Lesson1
The greatest achievement of human in its long evolution from ancient hominoid ancestor to its present status is the acquisition and accumulation of a vast body of knowledge about itself，the world，and the universe. The products of this knowledge are all those things that, in the aggregate, we call “civilization”, including language, science, literature, art, all the physical mechanisms, instruments ，and structures we use ，and the physical infrastructures on which society relies. Most of us assume that in modern society knowledge of all kinds is continually increasing and the aggregation of new information into the corpus of our social or collective knowledge is steadily reducing the area of ignorance about ourselves ，the world ，and the universe. But continuing reminders of the numerous areas of our present ignorance invite a critical analysis of this assumption.
人类从古代的类人猿祖先发展到现状的及其漫长的过程中的最大成就是获取并积累了大量关于自身、世界和宇宙的知识。总的来说，我们将这种知识的所有产物称之为“文明”，包括语言、科学、文学、艺术，我们所应用的所有物理学、工具、结构，以及社会所以存的物质基础。大多数人认为，随着现代社会各种知识不断增加新信息不断积聚，我们对自身、世界、宇宙的未知正在稳步减少。但是，人类至今对诸多领域的无知使得我们要对这种观点进行批判分析。
Lesson2
Moreover ，before lamenting modularization ，it is necessary to ask ourselves whether we really would prefer to return to the traditional condition of man in which each individual presumably related to the whole personality of a few people rather than to the personality modules of many. Traditional man has been so sentimentalized ，so cloyingly romanticized，that we frequently overlook the consequences of such a return. The very same writers who lament fragmentation also demand freedom—yet overlook the un-freedom of people bound together in totalistic relationship. For any relationship implies mutual demands and expectations. The more intimately involved a relationship，the greater the pressure the parties exert on one another to fulfill these expectations. The tighter and more totalistic the relationship，the more modules，so to speak ，are brought into play，and the more numerous are the demands we make. 此外，我们在惋惜感叹模块化之前有必要自问我们是否真的愿意回归传统，每个人只与少数几个人做全面深入的了解接触而不是与众多的人做有限的接触。传统的人流于感伤，多生浪漫，以至于我们经常忽略其带来的后果。那个哀叹人际破碎的作者同样需要自由，只是他忽略了严格人际关系下人的不自由。人际关系意味着彼此的需求与期望。私交越亲密意味着彼此实现这些期望的压力越大。可以这么说，严格完整模块化的人际关系能够更有效地满足我们更多的需求。
In a modular relationship, the demands are strictly bounded. So long as the shoe salesman performs his rather limited service for us, thereby fulfilling our limited expectations, we do not insist that he believe in our god, or that he be tidy at home, or share our political values, or enjoy the same kind of food or music that we do. We leave him free in all other matters—as he leaves us free to be atheist or Jew, heterosexual or homosexual, john Bircher or communist. This is not true of total relationship and cannot be. To a certain point, fragmentation and freedom go together.
在一个模块化的人际关系中，需求有着严格的界定。比如，只要卖鞋的售货员为我们提供有限的服务并保证满足我们有限的期望，我们并不期望他信奉我们的上帝，或者他在家里衣着整洁，或者持有和我们相同的政治价值观，或者喜爱我们所喜爱的食物与音乐。我们使得他在其它事物上是自由的，正如他不干涉我们是无神论者或犹太教徒、异性恋或同性恋、反对或拥护共产主义。这不是更不可能是人际关系的真实性。在某种程度上，模块化的人际关系与自由相伴而生。
Lesson3
That there are significant differences between modern and traditional cultures is beyond dispute.
