For this assignment I would like you to assess Gordon Freeman’s…

Question Answered step-by-step For this assignment I would like you to assess Gordon Freeman’s… For this assignment I would like you to assess Gordon Freeman’s short article and answer the following questions. Here is the articleKinetics of nonhomogeneous processes in human society: Unethical behaviour and societal chaos GORDON R. FREEMAN Cherrlis~ry Department, Universiry of Alber~a, Edmonton, Alto., Crtr~ada T6G 2G2 Received October 7, 1989 Human society is a structured system and processes that occur within it are nonhomogeneous. The methods of studying the kinetics of nonhomogeneous processes assist the definition and analysis of societal problems and the determination of ways to decrease them. The concepts of stochastics and deterministic chaos apply. The greatly increased incidence of cheating on university exams during the last two decades is a symptom of the widespread increase of ethics problems throughout North American society. While causes of the problem are many and complex, the largest single cause appears to be the decay of traditional (stable) families as the basic unit of society. Families in which both parents have jobs outside the home have relatively low stability, and they do not provide adequate nurture for the children. Inadequately nurtured children have a high probability of developing into unethical or unmotivated adults. Inadequately nurtured children also have a relatively high tendency to use drugs and to be sexually irresponsible. Policies are suggested that would reduce societal problems and have large economic benefits. La sociCtC humaine est un systkme structuri, et les processus qui s’y dkroulent sont non homogknes. Les mCthodes d’Ctude des processus non homogknes aident h dCfinir et h analyser les problkmes de sociCtC. Les concepts de stochastique et de chaos dkterministe s’appliquent. La frCquence grandement accrue, au cours des deux demikres dicennies, de la tricherie dans les examens universitaires est un symptBme de l’augmentation gCnCrale des problkmes d’Cthique dans la sociCtC nord-amkricaine. Bien que les causes du problkme soient nombreuses et complexes, il semble que la cause la plus importante soit de dCclin des familles traditionnelles (stables) comme unit& de base de la sociCtC. Les familles ob les deux parents ont des emplois h I’extCrieur de la maison ont relativement peu de stabilitC et ne foumissent pas aux enfants une education adCquate. I1 y a une grande probabiliti que des enfants inadiquatement CduquCs deviennent des adultes sans Cthique et sans motivation. Ces enfants ont aussi une tendance relativement forte h utiliser des drogues et h se niontrer irresponsables sur le plan sexuel. On suggkre des politiques susceptibles de rCduire les problkmes de sociCtC et d’apporter des bCnCfices Cconomiques considCrables. [Traduit par la revue] Can. J. Phys. 68. 794 (1990) Introduction views of events such as drug abuse by teenagers, or “insider What is a society? One dictionary has defined it as “the trading” on the stock market. The discussions usually conclude system of community life in which individuals form a contin- that the behaviour is not understandable, or it is simplistically uous and regulatory association for their mutual benefit and attributed to greed. However, methods of studying the kinetics protection” (1). However, such a definition is too imprecise of nonhomogeneous processes (KNP) require views that are for a focussed study of processes within a society. A more ad- long-term compared with the time scale of the specific events equate definition is Society: a cooperating group of animals under discussion. Events become understandable in terms of that has a pattern of relationships between its metnbers and the earlier conditions that led to them. which endures for many generations; it requires (i) communi- To make progress toward understanding behaviour in any cation, (ii) governance, (iii) economic organization, and (iv) complex system, the more important factors must be identireproduction. These four basic requirements produce, over a fied and less important factors must be temporarily neglected. period of several generations, other attributes of a society such When an effect has been identified, data are gathered to seek as tradition, culture, philosophy, and religion. conditions and other behaviour that correlate with them. For a A society is a structured system; processes that occur within chemical or physical system, after an empirical correlation beit are nonhomogeneous (2). The analysis and correlations tween causes and effect has been established, a detailed mechof human behaviour require stochastic models; predictions of long-term responses to long-term actions are probabilistic rather than precise. Furthermore, the concept of deterministic chaos applies to societal systems; certain activities produce a high probability of later chaotic behaviour. While each of us is a unique being, our minds have many things in common. Experiences of human behaviour over many generations have produced empirical correlations between human action and subsequent results. These correlations permit probabilistic predictions of future consequences of present acanism for the process is formulated and a prediction of a previously unobserved effect is made. Experiments are then