XXXX 考研英语二真题完形填空考研英语二真题完形填空People have speculated for centuries about a futurewithout work, and today is no different, with academics,writers, and activists once again warning that technologyis replacing human workers. Some imagine that the ing work-free world will be defined by inequality: A few wealthypeople will own all the capital, and the masses willstruggle in an impoverished wasteland.A different, less paranoid, and not mutually exclusiveprediction holds that the future will be a wasteland of adifferent sort, one characterized by purposelessness:Without jobs to give their lives meaning, people willsimply bee lazy and depressed. Indeed, todays unemployeddont seem to be having a great time. One Gallup pollfound that 20 percent of Americans who have been unemployedfor at least a year report having depression, double therate for working Americans. Also, some research suggeststhat the explanation for rising rates of mortality, mental-health problems, and addiction among poorly-educated,middle-aged people is a shortage of well-paid jobs. Anotherstudy shows that people are often happier at work than intheir free time. Perhaps this is why many worry about theagonizing dullness of a jobless future.But it doesnt necessarily follow from findings likethese that a world without work would be filled withmalaise. Such visions are based on the downsides of beingunemployed in a society built on the concept of employment.In the absence of work, a society designed with other endsin mind could yield strikingly different circumstances forthe future of labor and leisure. Today, the virtue of workmay be a bit overblown. “Many jobs are boring, degrading,unhealthy, and a squandering of human potential,” saysJohn Danaher, a lecturer at the National University ofIreland in Galway who has written about a world withoutwork. “Global surveys find that the vast majority ofpeople are unhappy at work.”These days, because leisure time is relatively scarcefor most workers, people use their free time tocounterbalance the intellectual and emotional demands oftheir jobs. “When I e home from a hard days work, Ioften feel tired,” Danaher says, adding, “In a world inwhich I dont have to work, I might feel ratherdifferent”perhaps different enough to throw himself intoa hobby or a passion project with the intensity usuallyreserved for professional matters.Having a job can provide a measure of financialstability, but in addition to stressing over how to coverlifes necessities, todays jobless are frequently madeto feel like social outcasts. “People who avoid work areviewed as parasites and leeches,” Danaher says. Perhaps asa result of this cultural attitude, for most people, self-esteem and identity are tied up intricately with their job,or lack of job.Plus, in many modern-day societies, unemployment canalso be downright boring. American towns and cities arentreally built for lots of free time: Public spaces tend tobe small islands in seas of private property, and therearent many places without entry fees where adults canmeet new people or e up with ways to entertain one another.The roots of this boredom may run even deeper. PeterGray, a professor of psychology at Boston College whostudies the concept of play, thinks that if workdisappeared tomorrow, people might be at a loss for thingsto do, growing bored and depressed because they haveforgotten how to play. “We teach children a distinctionbetween play and work,” Gray explains. “Work is somethingthat you dont want to do but you have to do.” He saysthis training, which starts in school, eventually “drillsthe play” out of many children, who grow up to be adultswho are aimless when presented with free time.“Sometimes people retire from their work, and theydont know what to do,” Gray says. “Theyve lost theability to create their own activities.” Its a problemthat never seems to plague young children. “There are nothree-year-olds that are going to be lazy and depressedbecause they dont have a structured activity,” he says.But need it be this way? Work-free societies are morethan just a thought experimenttheyve existed throughouthuman history. Consider hunter-gatherers, who have nobosses, paychecks, or eight-hour workdays. Ten thousandyears ago, all humans were hunter-gatherers, and some stillare. Daniel Everett, an anthropologist at BentleyUniversity, in Massachusetts, studied a group of hunter-gathers in the Amazon called the Pirah? for years. Aordingto Everett, while some might consider hunting and gatheringwork, hunter-gatherers dont. “They think of it as fun,”he says. “They dont have a concept of work the way wedo.”