一篇issue关于long-term goal的，求大神看看~求踩求踩

joeyang043

也贴我的，３０分钟完成，都没时间再看一遍。。。。求改

Modern times have been witnessing how the mass media and the social network create heroes and idols in a short time span. Given this context, it is not surprising that young people of this generation are motivated by the dream of becoming famous and publicly recognized overnight. The society senses a lack of long-term goal among younger generation. Encouraging a pursuit of lofty aim of life, in my opinion, should be a relevant and important task to carry out.

It is widely acknowledged that the success that a person achieves is tightly associated with the height of the goal originally set. Most, if not all, historic figures achieved “unusual” success because they had “unusual” dreams. Chairman Mao in China was motivated by overthrowing the corrupted feudalism and unifying a country that was seized by military lords. Be his motivation driven by fulfilling his self-interest, it was certainly not worth risking his life in multiple occasions during the revolution period. Ford, if not dreaming of making automobiles available to the ordinary mass, would have well dwelled on the huge fortune that he had already had even before the invention of streamline manufacturing method. Those people, who we call idealists, brought political and technological revolutions to the society, which would otherwise not happen if their scope was limited to personal interest.

But, not everyone inherently is, or should be, an idealist. It is human nature to be myopic, which means that the rewards that could be realized in near future tend to generate great momentum than those far away. For non-idealist, a grand goal that takes decades of assiduity to achieve (and most time with a great possibility of failure) has little difference with the idea of being simply unachievable. Moreover, most career life that the majority of the society lives simply don’t have a lofty, long-term goal. What can, for example, a safeguard dreams to achieve other than being responsible for security of the designated area? The work by those people should be equally appreciated for their contribution to the society even a lofty goal is absent.

In some professions, the lofty goal and the short-term self-interest are so well aligned that one can hardly distinguish by which a person is motivated. Take sports for example, an athlete trains at his best, in attempt to break previous record. For the loft dream of ‘being faster, stronger, and higher’? Or just for the flowers and fortune that come with the triumph? Hardly to know. But the fact is that, as long as the athlete tries to win by pushing himself through hard training rather than conducting some malpractice, we don’t need to give our judgment on the greatness of his motivation.

In sum, although a long-term, lofty goal may be needed to obtain some great accomplishments and therefore should be encouraged among the younger generation, it is not an indispensable element for every individual or for every career. In situations where the long-term and short-term goals work equally good to incentivize a person, there may not even be a necessity to replace self-interest-focused goals with more far-sighted, lofty ones.