done to check the prediction. The proposed mechanism might then be rejected or modified, and the study proceeds. For studies of human society one is limited to discovering empirical correlations between different behaviours then trying to discern the causes of the behaviours. The correlations are interpreted in terms of general mechanisms that are then checked and modified by further observations. Observations need to be made over several generations because there are important mental tions. Knowledge of this body of empirical correlations, and feedback effects, such as the transformation of the emotion of the ability to use it, is called wisdom. Wisdom: the ability to loyalty into the emotion of betrayal, which is followed by a discern probable long-term effects of present human actions, long-term change of behaviour that can pass a disturbance to based on knowledge accumulated over many generations. the next generation. There is no detailed understanding of the There is now great concern about the increase of unethi- mechanisms that connect cause and effect in human society. cal behaviour in North American society. Most of the recent However, important adjustments to current societal policies discussions of unethical behaviour have involved short-term can be made on the basis of empirical correlations. The conCan. J. Phys. Downloaded from www.nrcresearchpress.com by University of Ottawa on 01/10/20 For personal use only. FREE IMAN 795 cept of wisdom is therefore of more immediate importance in social science than in the physical and biological sciences. This paper about unethical behaviour illustrates a study of KNP in human society. The material is the condensed result of about 1000 h of study during a 7 year period. The ethics problem initially appeared to me in 1983 as an enormous increase in the tendency of first and second year general chemistry students to cheat on examinations, compared with when I had last taught the course in 1975. During the period 1975-1983 professors had also devised more elaborate ways to make cheating more difficult, but none had tried to determine reasons for the increase of cheating (some thought cheating was normal). My long-term investigation of the cheating problem evolved into a study of analogous events in society at large. In this paper the broad picture is presented. It has enormous economic and societal im~lications. At the end of the article policies are suggested that could reduce the societal problems. Ethics One must distinguish between “personal ethics” and “societal ethics”. At first thought personal ethics might seem to be the more important. However, ethics is a practical concept that has evolved over many thousands of years and the most basic rules are the same in societies of all races and major religions. Thus the unadorned word ethics implies societal ethics. Many difficulties in society are related to differences between personal codes and the code used by the society in which the persons live. In this paper I refer to North American society. The concept of ethics is subtle in spite of its great importance. Ethics is the civil equivalent of morality. The concept of ethics is crucial for democratic societies that have separated religious considerations from state affairs (separated Church and State). Ethics is based in practicality and has to do with the longterm survival of a society. A society must propagate or it will die. A society has needs in addition to those of the individuals in it. Ethics is a code of behaviour that tends to maximize the atnoutzt of cotztentment in the society as a whole. Ethical behaviour tends to minimize conflict in a society. The foundation of ethics is the Golden Rule: do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself. How has it come to be that nearly half of the students in elementary chemistry courses have a strong tendency to cheat? How has it happened that a hard-edged assistant professor can tell graduate students that people do not get far if they are too honest? The problem that triggered the study Within two or three years of coming to the University of Alberta in 1958 I had established a relationship of trust and mutual respect with undergraduate and graduate students. In particular, I conducted examinations with a minimum of surveillance, even when there were 200 students packed shoulder to shoulder in the lecture room. I used the honor system1 and the students honored it with few exceptions. During the period September 1975-April 1983 I taught only advanced chemistry courses to small classes. Then my turn ‘Honor system: students are told before an examination that looking at someone else’s paper, showing their paper to someone else, or using other unauthorized sources of information is not allowed, and that they are on their honor not to do these things. It soon evolved that students were only told this before the first examination in a course, and they responded well. came around again to teach general chemistry to large classes of 200 or more students. The marks of the first large examination in October 1983 were unusually high. I then learned that my colleagues had in recent years been setting two exams for the same session, and distributing the exams to alternate rows of students to make cheating more difficult. Graduate students were used to patrol the class room during