Context
No matter Socrates or Plato, ancient Greek wisemen always encourage people to live an ethical life in accordance with logos. This case study is a display of my ethical thinking and reasoning skill. I develop this case analysis for classical study 211 class in response to my philosophical understanding on real-life situations. Accessing the realm of ancient Greek philosophy helps me realized the importance of reason and rationality, and further motivates me to live an ethical life. In the following passage I will examine a conflict between Darion the beer brewer and his local community through an articulation on the differences of their primary value, and give them a few possible solutions.
Ethical Case Study—The Micro Brewery
From Darion’s perspective, his primary motivation stands on two aspects. On the one hand, he finds conventional market-sold beers are flavorless and uninspired, and he dislikes the business model of the big beer monopolies that would reduce beer’s quality. He wants to brew his own craft beer since he outweighs beer’s quality over its quantity, and to produce high quality beer for the local community is always Darion’s pursuit of profession. On the other hand, he believes that better beer quality attracts more customers, hence he can gain more profits for a better business. In doing so, Darion devote his personal life into his profession by giving up his holidays, he even moves out of his apartment in East Vancouver in order to save money for his microbrewery. Up until this point, I find Darion a very admirable person, his behavior is much like in accordance with the Stoics’ idea—one is able to endure temporary suffering for a better future accomplishment. Luckily, from years of dedication Darion is almost close to achieve his dream, he has the money, a lease of an affordable place for the brewery, and a legal business license. Nevertheless, Darion does not receive as much understanding from his neighborhood.
From local community’s perspective, I see there are three major concerns about Darion’s brewery coming in: firstly, people are worried that their children might be affected from the negative image of alcoholism. They want to keep their children away from this highly addictive activity, which their reason is primarily motivated by the value of family secure. Secondly, some long-term residents see the moving-in of Darion’s brewery would possibly raise their community living cost, thereby increase their financial burden and even force them out of the community. Since a large portion of the locals depend on community’s low-cost living standard, a gentrification process does harmful to the their life. Thirdly, another group of people posed that alcohol itself as a problematic existence, would much likely decadence people from achieving their full potential. According to Plato, drinking can be a crime of passion that prevents people from a well-lived life. In addition, drinking can place negative impact to people’s health, both physically and mentally. So the primary value that drives this group of people is basically a social-integral concern, they hope to establish a healthy community that is free from potential damages.
Since I see one of the prominent arguments is the “negative effect”that could possibly brought into the community from the inclusion of Darion’s brewery, I want to have a claim on my personal understanding of alcohol. Over-drinking and addiction is extremely harmful to one’s health., alcoholism does nothing good to human. Whereas over-doing anything can place damages to people: over-eating leads to obesity, oversleeping leads to somnolence, even over-thinking leads to anxiety. Thus, as Socrates suggests, self-control is a human virtue, and as far as I concerned, drinking in moderation can bring very less negativities on people’s health, appropriate amount of alcohol helps people in relaxation from a day of exhaustion. As the Stoicism had taught us: to apply self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions in drinking can help us maintain a just understanding towards alcohol.
Based on a proper understanding of alcohol, I think the conflict between Darion and the locals and be reconciled. Since I consider both sides have a mutual goal that they wants to promote a better community life, only they want to achieve the goal in different means. Essentially, their values are aligned. Therefore, I am going to provide some workable solutions for both Darion’s business and community’s sustainability.
For the first group of people who are concern about local teenagers, I would say the key is to help them establish a healthy understanding on alcohol, both the negativity of alcoholism and the beauty of brewery industry, instead of completely prevent the teens from it. Make sure on the one hand, that the community center has cover education on the damage of over-drinking on an infant-accepted level, and to strengthen censorship on Darion’s brewery not selling exceeded amount to potential alcoholic on the other hand as well as imposing more strict inspection to legal-age customers. For the second group of people who is concerned about gentrification problem, I feel Darion in this case is falsely blamed by his neighbors. Regardless of Darion not having enough money to expand his business to a gentrification stance, a microbrewery is supposed to manage in a small-scale. Besides, Darion wants to reduce his production in order to maintain good quality, which means there would be no outstanding economic profit that may result in gentrification. In addition, Darion’s brewery provides more job opportunities to the community, which gives a hand to those poor residents who were worried about their living, in a sense the inclusion of brewery benefits the community on a social level. For the third group of people who are concerning about alcohol’s potential damage to a healthy communal atmosphere, I would say the same thing as to the first group of people, that individual’s proper understanding on alcohol plays a pivotal role in this case, public censorship towards Darion works to the community only if every individual behaved in good control. Otherwise even if the brewery does not exist, alcoholics could still damage the community from self-indulgence.
To summarize, Darion as a brewer, is fulfilling his ergon to produce as high-quality beer as possible, the locals are posing concerns towards every little aspects that may potentially damage their communal space. What I see here, is a beautiful alignment of community values that work as a whole to promote a better society. In this way, under local supervision and Darion’s self-improvement, a microbrewery can become a beneficial component to a better community.
Reference
Griffin, Michael. “Athenian Thought: A Reader”, 4. Plato and Aristotle, 2014, pp. 1-19
Simplicius, of C., Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain. On Epictetus’ “Handbook 1-26”. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y, 2002.