Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Carrying the Fire Individuation Toward the Mature Masculine

Carrying the Fire Individuation Toward the Mature Masculine and Telos of Cultural Myth in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and The Road maggie bortz So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. (McCarthy, 1999b, 143) It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all. (McCarthy 1999a, 284)Although many critics consider Cormac McCarthy to be the greatest living novelist in America, his dark, compelling vision did not reach a mass audience until the film adaptation of his novel No Country for Old Men (2005) was released in 2007. The film, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen (2007), won the Academy Award for Best Picture. A film adaptation of his latest novel, The Road (2006), which won the Pulitzer Prize, was released in la te 2009. McCarthy now has the public’s rapt attention. McCarthy’s visionary works can be read as dreams of our contemporary culture.Great works of art, like dreams, perform a compensatory function to the conscious attitudes of a society and may carry teleological implications. Jung viewed great art as an aperture to the collective unconscious, through which the role of the archetypes in shaping the psychological development of individuals and societies might be discerned (1930/1966, CW 15,  ¶Ã‚ ¶157, 161). McCarthy’s later novels, speaking in image and myth, the language of the unconscious, frame the collective psychic dissociation that prevents us, individually and collectively, from growing up.The final, transcendent image in No Country for Old Men, which appears in an old man’s dream, and the father-son imagery in The Road suggest that a reunion and recalibration of the inner Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, Volume 5, Number 4, pp. 28–42, ISSN 1934-2039, e-ISSN 1934-2047.  © 2011 Virginia Allan Detloff Library, C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website at www. ucpressjournals. com/reprintinfo/asp.DOI: 10. 1525/jung. 2011. 5. 4. 28. Maggie Bortz, Telos in No Country for Old Men and The Road 29 father and son, representing a â€Å"union of sames† in the split masculine archetype, constitute the requisite path of healing and maturation. This imagery may prefigure the emergence of a new cultural myth. Jungian analyst Joseph Henderson identified specific thresholds of initiation or psychological rites of passage â€Å"which make possible the transition from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to early maturity, and from maturity to the experience of individuation† (2005, 11).Our culture, however, remains dominated by male adolescent energy, seemingly arrested in anachronistic identification with the uninitiated hero, still living out a negative mother complex: a myth of male regeneration through escalating violence inflicted on a feminine earth and on humanity. This entrenched cultural complex manifests in and is reinforced by social constructs of what it means to be male in modern America, including the myth of the self-made man and the ethic of individualism. This complex also bears â€Å"a revolutionary unattached shadow that would smash all fetters† (Hillman 2005, 56–57).To give a clinical example, some of my clients, on parole from the Oregon Youth Authority, are very likable boys for the most part who, at 14 or 15, have already spent a year behind bars in the state’s â€Å"baby† prison system. Their yearnings for identity are shaped by a culture of outer action devoid of inner meaning. The lack of connection to an inner life also appears in adult male populations in presenting symptoms like workaholism, anger issues, substance abuse, relationship problems, and sexual obsession. In older men, the dissociative phenomenon is related to the common tragedy of suicidal depression.Women, of course, are not immune to any of these things. It is axiomatic that masculine cultural dominants affect women’s lives and impact their relationships with men. On a deeper level, masculine psychological energy is present and problematic in the female psyche as well. Jung personified the unconscious masculine energy in a woman as an interior male image, the animus. â€Å"Her unconsciousness has, so to speak, a masculine imprint† (1951/1968, CW 9ii,  ¶29). James Hillman personified â€Å"the psychological foundation of the problem of history† in the archetypal magery of the senex (old man) and puer (young man) (2005, 35). Old men and young men are ubiquitous images in McCarthy’s work. No Country for Old Men and The Road appear to validate Hillman’s theory that a split in the masculine senex-puer archetype underlies the psychic malaise of our time and that work toward a â€Å"union of sames† must begin at the senex pole of that archetype. Although the reticent McCarthy seems to write from a Jungian-informed perspective, I was unable to discover any biographical data linking him to an interest in Jungian psychology.However, he frequently associates with physicists at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute, a think tank located at the former site of the Manhattan Project, a collaboration McCarthy has tersely attributed to his enduring interest â€Å"in the way things work† (Voice of America 2008). C. G. Jung collaborated with Nobel 30 jung journal: culture & psyche 5:4 / fall 2011 Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli and was struck by the cogent parallels between quantum physics and his psychological theory (Pauli and Jung 1992/2001).Beyond the shared observer effect and the subject-object bond , quantum physics and Jungian psychology both venture into depths where the distinctions between energy and matter collapse. Following the development of nuclear weapons, Jung and Pauli also shared a deep concern about the future: they feared that in the absence of a greater understanding of man’s potential for evil, humanity would â€Å"destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science† (1957/1970, CW 10,  ¶585). Although McCarthy’s canon garners critical acclaim, his work also provokes controversy.Yale literary critic Harold Bloom admits to a â€Å"fierce† passion for Blood Meridian (1985), which he considers a masterpiece of American literature. Bloom also confesses that he had a hard time finishing the book because he â€Å"flinched from the overwhelming carnage that McCarthy portrays† (2009, 1). Literary critic Morris Philipson has written: â€Å"For culture, just as for therapy, symbols are not intuitions by themselves; th ey are only brute facts that must be interpreted† (1992, 226–227). There are brute facts aplenty inMcCarthy’s canon: scalping, massacres, executions, necrophilia, cannibalism, every imaginable kind of human evil, but his artistic vision reflects the ultimate mystery of the unconscious and does not lend itself to facile reduction. Symbolic images, whether interpreted or not, affect us. They represent living psychological dynamics that we experience as feelings, emotions, ideas, and impulses toward action. McCarthy’s earlier work is often celebrated for its lyrical style and long, commafree sentences.Critic Steven Frye wrote that, â€Å"for many of us that artistry, his mastery of beauty in language, is the only compensating factor for the bleak and uncompromising world he forces us to confront† (2005, 16). But in No Country for Old Men, the prose is clipped and minimalistic. The unconscious tends to turn up the music as required to equilibrate the co nscious attitude. Compensatory dreams may become repetitious or disturbing; symptoms may become more severe.Perhaps McCarthy’s style has changed because we have missed the subtler messages of the collective unconscious, and it is getting more obviously archetypal in its self-regulatory attempts. As if mirroring a quaternity, the pattern of psychic wholeness, No Country for Old Men contains four major characters. The landscape, as character, presents the energy of the dark, chthonic feminine. Llewelyn Moss, the hunter who becomes prey, embodies the immature masculine energy of the hero, a puer spirit contaminated by a negative mother complex. Anton Chigurh, the psychopathic killer, personifies evil in its human and god-like dimensions.The psychological protagonist, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, is a senex figure with positive and negative attributes who struggles against his own nature to assimilate his shadow and to individuate toward the mature masculine. Each represents an autonomou s complex at work inside the collective psyche. Complexes are split-off parts of the personality or culture that â€Å" behave like independent Maggie Bortz, Telos in No Country for Old Men and The Road 31 beings† ( Jung 1937/1969, CW 8,  ¶253). The ultimate meaning of the quaternity in this cultural dream remains ambiguous. Jung thought that the automatic eneration of quaternary images, â€Å"whether consciously or in dreams and fantasies, can indicate the ego’s capacity to assimilate unconscious material. But they may also be essentially apotropaic, an attempt by the psyche to prevent itself from disintegrating† (Sharp 1991, 111). Both possibilities, further evolution and collective psychosis, must be entertained in reading the work. The interpretation of a dream often begins with a careful consideration of the setting. No Country for Old Men unfolds in 1980 in the wild, scrubby borderlands of South Texas and Mexico.The landscape is a raw, barren land of spr awling desert plain, lava scree, red dirt, and creosote, sparsely inhabited by Mojave rattlesnakes, scorpions, and birds of prey. The image of the border itself suggests an unstable and volatile place between two worlds where the usual rules do not apply, a sort of psychological no-man’s-land where consciousness and unconscious meet. Borders are the domain of the archetypal Trickster, who incites psychic change through creative and destructive interventions that disturb the established psychological order.The archetypal feminine is always a silent, powerful, brooding presence in McCarthy’s work. In his novels, anima or soul is sometimes represented by animals, feral creatures who need human protection, like the pregnant wolf that Billy finds trapped at the beginning of The Crossing (1999b). Sometimes, and usually briefly, followed by tragic consequences, the anima is projected onto young women in McCarthy’s novels. But the chthonic feminine, as landscape, is alw ays present in his novels, both as a primitive force of nature and as a deeply unconscious psychological dynamic in the characters’ psyches.Anima figures fare pretty poorly in McCarthy’s work. Billy must kill the beloved wolf in The Crossing to save her from a slow, agonizing death in a dog pit, where she has become the main act in a blood sport that entertains older men. In The Road, anima as landscape has been killed off entirely: the chthonic feminine is a fading memory, a charred and ruined relic. In No Country for Old Men, anima appears as landscape in foreboding form: High bloodweeds along the road. Wiregrass and sacahuista. Beyond in the stone arroyos the tracks of dragons.The raw rock mountains shadowed in the late sun and to the east the shimmering abscissa of the desert plains under a sky where raincurtains hung dark as soot all along the quadrant. That god lives in silence who has scoured the following land with salt and ash. (McCarthy 2005, 45) The dark fem inine landscape in No Country for Old Men mirrors the alchemical process of calcinatio and its products: salt, a metaphor for bitterness or wisdom, and soot and ash, the residue of fire. â€Å"The calcinatio is performed on the primitive shadow side, which harbors hungry, instinctual desirousness and is contaminated with the unconscious.The fire for the process comes from the frustration of these instinctual desires† (Edinger 1994, 21–22). 32 jung journal: culture & psyche 5:4 / fall 2011 The characters in No Country for Old Men are ambivalent about the landscape. Uncle Ellis tells the sheriff: This country was hard on people. But they never seem to hold it to account. In a way that seems peculiar. That they didnt . . . How come people dont feel like this country has got a lot to answer for? They dont. You can say that the country is just the country, it dont actively do nothing, but that dont mean much . . This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people lov e it. (McCarthy 2005, 271) On one hand, the landscape represents a terrible archetypal mother, the surrealistic backdrop of a burgeoning drug war, which is itself the continuation of many barbaric historical slaughters. In other respects, the characters identify positively with the landscape. She still nurtures according to her increasingly limited abilities. Moss can still find antelope in her deep interior space and a river saves him from certain death early in the book.All of the novel’s central male characters are veterans: they have gone to war and risked their lives to protect â€Å"the country. † The power of the landscape, however, is muted in No Country for Old Men as opposed to McCarthy’s earlier Western novels. Even the moon, the symbol of feminine consciousness, is disfigured. It is as though man’s relentless dominance, his continual conquests, savagery, and ever forward â€Å"progress† have effectively depotentiated the chthonic femini ne, and she has regressed more deeply into the unconscious.Behind the mask of our technological society lurks a negative mother complex, a dissociation from and opposition to the feminine principle. Complexes are not ours to eliminate. On the contrary, they commonly persist beyond the life of the individual and perpetuate themselves across generations. According to Jung, â€Å"A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full . . . If we are to develop further we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what . . . we have held at a distance† (1954/1968, CW 9i,  ¶184).Unconsciously living out this collective negative mother complex is a dangerous and precarious proposition: it means consuming the natural world and each other in the process. The second major character, Llewelyn Moss, a welder and Viet Nam veteran, is hunting antelope in the desert when he stumbles across the surreal, slaughterhouse scene of a failed drug deal. Moss finds a case o f money, a load of heroin, and one dying Hispanic man pleading for water. He takes the money, but his conscience nags him and he comes back to the scene that night with a jug of water for the dying man.His belated act of compassion commences the novel’s ostensible journey: Moss runs with the money, pursued by Anton Chigurh, a rival hoard of drug dealers, and Sheriff Bell. Classical Jungian theory links both the puer and the hero to the Great Mother: the puer via regressive attachment, the hero via opposition. James Hillman argued, however, that whereas the hero is always bound up in a battle with the mother, the puer spirit is defined in relationship to the father and is not heroic in the classical sense. Maggie Bortz, Telos in No Country for Old Men and The Road 33Puer consciousness is a masculine psychological energy representing, in alchemical terms, â€Å"a new spirit born of an old spirit† (2005, 117). Hillman contended that whereas the emergent masculine ego migh t pattern itself in association with either archetype, an alchemical â€Å"union of sames† in the puer-senex archetype represents the requisite path of individuation toward the mature masculine. Moss initially seems to reflect qualities of the archetypal puer-like opportunist. Like other mythological puer figures, such as Icarus or Bellerophon,1 he does not recognize his limitations and is more vulnerable than he realizes.During his first encounter with the drug dealers, Moss injures his feet by walking barefoot in the river gravel and then traversing the country in wet boots. A gunshot wound suffered during his first encounter with Chigurh further lames him for the abbreviated duration of his life. The classic puer injury to the foot suggests a fatal weakness where this immature consciousness meets the world. Once Moss takes the money, however, his thoughts, feelings, and behaviors clearly pattern boy or uninitiated hero psychological energy.His heroic quest is about cashâ⠂¬â€his spirit is literalized in currency. Moss is skillful with weapons, which are described in elaborate detail. Literary critic Jay Ellis astutely observed the technological fetishism with which McCarthy describes Moss’ preoccupation with weapons and tools: To pre-adolescent (and increasingly, adolescent and older) male readers still uncertain about their vulnerability and power in the world . . . the minutiae surrounding objects that afford their user power in the world become all-important . . .Anything that can be added on to an already desirable object that will afford greater lethality, great speed, greater vision, or more information, fills in for what young men fear they lack. (2009, 138) Ellis noted that these powerful weapons and tools ultimately do little for Moss: he misses his opening shot at an antelope and is ultimately gunned down by drug dealers at a cheap hotel. Sheriff Bell, in contrast, is dubious of sophisticated weaponry. â€Å"Tools that comes into our hands comes into theirs too . . . Some of the old time sheriffs wouldnt even carry a firearm† (McCarthy 2005, 62–63).Moss’ interactions with women betray an oblique hostility and adolescent insecurity. He uses sarcasm to dismiss and deflect his young wife. Moss mentions â€Å"mother† specifically twice in the book, both times in relation to death, and appears to dialogue with her elsewhere. Shortly before he is murdered, Moss picks up a teenage girl who is hitchhiking. The mother complex speaking through Moss tells the girl: â€Å"Most people’ll run from their own mother to get to hug death by the neck. They can’t wait to see him† (McCarthy 2005, 234).Moss’ unconsciousness of his own limitations, of any transpersonal ideals, and of the insurmountable evil he both confronts and secretly carries within him, costs him his own life; the collateral damage includes the deaths of his wife and the young hitchhiker. 34 jung journal: culture & psyche 5:4 / fall 2011 At this point in the senescence of our culture, McCarthy seems to say, the hero is as good as dead. Although Moss’ heroic tale entices the reader into the novel, as critic Jay Ellis (2009) has noted, this part of the story collapses midway through with Moss’ death when Sheriff Bell’s process emerges to dominate.This apparent literary dismissal of the heroic neurosis may reflect its psychological status as a secondary pathology, as a symptom of failed initiation that masks a religious problem: the missing God â€Å"who offered a focus for spiritual things† (Hillman 2005, 121). The third major character, Anton Chigurh, psychopath and assassin, represents the most potent force in the collective psyche at this time. He is a complex, quasiarchetypal shadow figure, a paradoxical psychic presence who acts as the dynamist or catalyst in the larger psychological process of the novel.When the reader meets Chigurh, he is a prisoner i n a small, rural county jail. While the arresting deputy chats on the phone, Chigurh, in one fluid move, gets his manacled hands in front of his body and around the jailor’s neck. After the grisly murder, Chigurh nonchalantly uses the bathroom, binds his injured wrists with tape and paper towels, and sits at the desk â€Å"studying the dead man gaping up from the floor† (McCarthy 2005, 6). There is no emotion in the scene beyond the horror it evokes in the reader. The motif of the murdered jailor has appeared elsewhere in McCarthy’s work.Here, Chigurh represents an archetypal impulse or tendency that has been banished, repressed, â€Å"locked up,† but has now freed itself to act. Chigurh, unlike Moss, is not motivated by money. When he eventually recovers the satchel of stolen cash, he returns it. Killing people is Chigurh’s job. The world is his abattoir. He is the quintessential bounty hunter, a contemporary iteration of the scalp hunters in Bloo d Meridian. He prefers to dispatch his victims (and to open doors) with a cattlegun. Other people become objects or livestock to him, and in this way, he prefigures the cannibals in The Road.Anton Chigurh seems to embody shadow qualities properly belonging to the personal unconscious of the other characters, as though the archetypal split between the contaminated puer and ineffectual senex created a psychological void that he is obligated, through some inscrutable psychological rule, to fill. In some respects, he is like a photographic negative of Moss. He even mirrors Moss’ limp, sustaining a leg injury while inflicting one. When Chigurh is injured in a car crash late in the book, he buys a boy’s shirt to make a sling for his broken arm, mirroring Moss’ earlier purchase of a boy’s coat on the Mexican border.Chigurh certainly needs no help from anyone. Women who spend too much time around Chigurh, like those who become involved with Moss, wind up dead. An aura of the negative hero seems to radiate around him. At the same time, Chigurh seems to carry some qualities of the negative senex that seem related to Sheriff Bell. As a senex figure, Bell represents, among other things, Maggie Bortz, Telos in No Country for Old Men and The Road 35 justice, law, and the process whereby these concepts are enforced in human affairs through the sometimes arbitrary power of an established order.Within an individual psyche, these ordering and moral functions are often associated with the senex archetype, and, inevitably, a murky shadow accompanies them. â€Å"A morality based on senexconsciousness will always be dubious. No matter what strict code of ethical purity it asserts, in the execution of its lofty principles there will be a balancing loathsome horror not far away† (Hillman 2005, 260). (The first line of the book suggests as much: â€Å"I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville† [McCarthy 2005, 3]. Like a dark reflection of the senex compulsion for law, order, and measurement, Chigurh is a man of exacting principles: â€Å"principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that† (153). As Moss’ wife begs for her life, Chigurh shakes his head. â€Å"You’re asking that I make myself vulnerable and that I can never do. I have only one way to live and it doesn’t allow for special cases† (259). Anton Chigurh serves as a vehicle of unconscious projection for the reader. His sadistic acts and complete emotional detachment inspire terror. This character, so indefinably foreign, o marginally human, does not seem like one of us, but he is an irrefutable psychological truth