examinations. I was offended by the implied innate dishonesty of the undergraduate students. The examinations for large courses in December and April are conducted in the gymnasium and arena of our sports complex, with students of several courses mixed together. Students of a given course are separated into alternate rows, and the professors are assisted by graduate students to answer queries from undergraduates in different parts of the large space. The overseers also watch for inappropriate behaviour in the usual ten percent or so who have a tendency to cheat. The marks on my examination in December 1983 were normal. During the next examination in the classroom, in February 1984, I pretended to work as usual on a manuscript at the front of the room, paying little attention to the students unless someone held up a hand to ask a question. However, I actually watched their behaviour. As time passed the number of collaborative interactions increased and became less cautious. At the end of the 50 min period, as the 250 students milled toward the bench at the front of the room to hand in their papers, some of the students exchanged information and changed their answers on the way to the front. The average mark on the examination was similar to that in October, abnormally high. (I discounted the marks by 50% and shifted the extra weight to the December and April exams.) When I gave the marked examinations back to the students in the next period I said “Last day we disappointed each other. You couldn’t understand how a prof. could be so stupid as to not notice what you were doing, and I couldn’t understand why so many of you think so little of yourselves that you would cheat. I have held back two dozen papers so that at least 10% of you will come to my office to talk about this. Some of the two dozen cheated, and some did not as far as I know. I want to hear all sides of the story. I also encourage any or all of you who want to talk about these things to come to my office, alone or in groups, to help me to understand what is happening.” Thus began a study that still continues. It has involved about 1300 students so far, roughly equal numbers of males and females, with a wide range of racial, societal and family backgrounds. Methods of obtaining meaningful data The mind is like a quantum system, in that probing it alters it. Wisdom is not greatly needed for success in the physical and biological sciences. In social science wisdom is necessary in the gathering and interpretation of pertinent data. We seek information about attitudes of minds in their relaxed state. If a question or an artificial situation excites a mind into another state, the answer obtained will reflect the excited state rather than the habitual one we wish to know about. As a Blackfoot man told me in a completely different context, “Anthropologists went onto reserves with tape recorders. They paid Indians for stories. They got stories.” Information for the present study was obtained as unobtrusively as possible. I have listened nonjudgementally to hundreds of students for hundreds of hours. I rarely make notes Can. J. Phys. Downloaded from www.nrcresearchpress.com by University of Ottawa on 01/10/20 For personal use only. 796 CAN. J. PHYS. VOL. 68. 1990 until after the student has left. If asked for advice I try to give that drives people to cheat their colleagues, their neighbors, it in a way that the student has to think for himself or herself. and their families also produces the confusion and loneliness I encourage students to start discussions with other students, that seek relief in drugs. We have become a drug-oriented soindependently of whether I privately agree with the particular ciety to such an extent that science funding agencies provide point of view. I try to get representatives of the full range of disproportionately large amounts of money for the synthesis opinions to come to talk. Some of the most aggressive people, of new drugs. Drugs have for two decades been unhealthily male and female, seem not to have had anyone listen to them fashionable within universities and national science granting before. agencies. These are symptoms of societal disease. During the first year of the inquiry when I had no idea about A strong tendency to cheat is a psychological problem that the causes of the massive cheating, the 250 students as a group stems from low self-esteem. It is a symptom of other personal were interested by the novelty of the inquiry. They openly and societal problems as well. My study indicates that the gave me information about their attitudes, their perceptions of tendency to cheat correlates strongly with the absence of a the world, their family backgrounds, the general attitudes of full time mother in the home when the child was growing up, students in public and high schools, and the perceived attitudes of their teachers and professors. Later, when a pattern began to emerge in the data, general information obtained from the full classes of over 200 students became repetitive and did not add detail to the pattern. Useful information came mostly from discussions with individuals and small groups of students who came to my office. (They often came on the pretext of asking about a laboratory report or a chemistry problem assignment, and then branched into comments or questions about personal situations or