Passage IV

     Care is life, but in our society we have diminished and subverted it.  We have radically overvalued competition, independence, self-reliance, and aggression, making of them the organizing principles around which we construct our politics and policies, our ethics, and even many of our personal relationships.

     But no society, no individual, can function without care.  That is why in so many respects our lives no longer seen to work:  why so many are so unfulfilled at work and at home, and why we complain that the people on whom we depend for gentleness and generosity, empathy and concern, no longer seem to have the time or energy to care.  The social devaluation of care threatens to corrupt and compromise all who need it and all who give it.

     There is a window on our disorder in the movie Wall Street.  It comes in a scene in which Charlie Sheen, the poor boy who made good as the young protégé of Michael Douglas, and Daryl Hannah, the woman who is determined never to be a loser, engaged in an orgy of acquisition to decorate his newly purchased Manhattan apartment.  They fill it with extravagantly expensive modern art, furnishings, and the most up-to-date culinary gadgets.  The only thing they lack is the time to enjoy the things they've worked so hard to acquire.  They have a life-style but no life.

     Too many of us have been reduced to a version of this emotional deprivation in the midst of apparent material plenty.  We have children other people care for, friends we have no time to socialize with, and spouses about whom we complain but with whom we have no time to struggle to create more fulfilling relationships.  We have also-perhaps unwittingly and surely unwisely-abdicated out moral responsibilities as citizens.  Too many of us don't even bother to vote these days, and too often those who do bother vote against-not for-those political candidates who would support an agenda on which caregiving occupied a central place.  Many citizens' main concern is to pay less in taxes rather than to create a politics that will support the kind of caring culture that will nourish us all.

From Suzanne Gordon, "A National Care Agenda."  copyright 1990 by The Atlantic Monthly Company.

10.    The author of the passage suggests that, so far as such concepts as competition, independence, aggression, and self-reliance are concerned, our society should

A.    celebrate these organizing principles as the foundation of our liberty.
B.    see them as ethically superior manifestations of our nation's supremacy.
C.    understand the ways in which these organizing principles improve our lives.
D.    make these guiding principles less central to our everyday functioning.

11.    The third paragraph's purpose is to illustrate the difference between

A.    film and real life.
B.    life and life-style.
C.    poverty and riches.
D.    caring and sharing.

12.    Which of the following ideas, while NOT DIRECTLY STATED, can still reasonably be inferred from the passage?

A.    Increasing our taxes for selected social services would improve the quality of our lives.
B.    Other people, caregivers, often take care of our children for us.
C.    The characters in the film Wall Street are unable to enjoy the things they worked so hard to acquire.
D.    We have no time to create better relationships with our spouses.

13.    As it is used in paragraph four, the word abdicated most nearly means

A.    relinquished.
B.    resurrected.
C.    remembered.
D.    required.

14.    It is clear from the author's attitude, as regards what has happened to care in our society, that she feels people in our society should

A.    maintain the values which we have traditionally held.
B.    contemplate the ways in which material plenty works for us.
C.    learn ways in which to make our lives emotionally more rich.
D.    see that it is better to have a lifestyle than a life.