【2016-05-05】 @whigzhou: 任何一位对自己的前途还心怀一丝珍惜的艺术家/文学家，都不会大胆到悍然赞美一种竟然能让普通人的生活也稍许好过一点的东西，无论是大众媒体、大规模制造、迪斯尼、麦当劳、速溶咖啡、真维斯、宜家、易拉罐、塑料袋……那就太市侩了，太庸俗了，太不性感了，赞美它简直是审美声誉的自杀～ @Paul郑褚: 说的都对，但是为什么普通人也跟着装这个逼呢？ @whigzhou: 因为他们想让自己看上去不普通啊，而且尽管动机类似，实际做法还是很不一样 @whigzhou: 粗略说，装器大约分这样几种等级：1）炫耀器：直接告诉穷人你买不起，比如比手指粗的金项链，2）暗器：让新来的尴尬出丑露馅的东西，为用户创造鄙视俗人的机会，比如苹果鼠标，没右键多不方便啊，土了吧， @whigzhou: 3）仁波切器：号称唾弃浮华富贵，回归田园朴素，宣称我们这个才是普通人/穷人本来该用的东西，他们不用只是受了资本家蛊惑，但（除了最蠢的那些之外）其实心里明白，穷人才买不起这个呢，例：素色亚麻七分裤，有机蔬菜， @whigzhou: 4）第四种比较高级，不动声色，表现出对前面三类东西缺乏兴趣，而且绝不谈论，但仔细观察会发现，虽然看似漫不经心，但不知何故他们恰好都避开了让自己看起来庸俗的雷区，就好象在林子里随意漫步却从不湿鞋，‘随便翻翻’的一本书‘恰好’都是你从没听说过的欧洲小国作家 @whigzhou: 被戳到的朋友别着急，纯观察，没有批斗的意思，这是文明发展的几大线索之一，我看挺好，我只是提醒一下，当这些倾向影响到我们的伦理、法律、政策、市场制度时，对背后的心理/文化动力清醒一点，别被蒙到了，你们鄙视塑料袋大可接着鄙视，只要不试图剥夺我们继续用它的自由， @岑原2019: 简直是声誉的自杀说得太严重了，也不是非要装这个逼，主要是没有这个必要、乏味，人人都知的体验，也是省去废话的需要。厕所太方便了，你居然不赞美？ @岑原2019: 这恰恰是人类值得称颂的一种心理，拒绝平庸，亮亮自己的好东西，没什么不好啊 @whigzhou: 没说不好啊，好的狠

Postmodernism Unpeeled 后现代主义又被剥了皮 作者：David Thompson与Stephen Hicks @ 2009-3-22 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：Whig Zhou（@whigzhou） 来源：David Thompson 博客，http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2009/03/postmodernism-unpeeled.html A discussion with Stephen Hicks. 与Stephen Hicks讨论。 “In politicized forms, then, postmodernists will behave like the stereotypical unscrupulous lawyer trying to win the case: truth and justice aren’t the point; instead using any rhetorical tool or trick that works is the point. Sometimes contradictory lines of argument work. Sometimes your audience’s desire to belong to the in-group can be played upon. Sometimes appearing absolutely authoritative works to camouflage a weak case. Sometimes condescension works.” “因此，表现在政治形式上，后现代主义者的行为就像是典型的无良律师，一心想着打赢官司：真理和正义不是关键；相反，使用任何能够成功的修辞工具或策略才是关键。有时候相互矛盾的论证方式管用。有时候你的听众渴望自己属于某个小团体，这可以加以利用。有时候要表现得绝对权威，这有助于掩饰一个案子的虚弱。有时候则是纡尊降贵管用。” Dr Stephen Hicks is Professor of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Centre for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford College, Illinois. He is co-editor with David Kelley of Readings for Logical Analysis (W. W. Norton, 1998), and has published in academic journals as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, and Reader's Digest. His book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault was published in 2004 by Scholargy Publishing and is now in its eighth printing. He is the author and narrator of a DVD documentary entitled Nietzsche and the Nazis, which was published in 2006 by Ockham’s Razor Publishing. Stephen Hicks博士是伊利诺伊斯州罗克福德学院哲学教授、伦理学与企业家精神研究中心执行主任。他曾与David Kelly合作编辑有《逻辑分析读本》（1998），作品发表于众多学术期刊及《华尔街日报》《巴尔的摩太阳报》《读者文摘》等。其著作《解释后现代主义：从卢梭至福柯的怀疑主义与社会主义》于2004年由Scholargy出版社出版，如今已是第八次印刷。他还是题为《尼采与纳粹》的DVD纪录片的作者和解说，该纪录片于2006年由Ockham’s Razor出版社发行。 DT: In an exchange with Ophelia Benson, I mentioned Explaining Postmodernism and suggested one of the book’s main themes is that postmodernism marks a crisis of faith and a retreat from reality among the academic left. Is that a fair, if crude, summary? DT【译注：即David Thompson，下同】：“在与Ophelia Benson的一次交流中，我提到了《解释后现代主义》一书，并提到，此书的一个主题就是后现代主义标志着一场信仰危机以及学院左派对于现实的一种逃避。这种总结算得上公平吗？即使过于直白。 