教材习题
Exercises
I. Oral Presentation '
Make a five-minute presentation in class based on your research or close reading of the text.
Suggested topics: 1. The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus "2. Comment on the American Way of Life
II. Questions
A. Questions on the Content
1. What does Faustian economy mean?
2. Why has the general reaction to the end of the era of cheap fossil fuel been to delay any sort of reckoning, according to the writer?
3. What is the American Way of Life in the writer’s opinion?
4. What was the conference held in Louisville, Kentucky about? What did the writer think of the conference?
5. Why is human limitlessness a fantasy? What does it imply? Where does this fantasy of limitlessness come from, according to the writer?
6. What does the writer say this limitlessness will necessarily lead to in the end, in Paragraph 7?
7. What is human self-restraint implied, as explained in Paragraph 11?
8. What is Faustus like in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus?
9. What solution does the essay give as for how we human beings should deal with our limitedness?
B. Questions on Structure and Style
1. What is the thesis statement of this argumentation? Where is it first stated?
2. How does the essay begin? Why does it begin this way?
3. What antithesis does the writer focus on in his argument?
4. Why does the writer mention the summit on unbridled energy? How does he respond to the optimism, “The United States has 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves—enough to last 100 years, even at double the current rate of consumption”?
5. What contrary examples does the writer give in Paragraphs 19 and 20 to illustrate a
predatory economy and community economics?
6. How does the writer strengthen his argument by contrasting arts with sciences and
artists with scientists? Do you find his argument convincing?
Ill. Paraphrase
Explain the following sentences in your own words, bringing out any implied meanings.
1. This belief was always indefensible—the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed—and by now it is manifestly foolish. (Para. 2)
2. This fantasy of limitlessness perhaps arose from the coincidence of the industrial revolution with the suddenly exploitable resources of the New World—though how the supposed limitlessness of resources can be reconciled with their exhaustion is not clear. (Para. 6)
3. The normalization of the doctrine of limitlessness has produced a sort of moral minimalism: the desire to be efficient at any cost, to be unencumbered by complexity. (Para. 8)
4. The minimization of neighborliness, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination—this is the culture of which our present leaders and heroes are the spoiled children. (Para. 8)
5. Thus an X marked on a paper ballot no longer fulfills our idea of voting. (Para. 9)
6. Weare not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one. (Para. 10)
7. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. (Para..10)
8. If we go back into our tradition, we are going to find a concern with religion, which at a minimum shatters the selfish context of the individual life, and thus forces a consideration of what human beings are and ought to be. (Para. 16)
9. This is as far as possible from the economy in which the young veterinarians were caught, in which the powerful are limitlessly “free” to trade, to the disadvantage, and ultimately the ruin, of the powerless. (Para. 20)
10. In our age of the world it is not rare to find writers, critics, and teachers of literature, as well as scientists and technicians, who regard Satan’s and Faustus’s
defiance as salutary and heroic. (Para. 24)
IV. Practice with Words and Expressions
A. Look up the dictionary and explain the meaning of the italicized words and phrases. 1. ...and by now it is manifestly foolish. (Para. 2) 2. A recent “summit” in Louisville, Kentucky... (Para. 4) 3. ...government “loan guarantees... investment tax credits and other tax breaks.” (Para. 4)
4. Itis, in fact, a tissue of clichés... (Para. 4)
5. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart...our economic stupidity. (Para. 10)
6. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. (Para. 10)
7. ...for we have long encouraged ourselves to feel at home on the “cutting edge” of knowledge... (Para. 23)
8. A small place...can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure... (Para. 25)
9. We know further that if we want to make our economic landscapes... (Para. 29)
B. The following are some of the noun-forming suffixes. Find as many examples as
possible of each from the text.
1. —ness (adding to adjectives to form nouns meaning “state,” “quality”)
2. —action (forming nouns meaning “the act of, “the condition of being,” “the result of”)
3. —ment (forming nouns meaning “the act, fact, process, state, result,” etc.)
