2. 职称英语
  3. 1　　We often hear people ask such a question: Why do bad things happen to good pe

1　　We often hear people ask such a question: Why do bad things happen to good pe

游客2025-01-09  53
问题 1　　We often hear people ask such a question: Why do bad things happen to good people? The problem is: What kind of people are good? Some people make a distinction between two kinds of "good" people. One kind of "good" refers to innocence, as in a 2-year-old child who dies in an accident and who never intentionally hurt anyone. Another kind of "good" refers to people who have lived long lives of humility or service, like Martin Luther King, Jr. To really answer this question, though, we have to challenge our assumptions.  Why do we assume that people always get what they deserve? What if being "good" was dependent on a lot of bad things happening to you?
2　　Looking at being "good" as increasing strength of self, it would take trials and tribulations to increase our appreciation of what we have.  Losing my life savings in an identity theft ring definitely wouldn’t be a good thing, but the subsequent realization that I need to focus less on material things and more on my emotional, social and spiritual being would be priceless. Suffering can be a blessing.
3　　In fact, not only is such stress necessary for increasing strength, but if bad things don’t happen to good people, then perhaps they would lose those inner qualities that identify them as "good."
4　　When we think of "good" people, we often imagine them with some sort of amazing intrinsic motivation, such as utter humility or divine inspiration. But perhaps it’s not that these "good" people have such a high intrinsic motivation, but rather that others’ motivationis shifted to more extrinsic factors.
5　　Social psychologists call this shift the overjustification effect. They’ve found in various experiments that people who first started a task with inner motivation could lose that drive when given external rewards. For instance, let’s say some students really like to study and end up doing well in school.  Half of those students are then given money as a reward for their good grades. Eventually, those students will tend to get good grades for the money and not for their original passion. In fact, the paid students’ performance will decrease if you take away any money.
6　　This brings us back to why bad things happen to good people. If good things happened to me every time I did a good thing, then eventually I would only be good because I expected rewards and not for the sake of being good itself. Maybe this is why we think of people like Mother Teresa as good; she works hard without expecting lavish pay, whereas we’re trying to get highest-possible paying jobs coming out of college. There is an intrinsic motivation beyond our simple societal rules of karma.
7　　In any case, these are just a few things to think about. Obviously, if little Billy gets hurt in a horrible accident, it wouldn’t be really meaningful to tell his mom about the overjustification effect.
8　　But it’s worth considering that not only do bad things happen to good people, but perhaps it’s those bad things that make them good. [br] The author uses the "little Billy" example to_________.
选项 A、drive home the meaning of overjustification effect
B、prove bad things do happen to good people
C、dissociate one group of "good" people from another
D、show sympathy for people like Billy
答案 C
解析 作者这里回到文章开始对good people的划分。作者指出所谓overjustification effect并不适用于类似Billy这类人。
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