that belongs to our culture. He represents something we should know about ourselves that remains unconscious, like a not yet understood dream. While Chigurh’s vulnerability to physical injury suggests a human shadow figure, his disappearing acts, miraculous escapes, and his association with fat e lend him a supernatural aura that suggests the archetypal shadow. By the end of the novel, Bell comes to believe that Satan â€Å"explains a lot of things that otherwise dont have no explanation† (McCarthy 2005, 218).Chigurh himself confesses that he has found â€Å"it useful to model himself after God† (257). For our culture at this time, we might say Chigurh is God, the dark God grown more human, closer to consciousness. Chigurh resembles the God-image Jung discovered in the Book of Job. Jung found that Yahweh, egged on by Satan, possessed, in part, â€Å"an animal nature† (1952/1969, CW 11,  ¶600) and, in this way, was â€Å"less than human† ( ¶599). Like Yahweh, Chigurh is guilty of â€Å"murder, bodily injury with premeditation, and denial of a fair trial† ( ¶581).For Jung, Yahweh’s cruelty to Job is â€Å"further exacerbated by the fact that Yahweh displays no compunction, remorse, or compassion, but only ruthlessness and brut ality† ( ¶581); we find the same divine heartlessness, fed by the unconscious, in Chigurh. Chigurh shares another trait with Yahweh: â€Å"Nowhere does he come up against an insuperable obstacle that would force him to hesitate and hence make him reflect on himself † ( ¶579). In Jung’s view, the Christ symbol represents only an intermediate stage in a process of divine development in which God effectively dissociated from his own dark side.Identification with the exclusively â€Å"good,† loving aspects of the divinity â€Å"is bound 36 jung journal: culture & psyche 5:4 / fall 2011 to lead to a dangerous accumulation of evil† (1952/1969, CW 11,  ¶653). Anton Chigurh symbolizes that magnetic, irrational pull to incarnate God’s darkness, â€Å"the ultimate source of evil, its absolute home† (Stein 1995, 144). Chigurh slays the cultural hero and provokes Bell’s psychological development: he is the dynamic agent, the terrorist , and instigator of Bell’s emergent connection to the unconscious. The realization of the self as an autonomous psychic factor is often stimulated by the irruption of contents over which the ego has no control† (Sharp 1991, 120). The irruption of contents like this can destroy the ego. In his Trickster role, Chigurh is not unlike Satan in the Book of Job or the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Evil serves a psychological function. â€Å"The stirring up of conflict is a Luciferian virtue in the true sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light† ( Jung 1954/1968, CW 9i,  ¶179).The conscious attitude determines whether the conflict is ultimately illuminating or destructive: we either evolve from our mistakes or we unconsciously dig deeper into our accustomed defenses. Sheriff Bell, a country lawman approaching sixty, is the novel’s psyc hological protagonist. As a senex figure, Bell seems to represent, at least in part, the conservative function of the archetype, â€Å"the fastness of our habits† (Hillman 2005, 48), â€Å"the principle of long-lasting survival through order† (284). Psychological movement, once incited by Chigurh, depends entirely on Bell’s interior process.Paradoxically, the path of psychic evolution begins with the senex in a process of disintegration. The novel takes its title from the first line of W. B. Yeats’ most celebrated poem, â€Å"Sailing to Byzantium,† which contrasts the material world with the transcendent world of art from the viewpoint of an aged man. It urges a belated attention to one’s soul. To the extent that art is an aperture to the collective unconscious, the journey to Byzantium implies an intrapsychic movement from the ego toward the Self.Critic John Vanderheide has observed that the renunciation of the physical world expressed in à ¢â‚¬Å"Sailing to Byzantium† and No Country for Old Men is forced on the narrator by old age and approaching death, conditions he is powerless to change (2005). Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity (Yeats 1926/1952, 490, stanza III, ll. 21–24) This felt sense of mortality, hopelessness, and limitation is often the cue that ignites the process of individuation.The collective unconscious calls aged men; whether they will respond and how is another matter entirely, but this painful territory is no country for young men. Maggie Bortz, Telos in No Country for Old Men and The Road 37 As senex figure, Bell is the ostensible boundary keeper of the cultural psyche, but he is flooded with content that he cannot repress. Bafflement pervades his monologues. He longs for times past when the world made more sense to him, but Bell’s nostalgia is more than a regressive symptom, it implies â€Å"a separation of halves, a missing conjunction† (Hillman 2005, 182).Bell carries notable qualities of the positive senex. His most authentic self is related to others. He sees himself as a shepherd to the people assigned to his care. â€Å"I’ve thought about why it was that I wanted to be a lawman. There was always some part of me that wanted people to listen to what I had to say. But there was a part of me too that just wanted to pull everybody in the boat† (McCarthy 2005, 296). His psyche is anchored in an imago of the positive feminine in the form of his anima figure, his wife of thirtyone years, Loretta.The escalating violence, his inability to contain it, and the imperatives of his own interior process force Bell to examine the psychological orientation that has guided his life. Bell confronts his own provisional life, an adulthood founded on a lie. As a young soldier in France during World War II, he fought bravely, but in the face of overw helming odds and certain death, fled the battlefield and his dead companions. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his service, an honor he tried to refuse. His election as county sheriff followed from this heroic misidentification.Bell confesses this history to his Uncle Ellis, an elderly lawman disabled in the line of duty, late in the book. â€Å"I didn’t know you could steal your own life,† he says (McCarthy 2005, 278). Bell concludes that his history resurfaces because â€Å"sometimes people would rather have a bad answer about things than no answer at all† (282). Bell endures the part of the alchemical process associated with the death and decay of the old substance, the old way of being in the world. He experiences his growing edge of consciousness as a defeat.Bell makes a final break with the inauthentic hero and our culture’s idea of what it means to be a man: he quits in the middle of the hunt. His decision to retire reflects an understanding of his own limitations and is guided by a deeper psychic injunction. I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. . . . If you aint they’ll know it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think that a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. I think now that maybe I never would. (McCarthy 2005, 4)Bell begins to acquiesce to and participate in his interior process, going back through his memories, paying attention to his dreams, engaging in active imagination. He ponders the memory of an image he encountered on the battlefield in France, â€Å"a stone water trough† carved â€Å"to last ten thousand years† (307). A trough contains water, a symbol of the unconscious, perhaps the personal unconscious, but perhaps the collective one. The trough symbolizes a way of understanding content arising from the unconscious and resonates as a religious symbol. For Jung, 38 jung jou rnal: culture & psyche 5:4 / fall 2011 an had the need for a felt connection to something larger than his ego deeply embedded into the fabric of his being, but man lost his sense of larger meaning and purpose somewhere amid the horrors and upheavals of the twentieth century. Jung believed that the modern collective failure to channel this instinct, to carve another indestructible stone trough, was both symptom and root cause of our collective dissociation. Bell rejects the notion of carving a trough himself; it must be a collective enterprise, and no new myth has yet emerged to replace the dying God-image of our culture.Bell’s only child, a daughter, died as an infant thirty years before the story begins. Childlessness is associated with the negative senex. â€Å"When the senex has lost its child . . . A dying complex infects all psychic life† (Hillman 2005, 263). Late in the book, Bell confides to the reader that for many years he has dialogued with this dead infant d aughter (McCarthy 2005, 285). In Jungian theory, that imaginary child would be considered a psychic reality. The novel’s ultimate meaning resides in two dreams about his dead father.In the first dream, â€Å"he give me some money and I think I lost it† (McCarthy 2005, 309). His father imparted something of great value to him for safekeeping, but he misplaced it, perhaps irretrievably. The second dream is a powerful reiteration of the first and evokes Jung’s famous dream of carrying a small light in the fog (Jung 1961/1965, 88). The setting is a cold, snowy night in a remote mountain pass. Bell and his father ride horseback. It was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through this pass in the mountains.It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothing. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. (McCarthy 2005, 309)Although the dream can be viewed as regressive, in that it invokes Bell’s childhood relationship and a longing to live out an old, honorable myth that has become irrelevant in the modern world, it clearly carries teleological implications. Bell goes forward into the dark night, into the unknown, toward death. He and his father ride horses, numinous animals in McCarthy’s work that suggest connection to anima or soul. Horses also represent an older and an arguably more connected way of moving through the world. Bell’s father carries fire, a symbol for the light of consciousness or spirit, in a horn, a Gnostic symbol of maturity. The hor n is a dual symbol: from one point of view it is penetrating in shape and therefore active and masculine in significance; and from the other it is shaped like a receptacle, which is feminine in meaning† (Cirlot 1962/1971, 151). While the image of the horn may suggest a new hieros gamos, a union of masculine and feminine energy, the dead father carries it, not the dream ego Maggie Bortz, Telos in No Country for Old Men and The Road 39 itself. Bell’s passivity in the dream seems problematic. On the other hand, it is conceivable that Bell’s lack of agency is an auspicious sign. In the absence of ego and into its emptiness an imaginal stream can flow, providing mythical solutions between the senexpuer contradictions† (Hillman 2005, 66). Bell’s own father aspects are deeply unconscious: he has no living children and, in this respect, has lost his father’s â€Å"inheritance,† a future presence in the chain of life. Paradoxically, behind Bellà ¢â‚¬â„¢s senex mask we find a son looking for the father within. As in most of McCarthy’s books, the missing psychic presence is the father: there is never a shortage of symbolically fatherless boys in his work.However, in this novel, the puer appears in the form of Bell as an old man. Bell’s unconscious frames its message in terms of a reunion and recalibration of the father and the son, as though directly addressing the split masculine archetype that appears to block the evolution of our culture. â€Å"This split gives us . . . the search of the son for his father and the longing of the father for his son, which is the search and longing for one’s own meaning† (Hillman 2005, 61). The dream image suggests a path of potential healing, a â€Å"union of sames† in this split archetype, and might represent the nascent emergence of a new myth.In the end, the dream’s telos remains hauntingly ambiguous. We are only at the beginning of a process. In the face of such pervasive and unbridled evil and unconsciousness, one man’s individuation seems like a very small thing, a very small thing that requires much effort, attention, devotion, and suffering. The last line of the book immediately follows the second dream: â€Å"Then I woke up† (McCarthy 2005, 309). â€Å"Waking up,† increasing consciousness, is the entire point. And thus the novel ends on a slender strand of hope.We must dream this dream on, in the Jungian tradition, and look toward the next dream for further clarification. McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, is properly understood as a psychological progression of No Country for Old Men. In The Road, McCarthy resolves the ambiguity of the quaternity image presented in No Country for Old Men. It becomes clear that the imagery portends a collective psychosis and, at the same time, the possibility that some individuals may be ready to assimilate unconscious content. In The Road, the ch thonic feminine as landscape has een killed off entirely in an unnamed catastrophe marked only by â€Å"a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions† (McCarthy 2006, 45). Given McCarthy’s long preoccupation with man’s proclivity toward evil, the apocalypse was likely manmade: perhaps an all-out nuclear war. There are few survivors. Civilization itself is a fading memory. A nameless father and son wander the scorched landscape, â€Å"the cauterized terrain,† hoping to scavenge enough canned food to survive while evading roving bands of cannibals (12). The boy’s mother has committed suicide in despair. 40 jung journal: culture & psyche 5:4 / fall 2011McCarthy seems to suggest that the feminine will be eradicated from the picture entirely, the negative mother complex played out to its inevitable conclusion in man’s escalating shadow enactments before work on the fundamental problem can begin in what is left of humanity. As Anton C higurh says, â€Å"one’s path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly† (McCarthy 2005, 259). Despite the horrors, a new symbol, the image of a divine child, an elaboration of the dream imagery of No Country for Old Men, does emerge out of the ruin and ashes of The Road.This symbol arises from the ground of catastrophic loss. The end of the via longissima is the child. But the child begins in the realm of Saturn, in lead or rock, ashes or blackness, and it is there the child is realized. It is warmed to life in a bath of cinders, for only when a problem is finally worn to nothing, wasted and dry can it reveal a wholly unexpected essence. Out of the darkest, coldest, most remote burnt out state of the complex the phoenix rises. Petra genetrix: out of the stone a child is born. (Hillman 2005, 64)In The Road, the father and son are â€Å"each other’s world entire† (McCarthy 2006, 5), representing a â€Å"union of samesâ €  in the masculine archetype and, possibly, the beginning of a new cultural myth. The nameless father in The Road struggles to â€Å"evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them† (63). He views his son as a sacred being. As he is dying, the father sees his son â€Å"standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle† (230). Unlike Jesus, this son is not sacrificed back to the father. In the puer is a father drive—not to find him, reconcile with him, be loved and receive a blessing, but rather to transcend the father which act redeems the father’s limitations† (Hillman 2005, 161). The father’s job is to initiate the son before he dies: to provide a sense of meaning that makes existence tolerable. In The Road, individual meaning is symbolized in the son’s sacred responsibility to carry the light of conscio usness, the only thing of value in a post-apocalyptic world, into the overwhelming darkness that confronts him. This fragile possibility, however, resides in the individual, not within a culture or group.Critic Kenneth Lincoln saw McCarthy’s novels as â€Å"lamentational canticles of warning, not directives† (2009, 2). Part of Bell’s function is prophetic: he hints at â€Å"where we’re headed† (McCarthy 2005, 303). â€Å"I know as certain as death that there aint nothin short of the second comin of Christ that can slow this train† (159). McCarthy is first and foremost a storyteller. He is not an activist and does not make prescriptive statements, and it is a mistake to read him that way. The blind man in The Crossing explains the function of storytellers. â€Å"He said that they had no desire to entertain him nor yet even to instruct him.He said that it was their whole bent only to tell what was true and that otherwise they had no purpose a t all† (McCarthy 1999b, 284). I imagine that McCarthy shares the blind man’s views and also those of Jung, who in writing about art Maggie Bortz, Telos in No Country for Old Men and The Road 41 underscored the fundamental depth psychological tenet that â€Å"a dream never says ‘you ought’ or ‘this is the truth. ’ It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and it is up to us to draw conclusions† (1930/1966, CW 15,  ¶161).Those of us who are conscious enough to draw conclusions from this work must do so now and prepare ourselves as best we can for the dark new world to come. endnote 1. Bellerophon, son of the King of Corinth, was the hero of Greek mythology who killed the Chimera. Bellerophon, inflated by his triumph, felt entitled to join the gods on Mount Olympus and attempted to fly there on the winged horse, Pegasus. His presumption offended Zeus, who orchestrated the hero’s dismount. Belleroph on plummeted to earth, crippled in the fall. note References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number.The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA). bibliography Bloom, Harold. 2009. Bloom’s modern critical views: Cormac McCarthy. New York: Infobase Publishing. Cirlot, Juan Eduardo. 1962/1971. A dictionary of symbols. Trans. Jack Sage. New York: Philosophical Library. Edinger, Edward F. 1994. Anatomy of the psyche: Alchemical symbolism in psychotherapy. Chicago: Open Court. Ellis, Jay. 2009. Fetish and collapse in No country for old men. In Bloom’s modern critical views: Cormac McCarthy, ed. Harold Bloom, 133–170. New York: Infobase Publishing. Frye, Steven. 2005.Yeats’ â€Å"Sailing to Byzantium† and McCarthy’s No country for old men: Art and artifice in the new novel. The Cormac McCarthy Journal, 5, 1: 14–20. Henderson, Joseph. 2005. Thresholds of initiation. Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications. Hillman, James. 2005. Senex and puer. Putnam, CT: Spring. Jung, C. G. 1930/1966. Psychology and literature. The spirit in man, art, and literature. CW 15. ———. 1937/1969. Psychological factors determining human behavior. The structure and dynamics of the psyche. CW 8. ———. 1951/1968. The syzygy: Anima and animus. Aion. CW 9ii. ———. 1952/1969. Answer to Job. Psychology and religion: West and East.CW 11. ———. 1954/1968. Psychological aspects of the mother archetype. The archetypes and the collective unconscious. CW 9i. ———. 1957/1970. The undiscovered self (present and future). Civilization in transition. CW 10. ———. 1961/1965. Memories, dreams, reflections. Recorded and ed. by Aniela Jaffe. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage Books. Lincoln, Kenneth. 2009. Cormac McCart hy: American canticles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McCarthy, Cormac. 1985. Blood meridian: Or the evening redness in the west. New York: Random House. 42 jung journal: culture & psyche 5:4 / fall 2011 McCarthy, Cormac. 1999a.All the pretty horses. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 1999b. The crossing. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 2005. No country for old men. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 2006. The road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. No country for old men. 2007. Screenplay by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, No country for old men, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Pauli, Wolfgang, and C. G. Jung. 1992/2001. Atom and archetype: The Pauli/Jung letters, 1932– 1958. Eds. Carl Alfred Meier, Charles Paul Enz, and Markus Fierz. Trans. David Roscoe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Philipson, Morris. 1992. Outline of Jungian aesthetics. In Jungian literary criticism, ed. Richard Sugg, 214–227. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Sharp, Daryl. 1991. C. G. Jung lexicon: A primer of terms and concepts. Toronto: Inner City Books. Stein, Murray. 1995. Jung on evil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vanderheide, John. 2005. Varieties of renunciation in the works of Cormac McCarthy. The Cormac McCarthy Journal, 5, 1: 30–35. Voice of America. 2008. Cormac McCarthy and Thomas McGuane write stories set in the American west. Interviewed by B. Klein and S. Ember. Radio broadcast (February 11), voanews. om (accessed October 27, 2009). Yeats, William Butler. 1926/1952. Sailing to Byzantium. In Immortal poems of the English language, ed. Oscar Williams, 490. New York: Washington Square Press. maggie bortz earned an M. A. in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, California, and an M. J. in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. She is a Qualified Mental Health Professional (QMHP) working toward licensure as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) at the Center for Family Development in Eugene, Oregon.She plans to open a private counseling practice in Portland in 2012. Correspondence: 5873 SW Terwilliger Blvd. , Portland, OR 97239. abstract This alchemical hermeneutical study analyzes Cormac McCarthy’s novels No Country for Old Men and The Road as cultural dreams using Jungian and post-Jungian theory. McCarthy’s work elucidates the archetypal process of individuation toward the mature masculine in our time. Following McCarthy’s imagery and James Hillman’s work, I focus on the split in the senex-puer archetype that structures the masculine psyche as the ultimate psychological site of our cultural dissociation.I also examine the teleological implications in the novel regarding the evolution of the God-image, which reflects manâ€℠¢s understanding of the objective psyche, as well as the nature and psychological function of human evil. key words alchemy, archetypal psychology, chthonic feminine, Coen brothers, cultural psychology, dream interpretation, Jungian interpretation of literature, landscape, literature as cultural dreaming, masculine archetypes, Cormac McCarthy, mechanization, No Country for Old Men, puer, The Road, senex, symbol Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Cultures of the new world Essay

