The Ethics of Gambling

 

The Ethics of Gambling

Darcy Smittenaar

SOC120 Introduction to Ethics and Social Responsibility

Linda Atkinson

January 27, 2014 

The Ethics of Gambling

Is gambling ethical, right or virtuous?  Some, such as those who prefer a relativist perspective to ethical concerns, say yes, while many others say no.  From both the viewpoint of a virtue ethicist and from a utilitarian theorist’s view, however, gambling is, indeed unethical, and anyone who participates in such a pastime—especially casino gambling—is not a virtuous person.

A virtue ethicist defines virtue based on the motivation behind an issue (Mosser, 2013). “Why do people gamble, either in casinos or elsewhere?” is therefore the question at the root of a virtue ethicist’s argument.  The answers are manifold, but none of these answers would tell a virtue ethicist anything good about gambling: greed, boredom, addiction, a misunderstanding of statistical fact (Swekoski & Barnbaum, 2013), or even because the gambler is looking for a quick way to get money to feed his or her family.  In order to illustrate the unethical nature of gambling from a virtue ethicist’s view point, the arguments for gambling are presented from an ethical egoist’s perspective.  Because these arguments are manifold and reflect the nature of different communities of gamblers, they are also those of a relativist’s perspective.

Those who own and run casinos would definitely say that gambling is ethical, because it lines their pockets, and those who gamble just to get more money than they can make without gambling would say so as well.  Those gambling for the money—or providing places to gamble in order to make a profit—are greedy.  If they are especially skilled gamblers, then the money they receive can be tens, hundreds, or even thousands of times more than their original stake, and they just want more of it.  A virtue ethicist would argue that greediness is wrong; a greedy person takes from those who need, and does not give anything back, just as the owner of a casino makes a profit and would only give that money away if it was required by law.  Therefore, an avaricious gambler, or a casino owner, is not a good or virtuous person in the eyes of a virtue ethicist.

The “community” of people who gamble because they are bored would also consider their gambling an ethical pastime.  When people are bored, they find occupation.  Some of the occupation they could find is not as productive as others.  Gambling produces only debt or wealth—usually debt for the gambler and wealth for the house.  A gambler does not contribute to society in any way, instead staving off his or her boredom by betting the money they have earned with real, productive work on things that do not matter in the grand scheme of the world: whether or not the cards in their hands can beat the cards in their opponents hands, whether or not a metal ball will stop on a certain color or number, or whether or not a certain combination of pictures will show up on a randomly rotating series of wheels.  To paraphrase a proverb by Henry G. Bohn, idleness of thought or hand leaves room for all sorts of mischief (Bohn, 1855), and a virtue ethicist would see the lack of virtue in gambling, because gamblers are those idlers who have let that mischief into their lives.

There is a community of gambling addicts.  As long as they can get their gambling “fix,” these gamblers believe they are participating in an ethical activity, and that anything which keeps them from gambling is wrong.  Long-time gamblers—or even short-term gamblers who have had a good “winning streak”—can become addicted to the thrill of gambling.  An addictive substance or circumstance creates a need in the addict for itself.  This self-creating need for a thing that is not basic sustenance, shelter or comfort undermines the human identity.  An addict is no longer the person he or she was before becoming addicted; he or she is all need, all the time.  He or she has become a machine, a virus which consumes anything in its path which will get it more of its necessary substance or thrill.  Since an addiction to gambling turns people into addicts—basically non-people—a virtue ethicist would argue that gambling is not a virtuous occupation.

Yet another group of gamblers believe that the odds can never be against them, and therefore, their gambling is a good thing to do.  Often, gamblers believe that the statistical odds against their winning big are “somehow suspended in their case, owing to undue optimism about their chances” (Swekoski and Barnbaum, 2013, p. 1).  Whether or not they have been educated as to the statistical reality, these gamblers cannot understand that they are not going to win as often as they think they will, and are often lured into further debt, believing that the axiom, “The house always wins” does not apply to their gambling experience.  Since gambling creates this willful misunderstanding or ignorance of the statistical reality, gamblers, in a virtue ethicist’s eyes, would not be virtuous.  At best, they would simply be stupid, confused dupes.

One final community of gamblers, the debtors, is the most heartbreaking group of all, because they really believe that their gambling will help their loved ones to have better lives; therefore, their gambling must be good and virtuous.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and many who have money trouble believe that gambling will help them to “earn” more money to take care of their basic needs of food, shelter, and comfort.  These people will take their lives’ savings, or their entire pay checks, and gamble with them, believing that they will receive many times more than the original amount gambled.  Most go home with nothing, leaving them unable to provide for themselves or their families.  Since gambling means people spending what little they have on non-essentials, a virtue ethicist would call gambling non-virtuous behavior, as would a utilitarian since it means the greatest good is going to the smallest number, instead of the greatest.

While a virtue ethicist would refer to a gambler’s motivation, a utilitarian would look at the consequences of gambling.  The main question in a utilitarian’s mind would be, “Does gambling do more harm or more good to the most people” (Mosser, 2013)?  Although there are some good points, a utilitarian would argue that more people and communities—including the gamblers themselves—are harmed by gambling than are helped by it, as shown by example in Australia, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and on Native American reservations around the United States (Oddo, 1997).

A study primarily based in Australia recently found that pathological gamblers—those who experience a “loss of control over gambling, deception about the extent of one’s involvement with gambling, and significant family or job disruption” (Williams, Grisham, Erskine & Cassidy, 2012, p. 224)—often have problems effectively adapting to unwanted emotions as well as less ability to clearly express or understand their own emotions.  These gamblers were also more impulsive (Williams, Grisham, Erskine & Cassidy, 2012).  Gambling to the point of addiction detracts from a person’s ability to feel, understand, express or cope with his or her own emotions, thereby ensuring that such a person is unhealthy.  Unhealthy people have low utility, and therefore, a utilitarian would argue that gambling is unethical.

