现代大学英语精读第二版（第四册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——12A - Onwards and Upwards（往前与往上，行进与改进）

Unit 12A - Onwards and Upwards

Onwards and Upwards

Author Unknown

...In the rich world today, the idea of progress has become impoverished.

Through complacency and bitter experience, the scope of progress has narrowed.

The popular view is that, although technology and GDP advance, morals and society are treading water or,

depending on your choice of newspaper, sinking back into decadence and barbarism.

On the left of politics these days, "progress" comes with a pair of ironic quotation marks attached; on the right, "progressive" is a term of abuse.

It was not always like that.

There has been a tension between seeking perfection in life or in the afterlife.

Optimists in the Enlightenment and the 19th century came to believe that the mass of humanity could one day lead happy and worthy lives here on Earth.

They were bursting with ideas for how the world might become a better place.

Some thought God would bring about the New Jerusalem, others looked to history or evolution.

Some thought people would improve if left to themselves, others thought they should be forced to be free;

some believed in the nation, others in the end of nations;

some wanted a perfect language, others universal education;

some put their hope in science, others in commerce;

some had faith in wise legislation, others in anarchy.

Intellectual life was teeming with grand ideas.

For most people, the question was not whether progress would happen, but how.

The idea of progress forms the backdrop to a society.

In the extreme, without the possibility of progress of any sort, your gain is someone else's loss.

If human behavior is unreformable, social policy can only ever be about trying to cage the ape within.

Society must in principle be able to move towards its ideals, such as equality and freedom, or they are no more than cant and self-delusion.

So it matters if people lose their faith in progress.

And it is worth thinking about how to restore it.

By now, some of you will hardly be able to contain your protests.

Surely the evidence of progress is all around us?

That is the case put forward in "It's Getting Better All the Time," by the late Julian Simon and Stephen Moore then at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.

Over almost 300 pages they show how vastly everyday life has improved in every way.

For aeons people lived to the age of just 25 or 30 and most parents could expect to mourn at least one of their children.

Today people live to 65 and, in countries such as Japan and Canada, over 80;

outside Africa, a child's death is mercifully rare.

Global average income was for centuries about $200 a year;

a typical inhabitant of one of the world's richer countries now earns that much in a day.

In the Middle Ages about one in ten Europeans could read;

today, with a few exceptions, the global rate is comfortably above eight out of ten.

In much of the world, ordinary men and women can vote and find work, regardless of their race.

In large parts of it they can think and say what they choose.

If they fall ill, they will be treated.

If they are innocent, they will generally walk free.

It is an impressive list—even if you factor in some formidably depressing data...

The trouble is that a belief in progress is more than a branch of accounting.

The books are never closed.

Wouldn't nuclear war or environmental catastrophe tip the balance into the red? And the accounts are full of blank columns.

How does the unknown bookkeeper reconcile such unknowable quantities as happiness and fulfillment across the ages?

Even if you show how miserable the past was, the belief in progress is about the future.

People born in the rich world today think they are due a modicum of health, prosperity and equality.

They advance against that standard, rather than the pestilence, beggary and injustice of serfdom.

That's progress.

The idea of progress has a long history, but it started to flower in the 17th century.

Enlightenment thinkers believed that man emancipated by reason would rise to ever greater heights of achievement.

The many manifestations of his humanity would be the engines of progress:

language, community, science, commerce, moral sensibility and government.

Unfortunately, many of those engines have failed.

Some supposed sources of progress now appear almost quaint.

Take language: many 18th-century thinkers believed that superstitions and past errors were imprinted in words...

Purge the language of rotten thinking, they believed, and truth and reason would prevail.

The impulse survives, much diminished, in the vocabulary of political correctness.

But these days few people believe in language as an agent of social change.

Other sources of progress are clothed in tragedy.

The Germanic thought that individual progress should be subsumed into the shared destiny of a nation is fatally associated with Hitler.

Whenever nationalism becomes the chief organizing principle of society, state violence is not far behind.

Likewise, unspeakable crimes were committed by the ruling elite in the pursuit of progress, rather as they had been in the name of God in earlier centuries.

The 20th century was seduced by the idea that humans will advance as part of a collective and that the enlightened few have the right—the duty even—to impose progress on the benighted masses whether they choose it or not.

The blood of millions and the fall of the Berlin Wall, 20 years ago this year, showed how much the people beg to differ.