A world in which some societies highly modern and others still traditional will obviously be less homogeneous than a world in which all societies are comparably modern. It dose not necessarily follow, however, that societies with modern cultures should be any more similar than are societies with traditional cultures. Only a few hundred years ago all societies were traditional. Was that world any less homogeneous than a future world of universal modernity is likely to be? Probably not. “Ming china was assuredly closer to the France of the V alois, ” Fernand Braudel observes, “than the China of Mao Tse-tung is to the France of the Fifth Republic.” Modern societies have much in common, but they do not necessarily merge into homogeneity. The argument that they do rests on the assumption that modern society must approximate a single type, the western type; that modern civilization is western civilization, and western civilization is modern civilization. This, however, is a false identification. Virtually all scholars of civilization agree that western civilization emerged in the eighth and ninth centuries and developed its distinctive characteristic in the centuries that followed. It did not begin to modernize until the eighteenth century. The West, in short, was Western long before it was modern.
现代文化与传统文化之间存在显著的差异是无可争议的事实。一个同时拥有高度现代化的社会与传统社会的世界明显地比各个社会都同等现代化的世界缺乏相似性。然而，没必要遵循拥有现代文化的社会就应当比拥有传统文化的社会更相似这一结论。只是在几百年前，所有的社会都是传统文化社会。那样一个世界会比将来的全面现代化的世界具有较少的类似吗？答案也许是否定的。Fernand Braudel 研究发现：明朝中国与法国Valois 王朝的相似度比毛泽东时代的中国与第五次共和时期法国的相似度更高。现代社会拥有诸多的共同点，但他们没必要迈向同质化。他们所依据的论据是假设现代社会必须趋同于单一类型，即西方类型；现代文明就是西方文明，西方文明就是现代文明。然而，这是一种错误的认识。事实上，所有的研究人类文明的学者都赞同西方文明始于八九世纪并在接下来的数百年内形成了其独有的特点。直到十八世纪才开始现代化进程。简而言之，西方的西方化历史要比其现代化的历史悠久的多。
Interaction and borrowing between civilizations have always taken place, and with modern means of translation and communication they are much more extensive. Most of the worlds great civilization, however, have existed for at least one millennium and in some cases for several. These civilizations have a demonstrated record of borrowing from other civilizations in ways that enhance their own chances of survival. Chinas absorption of Buddhism from India, scholars agree, failed to produce the “indianization ” of china; it instead caused the sinification of Buddhism. The Chinese adapted Buddhism to their purposes and needs. The Chinese have to date consistently defeated intense western efforts to Christianize them. If at some point they do import Christianity, it is more than likely that it will be absorbed and adapted in such a manner as to strengthen the
continuing core of Chinese culture.
不同文明之间的互动和借鉴从未间断，现代化的翻译和交流手段使其更广泛。世界上伟大的文明大多数都存在了至少一千年或几千年。据史料记载，这些文明均借鉴其它文明以提升自身的生存能力。学者们认为，中国引入吸收了印度的佛教，但并没有使中国印度化，反而使得佛教中国化。中国人将佛教加以调整使其符合他们的需求。中国一贯致力于抵制为使基督教进入中国西方人所作的努力。如果有一天他们引入基督教，那将很有可能是以吸收改编的方式来提升不断发展的中国核心文化。
Lesson8
Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its accoutrements now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs —the location, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or tow years ago. What has happened is that people cannot own up to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive, vulgar. Instead we are treated to fine pharisaical spectacles, which now more than ever seem in ample supply: the revolutionary lawyer quartered in the $250000 Manhattan condominium; the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home; the publisher of radical books who takes his meals in three-star restaurants; the journalist advocating participatory democracy in all phases of life, whose own children are enrolled in private schools. For such people and many more perhaps not so egregious, the proper formulation is, “succeed at all costs but refrain from appearing ambitious.”