4. —er (meaning “a person having to do with, especially an occupation or profession,” “living in a place”)
5. —ity (added to adjectives to form nouns meaning “state,” “quality”)
6. —ism (forming abstract nouns)
7. —ship (added to nouns denoting “state,” “condition”)
C. Replace the formal, technical or figurative words and expressions in italics in the following sentences with everyday English. 2. The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. (Para. 1) 3. The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness. (Para. 3) 4. It is, in fact, a tissue of clichés that is now the common tongue of promoters, politicians, and journalists. (Para. 4) 5. The world-ending fire of industrial fundamentalism may already be burning in our furnaces and engines... (Para. 4) 6. Fear of the smallness of our world and its life may lead to a kind of claustrophobia... (Para. 6) 7. Our true religion is a sort of autistic industrialism. (Para. 9) 8. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. (Para. 10)
9. To assuage his thirst for knowledge and power, he deeds his soul to Lucifer, receiving in compensation for twenty-four years the services of the subdevil Mephistophilis, nominally Faustus’s slave but in fact his master. (Para. 13)
10. To recover from our disease of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea that we have a right to be godlike animals, that we are potentially omniscient and omnipotent... (Para. 26)
V. Translation |
A. Translate the following sentences into Chinese.
1. The strategies of delay so far have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such “biofuels” as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that “science will find an answer.’ (Para. 1)
2. The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness. (Para. 3)
3. But once greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits. (Para. 4)
4. The life of this world is small to those who think it is, and the desire to enlarge it makes it smaller, and can reduce it finally to nothing. (Para. 6)
5. A second problem is that the economic fantasy of limitlessness in a limited world calls fearfully into question the value of our monetary wealth, which does not reliably stand for the real wealth of land, resources, and workmanship but instead wastes and depletes it. (Para. 9)
6. For an art does not propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the work. (Para. 27)
7. Within these limits artists achieve elaborations of pattern, of sustaining relationships of parts with one another and with the whole, which may be astonishingly complex. (Para. 28)
8. And probably most of us can name a painting, a piece of music, a poem or play or story that still grows in meaning and remains fresh after many years of familiarity. (Para. 28)
9. According to the underlying myth of modern science, this progression is always replacing the smaller knowledge of the past with the larger knowledge of the present, which will be replaced by the yet larger knowledge of the future. (Para. 30)
10. Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. (Para. 33)
B. Translate Paragraphs 5, 7, and 11 into Chinese.
Read, Think and Comment
Below is a passage from the book Freefa// (2010) by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz. Read it and prepare to respond to the following questions: What is the passage about? What are the problems with GDP according to the writer? What is GNH?
In a performance-oriented society such as ours, we strive to do well— but what we dois affected by what we measure. If students are tested on reading, teachers will teach reading—but will spend less time developing broader cognitive skills. So, too, politicians, policymakers, and economists all strive to understand what causes better performance as measured by GDP. But if GDP is a bad measure of societal well-being, then we are striving to achieve the wrong objectives. Indeed, what we do may be counterproductive in terms of our true objectives. Our economic growth has been based on borrowing from the future: we have been living beyond our means. So too, some of the growth has been based on the depletion of natural resources and the degradation of the environment—a kind of borrowing from the future, more invidious because the debts we owe are not so obvious. We are leaving future generations poorer as a result, but the GDP indicator doesn't reflect this.
There are other problems with our measure of well-being. GDP per capita (per person) measures what we spend on healthcare, not the output—the status of our health reflected, for instance, in life expectancy. The result is that as our health care system gets more inefficient, GDP may appear to increase, even though health outcomes become worse. America’s GDP per capita appears higher than that of France and the United Kingdom partly because our health care system is less efficient. We spend far more to get far worse health outcomes.
As a final example (there are many more) of the misleading nature of our Standard measure, average GDP per capita can be going up even when most individuals in our society not only feel that they are worse off, but actually are worse off. This happens when societies become more unequal (which has been happening in most countries around the world). A larger pie doesn’t mean that everyone—or even most people—gets a larger slice. In the United States, by 2008, the median household income was some 4 percent lower than it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation, even though GDP per capita has increased by 10 percent.
The objective of societal production is an increase in the well-being of the members of society, however that is defined. Our standard measure is not a good one. There are alternatives. No single measure can capture the complexity of what is going on in a modern society, but GDP fails in critical ways. We need measures that focus on how the typical individual is doing, on sustainability, and on health and education. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has devised a more comprehensive measure that includes education and health, as well as income. In these metrics, the Scandinavian countries do far better than the United States.
