List of top Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions

Choose the word that is most similar in meaning to the word "arduous" :

The four sentences (labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. The US philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) is perhaps best known for his ‘veil of ignorance’ thought experiment, which he first laid out in his landmark work A Theory of Justice (1971).
2. However, as this TED-Ed video illustrates, A Theory of Justice does far more than just describe the thought experiment.
3. Rather, Rawls articulates the policies he believes should emerge from this initial conceit, outlining a democratic government with an economic structure that allows for equal opportunity and, ultimately, only as much inequality as would benefit society’s worst-off members.
4. With stylish visuals, the animation details the ideas and ideals outlined in A Theory of Justice, criticisms of the text raised by prominent thinkers, and the lasting impact of Rawls’s groundbreaking work more than half a century after its initial publication.

The four sentences (labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. In this short from the YouTube series Howtown, the US reporter and producer Adam Cole sets out to separate the facts from doggone fiction regarding canine vision.
2. Working through the scientific literature with a series of experts, he discovers some truly fascinating insights into how dogs experience color and depth, as well as how sight and smell intertwine in a dog’s mind.
3. Between camera filters and clickbait, the digital world is rife with misleading information about how, exactly, dogs see the world.
4. His investigation also provides an illuminating look into the tools scientists currently possess to understand the interior worlds – or ‘Umwelts’ – of nonhuman animals, as well as the limitations that we may never be able to overcome.

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Based in part on entries from Smyk’s grandfather’s journal, the piece outlines a sequence of flirtation, gifts of bread and vodka and, finally, a dowry negotiation to seal the deal.
2. In this brief animation, the Polish-born, UK-based filmmaker Ewa Smyk combines personal history and anthropology to explore how courtship and marriage unfolded in eastern Poland in the 1950s and ’60s.
3. Through these deeply personal production choices, Smyk’s work conveys a joy and charm rarely seen in stories depicting life in this time and place.
4. Her use of personal objects – including old notebooks and family photos – for the stop-motion animated treatment and traditional Polish music for the score lend an endearing layer to the viewing experience.
5. Poland has a rich cultural heritage that spans centuries.

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Presenting a flurry of animations that flow from one scene to the next, the UK director Marcus Armitage captures the diversity of daily experience in the county.
2. With its lively animations and immersive audio, That Yorkshire Sound thrusts viewers into the sights and sounds of Yorkshire in northern England.
3. The images move from rural areas, where farm animals squeal and bicycles spin through the suburbs, to the heart of its urban centers, abuzz with drinking, dancing, gambling and a bit of post-football match mayhem.
4. The resulting work is a fleeting yet overflowing tribute to life in this vibrant and historic slice of England.
5. Simultaneously, the clock seems to move from day to night over the course of the short, giving the impression of time flying through a full day over the course of two minutes.

Which of the following words is a synonym for "magnificent" ?

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
"It does seem to me that the job of comedy is to offend,or have the potential to offend,and it cannot be drained of that potential," Rowan Atkinson said of cancel culture. "Every joke has a victim. That's the definition of a joke. Someone or something or an idea is made to look ridiculous." The Netflix star continued,"I think you've got to be very, very careful about saying what you're allowed to make jokes about. You've always got to kick up? Really?" He added,"There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society,who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society,you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything."

