中科大综合英语听力教程Unit 7.docVIP

Unit Seven Goals of Life Part I Appreciation of Life ?Task 3 They say that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. What makes people believe this saying is contrast. Contrast is necessary in order to illustrate the relative values of two or more options. When the options are compared, a judgment is made and a preference is established. For the real value of anything to emerge it would seem necessary to adopt this comparative procedure so that the correct judgments may be formulated and the preference realized. The trouble with this idea is that in order to appreciate anything it must be lost or at least a true knowledge of the absence of it must be recognized. If we put forward the challenge then, to begin appreciating the uniqueness of a human existence, what must an individual do in order to succeed at this? Give up his or her life? It would be fair to imagine that if the individual is to have a genuine chance at appreciating his or her life then comparison has to be abandoned as a methodology for recognizing value. And in fact, the comparison between options and the formation of judgment is an inefficient way of generating appreciation, for they do not take the function of emotions into account. To rely only on the comparison to promote appreciation, would be misguided, for the major components of appreciation and preference are emotional in their nature. Appreciation and preference are products of feeling. The key to the ability to appreciate is the ability to love. The love of life does not depend on comparison, nor does it depend on loss. Love can be experienced in its own right. True, one is more able to know love through the knowledge of its absence, however love’s power is not exclusively due to such knowledge. Love is a genuinely creative force devoid of the need for qualification and free from the constraints of anything other than the willingness to feel it. And so again, if the challenge is laid down to the individual to appreciate the uniqu