SRCC GBO 2015 Question Paper

Study the passages below and answer the questions that follow each passage?

Passage-II

Plato may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to “real” people and everyday events —knew what intellectual experiences make for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings. Even Aristotle, master of pure reason,said: “The friend of wisdom is also a friend of myth.” Modern thinkers who have studied myths and fairy tales from a philosophical or psychological viewpoint arrive at the same conclusion, regardless of their original persuasion. Mircea Eliade, describes these stories as “models for human behavior by that very fact, give meaning and value to life.’ Drawing on anthropological parallels, he and others suggest that myths and fairy tales were derived from, or given symbolic expression to, initiation rites or other rites of passage — such as metaphoric death of an old, inadequate self in order to be reborn on a higher plane of existence. He feels that this is why these tales meet a strongly felt need and are carriers of such deep meaning.

Other investigators with a depth psychological orientation emphasize the similarities between the fantastic events in myths and fairy tales and those in adult dreams and daydreams — the fulfillment of wishes, the winning out over all competitors, the destruction of enemies — and conclude that one attraction of this literature is its expression of that which is normally prevented from coming to
awareness. There are, of course, very significant differences between fairy tales and dreams. For example, in dreams more often than not the wish fulfillment is disguised, while in fairy tales much of it is openly expressed. To a considerable degree, dreams are the result of inner pressures which have found no relief, of problems which beset a person to which he knows no solution and to which the
dream finds none. The fairy tale does the opposite: it projects the relief of all pressures and not only offers ways to solve problems but promises that a “happy” solution will be found. We cannot control what goes on in our dreams. Although our inner censorship influences what we may dream, such control occurs on an unconscious level. The fairy tale, on the other hand, is very much the result of common conscious and unconscious content having been shaped by the conscious mind,not of one particular person, but the consensus of many in regard to what they view as universal human problems, and what they accept as desirable solutions.If all these elements were not present in a fairy tale, it would not be retold by generation after generation. Only if a fairy tale met the conscious and unconscious requirements of many people was repeatedly retold, and listened to with great interest. No dream of a person could arouse such persistent interest unless it was worked into a myth, as was the story of the pharaoh's dream as interpreted by Joseph in the Bible.

Study the passages below and answer the questions that follow each passage?

Passage-III

Advanced technology has created a vast increase in occupational specialties, many of them requiring many, many years of highly specialised training. It must motivate this training. It has made ever more complex and “rational” the ways in which these occupational specialties are combined in our economic and social life. It must win passivity and obedience to this complex activity. Formerly, technical rationality had been employed only to organise the production of rather simple physical objects, for example, aerial bombs. Now technical rationality is increasingly employed to organise all of the processes necessary to the utilisation of the physical objects, such as bombing systems, maintenance, intelligence and supply systems. For this reason it seems a mistake to argue that we are in a “post-industrial” age, a concept favouredby the laissez innover school. On the contrary, the rapid spread of technical rationality into organisational and economic life and, hence, into social life is more aptly described as second and much more intensive phase of industrial revolution. One might reasonably suspect that it will create analogous social problems. Accordingly, a third major hypothesis would argue that there are very profound social antagonisms or contradictions not less sharp or fundamental than those ascribed by Marx to the development of nineteenth century industrial society. The general form of the contradictions might be described as follows — a society characterised by the employment of advanced technology requires an ever more socially disciplined population, yet retains an ever declining capacity to enforce the required discipline. One way readily describes four specific formsof the same general contradiction. Occupationally, the work force must be over-trained and under-utilised. Here, again, an analogy to classical industrial practice serves to shorten and simplify the explanation, I have in mind the assembly line. As a device in the organisation of the work process, the assembly line is valuable mainly. It gives management a high degree of control over the pace of the work and, more to the point in the present case, it divides the work process into units so simple that the quality of the work performedis readily predictable. That is, since each operation uses only a small fraction of worker’s skill, there is a very great likelihood that the operation will be performed in a minimally acceptable way. Alternately, if each operation taxed the worker’s skill, there would be frequenterrors in the operation, frequent disturbance of the work flow, and a thoroughly unpredictable quality of the end product. The assembly line also introduces standardisation in work skills and thus makes for a high degree of interchange ability among the work force. For analogous reasons, the work force in advanced technological systems must be relatively over-trained or, what is the same thing, its skills relatively under-used. My impression is that, this is no less true now sociologists that of welders, of engineers than of assemblers. The contradiction emerges when we recognize that technological progress requires a continuous increasein the skill levels of its work force, skill levels which frequently embodya fairly rich scientific and technical training. While at the same time, the advance of technical rationally in work organisation means that those skills will be less and less fully used. Economically, there is a parallel process at work. It is commonly observed that the work force within technologically advanced organisations is asked to work not less hard but more so. This is particularly true for those with advanced training and skills. Brzezinski's conjecture that technical specialists undergo continuous retraining is off the mark only in that it assumes such retraining only for a managingelite. To get people of work harder require growing incentives. Yet the prospérity which is assumed in technologically advanced society erodes the value of economic incentives. Salary and wage increases and the goods they purchase lose their over riding importance once necessities, creature comforts, and an ample supply of luxuries are assured. As if in confirmation of this point, it has been pointed out that among young people one can already observe a radical weakening in the power of such incentives as money status and authority.

