奉上一些习作，大家狠批猛批我的chinglish

songshit

Should government support artists? Or should artists support themselves? List which idea do you agree with?

Should governments support artists? Or artists support themselves? Answers may differ from person to person, and culture to culture. In my opinion, it is the responsibility for government to support artists.

Firstly, arts have the function to satisfy the spiritual needs of society, thus deserving the support from government. Nowadays, beyond our requirement for living, people tend to have stronger desire to meet their taste for artworks. Even though they attend artwork exhibition or concert, it seems that the money from the ticket incomes still cannot cover most artists’ stipends with inflation soaring these years. Besides, arts education is very important for the next generation’s growth. So artists actually bear an important role in our education system. From this meaning, it sounds quite reasonable for governments to support artists.

Besides, the purpose of arts is usually not money. As we know, for most artists, it is desire to make things different that corroborates an artist’s creation process. Also, the career of artists is often simple and pure, since they do not want their creation process to be associated with money. Thereby without government’s support, many artists will hardly find ways for a living. For example, many well-known artists in the art history lived a poor life during their whole life, because in old times governments seldom supported these artists. To be more tragic, the significance of many artworks is dug out after the original artists’ death. Now our recognition has changed a lot. For artists to live a better life without the worry of feeding themselves, I suggest that governments should automatically support artists, no matter whether their works are valuable to us or not.

Moreover, artists can make better and more subjective works when supported by governments. It is known that sometimes commercial institutions or millionaires employ artists to work for themselves. I must admit that it is an effective way for artists to make money. However, let’s think about some questions. What is the instinct of arts? Should artists create pieces of works like a machine? What will our artists become if they are born to manufacture artworks for commercial purpose? From my perspective, the core of arts is freedom, which means that arts creation goes without any influence out of the inner world of artists themselves. Therefore, for this reason, governments should support artists and help them get rid of the commercial impacts.

Finally but not least, I would like to mention that though it is a must to support artists, governments should also notice some points. First, do not try to consider any return from artists, since our support for artists is not like investment. Second, our support should be voluntary, meaning that successful artists or artists without any financial worry can ask for the halt of support. Third, governments should also give spiritual support, like respect and admiration, to the artists, except for only money.

To sum up, arts play an important role for our modern society and public. Also the process of arts creation should be very pure and get away from the purpose of making money. Therefore, it is necessary for governments to support artists.

songshit

Should governments support scientific research if there is not any realistic application right now? Answers may differ from person to person, and culture to culture. In my perspective, the answer is YES, cause the value of scientific research is usually far-reaching and cannot be judged by short-term view.

Firstly, the goal of scientific research is usually placed in long-term position, while its present value may not look obvious. Roma was not built in a day! We know the old Chinese saying: A good arrow cannot be made in one day. In the first day of the arrow processing, the smith only burn the fire to the proper temperature in order to melt the raw iron. In the second day can the raw iron be purified to steel and then transformed into the structure of arrow. Then after another one day or even more, a small but superior arrow can come out. Scientific research is just like this. In fact, the process of scientific research often lasts very long, from asking a question, to making up the methodology to solve it, till the end of finally achieving the goals. In this process, scientists have to bear the loneliness, poverty, and confusion. So it is very necessary for governments to support these sorts of research. For example, we know that people prepared more than 20 years for the first successful nuclear explosion. In the very beginning, scientists spent more than 10 years making millions of times of calculation to draw the right formulation. Is it any application in this step? Is there any result that people can get in this step? I think that the practical value in that time must have been nothing to most people, if they viewed the whole research process with just a realistic and short sight. But finally they made it, by the amounts of financial aid from USA government. Therefore this example is to say that people should treat scientific research using a long-term way.

For the second place, some kinds of science may not have direct and practical meaning at all, but still ought to be supported by governments. The most typical case is theoretical physics. It is known that from when Fermi created the quantum physics, it is abstract, hard to understand and even in most times thought meaningless to the practical world. But based on the findings of this science, people started to design experiments to prove its assumption, to invent scientific instruments, and finally to ramify many other very influential and practical disciplines like semi-conductor. Another case is mathematics. Though topology cannot instruct us to design a car, or teach us how to win one gamble, it is one important basic subject of engineering and probability. So for this reason, government should support topology researcher even this subject seems nothing to do with our daily life.

Finally but not least, most scientific research works are non-profitable, thus in the need of being supported by governments. Nowadays many people tend to judge whether governments should provide support on whether this practice can create wealth for society. This judgment sounds illogical. For example, some biology research is conducted to show that people should live in harmony with wild animals. Some anthology research is to pursue the puzzle why dinosaur disappeared from the earth. These researches have nothing to do profits and economics. However, governments should still support them because they mean a lot for people’s spiritual world and help people better under themselves.

To sum up, whether government should support scientific research should not be just based on the practical use. In fact, people should not pursue the short-term interest but miss the long-term goal, should not pursue the practical utility but ignore the fundamental research, and should not focus on profitability but forget to satisfy the spiritual needs. From these reasons, I agree that governments should support scientific research from a broader recognition.

songshit

Should we never lie to our friends? The answer may differ from person to person, and culture to culture. From my perspective, the answer is NO.

Firstly, even though we disagree that people can always keep honest to their friends, I have to admit that in most circumstances, people should be honest and loyal to friends. Let’s try to reexamine the meaning and definition of friendship. In my opinion, friendship refers to that friends share very similar interest, respect each other and are willing to communicate with each other. Therefore, honesty is one essential element of friendship and often related to whether we treat friendship with sincere heart. For this reason, everybody expects his or her friends to always tell truth to them. Also if one person is  always dishonest to his friends, he will finally lose all his friends.

However, there are exceptional cases under which people have to be not so honest to their friends with the purpose of protecting friends or encourage friends. Firstly, we cannot deny that in many cases lying to friends is a kind of behavior actually protecting friends. For example, if one of my friends was proved to have got a lethal kind of illness: cancer. We, all of his friends, knew that this guy was weak-minded and might be unable to bear the bad news. The doctor also told us try to conceal this illness information to him. So in this  case what should we do, to tell him the truth or not? Another exception is encouragement. I remember that when I was a little boy, I liked playing piano pretty much. So I often asked my friends how they felt my piano performance. Luckily, all I got were phrases. Now I know, they praised me not for my good playing, but to encourage me to make a better progress.

Thirdly, sometimes people may lie to their friends for the interest of more prior level, for example, the interest of country. For example, most of Chinese adults have watched a well-known TV show named The Spy. In this TV show, the spy may cheat all kinds of people including his own friends. Why did he do this? Because he cannot reveal his true identity, which is secret spy. In another case, sometimes, people may sacrifice their friends to earn justice or for the interest of nation, despite that they may be dishonest to their friends. For examples, when our friends make criminals or disobey the public rules, we should testimony them or send them to the cops, even they are friends to us. So it is totally understandable that people may lie to their friends for the public interest.

Finally but not least, the fact that we may be possible to dishonest or tell write lies to our friends does not mean that we can form the habit of lying to friends. Just as what I said in the second paragraph, people should try their best to keep honest to friends, to be loyal to friends, and to treat friends with the whole heart. Only in some extreme circumstances, the rule is broken.

For these reasons discussed above, we may easily realize that friendship does not mean no lies, and that in many cases people may sacrifice the friendship for the public interests.