课文翻译 英美报刊阅读教程中级精选本 第五版 端木义万 Lesson18

2024-07-27 作者:

Lesson 18 Those Rugged Individuals

美国个体主义价值观

No ideal may be held more sacred in America, or be more coveted by others,

than the principle of individual freedom.

在美国，没有什么理想比个人自由原则更神圣，也没有什么理想比个人自由原则更令人垂涎。

Given the chance to pursue the heart's desires, our Utopian vision claims, each of us

has the ability and the right to make our dreams come true.

我们乌托邦式的愿景宣称，只要有机会去追求内心的渴望，我们每个人都有能力和权利去实现自己的梦想。

This extraordinary individualism has prevailed as the core doctrine of the New World

through four centuries, bringing with it an unrelenting pressure to prove one's self.

四个世纪以来，这种非凡的个人主义一直是新世界的核心信条，随之而来的是证明自我的无情压力。

The self-made man has been America's durable icon, whether personified by the

prairie homesteader or the high-tech entrepreneur.'

白手起家的人是美国经久不衰的偶像，无论是草原上的农场主还是高科技企业家都是他们的化身。”

Yet, from the beginning,the idea of a community of rugged individualists struck

many as an oxymoron. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville warned that the tendency

of Americans to do their own thing could very likely doom the country.

然而，从一开始，由粗犷的个人主义者组成的社会这个想法就给许多人以矛盾的感觉。19世纪30年代，亚历克西斯·德·托克维尔(Alexis de Tocqueville3)警告说，美国人自行其是的倾向很可能会让这个国家走向灭亡。

The Founding Fathers be seeched people to remain involved in community affairs.

开国元勋们鼓励人们继续参与社区事务。

And today, a chorus of critics worries that the philosophy of individualism has slipped

its original moorings, threatening the well-being of the nation and, ironically,

individuals themselves.

今天，许多批评家担心个人主义哲学已经失去了它最初的根基，威胁到国家的福祉，讽刺的是，也威胁到个人本身。

When the United States first came into being, most people had never even heard

the word individualism.

当美国刚形成时，大多数人甚至从未听说过个人主义这个词。

"Our fathers only knew about egoism," said Tocqueville, who helped coin the term to

capture the new way of life in the fledgling , where caste systems

determined so much of one's fate, had never had much practical use for individualism.

“我们的父辈只知道自我主义，”托克维尔说，他帮助创造了这个词来捕捉这个新兴国家的新生活方式。在欧洲，种姓制度在很大程度上决定了一个人的命运，个人主义在实际中从未发挥过多大作用。

Born of the Protestant Reformation,the ethos was carried across the Atlantic by the

Puritans, who believed that each person received marching orders directly from God.

这种精神诞生于新教改革，并被清教徒带到了大西洋彼岸。清教徒相信，每个人都直接接受了上帝下达的行军命令。

In their new society, the reformers decided, people would interact as equals, and God

would reward the just.

改革者们决定，在他们的新社会里，人们将平等互动，上帝将奖励公正的人。

Their reasoning appealed to other groups landing in the New World, and over time,

says Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington,"The Puritan legacy became the

American essence."

他们的推理吸引了其他抵达新大陆的群体，随着时间的推移，哈佛政治学家塞缪尔·亨廷顿说，“清教徒的遗产成为了美国的精髓。”

The first American individualists were thoroughly steeped in a one-for-all

mentality on the assumption that all moral persons would devote themselves to the

good of the group.

第一批美国个人主义者完全沉浸在“人人为我”的心态中，他们认为所有有道德的人都会为集体的利益而献身。

Just before landing in Salem Harbor, John Winthrop, the soon-to-be governor of

Massachusetts, reminded parishioners:

就在抵达塞勒姆港之前，即将成为马萨诸塞州州长的约翰·温斯洛普提醒教区居民:

"We must ...make others' conditions our own ... always having before our eyes our

community as members of the same body."

“我们必须…把别人的情况变成自己的……在我们面前，我们的社会是一个整体。”

And even as Thomas Jefferson wrote of the right to liberty and the pursuit of

happiness, he pictured a nation of independent yeomen who, after tending their land

all day, would gladly participate in community meetings.