“Its a pretty laid-back life most of the time,”Everett says. He described a typical day for the Pirah?: Aman might get up, spend a few hours canoeing and fishing,have a barbecue, go for a swim, bring fish back to hisfamily, and play until the evening. Such subsistence livingis surely not without its own set of worries, but theanthropologist Marshall Sahlins argued in a 1968 essay thathunter-gathers belonged to “the original affluentsociety,” seeing as they only “worked” a few hours a day;Everett estimates that Pirah? adults on average work about20 hours a week (not to mention without bosses peering overtheir shoulders). Meanwhile, aording to the Bureau of LaborStatistics, the average employed American with childrenworks about nine hours a day.Does this leisurely life lead to the depression andpurposelessness seen among so many of todays unemployed?“Ive never seen anything remotely like depression there,except people who are physically ill,” Everett says.“They have a blast. They play all the time.” While manymay consider work a staple of human life, work as it existstoday is a relatively new invention in the course ofthousands of years of human culture. “We think its badto just sit around with nothing to do,” says Everett.“For the Pirah?, its quite a desirable state.”Gray likens these aspects of the hunter-gathererlifestyle to the carefree adventures of many children indeveloped countries, who at some point in life are expectedto put away childish things. But that hasnt always beenthe case. Aording to Gary Crosss 1990 book A SocialHistory of Leisure Since 1600, free time in the U.S. lookedquite different before the 18th and 19th centuries.Farmerswhich was a fair way to describe a huge number ofAmericans at that timemixed work and play in their dailylives. There were no managers or overseers, so they wouldswitch fluidly between working, taking breaks, joining inneighborhood games, playing pranks, and spending time withfamily and friends. Not to mention festivals and othergatherings: France, for instance, had 84 holidays a year in1700, and weather kept them from farming another 80 or sodays a year.This all changed, writes Cross, during the IndustrialRevolution, which replaced farms with factories and farmerswith employees. Factory owners created a more rigidlyscheduled environment that clearly divided work from play.Meanwhile, clockswhich were being widespread at thattimebegan to give life a quicker pace, and religiousleaders, who traditionally endorsed most festivities,started associating leisure with sin and tried to replacerowdy festivals with sermons.As workers started moving into cities, families nolonger spent their days together on the farm. Instead, menworked in factories, women stayed home or worked infactories, and children went to school, stayed home, orworked in factories too. During the workday, familiesbecame physically separated, which affected the way peopleentertained themselves: Adults stopped playing “childish”games and sports, and the streets were mostly wiped cleanof fun, as middle- and upper-class families found working-class activities like cockfighting and dice gamesdistasteful. Many such diversions were soon outlawed.With workers old outlets for play having disappearedin a haze of factory smoke, many of them turned to new,more urban ones. Bars became a refuge where tired workersdrank and watched live shows with singing and dancing. Iffree time means beer and TV to a lot of Americans, thismight be why.At times, developed societies have, for a privilegedfew, produced lifestyles that were nearly as play-filled ashunter-gatherers. Throughout history, aristocrats whoearned their ine simply by owning land spent only a tinyportion of their time minding financial exigencies. Aordingto Randolph Trumbach, a professor of history at BaruchCollege, 18th-century English aristocrats spent their daysvisiting friends, eating elaborate meals, hosting salons,hunting, writing letters, fishing, and going to church.They also spent a good deal of time participating inpolitics, without pay. Their children would learn to dance,play instruments, speak foreign languages, and read Latin.Russian nobles frequently became intellectuals, writers,and artists. “As a 17th-century aristocrat said, We sitdown to eat and rise up to play, for what is a gentlemanbut his pleasure?” Trumbach says.Its unlikely that a world without work would beabundant enough to provide everyone with such lavishlifestyles. But Gray insists that injecting any amount ofadditional play into peoples lives would be a good thing,because, contrary to that 17th-century aristocrat, play isabout more than pleasure. Through play, Gray says, children(as well as adults) learn how to strategize, create newmental