Coercion will always have its attractions for those able to do the coercing,

but, as a source of enlightened progress, the subjugation of the individual in the interests of the community has lost much of its appeal.

Instead the modern age has belonged to material progress and its predominant source has been science.

Yet, nestling amid the quarks and transistors and the nucleic acids and nanotubes, there is a question.

Science confers huge power to change the world.

Can people be trusted to harness it for good?

The ancients thought not.

Warnings that curiosity can be destructive stretch back to the very beginning of civilization.

As Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, so inquisitive Pandora,

the first woman in Greek mythology, peered into the jar and released all the world's evils.

Modern science is full of examples of technologies that can be used for ill as well as good.

Think of nuclear power—and of nuclear weapons; of biotechnology—and of biological contamination.

History is full of useful technologies that have done harm...

The point is not that science is harmful, but that progress in science does not map tidily onto progress for humanity.

In an official British survey of public attitudes to science in 2008, just over 80% of those asked said they were "amazed by the achievements of science."

However, only 46% thought that "the benefits of science are greater than any harmful effect."

From the perspective of human progress, science needs governing.

Scientific progress needs to be hitched to what we might call "moral progress."

It can yield untold benefits, but only if people use it wisely.

And to do that they must look outside science to the way people behave.

It is a similar story with economic growth, the other source of material progress.

The 18th century was optimistic that business could bring prosperity;

and that prosperity, in its turn, could bring enlightenment.

Business has more than lived up to the first half of that promise.

As Joseph Schumpeter famously observed, silk stockings were once only for queens, but capitalism has given them to factory girls...

Yet even the strongest defenders of capitalism would, by and large, agree that business needs governing, just as science does.

Nor does economic progress broadly defined correspond to human progress.

GDP does not measure welfare; and wealth does not equal happiness.

Rich countries are, by and large, happier than poor ones;

but among developed-world countries, there is only a weak correlation between happiness and GDP

And, although wealth has been soaring over the past half a century, happiness, measured by national surveys, has hardly budged.

This is probably largely because of status-consciousness.

It is good to go up in the world, but much less so if everyone around you is going up in it too.

Once they have filled up their bellies and put a roof over their heads, people want more of what we call "positional goods."

Only one person can be the richest tycoon.

As wealth grows, the competition for such status only becomes more intense.

And it is not just that material progress does not seem to be delivering the emotional goods.

People also fear that mankind is failing to manage it properly—with the result that, in important ways, their children may not be better off than they are.

The forests are disappearing;

the ice is melting;

social bonds are crumbling;

privacy is eroding;

life is becoming a dismal slog in an ugly world.

...But the worst nightmares have not come to life so far.

Why?

The answer depends on that last pair of engines of progress:

moral sensibility in its widest sense, and the institutions that make up what today is known as "governance."

These broadly liberal forces offer hope for a better future—more, indeed, than you may think.

Right and left have much cause to criticize government.

For the right, as Ronald Reagan famously said, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

For the left, government has failed to tame the cruelty of markets and lift the poor out of their misery.

From their different perspectives, both sides complain that government regulation is often costly and ineffectual.

Yet, even if it is often inefficient and self-serving, it also embodies moral progress.

That is the significance of the assertion, in the American Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

It is the significance of laws guaranteeing free speech, universal suffrage, and equality before the law.

And it is the significance of courts that can hold states to account when they, inevitably, fail to match the standards that they have set for themselves.

Such values are the institutional face of the fundamental engines of progress—"moral sensibility."

The very idea probably sounds quaint and old-fashioned,

but it is the subject of a powerful book by Susan Neiman, an American philosopher living in Germany. Ms Neiman thinks that people yearn for a sense of moral purpose.

In a world preoccupied with consumerism and petty self-interest, that gives life dignity.

People want to determine how the world works, not always to be determined by it.

It means that people's behavior should be shaped not by who is most powerful, or by who stands to lose or gain, but by what is right despite the costs.

Moral sensibility is why people will suffer for their beliefs, and why acts of principled self-sacrifice are so powerful.

People can distinguish what is and what ought to be.

Torture was once common in Europe's market squares.

It is now unacceptable even when the world's most powerful nation wears the interrogator's mask.

Race was once a bar to the clubs and drawing-rooms of respectable society.

Now a black man is in the White House.

There are no guarantees that the gap between is and ought can be closed.

Every time someone tells you to "be realistic" they are asking you to compromise your ideals.

