IELTS Academic Reading Test-13
The politics of pessimism
Newspaper headlines and TV or radio news bulletins would have us believe erroneously that a new age has come upon us, the Age of Cassandra. People are being assailed not just with contemporary doom, or past gloom, but with prophecies of disasters about to befall. The dawn of the new millennium has now passed; the earth is still intact, and the fin de siècle Jeremiahs have now gone off to configure a new date for the apocalypse.
It can, I believe, be said with some certainty that the doom-mongers will never run out of business. Human nature has an inclination for pessimism and anxiety, with each age having its demagogues, foretelling doom or dragging it in their wake. But what makes the modern age so different is that the catastrophes are more “in your face”, Their assault on our senses is relentless. Whether it be sub-conscious or not, this is a situation not lost on politicians. They play upon people’s propensity for unease, turning it into a very effective political tool.
Deluding the general public All too often, when politicians want to change the status quo, they take advantage of people’s fears of the unknown and their uncertainties about the future. For example, details about a new policy may be leaked to the press. Of course, the worst case scenario is presented in all its depressing detail. When the general public reacts in horror, the government appears to cave in. And then accepting some of the suggestions from their critics, ministers water down their proposals. This allows the government to get what It wants, while at the same time fooling the public into believing that they have got one over on the government. Or even that they have some say in the making of policy.
There are several principles at play here. And both are rather simple: unsettle people and then play on their fears; and second, people must be given an opportunity to make a contribution, however insignificant, in a given situation; otherwise, they become dissatisfied, not fearful or anxious.
A similar ruse, at a local level, will further illustrate how easily people’s base fears are exploited. A common practice is to give people a number of options, say in a housing development, ranging from no change to radical transformation of an area. The aim is to persuade people to agree significant modifications, which may involve disruption to their lives, and possibly extra expenditure. The individuals, fearful of the worst possible outcome, plump for the middle course. And this, incidentally, is invariably the option favoured by the authorities. Everything is achieved under the guise of market research, but it is obviously a blatant exercise in the manipulation of people’s fears.
Fear and survival Fear and anxieties about the future affect us still. People are wracked with self-doubt and low self-esteem. In the struggle to exist and advance in life, a seemingly endless string, of obstacles is encountered, so many, in fact, that any accomplishment seems surprising. liven when people do succeed they are still nagged by uncertainty.
Not surprisingly, feelings like doubt, fear, anxiety and pessimism are usually associated with failure. Yet, if properly harnessed, they are the driving force behind success, the very engines of genius.
if things turn out well for a long time, there is a further anxiety: that of constantly waiting for something to go wrong. People then find themselves propitiating the gods: not walking on lines on the pavements, performing rituals before public performances, wearing particular clothes and colours so that they can blame the ritual not themselves when things go wrong,
But surely the real terror cornea when success continues uninterrupted for such a long period of time that we forget what failure is like!
We crave for and are fed a daily diet of anxiety, Horror films and disaster movies have an increasing appeal. Nostradamus pops his head up now and again. And other would-be prophets make a brief appearance, predicting the demise of human kind. Perhaps, this is all just a vestige of the hardships of early man – our attempt to recreate the struggles of a past age, as it’s becomes more and more comfortable.
Mankind cannot live by contentment alone. And so, a world awash with anxieties and pessimism has been created. Being optimistic is you struggle. Hut survival dictates that mankind remain ever sanguine.
Questions 1-5 Choose one phrase (A-K) from the List of phrases to complete each Key point below. Write the appropriate letters (A-K) in Boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
The information in the completed sentences should be an accurate summary of the points made by the writer. NB. There are more phrases (A-K) than sentences, so you wilt not need to use them all. You may use each phrase once only.
Key points
1. Newspaper headlines and TV or radio news bulletins 2. Doom-mongers are popular, because people 3. Today, catastrophes 4. To politicians, people’s Inclination for fear 5. The government
List of phrases A are not as threatening as in the past B tell the truth C blame them D try to make us believe mistakenly that we are in a new era E calm people down F are uncertain about the future G are less comfortable H are natural pessimists and worriers I are more immediate J get what they want by deceiving the public K is something they can make use of
Questions 6-9 Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in Boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.
