Issue 41
Such nonmainstream areas of inquiry as astrology, fortune-telling, and psychic and paranormal pursuits play a vital role in society by satisfying human needs that are not addressed by mainstream science.
To a great extent, sometimes astrology, fortune-telling, and psychic and paranormal play an important role in the daily life-comfort people who worry about their destiny, satisfy people's curiosity about the unknown world, and spark hope when people feel disappointed. However, these pursuits are illusionary and short-termed. Science is still the most reliable source for people to deal with difficulties.
Admittedly, even though they are called nonmainstream, unquestionably, they have great influences on people. In our daily life, we can find that there are many columns about astrology in newspapers, magazines and TV programs telling people about their fortune in coming days. To be specific, they may advise you to do something or not to do something in a certain time. This kind of information mainly contains encouragements. For example, Aries should believe in themselves and be more cautious; this week is a good chance for Leo to show their talent and abilities to their boss, and they may get a promotion; Virgo may get into troubles with their friendships, everything will be all right next week if they act more friendly and sincere. Also in some areas in China, people believe that they can contact their relatives who are dead by witches. In that case, they can comfort themselves. Therefore, nonmainstream can satisfy people because they enliven our lives, stimulate our interest and bring us hope and fun.
However, nonmainstream areas are detrimental to us if we take it seriously and even make use of them to deal with real problems. Generally speaking, when a person is sick, he had better seek help from doctors and take some medicines rather than turn to a fortune-teller for help. Although they believe it is rotations of planets that cause influenza, in deed, medicines, aspirin, for example, really take more effect in treating illness. If you believe what a fortune-teller says, like you just should pray for Gods, not take medicine, your illness may be more serious. When you have an important interview, if you believe what the column says that today is not a good time for you to apply for a job, probably you will lose a good chance. In short, nonmainstream areas sometimes cannot be used to deal with some important things.
Referring to the mainstream science, as we know, it is usually based on scientists' studies, research and their practical experiments. To some extent, the methods that science provides are more reasonable and convincing. Although science cannot satisfy people in some aspects and bring people fun as nonmainstream areas do, we must admit that science gives us real help in some special circumstances, which is certainly of great significance. For instance, nowadays modern medicine is so advanced that it can cure some cancers and even predicts diseases before a child is born. Nowadays, mainstream science is valuable for most people.
In conclusion, nonmainstream areas of inquiry as astrology, fortune-telling, and psychic and paranormal, to some degree, contribute to society. However, from my perspective, science, as mainstream, can really help us to do with real problems in our daily life.
Rose Wu
"Although they believe it is the rotations of the planets that cause influenza, in deed, medicines, aspirin, for example, really take more effect in treating illness. If you believe what a fortune-teller says, like you justsimply should pray for Gods, not take medicine, your illness may be more serious."
"When you have an important interview, if you believe what the column says, that today is not a good time for you to apply for a job, probably you will lose a good chance."
"Admittedly, even though they are called non-mainstream "
This is a great paper; the only grammatical errors I could find are the ones shown above. Remember to put a hyphen in all of the non-mainstream entries and you should be golden!
