Issue186 行为类 自己改过三遍，请拍啊拍啊拍啊拍

rsrsUID: 146479

------题目------
Practicality is now our great idol, which all powers and talents must serve. Anything that is not obviously practical has little value in today's world.
------正文------(542 words)
We live in a material world, in which people are more practical than before. In addition, the trend is becoming more obvious. It is believed among some people that, as the above statement said, now practicality is our great idol, and things that seem not so practical have little value. They are not wrong, as I may analyze below, yet fail to find the essence of the practicality. They also ignore that some "impractical" things are still popular in today's world.

Human beings are indeed practical. Maslow’s theory of human needs hierarchy divides human needs into five layers. The lowest is physiological needs, including food and water; next is the safety needs, including job security and employee benefits; the third is social needs, including acceptance and affection; the fourth is esteem need, including status and approval of others; and the self-actualization needs is the highest, including accomplishment and creativity. No doubt that the first two needs should be based on material supply. What is more, whether the social needs, the esteem needs and self-actualization needs can be satisfied is now mostly based on how much material value the individual makes. This is easy to comprehend. Success is measured by wealth now, and our media keep on telling us how important it is to become successful. In a word, these five layers of human needs are all firmly related to practicality. Most powers and talents serve practicality just because powerful and talented people are eager to make achievements to satisfy their self-actualization needs.

One question may be asked: if the pursuit of practicality is decided by human nature, then why it becomes more important in today's world, instead of being constantly emphasized in the history of human? To answer this question, we should notice the increasing abundance of material supply after Industrial Revolution and the considerable development of science and technique. People today can recognize, create, and control much more then in the past. As a result, comparing with our ancestors, we focus more on practicality. An obvious example is people’s recognition of the moon. Thousands of years ago, people in China considered it to be an extremely cold palace and a woman flew there after taking some magic drug. Now people know that it is only an ordinary planet and attempt to explore it, with the hope of constructing a resource base there.

On the other hand, impractical things still have their own value. People are now living a better life. So entertainment becomes important. For example, people all over the world watch movies. The most famous movies published in recent years include "The Lord of Ring ",  "The Spiderman", "Harry Potter", either of which is a fantasy movie. Even though they describes different fantasy world, they all express our kind wishes. Another example I would like to mention is belief. Almost every person has his or her own belief. That is what one cannot see but still provides strength when one comes across difficulty. That is what lacks practicality but still appears to have great value.

In conclusion, either practicality or impracticality is part of people's life. With practicality, we satisfy our own needs and create value for others, too. With impracticality, we make life more enjoyable and full of hope.

rsrsUID: 146479

有人说第一句多余，应该开门见山提出自己是否同意题目观点
我自己还是倾向于写一些跟别人不会太一样的开头
大家觉得呢？

hardbeaverUID: 197443

------题目------
Practicality is now our great idol, which all powers and talents must serve. Anything that is not obviously practical has little value in today's world.
------正文------(542 words)
We live in a material world, in which people are more practical than before. In addition, the trend is becoming more obvious. It is believed among some people that, as the above statement said, now practicality is our great idol, and things that seem not so practical have little value. They are not wrong, as I may analyze below, yet fail to find the essence of the practicality. They also ignore that some "impractical" things are still popular in today's world.

Human beings are indeed practical. Maslow’s theory of human needs hierarchy divides human needs into five layers. The lowest is physiological needs, including food and water; next is the safety needs, including job security and employee benefits; the third is social needs, including acceptance and affection; the fourth is esteem need, including status and approval of others; and the self-actualization needs is the highest, including accomplishment and creativity. No doubt that the first two needs should be based on material supply. What is more, whether the social needs, the esteem needs and self-actualization needs can be satisfied is now mostly based on how much material value the individual makes. This is easy to comprehend. Success is measured by wealth now, and our media keep on telling us how important it is to become successful. In a word, these five layers of human needs are all firmly related to practicality. Most powers and talents serve practicality just because powerful and talented people are eager to make achievements to satisfy their self-actualization needs.

One question may be asked: if the pursuit of practicality is decided by human nature, then why it becomes more important in today's world, instead of being constantly emphasized in the history of human? To answer this question, we should notice the increasing abundance of material supply after Industrial Revolution and the considerable development of science and technique. People today can recognize, create, and control much more thenthan in the past. As a result, comparing with our ancestors, we focus more on practicality. An obvious example is people’s recognition of the moon. Thousands of years ago, people in China considered it to be an extremely cold palace and a woman flew there after taking some magic drug. Now people know that it is only an ordinary planet and attempt to explore it, with the hope of constructing a resource base there.

On the other hand, impractical things still have their own value. People are now living a better life. So entertainment becomes important. For example, people all over the world watch movies. The most famous movies published in recent years include "The Lord of Ring ", "The Spiderman", "Harry Potter", eithereach of which is a fantasy movie. Even though they describes different fantasy world, they all express our kind wishes. Another example I would like to mention is belief. Almost every person has his or her own belief. That is what one cannot see but still provides strength when one comes across difficulty. That is what lacks practicality but still appears to have great value.

