Questões de Inglês

Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?

 

By Bryan Lufkin, 9th May 2021

 

Although many of us associate overly ambitious workaholism with the 1980s and the finance industry, the tendency to devote ourselves to work and glamourize long-hours culture remains as pervasive as ever. In fact, it is expanding into more sectors and professions, in slightly different packaging. Overwork isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Silicon Valley or Wall Street. People work long hours all over the world, for many different reasons

 

In Japan, a culture of overwork can be traced back to the 1950s, when the government pushed hard for the country to be rebuilt quickly after World War Two. In Arab League countries, burnout is high among medical professionals, possibly because its 22 members are developing nations with overburdened healthcare systems, studies suggest. Reasons for overwork also depend on industry. Some of the earliest researchers on burnout in the 1970s asserted that many people in jobs geared toward helping others, like employees in clinics or crisis-intervention centers, tended to work long hours that led to emotional and physical exhaustion – a trend which is shown up in the pandemic, too. But millions of us overwork because somehow, we think it’s exciting – a status symbol that puts us on the path to success, whether we define that by wealth or an Instagram post that makes it seem like we're living a dream life with a dream job. Romanticization of work seems to be an especially common practice among "knowledge workers" in the middle and upper classes. In 2014, the New Yorker called this devotion to overwork "a cult".

 

According to Anat Lechner, clinical associate professor of management at New York University. "We glorify the lifestyle, and the lifestyle is: you breathe something, you sleep with something, you wake up and work on it all day long, then you go to sleep. Again, and again and again."

Adapted from: Home - BBC Worklife.

What does the word “for” in “for many different reasons” indicate?

Read the following text:

 

U.S.A. FOR AFRICA - We Are The World (1985) - YouTube

 

There comes a time
When we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
Oh, and it's time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

(Available in: https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj 4tFP1zcsNjAtsSgwNDVg9BLPLS3OTE5UKE9VSCxKVSjJ SFUozy_KSQEA5zYMeA&q=musica+we+are+the+world& oq=musica+we+&aqs=chrome.1.0j46l2j69i57j0l4.44137j0j4 &sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. Accessed on: October 4th, 2020.)

 

Mark the only sentence with a non-personal verb:

Influenced by high levels of technology in many areas of life, people forget about how important it is to be in contact with nature. That’s what we read in the next text:

 

    […]
    You’re just not getting out enough. Really. Author and environmentalist Richard Louv has been warning theworld about nature-deficit disorder, loosely described as a state in which humans lose their connection with the outdoors.
    “An expanding body of scientific evidence suggests that nature-deficit disorder contributes to a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, conditions of obesity, and higher rates of emotional and physical illnesses”, Louv writes on the website of the organization he founded, the Children & Nature Network (childrenandnature.org). […]

(Available in: https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/ story/2020-01-03/outdoors-nature-tidepools-bighornsheep-raptors-griffith-park-newport-beach. Accessed on: January 5th, 2020.)

 

Mark the alternative which presents the correct verb tense of the verbs in bold in the text:

Read the following text:

 

How technology can help reduce our impact on the planet

 

    All around the globe, people are facing the question of how to grow and thrive with fewer resources. Urban population growth is a major factor, as it’s estimated that by 2030 almost 60 percent of our global population will live in cities. This urban migration is felt even more acutely in Europe, where more than 80 percent of us are predicted to live in towns by 2050.

    […]

(Available in: https://news.microsoft.com/europe/2017/ 06/05/how-technology-can-help-reduce-our-impact-onthe-planet/ Accessed on: January 21th, 2020. Adapted.)

 

Consider the following statements, then choose the correct alternative:

 

I - People are worried about not having enough provision in the future.
II - In ten years, more than a half of the world population will be living in urban areas.
III - In2050,it’s probable that 4/5 oftheworldpopulation will be living in urban areas.

 

Regarding the statements, read and check the only correct alternative:

Read the definitions of the words ideal, idle and idol:

 

    […]
    Idle means something is not in use, empty or doing
nothing.

    […]
    Idol is a noun. It means an object that represents a
deity. It is also used to say that you excessively admire
someone.

    […]
    Ideal means something that is in its perfection or
something that is most suitable.
    […]

(Available in: https://freevideolectures.com/course/3464/ englsh-grammar/10. Accessed on: January 27th, 2020.)

 

Complete the sentences below with ideal(s), idle(s) or idol(s):

 

I - You may use this room, it is _______ for the next six weeks.
II - People normally worship their ________ as gods.
III - Keep calm and answer cordially are the _________ things to do when someone hurts you.
IV - We are justsitting ________ because we don’t have anything to do.
V - For many people, the morning time is ________ to study and learn.
VI - Mom is normally the daughter’s __________.

 

Check the only alternative that presents all the correct items:

Texto para a pergunta.

 

EQUALITY

 

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” Those powerful words, from the all-important second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (the document that led, eventually, to the creation of the United States of America), represented a watershed [divisor de águas] in the life of an idea that had sources going back as far as the ancient world and the precepts of Jesus Christ. But it required centuries of struggle for it to find genuine and widespread acceptance. It was Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) who composed the words, which were then amended by Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson had originally described the truths as “sacred and undeniable,” effectively rooting them in religious traditions. Franklin made them “self-evident,” basing them in traditions of reason going back to the self-evident axioms of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid and the “analytic truths” of Franklin’s close friend, the eminent Scottish philosopher David Hume.

    Despite the confident tone of the famous assertion, equality was not an idea that would have seemed “self-evident” in most cultures and times – or even at the time and in the place that the words were written. It’s a well-recognized irony of the Declaration that fully a third of the 56 men who signed it in July 1776 were slaveholders [donos de escravos], including Jefferson, and few of them would have agreed that their black slaves were their equals. Real equality for women was also unimaginable to most men of the time. So it would be a long journey before that phrase took on real substance, one that would require a civil war and a century of turmoil [tumulto, distúrbio, desordem] after that. Yet with that momentous document the journey had truly begun.

    Even so, although the thinkers of the Enlightenment [o Iluminismo, uma época de grande progresso em ciência e cultura] spoke regularly and eloquently about the rights of man, when they did, they often seemed to have only men in mind. It was not until 1792 that someone stepped forward to speak at length about the conditions endured by the other half of the human race. That was the year Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. A former teacher and governess, Wollstonecraft identified the failure to educate women for any independent role in life as the great source of their difficulties. Men led women to be “docile and attentive to their looks [cuidadosas com suas aparências atraentes] to the exclusion of anything else,” she wrote. She called marriage “legal prostitution” and demanded the vote, proclaiming, “Let women share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man.”

    Wollstonecraft was just 38 when she died, a few days after giving birth to a daughter, Mary (later the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the author of Frankenstein). After Wollstonecraft’s death, her husband, the political philosopher William Godwin, published a biography of his wife that frankly acknowledged her early affair with an American lover and the illegitimate child she bore him. Opponents soon used those revelations to dismiss her. But her arguments would inspire later generations, including the suffragists, who brought women the vote, and the feminist activists of the 1960s and ‘70s

According to the information in the article, which of the following is most likely true about Mary Wollstonecraft?