Furthermore, those people with mental and emotional disorders—such as pathological gamblers—once they realize they have a problem either cannot stop their gambling even if they want to.  For those who cannot stop, sometimes the only option is to keep gambling, or else risk severe withdrawal and depression because they are not receiving the endorphin high which gambling used to give them.  Their utility is reduced, because gambling has become an addiction, and the “fix” they get from gambling no longer makes them happy.

Another Australian study says that, while “leisure gambling” is a “legitimate and natural leisure activity,” the costs of becoming too involved in gambling are especially severe.  There are not only financial consequences for the gamblers themselves, but there are also “relationship, and emotional consequences for the gambler, significant others, and the community,” and these consequences are “comparatively acute, with wide ripple effects.”   Some such consequences are ”depression, anxiety and poor physical health” (Hing, Breen & Gordon, 2012, p. 218).  All of these consequences mean that the gambler has low utility, and therefore a utilitarian would not find gambling ethical.

A gambler’s family, friends and acquaintances can also come to harm from the gambler’s actions.  For instance, a heavy gambler will spend his or her whole pay check—or pension check—in order to “chase the big win,” or to get as much money as possible from their original stake.  Often, this original stake is lost all at once, within a few days of receiving the money, and the gambler has to borrow more money in order to pay bills—or even gamble more—until the next check comes (Hing, Breen & Gordon, 2012).  Since heavy gamblers use their entire pay in gambling and often have to borrow money until the next check, this means they are not paying for food, shelter or clothing for themselves or their families.  Their families’ utility is lower, since any non-gambling family members—especially spouses or grown children—will have to work harder to pay not only their own share of what needs paying, but also the gambler’s share.  If the gambler does not have any immediate family, then his or her utility would also be low, because he or she would most likely either be homeless, or would have legal trouble related to their debts—both gambling and non-gambling related.

Finally, a pathological gambler is likely to be out late, or not come home at all while there is still money to be gambled (Hing, Breen & Gordon, 2012).  They cannot be relied upon to be home at a certain time, or to help family members when they are in trouble.  Since a gambler has essentially taken himself or herself out of the family group, his or her family is therefore less happy—their utility is lower because of their family member’s gambling habit.  Therefore, a utilitarian would argue that gambling is unethical.

Those who find help for their addiction are also less happy—until they are able to stop feeding their need for gambling, and then they are still forever addicted to gambling.  These “recovering” gamblers pay many thousands of dollars in therapists’ fees—or spend many hours talking to groups of people like them in order to find support in their wish to quit gambling.  The loss of time and/or money these gamblers experience reduces their utility, since that time and money could be spent on activities which either would make the person truly happy—like a nice vacation, or higher education, for instance—and also since these people will never truly not be addicted to gambling; they will always want to go back to gambling for the high it gave them, but they know it will not make them happy to do so.  Resisting the urge to gamble also brings with it a loss of utility, because of this pull in opposite directions for the recovering gambling addict.  Since a pathological gambler can never truly be happy, either while he or she is feeding the gambling habit or while abstaining from gambling after having had the habit, a utilitarian would argue that gambling is unethical.

Casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey were originally planned as projects to revitalize the flagging community—creating jobs, drawing tourists to the area, and paving the way for nearby businesses to make money—thereby increasing the utility of the community of Atlantic City as a whole as well as the people who live and work there. The reality, however, is that Atlantic City has not been greatly improved since the opening of its first casino in 1978 (Oddo, 1997).

The casinos do well, yes, but less than five years after casinos were legalized in Atlantic City, “the number of retail businesses in Atlantic City declined by one-third," and “the number of restaurants ‘declined from 243 in 1977 to 146 in 1987.  Only about 10 percent of the businesses nearest to the casino locations in 1976 are still open today” (Oddo, 1997, para. 13).  If the number of retail businesses, restaurants and other businesses outside of—but originally close to—casinos in Atlantic City has declined since the casinos opened, many jobs have been lost, and people have had to find other work away from Atlantic City.  This is an overall decrease in not only any given Atlantic City resident’s utility, but in the community’s utility as a whole, since Atlantic City is not as vital a place as before.

Not only do Atlantic City’s casinos cost more to local residents in taxes, but the casinos do not make up for it by bringing in enough tourist dollars to make up the difference in pre-casino tax rates (Oddo, 1997).  This further decreases the utility of Atlantic City’s residents, because higher taxes mean less money that the residents can spend on the necessities of life: food, shelter and comfort.  Therefore, a utilitarian would argue that Atlantic City’s casinos are not places which should be visited by those who wish to be virtuous or good people.

While casinos on Native American reservations provide jobs to the Native Americans who live and work there, even the tribal leaders have misgivings about their casinos, and a utilitarian ethicist would as well.  Native Americans have warring motivations when it comes to casinos and gambling.  They do not love gaming, but the gaming in their casinos pays for the food which they put on their dinner tables, the clothing their families wear, and the houses they live in.  It is these three things which they provide to their loved ones which keep Native Americans running casinos on their reservations.

Despite the utility that the casinos bring to their families, those who live near a Native American casino “increasingly believe that there is more crime in the area than before the casino was opened and more traffic congestion, and the town is a less desirable place to live” (Oddo, 1997, para. 18).  Since it causes residents to desire less to live near the casino, this increase in crime and traffic problems due to casino gambling decreases the utility of those residents.  Therefore, a utilitarian would not find those who indulge in or who make money through casino gambling to be virtuous people.

