It’s the personal demonstration of interest in the welfare state from someone whom you admire, acknowledge, appreciate and share in happiness and adversity mutual support. Over the years the concept has been widely discussed by countless writers, the reality is that perception does not change in nature, the environment is being altered.

We live today in a system of beliefs and ideas materialistic, prevails in the first instance I on human and social values​​, the rhetoric of seeing for others it ends in the reality of what I can not benefit. That’s the nerve center of civilized human beings can act in a diligent and determined that friendship must be sought not only to those who can offer us something, stop being subservient to those who can give, the value of human beings in their without being dreamy essence, you find in each individual, each person is special in life.

Not a friend that tells you if at all, friend’s comments is that things are bad and external. Friend is someone who not only goes with you because you are going to invite all you enjoy is one that is with you because they enjoy chat, share and learn from experiences.

These rights are based in values and allow us all to keep a line above which nobody is supposed to cross.

Some of the Universal values accepted by all nations (let me again say: Supposedly) are unquestionable. Nobody has any doubt about the universal acceptance of Freedom, Peace, Human Dignity. Every person has an inherent right of respect, dignity, peace and freedom.

However, some of the human rights can and, in my view, must be questioned. Among these the most urgent of them is Democracy. Is Democracy a Universal right?

If we carefully think about the world crisis that is happening, how much of that crisis has been powered by the huge lacks of Democracy? Can we say civilizations under other ways of government based on people willing were unhappy? I don’t think we can.

In fact, democracy has shown to be very unfair. The construction of piles of laws has shown to be effective only to the fair and working people.

No other ruling system has increased so much the unequal distribution of wealth. No other system has increased so much poverty.

So, I ask again. Are we sure that the political models that we live in are a universal value.

Not that I support any other specific political model. However, I’m very far from unconditional accepting democracy has a universal right.

There’s just too much suffering, too much people getting rich with questionable merit causes.

The debate that, in my view, must be made is not about eliminating democracy, but how can we make it better. How can democracy reach fairness and equality to all people? One possible way of starting that change may be on the demands we make to our politicians. Very often, the man who gets more voted is not the one with more competence, but the one with a better merchandising machine.

If I can, So can you

Raja Sharma

Very rarely do I come across a human whose eyes eloquently tell me that he or she can. All over the world teachers, gurus, philosophers, parents, and elders of the society keep on imposing their ideas on the younger generation without ever trying to know whether they are interested in the assigned task or not.

Some might say that children are only interested in those things which appeal to them but they forget that it is the duty of the master to make uninteresting things interesting for the children. Elders often complain that children don’t want to study, they don’t like reading books, or they don’t show interest in the things which their elders believe would be good for them. I am not surprised at it because it is but natural that children don’t like to do those things. The experiences of the elders are the result of their long process of learning during which they had also felt that kind of dislike initially but gradually came to know about the usefulness of all those things which they want to pass on to posterity.

I have a vision of an absolutely new kind of person. That person should be able to love; he should not go to a monastery, or temple, or mosque, or church; he should see the existence of nature everywhere. He should live in the marketplace and yet he should be able to drop all possessiveness, all attachments, all clinging, and all jealousy.

You will say that I am trying to sell these lofty ideas. Hold on, I am trying to inform you that it can be done because I have done it, so you can do it. I present my view about the human behavior through my own experience. I never say a single thing which is not my own experience.

An old master’s story will be quite appropriate to quote here:

There was a saint. A woman came to him dragging her small child and said to the master,” I am sick of this child. He eats so many sweets that I am afraid he will be ill, his teeth will become rotten. He suffers from stomachache and other temporary ailments. Please tell me what I should do.”

The saint told that woman to some next week. The woman came to him the following week but he once again told her to come the following week. And in this way three weeks passed but no answer came from the saint.

Finally, the saint called the woman and the son and informed them the saint liked the sweets too and he was experimenting for three weeks to see whether he could leave eating sweets or not. The saint said that he was successful in doing so. The boy, though very young, was highly impressed by this practical approach of the saint.