When the New World was discovered, Native American peoples had spread throughout North and South America. Often they were hunter/gatherers, but they had established various civilizations. The Europeans considered themselves far superior to these natives, and European arrival invariably led to native peoples being subjected to European rule. The Europeans brought superior weapons such as fire-arms, and diseases, which took an appalling toll on native peoples. Native peoples were often unable to assimilate themselves to European culture, and fell into ongoing conflict with the Europeans, resulting in the decimation of native tribes or their relegation to lands beyond a widening sphere of European control. Native Americans’ most lasting contributions were two food crops that reshaped of European farming: corn and potatoes. At the time they settled the New World, Europeans were feeling the effects of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Spain had emerged from centuries of division to become a united country. Portugal was trying to emerge as a sea power and a mercantile power, taking advantage of the slave trade. England was breaking free of continental control and experiencing the remarkable flowering of the Tudor-Stuart period. Open realizing the vast extent of the New World, the Europeans rushed to establish colonial settlements. These colonies reflected the cultures from which they were sent. The Portugese colonies in Brazil were marked by the depredations of slavery. Spanish colonies reveled in the wealth they found in many parts of the New World. English colonists carried their traditions of self-government and sturdy habits to their new colonies. The result has been the Europeanization of the New World. From Mexico south, the region is Latin America, reflecting the pervasive influence of Spanish and Portugese control throughout central and South America. The United States and Canada remain more English in their orientation, and America has become the ultimate cultural imperialists. Although the Europeans discovered the New World while trying to reach Asia, Asia remained largely unaffected by the discovery and settlement of the New World. The Chinese had apparently sailed to the Americas several centuries earlier, but had found nothing that they felt warranted continued contact. The Japanese were about to enter their two-centuries-long isolation. The various peoples of southeast Asia, whose spices had been one of the key goals of the Europeans, remained oblivious to what went on in the New World. It would be the mid-nineteenth century before large scale emigration to the Americas would increase contact, and this would be followed by American laws excluding Asians. Because of the very limited contact that the Asians had with the Americas during the period of European exploration and settlement, Asia had very little direct influence on the Americas. Its indirect influence shows in the fact that the native Americans were called as Columbus dubbed them, Indians. At the time Europeans were settling the New World, sub-Saharan Africa was divided into various kingdoms. Wars among these were common, as was the practice of seizing enemy tribal peoples and selling them as slavery. As Europeans found that Native Americans did not survive well in slavery, they quickly found advantages to importing slaves from Africa, and a flourishing trade in humans began which would last until the nineteenth century. Slaves in America often worked long hours under conditions in which death was commonplace, prompting a need for the continual importation of more slaves. The result of this importation has been the profound legacy of racism that continues to wrack communities from the United States throughout Latin America. SOURCE: â€Å"The Age of Exploration. † (Undated). HistoryTeacher. net. Retrieved January 31, 2007, from . Internet.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Storytelling can help making the brand means much to the audience Essay