SH: It is striking that the major postmodernists - Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty - are of the far left politically. And it is striking that all four are Philosophy Ph.D.s who reached deeply skeptical conclusions about our ability to come to know reality. So one of my four theses about postmodernism is that it develops from a double crisis - a crisis within philosophy about knowledge and a crisis within left politics about socialism. SH【译注：即Stephen Hicks，下同】很令人震惊的是，主要的后现代主义者——米歇尔·福柯、雅克·德里达、让—弗朗索瓦·利奥塔、理查德·罗蒂——在政治上都是极左。同样令人震惊的是，这四个哲学博士都得出结论，极度怀疑我们认识实在的能力。所以，我所提出的关于后现代主义的四个主题之一是，它发源于一种双重危机——一面是哲学领域中的知识危机，一面是左派政治领域中的社会主义危机。 DT: It seems to me that in its broadest sense postmodernism is as much a rhetorical device as it is a set of theories and political stances. For instance, Slavoj Žižek can dismiss aspects of postmodern theorising while employing much the same manoeuvres in his own writing. Much of what he says is clever in a rhetorical sense, in terms of manoeuvring around a dubious and unproven premise, while being enormously tendentious or simply glib. DT：在我看来，最广义而言，后现代主义既是一种修辞工具，也是一套理论和政治立场。比如，斯拉沃热·齐泽克能够在拒绝后现代理论若干方面的同时将同样的操控策略用于自己的写作中。从操控暧昧不明、未经验证的前提这个角度来看，他所说的很多东西从修辞上看非常聪明，但其内容的倾向性却非常明显或干脆就是耍嘴皮子。 If you don’t accept the premise - say, a tarted-up rehash of “false consciousness” or an antipathy towards capitalism - then what follows is unpersuasive, even absurd. Geoffrey Galt Harpham pointed out that Žižek’s essays often disregard conventional argumentative structures in favour of stylistic effects and bald assertion: 如果你不接受其前提——比如，对“虚假意识”的一种改头换面式的打扮或者对资本主义的反感——那么随之推演而来的就不具说服力，甚至荒谬至极。Geoffrey Galt Harpham曾指出，齐泽克的文章经常无视传统的论证结构，喜欢追求文体效果和不加解释地提出断言： “[E]ven the earnest reader who begins at page one has the constant impression of having opened to a page somewhere in the middle. This sense of an endless middle is achieved by reducing the conventional middle to almost zero. The typical Žižekian unit of discourse - a wittily-titled passage of between five and fifteen pages - begins abruptly with the kind of confident assertion commonly associated with the conclusion; there is no phase of doubt, no pretence of unprejudiced inquiry, only a series of demonstrations, exemplifications, and restatements.” “即便是最为真诚的读者，刚刚打开第一页，也总是会有一种印象，像是自己翻到了该书中部的某一页一样。制造出这种无休止的中部感的，是他将传统上的中部几乎压缩为零的做法。齐泽克一篇典型论文——5到15页的一段文字，题目机智巧妙——开头总是突兀地提出那种充满自信的断言，通常还跟结论混同在一起；没有怀疑的段落，绝不假装自己要做无偏见的探讨，只有一系列展示、举例和重申。” Bold yet unsupported claims are pretty much a signature of Žižek’s output -and of postmodernist writing more generally -and this is tolerated, indeed championed, by his more cultish admirers. What seems to matter is a “provocative” conclusion, at least of a certain kind, not how that conclusion was arrived at or whether it can be justified. 大胆而没有支撑的断言，几乎就是齐泽克作品的标志——也是更一般的后现代主义者作品的标志——而这得到了他那些狂热崇拜者的宽容、实际上是支持。对于他们来说，重要的是“令人振奋的”结论，至少是某种类别的此种结论，而不是如何得出这一结论或它是否可靠。 