Reflective diary of week 3 by Ngu Wah Aye

During the week 3 lecture day, Prof. Evengelos discussed a lot of interesting topics related with the ethical issues and I have got the newly thoughts from that class. Among those many others interesting topics, I would like to highlight and reflect the most interesting topics for this week. First of all, our Prof. Evengelos discussed about the ethical issue of AIU students that is they can see that some of the students are not actually underprivileged. Actually, he was questioning the students that it is ethical or not. This is because the aim of the AIU founder is to help the underprivileged or disadvantage students in education and one day, they all need to help the poor people in their respective environment in return. Then, our professor explained his thoughts about it and I really impressed on his answer and I also have the same thoughts as what he said. Actually, may be some of the AIU students are not really underprivileged but I am sure one thing that is all the AIU students well understand from the heart that the mission, vision and core value of AIU. Moreover, it is strongly attached in our heart that we must have to help the people who are in need of help. I am saying it for sure because as I am also a student of AIU and I feel the same way as other AIU students feel on our AIU and besides, we all know the thankfulness of our founder and one day, we should return this thankfulness that is to fulfill our founder wish. So, in my point of view, being underprivileged or not is not a main factor unless we know or responsibility and not harming other people. What if AIU provide the real underprivileged students and they do not know their responsibility or they are only looking for themselves? Can we say that it is ethical? Therefore, I believe that it is ethical unless we know what is right and what is wrong to do. The second part that he discussed is ancient Greek philosophical thoughts and great philosophers of the history such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and so on. Especially, he focused on the Socrates questioning method and even they performed a kind of role play in the class. I think it is interesting and it helps us to understand more about Socates’ philosophy. At the end of the session, he made a question for us that “Can we say that humanity is progressing?” and he finished the class by giving us a bundle of thoughts concerning with this question. Actually, we, students are not in the position to discuss about humanity is progressing or deteriorating as it is still questioning about it in current. But, let me share my point of view on humanity in here. As I am very interested relating with this topic and I am also confusing about it, I did research on google and most of the website says that it is deteriorating according to their calculation and research. When I look around the environment and news, I can see depressively that a lot of inhumanity issues are there. Yes, there were a lot of serious wars in our past but these problems are becoming worse and worse because they are using dangerous and latest chemical equipment to kill each other. Now, they have the scary idea that if they want something, they won’t be hesitating to take other people life and they are thinking as killing someone is not the serious issue. We can see in our society also, there is no law for people with authority, rich people do not have the idea of sharing their belongings to poor people and they are easily lying to each other to develop their wealth. Moreover, according to the study, the raping cases are also increasing day by day. Besides, in the first trimester, I have learnt about capitalism in SLA class and nowadays, many of the countries are using capitalist system, and because of that capitalism, poor people remaining poor and poor but rich people becoming rich and rich. There are a lot of cases left that are unstudied, and therefore, I am not so sure about that humanity is progressing or not. The next day in the tutorial class, we had a class activity and that was to discuss about the ethical issue that is “Lying is less harmful than killing”. Of course both of them are harmful and unethical, it is difficult to weight which one is more or less harmful. For me, personally, I think lying is less harmful than killing. The reason is no one is allowed to take other person life for any reason regarding by the religions. When someone kills a person, that person life is finished and it can never get back again. If someone did a big crime, for example killing, although we want to take his/her life back, but normal people cannot give the death penalty except by the law or god. I believe that it is just like a vice versa, if killing is unethical, killing to the murder is also unethical because we are doing the same thing that the murder did. I am not saying that lying is more ethical but when you lied to someone, you can apologize or admit your crime and ask for forgiveness. But when you killed, you cannot do anything anymore. Moreover, lying to someone can probably have the good purposes like white lies, but killing cannot have the good aim. But sometimes, lying can lead to killing. So, it will take a long time to discuss about it as everyone has a different view. For me, I think lying is harmful than killing.

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