Storytelling can help making the brand means much to the audience because the stories just like a bridge which create a real connection between the work and the audience - Essay Example Storytelling presupposes that a consumption story protagonist tells a personal story in which he consciously or unconsciously intertwines a brand. Most often the existence of the brand influences and changes protagonist`s life for better (Woodside et al., 99). Storytelling in business is exceptionally important because it creates credibility of the brand making the product more real. Good myth can deliver the main message less persistently and more naturally. It is impossible to create something that will not breed similar concurrent products; however, it is possible to make the of the product unique. Myths shape information about the product in an effective way- not with facts but with coherent experiences of people. We all are prone to believe more to what we read or what feel and experience, and storytelling and myths in marketing is the most reliable way of facts presentation. It is also important to mind that stories are usually shared, not facts, and the probability of the advertisement with a good story to go viral is much higher (Thomas 1). Whole Foods, one of the biggest health food companies in the United States is good example of effective storytelling. Their myth is about healthy benefits of their products that change life of consumers. They claim that natural food is much better for the body and you as you will feel more energetic and healthier eating it. Those who consume this food care about themselves while those who prefer other products do not (Mathews & Wacker, 13) Nike is another example of an effective storytelling in marketing. The company is selling the myth about personal perseverance and resistance to the world and the following success. Nike has created a philosophy based on sportsmen who dedicate their lives to fighting with ordeals, rivals, and themselves finally and achieving success in this fight. In the story the product itself is placed on the