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Most accomplished senior managers depart from the traditional rational model, which prioritizes goal-setting, option analysis, problem-solving, and decision-making. Instead, these leaders often rely on intuition—a blend of instinct and nuanced understanding—when making daily strategic decisions to navigate a complex network of interconnected challenges. These issues are defined by uncertainty, conflicting information, creativity, and unexpected developments. They integrate deliberate action with intuitive insights to craft decisions that naturally align with their operational strategies.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Medieval portolan charts of the Mediterranean and later navigation charts from Holland served practical navigational purposes effectively. Detailed city plans from historical works such as Braun and Hogenberg's "Civitates Orbis Terrarum" and John Speed's depictions of English cities provide valuable insights into their historical layouts and sizes. Similarly, John Ogilby's "Britannia, Volume the First," published in 1675, offers extensive details on England's road network as it existed nearly three centuries ago. However, early maps often fall short of modern standards, which require precise representations of distances, elevations, and clearly distinguishable symbols. Cartography did not achieve the level of exactitude seen in later centuries until the 18th century.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Promoting increased plastic recycling is comparable to trying to stop a collapsing skyscraper by hammering a nail. It's a futile effort to find recycling centers and feel a sense of accomplishment when we manage to recycle, yet it fails to tackle the root cause: the rampant production of single-use plastics. These items, like grocery bags used for mere minutes but enduring for hundreds of years in our ecosystems, illustrate a profound misuse of technology. The real solution lies in eliminating the production of single-use plastics altogether, rather than relying on insufficient recycling efforts to address a problem that should never have been created in the first place.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The era of the internal combustion engine is nearing its end, evidenced by various indicators. Major automakers are increasingly transitioning to hybrid vehicles. Volvo, for instance, has committed to ceasing production of purely petrol-engined cars by 2019. Additionally, Tesla has introduced its first electric car aimed at middle-class consumers—the Tesla 3, priced at $35,000 in the US. Over 400,000 people have already made refundable deposits for this model, with thousands having received their cars. Tesla aims to sell another half a million units next year, a notable achievement considering its limited range and the scarcity of charging stations.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences:
1. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized various industries, from healthcare to finance, by automating complex tasks and improving efficiency.
2. However, concerns about AI's ethical implications, such as privacy violations and algorithmic biases, have also been raised as its usage becomes more widespread.
3. AI systems rely on vast amounts of data to train algorithms, which can sometimes lead to unintended consequences if the data is biased or incomplete.
4. Despite these challenges, AI continues to be integrated into everyday applications, driving innovation and shaping the future of technology.
Choose the sequence of the four numbers that best forms a coherent paragraph:

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
It's taken me six decades, but recently I had a profound realization: Every aspect of existence requires continuous energy and order to sustain itself. This fundamental truth, encapsulated in the second law of thermodynamics, states that everything tends towards disorder over time. This realization isn't just a reflection of aging; it's a deeper understanding that even seemingly inert objects—stones, iron columns, copper pipes, gravel roads, or a piece of paper—inevitably degrade without ongoing maintenance and the infusion of additional order. It appears that the essence of existence itself is largely about maintenance.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) below, when properly sequenced would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Complex computational elements of the CNS are organized according to a “nested” hierarchic criterion; the organization is not permanent and can change dynamically from moment to moment as they carry out a computational task.
2. Echolocation in bats exemplifies adaptation produced by natural selection; a function not produced by natural selection for its current use is exaptation --feathers might have originally arisen in the context of selection for insulation.
3. From a structural standpoint, consistent with exaptation, the living organism is organized as a complex of “Russian Matryoshka Dolls” -- smaller structures are contained within larger ones in multiple layers.
4. The exaptation concept, and the Russian-doll organization concept of living beings deduced from studies on evolution of the various apparatuses in mammals, can be applied for the most complex human organ: the central nervous system (CNS).

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) below, when properly sequenced would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1.Man has used poisons for assassination purposes ever since the dawn of civilization, against individual enemies but also occasionally against armies.
2. These dangers were soon recognized, and resulted in two international declarations—in 1874 in Brussels and in 1899 in The Hague—that prohibited the use of poisoned weapons.
3. The foundation of microbiology by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch offered new prospects for those interested in biological weapons because it allowed agents to be chosen and designed on a rational basis.
4. Though treaties were all made in good faith, they contained no means of control, and so failed to prevent interested parties from developing and using biological weapons.

The passage below contains four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
The Impressionists openly rejected any philosophical connotations, although their avant-garde approach to painting had important philosophical implications. By drastically diverging from the conventional perspectives of artists on visual reality, they created a logical new mode of artistic expression. Greek painters even made the connection between abstract ideas and concrete shapes, demonstrating their concrete comprehension of the cosmos. This materialistic perspective dominated painting far into the nineteenth century. By contrast, the Impressionists felt that the fundamental element of visual reality was light, not substance. This viewpoint is aptly expressed by the philosopher Taine, who said, "The chief 'person' in a picture is the light in which everything is bathed."
The Impressionists held that all solid objects were connected by light and that any divisions between them were artificial. Solid objects were merely surfaces reflecting light. This alteration altered how color and outline were handled. It was discovered that color resulted from light vibrations on a colorless surface, refuting the earlier belief that color was an intrinsic feature of objects. Originally intended to indicate the edges of an item, outline is currently only used to indicate the boundaries of often overlapping patterns. Impressionist paintings saw the world as a sequence of surfaces reacting to light, rather than as a collection of distinct objects. Filtered light frequently produces the mosaic of colors seen in an Impressionist painting.According to Mauclair, "light becomes the sole subject of the picture," with the objects it illuminates playing a supporting role. This shift means that painting is no longer only a visual art form. This ground-breaking new approach to art appreciation ignored all external ideas, whether they were moral, spiritual, or psychological, as well as any emotions that went beyond the purely aesthetic. The subjects of Impressionist paintings—people, places, and things—did not convey deeper meanings or tell tales. Instead, they merely served as elements of a light pattern that the painter used as inspiration from nature to create on canvas.