But even when economic measures are broadened to include health and education, they leave out much that affects our sense of well-being. Robert Putman has emphasized the importance of our connectedness with others. In America, that sense of connectedness is weakening, and the way we have organized our economy may contribute.
The Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan has attempted to carve out a different approach. It is trying to create a measure of GNH—gross national happiness. Happiness is only partly related to material goods. Some aspects, like spiritual values, can’t and probably shouldn't be quantified. But there are others that can be (like social connectedness). Even without quantification, though, focusing on these values highlights some ways that we should be thinking about redirecting our economy and our society.
学习指南参考答案
A.
1. Faustian economy means limitless economy, based on the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt.
2. Because people don’t want to give up their wasteful lifestyle, that is, the American Way of Life.
3. In the writer’s opinion, the American Way of Life is characterized by waste and greed.
4. The conference held in Louisville, Kentucky is a summit on clean-coal generation, biofuels, and other cutting-edge applications. The writer thinks the conference is nothing new and full of empty talks and groundless optimism.
5. Human limitness is a fantasy because we human beings have a limited life expectancy and everything we have on earth is limited, including our mother earth.
Human limitlessness implies that all people are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable.
According to the writer, this fantasy may have come from the coincidence of the industrial revolution with the suddenly exploitable resources of the New World, and people’s apprehension of the world’s smallness together with their desire for the freedom of limitlessness.
6. In paragraph 7, the writer states that this limitlessness will finally produce a crowning cult of political limitlessness.
7. Human self-restraint is implied in neighborliness, stewardship, thrift, temperance, generosity, care, kindness, friendship, loyalty, and love.
8. Faustus is depicted as a man of learning who recklessly seeks to possess all Nature’s treasury, and all the knowledge and power in the world. In order to achieve his goal, he deeds his soul to Lucifer (the prince of devils) and receives in compensation for twenty-four years the services of the subdevil Mephistopheles. Then at the end of twenty-four years, his soul belongs to Lucifer and Faustus goes to Hell. In short, Faustus is a person who seeks present gain without regard for the future.
9. We should first recognize and accept our limits and turn to art for inspirations of living.
B.
1. The thesis statement is: Faustian economics, or the idea of a limitless economy is monstrous. It is first stated at the end of Para. 4.
2. The essay begins with a description of the general reaction to the end of cheap fossil fuel.
The author begins the essay this way to draw the attention of more people, since fossil fuel is closely related to people’s daily lives and they are generally more concerned with the price of fossil fuel than to other environmental or ecological issues, since they think that’s something to be solved by scientists or politicians and is remote from their own lives.
3. The writer focuses on the antithesis between limitlessness and limits. Everything in man’s assumption is limitless while all things in reality are limited.
4. He mentions the summit on unbridled energy as an example of people’s delusional assumptions of limitlessness.
In his view, people’s optimism of limitless resources seems groundless and ridiculous. And it seems the people who keep repeating these remarks don’t really understand what they are talking about.
5. The example the writer gives for predatory economy is that veterinarians have to treat farm animals with drugs more expensive than these farm animals are worth.
The example he gives for community economy is that an old-age farmer rents his land to a younger farmer on the basis of “crop share” instead of a price paid or owed in advance.
6. By contrasting arts with sciences and artists with scientists, the writer points out for us a solution to the problems caused by Faustian economics and the future direction for mankind.
It is convincing in that the writer gives lots of examples to illustrate his point.
1. This belief reflecting waste and greed are too bad to be excused: the real causes of global warming are not natural phenomenon but human factors such as waste and greed, which are embodied in this belief. And by now it is easy to see how foolish this belief is.
2. It is assumed that the supposed possibility of limitlessness came about from the fact that the industrial revolution coincided with the discovery of natural resources in the New World (the American continent) that became suddenly exploitable. However, it is not clear how to relate the ideas of the supposed limitlessness of resources with their eventual exhaustion.
3. Making the doctrine of limitlessness a normal standard of belief and behavior has produced a sort of moral reduction, namely, the strong wish to be efficient regardless of any cost, and not to be hindered by complexity.
4. Connectedness with others, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination are all reduced to the minimum. Our present leaders and heroes are especially favored by and are bad examples of this culture.
