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Speaking as a member of avery spacial community called a Kibbutz, which used to provid to our
poeple from the agriculture products we grow in our own feilds, and sell in markets. When
progress came to our country, many industries got stronger, and farmers like ourselfs found their
selfs without a future for their agriculture investment, that they worked and built for years. In this
case progress has damaged a larg community, and made them face a hard finencial fueture.
Another unfourtunate veiw on progress, is the use of computures to entertain children. In the year
2000, when every home has adopted the progress in computures, children find themselfs sitting
long hours infront of the compure instead of playing outside or inviting friends over. This way of
spending to much time on the computure is very damaging to thier social skills, and even a reason
for weight gain amoung young children.
After looking at a differnt aspects of progress, i can say clearly, that progress has to be supervised.
That in some cases progress is making a big damage for our society. People sould welcome
progress in many feilds of life, but always have your eyes open for littel "land mines" that could
make an unreversable situation and future.
(Essay ID: 317. This is a 5 point essay)
Topic: 37
The nobleness & the use of progress in any field, to an individual, or to the society on the whole,
will depend on what use the progress is being put to, and I feel, cannot be generalized as stated
above.
Progress has been inherent with the human race. As the human brain developed, so has progress
been achieved, in almost all fields known to man. The cultural progress over the ages, have made
humans better and made this world, a better place to live in. Similarly, scientific progress has been
effective in eradicating diseases, providing better food crops, facilitating transportation etc.
Literary progress has helped us better document our history and has produced works that have
made us think. Progress in communication techniques have converged this whole world of ours,
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into the 'global village'.
If we look at the above examples, we see that they are all aimed at the betterment of our world.
Here progress is being applied for the society's good.
The products from the same progress in the various fields, when in wrong hands, wreak havoc in
the same society that they are supposed to make better.
Sophisticated arms & explosives in the hands of terrorists & children, science of human cloning in
the hands of scientists, crop control technologies in the hands of corporations etc., are some of the
examples of how progress can go wrong. Think of how much better the world would be, without
nuclear and biological weapons, without mutated food grains et al. Think of how many people
would not have died or maimed for life, if there had been no land mines ? After witnessing the
destructive use the Dynamite could be put to, Alfred Nobel himself repented his own creation of
Dynamite so much that he set up the Nobel prize, to be awarded to people who work for the
betterment of the human society.
Therefore, it is my strong contention that progress is only good when it is put to the right use, for
the betterment and upliftment of the individual and the society, on a whole. Progress put to any
ulterior uses should be outrightly condemned.
(Essay ID: 320. This is a 5 point essay)
Topic: 38
I disagree wholeheartedly that learning about the past has no value for those of us living in the
present. In fact, the definition of learning includes the idea of an accumulation of experiences
from the past. Learning can only take place if we make an association between things that have
happened in the past or between something in the past and something that we predict will happen
in the future. All knowledge that we acquire as we grow is from the past-language, customs,
academic subjects, and so on. While it may be helpful sometimes to be able to overlook previous
knowledge in order to avoid the constraint conformity, the vast majority of knowledge that we
learn is a huge boost-imagine if each of us had to discover by ourselves that 2 + 2 = 4! So, in a
very real sense, all learning depends on past events.
We are only able to live in this world with our current standard of living because we have learned
from the past. We receive knowledge from the past and we are able to use it and improve it. We
examine our actions in the past and we make judgments about what was right and what was
wrong. Then, it is hoped, we will attempt to avoid those same mistakes again. For example, one of
the great mistakes all over the world has been depriving women and the disempowered classes
status in society and many industrialized and developing countries all over the world are
attempting to avoid such mistakes both in the present and in the future.
Furthermore, all of the knowledge that we have today is a result of all the work of our
predecessors. The ancient Greeks developed geometry, which helped other European scientists
analyze the solar system, which in turn gave us a new understanding of our place in the universe.
The great majority of technology today depends directly on several thousands of years of work of
past thinkers. To ignore the knowledge of the past would be to throw away five thousand years of
history and experience.
There is, however, some seemingly small, but important value to ignoring the past. It is often the
case that history or tradition has the effect of constraining our thought in the present and many
important philosophical and scientific breakthroughs have only been possible as a direct result of
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ignoring the past. The past, in a sense, can blind us to the truth, we can become bound by
tradition. For example, at one time, leading thinkers in Europe thought that the Earth was at the
center of the universe and those who disagreed were persecuted as heretics, even Copernicus,
who we now know was correct about his heliocentric model of the Solar System. However,
scientists were eventually able to break from the past and accept the new model of the universe.
In short, learning from and analyzing the past has enormous value for us and life as we know it on
Earth today would not be possible without the benefit of thousands of years of history and
accumulated knowledge. It is important, however, to ignore the past so that we can make a step
forward, and such free thinking should be encouraged, although not at the expense of past
knowledge. Learning from the past is something like learning from our parents-in most cases, their
past helps us have a better future, but there are times when we need to make a break from the
past and make a bold step into an unknown future.
(Essay ID: 122 . Sample essay provided by Erin Billy of www.TestMagic.com)
Topic: 39
Technology has greatly improved the way we get information. Students can now get more
information, get it more quickly, and get it more conveniently.
The Internet and the World Wide Web has opened every major library and database to students [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]