Morals and Ethics

Loneliness/Isolation

Loss

Loneliness is a feeling of sadness that occurs when people are separated from one another.
It can be interchanged with isolation because when a person is lonely, it can cause them to feel like they are by themselves.

A set of principles on what is right or wrong

When a loss occurs, it can affect how people perform in the workplace.

Ethics is based upon society's beliefs on what is right or wrong. This can change due to society evolving with what they believe is correct.

Morals can be seen as a person's own beliefs on what is right or wrong in life. It does not usually change because there is no outside influence.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Failure to Create Meaningful Relationships

Regretting What Could Have Happened

Mae works for a company called the Circle and their goal is to create a utopian society that is transparent. This is done through the use of technology. For example, Mae, all the workers, and their families that are under the healthcare plan swallow small pill-like object that is filled with technology for tracking anything to do with health. Everyone throughout the world and those that work for the Circle, except for a few people, are brainwashed into thinking being completely open and being one with technology is the answer to society. They think it will create a utopia where everyone will be happy and no one will get hurt a long with all evils, such as stealing, will cease to exist.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a self-help book that is a layout of morals that the narrator follows. For example, "move to the city" (1), "get an education" (17), and "avoid idealists" (55). He did not sway from these morals throughout the book until he reached his dream of becoming wealthy.

Isolation in a workplace can create disconnection because people are unable to communicate properly.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville

A person that is isolated can find it hard to create true relationships with people. This can be due to awkwardness, social anxiety, not knowing how, or even being alone for so long that they do not find it necessary to create them.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

When a person experiences being lonely or isolated, they decide to spend all of their time working. They try to fill the emptiness in their life with a purpose, and in this case, work.

Severance by Ling Ma

"Standard Loneliness Package" by Charles Yu

If a loss of a person occurs, whether they die or they are no longer in a person's life, it can cause regret. They might feel disappointed over their past actions and wish that they could change what happened.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

At first, Bartleby is a very hard worker and puts all his efforts into completing the tasks at hand. This all changes when he says "I would prefer not to." Bartleby then becomes stubborn and refuses to perform tasks, even the simplest ones. He goes from being a dedicated worker to one that could even be seen as lazy. Even with reasoning, Bartleby still held strong with not wanting to do any work.

Keiko has been working at the convenience store for about eighteen years. She dedicated her life to the store because it was the only place she felt that she belonged due to her awkwardness and being seen as different by society. Keiko interpreted situations without any perspective. For example, when she in primary school, kids were yelling to stop the boys that were fighting, so Keiko proceeded to hit one of them in the head with a spade. She misinterpreted the meaning of the stop them did not understand why it is not good to hit a boy in the head.

Candace lived in New York City with a roommate. She had no living family that she knew of and the ones that lived in Fujian were unreachable because their addresses were unknown. This isolated Candance because she was by herself. She tried to fill the void by throwing a semi-cultural shark fin dinner party with some friends and acquaintances, but it was not successful in making her feel whole.

Stevens worked as a butler at Darlington Hall in England. He dedicated his life to being a dignified butler that other butlers could look up to. This led to him making decisions that can be seen as regretful. When Stevens father was dying, instead of spending his last moments with him, Stevens proceeded to work because he believed it was more important. This led to him having a very curt last words with his father.

In this dystopian society, people can pay others that work within the call center to take on their emotional pain. This could be a funeral for a loved one, a dentist appointment, or even the quitting of a job. People are taking their emotions and putting it on another person to handle.

The narrator strictly follows a set of his own morals throughout the novel, but there was a downside to following them. He believed in the idea of "don't fall in love" (35) because it could distract a person from becoming wealthy and living a full life. This caused the narrator to put aside his love for the pretty girl and pursue his dreams.

The narrator worked very hard and eventually accomplished his dreams, but when he lost his company, he realized that his life was not truly fulfilled. By putting all his focus on work, the narrator was not able to focus on the little things in life, such as having a family and creating relationships. With this realization, it eventually led to the pretty girl and the narrator becoming a couple but they missed out on living the best years of their lives together.

She put her entire life into working in the Bible Department at Spectra and became a workaholic. Candace even put her dreams of being a photographer to the side to work at Spectra to fill the emptiness. She spent her time working on the Gemstone Bible and visiting Hong Kong and parts of China to work with the manufacturers of the Bibles.

The taking on of emotions from another person can be difficult. This is the workers at the call center's job so they are getting paid to handle it, but in reality, it is very difficult to handle other people's emotions. The emotional burden is eventually seen to take a toll on some of the workers to the point where they have breakdowns.

