我们的社会正在变得越来越荒谬，越来越离谱，大众则变得越来越心浮气躁，粗俗鄙陋，拿什么来挽救这个时代？美国作家Janet Mendell Goldstein敏锐的抓住了问题的核心 ，看到现代社会凸显出的三大问题：优化营商环境工作总结 Now instead of later 不等将来，只求现在 Faster instead of slower不再缓慢，快快益善 Superficially instead of thoroughly不求透彻只求浅薄。怎么解决，读一读这篇文章，你会找到答案。
玉米面煎饼 Quick Fix Society
Janet Mendell Goldstein
1. My husband and I just got back from a week's vacation in West Virginia. Of cour, we couldn't wait to get there, so we took the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a couple of
interstates. "Look at tho gorgeous farms!" my husband exclaimed as pastoral scenery slid by us at 55 mph. "Did you e tho cows?" But at 55 mph, it's difficult to e anything; the gorgeous farms look like moving green checkerboards, and the herd of cows is reduced to a few dots in the rear-view mirror. For four hours, our only real amument consisted of counting exit signs and wondering what it would feel like to hold still again. Getting there cer
tainly didn't em like half the fun; in fact, getting there wasn't any fun at all.
2. So, when it was time to return to our home outside of Philadelphia, I insisted that we take a different route. "Let's explore that countryside," I suggested. The two days it took us to make the return trip were filled with new experiences. We toured a Civil War battlefield and stood on the little hill that fifteen thousand Confederate soldiers had tried to take on another hot July afternoon, one hundred and twenty-five years ago, not knowing that half of them would get killed in the vain attempt. We drove slowly through main streets of sleepy Pennsylvania Dutch towns, slowing to twenty miles an hour so as not to crowd the hors and hor carriages on their way to market. We admired toy trains and antique cars in county muums and saved 70 percent in factory outlets. We stuffed ourlves with spicy salads and homemade bread in an "all-you-can-eat" farmhou restaurant, then wandered outside to enjoy the sunshine and the herds of cows — no little dots this time — lying in it. And we returned home refreshed, revitalized, and reeducated. This time, getting there had been the fun.
银饰
3. Why is it that the featureless turnpikes and interstates are the routes of choice for so many of us? Why doesn't everybody try slowing down and exploring the countryside? But more and more, the fast lane ems to be the only way for us to go. In fact, most Americans are constantly in a hurry — and not just to get from Point A to Point B. Our country has become a nation in arch of the quick fix — in more ways than one.
4. 离歌饶雪漫 Now instead of later: Once upon a time, Americans understood the principle of deferred gratification. We put a little of each paycheck away "for a rainy day". If we wanted a new sofa or a week at a lakeside cabin, we saved up for it, and the banks helped us out by providing special Christmas Club and Vacation Club accounts. If we lived in the right part of the country, we planted corn and beans and waited patiently for the harvest. If we wanted to be thinner, we simply ate less of our favorite foods and waited patiently for the scale to drop, a pound at a time. But today we aren't so patient. We take out loans instead of making deposits, or we u our credit card to get that furniture or vacation trip — relax now, pay later. We buy our food, like our clothing, ready-made and off the rack. And if we're in a hurry to lo weight, we try the latest miracle diet,
guaranteed to take away ten pounds in unless we're rich enough to afford liposuction.
大学生创业政策
暗恋一个人5. Faster instead of slower: Not only do we want it now; we don't even want to be kept waiting for it. This general impatience, the "I-hate-to-wait" attitude, has infected every level of our lives. Instead of standing in line at the bank, we withdraw twenty dollars in as many conds from an automatic teller machine. Then we take our fast money to a fast convenience store (why wait in line at the supermarket?), where we buy a frozen dinner all wrapped up and ready to be put into unless we don't care to wait even that long and pick up some fast food instead. And if our fast meal doesn't agree with us, we hurry to the medicine cabinet for — you guesd it — some fast relief. We like fast pictures, so we buy Polaroid cameras. We like fast entertainment, so we record our favorite TV show on the VCR. We like our information fast, too: messages flashed on a computer screen, documents faxed from your telephone to mine, current events in 90-cond bursts on Eyewitness News, history reduced to "Bicentennial Minutes". Symbolically, the American eagle now flies for Express Mail. How dare anyone keep Ame
抬网捕鱼rica waiting longer than overnight?
6. Superficially instead of thoroughly: What's more, we don't even want all of it. Once, we lingered over every word of a classic novel or the latest best ller. Today, since faster is better, we read the condend version or put a tape of the book into our car's tape player to listen to on the way to work. Or we buy the Cliff's Notes, especially if we are students, so we don't have to deal with the book at all. Once, we listened to every note of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Today, we don't have the time; instead, we can enjoy 26 conds of that famous "da-da-da-DUM" theme — and 99 other musical excerpts almost as famous — on our "Greatest Moments of the Classics" CD. After all, why waste 45 minutes listening to the whole thing when someone el has saved us the trouble of picking out the best parts? Our magazine articles come to us pre-digested in Reader's Digest. Our news briefings, thanks to USA Today, are more brief than ever. Even our personal relationships have become compresd. Instead of devoting large parts of our days to our loved ones, we replace them with something called "quality time", which, more often than not, is no time at all. As we rush from book to music to news item to relati毛巾操
onship, we do not realize that we are living our lives by the iceberg principle — paying attention only to the top and ignoring the 8/9 that lies just below the surface.