The ethics of casino gambling may seem complicated, but in the asking of two questions—the virtue ethicist’s “Why are they doing it?” and the utilitarian’s “What happens after they do it?”—the conclusion that gambling is not something that a virtuous person would do comes easily.

References

Bohn, H. G. (1855). A Handbook of Proverbs. Retrieved from Google Books.

Hing, N., Breen, H., & Gordon, A. (2012). A Case Study of Gambling Involvement and Its Consequences. Leisure Sciences, 34(3), 217-235. doi:10.1080/01490400.2012.669682

Mosser, K. (2013). Ethics and social responsibility (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Oddo, A. (1997). The economics and ethics of casino gambling. Review of Business, 18(3), 4.

Swekoski, D., & Barnbaum, D. (2013). The Gambler's Fallacy, the Therapeutic Misconception, and Unrealistic Optimism. IRB: Ethics & Human Research, 35(2), 1-6.

Williams, A. D., Grisham, J. R., Erskine, A., & Cassedy, E. (2012). Deficits in emotion regulation associated with pathological gambling. British Journal Of Clinical Psychology, 51(2), 223-238. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8260.2011.02022.x

What Makes Draco Malfoy Tick? by DSDragon

Revision date: December 25, 2004

Note: Any references are either from my own brain, the Harry Potter movies, or the Harry Potter books. If I have a quote from anywhere else, I'll cite it with the speaker's last name. If they are from books, the citation will say "JKR," then a book and page number. If they are from the movies, the citation will include one word from the movie's title--like, "Azkaban," and if they are from my own brain, they won't have any citation. Duh.

"The amazing bouncing ferret” (JKR 4/207), that "spineless, evil little cockroach" (Azkaban), Drama King. Whatever he's called, Draco Malfoy isn't a nice guy. Unless you're rich and pure-blooded to the third generation, that is. Draco scorns Muggles, Weasleys, and all things Potter, and makes no excuses. I'm not making excuses for him either, but what makes him tick? What's behind the white-blonde hair and scathing sneer--besides the obvious connection to his father's Death Eater status?

Personally, I think the kid's a brat, and needs a good spanking as much as Dudley Dursley does. However, for some strange reason, I have been gifted with the key to understanding this snobby little vermin, so I feel I must share.

Indulgence and Sacrifice

Draco is rich, so he has never had to hear the word, "no." He is the heir to the Malfoy fortune--a considerable sum, as evidenced by Lucius' purchase of seven Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a ploy to buy Draco's way onto the Slytherin Quidditch team—so he feels entitled to treat anyone poorer like scum on the bottom of his shoe. In fact, due to this sense of entitlement, young Malfoy sees nothing wrong with taking someone else's gifts (Chamber).

"Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. . . . A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in" (C.S. Lewis).

As an heir to such a fortune as the Malfoys', Draco was probably taught to see siblings as just that much less inheritance. Lucius and Narcissa don't seem the type to shower children with affection--they are merely a means to keep the bloodline from breaking. In such rich and affluent families, usually the eldest child (particularly male) would get the--ahem--lion's share of the family wealth, but some of that wealth would still have to be set aside to keep the younger siblings alive--or at least to get them started on their own--after the parents' deaths.
The Malfoys--including Draco--seem to think that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley have "more children than they can afford" (JKR 1/108), which, as shown from the feasts Molly provides when Harry visits, is a fallacy. When he taunts Ginny at Flourish and Blotts in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, he makes a nasty comment about Arthur and Molly having to "go hungry for a month to pay for all [the children's textbooks]" (JKR 2/61). He said that as though it never occurred to him that the pair would willingly sacrifice all they had to for their children. Why? Because he doesn't understand sacrifice.

He has never had to work a day in his life for something he wanted. He has house elves at his beck and call 364 days a year to cook, clean, and run errands for him. He has had shelter, food, and everything else handed to him on a silver platter, and his parents had money to spare. Lucius and Narcissa never had to learn to say "no," so Draco was, inevitably, spoilt rotten. In the same vein, Draco has probably never had to give up something for love of someone else. He is inherently selfish, and thinks anyone who is selfless a fool for risking their necks for someone else. There are no "labors of love" in his rich-boy past--just greed.

Love and Marriage

As the heir to an elite family, Draco is expected to produce at least one heir--preferably male. For this task, he needs a wife, and therefore must be at least openly heterosexual. There is evidence in canon that Pansy is Draco's choice of mate; he plays up his injury, and milks all the sympathy Pansy will give him after the Buckbeak incident (JKR 3/123), suggesting that he is endeavoring to impress her with how well he is holding up. Afterward, when Pansy looks away, Draco "wink[s] at Crabbe and Goyle," suggesting that the girl bought his act, "Hook, line, and sink 'er." Draco would never seek a relationship with Hermione, Ginny, or Luna. First off, Draco despises Muggle-borns, half-bloods, and Weasleys, so the first two are out. Luna is out, simply because she associates with the first two. J.K. Rowling consistently depicts this, and there is no reason to suspect that five books and three movies' worth of canon is going to change abruptly, simply because some fans want to see Emma Watson (or Bonnie Wright) and Tom Felton together. There is no canonical evidence that Draco--or any other character, for that matter--is homosexual either. However, were Draco to take a male lover, the affair would have to stay secret, because, as I said above, he is expected to produce heirs--homosexuality does not little baby Malfoys make--and he would be considered a disgrace to the Malfoy
name, should he "come out of the closet."