当然，人们现在似乎对成功以及其所带来的物质比以前更感兴趣。避暑别墅、欧洲旅行、宝马车——它们的位置、地名以及品牌或许有变化，但这类事物在今天被人渴求的程度不会亚于十年或两年前。现在的情况是人们不能像以前那样轻易地公开地承认自己的梦想，唯恐别人认为自己爱出风头、贪婪、庸俗。相反，我们现在看到了比以往多很多的大量极其伪善的场景：思想激进的律师住在曼哈顿价值250000美元公寓内；美国唯物论批判家拥有南安普顿的避暑别墅；激进书籍的出版商在三星级酒店用餐；倡导人们在人生各个阶段参与民主的记者把自己的子女送进私立学校。对于这类人以及更多的并没有如此过分的人来说，有一条特定的法则“不惜一切代价取得成功，但避免野心外露”。
It may seem an exaggeration to say that ambition is the linchpin of society, holding many of its disparate elements together, but it is not an exaggeration by much. Remove ambition and the essential elements of society seem to fly apart. Ambition, as opposed to mere fantasizing about desires, implies work and discipline to achieve goals, personal and social, of a kind society cannot survive without. Ambition is intimately connected with family, for men and women not only work partly for their families; husbands and wives are often ambitious for each other, but harbor some of their most ardent ambitions for their children. Yet to have a family nowadays-with birth control readily available, and inflation a good economic argument against having children-is nearly an expression of ambition in itself. Finally, though ambition was once the domain chiefly of monarchs and aristocrats, it has in more recent times, increasingly become the domain of the middle classes. Ambition and futurity-a sense of building for tomorrow-are inextricable. Working, saving, planning-these, the daily aspects of ambition-have always been the distinguishing marks of a rising middle class. The attack against ambition is not incidentally an attack on the middle class and what it stands for. Like it or not, the middle class has done much of society’s work in America; and it, the middle class, has from the beginning run on ambition.
说志向把许多根本不同的元素结合在一起，是社会的纽带，这似乎有点夸张。但这种夸张不
算过分。如果没有志向，社会的基本元素似乎会分崩离析。与对愿望单纯的幻想不同的是，志向暗含着为了达到某种个人及社会目标的工作和纪律，没有这些目标，社会就不可能生存。志向与家庭紧密联系在一起，因为，在某种程度上，男男女女不仅仅为家庭工作。通常夫妻因彼此而拥有志向，但却为了孩子而心怀最强烈的志向。因为计划生育容易做到，通货膨胀也是反对生育孩子的有力经济论证，所以今天拥有一个家庭这事本身几乎就是志向的表现。最终，尽管志向曾一度主要是王公贵族的思维范围，但在最近的年代里，它越来越多地变成中产阶级的思维范围。志向和未来——一种创造明天的使命感——是不可分割的。工作、储蓄、计划——这些日常的志向——一直都是正在崛起的中产阶级的重要标志。对志向的抨击不是偶然地对中产阶级及其代表的事物的抨击。不管你是否喜欢，在美国，中产阶级为社会做了大量的工作；中产阶级从一开始就为志向努力奋斗。
It is not difficult to imagine a world shorn of ambition. It would probably be a kinder world: without demands, without abrasions, without disappointments. People would have time for reflection. Such works as they did would not be for themselves but for the collectivity. Competition would never enter in. Conflict would be eliminated, tension become a thing of the past. The stress of creation would be at an end. Art would no longer be troubling, but purely celebratory in its functions. The family would become superfluous as a social unit, with all its former power for bringing about neurosis drained away. Longevity would be increased, for fewer people would die of heart attack of stroke caused by tumultuous endeavor. Anxiety would be extinct. Time would stretch on and on, with ambition long departed from the human heart.
