【challenge yourself小组】第六次作业 issue186

superjiang001UID：2300426

TOPIC: ISSUE186 - "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."


提纲：
第一段：论述实用性的价值，它使我们的社会进步
第二段：但是不能忽视那些没有明显实用性的东西，比如艺术作品
第三段：同样不能忽视一些没有实用价值的学科，短期内它们可能没有实用价值，但从长远来看它们的价值很大
第四段：我们要预防过度重视实用性的情况发生，以防人们把实用性转化为功利主义

In current society, people are becoming more and more fascinated with practicality. The speaker believes that anything that is not obviously practical has little value in today’s world. It is undoubted that human beings have paid tribute to practicality for our society has a limited opportunity to progress without those practical things, while we should not neglect the contributions of no practical value of things. In fact, they provide us more valuable merits which guide us to proceed in a valid direction.  

First of all, practicality teaches us how to draw on our own resources, how to use our own mind for analyzing—an ability which stimulates human beings to keep on moving forward. In fact, mankind's faculties develop primarily through the high value we have been placing on practicality. Consider, Tomas Edison, for instance, who earns reputation not for the discovery of electricity, but for the first step he took in applying electricity to general fields, say, the light bulb, greatly changes people's daily life, and bring human beings to new era of electronic. Without the application of his discovery, the dawn of modern civilization will be delayed at least fifty years or even centuries. From the above we can conclude that practicality forces us to think intelligently and logically—which is the most significant weapon we equipped with to explore the unknown world and at the same time makes our life better and more comfortable.

Having recognized that practicality have been greatly contributed to our society, we should not overlook the significance of something which seems not that practical. To illustrate the point evidently, we can analyze the example of the works of art which is typically of no practical use. Throughout the nation and history, we have long been emphasized that the works of art as a means of reflecting social reality, transmitting cultural values, even practicing our morals. For instance, if we carefully observe the color of works created by Van Gogh's, we can easily discover that there are amount of dark and somber, sometimes crude in his paintings--which reflect his intense desire to express the misery about the poverty of humanity of that period of time. In my opinion, such kind of feelings is more important in forcing us to struggle and thrive in fighting against the injustice in our society.

Moreover, while some impractical subjects, such as biological genetics, historical literature, and so forth, have little practical values in today’s utilitarian world, we should not give up in studying such kind of areas for they may bring us values in the longer term though it maybe useless in the near future. For example, we gain little practical value from the study of biological genetics in a short term, however, we can acknowledge where mankind is rooted and the rule of survival of the fittest--which are more essential in the future with the rapid development of cloning.

Finally, the excessive of attention people nowadays have paid on practicality is the one that we must be very wary of for it is easily to turn to utilitarianism. For example, recently we have heard so many pieces of news about scandals towards academic fraud. It is primarily due to the too much emphasize the researchers or professors have paid on practicality. The more papers they publish, the more reputation they will earn, which means the more money they will get. The same situation have also preoccupied on politics. For example, in order to gain more support from the public, some politicians may tamper the poor economical data to a better one, which maybe earn themselves reputation and enough support during his governing period, but it will does great harm to the whole economic system, for the economical council will make improper plans for the following months according to the wrong data. In the main, while we obtain benefits from the practicality, we should be careful with utilitarianism which can be easily transformed from excess practicality.

In sum, although mankind has paid tribute to the contribution of practicality, we still need those impractical subjects and fields, say, art. In addition, in a world where competition is cumulated by multiplying and at the same time we undergo great pressures from various directions, especially the economic, we should be care with the rising of utilitarianism.




[ 本帖最后由 superjiang001 于 2008-8-2 19:11 编辑 ]