Were young Malfoy gay, however, he would not choose Harry, Ron, or Neville as a partner. There is no evidence that Harry, Ron, or Neville is gay either, but that's a topic for another essay. I'm sorry to all those H/D 'shippers out there, but it's true. There is plenty of canonical evidence that Draco despises all three boys, and none to support a relationship with either of them.

To top it off, those three boys hate Draco too. Malfoy insulted Lily Potter long before he or Harry knew she was Muggle-born, and insulted the Weasleys--including Ron--when he volunteered to show Harry who the "wrong sort" (JKR 1/108) of Wizarding family was--in other words, Muggle-loving fools and people with more mouths to feed than galleons. Draco sees Neville as nothing more than a bumbling idiot to laugh at and push around, along the same order as Crabbe and Goyle--and no, there's no evidence in canon that they are gay either.

Tattooing in American Penitentiaries and Malaysia

Tattooing in American Penitentiaries and Malaysia

Darcy Smittenaar

ANT 101 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Megan Douglass

March 17, 2014 

Tattooing in American Penitentiaries and Malaysia

For millennia, the peoples of many non-Western cultures have used their skins as a “canvas upon which human differences can be written and read” (Schildkrout, 2004, p. 319).  Such inscriptions on a person’s body can convey which rites of passage the individual has passed, their social status within their culture, or even their position on certain arguments.  The culture of United States prisons and that of Malaysia could not be more different—prisoners in the United States have been convicted of crimes, which the average Malaysian has not—but their approaches and attitudes toward tattooing, are remarkably similar.

Some Malaysian tattoos have spiritual significance, but such tattoos are mostly found in the older generation, as “younger generations aren’t that religious anymore and you will see that most of their tattoos are to express their love to their partners or simply being artistic in nature” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 38).

Anthropologists Demello (1993) and McNaughton (2007) do not go into the spiritual aspects of prison tattoos, but according to Demello (1993), the most common type of tattoo among convicts is the loca, which tells the viewer the convict’s origins, be they neighborhood or gang affiliation.  Female inmates might also inscribe their lovers’ names in tattoos, but Demello’s work focuses only on male convicts (Demello, 1993).

Another difference between tattoos among American male convicts and those of Malaysian individuals is payment.  In prison, men do not have as much money as those on the outside, so they pay a tattoo artist either smaller amounts of money than would be paid to artists in legitimate tattoo parlors, or they barter with items such as drugs (Demello, 1993).  As anthropologists Lim, Ting, Leo and Jayanthy’s (2013) goal was to study perception of tattoos in Malaysia, they did not go into the method by which Malaysians acquire tattoos.

Most prison tattoos are black-and-white only, although “prison tattoos can range from technologically primitive to relatively advanced.”  Due to the illegality of tattooing in prison, most convict tattoo artists have to make due with whatever technology they can find to ply their art.  Tattoos in prison are usually made either by hand-picking the design with a needle dipped in ink, or by creating a sort of “homemade rotary machine” using the motors from common household appliances, such as an electric razor or cassette player, and a ball-point pen.  Professional tattooing inks are unavailable to convicts, so they use the ink from black ball-point pens in their tattoos (Demello, 1993, p. 10).

In Malaysia, unless the wearer of a tattoo has been incarcerated before, such an individual’s tattoo can be either black-and-white or in color.  If they have been incarcerated, any tattoos gained during that imprisonment would be black-and-white only, due to the unavailability of professional tattooing inks in prison.  Tattoos in Malaysia may not be as intricately shaded as tattoos on men from American prisons, as the homemade rotary machine’s need to use only one needle at a time makes for particularly fine lines (Demello, 1993).

Among prisoners in American penitentiaries, McNaughton suggests, tattoos are a form of visual argument (2007).  In Malaysia, however, there are other reasons for individuals to get tattoos, some of which are also shared by American prisoners: expression of social position (Demello, 1993), art, spirituality and remembrance of important happenings.  In all cases, tattooing is seen as “a form of self-expression.”

Like in American prisons, in Malaysia, there is a feeling that those with tattoos have somehow gone over to the dark—that they “have a history with triad gangsters or may have been criminals or prisoners before” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 39).  The negative connotations of tattooing do not seem to affect American penitentiary prisoners until they have left the prison system—and then it is those individuals outside their prison culture who show negative reactions to their tattoos, not unlike mainstream Malaysians to those with tattoos in general.

Both prison tattoos and tattoos on those inscribed on Malaysian individuals can express the person’s position in society.  In fact, Demello (1993) says, “tattoos make the body culturally visible,” and “prison tattoos . . . make the body especially obvious, and more importantly, express . . . the social position which that body occupies” (Demello, 1993, p. 10).  A tattoo that identifies a prisoner with a specific ethnic group “is another means of identifying with a particular community as well as differentiating oneself from other groups in prison” (Demello, 1993, p. 11).  This is no less true in Malaysia, where those individuals interviewed expressed their belief that tattoos are “a form of self-expression” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 39).

Part of the self is that self’s place in society, and certainly many tattoos have such cultural significance.  Even a tattoo that is meant as a memorial for a significant event, or for the death of a loved one, shows that the person with the memorial tattoo had a part in that event, or a place in the life of the dead individual.  Like men in American penitentiaries memorializing their time in prison with tattoos, Malaysians get tattoos to remind them of significant moments, “such as marriage, a new born child and other milestones in life” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 38).