不难想象一个完全失去抱负的世界很可能是一个更加友善的世界：没有强求，没有冲突，没有失望。人们会有时间去自省。他们所做的工作不是为了自己，而是为了集体。竞争永远不会介入，冲突将被消除，紧张将成为过去。创造的压力将结束，艺术也将不再令人烦恼，纯粹只用于庆典。随着过去让人心神疲惫之力的逐渐消逝，家庭作为一个社会单位，将变得多余。由于很少有人会因为纷乱的努力而引发的心脏病或中风死亡，长寿者将增加，焦虑也将消失。时光会继续前行，人们心中的抱负也将随之消失殆尽。
Lesson1
The greatest achievement of human in its long evolution from ancient hominoid ancestor to its present status is the acquisition and accumulation of a vast body of knowledge about itself，the world，and the universe. The products of this knowledge are all those things that, in the aggregate, we call “civilization”, including language, science, literature, art, all the physical mechanisms, instruments ，and structures we use ，and the physical infrastructures on which society relies. Most of us assume that in modern society knowledge of all kinds is continually increasing and the aggregation of new information into the corpus of our social or collective knowledge is steadily reducing the area of ignorance about ourselves ，the world ，and the universe. But continuing reminders of the numerous areas of our present ignorance invite a critical analysis of this assumption.
人类从古代的类人猿祖先发展到现状的及其漫长的过程中的最大成就是获取并积累了大量关于自身、世界和宇宙的知识。总的来说，我们将这种知识的所有产物称之为“文明”，包括语言、科学、文学、艺术，我们所应用的所有物理学、工具、结构，以及社会所以存的物质基础。大多数人认为，随着现代社会各种知识不断增加新信息不断积聚，我们对自身、世界、宇宙的未知正在稳步减少。但是，人类至今对诸多领域的无知使得我们要对这种观点进行批判分析。
Lesson2
Moreover ，before lamenting modularization ，it is necessary to ask ourselves whether we really would prefer to return to the traditional condition of man in which each individual presumably related to the whole personality of a few people rather than to the personality modules of many. Traditional man has been so sentimentalized ，so cloyingly romanticized，that we frequently overlook the consequences of such a return. The very same writers who lament fragmentation also demand freedom—yet overlook the un-freedom of people bound together in totalistic relationship. For any relationship implies mutual demands and expectations. The more intimately involved a relationship，the greater the pressure the parties exert on one another to fulfill these expectations. The tighter and more totalistic the relationship，the more modules，so to speak ，are brought into play，and the more numerous are the demands we make. 此外，我们在惋惜感叹模块化之前有必要自问我们是否真的愿意回归传统，每个人只与少数几个人做全面深入的了解接触而不是与众多的人做有限的接触。传统的人流于感伤，多生浪漫，以至于我们经常忽略其带来的后果。那个哀叹人际破碎的作者同样需要自由，只是他忽略了严格人际关系下人的不自由。人际关系意味着彼此的需求与期望。私交越亲密意味着彼此实现这些期望的压力越大。可以这么说，严格完整模块化的人际关系能够更有效地满足我们更多的需求。
In a modular relationship, the demands are strictly bounded. So long as the shoe salesman performs his rather limited service for us, thereby fulfilling our limited expectations, we do not insist that he believe in our god, or that he be tidy at home, or share our political values, or enjoy the same kind of food or music that we do. We leave him free in all other matters—as he leaves us free to be atheist or Jew, heterosexual or homosexual, john Bircher or communist. This is not true of total relationship and cannot be. To a certain point, fragmentation and freedom go together.
在一个模块化的人际关系中，需求有着严格的界定。比如，只要卖鞋的售货员为我们提供有限的服务并保证满足我们有限的期望，我们并不期望他信奉我们的上帝，或者他在家里衣着整洁，或者持有和我们相同的政治价值观，或者喜爱我们所喜爱的食物与音乐。我们使得他在其它事物上是自由的，正如他不干涉我们是无神论者或犹太教徒、异性恋或同性恋、反对或拥护共产主义。这不是更不可能是人际关系的真实性。在某种程度上，模块化的人际关系与自由相伴而生。
Lesson3
That there are significant differences between modern and traditional cultures is beyond dispute.
