15. Today, life is easier and cozier than life when grandparents were young.
r1) 육체적으로는 편안해졌으나 정신적으로는 황폐해졌다
각박한 도시 삶으로 인한 우울증, 무기력증 등
r2) 빈부격차로 인한 상대적 박탈감의 증대로 삶이 힘겨워짐
Many people argue that today’s life is easier and cozier than life when grandparents were young. As far as I am concerned, I completely disagree with them. The rationale behind this is that although today life is more physically comfortable, the mental health of people has been devastated. Moreover, the gap between the wealthy and the poor has been ever growing, thereby aggravating the sense of deprivation of poor people.
First, even though people now enjoy various benefits of the high technology and medical progress, they suffer from severe mental diseases. In other words, people are more apt to get mental complaints, residing in a highly-developed but materialistic city. For example, according to a research recently conducted by National Research Foundation of Korea, it was analyzed how many people living in Seoul, the capital city of Korea, were suffering from psychological disorders such as a depression, etc. The result was, of course, surprising: over seventy percents of subjects in Seoul answered that they were caught by severe or weak mental diseases, forty percents of whom had tried suicide more than once due to the unbearable pain of mental complaints. The underlying cause of this is identified to be the fact that cozier but meaningless city life tend to expose urban people to horrible mental damages. Therefore, this clearly indicates that today life is more uncomfortable and unpleasing past life when grandparents were young.
In addition, the gulf between the rich and the poor has been ever widened, resulting in aggravating sense of deprivation of poor people. That is because as the mass media has become popular, people realize that there always exists someone richer than them. For instance, according to a number of renowned scholars on sociology, the sense of deprivation only occurs in one condition: existence of others to be compared with oneself. Thus, this is a clear indication why today life is tougher and more burdensome than life of the past.
In conclusion, I wholeheartedly believe that today life is neither easier nor cozier than life when grandparents were young. The reasons are not only the mental health of people has been devastated although today life is more physically comfortable, but also the gap between the wealthy and the poor has been ever growing, thereby aggravating the sense of deprivation of poor people. Therefore, these are the two most convincing reasons for my contention.
두 시간에 걸친 에세이 작성과 수정..
밤잠도 잊고 깨어있는 토플러님들! 조언 부탁드려요..!
의견 남겨주시면 귀담아 듣겠습니다.. :-)