Lightning-Fast Doubt Resolution

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:
The 19th and 20th century rapid industrialization brought with it, a shift from the original path to the American dream. The ideology of hard work was gradually replaced with get rich quick philosophy. Today there are three ways most Americans believe are their passport to the realization of the American dream. The television shows with large prizes, jackpots with state lotteries and compensation from lawsuits. These are just seductive strategies that are highly elusive. But the question remains; how to achieve the American dream?

The answer to achieving the American dream can only come from individual definition of the dream. Many think that a religious paradise or racial equality as Martin Luther dreamed would make them realize their American dream. Many scholars have tried to evaluate the American dream from various angles, but one consistent factor and component of the dream has been identified as money. The American dream is highly associated with capitalistic tendency of most Americans. The ability to buy big cars, houses and to be independent overshadows everything else. You will be successful only if you own these. Then, how do you achieve these? For those who have fallen into the trap of market surveys seducing people to believe in game shows, lotteries and lawsuits as their path to instant wealth, it is good to remind them that the founding fathers insisted on hard work, industry and labor ideology as the way to the American dream.

The original ideology of the American dream to many was not through instant gratifications and extravagant wealth. The founding fathers believed in economic independence and financial gain that came from social advancement. In early 19th century, many Americans faced great hardships due to changing economic landscapes. Stories of rags to riches through hard work were plenty. Many believed their American dream could only be achieved through hard work, discipline and saving. The religious Protestants promoted hard work as the only way to success and revelation of God's grace.

This work ethic of the early American gradually started shifting with the introduction of industrialization. The values of work changed significantly with the introduction of line production and requirements of skilled labor. The Second World War and the introduction of consumer world further changed the original philosophies of success. More and more Americans were swallowed into the material world of consumerism. Consumerism changed the American dream and the American from beliefs in individuality, thrift, craftsmanship and hard work to desires of material good, acceptance, and social status. It is not lost on observers that these changes have not increased the desire to achieve the American dream but have deluded people. People think just being in America, you are entitled to the American dream, rather than accepting you will only achieve the dream through hard work. Many Americans do not see their future based on hard work and success but are deluded by massive marketing of wealth obtained through cheap, quick and easy means.

Today the American dream, the road to success and financial stability is taken more as a matter of luck than hard work. While many covet the dream through easy means and thereby undercut the ethical core values that established the American dream first, Americans have not lost the aspirations of realizing their dreams. This can be shown through critical analysis of the lotteries, television shows with large winning money and the number of lawsuits for money that many Americans are pursuing.

Source Agnes, articlebase.com

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

I’ve been following the economic crisis for more than two years now. I began working on the subject as part of the background to a novel, and soon realized that I had stumbled across the most interesting story I’ve ever found. While I was beginning to work on it, the British bank Northern Rock blew up, and it became clear that, as I wrote at the time, “If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex, and potentially super  risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.” . . . I was both right and too late, because all the groundwork for the crisis had already been done—though the sluggishness of the world’s governments, in not preparing for the great unraveling of autumn 2008, was then and still is stupefying. But this is the first reason why I wrote this book: because what’s happened is extraordinarily interesting. It is an absolutely amazing story, full of human interest and drama, one whose byways of mathematics, economics, and psychology are both central to the story of the last decades and mysteriously unknown to the general public. We have heard a lot about “the two cultures” of science and the arts—we heard a particularly large amount about it in 2009, because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the speech during which C. P. Snow first used the phrase. But I’m not sure the idea of a huge gap between science and the arts is as true as it was half a century ago—it’s certainly true, for instance, that a general reader who wants to pick up an education in the fundamentals of science will find it easier than ever before. It seems to me that there is a much bigger gap between the world of finance and that of the general public and that there is a need to narrow that gap, if the financial industry is not to be a kind of priesthood, administering to its own mysteries and feared and resented by the rest of us. Many bright, literate people have no idea about all sorts of economic basics, of a type that financial insiders take as elementary facts of how the world works. I am an outsider to finance and economics, and my hope is that I can talk across that gulf.

