2020 年 12 月大学英语六级考试真题（第 2 套）

Virtually every activity that entails or facilitates in-person human interaction seems to be in the midst of a total meltdown as the coronavirus outbreak erases Americans' desire to travel. Amtrak says bookings are down 50 percent and cancelations are up 300 percent. Hotels in San Francisco are experiencing __26__ rates between 70 and 80 percent. Broadway goes dark on Thursday night. Universities, now emptying their campuses, have never tried online learning on this __27__. White collar companies like Amazon, Apple, and the New York Times are asking employees to work from home for the __28__ future.

But what happens after the coronavirus?

In some ways, the answer is All the old normal stuff. The pandemic will take lives, __29__ economies and destroy routines, but it will pass. Americans will never stop going to basketball games. They won't stop going on vacation. They'll meet to do business. No decentralizing technology so far—not telephones, not television, and not the internet—has dented that human desire to shake hands, despite technologists' __30__ to the contrary.

Yet there are real reasons to think that things will not return to the way they were last week. Small __31__ create small societal shifts; big ones change things for good. The New York transit strike of 1980 is __32__ with prompting several long-term changes in the city, including bus and bike lanes, and women wearing sports shoes to work. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 prompted the development of national health care in Europe.

Here and now, this might not even be a question of __33__. It's not clear that the cruise industry will __34__. Or that public transit won't go broke without __35__ assistance. The infrastructure might not even be in place to do what we were doing in 2019.

Vegetarians would prefer not to be compelled to eat meat. Yet the reverse compulsion is hidden in the proposals for a new plant-based "planetary diet." Nowhere is this more visible than in India.

Earlier this year, the EAT-Lancet Commission released its global report on nutrition and called for a global shift to a more plant-based diet and for "substantially reducing consumption of animal source foods." In countries like India, that call could become a tool to aggravate an already tense political situation and stress already undernourished populations.

The EAT report presumes that "traditional diets" in countries like India include little red meat, which might be consumed only on special occasions or as minor ingredients in mixed dishes.

In India, however, there is a vast difference between what people would wish to consume and what they have to consume because of innumerable barriers around class, religion, culture, cost, geography, etc. Policymakers in India have traditionally pushed for a cereal-heavy "vegetarian diet" on a meat-eating population as a way of providing the cheapest sources of food.

Currently, under an aggressive Hindu nationalist government, Muslims, Christians, disadvantaged classes and indigenous communities are being compelled to give up their traditional foods.

None of these concerns seem to have been appreciated by the EAT-Lancet Commission's representative, Brent Loken, who said "India has got such a great example" in sourcing protein from plants.

But how much of a model for the world is India's vegetarianism? In the Global Hunger Index 2019, the country ranks 102nd out of 117. Data from the National Family Health Survey indicate that only 10 percent of infants of 6 to 23 months are adequately fed.

Which is why calls for a plant-based diet modeled on India risk offering another whip with which to beat already vulnerable communities in developing countries.

A diet directed at the affluent West fails to recognize that in low-income countries undernourished children are known to benefit from the consumption of milk and other animal source foods, improving cognitive functions, while reducing the prevalence of nutritional deficiencies as well as mortality.

EAT-Lancet claimed its intention was to "spark conversations" among all Indian stakeholders. Yet vocal critics of the food processing industry and food fortification strategies have been left out of the debate. But the most conspicuous omission may well be the absence of India's farmers.

The government, however, seems to have given the report a thumbs-up. Rather than addressing chronic hunger and malnutrition through an improved access to wholesome and nutrient-dense foods, the government is opening the door for company-dependent solutions, ignoring the environmental and economic cost, which will destroy local food systems. It's a model full of danger for future generations.

Back in 1964, in his book Games People Play, psychiatrist Eric Berne described a pattern of conversation he called "Why Don't You—Yes But", which remains one of the most irritating aspects of everyday social life. The person adopting the strategy is usually a chronic complainer. Something is terrible about their relationship, job, or other situation, and they moan about it ceaselessly, but find some excuse to dismiss any solution that's proposed. The reason, of course, is that on some level they don't want a solution; they want to be validated in their position that the world is out to get them. If they can "win" the game—dismissing every suggestion until their interlocutor gives up in annoyance—they get to feel pleasurably righteous in their resentments and excused from any obligation to change.

Part of the trouble here is the so-called responsibility/fault fallacy. When you're feeling hard done by—taken for granted by your partner, say, or obliged to work for a half-witted boss—it's easy to become attached to the position that it's not your job to address the matter, and that doing so would be an admission of fault. But there's a confusion here. For example, if I were to discover a newborn at my front door, it wouldn't be my fault, but it most certainly would be my responsibility. There would be choices to make, and no possibility of avoiding them, since trying to ignore the matter would be a choice. The point is that what goes for the baby on the doorstep is true in all cases: even if the other person is 100% in the wrong, there's nothing to be gained, long-term, from using this as a justification to evade responsibility.

Should you find yourself on the receiving end of this kind of complaining, there's an ingenious way to shut it down—which is to agree with it, ardently. Psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb describes this as "over validation". For one thing, you'll be spared further moaning, since the other person's motivation was to confirm her beliefs, and now you're confirming them. But for another, as Gottlieb notes, people confronted with over-validation often hear their complaints afresh and start arguing back. The notion that they're utterly powerless suddenly seems unrealistic—not to mention rather annoying—so they're prompted instead to generate ideas about how they might change things.

"And then, sometimes, something magical might happen," Gottlieb writes. The other person "might realise she's not as trapped as you are saying she is, or as she feels." Which illustrates the irony of the responsibility/fault fallacy: evading responsibility feels comfortable, but turns out to be a prison; whereas assuming responsibility feels unpleasant, but ends up being freeing.