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  • Essay / Biographies of Hegemony by Karen Ho: Summary and Study of Moral Values ​​

    In Biographies of Hegemony, Karen Ho explains how institutions such as universities and law firms instill undeniably distorted values ​​in their students and scholarship workers. In Hard to Get: 20-Something women and the paradox of Sexual Freedom by Leslie Bell, the question of the system's propensity to create selfish values ​​further comes up. The text shows how institutions and other systems in society have the capacity to instill certain values ​​in people. However, among young people in the process of self-discovery, some of these values ​​can be detrimental because they are only intended to serve these systems. However, not all of these values ​​are equally dangerous. This article will thus seek, through a comparison of the two texts, to show that the selfish values ​​of these systems can benefit society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Every human being adheres to certain values ​​that guide them throughout their lives. Values ​​are the qualities that individuals or groups consider important and to which they aspire. These values ​​are formed throughout people's lives and come from family, friends, religion and society in general. According to Karen Ho, Ivy League universities and Wall Street culture can rightly be accused of taking an intrinsic human quality and quantifying it into value; the ability to make money in a competitive environment. By aspiring to achieve this value, students and young workers in this system have only perpetuated the same system by ensuring that more young people in the future will strive to achieve the success of their predecessors. The same accusation can rightly be extrapolated to the manner in which society has embraced the currently promulgated notion of female sexual liberation. Indeed, society expects women in the 20-year-old age group to "describe this period of their lives as one in which they were relatively free from social restrictions and prohibitions in matters of sexuality and relationships” (Bell 29). Society justifies this accusation since it has invariably attempted to quantify the inherent traits of women and presented the success of both as dissonance. For example, society embraced two intrinsic human characteristics: compassion and sexuality and used them as tools to evaluate the quality of femininity. Women who aspire to be seen as compassionate are now considered “good girls,” while those who seek sexual liberation are valued as “independent women.” Such quantification is not wrong in itself; problems arise when the same society alludes to the incompatibility of the two values ​​in the same woman. In effect, this results in a conflict of values ​​in which women seeking the realization of one directive must compromise on the other. Leslie demonstrates this by saying, “Particularly for women with fragile self-esteem, the bad girl strategy seemed to provide a strong identity. But rather than feeling strong and protected, some bad girls felt alone and vulnerable” (Bell 31). The author describes this phenomenon as splitting, by which a young woman devotes her identity to the archetype of one or the other directive. The aforementioned conflict of values ​​is amplified by the fact that each directive is replete with both positive and negative connotations. Leslie Bell claims that womenContemporary women are forced to choose strength, independence, and control over vulnerability, desire, and belonging (Bell 62). Therefore, when young women crave a directive because of its implicit positive affect, they inevitably become victims of the other's negative affect. The creation of values ​​is paramount in any society because it guides individuals on how to act and adds value to the institution of life. . Values ​​are largely created from norms and traditions that have worked best throughout human history. However, since human progress is possible only through the social relations of dissenting disciplines, different institutions have professed the necessity of certain values ​​over others. In the example of Karen Ho, the rarity of certain human qualities was at the origin of the creation of the values ​​of the Ivy League and Wall Street. In these institutions, the rarity of the mindset with raw intelligence, competitiveness, risk propensity, eloquence, and confidence informed the creation of the value “intelligence.” As a result, young people naturally possessing some of the above characteristics would strive to compensate for what they lacked in school in order to eventually join the group of other “smart” individuals. As the author explains, “through the recruiting process, investment banks define the notion of what it takes to succeed in the age of global capitalism” (Ho 41). The financial nature of this system further attached a monetary reward to value in order to incentivize others to follow the same path. In doing so, we can say that this system is at the origin of the creation of the value of “intelligence”. It is furthermore correct to assert that the system benefits from the proliferation of this value. Indeed, it capitalizes on young people's need for self-identification. By providing young people with a sense of identity and a promise of financial reward, the system ensures its own propagation as their youth product invariably becomes role models for others who are gifted and seeking self-discovery. Indeed, young people consider themselves to be “at the pinnacle of power in the identity formation of future bankers” (Ho 55). In other words, “through the continuous practice of recruitment, the street implements the very foundations of its legitimacy” (Ho 41). In Leslie Bell's screenplay, society's struggle to embrace the best of modernity while preserving tradition is the creative force behind the values ​​she speaks of. This struggle presents a dissonance between the current knowledge that all sexes are equal and the deep-seated patriarchal fear of emasculation that traditional worldviews cling to. In this regard, two dissident institutions can be isolated: feminism, which advocates the sexual liberation of women, and religion which continually attempts to stifle women's sexuality. By propagating these values, both institutions serve each other in their own interest since feminists enjoy a growing number of supporters while religions manage to preserve the patriarchal traditions on which most religions are based. For example, the Church expects women to behave like “the ideal child…the Virgin Mary” (Bell 33). Generally speaking, the importance of values ​​in society cannot be refuted. Furthermore, it can be argued that values ​​have value both for the people who adhere to them and for the institutions which create and propagate them. However, when objectively discussing whether values ​​such as "intelligence", "virtue" and "independence" acquire their value,.