In today’s world, racial, ethnic, and national categories no longer impose fixed barriers or unbending traditions. This is not t

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问题     In today’s world, racial, ethnic, and national categories no longer impose fixed barriers or unbending traditions. This is not to say that these categories have disappeared. Rather, they are mixing and interacting in new ways. The hybrid nature of today’s society is a valuable resource that companies and businesses should tap into in their quest to innovate.
    The ability to apply knowledge to new situations is the most valued currency in today’s economy. More than ever, creativity rewards those who exercise it, so curiosity about the source of creativity has never been higher. How creativity comes about is a riddle, but a few things seem clear. Highly creative people don’t necessarily excel in raw brainpower. They are misfits on some level. They tend to question accepted views and to consider contradictory ones.
    The implications are plain to see: Divergent thinking is an essential ingredient of creativity. Diverse groups produce diverse thinking. Therefore, diversity promotes creativity. This logic applies to corporations, research teams, think tanks, and other groups of creators. Those who rely on a team of diverse people are more likely to innovate than those who rely on platoons of similar people.
    To be sure, hybridity poses risks. A hybrid person may lose himself in a jumble of affiliations. A hybrid nation may botch the process of reinvention. Still, the price of such errors seems lower than the cost of circling the ethnic wagons and either shutting out people who are different or forcing them to become "one of us". Never before have so many people married across racial and ethnic lines. Never before have so many people left their homelands for work or pleasure. Never before have so many people touched or tasted the clothes, foods, musical styles, and ideas of cultures not available to them in their youth. These people are not becoming phantoms or dilettantes. Rather, they are part of an outpouring of human creativity that is being driven by radical mixing.
    "You cannot spill a drop of American blood," Herman Melville wrote in 1849, "without spilling the blood of the whole world." More than ever, Melville’s declaration applies not only to America, but to all nations.
In paragraph 4, the term "botch" most likely means "______".

选项 A、complicate
B、err in
C、excel at
D、flourish in

答案A

解析 属词义推断题。botch所在的句子与前面一句构成了平行结构,而且在意义上是前一句的进一步引申说明。这两句指出:混血儿由于各方面的关系错综复杂,可能会迷失自我;一个种族混杂的国家可能会把重整河山的进程botch。由此可推知botch的意思与前句中的lost himself ina jumble of affiliation相近,而决不会是个褒义词,因此可首先排除选项C(在…方面表现突出)、D(在…方面繁荣兴旺)。选项A、B中符合此意的应该是A(使复杂、麻烦、难处理)。
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