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Political Environment Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Political Environment - Case Study Example A good political environment such as political stability is conducive to business because it meant that business can operate unhampered. Its factories can work without disruption and its employees can go to work any issue, therefore, the business can operate smoothly when there is a political stability. A bad political environment such as political instability, on the other hand, is a bad macroeconomic environment for business. We can take the recent issue about Egypt’s coup’d etat where the military took over the government and the people protesting it. News of military crackdowns is everywhere and conflict happens every day. This is bad for business because it cannot operate smoothly. Moreso when it is in the Middle East where the majority of the oil in the world is produced. In the case of political instability in Egypt, oil prices rose up above the $100 because Egypt controls the Suez Canal where most oil cargo passes through such as what is reported in the article â€Å"Oil prices rise above $100 post-Egyptian military's coup d'etat† (Business Standard, 2013). This uncertainty that oil may not reach their destination or may be entangled in the conflict sends anxiety in the market that its price shot up. And this price hike in oil has ripple negative effect in business in general and for us consumers because all industry is dependent on power which needs oil. When the input of the price of oil shots up, the price of the products and services will naturally increase making everything expensive.

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Marketing Design and Innovation Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 1

Marketing Design and Innovation - Dissertation Example Influence of insurance on the business industry provides a clear indication of the significance and value to the global economy. With the emerging insurance sector worldwide, policy holders as well as investors are exposed to a wide range of products (Augustine & Chandrasekhar, n.d.). The insurance industry contributes to economic growth and national prosperity in multifarious ways. Insurance helps to strengthen the effectiveness and resilience of the economy by minimizing risk. It helps individuals by reducing the financial impact of unpredicted and unwelcome incidents, and helps them to perform their work activities as well as organize their lives with greater certainty. Risk-averse people are able to enjoy greater utility from their assets. Today almost every conceivable asset can be insured such as car, motorcycle, business, travel and others (Wahi & Et. Al., 2010). 2.0. Synthesis and Review of Literature 2.1. Stylistic Change towards Insurance The insurance industry is considere d to be one of the major segments for economic growth and development. In other words, perceived benefits compared to actual benefits are the backbone for marketing of insurance services. Over time, the insurance industry has found new and innovative ways for expansion. ... The regular dissolution of conventional social structure also increases the demand for insurance. In this growing competitive insurance sector â€Å"customer is the king†. For this reason, insurance products are designed and customized in such a way that they can be tailored to the changing style of customer tastes. Insurance products are developed by considering various demographical factors such as family status, gender, age, employment and income level (Kumar, 2008). To illustrate the critical importance of insurance, HDFC Standard Life has developed ‘Super’ series products for the diverse need segments. This series has developed to meet changing needs and preferences of customers across various life stages. For example, ‘HDFC Young Star Super’ product caters for those customers who wish to provide for their children’s education, and ‘HDFC Pension Super’ for those customers who plan for retirement and save for key milestones (HD FC Standard Life Insurance Company Limited, 2009). Another example is ‘Oman Life Insurance Company’ which introduced ‘Property Owner’s Association Package Insurance’, a new product in the UAE insurance industry. This product will provide multiple insurance coverage including ‘Property Insurance’, ‘Third Party Insurance’, ‘Office Bearer’s Liability Insurance’, ‘Fidelity Guarantee Insurance’ and ‘Machinery Breakdown Insurance’. Oman Insurance Company believes that this policy will provide coverage to all in a jointly developed property, for instance, residential tower, commercial offices and villa communities. Both owners and renters will benefit from this insurance product (Mesbah, 2010). 2.2. Changes in Customers’ Taste, Need and Fashion In the past, younger generation was not

Friday, July 26, 2019

Midterm Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Midterm - Essay Example a deal and they want to save time, managers are advised to find out more about the export market; which is through the internet and have a look at business journals and various banks of the region. 2. Internationalizing a small business through the incremental stages creates high chances of success for that business and high sustainability is guaranteed. This is quite different from when it is started at once by investing a lot of money, which ends up putting the whole idea at risk in case things don’t go as expected. It should be noted that success is only realized when the business is conducted internationally, in a self-directed manner by simply filling normal orders. It will be the growth of this business that places it in a better position for more orders and therefore gain prosperity in the international business world. There are however barriers to this success, and this is in terms of the export market where if not researched on well, the manager might end up unsuccessful in case the product they want to distribute has no market internationally. Inadequate resources can also be a hindrance, as external support is of great need for one to go through this successf ully. The culture of a particular country too is a barrier, as some countries attach beliefs to some products and ignorance in this case can be quite an issue. China for instance associates watches with death, therefore such products in that country are not welcome. 3. The internet is widely known to be informative in diverse fields that one would want to research on. When it comes to internationalizing businesses, a manager can be able to find out about the export market; in terms of what products are acceptable in that particular country of choice, their demand, and also get to find representatives in the export market that are to be of help in terms of conducting their business. It therefore in this case saves on the time that would have been used in travelling to one’s country of interest

