Word: discerning
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...living standards in many other countries?a development that has potentially grave social consequences. The steep economic growth that the industrial nations have enjoyed since World War II tended to soften social and economic inequalities because even the poor and deprived made visible progress year by year and could discern a brighter future. Now, if there is slow growth or no growth, demands for social justice will be more urgent?and harder to fulfill. Democratic governments will have to find ways to redistribute the existing wealth, or else face dissension and perhaps chaos...
...only the advocates of absolute inerrancy who worry about preserving faith; most liberal exegetes share that concern, as well as a profound respect for biblical truth. Yet the truth they discern is of a different order, less tied to the Bible's literal events than to its underlying spirit. The faith such scholars affirm reflects the endemic doubts of modern man, child of the Enlightenment, reading his faith largely in the light of reason...
...pros tend to develop quirks that decorate their egos like gargoyles on a tower. Richard Bergmann, the late English titlist, once searched in vain for the perfect sphere; he went through three gross of balls before he found one worthy of him. Alex Ehrlich, the Polish prodigy, could discern no life purpose beyond Ping Pong. To this day, when he finds a promising young player he counsels, "Now the first thing you must do is quit school...
...penultimate week of campaigning, struggling Republicans could discern scant hopes of avoiding serious defeat at the polls on Nov. 5. Their supporters were either apathetic or were deserting to the other side; their candidates lacked funds and ways to escape the crippling legacy of Watergate and the crushing issues of inflation, unemployment and the President's proposed 5% surtax. Said one presidential adviser: "All over the country there is an uneasiness, a feeling that a lot of problems are not being solved, and voters are taking it out on the party in power...
Given the almost simultaneous rise of the women's liberation movement and TV cop shows, it required no genius to discern that an indifferent idea's time had to come soon. And so we have them this season-not one, but two weekly dramas about policewomen...