The Gate to Womens Country Critique - Essay Example

The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri Tepper. INTRODUCTION: People have been trained to know what is morally right and what is morally wrong. But ifthis is true, why then are there are more people killing people from other places, because according their religion, it is an honorable thing to do. Take the case for instance, of the Japanese killing hundreds of people during the world war. Adolf Hilter also had a blind feeling that he was now on the same level as God himself during World War 1. In the women's country (Tepper, 1987), the men and women follow a set of rules and regulations and violations of these rules and regulation have been preset. One such regulation is that he men will have to fight with their bare hands their enemies. The enemies, in turn, agree to the gentlemen's agreement to fight with their right hand. Whatever is the reason for blindly following the women's country policies is unclear as of this moment in time. By proceeding with the reading of the next paragraphs, the reasons for the men and women's blind following of the rules and regulations and the company rules and regulations will slowly unfold the reader of this work's very eyes. BODY ETHICAL SYSTEM - WOMEN UTILITRARIANIST or CONSEQUENTIALIST. The women are consequentialists or utilitarianists (Theroux, 2007) because they fall under this description that is espoused by John Stuart Mills. John Stuart Mills had put up a huge framework for what is known as Utilitarian Normative ethics. A consequence, according to John Stuart Mills encompasses the intrinsic good, or good in itself of every action and inaction. The women are consequentialists because they espouse that the morality of their action depends on the context or consequences of such action. A good example is when the child is made to choose, at the deciding age of fifteen years old, to either continue mastering the battle techniques of the warrior or to return back their mother that they left when they were still five years old to serve her. This is because the women in Sherri S Tepper's Gate to Women's Country where the story is set in a world of fantasy in our planet three hundred (300) years after the nuclear war hit the United States Pacific Northwest. The United States post nuclear war had fragmented the United States into many districts that continually war on each other. But their war is fought with only their bare hands as is the tradition of our modern day martial arts contests because deadly weapons and weapons of mass destructions are not allowed during inter state wars. The women's country has a decentralized form of government where the women make the critical day to day community decisions for only the women are allowed be engrossed in the study of medicine, history and agriculture. Women live separately from their warrior husbands. The only time allowed for warrior men (the servitor non warrior men are castrated and not allowed to have sex with women) and women to mate is during the once a year festival. The children are allowed to stay with their mothers until the age of five. After this age, the boys will have to go with their fathers to learn the warrior life. The children are then made to chose, after experiencing many years with their warrior father, whether to return through the gate of the women country to their mothers as their mother's servants (which places them at low societal status as compared with choosing to be a warrior) or to remain with their fathers and choose a higher societal status of being warriors. Are always thinking of the consequence of each of their every actions and they make sure that all their actions have a consequence of doing well to everyone and making everybody happy. EMPATHY. Empathy is described as a person's ability to know by using the five senses the emotional situation of a friend, relative, patient, neighbor or warrior. It is a known fact that different persons have different states of mind, beliefs and desires where they are intertwined with his emotional make up. Empathy can increase the person's ability to heal the person both mentally and physically because there is a meeting of the minds or understanding between the women empathizers and the warrior patient, women's country neighbors and others. Simply said, empathy is that unique personal ability to put a person's self in another person's shoes so he can feel the same pain and misfortune of the other person. Another term for this is emotional resonance. MORAL ABSOLUTISM. The women of women's country are practicing moral absolutism because they follow their society's natural law that everyone, both men and women must follow standards set by the women's country society. The morality of what is good or bad is now compared to the standards that have been preset. If the act violates or not at par with the standard then morality has been violated. The absolute moralists are firmly founded on the standard that the death penalty that are enforced on criminals is morality wrong for it violates the ten commandments that states thou shall not kill. Absolute moralists also advocate that slavery is morally wrong. Dictatorship is also morally wrong according to the absolute moralists. The woman decision maker of women country despise child abuse as immoral that is why the children at the age of 15 are made to freely choose between the violent life of a warrior or the peaceful intellectual life of the servant in women's country. In fact, our society's modern day human rights theory is only one of the many forms of moral absolutism because this theory is based on the human nature and the essence of this nature of