For instance, we’re told that fundamentalist Islam constitutes a “site of resistance” from which “one can deploy critical doubts about today’s society.” Yet “today’s society” - i.e. Western, liberal, capitalist society – is questioned openly, at length, and as a matter of routine - more so, I’d guess, than any other society in history. However, the societies envisioned by enthusiasts of fundamentalist Islam don’t seem likely to foster similar reflection or dissent; nor do they seem likely to equip their inhabitants with the tools of such endeavours. Yet these basic considerations don’t delay Žižek in his rush to assert. 比如，我们被告知，伊斯兰原教旨主义构成了一个“反抗地”，从此出发“人们可以对今日社会加以批判性的怀疑”。然而，“今日社会”——即西方，自由资本主义社会——经常公开地、详尽地、司空见惯地遭到质疑——程度超过历史上的任何社会，我想。可是，伊斯兰原教旨主义的狂热分子所设想的社会不太可能鼓励类似的反思或异议；他们也不太可能赋予其居民以从事这种事业的工具。但是，这些基本的考虑并不会耽误齐泽克匆忙提出其断言。 SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities. SH：是的，后现代确实修辞繁复。但修辞是个工具，所以人们可以追问，它是被怎样使用使用的，以及为什么要这样使用。后现代主义者已经拒斥理性，连带着也拒斥了对于证据和一致性的关心。那么，修辞的目的是什么？在后现代实践中，有多种可能的回答。 One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism - you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this - I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation.” Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you - you just let ‘er rip. 一是修辞成为一种主观主义的表现主义——你摆弄语词，期待有啥有意思的东西自己跳出来。德里达经常就像是这样——我把他看作是一个后现代主义的行为艺术家。如果这种路径的基调更为阴郁一些，那就会让人想起Kate Ellis说过的一句话，Ellis是一个同情后现代主义的评论家，她提到过“绝大多数后现代主义中典型的非政治的悲观主义，这种悲观主义认为创作只不过是排泄的一种形式”。不管你体内正在处理、正在搅拌的都是些什么——你只管有屁快放。 The other use of rhetoric is politically-charged persuasion. Pomo rhetoric becomes long on emotionalism, ad hominem, and so on, and it becomes short on logic and evidence. But the point of such rhetoric is effectiveness, not truth. 修辞的另外一种用法是作为一种充满政治意味的劝服。后现代主义修辞富于感情主义、以情动人等等，同时缺乏逻辑和证据。但这类修辞的关键是有效性，而非真实性。 You mention that much pomo political rhetoric is anti-capitalist and champions unlikely causes such as fundamentalist Islam. Here the pomo are taking a page out of Lenin’s and Marcuse’s playbooks. There’s a long-ish story here that I talk about in Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Traditional Marxism said that capitalism would collapse from the inside (the exploited and alienated workers would rise); but when that didn’t happen, Marxists theorized that capitalism had exported its misery to the Third World (Lenin’s idea) or to outcast and marginalized subcultures (Marcuse’s idea). So the new strategy was to cultivate the anti-capitalist resistance in those places. 你提到，众多后现代的政治言说都反对资本主义且支持如伊斯兰原教旨主义之类的无望事业。这是后现代在利用列宁和马尔库塞的一部分剧本。这里有个略微有点长的故事，我在《解释后现代主义》第五章曾谈及：传统的马克思主义提出，资本主义将会从内部瓦解（遭到剥削和异化的工人会站起来）；但这事没有发生，于是马克思主义者就提出一个理论，认为资本主义已经将其不幸输出到了第三世界（列宁的观点）或者输出到了“被排斥者”和被边缘化的亚文化群体中（马尔库塞的观点）。所以，新的策略应是在这些地方培育反对资本主义的抵抗运动。 Like other pomo of this generation, Žižek is an evolving combination of the above. 跟这一代后现代的其他人一样，齐泽克是以上几种情形逐步发展出来的结合。 DT: You say, “The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency,” and I suspect some readers will find this hard to accept. It sounds outlandish. But, as you point out in the book, Lyotard explicitly rejected notions of truth and clarity as being synonymous with “prisons and prohibitions.” DT: 你提到，“后现代主义者已经拒斥理性，连带着也拒斥了对于证据和一致性的关心。”我怀疑有些读者可能觉得这种说法难以接受。听起来很稀奇。但是，正如你在书中指出的，利奥塔明确拒绝了真理和清晰这两个概念，认为它们与“监狱和禁令”是同义词。 