Technical Description: 4 page paper. Persuasive Essay.
In this paper, I want you to discuss your ideas on what would be a meaningful and inspiring destiny for the human race to pursue. The idea here is that if we do not define our goals, then discussion of what is "right" or "ethical" cannot really progress. If we can agree on a goal, or destiny, then we can discuss implementation. If we cannot agree on a destiny, then at least we can focus our discussion at the proper level of disagreement.
This paper will be somewhat more structured than the childhood memory paper, as it will require you to present an idea and try to back up your claim that this is meaningful with persuasive evidence. In this paper, I do not really care where the evidence comes from, it can be personal experience, scientific research, newpaper articles, whatever. All that I care about it that it is relevant, broadly convincing, and helps to make your point. Obviously, if you use someone else's ideas (from a website or a book or something), you will need to include citations as we discussed in class.
This is the first paper where I want you to demonstrate an ability to investigate your basic assumptions in an interesting way. Hence, if you want to say that our destiny is to maximize human happiness for the greatest number of people possible, I will want you to think about why happiness is a worthwhile goal, why we should only care about humans (notice that I am using "should" here; I am rarely pursuaded by arguments that rely on looking just at what we do), why is it better to have a lot of happy people than it is to have just a few, and so on. If you want to claim that our destiny is to give glory to God, then I want you to ask what is it about God that makes giving Him/Her/It/Them glory a meaningful thing? If we could do what He/She/It/They does, would it suddenly be meaningful to give glory to ourselves? Does creating a Universe suddenly make you worthy of praise? What does God bring to the table that humans don't? Does the fact that people believe in many different interpretations of God, or don't believe in God at all, change whether this can be a goal for humankind? I won't ask you to deal with the question of whether God exists, as this is only a 4-page paper, so you can just assume existence and then tell me why this matters. If you are going to suggest that our destiny is to conquer the universe, then tell me how this process brings meaning to our lives that wouldn't be there otherwise. If you want to suggest that Ishmael had it right, and our destiny is to act as teachers and role models for future civilizations of non-humans, then how does this add meaning to our lives? And so on.
I will be grading based on: writing basics (spelling, grammar, etc), style (does the writing flow well, are the sentences written in an interesting, nonrepetitive way, etc.), organization (can I follow your argument easily and does it make sense; is it well thought-out and laid-out), content (do you provide meaningful examples and evidence that back up your ideas), and depth of thought (is there stuff in the essay that makes me think about things in a new and interesting way; is the argument reasonable and in some sense objectively correct).
Enjoy!
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