What I mean to say is if an old man can do it, so can a young one. But, unfortunately, in our human world, old are so serious and gloomy that they make the most beautiful of the subjects sad and gloomy. They don’t smile, don’t share their thoughts with the young ones, and never take part in the activities which the young ones are interested in.

I say that my own experience in this world is quite different from the general opinions about life. I see every moment as a new birth. There is inherent delight in all the things if those who have experienced are ready to happily share it with others, not through complex essays, theories, and fiction that are forcibly taught to children in dismal dungeons of our educational departments. I want to see dancing Buddhas, rejoicing Krishnas, and Sheep herding Christ in our schools and colleges. Let the teachers of the world understand that if they don’t love their profession, and they don’t or can’t teach students happily and joyfully, without ever trying to think that they are superior to their students, and then the teachers have no right to remain in those places where education is imparted to children.

My new vision of a new kind of man rests upon the responsible shoulders of only those teachers who are selfless guardians, who are willing to make every effort to make their subjects as interesting and suitable to the demands of their students as they can.

I don’t think that the lofty slogans of UNO, Child care, and other such organizations are going to help in this cause. They provide preventive measures, but I want a revolution in human hearts, and that will come if teachers love their duty and their pupils.

http://www.rajasirji.webs.com

http://rajasir.com

The wonder of childhood revolves around the fact that the possibilities of our lives are endless. Each day invites a chance to learn something new that we can internalize and build upon. That wonder goes away as we get older and adulthood looms on the horizon. Now, we have to keep our feet on the ground.

In an effort to be more sensible, we tend to reject anything that is not according to a plan—either one we devise or one that has been set down for us. If we are going to law school, then we need to hit the ground running after high school with four years of college followed by exams and four years of law school.

Our parents and those around us truly believe that we won’t develop a satisfying career if we don’t follow everything to the letter. Life is not about letters, but about living. Everyone’s path is not the same even when journeying to the same destination.

So, why do we feel compelled to stay on the rigid imposing path of our lives even when we don’t want to? It could revolve around a lack of any better ideas or because we are afraid to want something not time-tested.

The thing about plans is that we choose them based on the fact that someone else has gone before and figured out the path. That’s good, but for that person, it was a leap of faith to “think outside the box” just so that you could follow them.  Embracing new ideas is not about making unwise choices, but about enhancing the quality of our lives.

Let’s go back to the law school scenario. There are many ways to practice law. A big corporate law firm may not be for you. Teaching or fighting for civil liberties of the underprivileged might be what you desire.

It is not wrong to do these things. They may not bring you fame and fortune but then that should not be the barometer of our happiness. When life is all said and done, it is the memories of those we helped and how it made us feel that we take with us not the money.

Remember the creativity of youth and apply that to your life. Be molded and shaped by your thoughts and values and not those of society. Who knows? Charting a new course today can leave a lasting impression on those who will follow.

The author’s attempts to portray an alternative viewpoint are immediately apparent. Opening his account with a dramatic quotation describing one of the King’s justices reading out a court verdict to a near-spiritless prisoner, Linebaugh provides us with a view of the contemporary legal system’s aims – namely, to inspire “terror, majesty, dread and some pity” in the hearts of the local population. He instantly attacks this account, however, claiming instead that there was a prevailing atmosphere of “irreverence, humour and defiance.” Linebaugh’s justification for such a claim is primarily linguistic in nature; he goes on to list a host of humorous words related to hanging. The phrases “to cry cockles”, “to be…frummagemmed”, and “to ride a horse foaled by an acorn” each serve to colourfully illustrate a more defiant and less serious public conception of the noose. This claim exhibits an element of inconsistency, however, when compared with what the author explicitly points out in his penultimate paragraph: that these offenders’ deaths are, in fact, shown as anything but unimportant to society. Linebaugh points out that the common social demographic of those hanged is that of a young, fertile worker and family member. Thus, he labels a death through hanging as a “sentimental loss” as well as one of “deep moral and material consequence”. He even chooses to use the phrase “death crisis” to describe the consequences of a hanging. Linebaugh makes it clear, therefore, that death by hanging was not viewed with indifference.

