【TRANSFORMER】_ISSUE40_0812

yesrushUID: 2443769

40"Scholars and researchers should not be concerned with whether their work makes a contribution to the larger society. It is more important that they pursue their individual interests, however unusual or idiosyncratic those interests may seem."

yesrushUID: 2443769

TOPIC: ISSUE235 - "Most people are taught that loyalty is a virtue. But loyalty-whether to one's friends, to one's school or place of employment, or to any institution-is all too often a destructive rather than a positive force."
WORDS: 552          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2009-8-12 19:28:54

The relationship among persons will be undermined if the loyalty lost in our society. Someone claims that that albeit loyalty is widely accepted as a base principle among human, however, it brings harm rather than benefits to our society. I disagree the speaker's contention, owning that the loyalty, which involves the logical thinking, can build the trust among persons, as well as accelerate our social progress.

To begin with, the loyalty is able to strengthen trust in friends, couples and group members, and therefore help one to earn respect from others. One can not become another's friend if one tell lies frequently, considering that loyalty is the foremost values in human beings. Let us look at the couple relationship. Loyalty in couples requires husband not to flirt other ladies since the third person is forbidden in the loyal essential of couple. Bill Clinton, the ex-president of American, who involved in the Lewinsky sex scandal, not only pose risk about family collapse, but also lose confidence from his supporters as well as undervalue his moral models in front of public. In sum, no loyalty, no trust, consequently no respect from others.

In addition, our society gets fruit from the loyalty in that it can greatly advance the productivity. With the emergence of Industrialization Revolution, the division of social labor born in industry. For the purpose of accomplishing a complex task, people from variety field must join into a group and therefore the loyalty becomes necessary during this period. If one in the big group betray his pears, and unfortunately his treacherous behavior is detected by others, group members will draw attention to the punishment on the dishonest person and morale issues, rather than working with a pioneering spirit. Lacking loyalty in a group leads to the decrease of whole group's efficiency.

However, the loyalty does not mean obey one's principles or polices without critical thinking. The aim of loyalty, is to better improve a community's development. If a wrong idea, which offered by the leader of a group, a company, or even a country, standing in the way of improvement, is discovered by a loyal person, he or she has the responsibility to inform this misleading issue to public. It might be tempting to think that the loyalist should not say no in the community, nevertheless, this concern is unwarranted, considering that this opposition attributes to correct errors in order that the community can go a way towards orderly and healthy. One of the paradigmatic examples is the population problem in China. Before fifty years ago, ‘more human is better’ is Chinese government attitude on population business, nonetheless a researcher named Chuyan Ma, point out that excess growth of population without limitation will definitely to induce to the scarcity of social resource and even social collapse. However, many scientists are too loyal to Chinese government to use their own analytical skills to evaluate Ma’s argument. Hardly could overpopulation in China be so evident nowadays if most of the scientists in the period of Ma opposite government's policy.

To sum up, the trust among familiar persons and the increasing efficiency in the group are born from loyalty. However, owing to the harm of overly loyalty, critical thinking must be set to be a prerequisite to prevent the loyalty going in the wrong way which opposes welfare of mass human.

blade134UID: 2328542

It is a hard choice when a researcher's interests conflict with social needs. A perfect condition is what he is interest in is just what general public needs. If these two are distinctly different and cannot have a compromise, which one should he take? In my opinion, researchers and scholars should insist on studying further if they believe what they do will have real value for society, no matter how unusual and idiosyncratic their interests seems.

Admittedly, an individual is a part of society all the time. With support from other people, such as families, friends or society, an researcher will fully show his talent. Edison, one of the greatest inventors in the world,  is such a successful example. He worked hard and manufactured a lot of useful inventions, and then people realized how useful they were and paid a large amount of money to buy them. When he had enough money, he created his company name General Electric to sell his products worldwide. Some of his inventions, such as light bulb and motion picture camera, are still widely used today. In general, the value to society is the key factor of his successful research.

However, Pursuing one's interest can make researchers solve the problems confront them and find some deep values. Take Einstein as example. No one understand what he think in the beginning. Einstein, who kept on working in people's misunderstanding, had accomplished great achievements in science. His  Relativity theory have changed people's understanding about traditional physics, and have made the research of physics go much further in 20th century. If the general public can not realized and accepted the real value of his workings, he would be obscure in his rest of life while modern technology would fall behind several decades.

In addition, researchers need to persist on his own research when others cannot realize how important it is. Van Gogh, one of the greatest artists in  history, died in poverty because no one understand his paintings in his life. In another case, Andersen, a Denmark writer, had written lots of compelling novels but also died in poverty, only for the reason that no one understand and like his workings. The compositions of both are widely regarded and spread out all over the world. Perhaps we could obtain much more outstanding compositions of them if they were recognized and supported during their life times. Besides these artistic misunderstandings, sometimes the theory raised by a scholar is too advanced to be accept by people at that time. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory, which illustrate the sun is the center of the universe, was regarded as an advance theory by modern scientists. But when he was alive, he can not public his theory for religious schools thought the earth is surely the center of the universe. These examples show that researchers have the power to keep their interest and go on studying if he believes what he studies is right, no matter how idiosyncratic it looks.

Hence, if a researcher set out his research base on society needs, he should have persistence on it because the value of his research would be recognized by society in the end.