Writing Feedback / Essay response to Thoreau - "Does adulthood takes away the true spirit of life?" [5]

Hi!

I stared a new thread because it is a new assignment even tough is related to an old one.

The assignment is :

Write an essay of approximately 500 words. Your essay should demonstrate sound organization, solid development, correct spelling, and strong control of the mechanics of grammar.

Write your analysis then reactions or response to some sentence or thought in the assigned essay, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" (p. 447 in Webb reader or in the "Readings" section of this module).

You might decide to argue for or against Thoreau's stance, or you might want to apply one of Thoreau's insights to modern life: Be as creative and insightful as you would like. Just show me that you can make sense of a complicated reading, that you can write an organized and competent essay, and that you can think!

Does adulthood takes away the true spirit of life?

According to Henry David Thoreau, "Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more closely than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think they are worthier by experience, that is, by failure." (The resourceful reader 450) Thoreau's words convey a sense of nostalgia to a much simpler world. Childhood is often remember to a world of cotton candy, ferries wheels, being amazed at fire works, just running and running without ever getting tired, a world of discovery. When we are children we live life at is best. So, what changes in our lives? Is it because we grow up? Does adulthood takes away the true spirit of life?

Children are problem free. For example, when I was 5 years old my whole family went to Miami. It was my first time on an airplane and I was really exited. Unfourtunally, there was some turbulence, and my father was really scared of what my first experience on an airplane would leave on me. The funny thing is that I laughed all thru the turbulence. And when my father asked me why I was not scared, I told him that the worst thing that could happened is that we will fall. I also told him that if we fell it would be on water so it would not hurt. My father laughed realizing in that moment that children are so naïve that they live every experience to the fullest.

Children, who play life, know how to live it better that the rest of us, who subsist with such seriousness. Society creates in us a concern for things that are truly unimportant. Everyday newspapers give us more and more things to worry about. On that same page, advertising lures us into buying more and more things we don't need. For instance a better phone, a larger TV, a new microwave, among other things, even though the old one does the same thing. Too much insignificant things and not those things that are truly important concern people. What Thoreau is trying to explain is that we need to simplify our lives. We need to stop complicating things to the point that they are stressed out, dissatisfied, and unhappy.

For example, my friend Nancy works everyday, from 5am to 5pm and goes to college from 6pm to 10pm getting all stress out and tired so that she can start doing her homework at night sleep a few hours and do the same thing over and over again. You would think that she does relax on Sundays. But no! She goes to work on Sundays too. She is immerse in work, and getting financial status. She does not enjoy the simple things like a beautiful Sunday morning, or the advantages of sleeping late on weekends. Nancy buries herself in everyday problems, and forgets to live. We need to imitate children who are free from the economic endless pursuit, and free to be inspired by nature.

One day she will look back to those small little mistakes made along the way to adulthood, mostly in our day-to-day relationships with our loved ones. Such mistakes, we keep calling experience, are what makes us assume we are growing up. The sad part is that we can only realize we've lost "the spirit of life" in hindsight, when we have become "experienced". I encourage people to be more like Thoreau "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" (447).

I need help with the citation for this essay, I read "Where I Lived, and What Lived for" in The Resourceful Reader. How should I put in MLA format?

Essays / Comment on a Henry David Thoreau quote [8]

"Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more closely than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think they are worthier by experience, that is, by failure."

When do we become adults? Children see life at its best. They are eager to explore, they want to suck the spirit of live. Children are free from the economic endless pursuit, and free to be inspired by nature. On the other hand, adults only see what they've been taught to see; they miss many parts they could see as kids because they only care about the world that society and traditions have created in their minds, losing the true spirit of things. In order to become part of that world they have on their minds many mistakes are made. Such failures, we keep calling experience, are nothing more than a continuous chain of bad things we've made that makes us assume we are growing up. The sad part is that we can only see it in hindsight when we have become "experienced".

Writing Feedback / "the disparity (gap) between rich and poor" - sample writing [4]

The asigment is this :

The following data highlights the disparity (gap) between rich and poor. In at least two paragraphs, addressing the problem and a possible solution, compose a response to the following excerpt from US president Jimmy Carter's Nobel Prize Speech:

At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them.

The disparity between rich and poor is nowhere more evident than in the US. Of all industrialized countries, we rank the lowest (22nd) in equality between rich and poor. Statistics show that in 2004, 34.3 % of population had 35% of the wealth, while 40% of our US population had 0.2% wealth.

My writing is the following :

The discrepancy between the richest and poorest people on earth continues to grow over time. According to the Human Development Reports of United Nations Development Program the US has the second highest level of income per person, and the third highest rate of human poverty. How come one of the countries with the highest level of income can be, also, one of the highest in poverty? Statistics showing the gap between those who have and those who don't is impossible to overlook. It is time to offer a solution to the problem.

The challenge to find out what could be done to reduce the difference has created two groups of specialists, each with their own point of view. Some economist might argue that there needs to a better distribution of the "cake", therefore creating a more egalitarian society, economically speaking. The redistribution group proposes change in taxation, and land reform among other things. At the same time, other economists argue that redistribution of wealth is not the answer. The gap between the richest and the poorest is a consequence of the structure of the economy. Anti-redistribution experts express the need to reduce poverty by creating wealth, not by redistributing it. Since redistribution means taking from the ones that have and giving it to the ones that do not have, soon the poor might notice they do not have to make an effort because the other half is going to take care of them, and the rich wont have the incentive to work as hard because somebody else is going to take what the worked for. The answer to the problem is creating policies that grow our economy and create jobs, creating opportunity, for those who need jobs and those who create them.