阿倫的孤獨星球

TOPIC: ISSUE170 – “The surest indicator of a great nation is not the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists, but the general welfare of all its people.”
WORDS: 586 TIME: 00:73:34 DATE: 2009/2/13 17:51:46
The topic’s opinion is some partial about the definition of a “great” nation, which should be considered about more than welfare of its people.
Firstly, the people’s welfare should be a basic requirement for a country. For example, in Afghan, people are living in danger all the day. They are afraid of walking in the street at night, for they may be attacked by local insurgents. What they care most is how to safely move to tomorrow. It is also the most important part which government is caring about. You can read reports that leaders of the country are trying to sweep out the insurgents although they are usually failed. When a country’s people feel difficult to live here, government would not have extra energy to develop, such as science. At the same time, the country would not be recognized great in any way.
But a country which could make sure of its people’s welfare is still far from great. Sweden, which is ranked first Democracy Index by Economist, could not be better place for living, for its low unemployment and perfect sanitary system. Doors are left open in the night for nobody would break in. Sweden has met the goal, making sure the general welfare of its people. However, you may never hear that Sweden is a great country.
What makes Sweden not great? To answer this question, we would like to get the meaning of great and the definition of great nation. Let’s first get a easier question: what is a great human-being like? There must be some names initially come to your mind, such as Newton, Aristotle… And what is the common character of these great men? It is easy to get that they all make a huge difference all over the world, and rewrote the human history significantly. So we can get a conclusion a great country would make influence for the whole world rather than its people. Now the reason why Sweden is not called great is apparent. Sweden, which is a country filled with happiness of its people, makes little influence on the other parts of the world.
Not only welfare of citizens, the achievements of science and art also indicate whether a country is great. I want to explain my idea with another country: Ancient Greece. Ancient Greece, which lasted from 1100BC to 26BC, has been widely considered as the foundation of Western civilization, making powerful influence on science, philosophy, art etc. In that time, people living in that country didn’t need to care about food and other basic requirement. People are happy to devote to education and science, which leads to numbers of great men, such as Aristotle, Euclid, most of who made such achievements today we still get profit from them. In my opinion, only the country like Ancient Greece is deserved when we are talking about great country.
Actually it is divergent when talking about great country. Because most people couldn’t be objective on this topic, the fault of a country would be omitted. What’s more, facts sometime may be covered so as to make the country’s figure would be brighter in citizens. Like U.S government, called themselves as “world police”, that always invade other countries under the name of justice, it would not be recognized as great anytime by the people in Afghan or Iran.
Although it is some difficult to give a list saying which country is great. A great country would not be only good to its people, but to the whole world.