Marketing Skills Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Marketing Skills - Essay Example It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, often through market research." These are the main key factors on which one should concentrate and thus opening the new doors of success in the field of marketing and in this field one should be adaptive to innovations and able to grasp the marketing trends and finally understanding the graph of success & failure of the best applied method. "Advertising is a one-way communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to obtain them. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet and billboards." But before choosing the advertising media one should concentrate on the following questions and try to answer these questions - What target markets I am trying to reach with my ads What would I like them to think and perceive about my products (this should be in terms of benefits to them, not you) What communications media do they see or prefer the most Consider TV, radio, newsletters, classifieds, displays/signs, posters, word of mouth, press releases, direct mail, special events, brochures, neighborhood newsletters, etc. What media is most practical for me to use in terms of access and affordability (the amount spent on advertising is often based on the revenue expected from the product or service, that is, the sales forecast) Lastly, successful advertising depends very much on knowing the preferred methods and styles of communications of the target markets that you want to reach with your ads. A media plan and calendar can be very useful, which specifies what advertising methods are used and when. "Effective copywriting (also known as business writing) is any writing that sells a product, a service, or even a person. The radio commercial you hear on your way to work is an example of copywriting. The sales letters and advertisements you receive in the mail are examples as well. Even the billboards you see on the highway are examples of copywriting. In other words it means the effective use of words to communicate a sales message. The objective of is to generate leads which are in turn converted to sales. It's only a way, how much footage a person can earn for his products through his ads or the way he presents it to the whole world i.e. attracting customers with the help of words within fractions of seconds." Some strategies are: - 1) Use attention grabbing text to keep users in the site. 2) Avoid making the

Allegory of the Cave in Platos Book Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Allegory of the Cave in Platos Book - Essay Example One question that thinkers need to answer in the allegory of the cave is; who is the liberator? The fact that this allegory had a symbolic meaning to the manner in which true knowledge is achieved, gives room for many thinkers to deduce that the Liberator is the philosopher. In fact, as one may realize, Socrates advised on the need for those who have seen light to go back and pass the very light to those in the darkness. This would mean, philosophers, taking responsibility in passing true knowledge to those who are yet to receive knowledge. First, Socrates claimed that the prisoners were in a locked cave, chained from birth and unable to move their bodies and could only stare straight at the wall of the cave. This situation would portray human being in the world of the unknown. Moreover, Socrates believed that a person had an inner knowledge that only needed to be shaped, rather than being taught by the teachers. That would be symbolic to the prisoner who only needed a springboard to let him make the first movement towards enlightenment. Secondly, the prisoners in the cave are portrayed as only able to see the shadows of real visible things (Bloom, 1991). This phrase would symbolize human being in the sense where they lack true knowledge of real things that exist. In such circumstances, people would reason under conditions of the depravity of knowledge and imagine that they know everything, yet the true knowledge is hidden from them. Nevertheless, when either the internal force or the external force triggers the already existing knowledge, they would come to realize the true knowledge and live in it. Some of the factors may prevent one from perceiving reality. One is the fear to accept the reality. Here, one may realize that most people would not like to accept the change and cope with it.  

Defining And Analysing Business Ethics Philosophy Essay

Defining And Analysing Business Ethics Philosophy Essay Ethics is similar value and moral, in business ethics are doing something and decision, that not right or wrong, it is depend on people how to treat and feel it. In business, all care about is money, it will done everything because of money. They even not care about to do that thing have moral or not. They just think about that done about have valuable or not. Business ethics is doing not have correct or wrong, it is depend how much you can covered by your conscience. Define the follow Concepts: In business ethics, there have five concepts, which are contractual rights, ethics of virtue, legal rights, principles of fair equality opportunity, and utilitarianism. Those concepts can to guide or to be an example for the business to conduct. Contractual rights is the rights based on the contract, either one party of the contract breach the contract, the other party can to sued the breach of contract. It is an agreement between two or more people mutual benefit but do not necessarily involve in mutual supportiveness. The right is based on the contract, if the contract does not have mention about, then might not can to sue the other party because in this theory is based on the contractual rights. No contract, no agreement, and then no right to complain or sue the other party. In business, everything is made by the contract that can secure both party benefit and loss. Contractual right can to secure people have the right to made contract and sue people who is breach of contract. Both parties have the right to sue other party based on the contract. For example, buyer and the seller, they have to sign a contract for seller must have supply A4 paper 1000 sets. Buyer has the right the sue seller because supply A3 paper to them, instead of A4 paper. Both party have right to sue each other if they have something are not followed by the contract. Or the seller can sue the buyer if the buyer is late or do not have pay the installments. Ethics of virtue is an approach to ethics that rule, and particular acts focus on the kind of people who acting. Ethics of virtue is the person when is a kid, parents or people who relative to effect the person. Ethics of virtue is important for business ethics because in business people must trust other people. And the trust is come from the virtue ethics. Ethics of virtue is that value and characteristic on the person, is based on the person culture, background, moral, and value. Obligation is not morally sufficient for virtue. To compare virtues and moral character is duties or