Mockingjay Book Review Essay Example for Free

Mockingjay Book Review Essay Imagine the cruelest form of a dictatorship you can think of, randomly selecting two young and innocent children per state from their families and friends. This is the corrupt and power-obsessed capitol. The capitol forces 24 children, 2 from each district to get put into an arena where they must violently fight to the death; there are 12 districts. This is called the hunger games, a â€Å"celebration† rather than a punishment to remember the 13th district that attempted to overrule the capitol, therefore, destroyed. The treacherous and notorious hunger games are nationally televised to all the districts as a lesson and are an amazing and honorable task to the people of the capitol. When Katniss Everdeen’s sister is randomly selected, Katniss takes her place in the games and wins. She is then reselected back into the games the next year and forcefully taken against her will in a surprise attack during the games into what is now known as the surviving district 13. In the final book of the trilogy, Mockingjay, starts off where Katniss is then taken into the underground District 13, a secret remaining district which is grouping together as rebels to fight against the capitol. Mockingjay has captured thousands of audiences ranging from kids, teenagers, and adults. Mockingjay has an unexpected turn in fate when most of the trilogies fans expect to finally see Katniss in freedom from the games and to find her romantic life where she can live in happiness and peace. When she becomes the rebel’s leader and emblem in district 13, it’s unexpected when she is soon found to be trapped in the evil and manipulative ways of government type control again. The capitol had used a televised, violent, and an effective show of the hunger games to prove to the world how much power and control they had over everyone else, and to threaten others so that they will not try and regain strength against the capitol again. Now, districts 13’s rebels are trying to overrule the capitol by using the same savage like strategies. They are creating videos of their rebellious actions and uprisings and televising them as well for more supporters. Soon enough, Katniss realizes she has fallen into the manipulation of another group again, and is causing just as much anger, pain. Sacrifice, and war as the capitol themselves were. This book is as popular and similar in fiction, style, and audience as some of the greatest fiction stories in the world such as, â€Å"Harry Potter†, â€Å"The Chronicles of Narnia†, and the â€Å"Twilight† trilogy. They all take place in a separate fantasy world where its evil vs. the good incorporated with the usual romance affairs. The nasty tracker jackers that take over memoires and change them so people forget who they are, the beautiful jabberjays, so entrancing yet evil by projecting the screams of your loved ones being tortured. Katniss as the main character of course is like Harry Potter, or Bella. She is brave, important, bossy, skillful, intelligent, logical, swift, humorous, thoughtful, caring, independent and sympathetic. Her personality traits are amazing as well as her physical, she is enchanting and beautiful. Her looks are mesmerizing when she rides across the arena in her carriage and dress on fire. She is the girl on fire, the fierce and brave girl who started it all by saving her younger sister. The story is dark and twisted, yet mind grabbing, and fascinating. Its gruesome and detailed events are disturbing but so thrilling and adventurous you can’t seem to stop reading this famous and loved trilogy.

Candide and Redemption, Moral Truth, and a Just Society

Candide and Redemption, Moral Truth, and a Just Society Candide and the Theme of Redemption Voltaire view of redemption is that it has to be bought. Candide, the primary protagonist, lives with Baron before his expulsion. One of the teachings that he clings to is optimism in life. He is expelled from Barons castle and losses the girl that he loves dearly-Cungode (Voltaire, 1999). After the expulsion he sets to travel the world though not by choice by due to various circumstances. His journey and life shows that when a person is optimistic in the end they get saved from the sufferings that they have endured. His redemption from the misfortunes that he has suffered is made possible at the end when he not only gets Cungode back but also finds a family and farming career which makes him happy. What remains apparent is that for Candide there has to be a price paid for a person to gain back what was his. For example, he purchases the freedom of the old woman, Pangloss and Cunegode. The willingness that Candide had to purchase back this people indicates that he believed that to get redemption a price has to be paid. The other example is that in order to save her beloved Candide had to kill two people. Salvation therefore comes but only at a price that a person must be willing to pay. Candide and the theme of Moral Truths Moral truth as presented using the protagonist Candide is subjective implying that there can never be an absolute level of morality. By extension, this means that moral truth is when the good that a person does surpasses the evil that they have committed. For example, Candide makes a statement that if I had not been so lucky as to run Miss Cunegondes brother through the body, I should have been devoured without redemption'(Voltaire, 1999).. This statement indicates that Candide killed to protect himself and there he is justified for doing so. The other example is when Candide kills the monkeys that were biting the buttocks of young ladies. He is relieved and says that although he killed two people he has saved the lives of the girls Also, moral truth involves striving to ensure that the lives of beloved ones are improved whenever one can. For example Candide helps Pangloss, Cunaagode and the old woman with a pure heart. He purchases a farm and they start cultivating to improve their lives. When asked if this is the best of all possible words as Pangloss used to teach Candide does not give an absolute answer but sates We must tend our garden. This implies that the moral truth is simply hard work and improving life. Candide and the theme of Just Society The society is in many ways presented as being un-just. Candide and other characters are always placed in a situation where they have to suffer in the hands of bad people. For example Candide is expelled from Barons castle simple because he was found kissing Cunegode. It is not fair that Candime has to take the blame alone.   On his journey he is brutally flogged without a good justification. There appears to be a great gap between the rich and the poor. Those who are powerful take advantage of the vulnerable within the society. All this occurrences make the society to be evil. For example, women are used and the damped if they come from a lower social class as indicated in this statement; The old servants of the family suspected him to have been the son of the Barons sister, by a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through the injuries of time'(Voltaire, 1999). The other example of unjust society is presented in the way slaves are treated without mercy by people who are in power. I need not tell you how hard it was for a young princess and her mother to be made slaves and carried to Morocco (Voltaire, 1999). This statement indicates that being made slave was involuntary but the slave masters were indifferent to their suffering. Reference Voltaire (1999). Candide. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

