Breaking the Silence of

Morality: The Consequences of

New Morality on Peoples’ Lives
in the 1920s

By: Neisa
 P:
Some people like to be heard in the world,
but others see the world differently and
choose to be voiceless and silent
throughout their life. A different aspect or
way of seeing it is that people keep to
themselves and don’t like to share their
problems with their peers.
 E:

• “This is the Valley of Ashes-a fantastic farm where ashes

grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque
gardens, where ashes take the form of houses and
chimneys and risking smoke and finally, with a
transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already
crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of
grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a
ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-
grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an
impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure
operations from your sight” ( Fitzgerald 27).
 P:

• It is a multifaceted condition. It has many dimensions,

among which are poor access to public services and
infrastructure, unsanitary environmental surrounding,
illiteracy and ignorance, poor health, insecurity,
voicelessness and social exclusion as well as low levels
of household income and food insecurity. All these
aspects of poverty are life-shortening, involve great
suffering and pain (from disease and hunger) and the
undermine an essential dignity and decency to life.
 I:
• In the Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it shows how
people in the 1920s lived different lifestyles. The plot of
this book takes place in Long Island in two places called
West Egg and East Egg. There is also another place
called the Valley of Ashes. The people who live in the
Valley of Ashes have less money than West Egg and
East Egg, but they keep to themselves about it. The
people there do not complain that they do not have all
the leisure things that the other people have. Although
they do not have as much money as the people in West
and East Egg, they are very content and they are fine
with the way they live.
 P:

• Many Americans and people around the

world feel as though their voice is not
being heard. They believe that if they
rebel against the rules and laws, their
opinion will be taken into consideration.
 E:

• “I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second

time was that afternoon, so everything that happened
has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight
o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on
Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the
telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out
to buy some at the drug store on the corner.” (Fitzgerald
33-34).
 P:
• Economic models of rebellion usually treat it as a form of
crime or banditry. However, the analogy is not developed.
This article treats rebellion as a distinctive form of
organized crime that differs from other crime in its
objective, which is the predation of the rents on natural
resource exports. Because such rents can be defended by
government forces, rebel forces must be sufficiently large
to defend themselves. This introduces a survival constraint
that affects whether a rebellion s financially viable and how
it reacts to increases on government forces, and introduces
an entry threshold. This threshold gives rise to a problem
for a rebellion of attracting sufficient start-up finance. The
predictions of the model are shown to be consistent with
four stylized factors.
 I:
• In the 1920s, many people rebelled
against the rules and laws that the
government created. One of the biggest
ones was prohibition. Prohibition was the
law that no one was allowed to consume,
sell, or buy alcoholic substances. Many
Americans were not a fan of this and did
not obey the law.
 P:
• Today’s world is filled with many different
people. Many of these people like to be
heard and like to say what is on their
mind, but a good amount of people do not.
Americans are faced with different
challenges everyday and every person
has a different way of dealing with these
struggles.
 E:

• “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths
among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At
high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the
tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach
while his two motor boats slit the water of the Sound, drawing
aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-
Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the
city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight,
while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to
meet all trains.” (Fitzgerald 43).
 P:
• The motion that there are times of moral
silence is not without its puzzle, and those
who would insist that morality is never
silent--that all choices are subject to
practical reasoning that requires a
balancing of factors of normative
significance--may locate the “gaps” of
morality not in silences, but in “face-offs”.
 I:
• The Great Gatsby shows how many
people do not like sharing their personal
thoughts with the people who surround
them when Gatsby does not talk to
anyone at his own party. This is
significant because it represents how
different people respond to different
environments and surroundings.
 Sources
• Michael Rustin
• Reflections on the present: a conjunctural analysis of the current global financial crisis.
• Soundings
• Winter 2009
• December 14, 2009
• Pg 18
• In contrast to all this, the present crisis has plainly not been brought about by manifest
social conflicts of a class-based or any other kind. If the neoliberal system has now
encountered a crisis in its growth and development, it is not because it has been shaken
by the opposition or resistance of the social forces it set out to defeat. Indeed, as
contributors to Soundings have frequently pointed out, one of the greatest successes of
the neoconservative counter-revolution has been the demobilisation of class resistances to
capital, and the successful co-option of the political parties originally set up to represent
working-class interests to the task of co-managing the marketised social and economic
model. Not only was the financial meltdown not preceded by political or economic
demands from below, but no sense of heightened political consciousness has so far
emerged in response to the crisis itself. The dominant political mood, in Britain at least, is
one of widespread disenchantment with the system of governance in its entirety.
 Sources
• Heidi M. Hurd
• Paternalism on pain of punishment
• Criminal Justice Ethics
• May 2009
• December 11, 2009
• Pg 49
• The notion that there are times of moral silence is not without its puzzles, (46) and those
who would insist that morality is never silent--that all choices are subject to practical
reasoning that requires a balancing of factors of normative significance--may locate the
"gaps" of morality not in silences, but in "face-offs." Consequentialists confront the
prospect of moral face-offs when the consequences that must be weighed in a choice
situation are "tied"--that is, when they would yield the same net balance of good and bad.
In such "moral ties," it is plausible to think that one is at moral liberty to choose because no
choice is better or worse than its alternatives.
 Sources
• Helen Barkby
• Parents with learning disabilities: perceived incidence and needs.(PROFESSIONAL)
(Report).
• Community Practitioner
• November 2009
• December 14, 2009
• Pg 34
• Historically, legislation tended to focus on the risks to children and even questioned the
morality of people with learning disabilities becoming parents. (4) However, there has
recently been increased recognition of the human rights of people with learning disabilities
to start a family. (5) In 2009, the UK government released its three-year strategy for adults
with learning disabilities (Valuing people now), which stresses the importance of
recognising and supporting the needs of these parents. (6) The Department of Health's
2006 Good practice guidance on working with parents with a learning disability
emphasises the importance of services working together to protect the rights of both
parents and children, and places specific responsibilities on adult services to identify and
meet parents' needs. (7)
 Sources

• Bolatito Lanre-Abass
• Poverty and maternal mortality in Nigeria: towards a more viable ethics of modern medical
practice.(Commentary).
• International Journal for Equity in Health
• April 30, 2009
• December 14, 2009
• Pg11
• Poverty can be defined as the situation of people whose "resources (material, social and
cultural) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the
countries in which they live"[5]. It is a multifaceted condition. It has many dimensions,
among which are poor access to public services and infrastructure, unsanitary
environmental surrounding, illiteracy and ignorance, poor health, insecurity,
voicelessness and social exclusion, as well as low levels of household income and food
insecurity [6]. All these aspects of poverty are life-shortening, involve great suffering and
pain (from disease and hunger) and they undermine an essential dignity and decency to
life [7].
 Sources
• Malachi Haim Hacohen
• "The strange fact that the state of Israel exists": the cold war liberals between cosmopolitanism
and nationalism.
• Jewish Social Studies
• Winter 2009
• December 14, 2009
• Pg 37
• Still, significant tensions between his liberalism and Zionism remained. In the 1970s, he
reformulated his theory on the origins of nationalism as the "bent-twig theory." (48) Nationalism
arose as a response to previous oppression and humiliation: it was the rebellion of the slaves.
Throughout the history of nationalism, from nineteenth-century Germany to the contemporary
Third World, foreign rule triggered a dangerous response among its subjects. In their liberation
struggle, the subjects claimed national superiority to their oppressors and, having won their
independence, instituted illiberal measures to guard their exclusivity and superiority. Berlin's own
account of Zionism--"Jewish Slavery and Emancipation"--fit this theory of nationalism rather than
Herder's. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Zionism was all about the State of Israel,
the guarantor against genocide, and not about Herder's cultural community. Diaspora Zionism
could make peace with liberalism, but Israeli policies, which conformed to Berlin's outlook for
nationalism, could not. He was a gentle critic, apprehensive about post-1967 Israeli policies in the
occupied territories but willing to forgive much and always ready to defend the Zionist
achievement--an achievement he formulated as liberation according to the bent-twig theory.
Berlin's ambivalence about nationalism continued to the end. (49)