A world in which some societies highly modern and others still traditional will obviously be less homogeneous than a world in which all societies are comparably modern. It dose not necessarily follow, however, that societies with modern cultures should be any more similar than are societies with traditional cultures. Only a few hundred years ago all societies were traditional. Was that world any less homogeneous than a future world of universal modernity is likely to be? Probably not. “Ming china was assuredly closer to the France of the V alois, ” Fernand Braudel observes, “than the China of Mao Tse-tung is to the France of the Fifth Republic.” Modern societies have much in common, but they do not necessarily merge into homogeneity. The argument that they do rests on the assumption that modern society must approximate a single type, the western type; that modern civilization is western civilization, and western civilization is modern civilization. This, however, is a false identification. Virtually all scholars of civilization agree that western civilization emerged in the eighth and ninth centuries and developed its distinctive characteristic in the centuries that followed. It did not begin to modernize until the eighteenth century. The West, in short, was Western long before it was modern.
现代文化与传统文化之间存在显著的差异是无可争议的事实。一个同时拥有高度现代化的社会与传统社会的世界明显地比各个社会都同等现代化的世界缺乏相似性。然而，没必要遵循拥有现代文化的社会就应当比拥有传统文化的社会更相似这一结论。只是在几百年前，所有的社会都是传统文化社会。那样一个世界会比将来的全面现代化的世界具有较少的类似吗？答案也许是否定的。Fernand Braudel 研究发现：明朝中国与法国Valois 王朝的相似度比毛泽东时代的中国与第五次共和时期法国的相似度更高。现代社会拥有诸多的共同点，但他们没必要迈向同质化。他们所依据的论据是假设现代社会必须趋同于单一类型，即西方类型；现代文明就是西方文明，西方文明就是现代文明。然而，这是一种错误的认识。事实上，所有的研究人类文明的学者都赞同西方文明始于八九世纪并在接下来的数百年内形成了其独有的特点。直到十八世纪才开始现代化进程。简而言之，西方的西方化历史要比其现代化的历史悠久的多。
Interaction and borrowing between civilizations have always taken place, and with modern means of translation and communication they are much more extensive. Most of the worlds great civilization, however, have existed for at least one millennium and in some cases for several. These civilizations have a demonstrated record of borrowing from other civilizations in ways that enhance their own chances of survival. Chinas absorption of Buddhism from India, scholars agree, failed to produce the “indianization ” of china; it instead caused the sinification of Buddhism. The Chinese adapted Buddhism to their purposes and needs. The Chinese have to date consistently defeated intense western efforts to Christianize them. If at some point they do import Christianity, it is more than likely that it will be absorbed and adapted in such a manner as to strengthen the
continuing core of Chinese culture.
不同文明之间的互动和借鉴从未间断，现代化的翻译和交流手段使其更广泛。世界上伟大的文明大多数都存在了至少一千年或几千年。据史料记载，这些文明均借鉴其它文明以提升自身的生存能力。学者们认为，中国引入吸收了印度的佛教，但并没有使中国印度化，反而使得佛教中国化。中国人将佛教加以调整使其符合他们的需求。中国一贯致力于抵制为使基督教进入中国西方人所作的努力。如果有一天他们引入基督教，那将很有可能是以吸收改编的方式来提升不断发展的中国核心文化。
Lesson8
Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its accoutrements now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs —the location, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or tow years ago. What has happened is that people cannot own up to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive, vulgar. Instead we are treated to fine pharisaical spectacles, which now more than ever seem in ample supply: the revolutionary lawyer quartered in the $250000 Manhattan condominium; the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home; the publisher of radical books who takes his meals in three-star restaurants; the journalist advocating participatory democracy in all phases of life, whose own children are enrolled in private schools. For such people and many more perhaps not so egregious, the proper formulation is, “succeed at all costs but refrain from appearing ambitious.”