Ms. Neiman acknowledges that your ideals will never be met completely.

But sometimes, however imperfectly, you can make progress.

It is as if you are moving an unattainable horizon.

"Human dignity," she writes, "requires the love of ideals for its own sake, but nothing requires that the love will be requited." ...

Ms. Neiman asks people to reject the false choice between Utopia and degeneracy.

Moral progress, she writes, is neither guaranteed nor is it hopeless.

Instead, it is up to us.

参考译文——往前与往上，行进与改进

往前与往上，行进与改进

作者：佚名

……今天，在那些富有的国家里，“进步”的概念已经变得贫乏无力。

由于自满和痛苦的经历，进步包含的范围已经缩小了。

现在普遍的观点认为，虽然技术和国内生产总值在发展，道德和社会却在原地踏步，或者正在倒退到腐朽堕落和野蛮的境地——

是否这么说，要取决于你政治立场。

目前，持左翼政治观点的人士认为，“进步”这个词的出现总要伴随着一对具有讽意味的引号；而持右翼政治观点的人士则认为，说什么“在进步”是一句骂人的话。

过去，情况并不总是这样的。

一直以来就存在着是在今生寻求完美还是寄希望于来世的对立观念。

启蒙时代和19世纪的那些乐观主义者相信人民大众有朝一日能在地球上过上幸福的、有价值的生活。

他们的头脑里充满了这个世界如何才能成为更加美好的地方的种种想法。

一些人认为上帝会带来新的耶路撒冷，其他人则把希望寄托在历史发展或进化演变上；

一些人认为如果任由人类自由发展，他们就能进步，其他人则认为自由应该被强加在人们身上；

一些人相信国家是一定要存在的，其他人则认为国家注定要消亡；

一些人盼望有一种完美的语言，其他人则要求有普及的教育；

一些人寄希望于科学，其他人则寄希望于商业；

一些人坚信英明的立法，其他人则信仰无政府主义。

思想界充斥着各种宏论。

对大多数人来说，问题不在于进步是否会发生，而在于如何发生。

进步的观念是一个社会存在的前提：

极端一点儿讲，如果没有任何进步的可能，你的所得就是其他某个人的所失。

假如人的行为是无法改造的，那么社会政策只能是用来设法控制人的动物本性。

原则上社会必须能够向某种理想的状态发高，比如平等和自由，否则，这些理想就只能是伪善的言辞和自欺欺人。

因此，如果人们失去了对进步的信心，问题就大了。

如何才能重塑这种信心值得思考。

读到这里，诸位当中有些恐怕已经克制不住要提出抗议了。

难道我们周围不到处都是进步的证据吗？

这正是已故的朱利安·西蒙和斯蒂芬·穆尔在“我们的生活越来越好”一文中提出的观点，他们当时在华盛顿一家自由派智褒团——凯托研究所工作。

他们用将近300页的内容说明了人们日常生活的各个方面是如何得到了巨大的改进。

在历史漫长的岁月中，人一般只能活到25岁或30岁，而且多数父母都会痛失至少一个孩子。

今天，人们已经能够活到65岁，在日本和加拿大那样的国家，人们甚至能活到80多岁；

幸运的是，在非洲以外的地方，婴儿的死亡已经非常罕见。

几个世纪以来，全球人均年收入都只有大约200美元；

现在，在世界上较富裕的国家里，一个普通人一天就能挣到那么多。

在中世纪，十个欧洲人中，大概只有一个人识字；

今天，除了少数例外，全球的识字人数比例很轻松地达到80%以上。

在世界大多数地方，不管是什么种族，普通的男女都有了选举权和工作权。

大部分地方的人们有了思想和言论的自由。

假如他们病了，就能得到医治。

假如他们是清白罪的，他们一般都能行动自由。

这是一份令人印象深刻的清单——即便你把一些极其令人沮丧的数据考虑在内……

问题在于，对进步的判断比会计学的一门分支要复杂得多。

这本账册永不结算。