rules and that consequence of actions. In business, businessmen or businesswomen believe that trust. Although they have to sign contract, before this action, they must have a trust between each other. Some of the business is do not have use contract, they use trust to their each other, such as allow owing the money for doing the business. If do not have any trust for the business party or other party, it might make the business hard to conduct. They are allow to owing money is not a small amount, if they each other do not have trust between them. How come a person to believe and allow to owing the money? For example, to do a business must have a virtue ethics, such as be honest. Nowadays, to do businesses are cannot to cheat other party, customers already to be smarter, they are know you are cheating them. Once they are known you are cheating them, they are not to deal with you anymore. They would not to do a business with a dishonest businessman, and it will to spoil the business images because the person who deals with you, they will spread out what you did. This ethics theory should be right based that legal rights are that legal guaranteed power available to a legal. It can claims to rights, such as property, work, privacy, speak, and clean environment. Such as people have the right have a clean and good environment to live, they have right to live in a good environment. But some of the people to spoil and dirty up the environment, such as thrown rubbish in river, spitting, and so on. People have the right to live in a good environment, maybe some of the people are not like to live in good and clean environment but they have no right to discourage other people have right to live in good and clean environment. In business, right do not have correct or wrong, there are only have positive and negative right. Positive right is that right is good for anyone; negative right is that might have some of people do not thing that is good or bad for anyone. Such as, a people smoke not right or wrong, in the smoker, they have a right to smoke, but for people who surround the smoker have the right do not have breathed in the second smoke. Positive right is smoker has a right to smoke, the negative right is people have a right to choose does not breathe in the secondhand smoke. For example, people have a right to sell or not to anyone. Businessmen have their own right to decide to sell what kind of product, and they have right to selling to whom. Unfortunately, government have to interfere with the business, no one can to in charge the business without government. But businessmen have the right to choose which party they want to collaborate with. Principles of fair equality of opportunity is mean everyone have a fair enough opportunity in every fields. To be fair or have an equality of opportunity that should have not any discrimination, include culture, religion, race, gender, age, and so on. Have an equality opportunity is very difficult to gain and it have happened in everywhere. Hard to prevent or avoid this thing happened. If to fair enough to everyone, it will to make happened more because to given more chance to everyone to try to do. More chance to try that can have more answer at all. In business, company or businessmen are discrimination of gender, age, culture, race, and so on to hiring or dealing with. Discrimination people might get sued by the people. For example, a company to hire a staff cannot to depend on the staff background, culture, region, and gender; it might get sued by the candidate. Or a business deal because of the gender or race. Many businesses were done by the gender, it might consider as bribe. Some kinds of businesses are not dealing with women, because discrimination women capable, they are doubt women capable. Have an equality of opportunity that can to help the business going up, maybe the people who are discriminated by the person, they can maximum the job, to done as well. Different people have different capable, should to give a chance for everyone, just for done as well in the job. Also that do not discrimination any position of job, even a cleaning worker is important for a company. Utilitarianism is takes into consideration opportunity cost and benefit, and to give satisfaction to other. It should choose the option that brings greater to most people. It can to maximum the good and minimum the harm, and it has to decide what is good. There have two types of utilitarianism which is act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism is performing that act to leads to greatest good for greatest, it is use an action to greatest to people, such as charity, donation, and so on. Each individual action is to be evaluated directly utility principle. In business it will do the charity and something for social responsibility in order to build a good image to the company. For example, a company to give salary to the worker in return working for company, the salary for the workers is very important because the money can to give they eat, sleep, drink, clothes, and even to pay the daily use expenses. It is to greatest good and to give greatest for most people. To using an action to give a happiness to people, such as donate money to beggar. Other utilitarianism is rule utilitarianism; it is based on the rule to give the greatest people. Rule have significant place, and cannot be compromised for protect at all. It is behavior that evaluated by rules, if universally followed would lead to the greatest good for the greatest. For example, to give a greastest based on the rule, it might as the law. Only the rule can to protect, secure, and to give the greatest, it will help to give a good thing. The rules are come from the law, and the law will secure the benefit for everyone. In business, businessmen or businesswomen use the rule to secure their business. Such as, the method to do business is very important, need to understand the rule of different business, or sign contract. In conclusion, the concepts of ethics are example to give businessmen or businesswomen know that to do business must have conscience, and that also nowadays the thing do not have. Five concepts have business ethics that are contractual rights, ethics of virtue, legal rights, principles of fair equality of opportunity, and utilitarianism. QUESTION 2 2. Do you agree with the claims that (i) future generations have no rights, and (ii) the future generations to which we have obligations actually include only the generation that will immediately succeed us? Explain your answer. If you do not agree with these claims, state your own views and provide arguments to support them. Introduction: What is Right? Rights are an equitable that can have it to everyone that is a power to everyone. Everyone have a power to decide their own things how to going on. For a company they have copyrights that to prevent other company to copy they product packaging or logo. Human have a rights to choose what they want actually, even a kid also have a rights to choose what they want. But many people are like to decide for everyone, they are