200 The most elusive knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is

[Erin]

200 The most elusive knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is usually acquired through solitude, rather than through interaction with others.

[tommy21]

200. "The most elusive knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is usually acquired through solitude, rather than through interaction with others."

There is a growing public concern over whether through interaction with others or through solitude can make you better understand yourselves. The speaker in the title statement claims that when you spend your time alone, you could get your self-knowledge. In contrast, some people may argue that communication with other people can get this elusive knowledge. On balance, I am inclined to hold that sometimes interaction indeed can make one knows him or her better, whereas sometimes not.

To start off, it should be admitted that the most important and difficult thing in this world is to know yourself other than anybody else. As we all know, the society consists of each individual and every one bears some relationship with the society and another persons. Other people can see a person through and find out the virtues and defects inside oneself from another angel which is totally different from his or hers. Unfortunately, the person often can find out the merits inside oneself but fails to see the defects, which is more essential for the individual to make self-improvement than the virtues he or she possesses. For example, I have once heard a story about a youth women who is finding a job as a teacher. When she goes to the interview, the employer asks her:" why do you want to be a teacher?" She answers:" When I was youth, my wish was to be a great woman, but later I found that it was so difficult to be a great woman. Thus, my wish was to be a great man's wife. Unfortunately, this wish also quelled when I fell into the same dilemma as the former. Then my wish is to be a great teacher." Finally, she is employed. This story strongly indicates that it is so important for a person to have self-knowledge. In conclusion, without self-knowledge it is hard for anyone to achieve anything.

In addition, as far as I am concerned, when a person spends time alone, he or she may get a better self-knowledge of himself or herself. At this time, one can drops into a deep thought about what he had done to the society and the people around him or her, whether he accomplish his/her goal for the whole life or whether he or she had any defect which may harm the people or the society. This is all about his self knowledge. Once a famous thinker had ever said, "an unexamined life is not worth living." This saying tells me that we must have an in-depth examine of our lives to gain some self-knowledge so that we can make more progress in the later. To make self-improvement, not only the merits that others have agreed to us is required, but also the self-knowledge of our defects is needed, and always the latter automatically outweighs the former. Therefore, solitude can give us a time to examine ourselves to gain self-knowledge.

Last but not least, it should not be trifflized the significant role that interacting with others plays in attaining the self-knowledge. There are always some people around us who can points out what our "right" and "wrong". Unfortunately, people tends appreciated the positive praise but not the negative criticize. Admittedly, people are willingly to hear the voice of praise other than the critique. However, what can be most useful is the negative one but not the positive one. So interaction with other people can sometimes helps you a lot in gaining self-knowledge.

In sum, it is very likely that people will never be able to arrive at the same conclusion on this controversial issue due to their different experience and conflicting values. Nevertheless, the above-discussed reasons should to a large extend justify my claim that both through solitude and interaction with others can gain the self-knowledge which may help us in our self-improvement. (55')

[sonali]

200 The most elusive knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is usually acquired through solitude, rather than through interaction with others.


What increases the self-knowledge?,solitute or interaction? The issue
statement asserts that isolation is the key for enhancing self-knowledge. However, in my opinion, knowledge has no boundries and thus more we interact with others more we get cognizant.Thus, I totally disagree with the issue statement.

One imperative factor for accumulating knowledge is mutual sharing through conversation. Probably anyone would agree that knowledge is increased by sharing among people rather than keeping to ourselves. Through intellectual sharing of information one get aware with new concepts and latest technologies, which would not be acknowledged through solitute. This world consists of people possessing distinct talents and abundant abilities. Indisputably, one cannot acquire all talents or become genious in every field. Therefore, for making ourselves sentinet about the abilities that we do not posses, we should develop interaction with the people.

Furthermore, sharing of information through interaction increases our
general awareness as well as we get precious information about other cultures and disciplines. For example, Unites States is a cosmopolitian country, where people from different countries abides. In a work place having an Chinese or Mexican or Indian colleuge is quite manifest. A friendly conversation between two collegues would contribute in enhancing the self-knowledge about different countries as well as different traditions and heritage. This will also develop the healthy relationship among the co-workers.