Prison tattoos show not only the prison or prisons in which the individual has done time, but also that person’s reputation and status among the prisoners while he or she was incarcerated, as well as his or her stance on certain issues within, or possibly without, the prison.  Those incarcerated are sometimes unable to speak to each other, or have any significant “face-to-face dialogue,” and therefore, use tattoos “to engage the rhetoric of the everyday” (McNaughton, 2007, p. 133).  The penitentiary is not a public setting, but it is still a social one; the inmates’ choices of expression are limited, and so they turn to “non-traditional avenues for social communication” (McNaughton, 2007, p. 134).  To a lesser extent, this happens in Malaysia, as a form of self-expression, such as a way to “‘customize’ themselves to the form they want others to see them as” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 39).  However, since the average Malaysian is not incarcerated, they often have other ways to express themselves around each other which have been denied to American convicts.

The feeling that those with tattoos are not as good or virtuous as others is common both in the American penitentiary system and in Malaysia.  In Malaysia, tattoos are associated with the triads and prison, and make those without tattoos nervous.  Many Malaysian employers also will not hire someone with obvious, visible tattoos (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013).

The same goes for American convicts.  It is illegal to get tattoos in American penitentiaries, so the “model prisoners,” the “inmates,” will not get them; only the hardened criminals—those convicted of multiple offenses, those who demand respect because it is the only thing that has not been taken from them, those serving long jail terms—will get tattoos in prison (Demello, 1993, p. 12).  Because only the hardened criminals go against the system enough to acquire tattoos while incarcerated, when—or if—they are finally set free from the penitentiary, they are seen as somehow more dangerous, more rebellious, than other former prisoners.

Despite the significant differences in the overall cultures of American penitentiaries and the Malaysian public, both cultures’ views and practices when it comes to tattoos are remarkably similar.

 

References

Demello, M. (1993).  The Convict Body: Tattooing Among Male American Prisoners. Anthropology Today, 9 (6), 10-13. Doi: 10.2307/2783218

Lim, W. M., Ting, D. H., Leo, E., & Jayanthy, C. (2013). Contemporary perceptions of body modifications and its acceptability in the asian society: A case of tattoos and body piercings. Asian Social Science, 9(10), 37-42. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1445001008?accountid=32521

McNaughton, M. (2007). Hard cases: prison tattooing as visual argument.(Essay). Argumentation And Advocacy, (3-4), 133.

Schildkrout, E. (2004). INSCRIBING THE BODY. Annual Review Of Anthropology, 33(1), 319-344. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143947

Looking Toward the Future

Looking Toward the Future

Darcy Smittenaar

PSY202 Adult Development and Life Assessment

Diana Donovan

December 14, 2013 

Looking Toward the Future

According to Hoppmann and Blanchard-Fields, “young adults prioritize autonomy goals, whereas older adults focus on generative goals” (Hoppmann & Blanchard-Fields, 2010, p. 1433-1434) despite the fact that I am thirty years old, I only just a few years ago began to come out of that stage of young adulthood when I began knitting items of clothing for friends and family—I wanted to give something back to them and show appreciation for the things, both of intrinsic and sentimental value, that they had given me.  However, even though my knitting comes from a feeling of generativity—my desire to leave a mark (Mossler, 2013, Chapter 6: Identity Development and Personality)—the goals I currently have for the future are mostly those of autonomy; they will help me to become more independent, and to support myself should my support system collapse around me.

One of my goals for the future has come out of this love for knitting, but instead of a personal goal, it is professional, which I define as a goal which, in the end, is for profit, or for financial or some other intrinsic gain.  Another goal I have, a personal one—one that will help me to have a more enjoyable life outside of profit and money—is to buy a motorcycle, and an academic goal of mine is to receive my Bachelor of the Arts degree in applied linguistics by New Year’s Eve 2016.

Since I love knitting, it would seem that any goal I could have regarding that craft would be personal, but this is not the case, because I want to be able to make a profit doing something I like to do in my spare time.  I want to start an internet-order “hand-knitted” clothing business.  Specifically, I want to start this venture and be open for business by April 1, 2014.  I will measure my progress by going through the steps of buying a personal knitting machine (which can make clothing that looks hand-knitted, but a lot faster than I can knit by hand), applying for a small business license, deciding on a product line and how people can place orders, setting up a website, and advertising.  Once all those steps are done, being “in business” will just be a matter of waiting for the orders to start coming in.  I do not yet have a name for the business, but that will be decided when I apply for the business license.  I hope that the venture will be successful—that I will have so many orders, and enough profit, that I will have to hire others and buy more knitting machines to fill those orders, but at first just me and a single machine should work just fine.  As I said before, true failure or success will depend on whether or not I receive any orders, but as long as I stick to the plan, just having the business up and running—and the time to contribute toward fulfilling those orders—will be “successful enough” for me in the beginning.  Far in the future, if the business is successful enough, it may become a generative thing in and of itself, for I will be making clothes for people which will last longer than store-bought knitted items, and will also be personalized for them and the people they give them to.  That sentimental value will be something I will be able to provide should I be able to set up an online knitted goods business.