discouraging people to choose what they want, such as parent, friends, and sibling. Do Not Agree Future Generations have No Right I am not agree future generations have no rights, everyone come to this world should have their own rights. For future generations also, they have their own rights to decided by themselves. Parents should try to let children to make decision, maybe decision is wrong, and at least, the decision is decided by them. They are not regret about the wrong decision. Future generations should have rights to choose what they are wanted actually. Future generations are our future hope, should to bring a best thing to them. Education, future generations have own opinion, perception, and they have rights to selection or decide what they future. Such as parents to arrange the children go to other country to further study, or to disallow the children to choose what they want. Parents are not consider the child do not want to go oversea for further study. Some of parents will interfere with children study, maybe the children are like to draw, and have talent to draw, want to be artist, but parents hope the child to be an accountant or be professional, do not like a child to be artist. To stop the child dream but the child has rights to decide what career they want. Many workers are not satisfying their job because they doing the job are not they like. Maybe some workers are forced by parents; they are not hope to do so. Have a lot of people will to do what the parents hope, after that, they will change the career, or even go to study again for interest. Furthermore, nowadays people have educated, they know what are they can to have and right. They would not to keep quiet; they are known what rights they have. Formerly, government are controlled publish the truth and information to the citizens for prevent citizens know what right they should have. Nowadays, citizens can to know and find out the truth and information through the internet. Future generations also have the rights to choose what the choices they want, such as they have rights to decide what they want to do, purchase, eat, sleep, and drink. They have to choose by themselves. Parents are very nervous their children, everything are done for children, do not know what children want. Obligation In my opinion, people should to do something to secure future generations have to know and can to keep on to other future generations. The obligations for future generations there are to protection environment and give a freedom selection. Parents or other people cannot to make a decision for the future generations; they have rights to decide by their own. Future generations have the rights live in a good environment that they have a right to choose what environment to live. They have the rights to breath in every air are pure and fresh; do not have any haze mix with the air. Nowadays, water, air and noise are polluted by human; the future generations might not have a good environment for the rest of the life. Besides that, some kind of animals and plants are facing extinct because of human are not save the planet. Human are always wasted natural resource and to polluted environment. Air pollution, future generations have rights to choose what air to breath in, they have rights to decide how fresh the air breath in, but children might need to wear mask for prevent breath in that air are destroying their lung. Have a lot of the mill, factory, manufactures are doing some kind of business that polluted air. To burn the chemical in order for produce the product, and the haze will spread out and in the air. Water pollution, water is very important for our life that is cannot lack of. Has a lot of the company using water to conduct business, at same time, the company is the most pollute water. Such as, company thrown some liquid have chemical in the rivers or seas. Besides polluted water, people are wasted water. Water on earth that only have 1/3 water is can to drink, 2/3 water is cannot drink that is salt water. If human waste or polluted water, in future, the future generation might do not have clear water for drink, even will have a war caused by water. Noise pollution, noise pollution is very effect people think and emotion. The sound will make people going in bad emotion because the sound too noise. Such as, developer to building house nearby the school or surround the houses, the sound effecting the student study when developer to building the house, sure have come out some of the sound. Future generations have right to having a quiet and nice environment to study or live in. They would not hope have a noise sound surround their life. Animals and plants extinct, future generations have rights to know, discovery, see, and explore animals and plants, but nowadays, animals and plants are very rare, almost going to extinct. Animals and plants going to extinct because businessmen or businesswomen to mining trees, sure the trees will die and animals are loss shelter and die also. Future generations have right to know and see the animals, soon and later, future generation may not know how a trees or animals look. The obligation for environment is protection environment. For water, people should do not waste water, overuse or wasted. Company should not throw the cabbage or chemical liquid thrown in the rivers or seas. Company should to reduce the products are destroy through the air. Or use something can to replace that chemical which are release on the air. Such as air-conditioner have release a gas that destroy atmosphere to be thin enough, after that the UV light will directly come in the earth and human, animals, and planet will die caused of the UV light. Nowadays, air-conditioner release that gases are replace by another gas that do not have destroy our atmosphere. To prevent the developer developing the building make the noise, they should to developing the building is making sure done everything. Such as the building was built up already, and if some of the houses need to decoration the houses should to decoration when the building not yet allow people stay in. to reduce the noise, or the machine changes to silent machine. Animals and plants extinct because of the human mining trees after did not to re-plant in on the jungle. It is made the animals and plant extinct. Human should re-plant on the plant which is mined. Resources, businessmen or businesswomen are should not to wasted and use up the natural resource. Future generations have rights to use the natural material, but nowadays have a lot for natural materials are almost used up. The obligation of the human are to reuse the materials, such as recycle paper, tin, and so on. Do not wasted the natural materials, and to be more environmental protection. Such as recycle, reuse, and to be vegetarian to reduce the natural materials will be used up. In conclusion, future generations should have rights to choose what they want to do for future, such as education. And future generations have rights own any best environment and resource. Human should have obligations to take care and to succeed.