In contrast, loneliness would result in confining the knowledge rather than increasing. In solitude, the talent that one person possessing would not be revealed to others and vice-versa. Eventually, the lack of mutual co-ordination would result in depreciation of knowledge. For example, knowledge is like flowing water, which is cheerful and incessant. If we try to restrict this flow of knowledge, it become stagnant and cheerless.

In sum, the true appreciation of the knowledge is gained through interaction with different people. Solitute might end up in depression and thus would not contribute in increasing the self-knowledge.

[sonali]

please read this one and not the previous!!!!!!!!!!

200 The most elusive knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is usually acquired through solitude, rather than through interaction with others.


What increases the self-knowledge, solitude or interaction? The issue statement asserts that isolation is the key for enhancing self-knowledge. However, in my opinion, knowledge has no boundaries and thus more we interact with others more we get cognizant. Thus, I totally disagree with the issue statement.

One imperative factor for accumulating knowledge is mutual sharing through conversation. Probably anyone would agree that knowledge is increased by sharing among people rather than keeping to us. Through intellectual sharing of information one get aware with new concepts and latest technologies, which would not be acknowledged through solitude. This world consists of people possessing distinct talents and abundant abilities. Indisputably, one cannot acquire all talents or become genius in every field. Therefore, for making ourselves sentient about the abilities that we do not posses, we should develop interaction with the people.

Furthermore, sharing of information through interaction increases our
general awareness as well as we get precious information about other cultures and disciplines. For example, Unites States is a cosmopolitan country, where people from different countries abide. In a work place having a Chinese or Mexican or Indian colleague is quite manifest. A friendly conversation between two colleagues would contribute in enhancing the self-knowledge about different countries as well as different traditions and heritage. This will also develop the healthy relationship among the co-workers.

In contrast, loneliness would result in confining the knowledge rather than increasing. In solitude, the talent that one person possessing would not be revealed to others and vice-versa. Eventually, the lack of mutual co-ordination would result in depreciation of knowledge. For example, knowledge is like flowing water, which is cheerful and incessant. If we try to restrict this flow of knowledge, it becomes stagnant and cheerless.

In sum, the true appreciation of the knowledge is gained through interaction with different people. Solitude might end up in depression and thus would not contribute in increasing the self-knowledge.

[Zita]

Originally posted by sonali

please read this one and not the previous!!!!!!!!!!

200 The most elusive knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is usually acquired through solitude, rather than through interaction with others.


What increases the self-knowledge, solitude or interaction? The issue statement asserts that isolation is the key for enhancing self-knowledge. However, in my opinion, knowledge has no boundaries and thus more we interact with others more we get cognizant. Thus, I totally disagree with the issue statement.

One imperative factor for accumulating knowledge is mutual sharing through conversation. Probably anyone would agree that knowledge is increased by sharing among people rather than keeping to us. Through intellectual sharing of information one get aware with new concepts and latest technologies, which would not be acknowledged through solitude. This world consists of people possessing distinct talents and abundant abilities. Indisputably, one cannot acquire all talents or become genius in every field. Therefore, for making ourselves sentient about the abilities that we do not posses, we should develop interaction with the people.

Furthermore, sharing of information through interaction increases our
general awareness as well as we get precious information about other cultures and disciplines. For example, Unites States is a cosmopolitan country, where people from different countries abide. In a work place having a Chinese or Mexican or Indian colleague is quite manifest. A friendly conversation between two colleagues would contribute in enhancing the self-knowledge about different countries as well as different traditions and heritage. This will also develop the healthy relationship among the co-workers.

In contrast, loneliness would result in confining the knowledge rather than increasing. In solitude, the talent that one person possessing would not be revealed to others and vice-versa. Eventually, the lack of mutual co-ordination would result in depreciation of knowledge. For example, knowledge is like flowing water, which is cheerful and incessant. If we try to restrict this flow of knowledge, it becomes stagnant and cheerless.

In sum, the true appreciation of the knowledge is gained through interaction with different people. Solitude might end up in depression and thus would not contribute in increasing the self-knowledge.


Your organization, language, and logic is pretty good. But, what's in the topic is "self-knowledge", not knowledge from books. Self-knowledge means how well a person know about himself, for example, does he have a right view about his own ability, feeling, physical and mental state, what he wants, what he is talented at and be suitable to do as a careers, etc. It's a completely different thing from learning book language or taking some classes. So, from this angle, I think your assay is digressive.

