正确答案:
Does satisfaction bring happiness? Usually people are unhappy because they are not satisfied with what they have got. But do you think they will be happy if they are satisfied with what they have achieved? This seems a tricky question. Some believe that satisfaction brings happiness, but some believe that dissatisfaction can bring a happy life. If we mean by happiness is continuous improvement of human life, then it is dissatisfaction that brings happiness.
To begin with, dissatisfaction can motive personal development. As human society has been developing at an ever increasing speed since the industrial revolution, people find that there is more and more room to better their life. If they are unhappy with the education they have received, they will try to study on. If they are unhappy with their present jobs, they will try to find one that suits them better. And if they are unhappy with their relationship with others, they will try to improve it or find a better one. Therefore, dissatisfaction encourages people to seek life of a better quality rather than stay with the present one, and this process constitutes their development.
Besides helping individuals to develop, dissatisfaction can also promote the continuous development of the whole society. Common sense tells us that there cannot be a perfect society, therefore, if a society is satisfied with itself, it only means that it is willing to live with its problems. A society with dissatisfaction is in fact one that dislikes problems. It will find and solve the problems, and this will certainly help the society to keep moving forward. We can take China as an example. Chinese people used to believe that satisfaction brings happiness, but they had actually been living a very hard life before the 1980s. The reform and opening-up policy was adopted in the 1980s just because the Chinese were no longer satisfied with the society at that time. Facts show that the change of mentality has brought about thorough changes to the society.
Last but not least, dissatisfaction has also been a driving force of human civilization as a whole. It is reasonable to say that in the primitive society, science came into being because the ancestors were not satisfied with their understanding of the world, and technology came into being because they were not satisfied with working purely with their hands. The curiosity and desire has in fact led to the prosperity of science and technology in later times. Similarly, in the artistic world, new propositions and practices keep emerging because people are not pleased with the existing ways in expressing their feelings and emotions.
To sum up, dissatisfaction has played a vital role in the development of individuals, the whole society as well as human civilization. Although too much dissatisfaction may be harmful, a proper sense of dissatisfaction can be very beneficial. When everybody is pleased with what they have, the world will stop moving forward, which virtually means the end of humankind.
解析:
题目中的happiness是一个很模糊的概念,每个人可能都有自己的理解。在引言段中,作者在通过问题引出话题后,先给出“幸福”的定义才明确自己的观点,这样全文的讨论就有了比较坚实的基础。引言段的问题提得自然到位,既抓住了读者的心理,又点出了文章的中心议题。文章的正文段从个人、社会、人类文明三个角度阐述了不满的重要性。这三个要点不仅范围从小到大展开,议题也是从具体到抽象逐步深入。从论据上看,除了逻辑推理外,作者还用了中国社会的发展作例子,具有较好的说服力。文章结论段简洁明了。作者用一个句子做总结,然后用本讨论话题的意义作最终评论。