ANDERSON JUNIOR COLLEGE

JC 2 PRELIMINARY EXAMINATIONS 2008

GENERAL PAPER

8806/02

PAPER 2

27 August 2008
Candidates answer on the Question Paper. 1
hour 30 minutes
Additional Materials: Insert (4 pages)

1 hour 30 minutes

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

Write your name, PDG and GP Tutors name in the boxes below.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.
Answer all questions.
This insert contains the passages for Paper 2.
Note that 15 marks out of 50 will be awarded for your use of language.
At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
Hand in only this Question Paper
The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

For Examiners Use

Content
Language
Total
Name

PDG

General Paper Tutors Name

35
15
50

The idea happiness to be sure, will not sit for easy definition: the best one can try is to set
some extremes to the idea and then work in toward the middle. To think of happiness as
acquisitive and competitive will do to set the materialistic extreme. To think of it as the idea
one senses, in say, a holy man of India will do to set the spiritual extreme. That holy mans
idea of happiness is in needing nothing from outside himself. In wanting nothing, he lacks
nothing. He sits immobile, rapt in contemplation, free even of his own body. Or nearly free
of it. If devout admirers bring him food, he eats it; if not, he starves indifferently. Why be
concerned? What is physical is an illusion to him. Contemplation is his joy and he achieves
it through a fantastically demanding discipline, the accomplishment of which is itself a joy
within.
But, perhaps because I am Western, I doubt such catatonic happiness, as I doubt the
dreams of the happiness-market. What is certain is that this way of happiness would be
torture to almost any Western man. Yet these extremes serve to frame the area within
which all of us must find some sort of balance. Thoreau a creature of both Eastern and
Western thought had his own firm sense of that balance. His aim was to save on the low
levels in order to spend on the high.
Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighbourhood would
have been Thoreaus idea of low levels. The active discipline of heightening ones
perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of a high. What he saved
from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly
disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as
would keep him functioning for the more important efforts.
Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties.
Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfactions we get from a lifetime depend on
how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same
terms when he spoke of The pleasure of taking pains. The mortal flaw in the advertised
version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.
We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can
be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the
game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When the spoilsport ruins the fun, he always
does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your
pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No
difficulty, no fun.
The buyers and sellers at the happiness-market seem too often to have lost their sense of
pleasure of difficulty. Heaven knows what they are playing, but it seems a dull game. And
the Indian holy man seems dull to us, because he seems to be refusing to play anything at
all. The Western weakness may be in the illusion that happiness can be bought. Perhaps
the Eastern weakness is in the idea that there is such a thing as perfect (and therefore
static) happiness.

Passage 1: John Ciardi writes about the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

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25

30

35

7
1

8
2

Happiness is never more than partial. There are no pure states of mankind. Whatever else 40
In general may
our society
becoming
one ofnor
giant
enterprises
directed by
a bureaucracy
in 1
happiness
be, it isisneither
in having
being,
but in becoming.
What
our Founding
which man
becomes
well-oiled
in the
is done with
higher
Fathers
declared
for aussmall,
as an
inherentcog
right,
wemachinery.
should do The
well oiling
to remember,
was
not
wages, fringe
well-ventilated
factories
piped
music,
and by psychologists
and
happiness
butbenefits,
the pursuit
of happiness.
Whatand
they
have
underlined,
could they have
human relations
experts; yet all
this cardinal
oiling does
the fact
man
has itself,
become
foreseen
the happiness-market,
is the
fact not
thatalter
happiness
is that
in the
pursuit
in
powerless,
that pursuit
he doesofnot
wholeheartedly
participate
in his work and
thatishe
bored
5
the
meaningful
what
is life-engaging
and life-revealing,
which
toissay,
in with
the 45
it.
In
fact,
the
blueand
the
white-collar
workers
have
become
economic
puppets
who
ideas of becoming. A nation is not measured by what it possesses or wants to possess,
dance
to theittune
of to
automated
but
by what
wants
become. machines and bureaucratic management.
Theallworker
employee
are anxious,sell
notus
only
because
they might
themselves
outsoof
By
meansand
let the
happiness-market
minor
satisfactions
andfind
even
minor follies
a jobas
(and
payments
due);
they
anxious change.
also because
they
are unable
long
we with
keepinstallment
them in scale
and buy
them
outare
of spiritual
I am no
customer
for 50
to acquire
any real
satisfaction But
or interest
in real
life. spiritual
They livecapital
and die
withoutbazaars,
ever having
either
puritanism
or asceticism.
drop any
at those
and 10
confronted
the home
fundamental
realities
of human
existence as emotionally and intellectually
what
you come
to will be
your own
poorhouse.
productive, authentic and independent human beings.
Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty
than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are
in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not only a matter of salary
but even more a matter of self-esteem. When they apply for their first job, they are tested
for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From
that moment on they are tested again and again by the psychologists, for whom testing is
a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behaviour, sociability, capacity to get
along, etc., their own and that of their wives. This constant need to prove that one is as
good as or better than ones fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very
causes of unhappiness and psychosomatic illness.
The organisation man may be well-fed, well-amused and well-oiled, yet he lacks a sense
of identity because none of his feelings or his thoughts originates within himself; none is
authentic. He has no convictions, either in politics, religion, philosophy or in love. He is
attracted by the latest model in thought, art and style, and lives under the illusion that the
thoughts and feelings which he has acquired by listening to the media of mass
communication are his own.
He has a nostalgic longing for a life of individualism, initiative and justice; a longing that he
satisfies by looking at Westerns. But these values have disappeared from real life in the
world of giant corporations, giant state and military bureaucracies and giant labor unions.
He, the individual, feels so small before these giants that he sees only one way to escape
the sense of utter insignificance: He identifies himself with the giants and idolises them as
the true representatives of his own human powers, those of which he has dispossessed
himself. His effort to escape his anxiety takes other forms as well. His pleasure in a wellfilled freezer may be one unconscious way of reassuring himself. His passion for
consumption from television to sex is still another symptom, a mechanism which
psychiatrists often find in anxious patients who go on an eating or buying spree to evade
their problems.

