Reading Comprehension - Environment, Philosophy & Intellectual Discourse
Reading comprehension test featuring passages on Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling debate, mental discipline philosophy (titiksha), and analysis of intellectuals in capitalist society. Tests skills in main ideas, vocabulary, inferences, and author perspective comprehension for entrance exams.
Questions
Why do environmentalists call the ANWR, the 'biological heart of Alaska'?( Passage I)
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- It is like the Serengeti plains of Africa.
- It contains great number and diversity of plants and animals.
- It is in the centre of Alaska.
- It is the source of mineral deposits and oil resources.
Look at the selection of comments in Passage II by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. What is his opinion of the proposed legislation by Senator Murkowski?
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- Secretary Babbitt agrees that oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is important for U.S. economy.
- Secretary Babbitt disagrees with the environmental concerns raised by the Sierra Club.
- Secretary Babbitt opposes the suggestion to allow oil exploration in the ANWR.
- Secretary Babbitt says that he will wait for President Clinton to make a decision.
In Passage I, Senator Murkowski says oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is _____.
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- reasonable
- expensive
- risky
- extreme
What is the reason to be opposed by the speaker to use ANWR for oil drilling?
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- It is damaging for the environment.
- It is home for countless animals.
- Tourism would be affected.
- Being an undeveloped fragment, it has to be protected.
When you would be considered to have developed a mental weakness?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- When calm and cool disposition deserts you.
- When you acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles.
- When you do not make good resolves and affirmations.
- When you do not realise that God resides within you.
What is closest to the meaning of 'veto' in line 2 of passage II?
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- Refuse to endorse
- Discuss
- Agree to assent
- Overpower
What according to the passage is a practical wisdom?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- Negation of all worldly pleasures.
- Developing a right mental attitude.
- Making mind receptive to all mental disturbances.
- Longing for peaceful, successful and happy life.
Why the speaker has talked about National Petroleum Reserve in Passage II?
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- To show us the difference between National Petroleum Reserve and ANWR.
- To explain that ANWR can be converted into National Petroleum Reserve and used for oil drilling.
- To explain that a separate area has been set aside for oil drilling.
- To urge the congress to open a new National Petroleum Reserve.
What the author of the passage has practised in his life?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- Making daily affirmations that he will not indulge in laziness or inactivity.
- Developing a positive attitude and supportive frame of mind.
- Living in huts and caves in India.
- Self-discipline to attain neutrality.
According to all the readings, what is the relationship between gas prices and behaviour?
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- When gas prices rise, people look for alternative sources of oil.
- When oil production decreases, we have more gasoline to use.
- Everyone agrees about the need for oil exploration everywhere when gas is expensive.
- People are consuming more natural resources than ever before.
What, according to the passage, will make you happy and successful?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- Not grieving what you have or don't have.
- Not being too rash in behaviour.
- Not getting too much concerned about your problems.
- Not allowing your mind to withdraw in a shell.
What according to the passage materialistically successful men may have?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- All comforts at the cost of others.
- Facing odds with mental equilibrium.
- Self-discipline of body as well as mind.
- Problem, tension and sadness of great proportion.
What is closest to the meaning of 'gauge' in Passage I?
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- An instrument for measuring or testing
- A pressure point
- Public opinion or popularity
- Petroleum
''They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit, the existence of man, the producer.
If the above statement is correct, an explanation of its appropriate contradiction is provided by the hypothesis that __________.
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- wealth can be acquired only by force and a fortune as such is the proof of plunder
- the people in other professions were ignorant of the rapid changes brought about by scientific outlook
- wealth is produced by man through untiring efforts only
- the new intellectuals believe that wealth is not a reality
''When the intellectuals rebelled against the commercialism of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.''
If the above statement is true, which of the following can be concluded?
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- The new intellectuals made a professional living by means of reason.
- The new intellectuals were not afraid of freedom of ideas.
- In true sense, the intellects must provide people with new thoughts, new knowledge and objective truth.
- Wealth should be distributed equally.
Why have some people called oil exploration in the ANWR a 'sacrifice of a national heritage'? (Passage I)
Passage – I
When the numbers start going up here, you can bet the pressure gauge rises here also. It is pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, known as ANWR, has been off limits since 1980 to any oil exploration without Congressional approval. Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski says it's time for Congress to reconsider. Sen. Frank Murkowski says, “ANWR becomes one of the reasonable alternatives and consequently we want to pursue it.” **Environmentalists call the ANWR the biological heart of Alaska, and compare it to the Serengeti plains of Africa for the diversity of wildlife. They say, put an oil field here and you will destroy it forever. Bruce Hamilton of the Sierra Club says, “We’re going to sacrifice something that we should be passing on to our grandchil dren as a national heritage, in order to have a quick fix of oil for six months and if you really want additional oil there are better ways to do it through conservation.” Alaska ships 10 percent of its oil to Asia, but pet roleum producers say the percentage is too small to affect U.S. supplies or prices. When gas prices soar there’s a rally cry by the oil industry. They say, “Open the refuge and drill and the U.S. would no longer be over a barrel.” Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says, by using oil from ANWR, “It has been estimated through the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that we could replace the same amount of oil that we are importing through Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.” As the oil industry dreams of vast pools of crude beneath the Arctic tundra, environmentalists say their dream is to get President Clinton to declare the ANWR a national monument. This is the only surefire way, they say, to keep the refuge wild and free.
