Dear all,
I have here an essay on "People Commit Crimes for
Selfish Reasons" (one of the best, after having been edited) written by
my student to be shared online. Hopefully you will benefit from it.
[Nevertheless, this essay was uploaded to be shared, and to be read for the purpose of educating readers and MUET candidates on how detail you have to write to score high marks in the extended writing section. Please DO NOT PLAGIARISE this essay. PLAGIARISM IS A CRIME.]
[Nevertheless, this essay was uploaded to be shared, and to be read for the purpose of educating readers and MUET candidates on how detail you have to write to score high marks in the extended writing section. Please DO NOT PLAGIARISE this essay. PLAGIARISM IS A CRIME.]
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People commit crime because of selfish reasons. Do you agree?
How do people define crime? Some might define crime as an act of
offence towards the morality of humans. Others might regard crime as an
act that harms the universal human rights. In my perspectives, I think
that crime is an offence made towards the law. Therefore, why do people
still commit crimes? Some crimes were committed because of hatred,
hardships and even because of the people they loved. All in all, I do
agree that people commit crimes because of selfish reasons. I am saying
so based on several reasons.
My first reason to agree with the
statement is that people commit crimes because of greed. Greed is one’s
desire to have more than what one already has. We can look at greed
using different perspectives. One of them is of a poverty-stricken
person whose only desire is to fill up his hungry stomach. Since he was
born in poverty, it would be nearly impossible for him to pay for his
food. So, in order to fill up his stomach, he decided to steal, for
instance, a piece of bread from a nearby bakery shop. This is a kind of
greed that is used to fullfill one’s basic needs, like to kill the dying
hunger.
However, there is another perspective that can be used
to view upon greed. It is the wanting to lead a luxurious life or even
to own something that is beyond one’s financial budget. For example, a
person of moderate income would like to own an expensive plasma
television which the price is beyond his budget. However, his greed
prompts him to own that item by either stealing money to purchase it or
to steal the item itself. When the person get caught by any law
enforcer, the person will be charged in court for committing a crime. To
steal to fulfill one’s desire to own an item which one understands that
it is beyond his financial budget is committing a crime by the cause of
greed. This, in my view, shows that people commit crimes for selfish
reason.
Next, people commit crimes because of hatred. Why are
there hatred within people? The root of hatred might be caused by peer
influence or environmental sway or even being envious towards others’
wealth and prosperity. One of the crimes that was committed by the cause
of hatred was the Nazi’s genocide. That was Adolf Hitler’s policy to
literally eliminate the Jews throughout Europe. Many Jews had been sent
to concentration camps in order to be sentenced to death, and many Jews
died during that period of Nazi’s administration.
The common
question is, why did Adolf Hitler commit genocide on the Jews? It was
said that Hitler’s hatred towards the Jews began when his letter of
application had been rejected by the famous Art Academy in Venice, that
was controlled by wealthy Jews. Hitler was probably rejected because
Hitler himself was not a Jew. Probably having felt discriminated, when
Adolf Hitler headed the Nazi’s party, this hatred led him to formulate a
policy to eliminate the Jews throughout Europe, once and for all. In
reference to Hitler’s case, I think that it can be justified that people
commit crime because of selfish reasons like one’s hatred towards
another person or race.
Third of all, people commit crimes
because of ignorance. An ignorant person is said to be a person having
blind and stubborn determination. For instance, they insisted on being
correct at all times, without any knowledge that what they had actually
done was wrong by the side of law. The most prominent example was the
war waged by the government of the United States of America towards
Afghanistan following the incident of 9/11, which was when ‘terrorists’
attacked the World Trade Centre in New York in two air crafts. As
claimed by George Washington Bush, former president of the United States
of America, after the 9/11 attack, “ the surest way to avoid attacks on
our people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are
fighting … Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our
streets, in our own cities.” Consequently, the government of the United
States of America had declared war with the country that had been
suspected to house the major terrorist who instigated the 9/11 incident,
Osama Bin Laden. They then sent troops to savage Afghanistan, bombing
the residences of Afghanistan, thus killing thousands and thousands of
innocent lives there.
From my point of view, the government of
the United States of America was actually committing a crime as the mass
killing of Iraqi citizens for something they are not responsible of is a
crime. Furthermore, to champion on a revenge as what the Americans were
trying to do for the killing in 9/11 is an ignorant act. The Americans
might have been ignorant of the real truth and had been misguided by
their anger into believing that Osama Bin Laden was the actual culprit
for the 9/11 incident. In short, the government of the United States of
America committed a crime because of ignorance. And by this, they are
actually committing a crime out of a selfish reason.
In
conclusion, based on what have been discussed, it is true that people
commit crimes for selfish reasons. I hope that people will realize that
whatever crimes that they had committed, it is more for selfish reasons.
In order to stop this cycle of violence from recurring, they should
avoid committing themselves to crime activities, thus ensuring the world
to be a safer place to live in for future generations.
Written by,
Chin Ri Andrew (H4T6), Penang Matriculation College 2011/12
