<p>I'm an international student who is taking SAT for the first time in October to catch up early actions. I've written several essays for SAT, as below. And I hope someone may help grading them because I would like to know my level of readiness for the test. I apologize if my English sounds a little awkward. Thank you.</p>
<p>"We will never be able to solve all of the problems that we encounter in our lives. We can and must choose our battles, but the key to a happy life is the ability to tolerate certain problems, lest we become possessed by them and fail to see the good things around us."</p>
<p>Assignment: Is the ability to tolerate problems as important as the ability to fix them? </p>
<p>We often deem tolerance as a virtue of mankind. Very often, we propose tolerance as a remedy to problems by changing the subjective points of view to accommodate the objective ones. Perchance, it is a preferable attitude when some problems are seemingly non-fixable for individuals. Acting reclusive and escaping from brutal reality is always a disposition of mankind. However, for humanity as a whole, problems would not vanish because we have changed our values and attempt to behave tolerance. History is always propelled by the effort of mankind to fix problems.
Suppose we are living a primitive life before the dawn of civilization. We lack clothes in frigid winter, we suffer from being harassed by brutal carnivores. If at this stage we say to ourselves, 'Tolerate it. It is impossible to resist the nature.' The quality of life of mankind would have never achieved any progress.
In the well-known abolitionist novel in the 1850s, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the destinies of the characters are marked by their respectively 'tolerant' and 'aggressive' personalities. Uncle Tom was a black slave, who was sold by his former masters to a savage one. Though he assisted one of his companions to escape from the tyranny, still, he chose to tolerate the tormenting interrogation, and his life ceased to exist. On the other hand, George, another black slave who split with his family in the slave trade, fought for his and his family just met again by combating a slave hunter. Eventually, he and his family gained their freedom by fighting in bloodshed. George gained freedom by fixing the problem, and Uncle Tom gained demise by tolerating the problem.
In history, humanity makes its progress always by fixing problems. Karl Marx once said, 'Philosophers tend to explain the world. But to me, it is more essential to change the world.' The dictum marks the ethos of mankind, and of himself. The revolutions in the twentieth century provided incentives for the world to reform its system. The leftists changed the ways of how the world runs.
Tolerating problems is to pursue the temporal pleasure of an individual, but fixing problems is to pursue the long-living felicity of mankind. It is tacit, that which of them is more important and meaningful. </p>
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<p>"A mistakenly cynical view of human behavior holds that people are primarily driven by selfish motives: the desire for wealth, for power, or for fame. Yet history gives us many examples of individuals who have sacrificed their own welfare for a cause or a principle that they regarded as more important than their own lives. Conscience - that powerful inner voice that tells us what is right and what is wrong - can be a more compelling force than money, power, or fame."</p>
<p>Assignment: Is conscience a more powerful motivator than money, fame or power?</p>
<p>It is a paradox that had once embezzled me for quite a while, that conscience, or the altruistic value judgment is a widely lauded concept. Meanwhile, the market economy, which is also the widely lauded and adopted system in worldwide scale, is based on the postulate that ' human beings are selfish'. In the recent centuries, ever since the Industrial Revolution started in the 1760s, the developed countries are economically propelled owing to the fact that people are motivated by money, fame and power. Then as a child, starting to contemplate these problems on a materialistic worldview, I developed a set of thoughts that so-called conscience and morality are only tools of the societies and constitutions to perform check and balance effect against unbridled expansion of self-interest. After all, the society is only motivated by self-interest.
So let us visit back in time, for the socialist experiments in the twentieth century. In the 1950s to 1970s, China was implementing a collective economic system that all workers receive 36 dollars despite their working performances, characteristics and posts. In contrast to the Western propaganda that socialist countries exploit their people through this means, the socialist governments were attempting to achieve real equality of all. It is based on altruism and the interest of all, which is what ultimately conscience is, or 'judgment of right and wrong', based on. The economic hardships of similar socialist planned economy failed because they motivated people by 'conscience', but not fame and money.
The history has proven, that motivating people with what we call 'evil' is the most efficacious approach to develop the hardware of a country. In the early stage of capitalism in the West, in search of the market for the excessively produced goods and of the raw materials, the European states started colonization in the nineteenth century. Through this period, the world was moving closer to globalization. What catalyzed this fusion of the world, despite its good or bad nature, are power, fame and money, but never conscience.
The above examples illustrated the extreme contrasts of making use of conscience and self-interests and motivators. The history stood on the side of the latter. Still, conscience must still be advocated because the altruism it disseminates would be able to soothe the extreme moral depravity of the world.</p>
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<p>"There are books that try to show the world as it is and books that try to show the world as it should or could be. Which sort of books should we be offering children and reading ourselves? One answer is the argument for the value of truth, for 'telling it like it is.' Writers could promote certain positive ideals by being less realistic, but all of us - especially children - have a right to be told the truth."</p>
<p>Assignment: Should books portray the world as it is or as it should be?</p>
<p>A variety of worldly literature is bequeathed by innumerable great writers and thinkers. Among the literature works, fiction poses the most profound and ingrained influence in the process of fashioning the thoughts of children. Fictional literature takes two routes of realism and idealism, and there has long been disputes on the issue that which kinds of books, portraying the real world or the idealistic world, should be adopted.
As a matter of fact, these two elements are not contradictory , both facing the truth and pursuing of utopia are actually compatible. Through depicting the realistic world, uncovering the darkness and filth with other elements that try to instill positive values through instilling idealism, the hybrid can be accomplished.
For instance, some of the Western literature works in the nineteenth century tend to write on the realistically unjust and cruel nature in the society. Les Miserable, by Victor Hugo, was an epitome of realistic and historical novel. It depicts with compelling profundity the unjust social system in the post-Napoleonic Age in France, using the tragic character Fatine as an exemplary symbol of people with miserable destinies. But, on the other hand, the novel also utilizes the silver candlestick as another symbol indicating hope, the candle light in abysmal darkness. The contagious love and compassion from Bishop Myriel to Jean Valjean, then to Cosette, Marius and even the staunch advocate of stiff law and police system, Javert. The author proposes the remedy to the miserably ailing society as 'love'.
Take another non-fiction example, the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. In a very long passage, it discusses the intrinsic corruption of the capitalist society, the 'realistic nature'. But, rather than a mere sociologist, a phenomena explicator, he ended the book as a revolutionary - 'Workers of the world, unite!'. The Communist Manifesto is a widely successful book which not only displays the miserable reality, but also propels to mass with ideals - the utopian future. There will no longer be class divisions, as in the lyrics of Internationale - 'Let there be no walls to divide us, walls of hatred nor walls of stones'. Despite the controversial socialist movement in the twentieth century, the book unquestionably demonstrated an exemplary and iconic hybrid of realism and idealism.
Hence, just let us end the dichotomies - should it be this or that. Most of the representative iconic literature combines the education of facts and values in the book, which are corresponded to 'as it is' and 'as it should be'.</p>