Imposing and Exposing Values Essays

Imposing and Exposing Values Essays Imposing and Exposing Values Paper Imposing and Exposing Values Paper Imposing uses some type of force or manipulation or pressure for another to adopt or follow the same values as the one exerting the force. Exposing is simply putting or sharing ones values out there for others to take it or leave it. To expose your values means to open up and let it be seen, to speak up and tell people what your values are. An example would be youre pregnant teenager, and you tell your parents that you dont believe in abortion. Youre exposing your feelings, your values on that issue. To impose your values means to make people do things your way, that only your way is right its almost like forcing someone to do it your way. An example would be a teenager gets pregnant, wants an abortion, and her parents force her to carry the baby to term and raise it, saying as long as youre under my roof, youll do as I say. thats IMposing their values. Values based counselling means that the counselor is always pointing to a better way, meeting the client where he or she is at, and guiding that person towards a higher place: a place of deeper truth, a place of greater meaning. Non-values oriented counseling will simply seek to return the client to a functional level, or simply at a place that is best for them. Well in the example above what was best for the wife was divorce. Yet she may not realize, or even see, that there could be door for her that leads her to a joyful life with her husband. While we believe that all people have the capacity within them to change, that does not mean they can always see all the choices before them. Sometimes people are so heavily oppressed by their situation that they genuinely cannot see a way out, or are unable to discern the best possible path. This is where the values of the counselor are critical to effective therapy. Values are the whispers of our conscience that show us those things in our lives that need to change, they help us understand not only the problems in our lives, but why they were problems. Without values, we are unable to identify destructive behaviors and patterns of thoughts that cause pain and brokenness. Values allow us to learn from the past, let things go, and illuminate a new path towards a brighter future. And while we may never actually reach the ideal, it is instead the journey towards it that holds the joy of living; that we live a life always walking forward, towards a better place, one that is full of hope, experiencing true freedom and purpose every step of the way. I Dont Believe In Imposing Values On Clients This is probably the #1 concern we hear from professionals who feel hesitant about a transparent values approach regarding counseling and therapy. This section is written for therapists, but if you are a client this discussion may give you more insight into the world behind therapy. Most college textbooks will tell students of psychology to keep their values hidden to clients. This may have been true at one time, but with the vast use of the internet, it is a flawed premise based on a faulty assumption that clients are not pro-active in their mental health care. We will demonstrate why this philosophy of therapy is flawed with pro-active clients (it also should be stated that all clients who use the internet to find a therapist, are by definition, being pro-active in their mental health care). First lets define the difference between hidden values and transparent values therapy. 1. All therapists are human beings, and as human beings, all therapists also have a personal value system. 2. Therapists, the vast majority of them, do not compromise their own personal values in therapy. If you are a therapist, both points are going to be true. Counselors, regardless of their personal values, are neither expected to, nor do they by by practice, compromise themselves in therapy. But does (a) having personal values, and (b) not compromising values equate to (c) imposing values? It does not. So lets assume two hypothetical therapists, Therapist A who believes strongly against imposing values in Therapy, and keeps his/her values hidden from the client, and Therapist B with transparent values. What is the difference between these two therapists? Well, both of them have a set of personal values. The only difference is that Therapist B has made his/her values transparent to the client upfront, before therapy even begins. Transparency is the only difference, nearly the exact opposite of imposing. Hidden Values Are More Imposing Because all clients who use the internet to find a therapist are being pro-active in their health care, we make the case that a therapist who tries to keep his or her values hidden is far closer to imposing on a client, than a therapist who has those values transparent. With transparent values, the client knows the values upfront, and then can make the choice to see. or not to see. a therapist before spending any money, and before investing any energy. With a hidden values therapist, the client has already spent money, and has already invested time, energy, and emotions into therapy. The values of the therapist then leak into therapy over time, and the client discovers, over time, that the therapists values are polar opposite, and the client may feel defeated and give up counseling or go back to the search for a new therapist. Values and Beliefs It is not respectful to impose personal beliefs and values upon clients. It is the counsellor’s role to accept the client for who they are and where they currently are in their life. Geldard and Geldard (2005) emphasise that when a counsellor’s values are imposed on an individual, they tend to react by rejecting those values without consideration and withdrawing from counselling. An involuntary client, who is unable to physically withdraw from counselling, may withdraw emotionally, and become unmotivated to accept the counsellor’s suggestions. Imposing one’s values upon the client is indicative of judgement. Paradoxically, when therapists accept the client for the person they are regardless of their values, over time, the client’s values tend to grow closer to the values of the counsellor, as counsellors do become role models for their clients.