Essay --

City of God we would all think of a holy place to be in but on the controversy it wasn’t the safest place to be in. â€Å"But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.† Albert Camus Many young kids do not have a house to run to, a mother to cuddle with, a father to set things straight siblings to get love from. Reality getting involved in violence can make you but in the end break you. Power with violence can make you stronger five you more power but break you in a blink of an eye. Brutality of life is revealed in Rios slums in this Brazilian film. A powerful film that views violence, lack of education, lack of money in 3rd world countries People create a civilized society individuals make it the norm however there are those ignorant people that just destruct everything and make it a disaster. It is part of a human balance to have good and evil. According to Urban Cinefile Critics, "A powerful and haunting film that explores the myriad of stories that lie deep within the slums of Rio, City Of God shocks, enlightens and above all affects us by taking us into a world where drugs and organized crime are a way of life." But in this film it shows that everyone choses their own paths to walk by for instances if it wasn’t for the harsh and brutality in that city Rocket, who is intelligent, cannot survive to do the work that his intelligence entitles him to do. Take pictures be in the photography industry and have his work published. Intelligence can be made in everyone that chooses to succeed in life the right way however a charter named Lil Z in this movie shows us otherwise. Stupidity, lack of knowledge (thinking he is famous being in the newspaper) not being able to read at his age is just sad. Thinking he is God of... ...see karma in the ending where Lil Z returns to the city looking for the children for help id assume these children turn on hi and kill him Rocket captures the whole scenery which made him famous having one person on the inside and living another life where that shot he took landed on the front page of the newspaper. Neighborhoods do have an impact on a child's behavior as well as the way they vision themselves growing up. A child's background in life matters no matter what. Where a child has grown up the neighborhood history remains the same until someone changes the perspective of the scenery the children grew up in as well as the violence that was always surrounded them. They need a better role model because in the end history bounded to repeat itself having now kids under the age of 15 walking around thinking they run the place till history repeats itself again.