Case study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Case study - Essay Example Having a reliable cost estimate in place for the Worplestrop company would be important for the management to make decisions concerning the use of the company cash and ensuring that the software development and of cost data in information systems is implemented as planned. Therefore this kind of preliminary cost analysis is important in areas where there are scarce funds. Having a rough estimate on the cost of a project is important factor in ensuring the success of the project. Preparing a budget estimate at the early stages of the cost accounting software implementation brings together the previous cost data and the skills of estimation coupled with relevant project experience (Fonnow 2006). Budget Control Methods and System Cost Cost estimation on project implementation is never an exact science. Therefore, Worplestrop’s management need to put their effort towards affordable cost estimates projects that lie within the company budget. In order for the company to work within their budget calls for the use of consistent and comprehensive methodology (Gilbert 2011). However, even with the use of such methodology more concern should be given to the project to ensure the quality of the cost estimate. This cost estimate was therefore prepared through a thorough research and comparison with similar projects in other companies that have been done before and needed my professional judgment in its quality. This report further takes into account the coordination that is between the information systems planning cost estimates, the systems design cost estimate and the universal specifications that shall be used in the real construction of this information system. The estimate of this information system is being valued at $ 0.5 million plus the of implementation and training. The cocomo mode of software pricing is recommendable in finding the real cost of such a software implementation. Other Available Systems The use of the information management system would provi de an added advantage to Worplestrop Company over her competitors. However, the partners need to be aware that there are other systems in the market that can be used in place of the Costing information system if the providers do not accept to deliver the software within the company budget. This company is structured along the functional lines and therefore any system that is put in place must be able to support the company goals. Other systems are identified in the following section: Financial Management Information Systems This system can be used in the organization by the financial managers and gives an analysis of the past and the present financial activities of the company. Moreover, the future financial obligations of the organization are given by this software and has control over the use of the organization funds over time. Manufacturing Management Information System Presently the operations of any business has been affected by the changes in technology and therefore Worplest rop is no exception. The manufacturing operations in any company ought to change due to this dynamic factor. Inventories are provided to avoid use of large sums of money for warehousing in big inventories. Thus this kind of system would be important in managing in such scenarios. With this system there is no need for warehousing. Marketing Management Inf

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Systems Dvelopment Case Study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Systems Dvelopment Case Study - Essay Example The system also provided the factor of motivation that it was able to identify the cost saving opportunities and prospects for the Pepsi Company. The billing management offered by the project also served as a motivating factor for the company to implement the system. BusinessObjects Corporation was one of the participants involved in the development of the Purchase to Pay System. It was involved for the providence of business intelligence information to Pepsi Co. and also for the storage of the procurement in a well managed and efficient database. The systems development life cycle approach which can be best applied to the Purchase to Pay System of the Pepsi Co. was the iterative approach. Through this approach the prototype of the new project that was to be implemented should be designed for the convenience of the staff of Pepsi and also for the ease of use and should be improved through a number of iterations. For achieving the best system development, the system is improved through iterations in the prototype in this approach. This kind of approach would be helpful for Pepsi to get the best out of the Procurement System that it planned to implement in the company. 5. Assuming that you were responsible for designing and implementing the new procurement system at PepsiCo, what problems and opportunities would you have considered in conducting your initial systems investigation The purcha

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Nursing Profession Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Nursing Profession - Essay Example Additionally, they create and monitor nursing plans, advice patients and their families in proper care, and help individuals and groups to take steps towards improving or maintaining their health. In practice, there are several types of nurses: hospital nurses, office nurses, nursing home nurses, home health nurses, public health nurses, occupational nurses, nurse supervisors, and advanced practice nurses (APNs). To become a nurse, one must graduate from an approved nursing program and pass a national licensing examination. For APNs, they must meet higher educational and clinical practice requirements beyond the basic nursing education and licensing required of all other registered nurses (RN). More so, they are specialists who offer basic primary healthcare through diagnosis and treatment of common acute illnesses and injuries. Nursing has its hazards especially in hospitals and other facilities where nurses may care for individuals with infectious diseases. Thus, nurses must observ e strict guidelines to protect themselves against diseases and other dangers such as those posed by radiation, chemicals used for sterilization of instruments and anesthetics. The value of registered nurses The next part of this paper will discuss the nursing profession within the context of Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). CNA was established in 1908, and now it is a federation of 11 provincial and territorial nursing associations and colleges representing almost all registered nurses in Canada (CNA, 2011). According to the fact sheet on The Value of Registered Nurses, nurses are associated with saving lives, promoting health, and reducing costs to the health system. First, RNs through their skills and interventions, improve the quality of care and aid patients in getting better health outcomes. Secondly, they shorten length of hospital stays, reduce rates of medication errors and wound infections, and reduce waiting time by providing timely access to care. Thirdly, by increasing the number hours of care provided by RNs, the in-patient deaths and the adverse outcomes among residents in sensitive areas can be reduced significantly. Fourthly, by involving RNs in health promotion and prevention care among the patients, there can be improved mental and physical functioning, a reduction in depression, lower costs per person for prescription drugs, increased number of patients who quit smoking, and better management of chronic diseases (CNA, 2011). More so, home visits by RNs have been shown to improve child and maternal outcomes. Finally, by increasing the number of hours of care provided by RNs, there can be net cost savings through reduced length of hospital stays and avoided adverse outcomes (Needleman et al., 2006). Nurses offer solutions for cost effective health care According to the factsheet on Nurses Offer Solutions for Cost Effective Health Care, nurses are well positioned and work in all parts of the health system, thus they can offer innovations that reduce costs and enhance effectiveness of the health system. First, studies have revealed that by reducing nurse turnover, there can be a reduction in costs and improvement of nurse, patient, and system outcomes. This can be

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

MICROECONOMICS presentation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

MICROECONOMICS presentation - Essay Example Barriers to Entry. The airline industry operates in a highly dynamic environment and is affected not only by the legal, technological and economic environment but also by the global environment. Government restrictions and high degree of competition act as entry barriers in the airline industry. However the biggest entry barrier is the gargantuan cost involved in setting up and running the business. The acquisition of aircrafts, implementation of adequate security measures, deployment of skilled manpower and rendering the desired level of customer service entail huge financial resources. The high cost of entry however does not deter organizations with sound business models and adequate financial resources to enter the business. The Australian domestic airline industry, after its deregulation in 1990, has seen the entry of many players each catering to different customer segments. There have been firms that have flourished (Virgin Australian Airlines) and there have been firms that ha ve perished (Ansett Australia). Competitive strategies. In addition to the general business environment, companies are also affected by the competitive strategies adopted by rival firms. ... An example of the differentiation could be an airline (Qantas) which provides ‘bells and whistles’ in its service and charges a high price. Likewise, there could be another airline (Tiger Airways) with a ‘no frills’ service. It is important to note here that these two airlines are targeting distinct customer segments. As such, the high price charged by the airline offering value added services (e.g. in-flight entertainment, free wine) in addition to the core service of transportation does not induce the other airline, which offers ‘trimmed down’ services, to increase the price. Game Theory. There may be instances where more than one firm is competing for the same target market; for e.g. two airlines (Jetstar and Tiger Airways) trying to capture the price-sensitive customer. The competitive strategies employed by one firm and reactions thereof by the other firm are best understood with the help of the game theory. In the world of business game th eory finds applications in research and development expenditure, pricing, new product introduction, strikes, negotiations etc. A manager’s decision in each of these settings depends on the decisions that other players in the industry will take. As such, the payoffs in these setting can said to be interdependent. In the discussion about the airline industry, one may fathom three different outcomes; co-operative game, non co-operative game and a situation of no interdependence. The airline may get together and form a cartel (cooperative game) and operate as if they were a monopoly. In such a case the dominant strategy of each firm would be high price and neither would be compelled to reduce the price because of the implicit co-operation. This is the most logical game when the industry

Monday, July 22, 2019

Opposition Against Macbeth Essay Example for Free

Opposition Against Macbeth Essay Finally the three witches who built up Macbeth is also opposing him with a new prediction which would lead to his downfall. (3. 5 29-31) In Act three we are introduced to Macbeths deception and paranoia as he begins to suffer horrifying images of his murdered victims appear amongst him. Macbeths greatest opposition as he quickly destroys his status among others is Banqou his closest friend . Banqous suspicion towards Macbeth grows deeper ,yet it’s his persistence towards his prophesies that forces him into silencing the topic of his beliefs and knowledge for his own ambitions. Banqou awaited for his prophesies to suffice his wants yet as the time grew Macbeth grew in power with dark intentions. AS time quickly slipped through Banqous hand Macbeth noticed the threat the Banqou held against him. (Act3-2)(40-61)Macbeth began to experience paranoia and Banqous suspicion fueled that paranoia. With the witches misleading statements towards Banqous life and rise to glory, Macbeth was convinced there was a defective statement that may lead to his death through Banqous request. With fear and hatred circling his mind, Macbeth convinced two attendants to murder Banqou. (Act3-3)(12-33)As the two murders go off and commit their crime, Macbeth hints to his wife of great plans and that’s a sign of glory and confidence filling his soul. Macbeth had experienced a lack of sleep and a lack of apatite as he sat at his thrown while Banqou and others revolved around him with great suspicion leaving an emotional and mental scar. Act3-4)(49-101)After Banqous death, Macbeth grew great confidence yet it was the idea of murdering his friend haunted him daily and knowing Fleance escaped grew more fear within his soul. (Act3-5) The second opposition which played a large role from the beginning was the witches and Hecate. Macbeth finally reached his goal and accomplished his prophesy yet it was his greed that made him want more power and knowledge of future occurrences ,Knowing this Hecate Decided to convince Macbeth of more glory awaits him and raise his confidence to a higher level which will finally destroy him and lead him to his great down fall. Hecate knew Macbeth’s rain among Scotland and those close to him had to reach its limit and allowing him to continue would lead them to their death. In order to avoid the conflict and remove Macbeth from his power swiftly, Hecate and the other witches decided to allow Macbeth collapse on himself through gentle statements they created. Macbeth’s insecurity and fear leads him to gain enemies and demons which over take his mind. Act3-6)The final great opposition that slowly forms against Macbeth was Lennox and the other lords. Lennox and the other lords begin to discuss Macbeth’s actions among his territorial rule. The lords begin to discuss all the crimes they are sure Macbeth had committed. Macbeth begins to create a defence for himself as he find out his enemies alliance grows rapidly. Macbeth leads himself into the lowes t of situations as he slowly begins to murder others . His suspicion and terror haunts his every move and his enemies grow with his every day at his position.

