Socrates told us that ‘the unexamined life | CAT VARC Questions- Odd One Out

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The question below is from previous year CAT question from CAT 2019 exam comes from CAT Parajumble: Socrates told us that ‘the unexamined life

Find out by answering this question which tests an aspirant’s CAT VARC skills:

CAT 2019 – Slot -2 - Question 2 - Socrates told us that ‘the unexamined life

Q. 2: Five sentences related to a topic are given below in a jumbled order. Four of them form a coherent and unified paragraph. Identify the odd sentence that does not go with the four. Key in the number of the option that you choose.
1. Socrates told us that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ and that to ‘know thyself’ is the path to true wisdom
2. It suggests that you should adopt an ancient rhetorical method favored by the likes of Julius Caesar and known as ‘illeism’ – or speaking about yourself in the third person.
3. Research has shown that people who are prone to rumination also often suffer from impaired decision making under pressure and are at a substantially increased risk of depression.
4. Simple rumination – the process of churning your concerns around in your head – is not the way to achieve self-realization.
5. The idea is that this small change in perspective can clear your emotional fog, allowing you to see past your biases.

Show Answer

Let us link the sentences logically. The sentence that will not link logically is the Odd sentence out of the paragraph. Sentence 3 introduces the phenomenon of rumination and is our introductory sentence.

Sentence 4 follows by mentioning another disadvantage of rumination – it is not the way to achieve self-realization.

Sentence 2 then gives a corrective mechanism known as “illeism” – speaking about yourself in the third person.

Sentence 5 concludes the paragraph by this small change (of speaking of yourself in the third person) can be the answer to self-realization.

Sentence 1 is clearly the odd sentence out of the paragraph since it is about the path to “true wisdom” while the other four sentences are about rumination and ways of correcting it.

Hence, the correct answer is sentence 1.