5. Thus putting an X mark on a paper voting ballot no longer converts our idea of voting into reality. The result of voting no longer reflects our idea of voting. We don’t believe we are voting properly if some high technology is not involved.
6. We are not likely to get another planet to use up in a careless way to offset our error in damaging this one.
7. The hope that we can solve the problems of industrialism by using small amounts of more technology seems at last to be losing position.
8. If we dig into our cultural heritage, we are going to find our concern with religion, which, at least, completely destroys the belief that the individual life exists in a selfish way, and the destruction of this belief forces people to consider and examine seriously what human beings are and what human beings ought to be.
9. This community economics is entirely different from the predatory economy of bringing large profits to the powerful and disadvantages and even ruin to the powerless.
10. At the present time, quite a few writers, critics, and teachers of literature, as well as scientists and technicians, regard Satan’s and Faustus’s defiance as positive and heroic.
A.
1. manifestly: plain and easy to see
2. summit: meeting on the highest level
3. tax break: any item which reduces tax, including any tax exemption, tax deduction, or tax credit
4. tissue: mesh, network, web
5. outsmart: to get the better of; to gain advantage over someone by using tricks or by your intelligence
6. ill: something that disturbs or afflicts; trouble
7. would-be: desiring, intending to be; having the potential to be
8. cutting edge: the foremost part of something
9. fund: an available quantity of material or intangible resources; supply
10. landscape: a general situation in which a particular activity takes place
B.
1. -ness: foolishness, limitlessness, consumptiveness，smallness, reasonableness, neighborliness, kindness, selfishness, faithfulness, powerlessness, naturalness
2. -ation: industrialization, generation, application, computation, speculation, minimization, self-subordination, compensation, condemnation, preoccupation, limitation, elaboration
3. -ment: curtailment, government, predicament, nourishment, improvement, confinement, inducement, experiment
4. -er: manufacturer, promoter, leader, farmer, questioner, seller, buyer, composer, writer, reader
5. -ity: insanity, security, possibility, responsibility, accountability, ability, stupidity, generosity, discontinuity, community, domesticity, opportunity, complexity, gravity, identity
6. -ism: optimism, fundamentalism, industrialism, gigantism
7. -ship: friendship, workmanship, stewardship, relationship
C.
1. It means economics based on the supposed possibility of limitlessness of growth, wants, wealth, natural resources, energy, and debt.
2. The end of the age of cheap fossil fuel (like coal) is apparent. The general response to this reality has been to postpone any sort of thinking and consideration. This is the usual attitude towards other easily foreseeable limitations.
3. The problem with us is that not only are we carelessly wasteful but we assume that we are limitless.
4. It is actually a number of old and meaningless phrases and it has become the common language of promoters of such energy technologies, politicians and journalists.
5. The zeal for industrial fundamentalism will bring an end to our world.
6. Fear of the smallness of our world and life in this world may lead to a strong fear of being in a small enclosed space or situation.
7. Although many of us may believe in Christianity or other religions, in fact our true belief is industrialism, which alienates people rather than connecting people.
8. The hope that we can solve the problems and troubles of industrialism by using small amounts of more technology seems at last to be losing position.
9. To make his strong desire for knowledge less severe, he strikes a contract with Lucifer, the Devil, by which he is granted the services of twenty-four years of the subdevil Mephistopheles. The latter is Faustus, slave in name but his master in reality.
10. If we want to get rid of our fantasy of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea that we have a right to be animals like God with limitless knowledge and limitless power.
V. See the translation of the text.
1. The passage mainly focuses on the disadvantages of GDP as a measure for societal well-being. It also touches upon how to improve GDP’s role in judging societal well-being and such alternative measure for societal well-being as GNP.
2. According to the author, there are mainly three major problems with GDP: firstly, GDP doesn’t reflect the debts we owe, nor the deterioration of environment and depletion of resources in the process of economic growth; secondly, GDP, especially per capita GDP, doesn’t reflect the efficiency of social operation; lastly, average per capita GDP doesn’t reflect how much growth and progress each member of society can share.
3. GNH is gross national happiness, put forward by Bhutan to measure the degree of happiness and sense of wellbeing among its citizens.