Respond to one or both of the following:
What is one way you will use social media to help you get a job?
How do you plan to practice critical thinking and media literacy in your personal or professional life?
Sample Solution
In my personal life, I will practice critical thinking and media literacy by being mindful of the information I’m exposed to and questioning its accuracy. I’ll also pay attention to sources and consider a variety of perspectives when forming opinions. In my professional life, I plan to research topics thoroughly before making decisions or recommendations, remain open-minded when considering differing points of view, and evaluate claims objectively instead of relying on emotions or assumptions. Lastly, I’ll stay aware of emerging trends in media consumption so that I can better understand how people are engaging with content online.
Sample Solution
In my personal life, I will practice critical thinking and media literacy by being mindful of the information I’m exposed to and questioning its accuracy. I’ll also pay attention to sources and consider a variety of perspectives when forming opinions. In my professional life, I plan to research topics thoroughly before making decisions or recommendations, remain open-minded when considering differing points of view, and evaluate claims objectively instead of relying on emotions or assumptions. Lastly, I’ll stay aware of emerging trends in media consumption so that I can better understand how people are engaging with content online.
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan marks the genesis of the artificial political entity that is the Hobbesian commonwealth, with a social covenant as its efficient cause. Hobbes claims that this all-powerful commonwealth that he baptizes the Leviathan (as an allusion to the biblical beast) is the ultimate escape from a state where people have unlimited rights, but fear is the absolute sovereign and war is the only constant. Though he is rather vocal about his preferred form of government being an absolute monarchy, there is still some debate in whether the Leviathan Hobbes described actually takes such form. Thus, it remains the question of what is the true form of this political entity? In Machiavelli’s The Prince, he claims that all governments in his time have either been governed by one man as in a principality or more than one man as in democratic or oligarchic republics (Machiavelli, 5). Along with being a reign of multiple people, a republican government in Machiavellian terms is a state where its people are “accustomed to living by their own laws and in liberty” (Machiavelli, 20). Based on these definitions I believe that the ideal Hobbesian Leviathan is both a principality and a republic as the sovereign wields all of the state’s power individually, but is merely the head to the political entity, as he creates and enforces legislation with the purpose of representing, serving, and protecting the people. By agreeing to the social contract, the masses free themselves of the paralyzing fear of the state of nature and make themselves, not only the authors of the Leviathan, but of each one of his actions. Therefore one could say that a Hobbesian commonwealth allows for people to live “by their own laws” (Machiavelli, 20).
As Thomas Hobbes was a vocal advocate for absolute sovereignty as the greatest form of government, it is almost impossible not to find traces of his absolutism within the Leviathan. One example of this is the indivisibility of the office of the sovereign, in which Hobbes demonstrates when discussing the harm of having unrestricted representatives, who he calls “second sovereigns.” He states,