Foucault shared these sentiments, claiming “reason is the ultimate language of madness,” suggesting that nothing should constrain our beliefs and political preferences, not even logic or evidence. Frank Lentricchia, another left-wing theorist, said the postmodern movement “seeks not to find the foundation and conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.” 福柯也持有这种观点，宣称“理性就是疯癫的终极语言”，认为我们的信念和政治倾向不应该受到任何东西的拘束，即便是逻辑或证据的拘束也不行。弗兰克·伦特恰瓦，又一个左翼理论家，曾说后现代运动“并不打算找出真理的基础和条件，而是要通过行使权力来致力于社会改造。” And Stanley Fish, who rushed to defend Social Text after the Sokal hoax, had previously argued that theorising and deconstruction “relieves me of the obligation to be right … and demands only that I be interesting.” There is a pattern here. 而在“索卡尔恶作剧”【译注：物理学家Alan Sokal曾瞎写一篇充满后现代味道但胡话连篇的论文，成功发表在著名文化研究杂志《社会文本》上，然后将实情公开。】之后匆忙跳出来为《社会文本》杂志辩解的斯坦利·费什，之前则曾争辩说，建立理论和进行解构“将我从保持正确的义务中解放出来……只要求我是有趣的。”这里确实存在一种普遍模式。 SH:It is hard to accept the rejection of reason, especially if you’re outside of academic circles, but it’s no secret inside. You nicely quote some representative statements - it’s also worth noting that the leading pomo thinkers cite Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Existentialists as their forerunners, and the rejection of reason runs deep in those lines of thought too. SH：说他们拒斥理性，这种判断很难接受，特别是如果你身在学术圈以外，但在学术圈内这不是什么秘密。你引用的这几个有代表性的陈述就很精到——同样值得注意的是，后现代思想家中的领军人物经常引尼采、海德格尔和存在主义者为其先驱，在这类思想脉络中，对理性的拒斥也是根深蒂固的。 DT: A while ago, I quoted a chunk of Derrida prose that’s hilarious nonsense. I’ve defied several Derrida enthusiasts to explain what this particular passage means, or might mean if you squint and tilt your head, but so far no-one has managed to tell me. DT：不久前，我曾引用过德里达的一段文章，那就是一段可笑的胡说八道。我拿着它去挑衅过几个德里达粉，让他们解释这段话的意思，或者如果你作眯眼翘首状，那在你的理解中它可能是什么意思，但迄今为止还没有一个人能回答我。 And the essay from which the quote is taken has numerous, equally baffling, paragraphs which could be arranged in almost any order with no perceptible difference. Much of the essay is wilfully incomprehensible, like some Dadaist prank that no-one dares to mention. 而且我引用的这段话所在的文章中到处可见诸如此类的令人困惑的段落，把它们按任何一个次序排列，你都不会看出有什么差别。文章的大部分是刻意写得难以理解，就像是某种达达主义的玩笑，没人敢于提及。 And there seems to be a taboo against even entertaining the possibility that such a thing could happen, and happen quite often, with little if any protest from colleagues and students. It’s unthinkable that such a con could be perpetrated, and maybe that’s why it goes on happening. 似乎还存在一种禁忌，连设想这种事情会发生并会频繁发生且几乎不会遭到同行和学生的抗议都不行。人们根本不会相信这种欺诈竟然能发生，这可能就是它得以发生的原因。 More recently, in a piece about the art world’s reliance on postmodernist rhetoric – what’s often called “art bollocks” - I pointed out that the artist Aliza Shvarts was mouthing opaque gibberish while pretending to be profound. The text she’d written and presented as a key part of her art was clumsy, incoherent and often simply meaningless. It was a kind of verbal flailing and rhetorical camouflage. (It’s difficult to determine exactly how wrong an unintelligible analysis is.) 最近，在一篇讨论艺术界对后现代主义修辞——经常被成为“艺术扯淡”——的依赖的文章中，我指出，艺术家Aliza Shvarts所夸夸其谈的，都是些晦涩的胡扯，她还装作很深刻。她所写的、作为其艺术的关键组成部分的那些文本词不达意、文理不通并且多数全无意义。那就是一种词汇抽搐和修辞伪装。