How the Railroads Introduced Time Zones

How the Railroads Introduced Time Zones Time  zones, a novel concept in the 1800s, were created by railroad officials who convened meetings in 1883 to deal with a major headache. It was becoming impossible to know what time it was. The underlying cause of confusion was simply that the United States had no time standard. Each town or city would keep its own solar time, setting clocks so noon was when the sun was directly overhead. That made perfect sense for anyone who never left town. But it became complicated for travelers. Noon in Boston would be a few minutes before noon in New York City. And Philadelphians experienced noon a few minutes after New Yorkers did. And on and on, across the nation. For railroads, which needed reliable timetables, this created a huge problem. Fifty-six standards of time are now employed by the various railroads of the country in preparing their schedules of running times, reported the front page of the New York Times on April 19, 1883. Something had to be done, and by the end of 1883 the United States, for the most part, was operating on four time zones. Within a few years, the entire world followed that example. So its fair to say the American railroads changed the way the entire planet told time. The Decision to Standardize Time The expansion of the railroads in the years following the Civil War only made the confusion over all the local time zones seem worse. Finally, in the spring of 1883, the leaders of the nations railroads sent representatives to a meeting of what was called the General Railroad Time Convention. On April 11, 1883, in St. Louis, Missouri, railroad officials agreed to create five time zones in North America: Provincial, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. The concept of standard time zones had actually been suggested by several professors going back to the early 1870s. At first, it was suggested that there be two time zones, set to when noon occurred in Washington, D.C.  and New Orleans. But that would create potential problems for people living in the West, so the idea eventually evolved into four time belts set to straddle the 75th, 90th, 105th, and 115th meridians. On October 11, 1883, the General Railroad Time Convention met again in Chicago. And it was formally decided that the new standard of time would take effect a little more than a month later, on Sunday, November 18, 1883. As the date for the big change approached, newspapers published numerous articles explaining how the process would work. The shift only amounted to a few minutes for many people. In New York City, for instance, the clocks would be turned back four minutes. Going forward, noon in New York would occur at the same moment as noon in Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities in the East. In many towns and cities, jewelers used the event to drum up business by offering to set watches to the new time standard. And though the new time standard was not sanctioned by the federal government, the Naval Observatory in Washington offered to send, by telegraph, a new time signal so people could synchronize their watches. Resistance to Standard Time It seems most people had no objection to the new time standard, and it was widely accepted as a sign of progress. Travelers on the railroads, in particular, appreciated it. An article in the New York Times on November 16, 1883, noted, The passenger from Portland, Me., to Charleston, S.C., or from Chicago to New Orleans, can make the entire run without changing his watch. As the time change was instituted by the railroads, and voluntarily accepted by many towns and cities, some incidents of confusion appeared in newspapers. A report in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 21, 1883, described an incident where a debtor had been ordered  to report to a Boston courtroom at 9:00 on the previous morning. The newspaper story concluded: According to custom, the poor debtor is allowed one hours grace. He appeared before the commissioner at 9:48 oclock, standard time, but the commissioner ruled that it was after ten oclock and defaulted him. The case will probably be brought before the Supreme Court. Incidents like that demonstrated the need for everyone to adopt the new standard time. However, in some places, there was lingering resistance. An item in the New York Times the following summer, on June 28, 1884, detailed how the city of Louisville, Kentucky, had given up on standard time. Louisville set all its clocks ahead 18 minutes to return to solar time. The problem in Louisville was that while the banks adapted to the time standard of the railroad, other businesses did not. So there was persistent confusion about when business hours actually ended each day. Of course, throughout  the 1880s  most businesses saw the value of moving permanently to standard time. By the 1890s standard time and time zones were accepted as ordinary. Time Zones Went Worldwide Britain and France had each adopted national time standards decades earlier, but as they were smaller countries, there was no need for more than one time zone. The successful adoption of standard time in the United States in 1883 set an example of how time zones could spread across the globe. The following year a time convention in Paris began the work of designating  time zones worldwide. Eventually, the time zones around the globe we know today came into use. The United States government made the time zones official by passing the Standard Time Act in 1918. Today, most people simply take time zones for granted and have no idea that time zones were actually a solution devised by the railroads.