Despite the inconsistency that can be found between Linebaugh’s two accounts of humour and seriousness, it is clear that in both cases he seeks to challenge the established viewpoints of terror and callousness. He continues to challenge the notion of callous indifference throughout the account, citing evidence for what he sees as an air of intense decency and respect at the gallows. The fact that hangings were “treated as a type of wedding” serves to emphasise the prevalence of this atmosphere. Condemned prisoners went to their deaths wearing their finest clothes, as is found in the case of John Raymond, who wrote his relatives asking for “some white clothes to appear in on the morning he was to suffer”, or George Anderson, who was hanged in breeches with black ferret trimmings. These men were clearly not spiritless, as the King’s justice’s words on the opening page would suggest. On the contrary, Linebaugh argues, dignity was kept to the very end.

Respect, so inextricably bound up with decency and dignity, is also found with no shortage at the Tyburn gallows. It came, as Linebaugh puts forward, in many forms. One such form of respect can be illustrated by the “need for proper treatment of the dead” arising from the labouring class’s superstitions directed towards the dead, fearing they might rise again “to haunt” them. This was as likely to have stemmed from religious beliefs as from actual resurrections, in which an incomplete hanging would give rise to the victim’s revival. Belief in the healing power of the corpse is further evidence for another form of respect held for the dead. It was thought that if a child was stroked by the hand of an executed criminal, he or she would be guaranteed good health, and that the same hand could cure ulcers, cancerous growths, bleeding tumours, and even a woman’s infertility. This type of action, Linebaugh writes, “honours the power of the felon’s corpse”. In this sense, he interprets these practises and beliefs, labelled in our time as “bad taste” and superstition, instead as pain-relieving techniques for the peace of the living and methods for laying the dead to a respectful rest. In fact, he explicitly relates superstition to respect, calling the crowd’s actions a “respectful treatment” of the dead.

This respect for the dead found widespread in the Mob is not, however, borne out in Linebaugh’s descriptions of the medical surgeons and legal practitioners of the time. The former concerned only with furthering medical research and the latter with “aggravating capital punishment”, it is clear to Linebaugh that only the lower class crowd was concerned with the proper treatment of the convicted. This quasi-symbiotic relationship between surgeons, who “humiliat[ed]” the dead, and lawmakers, who relied on this humiliation to worsen their sentences, became “a main cause” of the riots and disturbances witnessed at Tyburn. The wide scale of these anti-surgeon and anti-authority riots can be seen as strong additional evidence for the common respect held for the dead.

It must be noted that the contemporary citizens’ unwillingness to interfere with nature, exemplified by their resentment of the surgeons’ practise, can be strongly compared to another medical issue today: that of stem cell research. Again, in the year 2005, protests are held on moral grounds against the scientific community’s interference into the realm of the medical unknown. In this way, this parallel drawn between eighteenth-century England and our twenty-first century society serves to support the thesis that sees humans as essentially the same creatures today as they were in the past.

Linebaugh’s article therefore serves two main purposes. Explicitly, he argues against common conceptions of the poor in eighteenth-century England in light of their views towards capital punishment, suggesting that instead of feeling callous and indifferent they were respectful and mourning. Implicitly, Linebaugh succeeds in pointing out an element of universality in the nature of humanity and human dignity across history.

