(1) The argument of Juvenescence, by Robert Pogue Harrison, is that this is becoming the ruling principle of modern society. (2) Yet this youthful or “juvenescent” culture is not actually doing worried young people any favours, since they are losing sustenance by being cut off from the past. (3) You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely,” goes a quip attributed to Ogden Nash. (4) Wrinkles may proliferate over our faces but we continue to wear rumpus-room clothing, watch cartoons and play video games. (5) We have lost our historical grounding: everything that speaks of time and tradition has become detached from its context, while everything young and fresh is idolised.
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Passage – 6
Psychology has reflected and contributed to the cultural bias of exalting
motherhood at the expense of fatherhood. Sigmund Freud considered
the mother, but not the father, to have a prominent role in infant
development. Gadpaille argues that maternalism is instinctual to
females, not only in the species but in mammals generally. He warns
that anyone advocating ―male mothering may bring harm to everyone
concerned.‖ Strongly influenced by such psychological theory, our
culture has been taken in by the ―superiority of mother‖ theory.
Benjamin Spock, in a six-hundred-page book on child care, devotes
just three pages to the role of fathers. While he admits that a man does
not sacrifice his masculinity, Spock thinks child care is something the
father should do only occasionally—just to help the mother out. Fathers
who win custody of children in divorce proceedings are often advised
that they should immediately hire full-time housekeepers to function as
surrogate mothers.
But, alas, mothers who win custody are not told to provide surrogate
fathers for them. Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist, once
remarked that ―fathers are a biological necessity but a social accident.‖
Throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, our
culture has been quite comfortable with this stereotypical view of
fathers. ―Less than ten percent of the scientific studies of parents have
taken the father‘s role into account, in spite of the fact that half of all
parents are fathers.‖ Society has not yet changed in any major ways
with regard to fathers as nonparents. However, researchers have finally
realized that ―the motherhood role is not an inherited behaviour pattern,
but a learned set of social skills.‖
Female children begin learning these social skills at a very early age;
society makes no effort to see that boys learn these same social skills.
Theories of ―maternal instinct‖ and attachment or bonding as being
exclusively maternal are now being called into question. Infants bond
with both the mother and the father. A growing body of literature now
reveals that fathers do have potential nurturance just as mothers do.
Men are increasingly demanding to be accepted as nurturant parents
rather than just the provider and protector.
Young men are beginning to reject the models of parenting provided
by their fathers and are searching for ways to become parents as well
as fathers. A radical restructuring of maleness and fatherhood is
currently under way. Fathering and mothering are two distinct parental
roles. When a male is nurturant, he is fathering, not mothering. Both
mothering and fathering are valid roles, but they are by no means
identical.
What is the primary aim of the passage?
To argue that women are more important than men
. To assert that men lack in maternal instinct
. To criticise men for neglecting their children
To describe the changing role of men in modern examples of
parenthood
To decry the concept of motherhood
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Word for the day-
deterrent: a thing that discourages or is intended to discourage someone from doing something.
Usage- Cameras in public places are a major deterrent to crime.
The genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, apart from being mis-described in the most sinister and ________ manner as ‘ethnic cleansing’, were also blamed, in further hand-washing rhetoric, on something dark and interior to _________ and perpetrators alike.
1.innovative; communicator
2.exigent; exploiters
3.enchanting; leaders
4.tragic; sufferers
5.disingenuous; victims
he question has a paragraph from which the last sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the sentence that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way.
Given the cultural and intellectual interconnections, the question of what is ‘Western’ and what is ‘Eastern’ (or ‘Indian’) is often hard to decide, and the issue can be discussed only in more dialectical terms. The diagnosis of a thought as ‘purely Western’ or ‘purely Indian’ can be very illusory.
1.Thoughts are not the kind of things that can be easily categorized
2.Though ‘occidentalism’ and ‘orientalism’ as dichotomous concepts have found many adherents
3.‘East is East and West is West’ has been a discredited notion for a long time now.
compartmentalizing thoughts is often desirable
4.The origin of a thought is not the kind of thing to which ‘purity’ happens easily
FIJ-
A.Motivation research is the subject of what is still the best-known and best-selling book about advertising ever written: The Hidden Persuaders, by Vance Packard (1957)
B. In this book, the psychologists Dichter and Cheskin make impressive and somewhat grandiose claims regarding the powers of their research techniques
C. Dr. Dichter, for example, claims that successful advertising ‘manipulates human motivations and desires and develops a need for goods with which the public has at one time been unfamiliar – perhaps even undesirous of purchasing’.
D.Such claims caused great concern to many members of the public, who perhaps did not like the idea of their motivations and desires being psychologically manipulated.
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Chhotu RC 😉 :: 3 Questions with only doubtful options :: HELP
Few things get music scholars more nervous than cross-cultural comparisons. The field of ethnomusicology, which was invented to inquire into this very subject, has grown increasingly uneasy with this part of its mission. The ethnomusicologist does not seek out such comparisons, but rather serves as “the debunker of generalizations.” Anthony Seeger has offered a similar perspective, expressing his resistance to “the privileging of similarities over differences.” If human beings from different cultures share certain musical proclivities and practices, academics in the field would rather not hear about it.
This resistant attitude is so highly prevalent that researchers Steven Brown and Joseph Jordania, conclude that “many decades of skepticism have prevented the field of musicology from embracing the importance of musical universals.” When the subject is addressed, they add, it is almost always in the form of “meta-critiques about the concept of universals,” rather than actual consideration of empirical evidence. This would be peculiar under any circumstances, but is especially so given the growing amount of evidence that runs counter to the isolationist assumptions of the academic music community.
