Stressed
The title says it all. I have three essays and a final to have done by thursday. I have 1.5 essays completed at this very moment and my mind is fried. We went and saw American Dreamz on sunday instead of saturday night. As a matter of fact, Saturday didn’t go as planned.
I got three hours of sleep on friday night. Somehow, I didn’t fall asleep during my 8 hour exam. It’s split into two and I managed to get done early with both parts. My truely honest feeling about the test is that it felt… too easy. I should be worried then, right?
I won’t find out for 12 weeks though. Royally sucks. So, I got home after that, and I’m hanging out and then the cleaning mood smacks me instead of laying down and taking a nap. My front lawn is almost finished in getting junk picked up. I just need to fix the license plate on Joe’s truck before I head off to the dump.
After talking to my sister and finding out she had a car accident that totalled her car, I ended up finding out that J caught my nauscious sickness. So our plans got postponed until sunday and then changed. We went to lunch and then a matenna.
American Dreamz (dddrreeamzzz with a zzzzzz) was funny and very amusing. It was also alot longer than I was expecting, with an “explosive” ending. MWAHAHAHA.
Then, I started my next house sitting job (I’ve gone straight to the next one and haven’t even had time to adjust). I crashed a little after Midnight and slept for a good 12 hours. I so needed.
So, what then? Casey has learned how to jump the fence. I got up and let her out before crashing for a few more hours and she goes off for a joy ride around the neighbor. I figured out where she was doing it at too. There’s a lump of snow that gives her just enough edge to get enough height to jump. I’ve tried to scrape it down lower, but I’ve hit ice and can’t go much lower. At the moment, she’s now stuck in the house when I’m not here. When I am here, the moment I let her out, I go to the window that’s closest to her jumping spot. Seeing me glaring at her when she starts testing scares her off from completing her task.
Then, I went to my place that evening to hang for a bit and play Guild Wars since I haven’t played it in FOREVER and you know what happens next? My heater craps out on me. I’m sitting at the computer, in the middle of a mission (and making friends with a new guild) and I hear this high pitched whining sound. I thought it was odd, shook it off, and figured, squirrels gone wild. It’s about that time of year and they can get pretty loud. Then the sound changes pitch and I realize that its not wild squirrels. Something is wrong with the heater. I ended up unplugging it and taking Sparkz with me to my place of house sitting so she didn’t freeze to death. Called my landlord this morning, but he hasn’t been out there to fix it yet. Or it didn’t appear like anyone had showed up when I swung out there this evening.
*sighs*
This is probably the most detailed entry you’ll get from me for the rest of the week. To those who’ve e-mailed me, I’ll be sending out replies soon… hopefully. Dude, I feel horrible if I take forever to reply, which I realize is really silly.
And now, I leave you with an essay on the the Female Ethic.
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The ethical theory of Care, proposed by Nel Noddings, can come to many similar conclusions that make it a reflection of the ethical theory of Egoism. So, is it truly a new and original idea? Some may believe so because they believe that the Ethics of Care reflects the idea that men and women think differently. However, are the genders truly different thinkers or is it something more, something else?
Thinking, or the ability to think and make moral choices, is shaped by more than just by our gender. The environment we are raised in, the individuals we call friends, and how our very own parents act is what shapes our outlook of morality. Can we not assume then that the Ethics of Care is nothing more than a derivative of the Ethics of Egoism and that there is no defining moral difference between a male and female perspective?
First, what is the Ethics of Egoism? Egoism is promoting the thought that a person is better off making choices (especially moral decisions) that help promote the individual self. In this context, if an individual was faced with the need to be charitable or to throw a super incredible birthday party for their one year old, there is nothing wrong with them choosing their daughter over charity. Why? Because we will naturally want more for someone we care about, rather than for someone we have never met. It is in our self-interest to act egotistical in the sense that we are only concerned about ourselves and the immediate outcome or effect we have on others.
So, then, what is the Ethics of Care? In order to answer this, we must first understand how it came into development. Lawrence Kohlberg developed a study in which this situation was proposed: Heinz’s wife was near death and her only hope was this drug discovered by a pharmacist that cost $1000. However, Heinz could not pay for that and when trying to bargain with the pharmacist, he could not bring the cost down. He is faced with the decision of either stealing the drug and saving his wife or letting his wife die. What should he do?
This scenario was proposed to children. The original purpose of this study was to determine how moral thinkers developed. Kohlberg developed a leveled system that he felt reflected this development in children. However, others have taken it to further their own purposes and to prove a supposed difference between male and female thinking based on two children alone. A boy by the name of Jake gave the answer that a human life was worth more than money and that stealing it would be ethically right. A girl by the name of Amy said that the stealing was wrong and he could go to jail. She further explained that he should continue to work with the pharmacist to get the drug. Both children were 11 years old.
This particular scenario is used to help explain Noddings’ concept of the Ethics of Care. Amy showed care, while being mindful of the social consequences of theft. However, did not Jake show a sense of care as well? Granted it was to the idea that a human being was important and not to an individual. This is why the Ethics of Care fails to prove that there is a “female ethic.†Both children showed care, but they showed it in their own way. Kohlberg should have taken the study farther and examined their living environments to better understand why these children came to such different opinions on the matter. The experiment is then flawed, and to use it to prove something is to make that theory just as flawed.
What the Ethics of Care does show is that it is a derivative of Ethical Egoism. The Ethics of Care simply states that when care is used to make a decision, we will want to help those that we are closest too. Our parents, children, and closest friends will always be foremost in our minds when it comes to a moral decision. We are then saying that the Ethics of Care is nothing more but for the benefit of our self-interest. Ethical Egoism shows the exact same thing.
So, is there a female ethic? Do females think differently than males? Absolutely not. Our environments and social conditionings are what shape our outlooks and opinions. To say that there was a female ethic would also confuse those who are one gender but act as the opposite gender. That is, if a man were homosexual, what ethic pattern would he fall under? A female point of view or a male point of view? He would fall under neither perspective because he is neither female nor male and yet both genders. The Ethics of Care then cannot simply apply to a female perspective because it must take into account all individual perceptions. Therefore, it fails to prove that there is a radical difference between female and male thought.