Acid Rain 8 :: essays research papers

Acid Rain is a type of air pollution, which is formed when oxides of sulfur and nitrogen combine with atmospheric moisture to yield sulfuric and nitric acids, which may then be carried long distances from a source before they are deposited by rain. This pollution may also take the form of snow, fog, or a dry form of precipitation. Acid rain is currently a subject of great controversy because of widespread environmental damage, for which it has been blamed, including eroding structures, injuring crops and forests, and threatening or depleting life in freshwater lakes.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The problem of acid rain originated during the Industrial Revolution, and has been growing ever since. The severity of its effects has long been recognized in local settings, exemplified by the spells of acid smog in heavily industrialized areas. The widespread destructiveness of acid rain, however, has become evident only in recent decades. One large area that has been studied extensively is northern Europe. In 1984, for example, environmental reports indicated that almost half the trees in Germany’s Black Forest had been damaged by acid rain. This form of pollution has also particularly affected the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Industrial emissions have been blamed as the major cause of acid rain. Because the chemical reactions involved in the production of acid rain in the atmosphere are complex and as yet little understood, industries have tended to challenge such assessments and to stress the need for further studies; and because of the cost of pollution reduction, governments have tended to support this attitude. Studies released by the U.S. government in the early 1980s, however, strongly implicated industries as the main source of acid rain in the eastern United States and Canada. In 1988, as part of the United Nations-sponsored long-range Transboundary Air Pollution Agreement, the United States and 24 other nations ratified a protocol freezing the rate of nitrogen oxide emissions at 1987 levels. The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1967 put in place regulations to reduce the release of sulfur dioxide from power plants to 10 million tons per year by January 1, 2000.

Agamemnon a Tragedy by Aeschylus Essay -- polytheistic ideas, grecians,

Aeschylus’ well-known tragedy of Agamemnon allows one to closely look at the treasured polytheistic religious ideas of Ancient Greece and how the Grecians relied heavily on the thought of free will versus fate determined by their gods. With the play being set and written in Greece, the polytheistic lifestyle is apparent and unabashed as the culture of the time would have seen the play to be easily believable; the entire audience would have been familiar with the various gods and goddesses as well as being familiar with the situation that begins the play: the Trojan War. Aeschylus was also able to reveal the Grecian mindset of morality, revenge, and justice through the characters’ actions and dialogue; the idea of jealousy and revenge is particularly notable was it was common for one generation of a family to take revenge for a wrong done to them in a previous generation (Constantakis), such as Aegisthus as he seeks revenge for his father through the act of murdering Aga memnon. The Trojan War is now seen by some as a war that never truly took place, but those sitting and watching the play unfold would have seen the chaos and imagery of the battles told by Aeschylus as brutally truthful and real. The bloody war was fought over Helen who was taken by Paris to his homeland of Troy to be his bride; however, she was already married to Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother. The war ends as Troy falls and that is where Agamemnon begins as news breaks of the victory and all seems to be well as there is now peace. The triumph only allows for devotion to the gods to be shown as Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife and future murderer, immediately kindles alters for worship and proclaims that the gods themselves have sent the sign of good news starting ... ...shers, 2002. Print. Brunel, Pierre, ed. Trans. Wendy Allatson, Judith Hayward, Trista Selous. Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and Archetypes. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print. Bullfinch, Thomas. Bullfinch’s Mythology. New York: Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2004. Print. Constantakis, Sara, ed. Drama for Students: Volume 26 – Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Dramas. New York: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way. New York: The Norton Library, 1930. Print. Hamilton, Edith. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1942. Print. Liston, Robert A. Who Stole the Sunset? New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1974. Print. Shipley, Joseph T. The Crown Guide to the World’s Great Plays from Ancient Greece to Modern Times. New York; Crown Publishers, Inc., 1984. Print.