6. The housing development example shows that people … A are not that easily deceived B like market research C lead their fears D are easy to delude
7. Which one of the following statements is true, according to the passage? A Market research uses people’s fears for their own good B People are scared by market research techniques C Market research techniques are used as a means of taking advantage of people’s fears D Market research makes people happy
8. The engines of genius are … A properly harnessed B the driving force behind success C driven by feelings like fear D usually associated with failure
9. Continual success … A makes people arrogant B worries people C does not have any negative effects on people D increases people’s self-esteem
Questions 10-13 Do the statements below agree with the information in Reading Passage 1? In Boxes 10-13, write:
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
10. The complex relationship between failure and success needs to be addressed carefully. 11. People perform certain rituals to try to avoid failure. 12. Anxiety in daily life is what we want. 13. The writer believes that Nostradamus and certain other prophets are right about their predictions for the end of the human race.
Crows Can be Craftsmen too
A remarkable colony of inventors has emerged on an isolated Pacific island. They can fashion tools out of materials scavenged from the rainforest. They can even customise a tool for a given job. Meet the crows of New Caledonia.
Thinkers as diverse as Freud, Engels and Thomas Carlyle once pointed to the use of tools as being a defining behaviour of human beings. Then it was found that many animals also used them, from the ’fishing sticks’ of apes to the rocks dropped on ostrich eggs by Egyptian vultures. Crows are particularly crafty. Earlier studies showed that they are almost human-like in their use of tools, with technological features that match the stone and bone tool cultures that emerged among primitive humans between 2.5 million and 70,000 BC.
But only humans were thought to have the brain power required for cumulative technological evolution. This is the skill for innovation that took our ancestors two million years ago from creating flakes of flint, for use in cutting, to honing knives, blades, arrowheads and axeheads.
Now this ‘unique’ attribute of humans has also turned out to be a flattering delusion. A new study shows that the crows of New Caledonia are inventive. With their evolving leaf tools, the birds have levered man off his pedestal.
Dr Gavin Hunt and Dr Russell Gray of the University of Auckland have spent the past decade studying feathered technology in New Caledonia, 900 miles north-east of Australia. After an intensive field survey of local crow industry, the scientists found that the birds rip the leaves of the pandanus tree to fashion three distinct types of tool for grub and insect extraction: wide, narrow and tapered.
Long ago, the birds discovered that they could rip the serrated edge off the leaves to make a wide tool. The skill spread and the crows honed tools with finer working tips, by either narrowing tools or tapering them. (Because the leaves are reinforced by tough parallel fibres, the tapered design is made in steps. The crow nips the leaf, rips along the fibres, makes another cut and tears again, repeating until it has a tool with usually two, three or four steps.)
Leaf tool manufacture is an example of culture: the birds leam through example and their tool-making wisdom grows in sophistication down the generations. The crows appear to have the cognitive requirements for cumulative, though rudimentary, technological evolution, said Dr Gray. Tool manufacture in New Caledonian crows shows striking flexibility and innovation.’ The ability of the birds to innovate is further shown by their making of other tools. They often strip a twig of leaves and cut it off just below a shortened offshoot to create a hook to get bugs out. They also use simpler tools to extract grubs from the dead wood of trees.
Prof Alex Kacelnik, fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, praised the study as extremely important’. It complements his own research, with Dr Jackie Chappell and Alex Weir, which has turned Betty the New Caledonian crow into a star by revealing her to be the first animal, other than man, to show a basic understanding of cause and effect.
Betty began making tools after her partner snatched away a hook made for her by the researchers, forcing her to make her own from garden wire to fish out morsels from a tube. She wedged the end of the wire into the base of the food tube and turned her head to form the hook. What amazed the researchers is that she can even adapt her hooks if they are not up to the job, something that even chimpanzees are unable to do. Although chimps use sticks in experiments, they have not shown any human-like understanding of basic physical laws. ’When she starts bending the wire it is as if she has a clear objective, even correcting the angle of the hook if it is not right,’ said Prof Kacelnik. ’Although many animals use tools, purposeful modification of objects to solve new problems, without training or prior experience, is virtually unknown.’
‘While we have been emphasising the individual ability of animals like Betty to solve problems, the New Zealand team has been emphasising tool manufacture, the cultural traditions and transmission of information in the wild,’ said Prof Kacelnik. Both strands of research are related by how the crows are not genetically programmed to use a tool, like a spider and his web. Instead, the birds creatively invent new kinds of tools to solve problems and can share skills with others.
The crow family are the Einsteins of the avian world, though Prof Kacelnik added that, at least in terms of tool making, the Pacific crows are smarter than their British cousins. We have not yet identified what it is that makes these crows so special, though it is something to do with ecological circumstances, ’said Prof Kacelnik.
Once scientists have got to the bottom of what makes Pacific crows master toolmakers, they may have to think again about how this skill evolved in humans.
Questions 14-17 Complete the diagrams. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