In conclusion, either practicality or impracticality is part of people's life. With practicality, we satisfy our own needs and create value for others, too. With impracticality, we make life more enjoyable and full of hope.
呵呵，写的很好，论点清晰，有条理，例证也不错,我也觉得开头有一点繁琐，能否精炼一点。
继续努力！

lisploreUID: 195645

作为一篇GRE的作文，本文前半部分的分析应该算是很不错的。

但是从我个人的角度，我非常不同意你的文章和马斯洛关于人的欲望的分析的观点。同样你后半部分的分析也是存在一些小问题的。

如果说马斯洛的理论是无懈可击或者近乎无懈可击的话，那么整篇文章应该可以得高分，但很可惜的是很多人并不完全认同他的观点。

我想，在所有对此的驳斥中，Prof. George Boeree 的几段话应该是最为精彩的。

[I]The “big picture” aside, there are a few criticisms we might direct at Maslow’s theory itself.  The most common criticism concerns his methodology:  Picking a small number of people that he himself declared self-actualizing, then reading about them or talking with them, and coming to conclusions about what self-actualization is in the first place does not sound like good science to many people.

In his defense, I should point out that he understood this, and thought of his work as simply pointing the way.  He hoped that others would take up the cause and complete what he had begun in a more rigorous fashion.  It is a curiosity that Maslow, the “father” of American humanism, began his career as a behaviorist with a strong physiological bent.  He did indeed believe in science, and often grounded his ideas in biology.  He only meant to broaden psychology to include the best in us, as well as the pathological!

Another criticism, a little harder to respond to, is that Maslow placed such constraints on self-actualization.  First, Kurt Goldstein and Carl Rogers used the phrase to refer to what every living creature does:  To try to grow, to become more, to fulfill its biological destiny.  Maslow limits it to something only two percent of the human species achieves.  And while Rogers felt that babies were the best examples of human self-actualization, Maslow saw it as something achieved only rarely by the young.

Another point is that he asks that we pretty much take care of our lower needs before self-actualization comes to the forefront.  And yet we can find many examples of people who exhibited at very least aspects of self-actualization who were far from having their lower needs taken care of.  Many of our best artists and authors, for example, suffered from poverty, bad upbringing, neuroses, and depression.  Some could even be called psychotic!  If you think about Galileo, who prayed for ideas that would sell, or Rembrandt, who could barely keep food on the table, or Toulouse Lautrec, whose body tormented him, or van Gogh, who, besides poor, wasn’t quite right in the head, if you know what I mean...  Weren’t these people engaged in some form of self-actualization?  The idea of artists and poets and philosophers (and psychologists!) being strange is so common because it has so much truth to it!

We also have the example of a number of people who were creative in some fashion even while in concentration camps.  Trachtenberg, for example, developed a new way of doing arithmetic in a camp.  Viktor Frankl developed his approach to therapy while in a camp.  There are many more examples.

And there are examples of people who were creative when unknown, became successful only to stop being creative.  Ernest Hemingway, if I’m not mistaken, is an example.  Perhaps all these examples are exceptions, and the hierarchy of needs stands up well to the general trend.  But the exceptions certainly do put some doubt into our minds.

I would like to suggest a variation on Maslow's theory that might help.  If we take the idea of actualization as Goldstein and Rogers use it, i.e. as the "life force" that drives all creatures, we can also acknowledge that there are various things that interfere with the full effectiveness of that life force.  If we are deprived of our basic physical needs, if we are living under threatening circumstances, if we are isolated from others, or if we have no confidence in our abilities, we may continue to survive, but it will not be as fulfilling a live as it could be.  We will not be fully actualizing our potentials!  We could even understand that there might be people that actualize despite deprivation!  If we take the deficit needs as subtracting from actualization, and if we talk about full self-actualization rather than self-actualization as a separate category of need, Maslow's theory comes into line with other theories, and the exceptional people who succeed in the face of adversity can be seen as heroic rather than freakish abberations. [/I]  

而且在你的这篇作文中，第四段中把entertainment作为impratical的也不完全妥当，而且仅仅是带过一笔pop movies，后面的belief也并没有说究竟是什么，全文最后一句话“With impracticality, we make life more enjoyable and full of hope.”也实在很费解。

整篇文章各位可以学习作者在第二段的分析手法，每句话之间非常连贯，说理也很清晰。虽然我不认同全文的观点，但这些推理分析说理的方式确实是夺取高分的捷径。

不过但愿作者不是文中写得那样“practical”，否则，Believe me， you are going down, either By God or by yourself。

rsrsUID: 146479

楼上批得有理
不过我主要是从写文章的角度觉得Maslow的理论好用
impractiacality没有想到好的方法来论证
至于个人观点嘛……说来就话长啦