Plan/Draft Items

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Comments
• Evaluation
• Description of text
• Interpretation of text
• Critical Analysis
• Purpose – TO DISPEL MYTHS?
• Thesis of text
• The text clearly seeks to inform
• As exhibited by the opening paragraph… to dispel common myths of how hangings proceeded, were viewed, and worked as part of English society
• To point out common elements of humanity, throughout humanity. To show that people are essentially the same. Again, the myth that it was everyday and unimportant is argued against: even though death was commonplace in 18th Century England, its impact on society was, nevertheless, unarguably felt.
• Contrast lack of spirit in opening paragraph with intense dignity, pride at end of article.
• He points out that hanging is not deeply studied, and thus that stereotypes emerge
• To point out the essential humanity
• The importance of the poor
• The conflicting values held by the society (scientific vs. moral)
• As an interpretation of alternative documents – that history is not only about official government sources
• Approach
• Social – with the waves of riots. Looks at the issue in the context of social change.
• Literary (with all the language stuff)
• Cultural – study of humanity, but of a specific culture and how it relates to our culture
• Legal/justice
• RELATE THIS TO AUTHOR’S THESIS
• Fact or Opinion
• Clearly both. Opinion is implicit, through the use of facts in arguments.
• Convincing Argument
• The argument is almost by definition convincing: the mere fact that it exists to dispel myths and point out where others have fallen means that if we do not doubt the author’s factual accuracy, there is little else with which we can argue. If its facts are to be taken seriously (and, with a certain trust in the facts we are given) it follows that we have to take the argument seriously. The views put forward are
• Theoretical Issues/Concerns and Topics for Further discussion
• Parallels drawn to present day with stem cell research
• Own Reactions
• Interesting to see parallels played out through time etc

Part I

1. Gives traditional government account of what hanging is (65)
2. Says that this account is not borne out by his sources (66)
3. Talks about hanging in the contemporary language (66)
4. Emphasises public nature of hanging (67)
5. Introduces the concept of riots (67)
6. Hanging as exercising state power (67-68)
7. Historiography and other authors’ shortcomings on the subject (68)
8. Question: why riot and disorder? (69)
9. Answer: physicians’ fault (69)

Part II

1. Established demand for corpses due to rapidly changing nature of medical practise (70)
2. Legal means of obtaining corpses insufficient (70-71)
3. Widespread practise of grave-digging and penalties for it (71-72)
4. Change in attitude towards commercialising the dead body (72)
5. Argument of scientific utility: criminals giving back to society (72-73)
6. ‘Health and sound Limbs’ vs. “Scum of the People”: dishonour punishment (73)
7. Cost of dissections (73-74)
8. Petition and proposed Act of Parliament (74-75)
9. Deploying soldiers to safeguard hangings (76)
10. Dissection as aggravating capital punishment: Murder Act (76)
11. Private work (not public) as the main scientific driving force (78)
12. End of obtaining hanged corpses from gallows mid-century (78)

Part III

1. The Mob as family, friends, workers, Irish, sailors (79)
2. Families (79-80)
3. Friends (80-82)
4. Co-workers (82-83)
5. Irish (84-86)
6. Sailors (86-89)

Part IV

1. Penlez Riots of July 1749 related to unemployment & riotous sailors (89-91)
2. Fielding’s ill-judged policy of military riot suppression (91)
3. Mob action with sailors as primary crowd members (92)
4. Penlez caught (93)
5. Opposition against hanging Penlez (94)
6. Fielding as not corrupt (95)
7. MP’s failure to support Penlez (96-97)
8. Attempted convict gunpowder escape/revolt (98)
9. Keeping order at a price (99)
10. Janssen’s shift away from military suppression (100-101)
11. Potentiality for flash-riot from disturbance (101)

Part V

1. Introduction to evaluation of surgeon’s struggle against the poor (102)
2. Death as commonplace at the time (102)
3. Resurrection due to incomplete hangings (102-106)
4. Criminal not re-hanged, but transported to America as example of humanity (104)
5. Resurrection as superstitious & haunting (106-107)
6. Superstition vs. social action as with similar functions (108)
7. The dead as healers (109)
8. Emphasis of powers of the felon’s corpse vs. the humiliation of it (110)
9. Gallows compared to weddings  respect & dignity in death (111-112)
10. Other deaths like weddings: virgin or childless woman (113)
11. Hanging unofficially annulled by marriage (114)
12. Summary & emphasis of complexity in views towards the dead (115)

Part VI

1. Historiographical argument against callousness and indifference to death (116)
2. The crowd’s respectful treatment of the dead (116)
3. Death as a crisis & social vacuum: sentimental, moral, and material loss (116)
4. What we call “Superstition” as, instead, a formalisation and elaboration of funeral rites (116)
5. “Ignominy” of the law; violation of customs through dissection (117)
6. The Mob as fighting for decency of the dead, peace of the living (117)