connections, express their creativity, cooperate,overe narcissism, and get along with other people. “Malemammals typically have difficulty living in close proximityto each other,” he says, and plays harmony-promotingproperties may explain why it came to be so central tohunter-gatherer societies. While most of todays adultsmay have forgotten how to play, Gray doesnt believe itsan unrecoverable skill: Its not unmon, he says, forgrandparents to re-learn the concept of play after spendingtime with their young grandchildren.When people ponder the nature of a world without work,they often transpose present-day assumptions about laborand leisure onto a future where they might no longer apply;if automation does end up rendering a good portion of humanlabor unnecessary, such a society might exist on pletelydifferent terms than societies do today.So what might a work-free U.S. look like? Gray has someideas. School, for one thing, would be very different. “Ithink our system of schooling would pletely fall by thewayside,” says Gray. “The primary purpose of theeducational system is to teach people to work. I dontthink anybody would want to put our kids through what weput our kids through now.” Instead, Gray suggests thatteachers could build lessons around what students are mostcurious about. Or, perhaps, formal schooling woulddisappear altogether.Trumbach, meanwhile, wonders if schooling would beemore about teaching children to be leaders, rather thanworkers, through subjects like philosophy and rhetoric. Healso thinks that people might participate in political andpublic life more, like aristocrats of yore. “If greaternumbers of people were using their leisure to run thecountry, that would give people a sense of purpose,” saysTrumbach.Social life might look a lot different too. Since theIndustrial Revolution, mothers, fathers, and children havespent most of their waking hours apart. In a work-freeworld, people of different ages might e together again.“We would bee much less isolated from each other,” Grayimagines, perhaps a little optimistically. “When a mom ishaving a baby, everybody in the neighborhood would want tohelp that mom.” Researchers have found that having closerelationships is the number-one predictor of happiness, andthe social connections that a work-free world might enablecould well displace the aimlessness that so many futuristspredict.In general, without work, Gray thinks people would bemore likely to pursue their passions, get involved in thearts, and visit friends. Perhaps leisure would cease to beabout unwinding after a period of hard work, and wouldinstead bee a more colorful, varied thing. “We wouldnthave to be as self-oriented as we think we have to benow,” he says. “I believe we would bee more human.”The decline in American manufacturing is a mon refrain,particularly from Donald Trump. “We dont make anythinganymore,” he told Fox News last October, while defendinghis own made-in-Mexico clothing line.On Tuesday, in rust belt Pennsylvania, he doubled down,saying that he had visited cities and towns across thiscountry where a third or even half of manufacturing jobshave been wiped out in the last 20 years. The Pacifictrade deal, he added, would be the death blow for Americanmanufacturing.Without question, manufacturing has taken a significanthit during recent decades, and further trade deals raisequestions about whether new shocks could hit manufacturing.But there is also a different way to look at the data.In reality, United States manufacturing output is at anall-time high, worth $2.2 trillion in xx, up from $1.7trillion in xx. And while total employment has fallen bynearly a third since 1970, the jobs that remain areincreasingly skilled.Across the country, factory owners are now grapplingwith a new challenge: Instead of having too many workers,as they did during the Great Recession, they may end upwith too few. Despite trade petition and outsourcing,American manufacturing still needs to replace tens ofthousands of retiring boomers every year. Millennials maynot be that interested in taking their place. Otherindustries are recruiting them with similar or better pay.And those industries dont have the stigma of 40 years ofrecurring layoffs and downsizing.