即使托马斯·杰斐逊在论述自由和追求幸福的权利时，他也描绘了一个由独立的自耕农组成的国家，这些自耕农在开垦了一整天的土地后，会很高兴地参加社区会议。

Singing solo.

独唱

Not until the mid-1800s did the pursuit of individual fulfillment come to connote a

retreat from the group.

直到19世纪中期，对个人成就感的追求才意味着退出集体。

Ralph Waldo Emerson first preached the concept in his 1841 essay"Self-Reliance."'

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its

members," he declared. "Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist."

拉尔夫•沃尔多•爱默生(Ralph Waldo Emerson)在他1841年的文章《自立》(self -自强)中首次宣扬了这一概念。他宣称:“世界各地的社会都在密谋反对每一个社会成员的男子气概。”“要成为男人，就必须是不墨守成规的人。”

For him, the self was more important, more interesting, than the group. "I have only

one doctrine," he wrote: "the infinitude of the private man." Emerson' s friend Henry

David Thoreau went further, deeming it necessary for him to physically part with

society to develop his own integrity.

对他来说，自我比群体更重要，更有趣。“我只有一个信条，”他写道:“个人的无限。”爱默生的朋友亨利·大卫·梭罗(Henry David Thoreau)则更进一步，认为他有

必要脱离社会，以发展自己的正直。

And Walt Whitman, in poems such as"Song of Myself," introduced to the country

what Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah calls "expressive individualism," the valuing

of personal pleasures such as sensuality and leisure above all else—something that

would have been an athema in the religion-dominated Colonies.

沃尔特·惠特曼在《我的歌》等诗歌中向美国介绍了伯克利社会学家罗伯特·贝拉所说的“表现型个人主义”，即重视个人享乐，如感官享受和休闲高于一切——在宗教主导的殖民地，这种价值观是阿瑟玛式的。

This new preoccupation with private experience came at a time when the nation'

s urban areas were growing more crowded and dangerous and the ideal of universal

self-employment was being eroded by a burgeoning underclass.

这种对个人经历的新关注是在这个国家的城市地区变得越来越拥挤和危险，普遍自主创业的理想正在被迅速壮大的下层阶级侵蚀的时候出现的。

Unlike Winthrop, who went broke from giving away so much of his own money,

Emerson cursed himself for parting with the occasional coin, asking, "Are they my

poor?"

与温斯洛普不同的是，温斯洛普因为捐赠了太多自己的钱而破产，艾默生诅咒自己偶尔会给别人一枚硬币，并问自己:“他们是我的穷人吗?”

It was in this atmosphere that Horatio Alger pumped out more than

100"rags-to-riches" tales of destitute orphans transformed into wealthy successes by

ceaseless effort, ingenuity, and integrity.

正是在这种氛围下，霍雷肖·阿尔杰(Horatio Alger)讲述了100多个“从赤贫到暴富”的故事，讲述了通过不懈的努力、聪明才智和正直，贫困的孤儿变成了富有的人。

The moral of the story: Prosperity is possible for anyone willing to try hard enough.

Even the day's most generous philanthropists bought into the notion.

这个故事的寓意是:对任何一个愿意足够努力的人来说，繁荣都是可能的。即使是当今最慷慨的慈善家也接受了这一理念。

Andrew Carnegie, himself a rags-to-riches success, who later gave nearly $400

million to fund the arts and libraries, preached that money should never be "wasted"

on the poor.

安德鲁·卡耐基(andrew Carnegie)本身就是白手起家的成功人士，后来他捐资近4亿美元资助艺术和图书馆。他鼓吹说，钱不应该“浪费”在穷人身上。

This by-your-bootstraps mentality didn't soften until the Great Depression 18 left a

quarter of the nation unemployed, a harsh reality check on the naive belief that

nothing could block the truly motivated individual. Since then the nation has created a

vast safety net of financial aid.

这种自力更生的心态直到大萧条导致美国四分之一的人失业后才有所软化，这对那种认为没有什么能阻挡真正有动力的个人的天真信念形成了严峻的现实考验。从那时起，国家建立了一个庞大的财政援助安全网。

We still prize self-reliance, but we are are latively generous people, with 3 out of 4

households donating to charity.

我们仍然重视自力更生，但我们是相当慷慨的人，四分之三的家庭向慈善机构捐款。

Lone heroes.