The passage below contains four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Artificial intelligence has been growing quite fast of late and has altered health, finance, transport, and entertainment. In its scope and definition, AI is an all-round technology involving machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. This has made machines undertake in large, major aspects that were under human intelligence: speech recognition and image interpretation, among many complex decision-makings.
Probably the first huge breakthrough in AI would be the field of deep learning—machine learning dealing with neural networks having many layers. Algorithms from deep learning have proven tremendously successful in tasks like image and speech recognition, where they have greatly surpassed human performance. For instance, AI-powered diagnosis tools can identify diseases such as cancer and diabetic retinopathy at greatly improved accuracy levels, hence greatly helping medical professionals in their work. AI in finance has indeed been a revolution. Algorithms are capable of analyzing huge reams of data at incredible speeds, notating patterns and trends that the human eye could never perceive. In this way, higher accuracy in risk assessment, fraud detection, and personalized financial advice can be reached. Even more, AI-driven trading systems trade at really amazing speed for the optimization of an investment strategy to the very last drop of maximum return. Another domain in which AI has made very big strides is transportation. Several companies across the world are developing and testing autonomous vehicles equipped with advance sensors and AI algorithms. There are several advantages of self-driving cars: they can reduce traffic accidents, improve fuel efficiency, and provide better mobility for the people who couldn't drive themselves. Moreover, AI could make public transport systems more efficient, less congested, by optimizing routes and schedules. It is constantly reshaping the very face of entertainment through content creation and consumption. Recommendation algorithms are running on any streaming service or social media to analyze user preferences to suggest yet more personalized content that allows for more engagement and satisfaction. AI-generated art, music, and literature are on their way up, expanding creativity into new frontiers and challenging conventional ideas of authorship and originality. The fast pace at which AI is developing is associated with ethical and social concerns. With respect to data privacy, bias of algorithms, and work displacement, if handled properly, that would go in line with the equitability of AI benefits. There needs to be increased cooperation from policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders on working out frameworks that support openness, accountability, and inclusiveness as AI goes on to gain more relevance. AI is a very powerful tool that transforms many dimensions of modern life. It opens up possibilities for innovative and vast efficiency improvements but at the same time bears requirements—thoughtful and responsible—to meet the challenges presented by this new technology. Great promise lies ahead of us in the future of AI, and exactly how its potential bearing on society will be shaped depends on how we go about using those capabilities while keeping their

The passage below contains four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
The Industrial Revolution was the period of immense technological, social, and economic changes in the late 18th century; it was basically based on the shift from agrarian economies toward a more industrialized and urban society. In this phase, new manufacturing processes were developed, hence marking the emergence of factories and mass production of goods. Influential inventions—the steam engine, spinning jenny, and power loom—transformed industries and significantly increased productivity during this time period.
One of the most pronounced effects of the Industrial Revolution was in the labor area. All along, people remained in villages and worked in agriculture, but then factories came, demanding lots of labor and seeing to mass migration into towns. This process of urbanization was accompanied by immense growth of the city but also gave rise to serious social problems. The process of industrialization corresponds to enormous growth in cities, entailing problems of overcrowding, bad living conditions, and exploitation of workers where large numbers were women and children often laboring for long hours under hazardous conditions. It changed the economic landscape of the time as well. Extension of trade and growth of markets enhanced the potentialities of production.
It generated enormous wealth for entrepreneurs and industrialists, giving birth to a new class of bourgeoisies. This newfound wealth was not, however, so equally distributed. Where the industrialist or the factory owner was minting money, a number of workers were being paid peanuts to work in most appallingly dreadful conditions. It is this mismatched economic distribution that manned social tensions and laid the path for labor movements coupled with calls for reforms. The environment paid a huge price, such as air and water pollution due to coal becoming the pivot of energy, and forest clearing and depletion of natural resources. Notwithstanding these problems created for laissez-faire by the Industrial Revolution, it laid the foundation for modern industrial society and stimulated innovations that continued to shape the world in the ensuing centuries. In all, the Industrial Revolution was an age of high complexity and great development with serious difficulties. Its inheritance has been novelty and human toughness, pointing to both the potential for progress and the potential for sustainable and equitable development.

