BORED? Come on in and knock yourself out with an Issue and an Argument Essay, feel free to rip it apart :) enjoy

[sle7en]

Issue Task

Prompt: It is primarily through our identification with social groups that we define ourselves.

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.

VVV Response Below VVV

I believe, it is identification of one’s self that leads to interaction with social groups, not the other way around.

I believe an endeavor to figure one’s self should start with that person. One should look at their self and put an effort to understand how they perceive the world and what they enjoy doing or dislike doing. This knowledge can only come through getting out of your comfort zone and trying different things around the world. This is a cycle which needs self discipline and recurrence but in the end leads to self exploration and facing one’s realities. And once you start illuminating you’re realities you will understand that you can’t make it all alone and are in help of others. This will mark the moment where you will seek and find others with the same agenda as you have and move towards a shared goal together.

You should not be associating yourself from the get-go with certain groups because of their wide accepted appeal. For example; you might associate yourself with people inclined towards liberal ideas and democrat partisans, but you should always question the goals of this group in terms of personal development and social benefit. Thus, you should always be asking if the agenda of this group overlap with my own and is it beneficial for me? Will the objective of this group benefit the public? This investigation will protect you from over conformity with the group’s rules and the comfort zone it provides.

Although, there are times when moving with the herd comes in handy. It is true that belonging to a certain group provides a safety zone for the members. This safety zone determines the culture of that group and embodies the power of casting out members who do not click with the group. But after a long period of halcyon, conformity kicks in and transforms the group vulnerable to outside fluctuations. One should be wary of the effects of conformity and must be able to spot the external changes.

To cap my argument off, I believe that one’s own self reflection leads him to decide which groups he would like to be associated with. The inverse, although may sound attractive, is not a dignifying trait to be possessed. 

Argument Task

 

The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Quiot Manufacturing.

"During the past year, Quiot Manufacturing had 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than at the nearby Panoply Industries plant, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts say that significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents are fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Quiot and thereby increase productivity, we should shorten each of our three work shifts by one hour so that employees will get adequate amounts of sleep."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

VVV RESPONSE BELOW VVV

The following argument doesn’t go without fallacies. To start off, the vice president doesn’t elaborate on the neither the nature of work of the two factories nor the amenities and size comparison of the workers’ of the two factories.

We can spot the first unwarranted assumption of the vice president within his own speech. As stated, an increase in productivity levels was never mentioned while the two factories were being compared. This statement seems and feels like a preemptively thrown assumption to gain favor.

Moving forward, even if the nature of work Quiot Manufacturing and the Panoply Industries plant are the same we simply don’t have enough information about staff levels and provided amenities. It may be correct that Panoply Industries experience a lower accident count, but the reason might not be shorter work shifts but the abundance of staff. Panoply Industries might have the luxury to substitute many workers between different tasks, creating a diverse and comfortable workflow so that their workers do not lose focus, in contrast to doing perennial monotone tasks.

Another point we should consider to arrive at a policy to reduce on-job accidents is the time each factories’ workers spend travelling to and from work. Rather than cutting down hours of shift, Quiot Manufacturing should be analyzing how many hours their worker spends in a day for transportation. This is another ambiguity which the vice president do not elaborate. It could be that Panoply Industries’ workers are provided with a shuttle service that expedites the transportation process, which in return saves the workers time to sleep. 

Looking at the argument, one can’t decide whether shortening shift hours is an effective policy to reduce on-the-job accidents.