Jose Garcia Villa Essay

Jose Garcia Villa (August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997) was a Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and painter. He was awarded the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973,[1] as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing by Conrad Aiken.[2] He is known to have introduced the â€Å"reversed consonance rime scheme† in writing poetry, as well as the extensive use of punctuation marks—especially commas, which made him known as the Comma Poet.[3] He used the penname Doveglion (derived from â€Å"Dove, Eagle, Lion†), based on the characters he derived from himself. These animals were also explored by another poet e.e. cummings in Doveglion, Adventures in Value, a poem dedicated to Villa. Early life Villa was born on August 5, 1908, in Manila’s Singalong district. His parents were Simeon Villa (a personal physician of Emilio Aguinaldo, the founding President of the First Philippine Republic) and Guia Garcia (a wealthy landowner).He graduated from the University of the Philippines Integrated School and the University of the Philippines High School in 1925. Villa enrolled on a Pre-Medical course in the University of the Philippines, but then switched to Pre-Law course. However, he realized that his true passion was in the arts. Villa first tried painting, but then turned into creative writing after reading Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Writing career Villa was considered the leader of Filipino â€Å"artsakists†, a group of writers who believe that art should be â€Å"for art’s sake† hence the term. He once pronounced that â€Å"art is never a means; it is an end in itself.† Villa’s tart poetic style was considered too aggressive at that time. In 1929 he published Man Songs, a series of erotic poems, which the administrators in UP found too bold and was even fined Philippine peso for obscenity by the Manila Court of First Instance. In that same year, Villa won Best Story of the Year from Philippine Free Press magazine for Mir-I-Nisa. He also received P1,000,000 prize money, which he used to migrate to the United States. He enrolled at the University of New Mexico, wherein he was one of the founders of Clay, a mimeograph literary magazine.He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and pursued post-graduate work at Columbia University.Villa had gradually caught the attention of the countryâ€℠¢s literary circles, one of the few Asians to do so at that time. After the publication of Footnote to Youth in 1933, Villa switched from writing prose to poetry, and published only a handful of works until 1942. During the release of Have Come, Am Here in 1942, he introduced a new rhyming scheme called â€Å"reversed consonance† wherein, according to Villa: â€Å"The last sounded consonants of the last syllable, or the last principal consonant of a word, are reversed for the corresponding rhyme. Thus, a rhyme for near would be run; or rain, green, reign.† In 1949, Villa presented a poetic style he called â€Å"comma poems†, wherein commas are placed after every word. In the preface of Volume Two, he wrote: â€Å"The commas are an integral and essential part of the medium: regulating the poem’s verbal density and time movement: enabling each word to attain a fuller tonal value, and the line movement to become more measures. Villa worked as an associate editor for New Directions Publishing in New York City between 1949 to 1951, and then became director of poetry workshop at City College of New York from 1952 to 1960. He then left the literary scene and concentrated on teaching, first lecturing in The New School|The New School for Social Research from 1964 to 1973, as well as conducting poetry workshops in his apartment. Villa was also a cultural attachà © to the Philippine Mission to the United Nations from 1952 to 1963, and an adviser on cultural affairs to the President of the Philippines beginning 1968. Death On February 5, 1997, at the age of 88, Jose was found in a coma in his New York apartment and was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital in the Greenwich area. His death two days later was attributed to â€Å"cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia†. He was buried on February 10 in St. John’s Cemetery in New York, wearing a Barong Tagalog. New York Centennial Celebration On August 5 and 6, 2008, Villa’s centennial celebration began with poem reading at the Jefferson Market Library, at 425 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) at the corner of 10th St. In the launch of Doveglion, Collected Poems, Penguin Classics’ reissue of Jose Garcia Villa’s poems, edited by John Edwin Cowen, Villa’s literary trustee, will be read by book introducer Luis H. Francia. Then, the Leonard Lopate Show (on WNYC AM 820 and FM 93.9) will interview Edwin Cohen and Luis H. Francia on the â€Å"Pope of Greenwich Villages† life and work, followed by the Asia Pacific Forum show. Personal In 1946 Villa married Rosemarie Lamb, with whom he has two sons, Randy and Lance. They annulled ten years later. He also has three grandchildren. Works As an editor, Villa first published Philippine Short Stories: Best 25 Short Stories of 1928 in 1929, an anthology of Filipino short stories written in English literature English that were mostly published in the literary magazine Philippine Free Press for that year. It is the second anthology to have been published in the Philippines, after Philippine Love Stories by editor Paz Mà ¡rquez-Benà ­tez in 1927. His first collection of short stories that he has written were published under the title Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others in 1933; while in 1939, Villa published Many Voices, his first collection poems, followed by Poems by Doveglion in 1941. Other collections of poems include Have Come, Am Here (1942), Volume Two (1949), and Selected Poems and New (1958). In 1962, Villa published four books namely Villa’s Poems 55, Poems in Praise of Love, Selected Stories, and The Portable Villa. It was also in that year when he edited The Doveglion Book of Philippine Poetry in English from 1910. Three years later, he released a follow-up for The Portable Villa entitled The Essential Villa.Villa, however, went under â€Å"self-exile† after the 1960s, even though he was nominated for several major literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. This was perhaps because of oppositions between his formalism (literature)formalist style and the advocates of proletarian literature who misjudged him as a petty bourgeois. Villa only â€Å"resurfaced† in 1993 with an anthology entitled Charlie Chan Is Dead, which was edited by Jessica Hagedorn Several reprints of Villa’s past works were done, including Appasionata: Poems in Praise of Love in 1979, A Parliament of Giraffes (a collection of Villa’s poems for young readers, with Tagalog language Tagalog translation provided by Larry Francia), and The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings by Villa that was edited by Eileen Tabios with a foreword provided by Hagedorn (both in 1999). Among his popular poems include When I Was No Bigger Than A Huge, an example of his â€Å"comma poems†, and The Emperor’s New Sonnet (a part of Have Come, Am Here) which is basically a blank sheet of paper.