一场核战争或环境灾难不就会使其陷入赤字的境地么？而且这本账册里满是空白的项目。

那位未知的会计师怎样才能核算账册里横亘古今的诸如幸福和成就这类无法计量的东西呢？

即使你能表明过去有多么悲惨，对进步的评判关注的是未来。

当今出生在富裕国家里的人们认为他们理应得到一定的健康、繁荣和平等。

他们按照这个标准发展，而不是将对抗瘟疫、贫困和农奴制的不公定为发展的方向。

这就是进步。

进步这个概念存在已久，但直到17世纪它才开始成熟起来。

启蒙思想家们相信，被理性所解放的人能创造空前的成就。

而人类的很多特征将成为人类进步的动力：

语言、社会群体、科学、商业、道德观念和政府。

可惜的是，在这些动力中，许多已经失效了。

有些曾经被认为是进步的动因的东西，现在看来似乎都有点古怪了。

以语言为例：很多18 世纪的思想家认为，迷信和过去的众多错误都印刻在文字里……

他们相信，只要从文字中清除掉腐败的思想，真理和理智就能胜利。

这种冲动，尽管已经大大减少了，但仍然还残存在政治上正确的词汇里。

然而，现在已经很少有人相信语言是社会变革的动因了。

其他进步的动因笼罩在悲剧当中。

日耳曼人认为个人的进步应该从属于国家的整体命运，这种想法致命地和希特勒联系在一起。

民族主义一旦成为一个社会的指导思想，距离国家暴力就不远了。

同样，统治精英在追求进步的过程中也会犯下恶劣的罪行，就如同此前几个世纪里以上帝的名义犯下的罪行那样。

20世纪，人们很受这么一种思想的诱骗：人类会作为一个集体向前发展，少数的开明人士有权利——甚至有责任——将进步强加到愚昧的大众身上，而不管他们愿意与否。

上百万人的鲜血和20年前柏林墙的倒塌表明人民对此是多么难以苟同。

强迫手段对于那些能够强迫别人的人总是有吸引力的。

但是，作为明智的进步的动因，个人利益必须服从集体利益的思想已经大大失去了它的吸引力。

当今时代已经属于物质进步的时代，而它的主要动因是科学。

然而，就在夸克、半导体、核酸和纳米管等涌现的同时，出现了一个问题。

科学给了我们改变世界的巨大力量，

但我们能相信人类会将其用在好的方面吗？

古代人认为是不能的。

早在文明开始之初，他们就警告说，人的好奇心可能会具有破坏性。

亚当和夏娃很是好奇，偷吃了智慧树上的禁果；潘多拉，希腊神话里出现的第一位女性，也是如此。

她偷窥了魔盒，把世上所有的邪恶都释放了出来。

现代科学里尽是说明技术既可以用来行善也可以用来作恶的例子。

只要想一想核能和核武器，生物技术和生物污染就够了。

历史上有无数的例子说明有用的技术如何造成了严重的危害······

问题并不在于科学本身有害，而在于科学的进步并没有和人类的进步紧密联系在一起。

2008年，在英国一次关于公众对科学的态度的官方调查中，超过80%的被调查者说他们“对科学所取得的成就感到惊奇”，

不过，只有46%的人认为“科学带来的好处胜于它带来的任何负面效果”。

从人类进步的角度看，科学需要管理。

科学的进步需要与我们可以称其为“道德的进步”的东西挂钩。

它可以带来巨大的好处，但条件是人们明智地利用它。

而要做到这一点，必须在科学之外考虑改进人们的行为方式。

另外一个物质进步的动因——经济增长——情况也十分相似。

18世纪的人们都乐观地认为商业能够带来繁荣；

而繁荣反过来则又能带来认知的启蒙。

商业已经超额实现了它承诺的前一半。

正如约瑟夫·熊彼特那句名言所说，长筒丝袜曾经只有皇后才能穿，但资本主义把它们带给了工厂的女工……

然而，即使是资本主义最坚定的捍卫者基本也同意，和科学一样，商业也需要管理。

广义的经济进步也并不与人类的进步相一致。

国内生产总值并不能衡量福祉；财富也不等于幸福。

一般来说，富裕国家的人们比贫穷国家的人们幸福一些；

但在发达国家里，幸福和国内生产总值只有微弱的联系。

况且，虽然在过去半个世纪里财富一直在飞速增长，但是，根据各国的调查，幸福感几乎原地未动。

这很可能多半是由人们对地位的意识决定的。

在世界上能出人头地的感觉是很好的，但如果你身边的每个人也都出人头地了，这种感觉就会差很多。

一旦食可果腹，居有定所，人们就想要更多所谓的“能够显示身份、地位的商品”了。

世界上只能有一个人是最富有的大亨。

随着财富的增加，争夺这个地位的竞争只会变得更加激烈。

并不仅仅是物质的进步似乎没有从情感上满足人们的愿望。