Social Responsibility Essay Example for Free

Social Responsibility Essay A community consists of organizations and citizens that are all tied to one certain area. What makes a community successful and effective is when both the companies and citizens work together with the same values and interests. When both organizations within a community and its citizens work together, it is a win-win situation. It makes for a better place to run an organization and a better place for its citizens to live in. Successful companies and organizations are now focusing on things other than making a profit. These companies are looking into how to make the community they serve a better place and to build a better relationship with its community which in turn, will help them operate more effectively (Investopedia, n.d.). Company Q is having a little trouble with containing a positive social responsibility with the community it serves in. Bing in a major metropolitan area, Company Q has had to close two because they were always reporting a loss. These two stores were unfortunately, located in areas where the crime-rates were higher. Company Q does not have a positive outlook on the social responsibility to its community because of the lack of trust that the management in Company Q has with their employees. Local food banks have asked Company Q to donate day-old food but Company Q has declined thinking that the company will lose money because management thinks that its employees will steal the food claiming that they are donating. The company feels that if its employees do any of this fraud or stealing, the company will lose money. One action that Company Q can take to improve its social responsibility is to increase security levels. Company Q does not have any trust in their employees so they can start by adding video surveillance to make sure that their employees are not stealing or doing any kind of fraud with the food they could be donating to the local food bank. Another type of security  measure can be to hire some sort of security or loss prevention to the stores. This kind of measure can help with keeping any stealing from both their employees and customers. Increasing the type of security can even help with keeping those stores that they had closed down in the high crime rate areas. If criminals know that there are some sort of security measures within the stores, it decreases the chances of stealing which in turn, will hopefully keep Company Q from losing money. Another action that Company Q can do is to try and find cheaper ways of finding health-conscience and organic products. This will help with decreasing the amount of products that are left unsold. They can try and find any local producers and maybe come up with a deal to buy products in bulk for a lesser price. This will help with decreasing the sales price on the items so that hopefully more customers will want to purchase more of these items. Being in a metropolitan area, the citizens in the community are very limited to the stores they can shop at since space is very limited in downtown areas. Company Q could benefit with lowering their prices on high quality, health-conscience and organic products because it would draw more customers into their stores if they were more affordable. A final action that Company Q can do is to provide some training to their management and employees. One type of training can be about ethics and the company’s code of conduct. Ethics and the company’s code of conduct training can help the employees know from right and wrong. It will help the employees understand what is expected of them as an employee. Another type of training can be employee training and activities that will help with the morale within the company. They can do activities that will help build teamwork and happiness with working in the company. These kind of activities can help promote job satisfaction. The kind of morale that would build from these activities can make the employees enjoy where they work and who they work with. Job satisfaction will make an employee want to do the right thing because they enjoy where they work. References Social Responsibility Definition | Investopedia. Investopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2014. .

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Financial regulatory framework

Financial regulatory framework Regulatory framework for financial reporting The financial regulatory framework in the UK went through significant reforms in 1990-91 and has remained stable for ten years thereafter. Changes are being proposed to the regulatory framework arising out of three major reasons (a) the move by the European Commission towards developing a single capital market (b) the Enron scandal which has stimulated political interest in the regulation of accounting and (c) changes in UKs domestic laws and regulation (Fearnley and Hines, 2003). There have been several changes in the international arena that have also necessitated changes in the financial regulatory framework. Due to globalization, many UK companies are now acquiring subsidiary companies in other countries, which function under different financial parameters and there may be a need to modify the existing regulatory and financial frameworks (Haller and Walton, 2003). When different financial accounting standards exist in different countries, it may be necessary to harmonize them and this can only be achieved through modification of the financial regulatory networks. In this context, a report published by the Institute of chartered accountants in Scotland offers the view that the current position in the context of globalization is such that there is an â€Å"ever increasing volume of accounting rules†, which is not sustainable in the long run (ICAS, 2006:2). Its only principles based accounting is likely to be beneficial Domestic law and regulation has changed in different ways. First, the London Stock exchange was once self regulatory but it is no longer the Listing authority within the U.K. The UKLA (UK Listing Authority) which is a part of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is now the responsible authority for this purpose. Second, professional bodies which are a part of the UK Accountancy profession, have set up their own private regulatory framework the Accountancy Foundation to provide independent oversight of their auditing standards, ethical standards and regulatory activities, including disciplinary procedures. New regulations have also been issued in respect of limiting the remuneration paid to directors and the Companies Act has also been modified (Fearnley and Hines, 2003). These changes in the domestic law mean that the framework which existed earlier and was largely self-regulatory may no longer be adequate. Bullen and Crook (2005) have explained why a conceptual framework is needed. Both the FSAB and IASB, share a common goal of ensuring that their standards are â€Å"principles based†, which requires that such standards must not be a mere collection of conventions but must be rooted in fundamental concepts. For instance, when the FASB members first attempted to set up a regulatory framework, they experienced considerable difficulty in attaining agreement on standards, which led them to work towards the development of a conceptual framework. If such standards are to produce a coherent financial reporting system, they must be compiled in such a way that they constitute a framework that is sound and consistent internally. Bullen and Crook (2005) have also pointed out differences in concepts and conventions through assets, wherein the concept of a piece of equipment as an asset is based upon viewing it as a source of economic benefits for the future, while the straight line depreci ation of that asset would be viewed as a convention. According to Bullen and Crook (2005), a consistent regulatory accounting framework is required to converge different aspects of expressing the same concepts. The development of an accurate and well developed regulatory framework is essential to prevent accounting fraud and deception such as the financial scandal that erupted at Enron. Secondly, it also provides advantages for investors, such as the ISAB framework for example, which Ball (2005:9) has spelt out as follows: (a) a more efficient valuation in equity markets (b) reduced costs to process financial information because GAAP adjustments are not required (c) reduced costs for being informed in a timely manner and (d) ability to create standardized financial databases. If these standards are implemented consistently, then it provides better comparability and therefore ensures that there is less risk for investors. Thirdly, it enables certain objectives of financial reporting to be met, such as (a) usefulness in making economic decisions (b) useful in assessing cash flow prospects and (c) providing information about enterprise resources, the claims of these resources and the changes that are required. Using ISAB Standards: The existing ISAB framework is similar to the FSAB framework in terms of its structural components, i.e., setting out the objectives, the qualitative characteristics of the information, elements of financial statements, their measurement and display in the statements as well as elements of disclosure. The qualitative characteristics listed for example, include understandability, relevance, reliability and comparability (Zeff 2007:291). There are two specific challenges arising where worldwide financial reporting is concerned: comparability and convergence. Most companies are using the International Financial reporting Standards in order to prepare their financial statements (Zeff, 2007). The differences in business customs and corporate structures, such as the kieretsu in Japan and chaebol in Korea which are actually networks of holding companies with interlocking relationships, raises the question of whether a standard on consolidated financial statements would ensure comparability. It must be noted that there are some factors interfering with worldwide comparability, such as the business and financial culture, the accounting culture, the auditing culture and the regulatory culture (Zeff, 2007). Different countries have different legal frameworks in place to tackle issues of financial regulation and the functioning of companies. For example, in the United States, the Sarbanes Oxley Act tries to regulate the funct ioning of companies, while in the UK, it is the Turnbull report which has guided corporate governance. Achieving similarity between the different legal national systems and their effective implementation across geographical boundaries is also difficult. While there are similar provisions among the laws of different countries, it must be noted that statutory provisions tend to set out legal parameters which may be adequate to express what financial actions would be considered illegal. The Companies Act of 2006, for example, has recently been amended to allow companies greater latitude and flexibility in their operations, such as decision making, company formation, director duties, etc, as well as spelling out limits on remuneration allowable to them. The components of the legal provisions thereby set out detailed parameters about how the company functions and how it is to carry out its business operations. The Companies Act of 2006 also requires that companies establish risk assessment and accountability measures, such as setting up independent auditor function to monitor and check accounting procedures within the Company. But all these aspects are dealt with in generalities rather than specifics in so far as statutory provisions are concerned. But the ISAB framework is much more comprehensive from the perspective of establishing and defining financial parameters. For instance, the ISAB framework defines assets, liabilities and equity clearly. Other information contained in the frameworks includes the characteristics of financial information, such as the elements of financial statements and their recognition, as well as measurement of assets and liabilities. As Ball (2005) points out, investors require high quality financial statements, which would necessitate (a) an accurate depiction of economic outcomes (b) timeliness and (c) a low capacity for manipulation by managers. None of these elements are likely to be components of the law (Ball, 2005:5). The ISAB framework on the other hand, does place an emphasis on reliability and relevance. The objectives spelt out under ISAB include the development of high quality, understandable and enforceable global accounting standards, promoting the rigorous application of those standards and bringing about a convergence in these standards.(Ball, 2005:6). Moreover, the regulatory frameworks place emphasis on reliability and consistency of accounting frameworks which helps to ensure that there is comparability and relevance across geographical boundaries. In conclusion therefore, a regulatory framework for financial reporting is necessary to ensure that there is consistency across financial standards in various countries. Regulatory frameworks also help to define financial parameters more clearly as compared to statutory provisions, which provide a more generalized set of rules and laws that companies are expected to adhere to. It is only when there is a violation in financial conduct that a legal provision can be applied and contested, in order to establish how it applies in the context of the specific incident or allegation that has been brought before the Courts. A financial regulatory framework such as the ISAB framework however, clearly defines financial parameters and allows for the preparation of accurate financial statements which are likely to be more informative for investors, based upon an accurate depiction of economic outcomes. References: * Bullen, Halsey G and Crook, Kimberley, 2005. â€Å"A new conceptual framework project†, Financial Accounting Standards Board. * Fearnley, Stella and Hines, Tony, 2003. â€Å"The regulatory framework for financial reporting and auditing in the United Kingdom: the present position and impending changes†, The international Journal of Accounting, 38: 215-233 * Haller, Axel and Walton, Peter, 2003. â€Å"Country differences and harmonization†, IN Walton, P, â€Å"International Accounting†, London: Thomson:1-34. * Zeff, Stephen A, 2007. â€Å"Some obstacles to global financial reporting comparability and convergence at a high level of quality†, The British Accounting Review, 39:290-302