（我们很难确定一则莫名其妙的分析到底有多少错误。） One postmodernist commenter took exception to my criticism - first by accusing me of arguing things I clearly wasn’t arguing, then by saying I was holding “entrenched positions” in which “aesthetic values” (in scare quotes), “scientific reality/clarity” (again, in scare quotes) and my own “reliance on logical consistency” (ditto) were obstacles to comprehension. Specifically, they were obstacles to comprehending Shvarts’ alleged (but oddly unspecified) “arguments of power, control [and] dominance.” The tone was, of course, condescending and self-satisfied. I’m guessing the commenter in question didn’t pause to consider the possibility that one might find pomo bafflegab objectionable precisely because it represents the “power, control [and] dominance” of what amounts to a priestly caste. 有个后现代主义评论家对我的批评提出异议——首先是指责我所争辩的是我明显并未在争辩的事情，接着说我持有“根深蒂固的立场”，且其中的“美学价值”（此处加讽刺引号）、“科学实在/清晰”（再加讽刺引号）及我自己对“逻辑一致性的依赖”（同上符号）都是理解能力的阻碍。特别是，它们阻碍了我理解Shvarts那些据称（但奇怪的是并没有具体指出来）“充满力量、控制及支配力的论证”。这一批评的语调自然是高人一等、自鸣得意。我猜我所说的这个评论家可能都不曾想过，人们之所以觉得后现代黑话难以接受，有可能就是因为它代表了一个相当于祭祀阶级的群体的“权力、控制和支配力”。 SH: A lot of what you’re getting from your various commentators seems like third-raters playing the game, so it’s probably not worth focusing on them - instead of attending to the lessons they’re learning from the leading pomo strategists. SH: 你从针对你的各种不同评论家那里获得的，就像是一群三流玩家在玩游戏，所以他们可能并不值得去关注——不如去注意他们都在学习的那些最重要的后现代战略家的教义。 Another clue is that some postmodernists prefer “neo-pragmatist.” Rorty, Fish, and many of the legal postmodernists sometimes use that label. Pragmatism as a school of thought thinks of knowledge, truth, and certainty as chimerical quests and suggests that we focus our efforts on what works. 另外一条线索是，某些后现代主义者喜爱“新实用主义”。罗蒂、费什和许多法律后现代主义者有时会使用这个标签。实用主义这一思想学派认为知识、真理和确定性都是虚假问题，建议我们把自己的努力集中到真正起作用的东西上来。 In politicized forms, then, postmodernists will behave like the stereotypical unscrupulous lawyer trying to win the case: truth and justice aren’t the point; instead using any rhetorical tool or trick that works is the point. Sometimes contradictory lines of argument work. Sometimes your audience’s desire to belong to the in-group can be played upon. Sometimes appearing absolutely authoritative works to camouflage a weak case. Sometimes condescension works. And so on. 因此，表现在政治形式上，后现代主义者的行为就像是典型的无良律师，一心想着打赢官司：真理和正义不是关键；相反，使用任何能够成功的修辞工具或策略才是关键。有时候，相互矛盾的论证方式管用。有时候你的听众渴望自己属于某个小团体，这可以加以利用。有时候要表现得绝对权威，这有助于掩饰一个案子的虚弱。有时候则是纡尊降贵管用。如此等等。 DT: I suppose, then, “neo-pragmatism” is often a euphemism for “bad faith,” or “rhetorical authoritarianism”? DT: 因此，我想，“新实用主义”通常就是“毫无诚信”或“修辞独断”的委婉语吗？ SH: Not necessarily. Some neo-pragmatists take the milder position that truth is hard, our data always partial, and the world always evolving - and so rather than obsessing about truth we should be flexible and focus on working hypotheses and workable results. Susan Haack comes to mind here. That doesn’t have to be bad faith or authoritarianism. But other neo-pragmatists do push hard on the skepticism-about-truth button, as Rorty does, and that takes them into postmodernism. SH: 并不必然如此。某些新实用主义者采取更为温和的立场，认为真理很难，我们的资料总是不全，而且世界总在变化——所以我们不能执迷于真理，而应更加灵活，专注于可行的假说和可用的结果。这里，我想到的就是苏珊·哈克。这就不一定会是毫无诚信或独断主义。但其他新实用主义者，如罗蒂做的那样，确实会使劲地按住这个“对真理持怀疑主义”的按钮不放，而这就会令其陷入后现代主义。 