精读课文confessions of a miseducated man 文章译文

精读课文confessions of a miseducated man 文章译文
如标题 ,是现代大学英语精读2上的 杨立民总主编

鍘熸枃鍦ㄦ?.
Norman Cousins's Confessions of a Miseducated Man
These notes are in the nature of a confession.It is the confession of a miseducated man.
I have become most aware of my lack of a proper education whenever I have had the chance to put it to the test.The test is a simple one:am I prepared to live in and comprehend a world in which there are 3 billion people?Not the world as it was in 1850 or 1900,for which my education might have been adequate; but the world today.And the best place to apply that test is outside the country - especially Asia or Africa.
Not that my education was a complete failure.It prepared me superbly for a bird's-eye view of the world.It taught me how to recognize easily and instantly the things that differentiate one place or one people from another.Geography had instructed me in differences of terrain,resources,and productivity.Comparative culture had instructed me in the differences of background and group interests.Anthropology had instructed me in the differences of facial bone structure,skin pigmentation,and general physical aspect.In short,my education protected me against surprise.I was not surprised at the fact that some people lived in mud huts and others in bamboo cottages on stilts; or that some used peat for fuel and others dung; or that some enjoyed music with a five-note scale and others with twelve; or that some people were vegetarian by religion and others by preference.
In those respects my education had been more than adequate.But what my education failed to do was to teach me that the principal significance of such differences was that they were largely without significance.The differences were all but obliterated by the similarity.My education had by-passed the similarities.It had failed to grasp and define the fact that beyond the differences are realities scarcely comprehended because of their shattering simplicity.And the simplest reality of all was that the human community was one ­greater than any of its parts,greater than the separateness imposed by the nations,greater than the divergent faiths and allegiances or the depth and color of varying cultures.This larger unity was the most important central fact of our time - something on which people could build at a time when hope seemed misty,almost unreal.
As I write this,I have the feeling that my words fail to give vitality to the idea they seek to express.Indeed,the idea itself is a truism which all peoples readily acknowledge even if they do not act on it.Let me put it differently,then.In order to be at home anywhere in the world,I had to forget the things I had been taught to remember.It turned out that my ability to get along with other peoples depended not so much upon my comprehension of the uniqueness of their way of life as upon my comprehension of the things we had in common.It was important to respect these differences,certainly,but to stop there was like clearing the ground without any idea of what was to be built on it.When you got through comparing notes,you discovered that you were both talking about the same neighborhood,i.e.this planet,and the conditions that made it congenial or hostile to human habitation.
Only a few years ago an education in differences fulfilled a specific if limited .need.That was at a time when we thought of other places and peoples largely out of curiosity or in terms of exotic vacations.It was the mark of a rounded man to be well traveled and to know about the fabulous variations of human culture and behavior.But it wasn't the type of knowledge you had to live by and build on.
Then overnight came the great compression.Far-flung areas which had been secure in their remoteness suddenly became jammed together in a single arena.And all at once a new type of education became necessary,an education in liberation from tribalism.For tribalism had persisted from earliest times,though it had taken refined forms.The new education had to teach man the most difficult lesson of all:to look at someone anywhere in the world and be able to recognize the image of himself.It had to be an education in self recognition.The old emphasis upon superficial differences had to give way to education for mutuality and for citizenship in the human community.
In such an education we begin with the fact that the universe itself does not hold life cheaply.Life is a rare occurrence among the millions of galaxies and solar systems that occupy space.And in this particular solar system life occurs on only one planet.And on that one planet life takes millions of forms,Of all these countless forms of life,only one,the human species,possesses certain faculties in combination that give it supreme' advantages over all the others.Among those faculties or gifts is a creative intelligence that enables man to reflect and anticipate,to encompass past experience,and also to visualize future needs.There are endless other wondrous faculties the mechanisms of which are not yet within the understanding of their beneficiaries - the faculties of hope,conscience,appreciation of beauty,kinship,love,faith.
Viewed in planetary perspective,what counts is not that the thoughts of men lead them in different directions but that all men possess the capacity to think; not that they pursue different faiths but that they are capable of spiritual belief; not that they write and read,different books but that they are capable of creating print and communicating in it across time and space; not that they enjoy different art and music but that something in them enables them to respond deeply to forms and colors and ordered vibrations of sounds.
These basic lessons,then,would seek to provide a proper respect for man in the universe.Next in order would be instruction in the unity of man's needs.However friendly the universe may be to man,it has left the conditions of human existence precariously balanced.All men need oxygen,water,land,warmth,food.Remove anyone of these and the unity of human needs is attacked and man with it.The next lesson would concern the human situation itself - how to use self-understanding in the cause of human welfare; how to control the engines created by man that threaten to alter the precarious balance on which life depends; how to create a peaceful society of the whole.
With such an education,it is possible that some nation or people may come forward not only with vital understanding but with the vital inspiration that men need no less than food.Leadership on this higher level does not require mountains of gold,or thundering propaganda.It is concerned with human destiny; human destiny is the issue; people will respond.