GRE-Issue99

TOPIC: ISSUE99 - "In any realm of life-whether academic, social, business, or political-the only way to succeed is to take a practical, rather than an idealistic, point of view. Pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic views tend to be superceded by simpler, more immediate options."
WORDS: 390 TIME: 00:45:00 DATE: 2011-3-27 17:14:11

Some people hold the opinion that being practical rather than idealistic is the only way to success.I agree with the idea that take a practical point of view for stuff in your daily life is essential.But when it comes to other realm of things like academic and so on,the habit of keeping an idealistic thinking in your mind is something insubstituted.
Without practical attitude,nothing can be achieved.Do you know how lights today were invented long period ago?It was created by Thomas Edison with hundred even thousand times' trial of different materials for the light wick.No one can find out the most appropriate material in the first trial and if Edison just imagined how to build such a lighting device and did nothing practical to implement his ideas,the invention would never occur to him.So never forget the attitude of being practical,and it will help you a lot to achieve what you have in your mind in reality.
As to my experiences,I think being practical can help me learn things quickly and master knowledge more solidly.For example,when people learn some subjects at school,apart from listening to what teacher instructs during class and reading book after class,trying to do solve some problems with the theory you learned is perhaps the best way to get to know the real meaning of knowledge you have in your mind.Learning knowledge just by reading"what it is" is not enough.You may misunderstand the real meaning when you mix this theory with other previous ideas you got in your mind.But what if the previous ideas in your mind is also by the mixiture of such readings?It will be terrible since basic knowledge in your mind may be totally unstable.So we should keep practical in face of any new knowledge by now.
However,the idealistical mind is critical in many fields.The plane will never be invented without the idealitic ideas that people flying like a bird.The mannul spaceship is said to be an imagination appeared in a science novel 100 years ago before the first mannual spaceship.In fact,many progress in human history is a result of an idealistical mind.The attitude of being practical is the basic stuff for searching the nature and the pioneer is idealistic.In modern society substancial stuff is enough for human beings,but people's mind is restricted by so many existing stuff.Being idealogical is specially needy in modern world.
With all the opinions above,I think we should keep an practical attitude towards daily stuff and try to make each ideas In mind into practice.However,in some occasions,idealogical mind is encouraged since it is the source power of renovation and progress of our human history.