mell scrie:
6.If you could change one important thing about your hometown, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.
"What is the city but the people ?" ( William Shakespeare )
"For a city consists in men, not in walls, not in ships empty of men." ( Nicias )
"God made the country. And man made the town." ( William Cowper )
"The knowledge of courtesy is a very necessary study; like peace and beauty it brings mutual liking." ( Michel de Montaigne )
"A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite." ( Oscar Wilde )
"Intemperance is the physician's provider." ( Publius Syrus )
Introduction :
- loosely speaking, a mentality is a mental or intellectual activity;
- but in everyday language, mentality is a quality of the mind that is taken as characteristic of a particular individual or class of individuals;
- I use the term mentality in its everyday, common meaning;
- here are the three least mentalities of my town's inhabitants that I would change : moralizing; incivility; and intemperance;
Development :
The Thing I Would Change about My Town :
THE MENTALITIES OF ITS INHABITANTS
A. Moralizing - the Claim of Monopoly on Moral Judgment
- a moralizer is a person who seeks to impose upon others his or her views of how they should live and behave;
- everyone is entitled to a view about what counts as accessible behaviour;
- and everyone in entitled to put it forward as eloquently and forcefully as he / she can;
- but moralizers go much further;
- they want others to conform to their views;
- and they seek to bring this about by coercion - employing means which range from social disapproval to legal control;
- when moralizers force others to comply with their preferences they show at least several of the following : insensitivity; intolerance; unkindness; lack of imagination; failure of sympathy; absence of understanding; ignorance of alternative, interests and needs in human experience; and arrogance in believing that their way is the only acceptable way;
- they defend their actions by saying that they are trying to defend others from harm;
- by this they claim a monopoly on moral judgment;
- they also pretend the right to decide on other's behalf what is good for them;
- that is why I would change this mentality as quickly as possible ( even overnight, if possible );
B. Incivility - Invading Other's Privacy :
- despite appearance, our 21st century world is not undergoing a new immoral age;
- but instead, it is suffering a different phenomenon : a loss of civility, a deficit of GOOD MANNERS;
- what has happened is a decay of what makes the social machine function : a breakdown of the mutual tolerance and respect;
- this mutual tolerance and respect should allow room in a complex, plural society for individuals to live their own lives in peace;
- youth spitting and the pavement and sweating in buses offer merely superficial symptoms of incivility;
- but what about gossiping, and backbiting ?
- even more serious are such things as invasion of privacy and irruption into areas of personal lives irrelevant to public concerns ( for example expose of the sex lives of others );
- our age is in fact a moralistic age;
- this moralistic age is a large part of the problem;
- because moralistic attitudes are intolerant;
- and intolerance is one of the worst discourtesies;
- ill-mannered people are generally so because they falsely estimate their own value;
- that is why I would immediately change the dangerous mentality of incivility which affects our lives at a high rate;
C. Intemperance - a Destructive Habit
- one night of alcohol-assisted celebration, especially of a major event, might leave one feeling allergic to light and sound, averse to the thought of food, intolerant even of the simplest and mildest forms of human interaction;
- these are in fact the wages of intemperance;
- there is a trick in the nature of some things, but especially of those two wild horsemen : alcohol and merriment;
- these two wild horsemen may urge us on just when we have already gone too far;
- intemperance is stimulating is itself;
- intemperance also has the salutary effect of preventing moderation become a habit;
- all instruments of excess are destructions;
- sometimes, excess - in moderation - keeps our sense of perspective, and has a cathartic effect, flushing our blocked up conventionalities of our sensibilities ( by moderate excess I mean the occasional abandonment to excess );
- but what if the excess is every night ?
- of course, everyone is entitled to substitute a dream that can be readily and quickly invoked for a reality which is hard, long, and uncertain to get;
- however, each one of us who is well anchored in every day life reality knows that this reality is much better than any blurred and temporary simulacrum can hope to be;
- one advantage of alcohol is that its effects are proportional to quantity;
- a little alcohol serves as a relaxing social lubricant, helping fellow guests warm to one another;
- but ( even at legal level ) alcohol makes the imbiber a menace if driving a car;
- larger quantities of alcohol subjugate one's muscular control and inhibitions;
- and very large quantities of alcohol can even kill an individual;
- this is why I would change this mentality about intemperance in my town's inhabitants;
Conclusion :
- urging individuals to be moral rarely works;
- the only genuinely practical way to get a good society is through communal morality;
- this communal morality ( obtained by debate and reflection in our best mood of tolerant good sense ) should concentrate on how as a society we can order our affairs in the direction of fairness and decency;
- "Civility is to human nature what warmth is to wax!" ( Arthur Schopenhauer )
- civility is our best hope to find and maintain that subtle and constantly renegotiated equilibrium on which the existence of society depends;
- one can be intemperate in many ways, but intemperance is most applied to the use of alcohol and other intoxicants;
- people choose to mark significant occasions by getting intoxicated ( inducing temporary, but often profound changes in their usual selves );
- yet many times some people choose to get intoxicated daily, becoming a danger for themselves and others around them;
- mentalities that drastically affect a society should be changed radically;