Music scholars are not alone in their preference for differences over similarities. Their views reflect a prevailing paradigm embedded in a wide range of cultural studies during the 20th century. “Individual cultures”, says anthropologist Ruth Benedict, “are traveling along different roads in pursuit of different ends, and these ends and these means in one society cannot be judged in terms of those of another society, because essentially they are incommensuarable.” Let physicists seek out unified theories — in the human sciences the motto has long been vive la différence.
I would argue that the time has come to question this allegiance to the particular and reconsider the explanatory value of musical universals. Important recent findings in related fields, for example Harvard professor E. J. Michael Witzel’s paradigm-changing exploration of the origins of human mythology, present a serious challenge of the incommensurability model and should not be ignored by music scholars. In linguistics, increasing focus on language macrofamilies, for example in the work of Joseph Greenbesrg or the Russian Nostratic linguists, is having a similar impact; the same is true of the genetic research into the so-called “African Eve.”
Music scholars have good reasons for resisting the path of cross-cultural systemization. In the past, such approaches have frequently been linked to generalizations on race and normative assumptions about the characteristics of “primitive” and “civilized” cultures. The definition of universal categories often involved assumptions about purity or authenticity or progress that did not hold up under close scrutiny and distorted the interpretation of empirical data.
Yet the new cultural universals are different from those of the past. Instead of coming pre-packaged with biased and normative assumptions about the stages of human progress, they now often arrive in tandem with powerful methodological tools, drawn from the sciences, statistics, and mathematics. These methodologies are less susceptible to bias and misuse than the traditional approaches of empirical ethnography.
In my study of early accounts of music in healing rituals, I could not ignore the unexplained patterns that emerge in far distant parts of the globe. Perhaps a diffusion model could explain why Siberian shamanism has so many shared characteristics with Native American practices, but how does one address this same congruence of shamanistic rituals and belief systems among the aboriginal population of Australia or the San people of Southern Africa? These same rituals and belief systems, almost always accompanied by specific musical practices, are also echoed in the Western myth of Orpheus. When Vittorio Macchioro first proposed that Orpheus might be considered a shaman, similar to those documented in the anthropological literature, this view was shocking to classicists, yet even more surprising discoveries were soon made. Back at the same time Benedict was publishing her incommensurability thesis, A. H. Gayton was also sharing her finding that 50 different Native American tribes possessed an Orpheus myth. Later researchers have added to Gayton’s findings, identifying more examples in Native American myths as well as in other cultures. Once the blind spot was removed by Macchioro and Gayton, new horizons were opened. Such blind spots still exist and are obstacles to the advancement of our understanding of human music-making.
Wouldn’t scholars rather devote their energies to showing how much our interests and practices converge, rather than emphasize our differences and incompatibilities? So those who love music shouldn’t feel threatened by the contributions of the sciences and social sciences to the study of human music-making. Rather than representing outside influences, they may serve as invaluable reminders of music’s power to break down boundaries and geographical divides. This remarkable capacity of music might even help us overcome these divisions in other spheres of social life.
Qs 1. According to the passage, what does the author imply by the phrase “blind spots” with respect to musical practices?
a) The obstacles to the advancement of our perception of human music.
b) The many cross-cultural similarities in music which we are not yet aware of.
Qs 2. How were the new cultural universals different from those of the past?
a) They tend to be the subjects of more objective study.
b) They provide the mechanism for accurately correlating assumptions in related fields like sciences, statistics, and mathematics.
Qs 3. Which of the following is/ are definitely not in favour of the opinion of music scholars in the passage? Identify all that apply and enter the corresponding number in the input box given below.
(1) Ruth Benedict
(2) Steven Brown
(3) Joseph Jordania
(4) Author of the passage
(5) E. J. Michael Witzel
(6) Joseph Greenbesrg
The sentences given in the question below when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. Enter in the box provided below the most logical order of sentences to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. Although he seems to be pretty good at that too.
B. He develops collections through discussions with his design staff and endless sketching.
C. "We got somewhere by making something we thought was right,"? says Jacobs, "not by sitting and thinking what we could contrive that millions of women will want."?
D. For all his commercial success, Jacobs doesn't put much stock in the marketplace as a design engine.
E. He thinks the secret is in the spontaneity of his clothes.
It's not _____________ that conflicts over patrimony have _____________ in recent decades thanks to globalizing trends: the increasing circulation of information along with objects and money and the evolution of institutions like museums from sleepy, scholarly repositories of artifacts into entertainment palaces and virtual town squares.
1] improbable; magnified
2] surprising; metamorphosed
3] coincidental; accelerated
4] incidental; disappeared
Rather than being a passive observer of what is going on, the camcorder can sometimes __________ behaviour and, thus, __________ situations that might not otherwise have occurred, especially when children are concerned.
1.restrict, evade
2.initiate, create
3. affect, correlate
4. engender, avert
PJ;
(1) That was when the magazine Popular Electronics ran a cover story on an extraordinary machine called the Altair 8800.
(2) They will tell you that date was January 1975.
(3) The headline on the story read: “Project Breakthrough! World's First Minicomputer Kit to rival Commercial Models.”
(4) Why don’t you talk to veterans of Silicon Valley and ask them to tell you the most important date in the history of the personal computer revolution?
(5) The Altair 8800 was a do-it-yourself contraption that you could assemble at home.
Why the answer is 42153 and not 42135?
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Solve Q374 and 375
Based on the previous passage only. Q375