The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

1944, who are designated to complete a certain amount of missions at the base of Pianosa Island. Its main character, John Yossarian, a bombardier of a B25 aircraft and member of squadron 256, tries to act like crazy in order to evade participation in more missions and be able to return home safely. The purpose of this satire is to make a statement against the horror of war and the lack of sense of it. It also aims to take a stand against bureaucratic army regulations, the use of the army and…

Power A fascinating paradox of modern India was the rise to power and the turbulent rule of Indira Gandhi. She was one of the most politically powerful women in the world, and definitely the most powerful in India's history. But she ruled in a country where women lived in poverty, were neglected, and heavily discriminated against. How is that Indira Gandhi was India's prime minister for four terms while most other women in India were unaware they had basic rights? And why is that…

distinguish themselves from others and the world around them. In the process of searching for individuality, one is shaped by his or her environment. We see this in Leslie Bell’s essay “Selections from Hard to Get: Twenty–Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” where Bell shows young women who are trying to find their sexual identities. Also, in the essay “The Power of Context,” Malcolm Gladwell states that the characteristics of one’s environment will influence one’s behavior. In…

Fear can numb a person. It can make one live a deluded reality, facing more trouble avoiding their fears rather than obtaining what they desire. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley races past a comfort-driven ideal of life to the reality of living with no values. Technology within society demoralizes factors that make one human, and the divisions within the population isolate each individual. This aids in the development of underlying tones centered around the meaning of life and the incapability…

(Merriam-Webster Dictionary). A perfect civilization would entail happiness for everyone. The stipulation that keeps the child from being happy. Neither is Omelas a dystopia, the majority of citizens are happy. Omelas teeter in between which makes it all the more interesting in…

In the Christian Paradox by McKibben, he pointed out that “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (McKibben 272). Poverty is a cyclical and one of the cause is unexpected natural disasters. Nothing could be expected and so, like McKibben says, it is up to the…

I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less” (1.1.93-93). She communicates wisdom beyond her years giving evidence to a paradox. Another example is toward the end of the scene where she foreshadows the rest of the play with a warning to her now alien father stating “Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides: who cover faults…

In Politics of Piety, Saba Mahmood does an amazing job at portraying the women’s mosque movement in Egypt in a new, less reductionistic light as opposed to the conventional approaches used by many scholars of feminism and theorists of agency. While Mahmood’s book revolves around these popular piety movements of the 90s, this book is much more than just an ethnographic inquiry; it is a scathing critique of secular liberal feminism, which has at times been exploited to serve imperial projects and…

their labor. At the end of our construction term, we were able to marvel at our work. The church, being proud of our hard work and not knowing that we broke the sabbath, gave us enough money to buy each of us a burger from a fast food chain of our choice. In brief, the functionalist perspective would explain the actions of my community through ideas given from the modernization…

regarding the transitions from communist regimes in mainly Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Again, her conclusions in this case are not as important as to whether they further predictability in comparative politics. Nalepa’s focus concerns how and why there were peaceful transitions away from communism in a process called lustration: the revealing of public figures’ communist pasts (Nalepa 4). Through both scientific and theoretical models, Nalepa concludes that careful calculations…