Issue41【六人作文小组】第4周第5次作业

sneakerliuUID: 2481691

TOPIC: ISSUE41 - "Such nonmainstream areas of inquiry as astrology, fortune-telling, and psychic and paranormal pursuits play a vital role in society by satisfying human needs that are not addressed by mainstream science."
WORDS: 750
TIME: 上午 12:45:00
DATE: 2009-1-30

It seems a human nature to have the curiosity of the future. People are eager to foresee future careers, luck and even romantic relationships. That is, no matter what stage the needs is in the Maslow's Hierarchy Pyramid, from safety to self-transcendence, it will always be fantastic to understand before the happening of them. In retrospect, these methods such as fortune-telling and astrology or paranormal pursuits have played a vital role to determine the decisions of people, however, not a so vital role to the society as a whole at the moment.


Above all, when dating back to the ancient time of China, generals of an army would closely examine the stars and moon's states and their distance to each other before making a vital decision. They believe certain method, much likely to astrology in the western world, can help to predict the winner of certain campaign by understand the weather of the next few days. With little knowledge of weather, astrology seems to be the only method for them to ensure success or the explanation of failure. More importantly, certain fortune-telling methods commonly, if not always, contribute to ensure the stability of a society by telling the people that their king is destined to be one. As the people tend to believe the words from those fortune-tellers, they were less likely to challenge the power of kingship, which, at that moment, maintain the stability of the vulnerable society. Nonetheless, the modern society have meteorology to satisfied certain needs of weather and justified that there is no such things of destiny. It is true that people no longer need the paranormal pursuits to determine those that could be explained by modern science.

Unfortunately, we do have many scientifically unexplainable phenomena, mostly subjective affairs. In this respect, even the modern civilians turn to the astrology. People, especially the young do care about the future luck as well as the romantic relationships. Those affairs are less likely to be explained by the modern science, as they are either purely subjective or imagined by humans. That is, there is no scientific way to explain why one person could win a lottery while another cannot. Or it is impossible to predict whom would one meet and fall in love with in the rest of ones life since it is full of coincidence. Here we have the astrology, which satisfies certain needs of understanding the future. Actually, in order to maintain people's belief of astrology, it never present the detail of ones future husband or wife or the date of winning a lottery, which indicates that the astrology is merely a way of relax but helping one to make decisions in the modern age.

Does the method vital or not when it comes to the society as a whole? It is vital in the past when we did not understand the traits of nature but not vital currently. The change is decided on whether people still believe in them. Even it is true that many people turn to the astrology to ask for the way out of a mess or paranormal pursuits for quicker recovery from diseases in the modern age. People are still struggling to cooperate or compete in the society positively in order to have a better life quality. The patients are still going to the hospitals and asking help from the modern medical system. People are pre for the peace of the world but never stop the pace to make one. Thus, the astrology or fortune-telling is a method for people to rely on, mainly mentally but cannot make changes since people no longer fully believe them. But in the ancient time, those paranormal methods actually changed the pace of societies. The astrology could decide the dates of a war and even decide the existence of a way if it indicates that the aggressive side cannot win. It gave people the faith to be loyal to the kingship and hope for a better luck. The whole society's actions, minds and behaviors are affected by the nonmainstream areas.

In sum, astrology, fortune-telling and paranormal pursuits or other nonmainstream areas play vital roles in the history of human beings by deciding either subjective issues such as luck and objective issues such as weather, or both. But currently with the increasing acknowledge of the modern science, many phenomena are explained perfectly by meteorology or medicine and so forth. People can only get comforts when asking for some predictions of the subjective issues, but never really believe in it. Thus, those nonmainstream areas as whole is not vital in the modern society,

levinshireUID: 2559564

你这一篇写得太好了，简直可以做范文。观点考虑得很全面，表达也很地道，那么复杂的意思都让你说明白了。
只不过：正文第一段讨论，说占星术在古代可以understand the weather，这是nonmainstream科学性的一面，感觉加上这个的话论证有些矛盾。就说占星术对将领们的决定起关键作用就可以吧。第二段在适当的地方重点强调一下对现代人的心理慰藉（psychological solace北美范文）更好些吧，因为感觉你就想表达这个意思，但只在最后说了一个relax。
其他地方，挑出不毛病了。大赞。

看完你的，觉得我好像写跑题了。应该讨论是否play a vital role in society，我整篇去讨论是否benefit the society。你看一下是不是：
https://bbs.gter.net/viewthread.php?tid=913221&page=1&extra=