[BeHappy]

Please read this and tell the mistakes...


Most difficult knowledge is self knowledge. Can we know our self better when we are alone or when we interact with the people is really a puzzle. From my point of view both the thing are important. One can not achieve success only through solitude or only through interaction.
When we see ourselves in the mirror we can see only our physical outlook, we can not see our inner soul. It is very difficult to analyzes our self from inside. What one think is totally different from his outer expression.

We are the integral part of society, in our day to day life we deal with different people around us. All these people have their own views, they see us in different way which we can not. We try to pretend that we are very good human being but sometimes when we interact with people we find out our mistakes. Sometimes people around us point out our ‘wrongs; sometime don’t but we can know from their behavior towards us that whether they are agree with us or not. This helps us improving our self in a better way. As a student, we interact with teacher who tell the good and bad things about us. In the family our parents helps us to understand our self better by discussing their experiences.

Sharing and discussing our view on particular topic with other people will definitely add some good points to our knowledge.

Beside all this, solitude is also important. Whenever we had a bad day we should analyze our self that where we did wrong. What should be the correct way of doing thing which make life easy. We can learn from reading the biographies of great people and comparing our self with their life in order to improve our self.

So I will say interaction with the people as well as solitude both are important. Only one thing is not sufficient to achieve our goals. We will always have people around us who will be constantly criticizing or appreciating our work and we will always have to make decision whether a person is flattering or really telling the truth which we can be done by thinking twice.

[r2kins]

hi Be Happy
thy essay is ok in general but has some areas where improvements can be made. i think
1: some paras are too short
2: u r deviating from the theme by kind of forcefully establishing a relationship betw soltitude/interaction and SUCCESS...it would be better if u would write in relation to self knowledge rather than success
3: the last paragraph could be phrased more precisely

hope this helps
regards
kinshuk


personal statement: could u take a look at my essay(i have just posted it )
any comments are highly welcome and appreciated.

[nutan606]

Hi,
please find faults (there are many) and let me know. by the way, why is ETS trying to make a philosopher out of me.


---------------
Self-knowledge is elusive and no one seems to doubt it. However, when the question of attaining it comes people tend to have varied views. On one hand, some people believe that only through solitude can one attain it whereas on the other hand there are people who think that it is interaction with others that helps one to attain the self-knowledge. However, in my view, both the views- only solitude and only interaction- are flawed. There should be a combination of both- the solitude and the interaction- to attain the self-knowledge.



Firstly, solitude is one requirement for attaining self-knowledge. To understanding oneself means understanding why one does something, what the motives behind doing something are, what if one does not do something particular. Similarly, to understand oneself one has to determine the things that make one happy and those factors that make one unhappy and so on. These questions can be asked only in solitude. The actions one performs can only be analyzed in the seclusion. Think of a busy businessman who attends ten seminars, meets with one hundred clients and makes one thousand business decisions in a day. Will he ever get a chance to understand who he is? Never. He will never get any time to think, to dwell on the actions, to analyze and reflect upon the actions. When there is only data and without analysis information cannot be generated.



Secondly, solitude is not enough for attaining self-knowledge. If one goes on living on seclusion, one will lack action. These are the actions that define what one is; and when there is no action there remains only a lump of flesh rather than a man. Consider a man who deserts everything in search for the self. There he does nothing; just goes on thinking. How can he know what drives him forward if he forcibly opposes the movement? There is no way for him to decide what makes him happy despite the solitude which in the presence of interaction would have brought him the answer. He has no data to analyze so he gets no information.



Thus, solitude and interaction with others both are necessary for attaining the self-knowledge for they are complementary to each other: interaction provides something to analyze and the solitude does the analysis and this is the result of analysis that provides one with the self-knowledge. Final product after all cannot be produced in the absence of either the raw material or the machine.

[traflee]

hi nutan,
good try, again!

you could also include the point of obtaining different ideas on a particular issue, when disccused among the freinds or an "elite group" rather than arriving at some particular decision without considering pros and cons of the situation........this helps in understanding the situation in a btter way also widens your imagination and knowledge.......

do let me know what do you think on this point............
and ya, even i think ETS is gonna make me some kind of a philosopher, rather than a scientist.....
anyways, good luck