孤独的英雄。

Not only did insistence on a strict self-reliance soften as the 20th century

progressed, but many came to fear our rugged individualism was melting into a

mediocre conformity.

随着20世纪的发展，不仅对严格的自力更生的坚持软化了，而且许多人开始担心我们粗犷的个人主义正在融化为平庸的一致性。

With the 1950s came mass media, tract housing, the organization man20,and the

concept of the mainstream middle class.

随着20世纪50年代的到来，出现了大众媒体、小区住房、组织人和主流中产阶级的概念。

In a lightning-rod book, The Lonely Crowd, sociologist David Riesman described a

shift from these if-reliant personality of the 19th century to the

"other-directed"corporate worker of the new service economy.

社会学家戴维•里斯曼(David Riesman)在《孤独的人群》(The Lonely Crowd)一书中描述了一种转变，即从19世纪那种依赖他人的个性，转变为新服务经济中那种“他人指导”的企业员工。

Many used his work to send an alarmist call for the revival of individualism. Out of

this sentiment were born heroes like the Lone Ranger, James Dean in Rebel Without a

Cause, and Beat poets like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

许多人利用他的作品发出危言耸听的呼吁，要求复兴个人主义。正是出于这种情感，涌现出了像《独行侠》、《无因的反叛》中的詹姆斯·迪恩以及像杰克·凯鲁亚克和艾伦·金斯堡这样的诗人。

The 70 million baby boomers soon to come of age would be dubbed the " me

generation" for indulging in an obsessive self-interest that critics blamed for

everything from rising crime and divorce rates to child abuse and urban decay.

即将步入成年的7000万婴儿潮一代被称为“自我的一代”，因为他们沉迷于一种执著的利己主义，批评人士将犯罪率上升、离婚率上升、虐待儿童和城市衰败等问题归咎于这种自我主义。

In his 1979 Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch argued that many Americans

could now perceive others only as a mirror of the self.

在1979年的《自恋文化》一书中，克里斯托弗·拉施认为，现在许多美国人只能将他人视为自我的一面镜子。

More sympathetically,in Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in

American Life, Bellah argued that Americans wanted to transcend their

self-absorption but had become trapped by the language of individualism into seeing

no point in trying to reconnect with others.

在《内心的习惯:美国生活中的个人主义和承诺》一书中，贝拉更为同情地指出，美国人想要超越自我，但已经被个人主义的语言所束缚，认为没有必要尝试与他人重新建立联系。

But that's exactly what we must do, say today's communitarians, not just for the

health of our democracy but for ourselves.

但这正是我们必须做的，今天的社群主义者说，不仅是为了我们民主的健康，也是为了我们自己。

In Bowling Alone, Harvard public-policy Prof.

在《独自打保龄球》一书中，哈佛大学公共政策教授。

Robert Putnam documents a huge drop in all forms of public life since the late 1960s

and a corresponding rise in measures of malaise, from the use of antidepressants to

suicide rates.

罗伯特·帕特南(Robert Putnam)记录了自20世纪60年代末以来，各种形式的公共生活都出现了巨大的下降，与此同时，从抗抑郁药的使用到自杀率等不安指标也相应上升。

Medical studies confirm that individuals are sicker and die sooner in direct proportion

to the degree that they are isolated from others.

医学研究证实，个体患病和死亡的早与他们与他人隔离的程度成正比。

Fortunately, says Putnam in his sequel Better Together, Americans are finding ways to

reform meaningful groups, such as using the Internet to create "virtual" communities.

幸运的是，帕特南在他的续集《在一起更好》中说，美国人正在寻找方法来改革有意义的群体，比如利用互联网创建“虚拟”社区。

Americans will no doubt continue to assume as a birthright the freedom to forge their

own destinies.

毫无疑问，美国人将继续把自由塑造自己的命运作为与生俱来的权利。

But a growing consensus also holds that individuals and democracies are far better off

when people feel part of a larger whole, when they heed Jefferson's directive to"love

your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself."

但越来越多的人认为，当人们感觉自己是一个更大的整体的一部分，当他们听从杰斐逊的指示“爱你的邻居就像爱你自己，爱你的国家就像爱你自己”时，个人和民主就会好得多。