Something I want to do in order to better enjoy life—by saving money on gasoline for my commutes to and from work which can be put toward things like vacations and other improvements to my quality of life—is to buy a motorcycle (and my first suit of appropriate safety gear) by the middle of July 2014.  Sometime in the future, saving money on gasoline by commuting to work by motorcycle may help me to create a better life for my future children, because I will have more money to save for their futures; however, right now, it is one of complete autonomy because the things I will be saving my gas money for will be things that I want in order to be more independent.  Each month, I will save up for a different piece of gear: helmet, pants, jacket, gloves and boots.  These purchases will be complete by April 1, 2014, and I will then save for the motorcycle itself.  Overall, I anticipate the lot to cost no more than $3,000-$5,000.  I also plan on learning to invest in order to earn a bit more money, but I do not know if any of the investments I make will grow in time to buy my motorcycle.  I have never been very good at saving money, but now that I have learned how to make a proper budget each month, I hope that I will be able to stick to that budget and actually save enough money in time to keep up with this goal, since I will need to get used to the bike before I can commute all the way from my home in Mount Airy, Maryland to my work at Washington-Dulles International Airport in Virginia.  I also tend to set long-term goals, and then underestimate the time it will take to achieve them, also getting distracted by more attractive, short-term goals.  Since I will have a line in my budget called “Motorcycle and Gear Savings,” I hope this—as well as the promise of an actual motorcycle at the end of it, which I discovered is really fun to ride this past summer—will encourage me to stick to this goal and resist the temptation to spend whatever savings I may accumulate on shorter-term goals.  I will reassess this goal on February 15, 2014, and if it turns out that I cannot realistically save up enough money in the total amount of time I have allotted, then I will adjust the schedule accordingly.

My final goal is that of academia—school-related tasks.  I want to receive my Bachelor of the Arts degree in Applied Linguistics from Ashford University by December 31, 2016.  Like my goal to purchase a motorcycle, eventually, this goal may contribute to a sense of generativity—I will be able to “give back” to the world at large by helping people learn languages foreign to them and therefore communicate with each other—but for now, it is completely one of autonomy, because it will help me to find a career, instead of just job after job after job.  I have already received an Associate of the Arts Degree from my local community college, and I hope that enough credits will transfer from my first school so that my current 4-year curriculum can be shortened to less than 3 years.  Given that, I will meticulously keep track of my grades in each five-week class, do my homework on time and do each type of assignment at the same general time each week.  For instance, I will read chapters in the textbook the weekend before they are to be discussed for class, I will make my initial discussion posts on the first day of the class week, and do longer writing assignments during the latter part of the week, as well as before or after reading the chapters for the next week.  As long as I do not take more than one 45-day break per year, I believe I can achieve this goal.  I have never had much problem with academic subjects (except for history and chemistry, which I still passed despite my difficulties), so getting the grades for my degree will not be a problem.  Keeping up with my classes and the assignments may become more tedious and tiresome as the months go on, but since I will only have one class at a time (possibly two) on which to focus, I anticipate an easier time of it than I had with my Associate’s Degree.  If it turns out that I need to take more classes than I can in the next three years, I will adjust the end-date of my goal to the end of the last required five-week class.  It took nine years (2004-2013) to finish my 2-year Associate’s Degree, but that is because I was paying for each class whenever I had the money and time concurrently for 7 of those years.  I have since sought financial aid, so money will not be an obstacle—at least not for the first couple of years—in getting my Bachelor’s Degree.  Time might become an issue, but I have dealt with that problem in the past, and overcome it.  I do not anticipate having trouble overcoming it now.

Over all, in my young adult years, my current goals for the future are those of autonomy, like the young adults of which Hoppmann and Blanchard-Fields wrote.  These same goals, once they are achieved and after many years of establishment when I am older, may turn into ways in which I can “give back” to not only those people I care about, but to complete strangers as well.

 

References

Hoppmann, C. A., & Blanchard-Fields, F. (2010). Goals and everyday problem solving: Manipulating goal preferences in young and older adults. Developmental Psychology, 46(6), 1433-1443. doi:10.1037/a0020676

Mossler, R. (2013). Adult Development and Learning. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu

Considering the Present

Considering the Present

Darcy Smittenaar

PSY202 Adult Development and Life Assessment

Diana Donovan

November 30, 2013

Considering the Present

Out of the five positive events I wrote about last week, the first one I chose was renting my own apartment, because it is one of the most positive out of the five events I had brainstormed.  I am also more able to remember details, because it is a recent occurrence.

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s rings, and his Ecological Systems Theory explains “development in terms of the interaction between individuals and the environments in which they live” (Mossler, 2013, Chapter 2, “Perspectives on Adult Development”).  I was living alone for the first time in my life, so essentially, I was taking myself out of some negative interactions with other individuals, and creating my own living environment.

In making this change, I was able to work better within my own microsystem; having my family at one remove made me happier, because I was not constantly fighting with people I love over petty and insignificant details.  I was also better able to concentrate on my school work, and received my Associate’s Degree while I was living by myself.  I have not really known my neighbors—in any neighborhood—for many years, and I do not really follow mass media.  I have not yet had need of either legal or social services either, so moving into my own apartment did not change my exosystem very much at all.

It is the macrosystem of my life that was most affected by my move.  When I moved, I felt I had the room to think the way I wanted to think, to build my own opinions—or non-opinions about any issues that might come up, and to begin to piece together my own belief system, even if it turned out to be different from my family’s.

I moved into my own apartment only a year ago, so at age twenty-nine, I was technically already well into adulthood when this event occurred.  However, this experience helped me to regulate my behavior when it came to eating, finances and personal responsibility for chores.  I was also better able to concentrate in online learning, since the only distractions in the apartment were the ones I created or the ones by which I allowed myself to be distracted.

The other positive event I chose to write about was visiting the Netherlands for the first time, which I chose because, like moving into my own place, it was one of the most recent events, and therefore, one of the most memorable.  I also felt that it was the most positive experience I had listed, and that I could write about it in detail.