DT: It’s interesting to contrast Explaining Postmodernism with some of the material you criticise. The writing is always clear, even when you’re dealing with quite detailed and knotty concepts or loaded obscurantism. I suppose some pomo theorists might consider your prose “unproblematic,” which is a pejorative, apparently. DT: 如果把《解释后现代主义》一书与你所批评的一些材料对比一下，就很有意思。你的写作总是清晰的，即便是在处理非常微妙且棘手的概念或者意味深长的玄虚隐晦时也是如此。我想，有些后现代理论家会认为你的文章“没有疑问”，而且显然用的是贬义。 Writing in Innovations of Antiquity, Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden dismissed “transparent prose” as “the approved mode of expression for the society and values of the newly empowered middle class.” In the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Mas’ud Zavarzadeh denounced “unproblematic prose and clarity of presentation” as “the conceptual tools of conservatism.” 在《古代之创新》中，Ralph Hexter和Daniel Selden将“清晰的文章”拒斥为“得到社会以及刚刚获得权力的中产阶级的价值观批准的表达方式”。在《美学与艺术批评杂志》上，Mas’ud Zavarzadeh贬斥“没有疑问的文章和清晰的表述”，认为它们都是“保守主义的概念工具”。 The rejection of transparency as “conservative” is particularly odd, since transparency makes a claim amenable to broad critical enquiry, and thus public correction. Without transparency, what do we have? A private language shared only by likeminded peers, in which one is “free” to assert, largely unopposed? Is that really a marker of progress? 将清晰拒斥为“保守”，这一点特别怪异，因为清晰性使得一个断言能够经受广泛的批判性考察，因而能够得到公众的纠正。没有清晰性，我们还有什么？只有一种私人语言，由几个想法相近的同类来分享，人们可以“自由”断言，基本上说不会遭遇反驳？这真是进步的标志吗？ In the essay linked above, Keith Windschuttle names various academics and educational advisors who claim that truth and reality are “authoritarian weapons” and that disinterested scholarship is merely “an ideological position” favoured by “traditionalists and the political right.” 在上面链接的文章中【译注：大概是指前面提到的Ralph Hexter和Daniel Selden的文章，标题是Truth and Tribalism，不过链接已失效】，Keith Windschuttle列举了许多学术界和教育顾问，他们声称真理和实在都是“专断工具”，而不偏不倚的学术研究则仅仅是“传统主义者和政治右派”所喜爱的“一种意识形态立场”。 This presents a rather handy excuse to dismiss political dissent without having to engage with inconvenient arguments. Presumably, if you prefer arguments that are comprehensible and open to scrutiny, this signals some reactionary tendency and deep moral failing. 这就给人提供了一个顺手的借口，无需通过麻烦的论证，就可以无视政治上的异议。他们假定，如果你偏爱那些能为人所理解、允许人审查的论证，这就标志着某种反动的倾向和深层的道德过失。 On the other hand, if you sneer at such bourgeois trifles, you’re radical, clever and very, very sexy. (Though I wonder what mathematicians and structural engineers would make of this claim. Is there such a thing as a rightwing calculation, or a rightwing bridge - I mean a bridge that’s rightwing because it doesn’t promptly collapse?) 另一方面，如果你会嘲弄这类资产阶级的细枝末节，那你就是激进的、聪明的，而且特别特别性感。（尽管我很想知道数学家和结构工程师会如何看待这一断言。是否存在一种叫做右翼计算的东西？或者是否存在右翼桥梁——我指的是那种因为不会立即倒塌而成其为右翼的桥梁？） SH: There’s that line from Nietzsche about obscurantists - they muddy the waters to make them appear deep. SH: 这里有尼采论故弄玄虚者的一句话——他们把水搅浑，以使自己看上去深沉。 But there is a deeper point about form following function, or in this case rhetorical style matching the content of one’s beliefs. The function of language is to express one’s thoughts. If you think truth is possible, then you work hard to understand the world clearly and completely. 