Answering questions - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... I think, this is the main ambivalence of the first paragraph. Also, the author calls this desire a “shame”, but at the same time he is angry that his wood is intercepted by a public foot-path. His feelings of a property owner are interfered with his consciousness.
Forster assumes that “creation, property, enjoyment form a sinister trinity in the human mind” (Forster 263). According to the author, a man owning property “ought to do something to it”. Property brings restlessness, which is different from the same restlessness accompanying the act of creation. Property can substitute the material basis needed for creation and enjoyment (which are both good, as the author writes). He thinks that our world is “material and carnal” and that we should learn how “to manage our materialism and carnality”. I can’t agree with the author on that. Forster, for example, mentions Tolstoy and his negative attitude to property. But, as a matter of fact, Tolstoy was an earl; he owned a large estate with slaves and was definitely a man of property. Property allowed him to obtain a good education and a material basis to create, i.e. he could waste no time on earning his living, but spend it on thinking and writing. Therefore, possessing property does not always mean “restlessness” about it. However, there are exceptions, but it only means that one should not be so categorical in this issue.
II. In her essay Toynbee elaborates on Richard Wilkinson’s idea that inequality is the main peril of society. For her “equality for its own sake” means a better and healthier society. This opinion is based on Wilkinson’s assumptions that “social environment can be more toxic than any pollutant” (cited in Toynbee 365). In simple words, poor people see the rich and it leads to envy and other negative emotions, which, in their turn, lead to unhealthy life. It can be proved, the author argues, by the experiments with animals. And since ...Download file to see next pagesRead More