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The Cultural Differences Argument: An analysis

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EDITOR'S NOTE: You, too, can have your articles published here. Send them through e-mail to OurHappySchool@yahoo.com)

THERE’S A SERIOUS CRISIS in communication between girlfriends and their respective boyfriends. In fact, this is also playing havoc with marriage.

Deborah Tannen, a best-selling author and expert in interpersonal communication, explains that this crisis is best represented by “the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.” It is observed that although men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less when with girlfriend or wife and not with other people. This often becomes a crucial problem because “most wives [and girlfriends] want their husbands [boyfriends] to be, first and foremost, conversational partners, but few [of them] share this expectation of their [partners].”

1. GENERALLY, ALL MEN HAVE the moral experience of feeling obligated.

2. The “binding force” and “overriding character” of the moral obligation are attributed to God who is man’s creator and thus the cause of man’s moral dimension.  

THE FOLLOWING are the summary and analysis of the ways secularists explain some principles in Ethics such as the existence of moral law and the binding force of moral obligation.

1. ‘Sense of moral obligation is just the effect of social conditioning’

·  Richard Robinson: “The original conscience… is a set of taboos and compulsions, acquired from…associates …” (An Atheist’s Values. 1964, p. 110).

·  “The demands of conscience are due tosociety because society expresses disapproval of certain actions.”

Analysis

·  It is the intellect which can be molded or (socially) conditioned.

·  The “sense of moral obligation” cannot be explained sufficiently by social conditioning—for there are innumerable situations where a person, although feeling a desire from society to adopt a certain course, feels the moral obligation to assume a course altogether different.

1. A good ethical theory is able to satisfactorily explain why people experience a sense of moral obligation.

2. It is able to account for the moral obligations’ “binding force” and “overriding character.”

3. The worldview endorsed by a good moral theory is capable of accounting for the moral accountability in ethics. (For, otherwise, morality would just be like promulgating a strict state law but without real sanction or punishment for the offenders. In such a condition, there would be no essential difference between following and transgressing the law.)

1. People experience a sense of moral obligation and accountability

·  One cannot doubt successfully a phenomenon of his own existence—namely, his moral experience.

·  Even secularists like Kai Nielsen recommend that one “ought”to act or follow some rules, policies, practices, or principles. [Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God. London: Pemberton, 1973, p. 82.]

·  Even atheist Richard Dawkins declares that there are “moral instruction[s] on how we ought to behave.” [Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press, 2006, p.347.]

A poem contributed by a psychology graduate in Saint Louis University, Baguio City.  She is a full-time wife to an educator and a mother to a 4-year old girl to whom the poem is dedicated. (You, too, can have your articles published here. Send them through e-mail to OurHappySchool@yahoo.com.)

ONE CHILLY NIGHT in November, one special day
God granted me a gift I can never repay
It was four years ago but I can still remember
Your beautiful face, you were so tender

You are a star in the sky each time you smile
A very innocent child
You are sweet as honey
I feel like I can live without money

SIMPLY PUT, “Everything that increases the role of subordinates is decentralization and that decreases the role is centralization.”

Centralization is a process where the concentration of decision making is in a few hands. The important decisions and actions at the lower level are subject to the approval of top management.

On the other hand, decentralization is a systematic delegation of authority at all levels of management and in all of the organization. Authority is retained to the top management concerning major decisions and framing policies that involve the whole organization. Rest of the authority may be delegated to the middle level and lower level of management.

HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES must be evaluated in terms of the quality of its graduates and their contribution to the needs of our society and nation. How can the management of higher education institutions be made more effective and efficient in order to produce globally competitive and ethically steeped workforce?

One of the key solutions to this issue is to uplift the morals and nationalism of the students by offering enough subjects in the higher education curricula that could instill nationalism and patriotism among students. One of the reasons our society now is deteriorating is that of the so-called 'brain drain' wherein the cream of the crop among our graduates migrate to other countries, thus having no contributions in solving our own society's problems.