但是，形式服从功能——或者在我们当前讨论的问题中即修辞风格对应个人信念内容——还有一层更深的意思。语言的功能就是表达人的思想。如果你认为真理是可能的，那你就会努力争取去清晰、完整地理解世界。 But if you doubt that truth is possible, that has psycho-epistemological consequences: you come to believe that the world is at best fuzzy and your mind incapable of grasping it - you come to believe deep down that all is fractured and disjointed - and your writing will tend to the fuzzy, the fractured, and the disjointed. And in consequence you will come to be suspicious of clarity in others. Clarity, from this perspective, must be an over-simplifying. 但如果你怀疑真理的可能性，那就会引发一些心理-认识论上的后果：你会开始相信，世界最多就是朦胧模糊的，而你的心智无力理解它——你内心深处会相信一切都是破碎的、脱节的——而你的写作就会倾向于模糊、破碎、脱节。结果就是你会开始怀疑他人写作的清晰性。在这种视角看来，清晰必然就是一种过分简化。 And there is a cheap rhetorical variant as well: if the data and the arguments, when presented clearly, are going against you, muddying the waters gives you some breathing room, so to speak. 当然，也存在一种粗劣的修辞形式：如果清晰表述的资料和论证都与你的观点相左，这时把水搅浑一些，可以说，就能给你留点可以呼吸的空间。 DT: How was the book received by defenders of the faith? Was there any serious attempt at refutation by those whose views you criticise? DT: 这种信仰的捍卫者们是如何看待你的书的？在其观点被你批评过的人中，是否有人真诚地尝试过反驳你？ SH: It’s been well received and reviewed by realist liberals, conservatives, and libertarian intellectuals. From postmodernists, I have received only a few email denunciations. SH：在现实主义的自由派、保守派和自由意志论知识分子那里，我的书都得到了很好的反响和评论。至于后现代主义者，我只收到过几封谴责性的电邮。 DT: One of the recurrent themes here is the self-inflicted disrepute of large parts of academia. Whether it’s the spread of political lockstep and the consequent intolerance and extremism, or hucksterism and incompetence (and those who champion it), or student “activists” who regurgitate postmodernist clichés while enacting their dreary psychodramas. It seems to me that many of these things are related to the subject of your book. Whether viewed as a set of claims, as a political movement or as a rhetorical device, how would you describe the general fallout of postmodernism? DT：此处，一个反复出现的论题就是学术界很大一部分人自己给自己造成的声名狼藉。这既表现为政治上的因循守旧及随之而来的不宽容与极端主义，也包括自吹自擂与颟顸无能，还有拾人牙慧的学生“活动分子”，在出演那些做梦一样的心理剧时总是重复后现代主义的陈词滥调。在我看来，许多此类事情都跟你书中的主题有关。不管后现代主义被看做一套主张，还是一种政治运动，还是一种修辞工具，请问你会如何描述其一般后果？ SH: In the shorter term, postmodernism has caused an impoverishment of much of the academic humanities, both in the quality of the work being done and the civility of the debates.The sciences have been less affected and are relatively healthy. The social sciences are mixed. SH: 短期来看，后现代主义已经导致了众多人文学科的贫乏，不管是说既有成果的质量，还是说学术讨论的礼节。自然科学受影响较小，相对来说更加健康。社会科学居中。 I am optimistic, though, for a couple of reasons. One is that pomo was able to entrench itself in the second half of the twentieth century in large part because first-rate intellectuals were mostly dismissive of it and focused on their own projects. But over the last ten years, after pomo’s excesses became blatant, there has been a vigorous counter-attack and pomo is now on the defensive. 不过，我还是个乐观主义者，理由有好几个。首先是，后现代之所以能在20世纪下半叶变得根深蒂固，很大一部分原因在于一流的知识分子大多不屑于理它，而是专注于他们自己的工作。但过去十年间，在后现代过分猖獗之后，已经出现了一轮强有力的反击，现在后现代已处于守势。 