The Core Values of the New Society - Report Example

PART A The core values of the new society are deeply entrenched in democratic rule of law. This fundamentally means that all citizens are equal before the law regardless of their class, political affiliations or religious inclinations. However, democratic rule does not always guarantee that life will be equal for all people because individuals determine their fate by the choices they make in life. In this regard, the state cannot impose certain inequalities on its people but it should deal with all citizens evenly and equally. There is nobody who is above the law, which is a creation of the people in a democratic society and therefore all people are supposed to submit to the law. Democracy is only served when people or citizens submit to the law they established to govern themselves. The economic function of this new society is based on a Capitalist Economic System which is based on the principle of free markets with the government not meddling in the affairs of the economy. However, there is fair and little intervention of the government which is usually geared towards protection of private property. The government derives its revenue from the economy where it utilizes most of the GDP (gross domestic product). This is only fair because the government finances welfare, education, health, defense among other schemes of national importance. Bearing in mind that the society has recently emerged from a revolution and it is practically trying to stand on its feet, much investment is needed to stimulate growth. The shortcoming of this system is creation of inequalities in terms of wealth and income. This invariably provides the impetus for economic growth and wealth creation. The justice system functions through fair and adjudication of the criminal system by using courts to arbitrate on different matters. In any democratic society, there has to be a powerful legal system which functions as a massive fortress against popular sovereignty. In the past before any form of civilization existed, people used to take matters into their own hands by doing what they pleased for example killing, looting and all sorts of evil. When various laws are broken, the judiciary through courts has the mandate to hear and determine different the fate of law breakers. Most of the suits are criminal cases and many of the defendants end up in jail or paying hefty fines as a form of restitution. However, in the spirit of rebuilding our nation, a new form of justice is being practiced which is based on retribution. It is incumbent upon each citizen of the land to recognize law and authority based on societal expectations besides morality of individuals. The government has the moral authority to proscribe and put in place some guidelines and principles which should be followed by its citizens for a peaceful coexistence. This being the case then, the government has three different arms which have different functions and it is the legislature which is concerned with the formulation and enacting of new laws of the land. However, parliament is not the only tool for creating laws. The laws emanating from parliament are called Acts of Parliament whereas on the other hand, the courts decide how the already existing laws are to be applied through interpretation. From the court’s decision common law arises. PART B Dealing with Crisis In dealing with famine and drought crises, it is important to examine the part played by cultural ecology in the broader political economy of social systems’ context and understand how and the manner in which these social systems and formation reproduce them. Various geographic approaches suffer from profound ahistoricism on the one hand, while on the hand, they have an incessant inability of relativity to adaptive behavior in the broad socio-economic context upon which they are grounded. These two identified weaknesses are pernicious and pronounced in human ecology leading to the perception of change as a disturbance. In this regards, it is like the environment is taken to be the determinant feature of behavior rules such that adoption of a production system leads to the intellectual problem becoming subject to environmental signals for change. In order to find the solutions to famine and drought therefore, it is important to change perception about means of production through controlling our environment to our advantage. This approach is in accordant with Marx’s concept of exploitation and Rawls’ theory of justice which both place man in control of the means of production to his advantage. This approach is also in line with Stuart Mill’s principle of production which must leave everyone happy. Establishing a consensus in a pluralist society which is governed through democratic rule is quite challenging and especially when emerging from a civil war. In order to suppress civil war among warring parties in a society, it is important to suppress individual and selfish ambitions by the ruling elite for the pursue of communal interests that are of priority. Rawls through his theory of overlapping consensus is of the opinion that reconciliation rationally reintegrates personal beliefs into the more tolerant and inclusive general will. This approach emphasizes the importance of normative consideration of normal citizens which is actualized through a compromise of the political system in place. Although neither general will nor overlapping consensus deals realistically with political dissent (civil war), the conception of individualistic interests as an interconnected theme is important is demonstration of consensus potential in the pluralistic environment of democratic governance. All these mean that civil war can only be stopped through a sort of compromise by the ruling elite (political class) in order to accommodate divergent views and demands of warring factions in the society. With regards to finding solution to the economic crisis, it is important to overcome the shortcomings of the current modes of production besides emphasizing the importance of time which is embedded in changes of scale. Changes of scale on the other hand are found in the process through which low risk; autarkic populations are subsumed by bigger systems which are often referred to as capture and enlargement systems. On the contrary, loss of autonomy by small and local systems as they integrate into coherent but developed integrated networks which are referred to as changing structure of permanence becomes a problem. When a society is enlarging economically, new and rough patterns of selecting and evaluating resources usually replace the old and finer patterns. In actual sense, diversity is replaced by specialization while natural risk is compounded with economic risk. In this regard, it simply means that the society must evolve with time to embrace the present conditions whereby competition in the global perspective is based on specialization on a particular service or good. Work Cited Soccio Douglas J. Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Cengage Learning, 2012 Read More