How Important is Discipline in Society? Essay

Among those who work in difficult or dangerous jobs, for example in coal mines, there is often a discipline that comes not from being subject to the will of any person, however rational and well-intentioned, but from the work itself. If it is to be done successfully and with the minimum danger and discomfort to all those engaged in it, certain procedures must be followed and safeguards observed. Since the workers can see that the nature of the work demands this, there is correspondingly less need for discipline to be imposed on them by some other agency. This is an ideal situation, as far as discipline is concerned: where the discipline is inherent in the work or activity, and where rules and procedures are followed because they are perceived as appropriate if the work is to be done. In the same kind of way it does happen, and fortunately not all that rarely, that a society appears collectively to embrace the idea that behaving within the legal confines is in the public’s interest, and that if they are to be law-abiding, then various routines, such as remaining content with earning one’s own keep and not committing fraud, have to be kept to. How can â€Å"discipline† be defined? Some would reserve the word for the following of rules because the rules are seen appropriate to the task in hand, and would apply the adjective â€Å"disciplined† to the abovementioned society but not to another one which has been brought to order by some external force such as the government’s threats of punishment. Others take a more holistic view of discipline in which it is perfectly proper to speak of one person or group of persons being â€Å"disciplined† by another’s imposition of authority. It would be pointless to stipulate that the word should be used in one way or another. However, I wish to stress that whatever words we use, there are clearly differences among the following three cases: one, where we follow rules willingly because we perceive them as right or appropriate; two, where we follow them under manipulative coercion, such as when we are persuaded that there is no alternative to the rules; and three, where we follow them under what may be called punitive coercion, being threatened with punishment or in general some unpleasant consequences if we do not. In a narrow view of things, many of mankind’s achievements in education,  economics, culture, athletics and science can be attributed to the persistence of disciplined, and often self-motivated, individuals. Sterling examples would include Archimedes, the great mathematician, who before being killed by a Roman soldier was drawing symbols in sand; Marie Curie who dedicated her widowed years in continuing research in radioactivity and eventually died of a radiation-triggered illness; and Siddhartha Gautama who exercised strict discipline over himself to mediate under the pipal tree and eventually achieved enlightenment. Even in Singapore, we see a most disciplined mountaineer in Mr. Khoo Swee Chiow who genuinely believes in his cause. However, discipline in the populace would assume greater significance if we consider its polar opposite: civil disobedience, or the taking of a token action in defiance of the law for the purpose of changing the law. Those who act in a civilly disobedient manner have no respect for law (whereas discipline is the manifestation of a respect for law). It is impossible to have a law that authorises individuals to violate it. Respect for law is essential for any system to function. An effective system of law is possible only when appeals cannot be made to principles outside the legal system. Civil disobedients determine for themselves what laws to obey and what laws to violate. Without law, there will only be chaos as each individual and group decides unilaterally what is right. The victims in such a lawless society will probably be many of the very same people who argue so adamantly for the right of civil disobedience, namely, the advocates of civil rights, social justice, and peace. If one group can decide for itself which laws to obey, so too will other groups. A system of law protects all groups in society. Without it, anarchy prevails, discussion ceases and violence begins. Therefore, discipline is a form of civilly responsible behaviour which helps maintain social order and contributes to the preservation, if not advancement, of collective interests of society at large. Having said that, a society whose members are too self-disciplined to ever become civilly disobedient is likely to be a stagnant one. On the other hand, civil disobedience may be good in the sense that a tolerance of it strengthens democracy. For a system to be democratic, it must have broad  support among diverse elements of society. The processes of a representative democracy (with a system of representative government based on free elections and a system of limitations on state activity) work slowly, and often groups become disenchanted with the slow responsiveness of government. Groups subjected to discrimination or injustice cannot be expected to rely exclusively on constitutional processes, while remedies take years to be instituted. Faced with the problems deeply felt by a group, its leaders must have an alternative to dissent or resistance. In the 1960s, for example, black people in America felt that the processes of change, particularly social and economic change, were moving too slowly to produce tangible benefits. Most of them rejected extremist solutions as unsuitable for democracy but saw in civil disobedience a remedy that would allow them to accept the legitimacy of the system. Hence Martin Luther King’s policy of direct action – the taking of non-violent measures like boycotts and sit-ins – which was based on the necessity of violating unjust laws. Here, acts of civil disobedience were justified because racial segregation by law is morally reprehensible. Another of the twentieth century’s great proponents of civil disobedience was Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Indian leader. His policy of satyagraha (literally â€Å"firmness in the truth†) was often equated with passive resistance. He urged his partisans to take peaceful acts, such