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People's behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
We live in a world divided in to positive and negative influences. External factors have always had an impact on man and history shows that many a great or flawed men were a product of these influences. Ultimately, an individual, although being told to remain unique, will tend to follow and adapt some form of behavior determined by society. This stems from the Darwenian theory of survival of the fittest; in the global arena today, those are people that absorb all external positive influences and create something unique to reach their personal acme.
Entrepreuners have a tendency to convert their deleterious past and create a unique experience for customers in their products. Consider Steve Jobs in his 2005 speech in Stanford. His past was bleak as he could not afford to get in to higher education and ultimately led him to drop out of school. The adopted status slapped on his forehead drove him to prove the world wrong about being abandoned by his mother and thus his zest for computing was born. As a result, in latter years as CEO of Apple Inc, he was reported to be adamant on his decisions, swaying little to compromises on his visions and outlook of his products. This stubborness was derived from "a need to be in control", as quoted by Tim Cook (the current CEO of Apple), something he did not have in his earlier years.
Similarly, while Jobs may have created ingenous products using his past forces, Adolf Hitler used these very forces to the other end of the spectrum. In his book Mein Kampf, he details about his experiences with Jewish population and the control they held in Germany at the time. His inital attitude towards the Jews were not of scorn; his outline of mass media in the country at the time (and rightly so) was the Jewish propaganda that led to elections of their candidates to parliament. The sense of losing his country to false propaganda in his eyes was too much to bear and his later actions dwelled in mass murder as a result of it. That is not to justify his actions, however we can see as a partriot, his love for the country blinded his view on humanity and led him to eschew any survivors under his regime.
Admittedly, people are not robots and this logic does not apply to all. Many past heros have not been swayed by society's forces and instead have developed their own sense of belonging. Martin Luther King Jr. aptly demonstrated this with his Civil Rights Movement in 1955, which ultimately led to the end of segregation in the U.S. His behavior was not determined by external forces, but rather an inner feeling of belonging and love for people. His whole agenda was based around what he thought was right and was later confirmed by the mass of people that gathered to share and promulgate this view.
Thus, it can be assessed that society tends to influence people with good or bad experiences. However, as individuals, we have a choice on how to effectively use these to our advantage. Like Jobs, we could convert our weak past in to a strong and healthy future or as Hitler let external influence drive us to obscure our view on life. Although extreme in examples, we can see the effects of society and it's forces and thus must strive to remain indivualistic as much as possible. As John F. Kennedy once said, "Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men".
People's behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
We live in a world divided in to positive and negative influences. External factors have always had an impact on man and history shows that many a great or flawed men were a product of these influences. Ultimately, an individual, although being told to remain unique, will tend to follow and adapt some form of behavior determined by society. This stems from the Darwenian theory of survival of the fittest; in the global arena today, those are people that absorb all external positive influences and create something unique to reach their personal acme.
Entrepreuners have a tendency to convert their deleterious past and create a unique experience for customers in their products. Consider Steve Jobs in his 2005 speech in Stanford. His past was bleak as he could not afford to get in to higher education and ultimately led him to drop out of school. The adopted status slapped on his forehead drove him to prove the world wrong about being abandoned by his mother and thus his zest for computing was born. As a result, in latter years as CEO of Apple Inc, he was reported to be adamant on his decisions, swaying little to compromises on his visions and outlook of his products. This stubborness was derived from "a need to be in control", as quoted by Tim Cook (the current CEO of Apple), something he did not have in his earlier years.
Similarly, while Jobs may have created ingenous products using his past forces, Adolf Hitler used these very forces to the other end of the spectrum. In his book Mein Kampf, he details about his experiences with Jewish population and the control they held in Germany at the time. His inital attitude towards the Jews were not of scorn; his outline of mass media in the country at the time (and rightly so) was the Jewish propaganda that led to elections of their candidates to parliament. The sense of losing his country to false propaganda in his eyes was too much to bear and his later actions dwelled in mass murder as a result of it. That is not to justify his actions, however we can see as a partriot, his love for the country blinded his view on humanity and led him to eschew any survivors under his regime.
Admittedly, people are not robots and this logic does not apply to all. Many past heros have not been swayed by society's forces and instead have developed their own sense of belonging. Martin Luther King Jr. aptly demonstrated this with his Civil Rights Movement in 1955, which ultimately led to the end of segregation in the U.S. His behavior was not determined by external forces, but rather an inner feeling of belonging and love for people. His whole agenda was based around what he thought was right and was later confirmed by the mass of people that gathered to share and promulgate this view.
Thus, it can be assessed that society tends to influence people with good or bad experiences. However, as individuals, we have a choice on how to effectively use these to our advantage. Like Jobs, we could convert our weak past in to a strong and healthy future or as Hitler let external influence drive us to obscure our view on life. Although extreme in examples, we can see the effects of society and it's forces and thus must strive to remain indivualistic as much as possible. As John F. Kennedy once said, "Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men".
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