Torture Essay -- essays research papers

Ronald D. Cretlinsten contends that torturers acquire the ability to cope with the moral dilemmas of inflicting pain upon and murdering their fellow humans primarily through the processes of â€Å"routinization† and â€Å"dehumanization†, and also through the notion of â€Å"authorization† (191). With such as the case, an individual adept in the art of torture would necessarily have learned to be cruel, however, that argument neglects the very reality that many engaged in such activities are intrinsically perverse, and in fact willingly and happily do harm to others. The prevalence of torture throughout the world can be accounted for in part by the process of â€Å"routinization† in which a regime, in essence, desensitizes a given torturer to the atrocities that he is committing in its name. In such a process â€Å"what is being done to someone transforms into what is being done: information gathering† (191). The task of amassing information and confessions eclipses the reality in which the torturer lives; this is achieved through peer pressure from fellow torturers â€Å"to be a man†, by intense physical and emotional training, and through the employment of propaganda claiming that the torturer is fulfilling his duty and doing the right thing as his victims are immoral enemies of the state (192). In short, the torturer becomes disoriented and unable to decipher the actuality of his existence. This disorientation is caused by repetition, or â€Å"habituation†, in addition to the development of the â€Å"task-orie...

“Macbeth” by William Shakespeare Essay

The plays of William Shakespeare definitely sustain their ability of staying relevant in today’s contemporary world. This can be seen in the play Macbeth by Shakespeare and the modern version of the play, Macbeth Retold, directed by Mark Brozel. The main issues of the texts include the inversion of the gender roles and how power and greed can take its wretched toll on people’s lives. Women still carry the expectations of being reliant on their husbands and there are certain power-hungry individuals that will do whatever it takes to reach the top of the leader board. These two texts contain various literary techniques such as imagery and sarcasm to support the themes mentioned. Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, has a considerably interesting viewpoint on the gender roles as the women behave more masculine whilst the men are embodied in an inferior manner. The theme is represented by ‘Lady Macbeth’ who is quite a manipulative character. Lady Macbeth demonst rates the inversion of gender roles when she tells Macbeth to act more manly and asks the spirits to unsex her so she can be a man since she feels the need to compensate for Macbeth’s lack of masculinity. She is also seen to be quite a violent person with cruel intentions which is illustrated in the line, â€Å"I have given suck and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me- I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out had I sworn as you have done to this† (Act 1, Scene 7, Line 3). The literary technique used here is imagery as a full detailed idea is given of just how much aggression Lady Macbeth possesses to the point where she would brutally murder an innocent baby. The gender roles are reversed once again in the film, Macbeth Retold, focusing particularly on Lady Macbeth’s modern version Ella Macbeth. This is relevant to our time because it is reflecting the authority that women now have. Interestingly though, the play was written in the 17th century where women were expected to be silent and obedient to their husbands so maybe it could be considered that Shakespeare pa ved the way to the liberation of women. In the modern version Ella best demonstrates the theme when she pressures Joe Macbeth, modern version of Macbeth, into killing Duncan who takes the credit for Joe’s hard work as a chef in the restaurant. The evidence that this character illustrates this theme can be seen when she says â€Å"He milks you for everything you’ve got†¦no amount of money covers what you do for him†¦You’re too full of the milk of human  kindness Joe. Thank you, Duncan, for the slap on the back, I’m so very, very grateful†¦It is shaming to hear the truth Joe? What kind of man is it who doesn’t feel humiliated in the position you’re in. what kind of man is that?† The technique that Ella uses is sarcasm, which is shown when she insults Joe’s manliness and she asks him rhetorical questions that she already knows the answer to so she is mocking his intelligence. The theme of the destructiveness of power and greed is ever-present throughout the play, Macbeth. The character Macbeth craves success so much that it gets to the point where he is lead into a paranoid madness. The prophecies made by the witches are what sparked his ambitions for power. Macbeth doesn’t favour committing evil deeds as much as his wife Lady Macbeth but his burning desire for power and progression blinds his better judgement and he kills Duncan. After he has killed Duncan he displays imagery when describing his intentions, â€Å"†¦For mine own good all causes shall give away, I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er† (Act 3, Scene 4, Line24). In this line Macbeth is making a comparison with his actions to that of wadding through a bloody river which also displays irony as his wicked action is murder which is associated with blood. He suggests that it’s impossible to stop onc e a man commits murder for their advantage. It is visible that Macbeth is becoming addicted to killing as it gives him a sort of ‘boastful high’ but this is short lived as his guilt sends him crazy and inevitably gets him killed as well. The same happens to Joe Macbeth in Macbeth Retold. The theme of power and greed is expressed in Macbeth Retold which is the retelling of the original Shakespeare play, Macbeth, but it is still seen everywhere from the media to the school ground as everyone wants to be at the top of the food chain. This is still relevant in today’s world through the businessmen and women who sabotage their ways towards a higher career position. The character that best demonstrates this theme is Joe Macbeth when he murders Duncan, and then Billy who he sees as a new threat, he does whatever it takes to reach his goal but ends up becoming engulfed in paranoia to the extent where he mistreats those who respected him. After a heated discussion Ella says to Joe â€Å"Men don’t run over by buses† which he then replies with, â€Å"No†. In the movie the technique used is the silence as the camera pans across their faces. This shows the suspense and tension present in the scene as they’d  just decided to go ahead with the plan to kill Duncan and get the restaurant. To conclude, William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth has endured the test of time and proven itself to still be relevant in our current day through the discussion of the themes of gender roles and power and greed. Both of these themes appear in the original version of the play, Macbeth, and a modern version, Macbeth Retold. The themes were presented in many ways in the texts through the use of literary techniques. In the original play, imagery and irony were used and in the modern film, sarcasm and suspense were used.