Passage 2: Erich Fromm writes about OUR WAY OF LIFE

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35

One of the strangest aspects of this mechanical approach to life is the widespread lack of
concern about the danger of total destruction by nuclear weapons; a possibility people are
consciously aware of. The explanation, I believe, is that they are more proud of than
frightened by the gadgets of mass destruction. Also, they are frightened of the possibility of
their personal failure and humiliation that their anxiety about personal matters prevents
them from feeling anxiety about the possibility that everybody and everything may be
destroyed. Perhaps total destruction is even more attractive than total insecurity and
never-ending personal anxiety.

40

45

7
Am I suggesting that modern man is doomed and that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to the nineteenth-century free enterprise capitalism?
Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already
outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed
industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a
humanist industrialism in which man and the full development of his potentialities those
of love and reason are the aims of all social arrangements. Production and consumption
should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.

50

55

Read the passages in the insert and then answer all the questions which follow below. Note
that up to fifteen marks will be given for the quality and accuracy of your use of English
throughout this paper.
NOTE: When a question asks for an answer IN YOUR OWN WORDS AS FAR AS
POSSIBLE and you select the appropriate material from the passages for your answer, you
must still use your own words to express it. Little credit can be given to answers which only
copy words or phrases from the passages.

Questions on Passage 1
1.

Or nearly free of it (lines 6-7). Why does the author add this statement in
paragraph 1? Use your own words as far as possible.

.. [1]
2.

In paragraph 1, how does the holy man achieve contentment? Use your own
words as far as possible.

...[1]
3.

Effort is the gist of it (line 23). How does the author explain the meaning of
the statement in relation to happiness? Use your own words as far as
possible.

...[1]

For
examiners
use

4.

We demand difficulty even in our games (line 28).

(a) What is the irony in this statement?

.................................... [1]

(b) Give two reasons why difficulty is important in games? Use your own
words as far as possible.

(i)

...
...
(ii)...

.. [2]
5.

Explain the shortcomings of Western and Eastern views of happiness in

paragraph 6. Use your own words as far as possible.

...

.. [2]
6.

The author says happiness is neither in having nor being, but in becoming
(line 41). Explain what the author means by this. Use your own words as far
as possible.

. [1]
6

For
examiners
use

For
examiners
use

Questions on Passage 2
(a) What is the first thing the author claims that has not been changed for man

7.

by this oiling (line 4)? Use your own words as far as possible.

..
...

.. [1]
(b) What contradiction is the author highlighting about mans working life (lines
2-7)? Use your own words as far as possible.
..

.. [1]
8.

the blue- and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets
who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic
management (lines 6-7). Explain what this phrase implies about workers,
paying attention to the words in bold. Use your own words as far as
possible.

...

..............................................................................................................................

For
examiners
use

.............[3]

9.

Using material from paragraphs 4 to 6 of the passage (lines 23-47), summarise

what the writer thinks are the negative consequences of an individual
becoming the organisation man and how he seems to adjust to them.
Write your summary in no more than 120 words, not counting the opening
words which are printed below. Use your own words as far as possible.

The writer thinks that the organisation man ....

...
...

...

...

.. [8]
10.

Give the meaning of the following words as they are used in Passage 1 and
Passage 2. You may write the answer in one word or a short phrase.

From Passage 1:
acquisitive (line 3)......
spoilsport (line 30)......
cardinal (line 44) ....
From Passage 2:
fringe (line 3).......
confronted (line 11) .. [5]

For
examiners
use

For
examiners
use

From both passages

11.

John Ciardi says happiness is the pursuit itself rather than the possession of
anything concrete. Erich Fromm says mans happiness is superficial because it
is directed by bureaucracy.
Which authors view do you subscribe to more and explain why. Discuss the
concerns your generation has in its search for happiness.
In your answer, develop some of the points made by the authors and give your
own views.

10

...

...

11

For
examiners
use

For
examiners
use

...

EV

EX

12

Co

.......
............................................................................................................
...[8]
END OF PAPER

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