99 Cent Store Case Study Essay -- essays research papers

99 Cent Only Business Strategy v. The Competition David Gold, founder and CEO says the 99 Cent strategy is â€Å"to create the shortest path possible between the customer and the sale† (Rae-Dupree, 2004). This is important in deep discount retail in order to purchase close-out and other special-situation merchandise at prices substantially below wholesale that sell at prices significantly below regular retail (Symplicity, 2005).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Over the past two years, the company has suffered a $17.00/share loss on its stock (from $30 to $13.00) mainly due to declining operating margins (Domash, 2004) caused by over-optimism in the Texas market. Competitors were more deeply entrenched than their research had shown, and reduced earnings forecasts combined with declining operating margins were the sell signal for many investors in the company. Also, the need to upgrade their IT infrastructure to support expansion in its California base market was the second company downfall. The following is a summary of the company strategy: 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Focus on brand name consumables. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Broad selection of regularly available merchandise. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Attractive and well-maintained stores. 4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Strong supplier relationships. 5.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Focus on larger stores and wider demographic of value-conscious customers. 6.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Welcoming and Flexible ...

Description of Croquet The Internet Essay

In Victorian England, the game croquet was a completely neutral area where social ranking and gender did not matter, and about which people could interact without inhibition. For the past few years, it has been the goal of a research team of bright and visionary industry gurus, namely, Julian Lombardi, Mark McCahill, Andreas Raab, David Reed, and David Smith, to capture that sense of interactivity and bring it to the Internet. Their tool for doing so is Croquet, an open-source software system where information can be shared and converted into a three-dimensional framework. In the current paper, I intend to briefly define Croquet, present its applications and impact on cyberspace, and expound on its regulability and sociability as discussed by Lessig and Castells. Description of Croquet The Internet, for all its information and supposed interactivity, existed only as what Lombardi described as a â€Å"high-speed textbook†. Even though speed and quality of the hardware has improved drastically, the medium is still the same: information is displayed as if it was on a sheet of paper. Croquet developers tried to solve this problem and finally showed how they were making the Internet do its job differently. They opened with a 3-D courtyard dubbed the â€Å"Cirque du Croquet†. Croquet is focused on interaction within a 3D shared space and is a new open source computer operating system built from the ground up to enable deep collaboration among teams of users (Smith, Kay, Raab, & Reed, 2003). As such, it is fundamentally based on user space and users’ needs. Applications of Croquet Personally, I find it hard to imagine this 3D space as a true day-to-day working environment. It seems a bigger leap from the milestone we made from evolving from paper-based print to green screen interfaces, and from those old green screens to Windows. Then again, I am quite certain that it is not that big a leap to the generations that have been brought up with intense exposure to computer games in 3D environments – in stark contrast against Super Mario 2, Tetris, or Pac Man. I am willing to believe that this represents a valid scenario for the next shift— indeed, we have only been through a few generations of this web world, and the change continues to be markedly rapid. Inside Croquet, each avatar can make changes – move a virtual mirror, make changes to a document or spreadsheet, upload a picture and play a game of chess – and all of the changes are displayed to the other person in real time. Moreover, users can build a completely new space and move into it using arrow keys and the mouse. This new space can be either public or private, and users can place more information or graphics or even the link to an invisible page inside. Croquet’s 3D makeup also allows for more flexibility than existing online systems. Since windows can be tilted for a 360-degree view, it provides a perspective angle of flash animation. Basic paint programs can also render a new figure inside the software easily, as Lombardi (n. d. ) demonstrated by drawing a crude shark, which was instantly visible in a 3-D fishtank instantly. For a practical example, I Croquet may possibly be applied in a hospital setting. Croquet’s interactivity would be useful in fields like healthcare where poor communication is a major issue. A virtual tool like Croquet would give physicians a different way of organizing their information and test it out, while at the same time communicating with other doctors and modifying the data collectively. Moreover, since Croquet was designed as a highly modifiable environment, developers may intend and be able to add new tools and capabilities. Cyberspace Cyberspace is about making a different (or second) life (Lessig, 2006 – ensure that this is indicated in the references page). Croquet is basically Second Life, and much more. From an optimistic viewpoint, Croquet can be a private network. In other words, only those you want in your space can get in there. On the other hand, Second life sometimes violates the right of privacy of users by requiring them give their information to third party sources. Secondly, Croquet is probably more eye candy than anything else, but there are live snapshots of other virtual environments. This is the equivalent of bookmarks, but live pictures of what is going on at those other places. It would be great since the user would be privy about other people’s whereabouts without having to actually go there. In fact, Tanaka (2003) has expounded on this feature of Croquet, presenting it as an effectual means of processing hypermedia. He has specifically explored the concept of portals that pose strong promise in buiilding digital libraries of the future. In addition, in contrast with HTML, Croquet allows the viewing of spaces by users, and the movement of such portals. Users may also use these portals as bookmarks, allowing the memorization of