Limitation Of The Study Guide Essay

Identifying limitations, and explaining how important they are There are many possible limitations that your research may have faced. However, is not necessary for you to discuss all of these limitations in your Research Limitations section. After all, you are not writing a 2000 word critical review of the limitations of your dissertation, just a 200-500 word critique that is only one section long (i.e., the Research Limitationssection within your Conclusions chapter). Therefore, in this first announcing move, we would recommend that you identify only those limitations that had the greatest potential impact on: (a) the quality of your findings; and (b) your ability to effectively answer your research questions and/or hypotheses. We use the word potential impact because we often do not know the degree to which different factors limited our findings or our ability to effectively answer our research questions and/or hypotheses. For example, we know that when adopting a quantitative research design, a failure to use a probability sampling technique significantly limits our ability to make broader generalisations from our results (i.e., our ability to make statistical inferences from our sample to the population being studied). However, the degree to which this reduces the quality of our findings is a matter of debate. Also, whilst the lack of a probability sampling technique when using a quantitative research design is a very obvious example of a research limitation, other limitations are far less clear. Therefore, the key point is to focus on those limitations that you feel had the greatest impact on your findings, as well as your ability to effectively answer your research questions and/or hypotheses. Overall, the announcing move should be around 10-20% of the total word count of the Research Limitations section. THE REFLECTING MOVE Explaining the nature of the limitations and justifying the choices you made Having identified the most important limitations to your dissertation in the announcing move, the reflecting move focuses on explaining the nature of these limitations and justifying the choices that you made during the research process. This part should be around 60-70% of the total word count of the Research Limitations section. It is important to remember at this stage that all research suffers from limitations, whether it is performed by  undergraduate and master’s level dissertation students, or seasoned academics. Acknowledging such limitations should not be viewed as a weakness, highlighting to the person marking your work the reasons why you should receive a lower grade. Instead, the reader is more likely to accept that you recognise the limitations of your own research if you write a high quality reflecting move. This is because explaining the limitations of your research and justifying the choices you made during the dissertation process demonstrates the command that you had over your research. We talk about explaining the nature of the limitations in your dissertation because such limitations are highly research specific. Let’s take the example of potential limitations to your sampling strategy. Whilst you may have a number of potential limitations in sampling strategy, let’s focus on the lack of probability sampling; that is, of all the different types of sampling technique that you could have used [see Types of probability sampling and Types of non-probability sampling], you choose not to use a probability sampling technique (e.g., simple random sampling, systematic random sampling, stratified random sampling). As mentioned, if you used a quantitative research design in your dissertation, the lack of probability sampling is an important, obvious limitation to your research. This is because it prevents you from making generalisations about the population you are studying (e.g. Facebook usage at a single university of 20,000 students) from the data you have collected (e.g., a survey of 400 students at the same university). Since an important component of quantitative research is such generalisation, this is a clear limitation. However, the lack of a probability sampling technique is not viewed as a limitation if you used a qualitative research design. In qualitative research designs, a non-probability sampling technique is typically selected over a probability sampling technique. And this is just part of the puzzle? Even if you used a quantitative research design, but failed to employ a probability sampling technique, there are still many perfectly justifiable reasons why you could have made such a choice. For example, it may have been impossible (or near on impossible) to get a list of the population you were studying (e.g., a list of all the 20,000 students at the single university you were interested in). Since probability sampling is only possible when we  have such a list, the lack of such a list or inability to attain such a list is a perfectly justifiable reason for not using a probability sampling technique; even if such a technique is the ideal. As such, the purpose of all the guides we have written on research limitations is to help you: (a) explain the nature of the limitations in your dissertation; and (b) justify the choices you made. In helping you to justifying the choices that you made, these articles explain not only when something is, in theory, an obvious limitation, but how, in practice, such a limitation was not necessarily so damaging to the quality of your dissertation. This should significantly strengthen the quality of your Research Limitations section. THE FORWARD LOOKING MOVE Suggesting how such limitations could be overcome in future Finally, the forward looking move builds on the reflecting move by suggesting how the limitations you have discuss could be overcome through future research. Whilst a lot could be written in this part of the Research Limitations section, we would recommend that it is only around 10-20% of the total word count for this section. Limitations Limitations of a dissertation are potential weaknesses in your study that are mostly out of your control, given limited funding, choice of research design, statistical model constraints, or other factors. In addition, a limitation is a restriction on your study that cannot be reasonably dismissed and can affect your design and results. Do not worry about limitations because limitations affect virtually all research projects, as well as most things in life. Even when you are going to your favorite restaurant, you are limited by the menu choices. If you went to a restaurant that had a menu that you were craving, you might not receive the service, price, or location that makes you enjoy your favorite restaurant. If you studied participants’ responses to a survey, you might be limited in your abilities to gain the exact type or geographic scope of participants you wanted. The people whom you managed to get to take your survey may not truly be a random sample, which is also a limit ation. If you used a common test for data findings, your results are limited by the reliability of the test. If your study was limited to a certain amount of time, your results are affected by the operations of society during that time period (e.g., economy, social trends). It is important for you to remember that limitations of a dissertation are often not something that can be solved by the researcher. Also, remember that whatever limits you also limits other researchers, whether they are the largest medical research companies or consumer habits corporations. Certain kinds of limitations are often associated with the analytical approach you take in your research, too. For example, some qualitative methods like heuristics or phenomenology do not lend themselves well to replicability. Also, most of the commonly used quantitative statistical models can only determine correlation, but not causation.