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Issue 28 113 120 121 127 145
Claim: The surest indicator of a great nation is not the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists.
Reason: The surest indicator of a great nation is actually the welfare of all its people.
When a nation comes into mind, often, some elites of the nation come into mind. Just as what's shown in the London Olympic Opening Ceremony, when we talk about England, we talk about Churchill, Shakespeare and The Beatles. In fact, these great celebrities represent their nation to some extent. However, I do agree with the author's reason that the surest indicator of a great nation is not the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists but the welfare if all its people.
It's a popular wisdom that among the many methods to evaluate a nation's greatness, the observance of social elite is one of the most effective ones. All these great minds brought visible, practical or immediately beneficial achievements, some of them even advanced the entire human civilization forward. Take Churchill, the former British perimeter as an example. Churchill was thrust into office when his country's morale was at its lowest, he gave courage to an entire nation and proved himself brilliantly to lead the British people. Yet, achievement of defeating German would have been impossible without his leading. Another example is Steve Jobs, the ex-CEO of Apple Company, a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. At the time that personal computer is so expensive that it's almost impossible for average people's daily use. Bearing the tenet of "there should be one computer on every table" in his mind he worked both hard and creative for many years. Though the day didn't come before his death, Jobs did change the computer world to a much better scenario and restore America to the status of economic powerhouse and technological leader of the world after the financial crisis.
It turns out, however, that sometimes the individual's greatness cannot be determined by their contemporaries. For example, Isadora Duncan, who is known as“mother of modern dance” nowadays, masterly writings on the dance reveal the depth of her determination to discard the traditional methods and established vocabularies of such dance forms as ballet and to explore the internal sources of human expressiveness which was free of characterization, storytelling, and the theatrical exhibition of skills.But she was never popular during her life in America. Also, in science world, any theory might be disproved tomorrow, thereby demoting the theorist's contribution to the status of societal footnote. All these render the “achievement- determination” unreliable.
In fact, a truly indicator of a nation is far more than investigating and admiring the population less than the 2 or 3 percent who comprised the political and social elite: the kings, scientists, judges, nobles, artists, and local magnates who had hitherto usually filled history books. After all, a nation is the convergence of public power to improve citizens' life and security. It's hard to say a country which is full of the hungry, the helpless, and the hapless is great, no matter the elite made how many brilliant achievements. Consider the giant gap between cities and countryside of China, a majority of children in Shanghai begin to use computer at five years old, but many children in the remote countryside of Ningxia still live a miserable life and have to face the dangers of exposure and starvation. While Shanghai's children are visiting Shanghai Museum enjoying the world-class paintings, Ningxia's students may be helping their parents feeding the sheep in order to earn money to support their own study life. Though nowadays, the sportsman, scientist and artist achieved many No, 1 in their field in world-wide, we can't say this is a great country.
In sum, it’s largely through the achievement of elites that a country looks (求助竹林中人，真的写不出来最后一段……) |
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发表于 2012-8-4 11:49:07
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