this target space (Tanaka, 2003, p. 2). Lastly, Croquet is a complete 3D workspace that allows for co-creativity, knowledge sharing and deep social presence among large numbers of people at a time (Tanaka, 2003). On the other hand, from pessimistic view, I am worried about the ease of use of Croquet. Yes, the people who designed it could navigate and get around, but it looks a bit more complicated than Second Life. There are certain questions that are left unanswered at this point. For instance, are there logs of everything that happens? What about the ability to lock down certain aspects of the world. If every user can manipulate and change an environment can a student accidentally/deliberately delete a world a teacher creates? The answers to these questions point to aspects of control that must be explicitly answered, whilst the advantages of Croquet seem apparent. The degree of control that a user has on these powerful aspects of Croquet may partly determine how aptly users will utilize it. Regulability One other issue of the effectuality of Croquet is its regulability. For instance, the creation of â€Å"open† and globally scalable social computing spaces can cause some to ask the following: To what extent will we need to impose â€Å"rules† on people’s behaviors in such spaces? What types of â€Å"rules† are necessary? Who will come up with such â€Å"rules† and how will they be enforced? How can we find a balance between personal liberty and the need for regulating behaviors in â€Å"open† cyberspaces? These are but some of the sensitive issues that have to be explicitly dealt with before the full, successful launch of Croquet is possible. Life in cyberspace is regulated primarily through the code of cyberspace (Lessig, 2006). I think Croquet as it is being developed now does not have regulability as a central concern. However, over time, if Croquet spreads and increases in popularity, users will begin to realize the importance of and build regulability back in. Croquet’s users/developers may freely share, modify and view the source code of the entire system. In other words, users can make their own regulability in their worlds. The single biggest reason why Croquet will become the future operating system is that the users can run and modify the code that the worlds are built on and they can integrate their own application. While Croquet seems to be the perfect tool for encouraging knowledge sharing and creativity, a structure for regulating it must be clearly defined to be able to ensure its success. There may be areas that seem vague at the moment, including the rules that should regulate it, the enforcing parties, and the level of control that the system must accorded to its users. The fact that regulability seems to rely solely on the hands of users may be both risky and dangerous – and is an aspect that must be seriously dealt with by the system’s advocates. Sociability The spread of Internet is making social exchanges based on fake identities and role-playing (Castells, 2001 – make sure this source is indicated in your bibliography). Those of us who have participated heavily in online communities over the years have substantial experience in dealing with imposters, forgers, and the ever-present anonymous cowards who can disrupt meaningful discourse. Effective online educational environments must be efficiently insulated from such craft. The Croquet project team is looking into integrating federated identity management system. By doing so, Croquet users who use their own institutional login/password could access protected resources in Croquet places that are hosted by other communities. Federate identity management system would provide numerous benefits to the educational and institutional use of Croquet. For example, multiple institutions could cooperate in creating restricted access learning environments in which students and educators from those institutions could interact and learn – without the need for each institution to set up an account for all the users of such spaces. A side benefit of this is that Fair Use limitation provisions on copyright laws would allow copyrightable materials to be distributed in such spaces – a feature that is really important to educators (and is probably one of the main reasons that academic institutions employ the use of cumbersome Course Management Systems over plain old websites, blogs, and wikis). Conclusion The current paper began with a brief introduction of Croquet, presenting it as a new soft ware that allows users to interact within a three-dimensional shared space, and which seems to be tailor fit to user space and their needs. This new software will allow each avatar to make changes that shall be displayed in 3D format, in real time. Croquet also holds promise to settings that require intensive interactivity, such as in hospital settings – the software prospectively allows doctors to communicate and change data collaboratively. Both the negative and positive aspects of Croquet as a channel in cyberspace has been presented. On a positive note, it may be used as a private network, an effective hypermedia processor, and a channel that encourages knowledge sharing, creativity and interaction. On the other hand, it may pose risks against users’ right to privacy, and has obvious ambivalent problems with regards to regulability and sociability. In our library and information space, we can see how our special information expertise contributes to the success of our users and the teams we work in and with. If Croquet is inevitable, we had better be early adopters. In order to use this Croquet scenario effectively, in our own visioning sessions, we can use it as a framework to think about what our future workspaces, offices, and intranets will look like. What skills will we need? What skills do we already have that will increase in importance? How can information be delivered in this environment? How do we increase our relevance in this kind of space? Good questions and ones that we should struggle to understand now and not much later when we have already been immersed in the wave of change. References Lombardi, J. (n. d. ) Socio-computational systems, virtual environments, learning contexts, and the Croquet Project. Retreived on January 31, 2008 from http://jlombardi. blogspot. com Smith, D. , Kay, A. , Raab, A. , & Reed, P. (2003). Croquet – a collaboration system architecture. IEEE Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing, 2. Tanaka, K. (2003). Tea-time museum: Croquet as a browsing and searching environment for digital libraries. IEEE Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing, 12.