“Weve never had so much attention from manufacturers.Theyre calling and saying: Can we meet your students?Theyre asking, Why arent they looking at my jobpostings? ” says Julie Parks, executive director ofworkforce training at Grand Rapids Community College inwestern Michigan.The region is a microcosm of the national challenge.Unemployment here is low (around 3 percent, pared with astatewide average of 5 percent). There arent many extraworkers waiting for a job. And the need is high:1 in 5people work in manufacturing, churning out auto parts,machinery, plastics, office furniture, and medical devices.Other industries, including agribusiness and life sciences,are vying for the same workers.For factory owners, it all adds up to stiff petitionfor workers and upward pressure on wages. “Theyreharder to find and they have job offers,” says Jay Dunwell,president of Wolverine Coil Spring, a family-owned firm.“They may be ing into the workforce, but theyve beenplucked by other industries that are also doing as well asmanufacturing,”Mr. Dunwell has begun bringing high school juniors tothe factory so they can get exposed to its culture. He isalso part of a public-private initiative to promotemanufacturing to students that includes job fairs andsending a mobile demonstration vehicle to rural schools.One of their messages is that factories are no longer dark,dirty, and dangerous; puter-run systems are the norm andrecruits can receive apprenticeships that include paid-forcollege classes.At RoMan Manufacturing, a maker of electricaltransformers and welding equipment that his fathercofounded in 1980, Robert Roth keeps a close eye on the ageof his nearly 200 workers. Five are retiring this year. Mr.Roth has three munity-college students enrolled in a work-placement program, with a starting wage of $13 an hour thatrises to $17 after two years.At a worktable inside the transformer plant, youngJason Stenquist looks flustered by the copper coils hestrying to assemble and the arrival of two visitors. Itshis first week on the job; this is his first encounter withRoth, his boss. Asked about his choice of career, he saysat high school he considered medical school beforeswitching to electrical engineering.“I love working with tools. I love creating,” he says.But to win over these young workers, manufacturers haveto clear another major hurdle: parents, who lived throughthe worst US economic downturn since the Great Depression,telling them to avoid the factory. Millennials “remembertheir father and mother both were laid off. They blame iton the manufacturing recession,” says Birgit Klohs, chiefexecutive of The Right Place, a business development agencyfor western Michigan.These concerns arent misplaced: Employment inmanufacturing has fallen from 17 million in 1970 to 12million in xx. The steepest declines came after xx, whenChina gained entry to the World Trade Organization andramped up exports of consumer goods to the US and otherrich countries. In areas exposed to foreign trade, everyadditional $1,000 of imports per worker meant a $550 annualdrop in household ine per working-age adult, aording to axx study in the American Economic Review. And unemployment,Social Security, and other government benefits went up $60per person.The xx-09 recession was another blow. And advances inputing and robotics offer new ways for factory owners toincrease productivity using fewer workers.When the recovery began, worker shortages firstappeared in the high-skilled trades. Electricians, plumbers,and pipefitters are in in short supply across Michigan andelsewhere; vocational schools and union-run apprenticeshipsarent keeping pace with demand and older tradespeople areleaving the workforce. Now shortages are appearing at themid-skill levels.“The gap is between the jobs that take no skills andthose that require a lot of skill,” says Rob Spohr, abusiness professor at Montcalm Community College an hourfrom Grand Rapids. “Theres enough people to fill thejobs at McDonalds and other places where you dont need tohave much skill. Its that gap in between, and thatswhere the problem is.”Ms. Parks of Grand Rapids Community College points toanother key to luring Millennials into manufacturing: awork/life balance. While their parents were content to worklong hours, young people value flexibility. “Overtime isnot attractive to this generation. They really want to livetheir lives,” she says.Roth says he gets this distinction. At RoMan, workerscan set their own hours on their shift, choosing to startearlier or end later, provided they get the job done. Thatthe factory floor isnt a standard assembly line everything is custom-built for industrial clients makesit easier to drop the punch-clocks.“People have lives outside,” Roth says. “Its notalways easy to schedule doctors appointments around apunch-in at 7 and leave at 3:30 schedule.”While factory owners like Roth like to stress theflexibility of manufacturing careers, one aspect isnonnegotiable: location. Millennials looking for a job thatallow them to work from home are not likely to get acallback. Im not putting a machine tool in your garage,says Roth.