Advertisements are becoming more and more common in everyday life. Is this a positive or negative development?
题目大意
广告在日常生活中越来越普遍。这是积极的还是消极的发展？
写作思路解析
不好不坏
1. 广告的普及是好是坏，完全取决于我们如何处理视觉传达信息之后所建立起来的欲望。目前为止出现的想法，即我们人类作为好奇的人，会驱动人格的信念，总是无法抗拒任何生理或心理刺激所促进的各种欲望，并做出非理性消费，这是一种完全错误的观念，因为每一种商品在广告上呈现的日常选择，不仅基于我们本能的好奇心和购物欲望，还基于人类的基本需求，性价比和个人经济状况的因素。虽然这类视觉信息可能不会直接带来贫困，但不成熟的人会。情况可能类似于次贷危机期间，大多数年轻人情不自禁地使用信用卡购买电视广告中的商品，导致无法负担他们的经济；如果软弱的意志和职业欲望建设者之间的战斗爆发，哪一方会赢显而易见。
2. 然而，当人类将空前繁荣的广告产品视为常态，并且极其理性地对待它们时，上段所展示的情景将完全相反；一旦视觉信息被频繁曝光，甚至相对烦人，其激励力将逐渐减弱。在这种情况下，人们很容易把这些宣传看作是对特定需求的提醒，并为他们提供他们应得的生存，但要知道经济学的基本原理，鼓吹的本质是触发羊群效应，即人们将追随主流的趋势作为他们的日常开支，我们很清楚，这并不总是发生。一个人可能会因为过度购买广告商品而陷入贫困，就像奥斯卡提名影片《大人物》中的商品一样，在广告主的劝说下，他们破产了，因为他们透支了房地产等商品的信贷账户，直到发现自己难以活下去或让人活下去。
因此，我相信这种趋势的真相是不好不坏的。完全值得利用广告作为推广新思想和新产品的有效途径。这确实是刺激消费的好办法，不必担心可预见的金融灾难；肯定还有其他原因导致这些灾难，而广告不是唯一的决定因素。然而，我们应该谨慎地平衡商业给我们带来的东西，并可能提前根据过去发生的事情进行推测，以避免结果变得不可撤销。
提纲梳理见下
写作示范
As a channel by which fast-moving consumer goods are frequently exposed to their potential buyers, advertising inevitably follows the law of “path dependence”, indicating that once a methodology is adopted, it would develop sustainably via the efforts of all the users until it is proved to no avail. The drastic improvement of this type of commercial mode becomes the commonest way of promoting things ranging from daily commodities to customized services. In the age of advertisement-oriented economy, no one knows for sure if the commercial life is bringing us ideals or tragedies.
Whether the popularity of commercial is positive or not depends entirely on what we deal with the desire that is built up after the visual communication. The thus far belief that we human, as the inquisitive, will-driven personality (said Schopenhauer), would always fail to resist various desires that are promoted by any physical or mental stimulus and finally make irrational consumption is a total misconception because the daily option of every commodity that is presented on the commercial is not only based on our instinct curiosity and shopping desire, but also a reasonable balance in terms of basic needs, the cost performance and most importantly, the personal economic situation. While this type of visual information may not directly bring the final poverty to the most, the immaturity will. The worst-case scenario might akin to that during subprime crisis, when most young people couldn’t help to charge items that are advertised on tv to credit cards and finally led to unaffordability; should the battle arise between flabby will and the professional desire builders, it is obvious which side would win.
The scenario exhibited in the above paragraph, however, would be totally converse when mankind saw the unprecedentedly flourish advertising products as the normalcy and treated them extremely rationally; the encouraging power would reduce progressively once the visual information were too frequently exposed, and even relatively annoying. At this juncture, it would be somehow easy for humans to consider viewing these promotions as just a reminder of particular needs, and provide them with the existence they deserve, but knowing the basic principles of economics that the essence of the drumbeating is to trigger the herding effect, the trend that people would follow the mainstream in their daily expenses, we know full well that this is not always happening that optimistically. One may wind up suffering from the poverty that is caused by over-purchasing the advertised goods like ones in the Oscar nominated movie “the big shot” where they went to bankruptcy thanks to the persuasion from advertisers of overdrawing credit accounts for things like real estates until one would find himself difficult to live or let live.
Therefore, I would believe that the truth of this trend is somewhere lying in the middle. It is totally worth it to use advertising as an effective way to popularize new ideas and newly-produced commodities—this is truly a good way in stimulating consumption—and there is nothing to worry about the foreseeable financial calamities; there are definitely other reasons leading to them and the advertisement it not the sole determinant. However, we should meticulously balance what the commercial brings us and in advance make speculations based what happened in the past to avoid the outcomes from being that irrevocable.
