7/30/2019 Sample / practice GRE "Issue" essay

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People's behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain

your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in

which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

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The response to this statement has to be complexafter all, we humans, like every other

creature or machine, behave largely in response to outside stimuli and to biological processes

over which our conscious minds have no control. However, that idea itselfof the conscious

mind being unable to control the stimuli to which the body must respondreminds us that

unlike most other creatures and machines, humans possess a consciousness that enables us to

examine our circumstances, adapt to them, and even combat them by our deliberate efforts.

The question of whether peoples behavior is determined by forces not of their own making is

therefore more incisively stated thusly: Are human efforts against the forces and influences of

the world strong enough to enable humans to effectively dictate their own destiny? The

complexity of answering this question lies in the fact that this question may be asked multipletimes, with various shades of meaning. Determining if the collective answers do indeed favor

one side or the other requires that many approaches to this question be taken.

On a certain, highly fundamental level, one can argue that most of what a person doeseven

highly individual things such as career choice and taste in apparelis motivated by forces such

as the need of the human chassis for nourishment and protection. On this level, variance

among the ways humans satisfy these needs is immaterial; the meaningful observation is that

the needs exist and are somehow satisfied by all successful human organisms.

This fundamental species of fate persists through surprisingly complex levels of human

behavior. Not only can humans not alter the fact that we suffer hunger and fatigue, but alsoactivities such as our conduct in crowds and traffic are determined almost exclusively by the

systems in which they take place, and not by the human consciences participating in them. I

recall once overhearing a conversation on the topic of the Navier-Stokes equations, which

model events such as fluid flow and air turbulenceand behavior of cars in traffic. I was with

you until you said it could describe traffic jams, said one of the speakers. I mean, if Im in a

traffic jam and just moving slowly along the road like normal, then sureI agree, Im being

described by those equations. But theres nothing to prevent me from just deciding Im going to

stop, or go barreling off the road down the embankment. Yeah, said the other speaker, but

you wont. Youll do what you normally do, and so will everyone else; and that behavior follows

a strict mathematical pattern. It seems that until the discussion is extended to quite specific,

even peripheral areas of human behaviorthat is, to the taste and style with which the

activities motivated by non-human or biological forces are carried outit is indeed true that

much of human behavior is dictated by outside forces.

However, as we have stated, the distinguishing characteristic of human life and behavior is that

it is not consistently relegated to this cause-and-effect level of experience. Surely there can be

no comprehensible set of equations to determine the notes chosen by a composer (or even

7/30/2019 Sample / practice GRE "Issue" essay

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the fact that she is a composer), the ethics of a culture, or with whom a person falls in love. And

even were these equations to exist, they would have to take conscious human determination

into account. On the level of these most identifiably human events, the most important forces

most certainly are of human making. The passion with which a person strives to achieve her

goals is a force on par with any of those created by the environment. Surely not all people

choose to behave in this way, setting up their individual wills to run counter to the outsideforces not of their own makingbut the important observation here is that this too is a choice.

The human capacity to make decisions consciously means that even in the case of human

behavior that seems to be determined by outside forces, that behavior can be characterized as

a conscious, individual act of human will.

Therefore, the overall answer to the question of whether or not humans are able to determine

our own behavior can be restated as the question of which level of human experience is to be

addressed by the answerthe cellular, animal level, or the mental, individual level? I would

argue that the level that is most specifically human is the one to which the answer should

default. Humans, like all living things, must respond to outside forces, but our nature is to affect

those forces with the force of our own will. The fact that we can do this is so significant as to

counter the assertion that the most significant forces determining human behavior are not

those originating in the individual. Although it is true that these other forces not of their own

making exert a powerful influence on the individual, the fact that these influences are not all-

powerful and all-determining is in itself evidence that the human will is a force comparable in

power to those of the human environment. Humans are uniquely freealthough we do have to

respond to the forces of the world, the fact alone that we have will is an answer to the question

of whether or not we can determine our own behavior.