When a person does not want to experience their emotions and pays others to do so, it causes them to lose the part that makes them human. To be a human, a person must experience all of the emotions because it is what shapes them. It allows people to grow through the mind, body, and soul. All the experiences that a person goes through allows them to improve in life.

This idea of the narrator working hard to become "filthy rich" as stated in the title has a double meaning. The narrator did at one point become wealthy, but some of the ways he worked to become rich were "filthy" and not morally correct. This was made clear when in the chapter of "Be prepared to use violence" (117). Here, his guard murders a gunman who is sent to encounter the narrator. This act of getting someone killed could have been prevented, but the narrator's actions in achieving his dream at all costs caused the gunman to die.

This awkwardness and being different than society would like Keiko prevented her from creating true relationships. She was isolated from everyone, including her family because she was different than everyone. Work was the only place that she felt like herself, but it isolated her even more since it was considered a dead-end job that is for college students that just want money or adults that are failures. Even when Keiko tried to create relationships it was still a failure.

Keiko created a fake relationship with Shiraha because she thought society would accept her if she was with a man. This relationship was not meaningful because Shiraha acted like a leech and took advantage of all that Keiko provided for him. They also did not have any connection to each other besides both having worked at the same convenience store. This created even more isolation from society because they were looked down upon by both Shiraha and Keiko's families. Shiraha's sister-in-law did not approve of his actions and believed they should break up. Keiko's sister was also against the relationship because she believed that Shiraha was nothing but trouble.

Even with Keiko trying hard to conform to society, she was unable to create a relationship with other people. This behavior could also be seen as borderline psychopathic because Keiko is unable to feel emotions like others and instead fakes them. She also does not experience any empathy throughout the novel. The only relationship she could ever create was one with the convenience store because she was able to work there without feeling different than others in society.

These ideas of the Circle are swayed by the ethics of society. Most people believe that it is ethically correct to be watched all of the time and have no privacy. They even created the slogans: "SECRETS ARE LIES, SHARING IS CARING, and PRIVACY IS THEFT" (305). Since the majority of people believe this is true, they all work hard to creating a society that values these slogans, even if they are not ethically valid.

Mercer does not believe that technology the Circle is implementing is beneficial to society. He goes against Mae and the rest of society by explaining how transparency is not key because people need privacy and that some secrets are meant to be kept away. This could be seen with Annie because she volunteered to be in PastPerfect where her ancestry would be evaluated and shared with the entire world. Here, Annie learned that her ancestors were slave owners. She also ruined her good family name when a video was released of her parents watching someone drown without saving them.

When the Circle implemented increased technology and transparency within the workplace, it led to Mae having to work ten times as hard. She had about six different monitors that she needed to keep track of while she was working. If Mae slacked on any of her monitors, it would cause her point level to decrease and make her look like she was not working hard enough. Mae became a slave to her job and had no time to take care of herself. She was also looked down upon for spending time with family or people outside of the Circle. Mae eventually started living at the Circle's dorms because she found it inconvenient to leave.

Even when Shen Fever occurred and people stopped coming in to work at the office. Candace continued to show up to work every day because she wanted the extra money for being an in-person employee. She even lived at Spectra's head quarters when it was too much work to commute to her apartment. This caused her entire life to be consumed by work. It showed that working to hide the loneliness of life created an unhealthy relationship with work. No matter how hard a person tries to hide their loneliness, it cannot be covered up. People must accept the idea that they may be lonely and learn how to handle it in healthy ways.

By stating "I would prefer not to," Bartleby isolates himself from all of this workers. Although Turkey and Nippers have trouble completing their work at certain times, they still are able to finish their work and be reliable. Bartleby becomes defiant, making him disconnected from his workplace because he is unable to accomplish anything.

Bartleby isolating and separating himself from his fellow workers, caused him to hit rock bottom by going to jail. Being stubborn and refusing to do his work prevented Bartleby from actually succeeding because it prevented himself from forming true bond and connections with anyone.

In Stevens' father's last moments of life, he started to regret how he treated Stevens in fatherhood. His father wanted to be better, but regretted choosing work over a better relationship with his son. When people do not have a good work life balance, it causes them to lose out on life.

Stevens as Miss Kenton both worked for the same owner at Darlington Hall, but Miss Kenton left work. Miss Kenton ultimately left because she left to marry another man. Stevens regretted not expressing his emotions to Miss Kenton. He did not show her how much he cared about her. Instead, he put his relationship with work before any other relationship in life.

Stevens regretted Miss Kenton leaving and decided to find her and convince her to come back. She ultimately decides not to go back to Darlington Hall because of the new life that she has now and the missed opportunity of the life she and Stevens could have had. This shows that people must take advantage of what they have now because it may be gone in the future.