人们还担心人类没能恰当地管理它——因而造成他们孩子的生活在许多重要方面也许会不如他们的生活好。

森林在消失，

冰山在融化，

社会纽带在瓦解，

隐私被侵犯，

生活正变成在丑恶世界里的惨淡苦熬。

……但是最可怕的噩梦至今尚未成真。

为什么？

答案就在于推动进步的最后两个动力：

最广义的道德观念，以及构成当今被称为“管理”的那些机构。

这些大体上自由开放的力量提供了未来更加美好的希望——甚至超乎你的想象。

左右两派都有很多理由对政府提出批评。

对右派来说，正如罗纳德·里根的名言所说，“英语里最可怕的九个词就是:I’m from the government and I’m here to help.(我是政府派来帮你的。）”

而对于左派来说，政府没能够驾驭住市场的残酷，未能帮助穷人摆脱他们的痛苦。

双方从不同的角度都抱怨政府的调控常常成本巨大但却收效甚微。

然而，即便它常常效率很低，而且常常为自己谋利，它仍然代表着道德的进步。

《美国独立宣言》里声明“人人都生来平等，都享有造物主赋予的不可剥夺的权利”的意义就在于此。

那些保证言论自由、普选权和法律面前人人平等的法律的意义也在于此。

当政府有一天不可避免地达不到为自己设定的标准时，法院能让政府做出解释的意义也在于此。

这些价值观念是进步的根本动力——“道德观念”——在制度方面的体现。

这种想法本身很可能听起来有些古怪和过时，

但它却正是苏珊·尼曼，一位生活在德国的美国哲学家，所写的一本颇具影响力的书的主题。

尼曼女士认为，人都渴望一种道德的目的感。

在一个充斥着对消费主义和个人蝇头小利的追求的世界里，这种道德感赋予生命以尊严。

人们想决定世界如何运作，而不是总被世界牵着走。

这意味着人们的行为不应该被谁最有权力左右，也不应该被谁会成功、谁会失败左右，而是取决于什么是对的，不管代价有多大。

道德观念解释了为什么人们愿意为自己的信仰承受苦难，也解释了为原则而做的自我牺牲为何有如此强大的力量。

人是能够分清现状和理想的。

酷刑拷打一度是欧洲的集市广场上的家常便饭。

可是今天，即使是世界上最强大的国家摆出审讯者的嘴脸，酷刑拷打也是不被接受的。

种族歧视曾是某些人参加俱乐部活动或进入某个上流社会人士客厅的阻碍，

但是现在，一位黑人已经在白宫当了总统。

没人能保证可以弥补现状和理想之间的鸿沟。

每当有人告诉你“现实一点”的时候，他们其实是在要你对自己的理想做出妥协。

尼曼女士承认你的理想永远不可能完全实现。

但是有时候，你仍然可以取得进步，尽管不甚完美。

这就像你在朝着一个无法到达的地平线行进。

“人的尊严，”她写道，“要求我们为理想本身而热爱理想，但是没有任何东西要求这种爱得到回报。

”……尼曼女士要求人们拒绝在乌托邦和堕落退化之间做虚假的选择。

她写到，道德的进步既不一定能实现也不是毫无希望，

而是取决于我们自己。”

Key Words:

mass [mæs]

n. 块，大量，众多

adj. 群众的，大规模

complacency [kəm'pleisnsi]

n. 自满，沾沾自喜

quotation [kwəu'teiʃən]

n. 引语，语录，引用，报价，行情

mourn [mɔ:n]

v. 哀悼，忧伤，服丧

modicum ['mɔdikəm]

n. 少量，一小份

fulfillment [ful'filmənt]

n. 满足，完成，履行

quaint [kweint]

adj. 古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的

purge [pə:dʒ]

n. 整肃，清除，泻药，净化 vt. 净化，清除，摆脱

impose [im'pəuz]

v. 加上，课征，强迫，征收(税款)

coercion [kəu'ə:ʃən]

n. 强迫，威压，高压政治

perspective [pə'spektiv]

n. 远景，看法，透视

intense [in'tens]

adj. 强烈的，剧烈的，热烈的

dismal ['dizməl]

adj. 阴沉的，凄凉的，暗的

crumbling

v. 破碎；崩溃（crumble的ing形式）

yearn [jə:n]

v. 渴望，想念

参考资料：