精读paraphrase

Unit 1

1.It is obvious that technology in modern age has brought about great changes. Nevertheless, we have not yet benefited from the supposed gains of new technology — rising income and greater productivity.

2.Creative thought is not appreciated. American managers have been troubled by the fact that independent and active thinking gives way to dumb numbers.

Unit 4

1.…if the great myth of America is the story of progress, then Disney World serves as the happy ending in which progress reaches the ideal state of utopia that goes beyond limits of our physical world and changes the decadent state of nature, society and ourselves.

2.…it does so by inviting us to see a world that is free from imperfection and to retreat to a happy period before childhood ended which is marked by unsophistication, free from moral decay, both individual and social.

Unit 5

1. For those who have not experienced the good old days, we have created an idealized picture of America.

2. Generally the churches are no better than we are, because they are also ambivalent and uncertain about what is right and what is wrong.

Unit 7

1.Religion seems to be a watchful dog with a threatening appearance and becomes less comforting when it loses its credibility or when it distances itself from people by taking a sociological form.

2.Generally, superstition has something to do with man’s strong desire to know what will happen to him in the future and his wish to have some control over his fate.

Unit 8

1.When we travel, our alertness is slackened and our anxiety relieved; we turn our eyes to the past, to what once happened instead of to what will happen in the future. We do not try to control ourselves or suppress our desires any more.

2.The tendency to travel in order to see the exotic world has become one to examine ourselves, and modern travel books may focus on what we have “ eliminated or edited out” of our culture, just as the classic travel books focus on what is still there.

Unit 10

1.The truth gathered from that experience is really very common or ordinary, just as the experience itself: Life’s gifts are precious, but we are often blind to them.

2.Put all these virtues together, glorify them despite the fact that they are still imperfect, add to them the wisdom of humankind that is saved from sins and no longer suffers from poverty and fighting, and then we will have a future glowing with hope.

Unit 11

1.The other thing one should avoid is being emotionally attached to young people from whom one hopes to draw energy and vigour.

2….and it is in this area of impersonal interests (such as academic and artistic interests) that the wisdom you have accumulated in your life can be practiced without putting any pressure on your children and grandchildren.

Unit 14

1. Possession is the same as loss, because when one gains the possession of something, he loses something

else or he also gains the risk of losing that possession.

2. Perhaps I shall also build high stone walls before it is too late. I shall keep the wood exclusively to myself and enjoy the satisfaction of being a man of property.