There is so much tension in the family: it mostly begins with the parents this is because the parents worry about the growing secrecy and disobedience of the children and decide to invite a friend who is a psychologist to examine the children and the use they make of the nursery. According to David the veldt image reflects the children’s hostility towards the parents. When we give our children everything they ever wanted is the reward secrecy and disobedience. When George turns off the nursery and the rest of the house, the children throw an elaborate tantrum in which peter implores the new disconnected machinery to let his father kill the house
Ray Bradbury has written a variety of short stories and novels and most of his work is fiction in this short story he warns people against becoming too dependent on science and technology at the expense of moral and aesthetic support. His position against technology stands not only in present in his literary works but also in lifestyle. The millennial with advanced technology create stress and frustration in everyday lifestyle. This frustration and stress is a race between humans and technology if we fail to keep up to date with the computer age we will be called out of date human. The technology has really bad effect on the families, imagine having so much technology that your kids start to think of it as their mother and father.
Bradbury also shows the consequences of the overuse of the technology on individuals. Lydia Hadley is the first of the two parents to point out the screams that are heard on the distance where the lions are. George dismisses them when he says he did not hear them. After George locks the nursery and everyone is supposed to be in bed, the screams are heard again insinuating that the children have broken into the nursery, but this time both the parents her them.
Little things are mentioned that foreshadow what is about to happen. The screams are one of the major things. When George enters the nursery after wendy and finds that it is now a forest full of color, there is an instant of doubt that maybe there never was any Africa or lions after all. George proves the suspicion wrong once he picked up something that lay in the corner near where the lions had been.
If individuals are not careful, technology and will eventually take over mankind he dives into the theme “The Vedlt” begins to introduce the Hadley’s and their happy life, home nursery, this house which clothed, fed and rocked them to sleep. However the Hadley’s soon began to fear their nursery, as it resembled and African veldt of blazing sun and ferocious lion. Their fear heightens when George Hadley finds his old wallet n the nursery with teeth and blood stains. They consult psychologist David McCleanand decide to shut the nursery down but become tempted to turn the machine back on and they pay soon pay for the descions o their lives the power of the nursery is exemplified throughout the story and its focus is a product of the story’s historical context.
Metamorphosisare examples of how Americans take advantage of the little things in life. In today’s society people don’t realize how easy they have it and will never fully understand the meaning of hard work. The children in “The Veldt” are disrespectful towards their family due to their disconnection to reality and abandonment from their parents. “Metamorphosis” displays how the parents take advantage of their son and all the work he does for them the story displays lack of respect and abandonment towards their family members in taking advantage of them or under appreciating them due to oblivious to their surroundings.
Work cited.
Caldwell Tracy M “The negative effects of parent and child conflict”
“Overview: The veldt” Short stories for students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol 20
Hart, Joyce. “critical essay on the veldt” short stories for the students Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol 20