XAT 2020 Question Paper | Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

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Read the passage below and answer the 3 associated questions:

Once, during a concert of cathedral organ music, as I sat getting gooseflesh amid that tsunami of sound, I was struck with a thought: for a medieval peasant, this must have been the loudest human-made sound they ever experienced, awe-inspiring in now-unimaginable ways. No wonder they signed up for the religion being proffered. And now we are constantly pummeled with sounds that dwarf quaint organs. Once, hunter-gatherers might chance upon honey from a beehive and thus briefly satisfy a hardwired food craving. And now we have hundreds of carefully designed commercial foods that supply a burst of sensation unmatched by some lowly natural food. Once, we had lives that, amid considerable privation, also offered numerous subtle, hard-won pleasures. And now we have drugs that cause spasms of pleasure and dopamine release a thousandfold higher than anything stimulated in our old drug-free world.

An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation. This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won’t be enough tomorrow.

Question 8 : Which of the following options BEST describes “emptiness” as described in the passage?

1. A feeling, evoked by the carefully designed commercial foods, alluring us to them
2. The inevitability of habituation that one gets from repeated consumption of manmade foods or drugs
3. A feeling of absence of sources of pleasure when extant sources are in abundance
4. Yearning for newer sources of pleasure when extant sources are in abundance
5. A feeling of weariness around extant sources of pleasure that are in abundance

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Explanatory Answer

A. A feeling, evoked by the carefully designed commercial foods, alluring us to them – The author does not talk only about foods. He only uses them as one of the examples. This option is incorrect.
B. The inevitability of habituation that one gets from repeated consumption of manmade foods or drugs – The same reason as above option. This too is incorrect.
C. A feeling of absence of sources of pleasure when extant sources are in abundance - This is the right answer.
D. Yearning for newer sources of pleasure when extant sources are in abundance- Yearning for new sources is a consequence of emptiness and so does not describe “emptiness”. This option is incorrect.
E. A feeling of weariness around extant sources of pleasure that are in abundance – The author does not speak about weariness in the passage. This is incorrect.

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The question is "Which of the following options BEST describes “emptiness” as described in the passage?"

Hence, the answer is A feeling of absence of sources of pleasure when extant sources are in abundance

Choice C is the correct answer.