The passage below contains four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Sustainable development is the platform that links people, the planetary system, and the future. This has been done to explain what has been everything in a nutshell concerning sustainable development: it represents meeting today's needs without meddling with the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This has three pillars: economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental care.
Growth in an economy has been taken to mean an improvement in the standard of living and the creation of wealth simultaneously. On the other hand, it is disproportionate because its insatiable demands on natural resources will deplete them unless kept within limits. On a brighter note, environmental degradation has a scope to be checked. The end should thus be to strike a balance that supports economic development yet conserves the available natural resources for future generations. It means making people participate in society by giving opportunities and sharing resources equally. This also involves the reduction of inequalities and ensures that economic gains are well shared among these strata of people within the population structure. Economic growth, which does not lead to social inclusiveness, can increase disparities and trigger related social unrest or instability.
Environment protection is the process of preserving natural resources and natural ecosystems. Full detailing may differ from anti-pollution measures, sustainable management, and conservation of natural resources; the meaning remains the same—preservation of biodiversity at that particular time. The environment is basic to both aspects: it stands for the reason that a sound environment is a precondition for economic growth and social inclusion. The serious pursuit of sustainable development is required at each level of governance, business, and individual. It requires internal coherence at the policy and practice levels that provides transformative capacity toward sustainability. Other key levers for advancing sustainable development goals are innovation, education, and international cooperation.

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Just outside London's Paddington Station, affixed to a corporate building at 50 Eastbourne Terrace, stands a remarkable clock. A cursory glance may deceive one into seeing a miniature man in a three-piece suit inside, painting and removing the clock's hands meticulously, marking the passage of time minute by minute. Initially bewildering, the realization dawns that this is not reality but a meticulously crafted film, capturing a continuous 12-hour performance—a stroke of creative genius inserted into an otherwise mundane piece of urban architecture. The public clock, now largely obsolete in the age of smartphones, has been transformed into a philosophical poem where function intertwines with artistic expression. It invites viewers to contemplate time in its existential purity, as a medium shaped by human action.
Designed by Dutch artist Maarten Baas, the clock debuted as part of his Real Time project at Milan's Salone del Mobile in 2009. Originally a trade fair for product design showcasing new furnishings and decor, Salone del Mobile has increasingly embraced more avant-garde installations at its fringe festival, known as 'Fuorisalone'. Here, the emphasis is less on comfort, brightness, or traditional beauty of objects like chairs or lamps, but rather on their ability to captivate like conceptual art. Each piece's underlying idea, concept, or narrative must match or exceed the value of its materials or the ingenuity of its construction, which sometimes becomes an integral part of its narrative.
Among the standout examples is Jeroen Verhoeven's Cinderella Table (2006), a conceptual fusion of an 18th-century chest of drawers and table, created using computer-generated outlines and meticulously constructed from plywood by boat-building specialists. The name itself invokes whimsical associations with Disney's reinterpretations of classical furniture in films like Beauty and the Beast. Similarly, Nacho Carbonell's expansive Light Mesh Collection transforms simple chairs into sprawling, cocoon-like structures reminiscent of his childhood home in Spain, while Thomas Lemut's Gigognes. Olympia. 43 + 38 (2020) nesting tables pay homage to Édouard Manet's painting Olympia, mapping its cracked varnish onto glazed earthenware tabletops, blending precision engineering with an allusion to human frailty. Furniture design, with its proximity to the human body and its integral role in domestic, social, and political spheres, offers a fertile ground for exploring embodied experiences. As John A. Fleming notes in 'The Semiotics of Furniture Form' (1999), all objects we create are reflections of the human body and mind within the constraints of time and space. This intimate relationship with movable objects like chairs and tables is underscored by our anthropomorphic references—leg, arm, back, seat—highlighting their symbolic resonance and functional significance throughout history.
The evolution of furniture from purely functional items to expressive, culturally resonant pieces parallels broader shifts in art and design. While traditional distinctions between art and design have been upheld through linguistic and educational frameworks, there have been movements, like the Bauhaus and Wiener Werkstätte, that sought to bridge these divides. The Surrealists, in particular, viewed furniture not merely as utilitarian but as conduits for subconscious projections and myths, exemplified by Salvador Dalí's Mae West lips sofa and lobster telephones, Méret Oppenheim's Object (1936), and Dorothea Tanning's Primitive Seating (1982).
Contemporary designers continue to challenge these boundaries. Artists like Franz West and Ron Arad blur distinctions between art and functional design, while groups like Droog and institutions like Design Academy Eindhoven foster experimental, thought-provoking approaches to design. Objects like Tejo Remy's Rag Chair (1991) or Lubna Chowdhary's non-functional sculptural ceramics defy conventional expectations, prompting viewers to reconsider the role of design as a medium for political expression and cultural critique.