as marches and boycotts to achieve the independence of India from British colonial rule. Gandhi became famous for his hunger strikes and for other acts of non-violence. One of his tactics was to have his followers lie down on railroad tracks, thus preventing trains from moving. By taking such peaceful acts of civil disobedience, Gandhi contributed to the movement – both in India and in Great Britain – for the independence of his country. Although not sanctified by law, civil disobedients can strengthen democratic institutions because they channel their energies in directions that a broader segment would ultimately accept – the abolition of slavery and segregation laws, the expression of civil rights, the establishment of nation independence, and the promotion of peace. They bring about positive  social changes. Returning to the three cases I highlighted in the second paragraph, it seems clear enough that the first case, whether or not we call it â€Å"discipline†, is what any government would prefer to find in its people. After all, it guarantees smooth implementation of even the most unpopular laws and in extreme cases, enables social engineering to be carried out. The question is what we are to do when this ideal breaks down or has no chance to develop. What course of action can governments take to bring about the order necessary for the smooth running of society, and indeed for civilised relationsh ips in general, to take place? More than often, governments ensure discipline in the people by instituting a legal system. Undoubtedly, a legal system is a specialised system of rules, distinct from moral rules, which at the least provides a framework in which individual behaviour can be in some sense regulated and an element in certainty guaranteed, and which at the very most may provide a comprehensive framework of regulations covering nearly all aspects of the individual’s life. To discuss the importance of discipline, or rather disciplinary action, in society, we would need to validate the existence of legal systems. It is true that some political philosophers have toyed with the idea of the possibility of social order without law: indeed, the first major work on this subject, Plato’s Republic, describes a lawless utopia in which the free play of the intelligence of the philosopher-kings is allowed to proceed untrammelled by legal restraints. Also, Karl Marx’s future classless society would be free from the restraints of civil and criminal law because those very factors that give rise to the need for law – the institution of money, the social division of labour and the system of private property – would have been removed. What unites all the differing â€Å"lawless† utopias is the requirement that these desirable states of affairs can only be brought about by a fundamental change in human nature. Marx, for instance, stresses that the abolition of the social division of labour associated with the bourgeois mode of production would entail a change in human nature. Yet the most elementary of human nature would make these interpretations fantastically optimistic because it seems to indicate the necessity for some rules, many of which are bound to be backed by organised sanctions (these will come to  be known as â€Å"laws†). Other political theorists, perhaps with a less elevated view of human potential, have argued that individuals have found the best form of protection in the existence of general rules of conduct binding on all. It is ironic that in his Laws, a much later work, Plato describes a society under the rule of law. Many commentators have understood this striking change in viewpoint as a capitulation to hard facts. If so, the facts may be no more compelling than that a wise ruler can be effective only through the promulgation of general regulations. No ruler of a large society could make every critical decision and transmit it rapidly through the populace. The best one can do is to define general limits within which individual citizens make their own decisions. Likewise, in practice, Communist regimes have maintained some sort of court system. Indeed, as the dream of a stateless, coercionless society faded, the notion of â€Å"legality† crept back into Soviet jurisprudence. Constitution law was revived and made consistent with socialism; and even some Western legal concepts and practices which would previously have been denounced as bourgeois reappeared in the later development of the Soviet legal system. Thus there was a legal order in the Soviet system. From these illustrations, it becomes more difficult to conceive of a society in which the people are not disciplined by laws. A system of law provides three qualities for social life: stability, uniformity and cooperation. The type of social stability that law provides is reliability of expectation. When established laws exist, citizens know what they can expect from their fellow citizens and government officials. Criminal law is a system of rules that provides means for the apprehension of individuals who break the law and that circumscribe the procedures that the government must follow in arrest and seizure. Civil law defines the procedures required for legal status with respect to property, contracts, marriages and many other relations among individuals and institutions. To a great extent, the more persuasive is law throughout a society, and the more are social relations regulated by it, the more stable is the society and the more reliable are expectations of members of the society as to how others will act if they respect the law. The greatest virtue of law is that it  achieves an explicitness frequently absent from other regions of social life, say custom, preventing arbitrariness and caprice and making clear what is demanded of individuals. Next, the fundamental and persuasive feature of law is its promulgation of a general rule binding equally on everyone who fits the conditions prescribed. The principle that everyone is equal before the law is inherent in all laws, not just in a democracy. Uniformity is important for stability, cooperation and fairness. It expresses the heart of the principle of equality before the law. A stable society requires uniform procedures for regulating