perceptions’of society.) until the young adult left home. About 50% of students whose mothers worked outside the home had a strong tendency to cheat, which is roughly five times larger than for the general student population before so many mothers had careers outside the home. The tendency to cheat was approximately uniform across the student mark distribution in my course. Students who obtained 919 were as likely to cheat as those who obtained 619 or 319. There was no noticeable difference between the tendencies of males and females. Many of the future problems of professional and personal I have also gathered opinions of people outside the univer- ethics are being generated now in homes by the inadequate nursity, in North America and in Europe, males and females in turing of children by their parents. About half of the children the age range from 18-70 years, spinsters and bachelors, hus- of two-career families suffer serious psychological damage. It bands and wives, mothers and fathers. The patterns in North America and in Europe are the same as those detected within the University of Alberta and its adjacent community. Information gained by “surveys and experiments with controls” is likely to be distorted by the artificiality of the gathering situation, so I do not use that method. My controls are my experiences with about 2500 students during the period 1958-1983. Identified problems The societal problems identified by this study form a network that permeates North American society. The mental state that drives a semi-adult to cheat on university examinations is similar to the mental state that drives an adult to embezzle money or to be unfaithful to one’s spouse. The behaviour pattern extends to corrupt business and political practices, to abuse of drugs and sex by teenagers, and to the extreme of the murder of fourteen female engineering students at L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989, by a severely psychologically damaged young man. Some observations The escalating problems of ethics in North America have the same roots as the escalating problems of drug abuse and single motherhood. President Bush’s war on drugs in Colombia and in the United States using police forces will fail because it is attacking the flame and not the source of the fire. Throwing extinguishing material at the flame itself does not put out a fire. The extinguishing material must be cast into accumulates during their first 14 years or so and causes antisocial behaviour during their puberty and later years. Much of the psychological damage centers in low self-esteem. An interpretation of the societal change Twenty-five years ago, many energetic, idealistic young women continued with their careers outside the home after they had children. Child nurture became a secondary concern. The young parents did not know that a child’s need for love is nearly as basic as the need for food. They did not realize that bad effects from inadequate nurturing could show up in their children 15 years later. As the children were growing, six year old Johnny seemed happy and was doing well in school. Ten year old Mary was bright eyed and tests showed her to be advanced for her age, or good in math. Yet many of them are having problems now in young adulthood. Why? While the parents were busy earning money for material status the children got treated more as objects. From the viewpoint of children “quality time” is a useless concept. Time, and lots of it, is needed. When parents make their children part of an external program, the children do not acquire high value as individuals. The much needed self-esteem does not grow. The hurt and insecurity that they suffer through being put aside gets stored away in their early years. It finally surfaces as an attitude that material things are worth more than people. One way to get more material things, which means to “get ahead” or “succeed in life”, is to cheat other people. In the words of some of my students, cheating is “creative acquisition” and “socially acceptable”. A few students believe that the the base of the flame, to stop the combustion at the source. word cheat is old fashioned and not part of today’s vocabulary. Once burning gas has left the source it is impossible to con- Two premedical students who have mothers with jobs outside trol. The source of the drug problem in North America is not the home unhesitatingly said that it is right for physicians to in Colombia, it is in our society’s desire to use drugs. Al- bill Medicare (public health insurance) for patients who do not though the drug problem is complex and has many roots, the exist. When asked why false billing is right they replied that if largest single root is the decay of stable families as the basic the doctors asked the government for an increase in rates and unit of society. It is also the largest single root of the grow- the government refused, the doctors do what they have to do ing ethics problems in North America. The self-centeredness to get the money. Can. J. Phys. Downloaded from www.nrcresearchpress.com by University of Ottawa on 01/10/20 For personal use only. FREEMAN 797 Most of the students are from affluent homes. About 60% of the 1300 have mothers who worked outside the home before the children were 15 years old. One young woman came to tell me that the age 15 is not old enough to