My grandmother, who was born and raised in The Hague, Netherlands, encouraged me to make this trip to see the country of her birth.  She also helped me to choose some places within the country that would be interesting to see while I was there.  She was originally going to go with me, but decided that she was unable to travel, due to problems with her joints.  Grandma’s influence on my vacation two years ago illustrates Bronfenbrenner’s theory that “psychologists need to look at family, culture, community, and the influences of the era in which people live in order to understand the circumstances surrounding individual growth” (Mossler, 2013, Chapter 2, “Perspectives on Adult Development”); because the Netherlands is part of my family heritage, I wanted to see and experience the culture for myself, and my grandmother—the family from whom I inherited my Dutch genes—helped me to do that.

Since I took this trip two years ago, I was already twenty-eight years old, but I had been trying to visit the Netherlands since I was old enough to understand what countries were—in other words, since I was a toddler.  I persevered, and finally, I was able to achieve that goal, and I know that I will be able to do so again, because taking the vacation was the reinforcement which rewarded that perseverance, and I want to feel that sense of accomplishment again.  I also want to feel the awe and inspiration of seeing new places, doing new things and meeting new people again.

Since I am studying Applied Linguistics in my online learning, actually having been to a country where a language other than English is normally spoken is probably a plus, and I hope to go to many other countries in the future.

 

References

Mossler, R. (2013). Adult Development and Learning. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu

Critical Lense - Not Understanding, but Appreciating, the Father: A Postmodernist Perspective on Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Darcy Smittenaar

Professor Clayton

EN224P

April 8, 2013

Not Understanding, but Appreciating, the Father

A Postmodernist Perspective on Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel’s postmodernist approach to the organization and structure of her memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, illustrates not necessarily her understanding, but definitely her appreciation of her father’s contributions in her life.  Through the study of various words, the use of the full “text” of her father’s life, the deconstruction of previously held notions about her family, and the parallels Bechdel draws between her father’s life and her own, she shows that she and her father are so alike that she may not have been able to fully understand him, but she could have appreciated him more had she known what she does now while he still lived.

According to Dictionary.com, postmodernism in the arts, such as literature, is “a style and school of thought that rejects the dogma and practices of any form of modernism . . . featuring elements from several periods, [especially] the Classical” (Dictionary.com).  This rather vague definition does not help at all in describing specific arts such as literature.  However, a more thorough definition can be gleaned from Literary Movements for Students, which describes a number of postmodernist works, including those from architecture, literature and philosophy.  According to the article, “Postmodernism,” “The postmodernist is concerned with imprecision and unreliability of language and with epistemology, the study of what knowledge is” (Literary Movements 616), which is something Bechdel does frequently in Fun Home.  Bechdel not only seeks to understand the definitions of various words such as the slang term “eighty-six” (Bechdel 106), and “lesbian” (Bechdel 74), but also, through her memoir tries to define her father—and through him, herself.  She is constantly questioning the true meaning of the words she uses, and the truth of what she knew of her father.  Through this examination of words connected both with her own life and her father’s, she is able to appreciate the struggle he went through as a “closeted” homosexual in the middle of the twentieth century.

Fun Home is a sound example of one author’s stipulation that “Any stability in a text is merely illusory” (Literary Movements 622).  Bechdel examines and reexamines the same handful of memories or spans of years, each time finding and revealing a new aspect of her father’s identity through his books, the places he went, and the people to whom he was attached.  Many postmodern literary works have “a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements” (Literary Movements 617).  Bechdel’s memoir is no different in this respect.  Bechdel pulls not only from her own memories and journal—which does not always include everything she remembers about the time periods in question (Bechdel 162), but also from elements of her father’s life and the world around her.  A whole chapter is devoted to her father’s obsession with home renovation (Bechdel 3-23), and another details the chaos of the period during which her father was on trial for providing alcohol to a minor and her mother was rehearsing for a production of The Importance of Being Earnest while writing her doctoral thesis (Bechdel 183-186).  Such seemingly disparate elements as these and many others dovetail together as Bechdel explores her father’s life and tries to find out who he really was and discovers who she is in the process.

This approach may seem to be contradictory to the postmodern idea that “there is nothing but the text and that it is not possible to construe a meaning for a text using a reference to anything outside the text” (Literary Movements 623); however, Fun Home and all of the disparate parts with which Bechdel brings it together, is the lens through which she sees her father, who was a human being. People are complex, and nowhere does anyone say that a person has to be completely confined to the flesh, blood and bone of their bodies. Bechdel's references to the books her father read and shared with her, the young men her father knew, and other things which seem tangential to the person who was her father are all, in fact, parts of her father--the text of his life, thoughts, and philosophies, however well or poorly Bechdel is able to read it.  Bechdel’s use of her father’s books, photographs and letters does not mean that she is trying to find meaning in her father’s life “using a reference outside [his] text” (Literary Movements 623); rather, she is including his entire personality, the entire text of him, in her analysis of him.  Without the inclusion of even the smallest minutiae she can find from her father’s life, Bechdel would not be able to appreciate him as well as she comes to do at the end of her memoir.

