GRE作文北美范文 关于社会对认知的关注度

GRE作文北美范文:关于社会对认知的关注度
4月份首轮GRE考试已结束，同学们需进入下轮GRE备考中，备考GRE首先要选择好的资料，GRE北美范文对备考GRE写作有一定的指导作用，下面为大家整理了最完整版的GRE北美范文，主要是关于GRE ISSUE 作文范文，供大家应用。

"Society does not place enough emphasis on the intellect---that is, on reasoning and other cognitive skills."
The speaker asserts that society should place more emphasis on intellect and cognition. While the speaker might overlook the benefits of nurturing certain emotions and feelings, on balance I agree that it is by way of our heads rather than our hearts that we can best ensure the well-being of our society.
I concede that undue emphasis on cultivating the intellect at the expense of healthy emotions can harm an individual psychologically. Undue suppression of legitimate and healthy desires and emotions can result in depression, dysfunction, and even physical illness. In fact, the intellect can mask such problems, thereby exacerbating them. To the extent they occur on a mass scale these problems become societal ones--lowering our economic productivity, burdening our health-care and social-welfare systems, and so forth. I also concede that by encouraging and cultivating certain positive emotions and feelings--such as compassion and empathy--society dearly stands to benefit.
In many other respects, however, emphasizing emotions and de-emphasizing intellect can carry negative, even dangerous, consequences for any society. Our collective sense of fairness, equity, and justice can easily give way to base instincts like hate, greed, and lust for power and domination. Thus, on balance any society is better off quelling or at least tempering these sorts of instincts, by nurturing reason, judgment, tolerance, fairness, and understanding--all of which are products of the intellect.
The empirical evidence supporting this position is overwhelming; yet one need look no further than a television set. Most of us have been witness to the current trend in trashy talk shows, which eschew anything approaching intellectual discourse in favor of pan &ring to our baser urges and instincts like jealousy, lust and hate. Episodes often devolve into anti-social, sometimes violent, behavior on the part of participants and observers alike. And any ostensible "lessons learned" from such shows hardly justify the antisocial outbursts that the producers and audiences of these shows hope for.
The dangers of a de-emphasis on intellect are all too evident in contemporary America.The incidence of hate crimes is increasing at a startUng rate; gang warfare is at an all-time high; the level of distrust between African Americans and white America seems to be growing. Moreover, taken to an extreme and on a mass scale, appeal to the emotions rather than the intellect has resulted in humanity's most horrific atrocities, like the Jewish holocaust, as well as in nearly every holy war ever waged throughout history. Indeed, suppressing reason is how demagogues and despots gain and hold their power over their citizen-victims. In contrast, reason and better judgment are effective deterrents to despotism, demagoguery, and especially to war.
Those opposed to the speaker's position might argue that stressing cognition and intellect at the expense of emotion and feeling would have a chilling effect on artistic creativity, which would work a harm to the society. However, even in the arts students must learn theories and techniques, which they then apply to their craft whether it be music performance, dance, or acting. And creative writing requires the cognitive ability to understand how language is used and how to best communicate ideas. Besides, creative ability is itsdf partly a function of intellect; that is, creative expression is a marriage between cognitive ability and the expression of feelings and emotions.
In sum, emotions and feelings can serve as important catalysts for compassion and for creativity. Yet behaviors that are most harmful to any society are also born of emotions and instincts, which the intellect can serve to override. The inescapable conclusion, then, is that the speaker is fundamentally correct.。