Influence of Confucianism on China Essay

Confucianism is a system of philosophy and religious practice that sprouted in China around 500 B. C. E, and which has had a tremendous impact on Chinese culture and politics since. It was created by a social philosopher named Kong-Fu-Tzu, who being convinced of his ability to restore order to the world devised a philosophy of morality and social duty. Unlike other political philosophies of the time such as legalism, Confucius placed importance on proper action through a moral code, not a legal code. This moral code was solidified with the threat of intense shame, both in the eyes of the living and in those of your ancestors who watch over your actions. But in codifying his philosophies in such a manner, he also set his own short-sightedness, misogyny and dated thinking into an immutable morality that plagues the Chinese to this day. It is in this way that any positive characteristics of Confucianism give way to the corruption of politicians and the serious injustice of the concept of filial piety as laid down by Confucius’ disciples. And furthermore, it is difficult to address these issues within the scope of Confucianism because they are the ways of â€Å"ancient wisdom† transmitted by Confucius, and are treated as immutably righteous. So, the injustice of Confucianism and the social disparity it promotes plagued China for millennia even to this day in some respects. Indeed, I believe Confucianism has had on overall negative impact on China. Confucianism, like Hinduism with its Code of Manu, has a hierarchical system that separates peoples into castes ordained by heaven. These castes are slightly less specific than in the aforementioned example, but they are still a very real dynamic in Confucian thought. Each person is considered to have duties to certain people or â€Å"filial piety† (Confucius, 45), a subject must serve his h/er ruler, a child must respect h/er parents, a wife must obey her husband. And though these relationships are reciprocal, as a ruler has a duty also to his subject, they are each organized in regard to a superior to h/er inferior. Rulers are seen as having a â€Å"Mandate from Heaven†, and to disobey your ruler is to bring shame upon yourself and your relatives. So not only was there legal repercussion for disobedience, but also the engrained shame of having disobeyed at all, even if you are being wronged or abused. Besides these stringent class divisions, women are treated as intrinsically inferior to men as a whole, making it exceedingly difficult for Chinese women. Male offspring are extremely important to a family as the Chinese divine heredity through the male parent and a grown son can be considered in breach of his filial piety, and thus shame his family, if he does not give birth to a son. As mentioned earlier, a woman must also obey her husband as part of her filial piety. To do otherwise would be to shame herself and her family. Moreover, a woman’s duty to her family demands that she marry whomever her parents see fit, which makes her beholden to both her parents, and to a man whom she did not choose as her spouse. In the Book of Mencius, it describes women as living through three subordinations, to their fathers as a child, to their husbands as an adult, and to their sons in old age (Lin Yu Tang, 743). All in all, Confucianism served to heighten the struggles of women in an already patriarchal society. Having been introduced to these inequalities in Confucian thought, it may come as little surprise that Confucius described a serious mandate of the state over the individual. Those in such castes as were seen fit to rule over others afforded themselves much power, and little can be done to challenge a hierarchy in which defiance means shame in the eyes of all your ancestors. Subjects owe filial piety to their ruler, and as such a ruler must be righteous in his actions, but is considered the clear superior to the ruled. Should a ruler not fulfill his duties properly, the peasants are still controlled by him. So, while the ruler can break his duties to his subjects and still retain the power to control them, the ruled must risk a great deal in breaking their duties to the tyrant. Thus, the concept of filial piety to ones ruler only serves to embed tyrants, and does not provide any real recourse should a ruler break his own supposed filial piety to the ruled. An interesting example of this sort of filial piety to a ruler can be seen in the Chinese â€Å"Book of Songs†, in which this poem appears in the section