** Senator Murkowski is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources commercial.
Passage – II
Secretary “Bruce Babbit” responds to the proposed legislation
I strongly oppose legislation introduced in the Senate today to open the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Clinton has shown great leadership by announcing his intention to veto past Congressional attempts to circumvent the wishes of millions of Americans nationwide who oppose the degradation of their national treasure. These Americans and the Clinton/Gore Administration have made it clear again and again: we will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America's arctic coastline for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow geese, musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and shelter their young. There is a time and a place for oil exploration in Alaska, and we have permitted environmentally sensitive oil exploration in a large area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, an area set aside for that purpose. There is a big difference between the designation of a National Petroleum Reserve and a National Wildlife Refuge but some in Congress consistently fail to recognise this fact. So today I am recommending that President Clinton oppose any further Republican Congressional attempts to use legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- They think that the U.S. needs lower gas prices.
- They think that oil exploration will destroy forever the ANWR.
- Oil exploration will only be a "quick fix" to the energy problem in the U.S.
- Their children will not be able to understand its value.
''They derive their mutual security not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other's secret weakness.''
This assumption of the author is based on the fact that ______________.
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- the businessman had no weapon to defend himself against the cruel attack of the new intellectuals
- the new intellectuals and the have-nots are suspicious of each other
- the businessmen believed in the doctrine of self-sacrifice
- the businessmen did not use common sense
''The young minds who came to the field of the intellect with the inarticulate sense of a crusade, seeking rational answers to the problems of achieving a meaningful human existence, found a philosophical con game in place of guidance and leadership.''
Which of the following can be assumed from the above statement made by the author?
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- The intellectuals are honest enough to find a solution to the deteriorating human values.
- Their knowledge of human nature is based on personal experience and deep study.
- Their inferences are based on sheer imagination and individual feelings.
- They add undue importance to unimportant points.
Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE in the context of the passage?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- Mind can be strengthened gradually to practise rigid methods of self-discipline.
- One should not acknowledge weakness in the face of trouble.
- Material possessions do not necessarily make one happy.
- One should constantly brood over what one does not have.
What according to the passage happens to your mind when you observe self-discipline?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- Mind inadvertently becomes the slave of discipline.
- Mind becomes strong enough to face any problem.
- Mind gets chained and struggles for freedom.
- Mind becomes disciple of your body where God lives.
''The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned. Which of the following best supports the above statement?
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- There is a difference between freedom and compulsion.
- There is a difference between the facts and unintelligible feelings.
- There is a difference between trade and force.
- There is a difference between reward and terror.
An intellect can perform his functions earnestly and honestly only when _________.
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- he keeps standing on the quicksands of his philosophical base
- he keeps his eyes lowered in guilt
- he keeps trying to understand and explain the past in its integrity
- he keeps looking at the distant objects
''The Witch doctor's morality of altruism, the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth, provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion.''
Which of the following can be inferred from the above statement?
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- The new intellectuals were not strong enough to uproot their enemies.
- They were the defender of the rich.
- They did not take into consideration the practical faculty of intellect.
- They believed in the physical strength of the poor.
Which of the following statements is TRUE in the context of the passage?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Even–minded endurance is called 'titiksha' in Sanskrit. I have practised this mental neutrality. I have sat and meditated all night long in icy water, in bitterly cold weather. Similarly, I have sat from morning till evening on the burning hot sands of India. I gained great mental strength by doing so. When you have practised such self–discipline, your mind becomes impervious to all disturbing circumstances. If you think you can't do something, your mind is a slave. Free yourself. I don't mean that you should be rash. Try to rise above disturbances gradually. Endurance is what you must have. Whatever may be your trouble, make a supreme effort to remedy it without worry; and until it is resolved, practice titiksha. Isn't this practical wisdom? If you are young and strong, then as you gradually strengthen your will and mind you can practised more rigid methods of self–discipline as I did. If you are thinking that the w inter weather is coming and you are bound to catch cold, you are not developing mental strength. You have already committed yourself to certain weakness. When you feel you are susceptible to catching a cold, mentally resist it. This is the right mental attitude. In your heart, sincerely do your best at all times, but without anxiety. Worry only paralyses your efforts. If you do your best, God will reach down his hand to help you.
If you do not acknowledge weakness in the face of troubles, and if you refuse to worry about your problems, you will find out how much more successful, peaceful, and happy you are. Make this affirmation daily. I will be neither lazy nor feverishly active. In every challenge of life I shall do my best without worrying about the future.
Don't grieve for what you don't have. The most materially successful man may have the greatest worries and unhappiness. In contrast, I have seen in humble little huts and caves in India men who were true monarchs. The earthy throne of one such saint was a dried grass mat. He wore only a little loincloth. Such are the real kings of the earth. Some of them have no food, nothing at all; they are richer than the world's millionaires. In biting cold weather, I saw one saint in the Himalayas who had nothing on. Won't you catch cold? I said. Sweetly he answered, If I am warm with God's love, how can I feel the cold? Saints like him are greater than any crowned king. If without food, without any visible means of security, such men can be like kings, peaceful and without worry, why can't you?
- Self-discipline makes your mind flexible to change from one thought to another.
- One should rise above mental disturbances in slipshod manner.
- One should bear everything that comes to one's life with ignominy.
- One should face the challenges squarely without worrying about the future.
''No one can accept with psychological impunity, the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect.'' This statement of the author stresses the need of which of the following attributes of an intellect?
Diretions: Answer the question based on the following passage
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctory and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendour of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primaeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it ? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearnedmoral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defence, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognise. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfil. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favour of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.
- An intellect must not be different from an ordinary man.
- He must be able to propound new ideas arid noble thoughts.
- He must pretend to be an intellect.
- He must be able to think and reason out.