Saturday, July 20, 2019

The Cold War and Reagan Essays -- Essays Papers

The Cold War and Reagan Topics What was the cold war? What were the causes? The Cold War at Home. -The U.S. involvement. What major roles did President Reagan serve in the cold war? A cold war is defined as "a conflict between nations for national advantage conducted by political, economic, and psychological means instead of direct military action." The Cold War defined by the same source was determined to be "the contest for power between the communist nations headed by the Soviet Union and the nations of the West headed by the United States that began after World War II"(Barnhart & Thorndike, 198). Causes of the Cold War included the struggle between conflicting values, those of Democracy in the West and statism in the East. After WWII the re-establishment of Eastern European countries destroyed in the war led to much disagreement about governmental structures, the West wanted Democracies with capitalist systems while the East (USSR) wanted a communist regime. The USSR would then be able to use the countries as buffer states against any further attack. This attack on the Soviets that might come would not take long to go through the buffer states protecting them against the new mechanism of war. World War II had created fear in the Soviets, mainly because of the use of the Atomic Bomb, and therefore they pushed towards nuclear technology. The label "iron curtain" was placed on the barrier existing between the Soviet bloc and the rest of the world, this idea was pushed by Winston Churchill to further British power in Western Europe. Forty-six years of a blind war followed and the West and the East fought "a war of nerves." As soon as World War II had ended threats of war with the Soviet Union beg... ...The Cold War was fought through the build up of arms, technology, and psychologically on the home front with a battle of nerves. Works Cited Internet Sources - http://ac.acusd.edu/History/20th/coldwar8.html - http://ac.acusd.edu/History/20th/reagan.html - http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~phealy/foreign.html - http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~phealy/mccarthy.html - http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~phealy/yalta.html - http://www.tntech.edu/~mww/www/reagan.html - http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/rr40.html - Barnhart, Clarence L., Thorndike E.L., Thorndike Barnhart Advanced Dictionary, Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1974. - Cannon, Lou. President Reagan: the Role of a Lifetime. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. - Wills, Gary. Reagan’s America. New York, Viking Penguin, 1988.

Friday, July 19, 2019

Stigma Within the Fast Food Industry Essay -- Restaurants Employment Es

When working at a fast food restaurant, more often than not it is accompanied with a stigma. People tend to believe that those who work in fast food restaurants are not capable of anything better. They assume people working at fast food restaurants are slow and uneducated, or they simply look down upon them because these jobs have become known as "dead-end jobs." This so-called "dead-end job" is what people might describe as low-wage labor that employees have a susceptibility to become trapped in. Fast food employee’s face many challenges, morally and socially. High school students take jobs at fast-food restaurants because they are convenient and can work around their schedules. High school students who work in fast food use the money they make toward an education, and most have goals that do not at all include the fast-food world. Why then, does the stigma remain? Perhaps it is because it has been coined as a social prejudice, and people are afraid to disagree. Parents tend to dissuade their working age children from working at fast-food restaurants as the stigma of these jobs creates conflict in their social lives. My background in the fast food industry starts with my first real job. I began working at Wendy’s when I was sixteen years old. I kept to myself for nearly a year. I was working for one thing, and that was to satisfy the customers. After exactly three years, the choice to move on and change was a hard decision to make, my hours were steady, and the managers were pushing me to move up in the chain of power and become a shift manager. I had accumulated three employee of the month awards (employees were only allowed to get it once a year), the title of ACE employee (knowledge of all positions and the skil... ...erve while working in the fast food industry that people not in the industry would not know or understand? 7. Has your perspective been provoked by the stigma related with fast food workers, if so, how? [ii] Questions for non fast food workers. 1. When did you first begin working and where? 2. Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant? 3. How do you feel this job might differ from that of one in a fast food restaurant? 4. Do you feel that fast food restaurants carry a stigma among employees? 5. Have you ever heard or been witness to a situation regarding the moral corruption of fast workers? Works Cited Bennet, Jay. Personal interview. 30 Oct. 2004. Koenecke, Wade. Personal interview. 25 Oct. 2004 Long, Whitney. Personal interview. 25 Oct. 2004 Wright, Sean. Personal interview. 28 Oct. 2004 Stigma Within the Fast Food Industry Essay -- Restaurants Employment Es When working at a fast food restaurant, more often than not it is accompanied with a stigma. People tend to believe that those who work in fast food restaurants are not capable of anything better. They assume people working at fast food restaurants are slow and uneducated, or they simply look down upon them because these jobs have become known as "dead-end jobs." This so-called "dead-end job" is what people might describe as low-wage labor that employees have a susceptibility to become trapped in. Fast food employee’s face many challenges, morally and socially. High school students take jobs at fast-food restaurants because they are convenient and can work around their schedules. High school students who work in fast food use the money they make toward an education, and most have goals that do not at all include the fast-food world. Why then, does the stigma remain? Perhaps it is because it has been coined as a social prejudice, and people are afraid to disagree. Parents tend to dissuade their working age children from working at fast-food restaurants as the stigma of these jobs creates conflict in their social lives. My background in the fast food industry starts with my first real job. I began working at Wendy’s when I was sixteen years old. I kept to myself for nearly a year. I was working for one thing, and that was to satisfy the customers. After exactly three years, the choice to move on and change was a hard decision to make, my hours were steady, and the managers were pushing me to move up in the chain of power and become a shift manager. I had accumulated three employee of the month awards (employees were only allowed to get it once a year), the title of ACE employee (knowledge of all positions and the skil... ...erve while working in the fast food industry that people not in the industry would not know or understand? 7. Has your perspective been provoked by the stigma related with fast food workers, if so, how? [ii] Questions for non fast food workers. 1. When did you first begin working and where? 2. Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant? 3. How do you feel this job might differ from that of one in a fast food restaurant? 4. Do you feel that fast food restaurants carry a stigma among employees? 5. Have you ever heard or been witness to a situation regarding the moral corruption of fast workers? Works Cited Bennet, Jay. Personal interview. 30 Oct. 2004. Koenecke, Wade. Personal interview. 25 Oct. 2004 Long, Whitney. Personal interview. 25 Oct. 2004 Wright, Sean. Personal interview. 28 Oct. 2004

College Athletes Should Not Be Paid Essay -- It’s Not Time to Pay Stud

Waking up before the sunrise is a daily routine. Early morning film sessions, class, then practice, which dominates the day. There are few moments in between for food and socializing, but the life of a student athlete is anything but ordinary. Sleep, eat, practice and school are all an athlete knows, and with the pressures of campus life it becomes even more difficult. No time for much of anything, let alone getting a job. Like most students, these athletes need money, but do not have a spare moment to work. Without any source of income, athletes are put at a major disadvantage. Their full-time job is athletics, in addition to rigorous college-level courses. The possibility of becoming a professional athlete and making millions becomes very appealing. This course of action leads to student athletes making money illegally, dropping out of school, or leaving school early without a degree in an often futile attempt to play at the professional level. Waking up before the sun is a daily routine. Early morning film sessions, class then practice, which dominates the day. There are a few moments in between for food and socializing, but the life of an athlete is anything but ordinary. Sleep, eat, practice and school are all an athlete knows, and with the pressures of campus life it becomes even more difficult. No time for much of anything, let alone getting a job. However, now that student athletes are compensated, they no longer need to worry about money. They can fully focus on school and sport. They can achieve success in both areas without worrying about money. Graduation rates are higher, academic grades are higher. Later in life, players more successful in their respective professional fields because of the ma... ...ommentary: Should NCAA should get rid of Amateurism for its Athletics.† Morning Edition (NPR). 07 May 2013. Points of View. Ebscohost. 05 Jan. 2015. Greenlee, Craig T. â€Å"College Athletes deserve some equity.† Black Issues in Higher Education. 27 Apr 2014. 62 (1). Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015. Jackson, Derrick. â€Å"Op-ed: It’s Time to Pay Student Athlete.† Interview with Lynn Nery. NPR Talk ok the Nation. 06 June 2013. Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015. King, Bill. â€Å"The Junkyard Blawg: Play for Pay?† The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 03 May 2012. Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015. Maisel, Ivan. â€Å"Don’t expect athletes to be paid anytime soon.† Sporting News 10 Oct. 2014. 52 (1). Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015.