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
In the late 1980s, my father and his friend took a wrong turn off the international road from West Germany to West Berlin and were stopped by an East German police officer. Fortunately, they simply turned around after their harrowing interchange with the cop. Mistakes can have far worse consequences when they are made by leaders of countries. In 1962, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's move to furnish Cuba's Fidel Castro with nuclear-capable long-range missiles almost produced an all-out war. Such an action was a violation of the post-World War II spheres-of-influence logic, where the Soviet Union and the United States were each supposed to dominate their own ideological, military, and economic spheres.
The Cold War influenced all aspects of life and became a motive for academics and different pundits to scrutinize the status of the international system it had generated. IR theory turned into an independent academic discipline to some extent due to nuclear threats and thereby the need for predictability. In 1964, theorist Kenneth Waltz argued that bipolarity as cast by the Cold War was the reason for a more secure world, where two poles balanced power and diminished opportunities for war.
These theorists based their predictions of behavior in specific international systems on ancient history and thinkers. The civil war between Sparta and Athens, the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), was taken to be the first bipolar system. Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche were all influences on this viewpoint, though its exact origins are unclear. In the 1960s, when bipolarity was supposedly at its height during the Cold War, dissenters such as journalist Walter Lippmann began to argue that an independent role for China could already be counted on, citing the example of Charles de Gaulle's withdrawal of French troops from NATO in 1966 to illustrate weakening superpower dominance.
During the 1970s, new indicators of power, such as economic growth in Japan, hinted at a shift toward a multipolar world order. As recently as 2015, political scientist John Mearsheimer forecasted Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine on the basis of geographical and size differences—a very traditionalist power dynamics thinking.
This board game-like approach forgets the human element of international affairs. Differential worldviews resulted from the post-1945 decolonization and reconstruction process, thus upsetting the bipolarity of the Cold War. Anticolonial modernity was pursued by leaders like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, who used to insist on the necessity of psychological deliverance from colonial inferiority complexes.
This anticolonial modernity was projected across Africa by Nkrumah's Ghana, with its message combining cultural pride and psychological liberation. The 1958 All-African Peoples' Conference argued that the African people had to cast off the imitation of foreign ways of life and turn seriously to their traditions.
Anti-colonial modernity aimed at a different international system from the bipolarity of the Cold War. Pan-Africanism, pan-Arabism, and other pan-isms sought to unite regions against protection and progress. For Nkrumah, independence was therefore connected with a united Africa.
This multipolarity was recognized by theorists such as Hans J Morgenthau and Joseph Nye, who saw beyond Cold War rigidity. Indeed, as early as the 1960s, even a US policymaker like Henry Kissinger recognized that a multipolar world had emerged.
Postcolonial archives are quite revealing for the period, even though record-keeping challenges and overrepresentation of Global North archives complicate that exercise. All the same, an opportunity exists for African sources to test how far Cold War superpower rivalry alone dictated the international system.