Another one of the “main outgrowths of Postmodernism is the disintegration of concepts that used to be taken for granted and assumed to be stable” (Literary Movements 625).  While Bechdel does not openly say so, she implies that the lack of positive emotional and physical demonstration in her family could have been due to her father’s homosexuality and his wish to hide it.  After telling her family that she is a lesbian, Bechdel receives a call from her mother in which she learns that her father has had affairs with other men (Bechdel 79).  Before this, she had taken for granted that her father was a heterosexual male in a family which was not physically or emotionally demonstrative.  This telephone call shatters Bechdel’s concept of her world, and in the ensuing instability she learns about and comes to appreciate her father as someone who silently supported her in her own self-discovery, and finds many instances in her own memories where her father may have been trying to tell her in his own way that he was a homosexual and that it was okay for her to be one as well—or that he knew what pain could come from homosexuality and that she might possibly identify with him as a homosexual.  Bechdel finds further clues that her father was trying to dissuade her from coming out at the same time as he was trying to connect with her over that similarity between them.  To Bechdel, her father is the original Icarus, falling into the sea because he flew too close to the sun of his own dreams, but in a way he is also Dedalus—creating a path and clearing the way for his daughter to discover who she is without fear, or at the very least trying to cushion the fall and save her when she makes the jump he was too afraid to take.  When she does take that leap of faith—discovering and revealing her homosexuality—Bechdel finds that her father “was there to catch [her] when [she] leapt” (Bechdel 232).

Bechdel’s “search for father and self” is somewhat repetitive (Goldberg 233), but the repetitions reveal more about Bruce Bechdel with every reiteration.  A more linear approach would not have been as effective in defining who he was, and through him, who Alison Bechdel is now.  Bechdel does not really uncover her father’s identity, however, so much as the person he might have been.  After all, no one can truly understand another person, and especially not posthumously.  Throughout the course of her memoir, Bechdel comes to realize that there is no real “notion of a universal truth” in regard to her father and who he was as a person (Literary Movements 625).  In that respect, there is no ultimate definition of her own identity either, so much as she is an ever-changing entity shaped by her parents’ pasts, her own memories, and her actions in the present.  Fun Home focuses on her father’s past to show how it has shaped Bechdel’s own concept of herself and who she is, which she truly comes to recognize by the time she has finished her study.

The parallels that Bechdel finds between her own and her father’s lives highlight the truth—however fluid it may be—of her similarity with her father, who she comes to respect more than she did before.  To this respect, certain pair of photographs is telling in its parallels.  The first, a picture of her father on the roof of his fraternity when he was twenty-two, was taken outside, the left half of his face shadowed, and his wrists relaxed.  The second photograph, this time of Bechdel and taken by her lover Joan, was also taken outside and includes a shadow on the left side of her face with her wrists equally relaxed (Bechdel 120).  She takes this as a clue that she and her father are similar of spirit and proclivity, if not of gender.  The observation of her father’s obsessions and the corresponding—if completely different or opposite—obsessions of Bechdel’s also parallel each other and help her to learn who her father is.  Bechdel’s father is obsessed with renovating and furnishing his home with antiques of all kinds (Bechdel 4), while she cultivates an obsession with certainty—or the lack thereof (Bechdel 141) and the desire for a more functional—or at least less-cluttered—living space (Bechdel 14).  Likewise, her father’s obsession with gardening and flowers, especially lilacs (Bechdel 90-92), was the trigger for Bechdel’s own hatred of flowers of any kind, be they natural or artificial, or just paintings (Bechdel 90).

Another parallel that Bechdel finds between her life and her father’s is that they both wished to wear the clothes of the opposite gender.  Bechdel finds a photograph in which her father—possibly for a fraternity prank—was wearing a women’s bathing suit (Bechdel 120), and Bechdel mentions multiple times throughout her memoir that she wanted to wear boys’ and men’s clothing as she grew up (Bechdel 221).  She hated wearing the barrette with which her father would insist she keep her hair back when she was young (Bechdel 96), and after her “coming out,” reminded him of her preference for men’s clothing when he acknowledged his occasional foray into the world of girls’ clothing (Bechdel 221).  By including this conversation, which took place shortly before her father’s death, as wells as the other parallels she draws between herself and her father in her memoir, Bechdel shows her newfound appreciation of him.

One final parallel between Bechdel’s preferences and her father’s is that of phallic symbolism.  Bechdel notes her father’s fixation on the shape of the obelisk, which he says “symbolizes life” (Bechdel 29), and subtly hints that this fixation may have been a clue to his homosexual proclivities.  On the other hand, when Bechdel was an adolescent, she was briefly exposed to the naked genitalia of a dead man, and was no more affected by them than the average person is affected by a picture of a cardboard box.  In fact, she describes the dead man’s genitalia as a “pile,” and although it was a shock to see them, she was more interested in the wound which caused the man’s death than in his sexual organs (Bechdel 44).  Even being a late-bloomer as she was—and not wishing for breasts either (Bechdel 109)—the fact that the maturing Bechdel had not been interested in the dead man for his maleness, but for the grizzly gore of his death wound is something that she only mentions once, but is important in its singularity.  Her father’s obsession with the phallic symbolism of life (Bechdel 29), however, in hindsight is highlighted in her singular reference of disinterest in the same subject.  This foil between obsessions shows that, while Bechdel could not truly understand why her father was interested in other men, she could appreciate that he was attracted to his own gender, as she was attracted to hers.

Alison Bechdel lost her father at a challenging point in her life, just after her mother informed her about an important piece of the puzzle that was Bruce Bechdel.  Her memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, in the style of postmodern literature, brings disparate elements of both his and her lives together.  Through her own memories and journals, the people her father interacted with, his obsessions and his possessions, as well as through the elements in his life that paralleled her own, Bechdel comes to appreciate better than ever before the man he was, even if she does not fully understand that man.  Through her reflection, she comes to see and appreciate the fact that, although he was as emotionally and physically distant as the rest of her family, he was always there for her.

 

Works Cited

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.

Goldberg, Wendy. "Fun Home." Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Ed. M. Keith Booker. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2010. 232-234. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 7 Apr. 2013.

"Postmodernism." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2013. .

"Postmodernism." Literary Movements for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Literary Movements. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 615-653. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 7 Apr. 2013.