Issue186【challenge yourself】第六次作业by linyunf

linyunfUID：2405027

提纲：
1实用性和理想主义对人类的贡献都是重要的
2实用性毕竟让人们花有限的精力完成工作，达到人们的生活目
3花太多的时间做实用性不大的事是没有实际意义的；
4但是有的方面来说，理想也是重要的总结
5应该结合起来

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."
WORDS: 542          TIME: 1:05:21          DATE: 2008-8-3

The speaker asserts that anything that is not obviously practical does not deserve working on in today's world and all powers and talents must serve practicality. Although the speaker recognizes the important role practicality plays, he or she just overestimates its effect. Apart from practicality, idealism is also crucial in the current society which is filled with utilitarianism. Both practicality and idealism is needed to guarantee the operation of a society.



The widespread of practicality can prevent a society from spending too much money and resources on meaningless projects, thus increasing more efforts to deal with ordinary people's fundamental requirements. For example, the government is now regulating the size of real-estate to allow poverty individuals to afford at least a house for living. Almost every company of real-estate will not be willing to build such small houses because the limited profits, making ordinary people with small salary not able to purchase houses and causing social problems. Once the government sets the percentage of small and saving houses of these companies, more and more people can focus their attention on working rather than a place to stay at night. Another example involves the level of treating distinguished guests form foreign countries. As long as these guests are satisfied with the receiving, we need not to apply surfeit resources to them to the extent of fawning. Basic needs are enough in such cases.



The lack of practicality can lead to waste of resources which may be used in other important aspects. Distributed unfairly, these resources will fail to develop their original functions. Taking the   government building as an example, in some countries, the governors are lack of the notion of practicality and trying to make the building as showy as better. The outcome of such projects can only be profligacy of public resources and resentment from the local people. It may also cause negligence of original wanted projects oriented for the local people's convenience and halt of the development of the country. Similar incidents also happen when we consider scientific research. Although most research has merit currently or in the long-term, there does exist certain kinds of research that are proved useless and money-wasting. For instance, the researches for machines that do not need energy are confirmed to be illusion. Yet, some researchers are still conducting such experiments, which is undoubtedly not practical and a waste of money.



However, too much emphasize on practicality and disregard of idealism is harmful. Both of two are central in some cases. For example, desertification is becoming more and more serious now. However, many people living in city do not acquaint the consequences of desertification; that are fewer lands suitable for living and bad climate. Although is may take hundreds of years for desertification to make all the people homeless, the effect of it may take place in a few years. If the government and ordinary people solve the problem immediately, we will all face up the irreversible impact. So practicality can only impede the long-term control of desertification which needs idealism; that is the concept of enduring development of our earth.


To sum up, practicality is beneficial to our current improvement. However, idealism also plays a role of indispensible assistance in the further development of human beings.