gre writing issue sample writing 43
- The increasingly rapid pace of life today causes more problems than it solves.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
Stating that the increasingly rapid pace of life today causes more problems than it solves, the speaker asserts that our quality of living and modern society in general will be ultimately worsened by technology-induced speedy life pattern. In some sense, it is hard to deny that modern technologies have presented lots of undesirable side-effects. From my perspective, however, there have been much more merits than problems from speed and technology.
Of course, few would disagree that some aspects of our living have been hurt by hectic life patterns. In terms of the depth of human interaction, speed itself cannot be always praised. Instead of thorough deliberations and refinements of our thoughts, instant messaging via E-mail or various SNS has made our daily communication more and more spontaneous and impromptu.
On our daily living, we are besieged by a number of cultural trends that emphasize only quicker life pattern: fast foods, quick services, and/or hopes for faster progress in everything. Meanwhile, we have gradually lost the leisurely hours for our spiritual maturation and reflection on our life. No one would deny that our time has imposed unprecedented levels of stress to most people.
Then, is speedy life pattern or technology that makes it possible always blameworthy? -----------
Is the increasingly rapid life pace today just a devil’s culture? In some sense, it is true that our lives have become remarkably stressful and unhealthy because of the hectic and busy life cycles. Ultimately, however, I think the nostalgic ideals to return to the past ignore a variety of benefits speedy modern life has produced.
Of course, it is undeniable that a number of new social problems today come from quicker and quicker life patterns. With regard to people’s general mental health, speedy modern life cannot be excused. Desires to be promoted quicker than others and demands to create new products faster than rivals inevitably make modern workers have a number of mentally unhealthy pressures which cause depression, anxiety, and stress.
Besides these general health problems, ever faster life today seems to produce negative consequences in our daily life. In general learning, we have become more impatient with the results; instead of spending sufficient time in figuring out the processes and the whole, we tend to rush into the end result. Careful reflection in thinking seems to be an outdated concept in our modern speed-oriented culture.
Then, should we go back to the past where bucolic peace is believe to outstrip intense, rapid urban life? By returning to the past, we might regain more quiet, slow, and even peaceful life. Yet, at the same time, it means that we should be divested of many privileges of modern life that rapidity coming from modern efficiency and competition has offered to us. We might be liberated from some modern discomforts such as rush hours, stressful competitions within and between organizations, and pressures to become updated with constantly changing knowledge and norms, if we say good-bye to the hectic modern life. But, we should deal with the same old problems including starvation, dearth of material resources, and crudity in means of production all of which medieval people wanted to eliminate. Maybe, people from the “lost paradise,” the past would prefer our abundance to their own poverty.
Aside from material well-being, the ever quicker pace of life today has presented us lots of new experiences that old times had never enjoyed. We have accumulated a size of new scientific knowledge that, in turn, is quickly revised, distributed, and re-concentrated through fast systems of the Internet. Thanks to swiftly innovated modern technologies and treatments in hospitals, patients with intractable diseases can be able to be properly diagnosed and cured. Even, people who are tired of the hectic urban life and thus want to go to silent refuges can avoid the rapid life quickly by virtue of the speedy vehicles, cars and airplanes; ironically, rapidity can be escaped rapidly through rapidity.
In short, rapid life today seems to be a tolerable fee for using our new heaven rather than an insufferable vice of hell. In my opinion, though regrettable to some degree, busy life today is not so much an egregious virus devastating humans as an inevitable cost for enjoying both material well-being and increasing confidence and convenience that people who lived their own slow lives in the past direly dreamed of.