set aside for â€Å"folk and peasant songs†: â€Å"To be rejoiced in are ye, noble men, The foundations of the State. To be rejoiced in are ye, noble men; — May your years be myriads and without end! † (Nan-Shan-You-Tai, Poem 172). That such a poem might be considered a folk song seems strange as it seeks only to glorify noblemen. Such is the bias engrained in the poor that the noblemen above them were to be â€Å"rejoiced in†. Another of the most important tents of Confucianism is deference to, and respect for your superiors, especially your parents. Filial piety to ones parents is paramount in Chinese families, and there are many stories of children in ancient times that went to absurd measures to please their parents. Some of the known ways that children have been made to bend to their parents will borders on utter child abuse. One story speaks of a child named Min Tzu-chien who let himself nearly freeze to death to appease a cruel stepmother (Brians, para. 4). Another relates the tale of Wu Meng, a boy in the Chin Dynasty who purportedly let his belly be feasted upon by mosquitoes numbering in the hundreds so they would not feed on his parents (Brians, para. 5). A particularly telling tale of this kind is the story of Kuo Chi, who lived during the Han Dynasty, was very poor, and who cared for his mother and three year old son. He could not feed either fully, and his mother often gave a portion of her food to her grandson so he would not hunger. Kuo Chi having seen this, told his wife â€Å"It would be better if we buried our son. We can always get another son, but it is impossible to get another Mother. † Kuo Chi then dug a grave in which to bury his son, but upon completing it he found a pot of gold which read â€Å"Officials cannot take it, people may not steal it† (Brians, para. 6-7). Kuo Chi was rewarded for his willingness to sacrifice the life of his inferior duty (his son) in favor of his greater duty to his mother. While the level of truth in such ancient stories is suspect, they represent the way in which Confucius’ idea of filial piety could be bent to allow for horrible injustice and child abuse. Confucian disciples also instituted a National Testing System for political office. The purpose of which was to insure that rulers were chosen on merit and not on lineage. But though Confucius advised a thorough education regardless of class, it was simply not the case in much of China. Learning was important, but the poor simply could not afford to give their children the full range of education necessary to succeed in the examinations. China became a watered-down sort of Oligarchy where only those wealthy enough to give their children a thorough education could hope to see their children into public office, and disparity between castes increased because of it. Meritocracy can not exist where equality of opportunity does not. All of these things can be considered unjust, unfair and even despicable in some instances, but the notion of changing them is difficult while maintaining Confucianism because like most philosophy rooted in spirituality, to deny the prophet often is seen as denying heaven. The traditional Chinese were severely limited by Confucianism because they believed any deviance from the righteous way of life prescribed by Confucius could lead to great shame and sorrow, to complacency and stagnation. And yet, Confucianism has continued in China even to modern times, though the Communist Government seeks to be rid of it. New troubles have been loosed because of Confucianism including but not limited to â€Å"sex specific infanticide† in which female babies are aborted in favor of male children because the Chinese Government has placed a cap on the number of children a family can have. The strong preference for male children, fed by Confucianism, is directly responsible for this horror. What new problems these outmoded ways of thinking, thousands of years dated, will bring up no one can tell. But as long as the tenets of Confucianism meet transgressors with shame and derision, it will no doubt continue to have a negative impact on China as a whole. Works Cited Confucius and Jennings, William trans. The Confucian Analects. New York: George Routledge and Sons, Limited, 1895. Waley, Arthur trans. Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Yutang, Lin ed. The Wisdom of India and China. New York: Random House, 1942. Brians, Paul. â€Å"Examples of Filial Piety (14th Century CE). † Reading About the World, Volume I. 1998. Washington State University. 23 Mar. 2006, .