My need to understand is the same as yours, whoever you are. That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together. The aftermath of the crisis is going to dominate the economics and politics of our societies for at least a decade to come and perhaps longer.

Six friends, A, B, C, D, E and F like different fruits among Mango, Grape, Papaya, Guava, Orange and Banana. And six of them weigh differently.
Further, the following information is known:
* E is between A and B in the order of weight.
* E likes Papaya, B likes Mango.
* The heaviest person likes Guava; the lightest among them likes Banana.
* B and D neither like Banana nor Guava.
*C likes Banana, E is heavier than A and D.

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

In 1826, at the age of 20, John Stuart Mill sank into a suicidal depression, which was bitterly ironic, because his entire upbringing was governed by the maximisation of happiness. How this philosopher clambered out of the despair generated by an arch-rational philosophy can teach us an important lesson about suffering.

Inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s ideals, James Mill’s rigorous tutelage of his son involved useful subjects subordinated to the utilitarian goal of bringing about the greatest good for the greatest number. Music played a small part in the curriculum, as it was sufficiently mathematical - an early ‘Mozart for brain development’. Otherwise, subjects useless to material improvement were excluded.  

The young Mill soldiered on with efforts for social reform, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d become a utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside. With his well-tuned calculative abilities, the despairing philosopher put his finger right on the problem:

[I]t occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: ‘Suppose that all your objects in life were realised; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?’ And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered: ‘No!’ At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.

For most of our history, we’ve seen suffering as a mystery, and dealt with it by placing it in a complex symbolic framework, often where this life is conceived as a testing ground. In the 18th century, the mystery of suffering becomes the ‘problem of evil’, in which pain and misery turn into clear-cut refutations of God’s goodness to utilitarian reformers. As Mill says of his father: ‘He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.’

For a utilitarian, the idea of worshipping the creator of suffering is not only absurd, it undercuts the purpose of morality. It channels our energies toward the acceptance of what we should remedy. To revere the natural order could even turn us into moral monsters. Mill says: ‘In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature’s every day performances.’

What Mill calls the ‘Religion of Humanity’ involves pushing aside the old conception of God, and taking over responsibility for what happens in the world. We’re to become the good architect that God never was.

The utilitarian take on the problem of evil is half-right. Suffering ultimately outstrips our goals and beliefs. To claim otherwise is heartless. But it’s wrong to think that the problem of evil brushes aside God or the goodness of nature. When we refuse to accept a fundamental dimension of suffering, we suffer worse. There’s an immense mystery at the heart of being human: the paradox of opposing and accepting suffering. To abandon either side of the paradox is the real problem of evil.

The best things in life clue us into the mystery. Think of art, which by evoking our tragedies fills us with joy. Think of humour, which by registering our humiliations makes us roar with laughter. Though these mysteries don’t preclude the belief in progress, they don’t subordinate all our energies to it. They might often be useless for material improvement, but their uselessness is extremely useful for a meaningful life.

Here’s another irony: what first lifted Mill out of his utilitarianism-induced depression was an act of suffering. Reading a historian’s account of losing his father as a boy, Mill started crying, and the fact that he was crying filled him with happiness: ‘I was no longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone.’

Next, he explored Romantic poetry, which nourished the ecosystem of his inwardness. By adding an affective dimension to his life’s projects, literature revealed a new horizon of value, one drawn by the paradox of suffering.

Mill tries philosophically to resolve the paradox of suffering by arguing that higher goods such as love and literature are ultimately more satisfying than basic forms of pleasure. In some sense, that’s true. But the terms of this satisfaction are no longer utilitarian; they have more to do with adventure, beauty, even holiness. 

We should be wary of the Religion of Humanity, because subordinating our lives to utility hollows them out. But we have lots to learn from Mill’s fierce desire to add poetry to progress. Without goods that explode utilitarianism and open us to the mystery of suffering, even the happiest life is miserable.

Scott Samuelson

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.