To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
----------------------- The statement is quite nonsensical and preposterous in claiming that by studying some major cities of a society, one is able to understand its most important characteristics. These important characteristics of a civilization include how people communicate and interact with each other and how they interact with their environments. It is undoubtedly true that one can learn much from studying major cities through textbook reading. It is, however, difficult to justify that purely through studying of major cities one can understand the major aspects of a society.
It is almost inconceivable to say that the various aspects of a society can be learned without actually interacting with it. Proponents of the stated claim would probably argue that by studying its major cities, they can learn about the various famous, historic buildings, the means of transportation, and all the glorious façade that the society has put up to display. Historic buildings, to put it bluntly, are merely a way to look back into the past; it is not a very indicator of the current state of affairs. While the apparent façade is certainly important to those major cities (and perhaps the society itself), they may not necessarily reflect the multi-faceted nature that a society has to offer.
As alluded in the previous paragraph, actually interacting with a society in person is paramount in understanding the important aspects of a society. For instance, it is often understood that people in majorly populated cities such as Beijing lived very comfortably with fancy cars. However, without exploring further outside the city and seeing how people actually lived, one would not be able to learn that there are many poor people who commute more than an hour by bicycles. In fact, cycling to work is more common than one would think since there are more than 3 billions of bicycles sold each year. Simply by learning about the major cities, we would fail to focus on the neighboring smaller cities where there are just as much information, if not more, about the society as larger cities. We would not learn that in villages near Beijing, there are many farmers who grow their own food and if there are excess leftovers, they would sell it to their neighbors.
By studying the major cities, one will neglect to find out how the people within a society interact with each other. There are many means of distant communication such as mail and telephone. In more technologically advanced civilizations, there are social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and email. In our modern world in which these social media seemed ever so commonplace, we often find ourselves astounded when we find that other societies lack these more advanced communication tools. Perhaps studying how the people of a civilization communicate rather than the major cities themselves would shed more light on understanding the important characteristics of the society.
The important characteristics of a society can range from how the people interact with each other to how the people interact with their environments. By merely studying the major cities where the society resides, these factors are impossible to visualize, let alone fathom, without being physically present at the society. One would be much more knowledgeable of a society by assimilating within communities of the society to fully grasp what is really important to the society. In these respects, one will not understand the most important aspects of a society by simply examining the major cities.
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This is my first GRE essay and I think I'm short on one paragraph to strengthen my essay. I picked a topic that I wasn't too comfortable with from ETS website. Please critique and rate the essay!
Thanks!
