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Nowadays it's easier to maintain health than the past.
Health seems to become an indispensable part of human life nowadays. While many people might advocate that modern people are healthier than people in the past, I personally do no hold it is a correct idea. I, given the chance, would like to endorse that humanity nowadays are not as healthy as people in the past due to environmental pollution, working pressure and moral decline as follows. (The question is about whether it is easier to 'maintain' health than in the past. It is NOT about whether people are actually healthier than people in the past, or not. These two issues may of course be related, but they are still two issues. You can't just base your writing upon one single keyword out of the question. Please ONLY think about what the ENTIRE essay question means. Do NOT get into the habit of labelling essay questions with broad 'categories' such as 'family', 'society', 'education', etc. Those are very misleading.)
To begin with, while people have utilized technology to improve our living standards, human activities does significant harm to the environment . As a result, modern human beings are more likely to get sick owing to serious environmental pollutions. Take the air pollution as an example. Recently, Beijing, China's capital, has experienced thick fog and haze since last month (Repetitive with 'recently'.). As it (What does this 'it' refer to? You probably meant 'it is'.) reported, you can see for less than 200 feet in front of you in some spots. The smog stings resident’s eyes and has lead to a surge in respiratory illness. Some experts argue that air is mainly polluted by modern transportation, especially gas-powered automobiles, as well as electrical generators (This means the generators themselves are operated as 'electrical' devices. It does NOT mean the generators generate electricity – that would be 'electricity generators'.) that burn fossil fuels and pour toxic chemical waste into the air. This makes Beijing’s air less healthy to breathe.(Now I've already said that your overall point of argument was not what the question asked for to start with, but even we set that aside and take that your opinion is really just 'people are now less healthy than they were before', merely talking about how awful Beijing's air quality is and how it's making people sick doesn't prove your point. Why? Because you're arguing it in the wrong direction. Being unhealthy can cause you to get sick more often, but it's not true if you swap 'unhealthy' and 'get sick more often' around. i.e. being sick more often doesn't cause you to be less healthy. This is exactly the case in your very example – that given the same person, it's the worse air quality that causes him to get sick more often, while his actual health level may just be the same as in the past.)
More importantly, people in the modern society tend to choose a high-paying jobs with long hours. This means we need to work overtime and suffer from more stress in order to afford the necessities of ordinary life particularly in metropolitan cities. Such high working pressure is easier to contribute to health issues (You can't say '<something> is easier to do <something else>, because 'easy' can only describe one <something> at a time. It's either '<something> is easier' or 'it is easier to do <something>', where the 'it' doesn't mean anything and can't be replaced by a concrete <something>. With all that grammar thrown at you, what you intend to say is actually just, very simply, 'such high working pressure contributes to health issues more easily'.). On one hand, this condition will contribute to unpleasant, even hostile relationships with both coworkers and clients, and thus will have negative effects on one’s mood and mental health. On the other hand, one is sure to form unhealthy habits under pressure, including heavy smoking, excessive drinking, staying up etc.(Now this is a rather wilful statement – who stipulates that pressure will definitely make one develop such habits? A lot of people use physical exercise as a way to release stress, would you call that an unhealthy habit? Unless you could further present some argument as to why your statement is valid, it is not going to be very persuasive. Whenever you start writing absolute words such as 'always', 'sure', 'definitely', it's a signal that you're secretly aware that your argument might not be powerful enough to persuade everyone and you want these words of emphasis to establish authority. But in logical argumentation, things do not work this way. Something that is 'always' true is not necessarily more persuasive than something that isn't. Argumentation is more about the correct process of developing arguments, than the actual correctness of the arguments themselves.) these habits are eventually responsible for diseases which didn't happen frequently before such as cancer (Yeah but if your argument is that some diseases weren't as frequent as they are now so people must be getting unhealthier, then I can very easily challenge you because at the same time some other diseases are not as frequent as they were before: the dreaded Black Death in medieval Europe, for example, is now pretty much a mere legend in many countries. Or smallpox. Yours is a valid point. It's just not very robust.).
Finally, moral decline is also a crucial factor that does harm to our health. Despite that growing persons (This actually means 'adults'. It's not really that people are growing. It's really the 'number' of people that is growing.) having made a big chunk of profits from the market economy in China within the recent 30 years, they appear to lose their basic morality as mankind for maximizing their profits. For instance, in 2008, at least 6 babies died and 300,000 became sick after being fed infant milk powder that had been deliberately and illegally added with one kind of toxic chemical (You say 'add <something> TO <something>', so in the passive you need a preposition as well. You can't say '<something> is added <something>' as in Chinese.) as raw material. What surprised Chinese nationals was that San Lu Group which produced the polluted milk powder had actually been a top Chinese brand for years.(Personal comment: I find it funny that people blame such things on the lack of morality standards, rather than the lack of laws and regulations regarding food safety, or the actual adherence to them, or the execution of punishment for violations. Do you actually think that such things do not usually happen in, say, the United States, because the people there are morally superior? They want profits too. But they are not doing such 'bad things', or not to the extent that it is easily discoverable, only because they would be found out and be out of business forever once they do it. It's the fear of losing the entire market and thus all future profits that prevent people from working evil. It's not the morals. Do you actually know what the eventual legal sentences were, and to whom the sentences were delivered, and whether any follow-up effort had been made across the milk powder industry, or indeed whether there was any focus on how to compensate the victims, for the milk powder case in China? Go and read about it and judge for yourself. When people, especially those in positions of authority, realize that they can do evil things without being seriously punished in person, either because of an ineffective legal system, or because public attention is never on the effectiveness of the legal system, they will do evil things. Think about it: if the decline in moral standards is indeed the reason that people turn evil, then why is there a legal system at all? Why do we not just brainwash everyone with good moral standards so the world will be a better place? That should prompt you to think about what morals really are. I personally hold the opinion that if China, as a country, continues to keep its focus on societal morality rather than building an effective, independent legal system that actually will have some restraining power over the upper classes, the morally corrupt rich people you see now will continue to be the norm.)
In a nutshell, I come to the notion that modern people are more difficult to maintain fitness than the past (No you didn't. You were arguing that modern people are less healthy than people in the past. And even that you didn't really argue very well.). Apparently, people in the past wouldn’t experience environmental issues, working pressure and moral crisis (Seriously, now this is as willful as it is naïve. How do you know that they wouldn't? If I want to I can give you plenty examples on how people in the past experienced as many bad things as we do now. Why people keep idealizing 'the past' as an old-fashioned world of simplicity, purity and goodness is seriously beyond me. Just one simple example: was Germany during World War II not experiencing a moral crisis, as Hitler chose to heartlessly inflict so much pain and suffering on Europe just because he wanted an empire? To me, the big problem with your essay is that your arguments are based on these willful, self-perpetuated assumptions that are simply too sweeping. But for TOEFL, the big problem is that you're not even arguing the right question..).
总结:
好吧于是你根本完全走题。。论述上我就不多吐槽了,托福考官其实并不会像我这样唧唧歪歪这么多论述要怎么才严谨的评语,但是这个走题是实实在在的。。问题问的是‘现在保护健康是不是更容易’而不是光‘健康’两个字,更不是‘现在的人是否比过去更健康’这个问题。。
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