leave kids at home alone. She thought that as long as the child lives at home, even if age 20, the influence of a full time mother is needed. Children mature at different rates. I have come to agree that 18 is a more reasonable age. We can now see evidence of psychological damage in about one out of two children of working mothers: drug abuse, compulsive eating, cheating on exams, not telling the truth in controversial situations, and other behaviour that society finds destabilizing. Why does this happen? It seems to be related to the decrease of loyalty of the mother to her child, to the delegation of nurture to babysitters or day-care workers. For a mother to have a career outside the home, someone must be a substitute nurturer of her children. Children do not adapt to repeated changing of their nurturers. The “make strange” reaction of babies seems to be part of our survival mechanism. Inconstant day-care attendants are a psychological threat to the child. The emotion of loyalty to parents, when damaged, changes to the emotion of betrayal. Loyalty and betrayal are emotions that have a great effect on our sense of security and well-being, on our psychological state. These factors are visible in many two-career families. Then why do so many mothers now have jobs outside the home? The most common cause offered is economic need: “It takes two salaries to make ends meet”. My study does not support that. Many husbands now expect their wives to “provide her share”, with little thought given to the effect on the children. Each successive generation of people is impressed by its advanced technology in comparison with that wh~ch had been available to its parents.’ However, the relcrtlve (logarithmic) rate of change seems to be roughly constant over each generation. When a man bragged to me that his wife is financially independent, I asked “How are your children?” His reaction was one of embarrassment, and his answer indicated that they lacked motivation. There is a growing realization that, as one European mother said, “The money that the mother earns is later given to doctors”. She referred to stress-related physical and mental problems in such families. Humans have reached this high state of evolution through specialization of labor. It seems that the majority of women were equipped by nature to be nurturers, and most men were not. A family functions as a single unit, and each member has a different function. If either your heart or your brain were cut out, your body would die. Children and motherhood devalued Two salaries per family used to be relatively uncommon. They are now more common because children and motherhood ‘My parents in the 1930s had labor saving devices that their parents did not have in the early 1900s. such as an automobile, a clotheswashing machine, a vacuum cleaner, and a gas stove. In the 1960s my wife and I had a television and affordable air travel that our parents had not had. Our children in the 1990s have disposable diapers, a computer, and a garage door opener that we did not have. The enormous amount of time and patience required to instill personal responsibility in children and young adults has remained the same. The concept of wisdom seems not have to changed during the past several thousands of years. have been severely devalued in recent decades. There are many complex chains of causes of the devaluation, including the fear of world over-population and the fear of nuclear holocaust. I will focus on what seems to be the most important chain of causes. The most basic element in it is the decrease of permanent commitment of individual men to individual women. What caused that? As use of birth control pills became commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s, women’s fear of pregnancy decreased and they became more accessible to men on a casual basis. If casual sex is available to a man, his permanent commitment to one woman becomes less likely. The use of birth control pills within the context of marriage can be beneficial. But in the era before birth control pills, the usual responses of girls to ardent boys before marriage seemed to be “I might get pregnant”, or “You won’t respect me any more”. The persuasiveness seemed to be in the first argument, but the deepest truth seems to lie in the second. The importance of the sex component in the permanent bond between an average monogamous man and woman has been temporarily forgotten. Nonmonogamous bonds are much weaker. When husbands and wives treat each other as being replaceable, they treat each other as objects. The rest follows: decreased mutual respect, decreased self-respect, decreased ethical behaviour, and societal decline. With the ready availability of casual sex, men lose permanent commitment and women are put in an unacceptable social and economic situation. This is the root of the present wave of feminism. As a protection against possible abandonment, women enter the workforce to gain dignity and material self-sufficiency. To assist women on the path of economic independence, baby sitters and day-care centers are used for the nurturing of children. Children are thereby treated as objects by parents and outside care givers, which produces psychological damage and later problems of societal ethics. The feminist movement has strong ties to socialism. Personal responsibilities are being transferred