activities and for rectifying imbalances. Citizens must be informed by formal legislation that activities are prescribed and proscribed. Where cooperation throughout large groups and regions is pursued, stable and reliable expectations are required. Vehicle drivers cooperate at road junctions through the laws that regulate left of way. Finally, the urge towards fairness shared by everyone, even those who reject some laws, requires implementation in laws if it is to be effective. Thirdly, a society can be beneficial to its members only where it achieves cooperation among them. If all activities were wholly individual within a society, the society would exact the usual price for social life from its members without compensating benefits. Law provides a necessary organisational and structural force in cooperative ventures. Exchange and possession of property could not be as smooth as they are in many countries without rules regulating the flow of money, procedures for the exchange of property and so forth. The most obvious characteristic of laws is that they are enforced, involving the police, courts of laws, punishments and penal institutions. I accept that the general justifying aim punishment is to secure greater obedience to laws and rules by deterring offenders, both potential repeat offenders and those who so far have not offended but might if not deterred. If this seems too obvious a statement to be worth making, I do so at this point because different opinions have been offered, such as that the general purpose of punishment is to reform offenders, or to visit retribution on them or to  reveal the moral order. Judicial punishment is incurred for an offence against laws or rules, which can be inspected in statute books. The connection is that when a person can know in advance, because rules have been published, what he is liable to be punished for, it is possible for him to exercise the choice and live in the security that are supposed to be the advantages of order being maintained through punishment rather than manipulation or sophisticated bullying. Thus punishment is supposed to have the merit of respecting the individual’s responsibility, of giving him the choice of whether to offend and to pay the price or observe the rule and preserve his freedom, so conferring the benefit that he is in charge, in this respect at least, of his own life and destiny. To insist that it is precisely where matters of importance are concerned that people must be given significant responsibility may seem strange in the context of punishment, for what we want to do is to prevent crimes and offences, not leave people with the choice of whether to commit them or not. Punishments are not simply a scheme of fines and restrictions designed to put a price on certain forms of conducts; it would be far better if the acts proscribed by penal statutes were never done. The point of punishment is that while it aims to prevent offences, it does this in a way that leaves room for other principles and goods that we value, which a more simple-minded, draconian system of preventing offences would not. More is at stake than the maintenance of laws at their most efficacious level: if that were all we wanted, we would behave very differently. We might, for example, take measures to isolate or even exterminate those sections or age groups of the population statistically most likely to commit crimes and would no doubt institute curfews. Yet we have reservations about measures such as these because as well as freedom from crimes, we value other things like freedom of speech, of movement and association. In this light, punishment as a means of discipline is important in society. At the same time, this importance can be diminished in the view of the adverse effects of law and punishment. The value of law is so great and the reverence for law becomes so overpowering that it may become self-stultifying and destructive. Laws can make a society become too stable  and inflexible, incapable of adapting to new conditions. The laws of a society may represent social relations long out of date, promoting oppression and invasion of privacy. Law may impose too great a uniformity upon society, stifling creativity, originality, human variation and cultural heterogeneity. When the faults of law intrude, people become desperate. When injustices prevail within the ruling system of injustice, when society becomes too uniform, inflexible and oppressive, law can be viewed as an intractable evil. When the prevailing legal system is held up as worthy because it is the law, no matter how oppressive and unjust, people lose their respect for law without knowing any alternative. The most pernicious danger is that respect for law may be imposed and not earned, and may be assumed even when the law is unjust. Then we have the hidden oppression of Kafka’s â€Å"The Trial†, in which a man suffers under a system of Law that accuses and trials him but never explains why. That system should not merit such respect and must instead be condemned. In conclusion, I view discipline exercised by and over the populace as important in society; however, it should co-exist with an active civil voice. Can discipline be maintained by means other than law and punishment? Liberal-rationalists distinguish rule-governed behaviour from habitual behaviour on the premise that the former involves â€Å"internalisation†. A rule is internalised when it is understood by the participants in a social practice as indicating a right and wrong way of doing things. Unlike the carefully trained animal in the zoo who follows the keeper’s instructions automatically, individuals who are guided by rules regard them as expressing meaningful standards of behaviour. Furthermore, rules entail the idea of choice for, unlike well-trained animals, humans may disobey rules. Sanctions are needed to cope with the minority of rule-breakers but this does not mean that sanctions can replace internalisation as the guarantor of regularised behaviour. This concept of â€Å"internalisation† is reminiscent of Confucius’ teachings: â€Å"Guide them by the edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the  common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.†