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  3. Few words are more commonly used in our modern world than the word modern itself. The modernity of manufactured articles, of ins

Few words are more commonly used in our modern world than the word modern itself. The modernity of manufactured articles, of ins

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问题     Few words are more commonly used in our modern world than the word modern itself. The modernity of manufactured articles, of institutions, of attitudes, of works of art is constantly brought to our attention. We ourselves may well be judged by whether we are modern or not: indeed, many people go to considerable lengths to make quite certain that they will be accepted as modern-modern in their dress, their behavior, their beliefs. And yet, we may ask, must earlier generations not have felt precisely the same? Surely men throughout history must have recognized themselves as modern. Surely innovators like Julius Caesar, Peter the Great or Oliver Cromwell saw themselves as breaking with the past, as establishing a new order. Must they not also have shared our awareness of the significance of what is modern? What is modern is distinct from what belongs to the past and men in earlier times must have experienced this sense of distinctiveness. People cannot escape, and never have been able to escape, an awareness of change. Reflection will tell us that our awareness of change, our sense of distinctiveness, is very different from that of our predecessors. Change for us is more, much more, than the change brought about by the passing of time, by important events or by the actions of outstanding individuals or groups of people. We make use of change and are ourselves a part of a process of change. Change for us has become modernization and modernization implies both direction and consciousness. Change is something we seek, something we attempt to control and something that has no end.
    Our "modern" consciousness of change and this desire to direct change began with the Industrial Revolution. The term revolution is usually applied to a historical event that causes a major change in thought, life styles, and identity. We can normally speak of a time before the revolution and a time after the revolution. But the Industrial Revolution, although it had a beginning, has never come to an end. It is a process not yet stopped. It is a process which affects more and more people in more and more ways. We may argue that it is a process directed by humans. The whole process is, as yet, beyond control of any particular individual or group.
    We can decide the direction of modernization to some extent but we cannot decide to halt it. This has led to a disturbing situation. What we boast of as modern or up to date today, will be old-fashioned or out of date tomorrow. The noisy insistence that something is modern often conceals fear of the knowledge that it will inevitably soon be superseded. Again, the very fact that modernization has one direction only and involves every member of society permits only two attitudes: acceptance or rejection. The desire to change or modify the world we live in implies acceptance, since the world is a world of change. Rejection of modernization may, therefore, lead to a sense of the world as unreal and meaningless, and this, in turn, to a breakdown, either individual or social.
The author believes that today people are often assessed by their______.
选项
答案modernity
解析 (文章第一段第二、三句提到：The modernity of…We ourselves may well be judged bywhether we are modern or not“人们用是否现代化是否时髦来评价自己”。故此空应填mo-dernity。)
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C类竞赛（非英语专业本科）

大学生英语竞赛（NECCS）

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