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
I remember going years ago to a BBC boardroom, in front of a panel of senior editors, to be interviewed for a promotion. Getting this job was something I really wanted, and I was keen to make a good impression. As I started to answer one question about teamwork, something weird happened inside my head. Over and over again, playing in my mind, was "The Wheels on the Bus" children's song. Although I was attempting to concentrate on my story about the tardy attendee and the less-than-patient presenter, I could feel myself losing control. I was chanting the song in my head, gnashing my teeth, and blinking my eyes like crazy. After a while, one of the panel members caught me acting strangely, and I felt as if I were on a pedestal for everyone to see.
For several years now, this has comprised—the painful habits that most obviously manifest are scraping my tongue over my teeth, doing complex eye movements, and peeling the skin off my lips until they bled. These behaviors worsen when anything is high-stakes or I am trying to enjoy the moment. Realistically, my OCD acts quite insidiously all the time; it seems to constantly avoid some part of conscious control and will of its own, though extrinsic to me. Apart from OCD, I have another problem with procrastination. Very often, I ruin my attention by scrolling through social media or emailing someone when I ought to be spending quality time with my kids. I am also an addict to screens and booze to get me through the evenings—but, of course, one of the normalized ones. I'm addicted to productivity: forever ticking lists, filling up every second, and all the while wishing for time and space to think.
Self-sabotage is a sort of intriguing process that really fits well with things like procrastination, distraction, addiction, and OCD. We know the damages these are causing to our own lives, yet we still hang onto them. For instance, when things really count, we tend to foul them up—beating ourselves up incessantly over wasting hours on activities that are not relevant, which basically halts any kind of progress. What's really happening with this self-defeating circle in which we just keep undermining our finest laid plans?.
Plato's image of a charioteer driving two winged horses, one light and one dark, is taken as a metaphor for the human divided psyche. One horse symbolizes the light of moral intention; another, that of dark irrationality and undermining. It is such a model of split self that echoes down to this day in the likes of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and psychiatrist R.D. Laing. It is now that neuroscience looks into the details of brain involvement in these behaviors and identifies imbalances of neurotransmitters that prevent the brain from regulating intrusive thoughts in OCD.
According to Piers Steel, an expert on procrastination, impulsive pleasure-seeking behaviors and the delay of procrastination are what drive our irrational actions. Our motivations mostly fade away when needed the most, earlier on knowing that we will be worse off. Again, addiction is a kind of self-sabotage where instant-gratification craving gets better of our rational intentions.
Ultimately, while mechanical explanations like neural pathways and dopamine responses offer a degree of insight, psychoanalysis suggests a much deeper understanding of our split selves and contradictions. Much of what ends up being self-sabotage, against our best interests, has been coping mechanisms or ways to handle stress and emotion. By recognizing these and making sense of them, people can find self-compassion and lead more balanced lives.

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
By the beginning of the Common Era, three-quarters of humanity resided within the confines of four imperial orders: the Romans, the Han, the Parthians and the Kushans. This raises suggestion that most people in history are born, live, and die in an imperial world. To some among modern scholars, this indicates that empires are natural and even desirable political structures that humans have repeatedly created throughout history. They argue that subjects of empires might have preferred life under imperial rule to the uncertainties of life outside. Edward Gibbon in the 18th century, for one, portrayed the Roman Empire as the height of civilization in the center of swarming barbarism. It was he who proposed that the poverty and primitiveness of those barbarian societies gave birth to freedom within them. Such attitudes have contributed to conclusions made upon empires as bringers of civilization and non-imperial life being chaotic and unproductive. This view largely remains unchecked and thereby reconfirms in society the knowledge that civilization requires both control and violence.
It's said that the ancient rulers for instance, of Egypt and Syria referred to disorganizing groups with the term 'Apiru.' This was a concept considered referential to Hebrews but it's only aeons down the line that it received elucidation as a referent for an individual dissent and/or refugee. The Han Empire also used to describe groups that rebel against its rule as being savage and barbaric. These tendencies used to make claims about the imperial violence and as a consequence, showed up empires as imperative to order and civilization. This is because Walter Scheidel bases his argument from an already shaky beginning when he assumes that painfully created empires with their powerful elites were the key competitive advantage in success. However, basing statistics from the 1978 Atlas of World Population History casts a shade on the statistics' validity and reliability, and because such claims have been based on such bare sources, one has to question the veracity of his assertive statement that empires were a good thing.
New archaeological discoveries challenge the premise that outside the empires, nothing was sophisticated or developed. That was shown to be just the case in the Amazon, Africa, and Southeast Asia: Urban civilizations existed with neither central rulers nor empires, found, thus placing their argument on the contrary side to what had been purported—where many societies like those thrived with imperial structures.
Archaeology has recovered rich histories of all sorts of non-imperial societies that flourished and developed their own ways and lifeways. These findings raise the stakes: ways in which human societies were diverse are at the same time raising entirely contemporary moral queries about all this in determining that empires were the main vehicles of civilization. Encouragingly: these facts suggest, also, that the 'winners' in history were not always those that lived under such imperial conditions.
The present modern world is being shaped by empires, which have brought it to the point of environmental collapse, erosion of democracy, and wars of a new kind. But to study all human history, of non-imperial societies as well, might provide insights into alternative ways of living and organizing into societies. A broader angle of vision could be fruitful in rereading civilization and prospects for different futures.
Such a exploration of the past is not about utopia but about recognizing the richness of human experience and its different possibilities for social realities. Such varied paths of human history will help us in understanding new ways of thinking to come out of future challenges regarding freedom, governance, and sustainability.