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Competition considered as the main thing in life is too grim, too tenacious, too much a matter of taut muscles and intent will, to make a possible basis of life for more than one or two generations at most. After that length of time it must produce nervous fatigue, various phenomena of escape, a pursuit of pleasures as tense and as difficult as work (since relaxing has become impossible ) , and in the end a disappearance of the stock through sterility. It is not only work that is poisoned by the philosophy of competition; leisure is poisoned just as much. The kind of leisure which is quiet and restoring to the nerves comes to be felt boring. There is bound to be continual acceleration of which the natural termination would be drugs and collapse. The cure for this lies in admitting the part of sane and quiet enjoyment in a balanced ideal of life.

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Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961) : one of the best known and most influential American novelists and short-story writers. All his life Hemingway was fascinated by war—in World War I he worked for the Red Cross on the Italian front, in the Spanish Civil War and World War II he served as a war reporter. His experiences and observations provided him with materials and background for many of his best works, in which he concerned himself with mans courage in facing strong physical forces. "Grace under pressure" was Hemingways definition of courage. In his view, life is painful and complex. The only way to survive is to face what comes with honor, dignity, strength, knowledge and endurance. Hemingways overall message, as established in The Old Man and the Sea (1952) , his nearly flawless short novel which gained him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in 1954, is that although life is a lonely, losing battle, it is a struggle that a man can dominate in such a way that his loss has dignity and is itself a victory.

One virtue of this book is its structure. Mr. Starr is never trapped by his chronological framework. Instead, when the subject demands it, he manages deftly to flit back and forth among the decades. Less satisfying is his account of Californias cultural progress in the 19th and 20th centuries: does he really need to invoke so many long-forgotten writers to accompany such names as Jack London, Frank Norris, Mark Twain or Raymond Chandler? But that is a minor criticism for a book that will become a California classic. The regret is that Mr. Starr, doubtless pressed for space, leaves so little room—just a brief final chapter—for the implications of the past for Californias future. He poses the question that most Americans prefer to gloss over: is California governable? "For all its impressive growth, there remains a volatility in the politics and governance of California, which became perfectly clear to the rest of the nation in the fall of 2003 when the voters of California recalled one governor and elected another.

It would be unjust to suppose that the patriotism and the zeal that every American displays for the welfare of his fellow citizens are wholly insincere. Although private interest directs the greater part of human actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does not regulate them all. I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another. The free institutions which the inhabitants of the United States possess, and the political rights of which they make so much use, remind every citizen, and in a thousand ways, that he lives in society. They every instant impress upon his mind the notion that it is the duty as well as the interest of men to make themselves useful to their fellow creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of animosity to them, since he is never either their master or their slave, his heart readily leans to the side of kindness. Men attend to the interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice; what was intentional becomes an instinct, and by dint of working for the good of ones.

Recently many average people rose for fame overnight because of kuso (恶搞) , a mimicking or parody to the mainstream culture. Someone thinks that kuso is the corruption of culture, while others think that it is a successful business operation. What is your idea of kuso? Write a composition of about 200 words on the following topic; Kuso: a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

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