humanity according to John Rauls in his masterpiece A THEORY OF JUSTICE. ETHICAL SYSTEM - MEN ON UTILITARIANIST OR NONCONSEQUENTIALIST. The men warriors are not allowed to study medicine, agriculture or history. They men warriors are only allowed to read books that increase the combat techniques such as martial arts books and the like. The men let the women do all community decision making. They men warriors will have to live a life of war, war and readiness to war until their death. The do not care about what decisions to make or to increase their educational aptitudes because this is a woman's job. The men warriors concentrate their time and efforts to fighting and mastering their skills in fighting and to engage in physical games during their off fighting days. The men are barely literate thus they do not care for the consequences of their actions. Another warrior job is to bring up the child from the age of five to fifteen to a life of war and war games so the child, during puberty age, can now freely choose to continue a life of a warrior or to pass through the gate of women's country to return back as servants to their mother and be allowed to study books on agriculture, history and most importantly medicine so they can cure the warrior men who are wounded in battle as well as care for the health needs of women country. FREE WILL. The warrior men in the outer side of the women's country have chosen to follow blindly their way of life of fight, fight and continue studying how to fight in order to improve the warrior's fighting prowess and winning chances. They have pursued this course of action by implementing their free will theory for without free will, the society would be deterministic and so morally and boringly not interesting. Ironically, for an action to be moral if the person doing such act has the free will to do such act. But whatever will be the decisions of the people in power such as the women decision makers of women's country, what is morality wrong or right depends on how the person doing the deciding acts. The famous philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was one of the foremost promoters of absolute morality. UNIVERSALISM. Universalism means that such morality good act or morally bad act is such beause such act classification as to good or bad has been the same in most places on the globe. The borders between two countries have been broken down because in terms of what is good or bad. Universalism also includes the moral responsibility of one person to accept the freedom of religion of another person. The people of women's country have learned to accept the other states' or state divisions' gentlemen's agreement that if there is a war betweent he states, the fight will be accomplished using only their bare hands and feet for they all agreed that weapons of mass destructions shall be prohibited in order that the nuclear that occurred three hundred years ago will never be repeated. CONCLUSION. Based on the above data, the women of women country have been following the utilitariansm role as well as the men warriors and other international countries. The women are consequentialists because they are watching their every step or move or communications to other person because they want to make sure that the recipient of their actions, reports, messages to others will make these people very feel happy because they know that they had done a good and moral decision. The men warriors are nonconsequentialists because they are too busy sharping their physical skills in order to make themselves in tip top shape for the next battle. They are in constant and continuous ways of preparing for a war that may or even may not happen in their liftime. The men warrriors do not have time to think that whatever will be their actions and reactions. Each nation, including the small post nuclear war state of women's country, has its own set of rules of what is bad and what is good. This is what we call as morality. Different persons actually have different interpretations of ideas of what is good or bad. Universlism states that what is good or bad in one country is, in most cases, is also good and bad in another country. Empathy is a very good tool for everyone to use. Empathy simply means that a person has to ( not literally) put himself or herself in some else's shoes in order to understand what that person he is (not literally) replacing a better and more comfortable way of seeking the right goods, services, among others to offer the sad and or suffering client several alternatives to choose from. People who need empathy are those people where some of them have lost a loved one or have failed the United Kingdom teachers board exams or have been kicked out of school because of quarrels inside the classmates. The life in women's country, is peaceful and quiet. There are so many rules and regulations in the women's country that have been put in place in order to make the citizens live a normal, peaceful (women within the palace walls) or dangerous( the warriors), and life. The daily routines of the women and the servant males inside women's country and the normal day of a male warior has already been planned so that there is a feeling that life is a BORE. There is no thrill to do or try new things. The challenges then in the women's country are difficult to entertain because of the pre planned standards that must be followed. It seems like the men and women of women's country are afraid to venture out of their turtle's shell or comfort area. REFERENCES: Tepper, S., The Gate to Women's Country, Bantam Spectra, New York, 1987 ISBN: 0-553-28064-3 Thiroux, J., Ethics: Theory and Practice, USA, 2007 Read More