Study the passages below and answer the questions that follow each passage?

Passage-IV

One major obstacle in the struggle to lower carbon dioxide emissions, which are believed to play a role in climate change, is the destruction of tropical rain forests. Trees naturally store more carbon dioxide as they age, and the trees of the tropical rain forests in the Amazon, for example, store an average of 500 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare (10,000 square miles). When such trees are harvested, they release their carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This release of carbon dioxide through the destruction of tropical forests, which experts estimate accounts for 20% of global carbon dioxide emissions annually, traps heat in the earth’s atmosphere, which leads to global warming.
The Kyoto treaty set forth a possible measure to curtail the rate of deforestation. In the treaty, companies that exceed their carbon dioxide emission limits are permitted to buy the right to pollute by funding reforestation projects in tropical rain forests. Since forests absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, planting such forests helps reduce the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thus balancing out the companies’ surplus of carbon dioxide emissions. However, attempts at reforestation have so far been unable to keep up with the alarming rate of deforestation, and it has become increasingly clear that further steps must be taken to curtail deforestation and its possible deleterious effects on the global environment.
One possible solution is to offer incentives for governments to protect their forests. While this solution could lead to a drastic reduction in the levels of carbon dioxide, such incentives would need to be tied to some form of verification, which is extremely difficult, since most of the world’s tropical forests are in remote areas, like Brazil’s Amazon basin or the island of New Guinea, which makes on-site verification logistically difficult. Furthermore, heavy cloud cover and frequent heavy rain make conventional satellite monitoring difficult.
Recently, scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have suggested that the rates of deforestation could be monitored using new technology to analyze radar waves emitted from a surveillance satellite. By analyzing multiple radar microwaves sent by a satellite, scientists are able to prepare a detailed, high resolution map of remote tropical forests. Unlike photographic satellite images, radar images can be measured at night and during days of heavy cloud cover and bad weather.
Nevertheless, critics of government incentives argue that radar monitoring has been employed in the past with little success, citing the Global Rain Forest Mapping Project which was instituted in the mid 1990s amid concern over rapid deforestation in the Amazon. However, the limited data of the Mapping Project was due only to the small amount of data that could be sent from the satellite. Modern satellites can send and receive 10 times more data than their predecessors of the mid 1990s, obviating past problems with radar monitoring. Furthermore, recent technological advances in satellite radar that allow for more accurate measurements to be made, even in remote areas, make such technology a promising step in monitoring and controlling global climate change.