Passage 5
What our society suffers from most today is the absence of consensus about what it and life in it ought to be, such consensus cannot be gained from society’s present stage, or from fantasies about what it ought to be. For that the present is too close and too diversified, and the future too uncertain, to make believable claims about it. A consensus in the present hence can be achieved only through a shared understanding of the past, as Homer’s epics informed those who lived centuries later what it meant to be Greek, and by what images and ideals they were to live their lives and organize their societies.
Most societies derive consensus from a long history, a language all their own, a common religion, common ancestry. The myths by which they live are based on all of these. But the United States is a country of immigrants, coming from a great variety of nations. Lately, it has been emphasized that an asocial, narcissistic perso
A. lack of serious disagreement over the organizations of social life
B. non-existence of unanimity on the forms the society should take
C. general denying of its conformity with what it was unexpected to be
D. public negation of the consensus on how to conduct social reforms
Passage Four
Ours is a society that tries to keep the world sharply divided into masculine and feminine, not because that is the way the world is, but because that is the way we believe it should be. It takes unwavering belief and considerable effort to keep this division. It also leads us to make some fairly foolish judgments, particularly about language.
Because we think that language also should be divided into masculine and feminine we have become very skilled at ignoring anything that will not fit our preconceptions. We would rather change what we hear than change our ideas about the gender division of the world. We will call assertive girls unfeminine, and supportive boys effeminate, and try to change them while still retaining our stereotypes of masculine and feminine talk.
This is why some research on sex differences and language has been so interesting. It is an illustration of how wrong we can be. Of the many investigators who set out to find the
A. assertive.
B. snobbish.
C. approving.
D. critical.
In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and "human-relations" experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not whole heartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue-and white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.
The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and i
A. a necessary part of the society though each individual’s function is negligible
B. working in complete harmony with the rest of the society
C. an unimportant part in comparison with the rest of the society, though functioning smoothly
D. a humble component of the society, especially when working smoothly
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