当然，人们现在似乎对成功以及其所带来的物质比以前更感兴趣。避暑别墅、欧洲旅行、宝马车——它们的位置、地名以及品牌或许有变化，但这类事物在今天被人渴求的程度不会亚于十年或两年前。现在的情况是人们不能像以前那样轻易地公开地承认自己的梦想，唯恐别人认为自己爱出风头、贪婪、庸俗。相反，我们现在看到了比以往多很多的大量极其伪善的场景：思想激进的律师住在曼哈顿价值250000美元公寓内；美国唯物论批判家拥有南安普顿的避暑别墅；激进书籍的出版商在三星级酒店用餐；倡导人们在人生各个阶段参与民主的记者把自己的子女送进私立学校。对于这类人以及更多的并没有如此过分的人来说，有一条特定的法则“不惜一切代价取得成功，但避免野心外露”。
It may seem an exaggeration to say that ambition is the linchpin of society, holding many of its disparate elements together, but it is not an exaggeration by much. Remove ambition and the essential elements of society seem to fly apart. Ambition, as opposed to mere fantasizing about desires, implies work and discipline to achieve goals, personal and social, of a kind society cannot survive without. Ambition is intimately connected with family, for men and women not only work partly for their families; husbands and wives are often ambitious for each other, but harbor some of their most ardent ambitions for their children. Yet to have a family nowadays-with birth control readily available, and inflation a good economic argument against having children-is nearly an expression of ambition in itself. Finally, though ambition was once the domain chiefly of monarchs and aristocrats, it has in more recent times, increasingly become the domain of the middle classes. Ambition and futurity-a sense of building for tomorrow-are inextricable. Working, saving, planning-these, the daily aspects of ambition-have always been the distinguishing marks of a rising middle class. The attack against ambition is not incidentally an attack on the middle class and what it stands for. Like it or not, the middle class has done much of society’s work in America; and it, the middle class, has from the beginning run on ambition.
说志向把许多根本不同的元素结合在一起，是社会的纽带，这似乎有点夸张。但这种夸张不
算过分。如果没有志向，社会的基本元素似乎会分崩离析。与对愿望单纯的幻想不同的是，志向暗含着为了达到某种个人及社会目标的工作和纪律，没有这些目标，社会就不可能生存。志向与家庭紧密联系在一起，因为，在某种程度上，男男女女不仅仅为家庭工作。通常夫妻因彼此而拥有志向，但却为了孩子而心怀最强烈的志向。因为计划生育容易做到，通货膨胀也是反对生育孩子的有力经济论证，所以今天拥有一个家庭这事本身几乎就是志向的表现。最终，尽管志向曾一度主要是王公贵族的思维范围，但在最近的年代里，它越来越多地变成中产阶级的思维范围。志向和未来——一种创造明天的使命感——是不可分割的。工作、储蓄、计划——这些日常的志向——一直都是正在崛起的中产阶级的重要标志。对志向的抨击不是偶然地对中产阶级及其代表的事物的抨击。不管你是否喜欢，在美国，中产阶级为社会做了大量的工作；中产阶级从一开始就为志向努力奋斗。
It is not difficult to imagine a world shorn of ambition. It would probably be a kinder world: without demands, without abrasions, without disappointments. People would have time for reflection. Such works as they did would not be for themselves but for the collectivity. Competition would never enter in. Conflict would be eliminated, tension become a thing of the past. The stress of creation would be at an end. Art would no longer be troubling, but purely celebratory in its functions. The family would become superfluous as a social unit, with all its former power for bringing about neurosis drained away. Longevity would be increased, for fewer people would die of heart attack of stroke caused by tumultuous endeavor. Anxiety would be extinct. Time would stretch on and on, with ambition long departed from the human heart.
不难想象一个完全失去抱负的世界很可能是一个更加友善的世界：没有强求，没有冲突，没有失望。人们会有时间去自省。他们所做的工作不是为了自己，而是为了集体。竞争永远不会介入，冲突将被消除，紧张将成为过去。创造的压力将结束，艺术也将不再令人烦恼，纯粹只用于庆典。随着过去让人心神疲惫之力的逐渐消逝，家庭作为一个社会单位，将变得多余。由于很少有人会因为纷乱的努力而引发的心脏病或中风死亡，长寿者将增加，焦虑也将消失。时光会继续前行，人们心中的抱负也将随之消失殆尽。