This is the age of the quick action. We have instant satisfaction, fast food, speed reading, mobile phones; even the stress management books have titles like "Stress Management in 60 Seconds".
Canadian Classics Professor Margaret Visser points out that the perception that we have "no time" is one of the most strict concepts of Western culture. Visser says that "no time" is used as an excuse and also as a spur (刺激); it both goads us and forces us, just as a concept such as "honour" did for the ancient Greeks. According to Visser, the feeling that Westerners have "no time" is abstract, quantitative, amoral (非道德性的), unarguable, bringing pressure on each person as an individual. At the same time, the "no time" excuse escapes censure by claiming to be a condition created entirely out of our good fortune.
Life offers "so many pleasures, so many choices".
The fact that women now work outside the home has contributed to the "no time" trend. But more important, Visser says, is the fact that feeling rushed has become an important component of our economy. Marketing of "time-saving" products causes people to buy more and work longer. So we eat out or buy prepared food to save time. The fax-it-to-me-in-my-car technology only contributes to the constant hurry. In our rushed and exhausted state, even the obligation (义务) to sit down to casual meal with family seems like a pressure. In comparison with the decision to act on a sudden whims (一时的兴致) to consume a microwave mug of soup, the act of eating together and not getting up from the table until everyone else has finished seems an incredibly time-consuming event. Being in one′ s own personal hurry in the West is somehow "free and preferable".
What does "goad" in "it both goads us and forces us" in the second paragraph probably mean?
词义题。free“释放”，sour“变坏，恶化”，instruct“指导”，stimulate“刺激”。根据goad所在句子的前一句“Visser says that‘no time ’is used as all excuse and also as a spur(刺激)”可推测，这里的goad与spur的意思相近。故选D。
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