to the government. The tragedy of the situation was made clear when a lady politician yelled into a microphone “My children have been abandoned! My children are neglected! The government owes my children day care!” She preferred politics to her children. When personal responsibilities are transferred to the government, what will follow in the next generation is regimented, bureaucratic control of the personal lives of one’s children and grandchildren. An optimal society requires ethical behaviour, which requires that self-esteem be instilled into children. The human mind is extremely complex and delicate. Unconstant nurturers produce insecurity and fail to produce the vital sense of self-worth in children. They produce long-term bad effects in many of their charges. I have been examining the results of it these past seven years. Conclusions (i) The escalation of ethics problems in North America is associated with the decline of family stability and the resulting deficiency of self-esteem engendered in children by their mothers. (ii) The decline of family stability is associated with, among other things, the excessive use of “good drugs”, which indirectly increases the use of “bad drugs”. On television many ads push “good drugs” and many programs show police fighting pushers of “bad drugs”. Can. J. Phys. Downloaded from www.nrcresearchpress.com by University of Ottawa on 01/10/20 For personal use only. 798 CAN. J. PHYS. VOL. 68. 1990 (iii) The spread of the feminist movement into the heterosexual majority of society was caused by the decrease of stability of marriage, and the associated decline of the dignity and economic stability of women. Unethical behaviour against women has produced unethical behaviour of women. (iv) Centers of Ethics are a new cottage industry. Their directors seem more interested in getting grants of money to study ethics than in seeking the roots of ethics problems. They throw government funds into the flame, not fire extinguishing material at the base of the flame. (v) Children and motherhood have been gravely devalued by society. Many day-care-nurtured children grow into unethical adults. (vi) Societal difficulties can be reduced by treating the ethics problems at the source, within the family. Societal policy proposals The main focus should be to encourage factors that strengthen permanent marriages. The human and economic effects will be to greatly decrease societal ethical and medical problems. (i) Give substantial tax credit to families in which one parent is a full-time parent. (ii) Reduce the tax credit for day-care expenses of twocareer families. Discourage the creation of on-site day-care centers by businesses. (iii) Elevate the social status of full-time mothers. (iv) Restore the social value of male and female virginity until marriage. (Change many TV ads.) (v) Reduce the social acceptability of divorce. Make divorce harder to obtain. Make divorce a handicap to obtain a public office or a senior administrative position. (vi) Strengthen the enforcement of alimony and child support payments by divorced income-earners. (vii) Publicly portray the family as a single, complex, living organism that is the basis of a stable society. Emphasize that a family has needs beyond those of the individuals in it. (viii) Reduce the social and financial status of drug research. Point out that drug research feeds on the massive public consumption of drugs. (ix) Treat the advertising of “good drugs” in the same manner as the advertising of alcohol and tobacco. (x) Emphasize the psychosomatic nature of many diseases. Foster acceptance of the long-known connection between a healthy mind and a healthy body. The connection is true even though not well understood. Acknowledgements Many discussions with sociologists and philosophers about definitions of the terms ethics, family, society, sociology, and wisdom are gratefully acknowledged. I especially thank Phyllis Freeman and Norman Gee for helpful comments on several earlier versions of this manuscript. 1. Funk & Wagnalls. Standard college dictionary. Canadian ed. Longmans Green & Co., Toronto. 1963. 2. G. R. Freeman. 01 Kinetics of nonhomogeneous processes. Edited by G. R. Freeman. Wiley-Interscience, New York. 1987. Chap. 1.    2. Based on the results from the above table and your own assessment, please consider whether any or all of the conclusions that Freeman comes to are supported by his evidence. Why or why not? (If working in pairs, this question should include an individual statement as to your own opinion. Please indicate your own statements.)3. How do you feel about the study? If you were asked these questions in the same context or manner how would you feel? If a friend were asked these questions how do you think they would feel? Would this motivate you to want to participate in a study like this? This is both an individual statement and a group dialogue so ask questions of each other. Please use courtesy when engaging in debate, opinions are good engaging in mean-spirited actions is not.4. Come to a decision as to these answers. I would like a concluding statement – if you are working in pairs you don’t have to agree on a single outcome but you should come to some sense of resolution about how we should apply the principles of ethics.   Social Science Sociology SCS 2150 Share QuestionEmailCopy link Comments (0)