2009-6-15 6:07:57 人气： 来源：http://www.thomas-school.com
青岛二中 高一十班 董潇
Harmonious World---a dream that can never come true
Nowadays as the globalization deepens at an accelerated speed, it’s generally agreed that our world is becoming smaller and smaller. We can see that countries depend on each other much more than ever before and even destinies or life of ordinary people like us can have some connections with the whole world. As the world is thought to be in the process of changing into the’ global village’ ,some rather optimistic people have begun to imagine that our world will some day become a harmonious one, free from crime, wars, violence and even quarrels.
However, they’re not the first ones who have come up with the idea for thousands of years ago, Plato, a great Greek philosopher, had already vividly described a mysterious place that had always been regarded as the best example of harmonious world to people in his book. As we all know, this place was called“Atlantis”. Atlantis exerts a great attraction on people not only because of its tragic sinking and the argument about its existence, but also Plato’s concept and imagination of harmonious world showed in its story. In Plato’s description, Atlantis had been a place where people had lived without violence and exploitation. Private ownership had been despised and each person had made a living by working hard. Everything had gone well until people in Atlantis began to find it difficult to resist the temptation of private ownership. So war and other disasters had come along. In the end, Atlantis disappeared in the sea. It seems clear that Plato’s purpose of writing the story was to describe a perfect place and a society in his imagination. On the other hand, we should pay much attention to the destiny of Atlantis, which I think Plato intended to infer that this sort of society would never be real. Plato couldn’t find a way to achieve his dream, so he chose to destroy Atlantis.
At the beginning of human history, all the human beings lived just like the people in Atlantis. But as the awareness of ownership gradually took possession of people’s minds, disputes began to fill people’s daily life. People went to great lengths to protect their interests and made every effort to get others’. Economic development enabled things to be divided into‘mine’,‘ours’and‘theirs’. Now it has become a social convention that a person’s achievements or relationships between other people should be judged or valued by money, power and other materials. We cannot conceal the fact that there have always been numerous people who don’t care much about their own wealth, but compared to those who do, their power seems too weak. In a sense, no one can totally avoid being tempted by fame and fortune. Furthermore, not everyone is able to protect his property without offending others. It seems that to prevent people from thinking about themselves is impossible. So we can say, harmonious world will never come unless private ownership has been forbidden.
Just like those between people, relations between countries also depend on their interests. People’s love of nations seems to play a crucial role when they get along with foreigners. Conflicts between nations are often caused by different national interests. As we cannot combine the countries on our planet to create a new single one, wars and clashes will never disappear from our sight. Serious problems like the environmental pollution and the needs of natural resources have already caused disputes, and the competitions among countries have become more and more fierce. In addition, there’s also a prediction that our planet will not have enough space for the constantly increasing population in the future. Therefore, people must fight for living space and if we can’t find another good place to live, the earth will surely be filled up with human beings. If that happens, no one will have time to think about ‘harmonious world’.
Some people believe that Communism is the right way to build a harmonious world. As we know, Communism is bound up with the level of production forces. At the moment there’s no sign that there’ll be a certain country that can develop so well and fast. Nowadays there’re still millions of people, especially children suffering from hunger, disease and war. Something has been done but obviously the methods people have adopted are not the best ones to solve the problems. Without the disappearance of poverty, talking about ‘harmonious world’ is rather unrealistic.
However, some people still believe that our world will finally be highly developed and then, as poverty goes away, all human beings will be able to stay together harmoniously. But there will be many new problems, which we can foresee in our time. Now most people around us are working hard just to make their own not others’ lives better. Eager to acquire good social position and living condition, people work, study or do other things for money instead of fun. Once they possess all the things they want or need, many of them will lose their goals. There’ll be some psychological trouble for a great many people who have difficulties finding out the reasons for more efforts. Not knowing the meanings of their lives, most people will surely fail to take on their own responsibilities. So a developed world doesn’t mean a harmonious one, which can also bring about a chain of reactions that we don’t have the ability to explain or handle.
Though ‘harmonious world’ is a thing that all of us have been dreaming of, there’re still too many things to do, problems to solve and disasters to avoid. Unless we give up our own narrow interests and make efforts together, the harmonious world will be a dream that can never come true. Even if it can come finally, I don’t think we are able to live to see it because the road is still too long for us.
青岛二中高二十三班的战迪，也是托马斯学校的学员，很高兴能参加这次活动
Globalisation a delicacy or a poison
------- 战迪 (Cindy )from:NO.2 high school
Walking around the street, we may see passersby commonly wearing Nike or Adidas,which seems to be rare and cool several years ago. Thanks to the globalization, a brand-new era is coming. But it can never be said to bring no harm. So a heated debate has risen: globalization, a delicacy or a poison?
In my view, globalization is a inevitable trend which benefits us as a whole. In the light of my view, the positive effects can be noticed in all aspects. In the first place, globalization provides a larger space for economy development. Every country can share market, raw materials,labour hands and advanced technology all over the world, which may greatly make up for their native drawbacks. Our motherland,China,is a typical case, we joined the world,and we have harvest the enormous development in the past 30 years, which astonishes the whole world.The international trade industry in China make a great contribution to China’s economy and the employment.Seeing those huge changes, how can’t we admit that globalization is a delicacy?Not only in the field of economy, but the culture makes no exception. With the advocate of cultural communication, many countries exchange studends,educational materials, ideas and so on. Thanks to the globalization, I can express my ideas here to shoot for the big opportunities of going to German. In recent years, we can see frequent cultural communications governmentally as well as non- governmentally. The China-Russia festival, organized by the two governments, for example, not only has improved the two countries’ friendship but is a marvelous publicity for China’s splendid culture. The improvement of civilization is based on cultural communication, so we can naturally draw the conclusion that globalization is an inevitable steps for the spiritual development as well as material development. Despite the great contribution to economy and culture,the terrorist, which is a great threat to the security of the whole world, has been attached importance to by a majority of countries. and the global corporations has been carried out in recent years. With the global concern, a strong protection against the terrorist has been built up, which largely drops the panic caused by the terrorist.
But on the other hand, I can’t wholly deny that globalization is a poison to some degree . In the first place, with the rapid development of global economy, the wealth enjoys their luxurious life while the poor is hard to survive. The world cares more and more about money rather than the fundamental demand of the bottom class. As a result, there are frequent conflicts in some areas, which are largely caused by the unfair social rules. In the second place, those economic corporations carried between the developed countries and the developing countries based on a unfair system. Take our joining of the WTO for instance; ‘we should decrease our tax rate to the WTO members’, which largely strike against our native industries. Also, we should be aware of the environment problem caused by industry is becoming far more severe. Developed countries deliver their contamination materials to developing countries. And the whole world is suffering the effect of global warming.
Just like a two-side sword, globalization should be treated dialectically.However,it’s obvious that its benefits over weighs its drawbacks . Only by the joint efforts can we solve those problems and take full use of it . In that case, a harmonious world won’t just be a dream .
