Gateway
In the post-World War II years after 1945, unparalleled economic growth fueled a building boom and a massive migration from the central cities to the new suburban areas. The suburbs were far more dependent on the automobile, signaling the shift from primary dependence on public transportation to private cars. Soon this led to the construction of better highways and freeways and the decline and even loss of public transportation. With all of these changes came a privatization of leisure. As more people owned their own homes, with more space inside and lovely yards outside, their recreation and leisure time was increasingly centered around the home or, at most, the neighborhood. One major activity of this home-based leisure was watching television. No longer did one have to ride the trolly to the theater to watch a movie; similar entertainment was available for free and more conveniently from television.
| The post-World War II economic boom catalyzed suburban migration and an (A) reliance on automobiles, leading to systemic shifts in urban infrastructure and leisure activities. This transformation prompted (B), with entertainment moving from public spaces to the home. |
(A) (B)
① entrenched the resurgence of mass transit
② declining privatization of leisure
③ intensified a cultural rejection of urbanization
④increasing the promotion of public transportation
⑤ unprecedented the revival of communal entertainment
1.
It is uncontroversially true that people in different societies have different customs and different ideas about right and wrong. There is no world consensus on which actions are right and wrong, even though there is a considerable overlap between views on this. If we consider how much moral views have changed both from place to place and from age to age it can be tempting to think that there are no absolute moral facts, but rather that morality is always relative to the society in which you have been brought up. On such a view, since slavery was morally acceptable to most Ancient Greeks but is not to most Europeans today, slavery was right for the Ancient Greeks but would be wrong for today’s Europeans. This view, known as moral relativism, makes morality simply a description of the values held by a particular society at a particular time. This is a meta-ethical view about the nature of moral judgements. Moral judgements can only be judged true or false relative to a particular society. There are no absolute moral judgements: they are all relative.
| Moral relativism asserts that ethical judgments are (A) and contingent upon societal norms. By rejecting absolute moral truths, it argues that morality is an (B) of specific cultural and temporal contexts. |
(A) (B)
① inflexible interpretation
② variable abstraction
③ universal embodiment
④ subjective interpretation
⑤ absolute application
2.
If the United States has one of the easiest geographies to develop, Mexico has one of the most difficult. The entirety of Mexico is in essence the southern extension of the Rocky Mountains, which is a kind way of saying that America’s worst lands are strikingly similar to Mexico’s best lands. As one would expect from a territory that is mountain- dominated, there are no navigable rivers and no large cohesive pieces of fertile land like the American Southeast or the Columbia valley, much less the Midwest. Each mountain valley is a sort of fastness where a small handful of oligarchs control local economic and political life. Mexico shouldn’t be thought of as a unified state, but instead as a collage of dozens of little Mexicos where local power brokers constantly align with and against each other (and a national government seeking — often in vain — to stitch together something more cohesive). In its regional disconnectedness, Mexico is a textbook case that countries with the greatest need for capital-intensive infrastructure are typically the countries with the lowest ability to generate the capital necessary to build that infrastructure.
| Mexico's geography, dominated by rugged mountain terrain, (A) its regional segmentation, where fragmented local economies and power structures (B) national cohesion and development. |
(A) (B)
① amplifies hinder
② facilitates reinforce
③ minimizes promote
④ exacerbates enable
⑤ simplifies accelerate
3.
When Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the words, “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink” in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798, the dangers of drinking seawater had been known for thousands of years. Seawater does indeed make men mad. Historical evidence indicates the ancient Egyptians knew seawater was not potable, but the earliest realization that it was unsafe to drink has been lost to antiquity. In pre-Columbian times, the greatest fear of venturing too far from land on the ocean was not falling off the surface of the Earth but lack of fresh drinking water. From a human perspective, the oceans, which cover 70% of Earth’s surface, are still the most extensive and unique desert wildernesses on the planet. Saltwater constitutes 97% of Earth’s water, and of the 3% that is fresh, two-thirds is frozen in glaciers and polar ice. Thus, a mere 1% of all the water on the planet (in lakes and rivers, groundwater, and the atmosphere) is fresh and can be used by terrestrial plants and animals.
| The oceans, encompassing 70% of Earth’s surface, are paradoxically labeled as deserts due to their (A) to meet freshwater needs. Of the planet’s water supply, a mere 1% is both fresh and (B) for terrestrial ecosystems. |
(A) (B)
① inability indispensable
② abundance critical
③ insufficiency detrimental
④ inadequacy inaccessible
⑤ unsuitability available