Another reason for optimism is that, as a species of skepticism, pomo is ultimately empty and becomes boring. Eventually intellectually-alert individuals get tired of the same old lines and move on. It is one thing, as the pomo can do well, to critique other theories and tear them down. But that merely clears the field for the next new and intriguing theory and for the next generation of energetic young intellectuals. 另一个保持乐观的原因是，作为怀疑主义的一个类别，后现代最终来说空洞无聊。最终来看，对于智识非常敏感的个体将会厌烦一模一样的陈旧言辞，就会另寻出路。批评其他理论并把他们推翻，这方面后现代可以做得很好，但这只是事情的一个方面。它做到的仅仅是清理了场面，留待下一个新的、有意思的理论出现，留待下一代充满活力的年轻知识分子。 So while the postmodernism has had its generation or two, I think we’re ready for the next new thing - a strong, fresh, and positive approach to the big issues, one that of course takes into account the critical weapons the pomo have used well over the last while. 所以，尽管后现代主义占据了一代或两代人，我想我们已为下一个新事物做好了准备——一种探讨宏大问题的强劲、新鲜、积极的路径，这种路径当然会将后现代在上一阶段中充分使用过的批判武器考虑在内。 It’s a big and interesting world out there. Let the best arguments prevail. 前面是一个无比广阔而有趣的天地。让最好的论证遍布其中吧。 Update: Over at The Augean Stables, Richard Landes has some interesting commentary on the above. Well worth reading. 更新：在The Augean Stables上，Richard Landes对上述内容提出了一些有趣评论，值得一读。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Testing ancient human hearing via fossilized ear bones 利用耳骨化石测量古人听力 作者：Rolf Quam @ 2015-9-26 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：Whig Zhou（@whigzhou） 来源：The Conversation，https://theconversation.com/testing-ancient-human-hearing-via-fossilized-ear-bones-47973 How did the world sound to our ancient human relatives two million years ago? 整个世界在我们200万年前的人族亲戚听来是个什么样子？ While we obviously don’t have any sound recordings or written records from anywhere near that long ago, we do have one clue: the fossilized bones from inside their ears. The internal anatomy of the ear influences its hearing abilities. 显然，我们并没有那么久以前留下来的录音资料或书面记录，但我们确实拥有一条线索：古人耳内的骨头化石。耳朵的内部构造能够影响其听觉能力。 Using CT scans and careful virtual reconstructions, my international colleagues and I think we’ve demonstrated how our very ancient ancestors heard the world. And this isn’t just an academic enterprise; hearing abilities are closely tied with verbal communication. 经CT扫描并精心进行虚拟重构之后，我和一些国际同僚认为，我们已经展示出了远古先人是如何听到这个世界的。这可不仅仅是一项学术事业，因为听觉能力与口头交流是密切相关的。 By figuring out when certain hearing capacities emerged during our evolutionary history, we might be able to shed some light on when spoken language started to evolve. That’s one of the most hotly debated questions in paleoanthropology, since many researchers consider the capacity for spoken language a defining human feature. 通过估计特定听觉能力在人类进化史上何时出现，我们就可能对口头语言何时开始进化有所了解。这是古人类学目前争论最为火热的问题之一，因为许多研究者认为口语能力是一项用来定义人类的特征。 Human hearing is unique among primates 人类听觉在灵长类中非常独特 We modern human beings have better hearing across a wider range of frequencies than most other primates, including chimpanzees, our closest living relative. Generally, we’re able to hear sounds very well between 1.0-6.0 kHz, a range that includes many of the sounds emitted during spoken language. Most of the vowels fall below about 2.0 kHz, while the higher frequencies mainly contain consonants. 与绝大多数灵长动物（包括与我们血缘最近的近亲黑猩猩）相比，现代人在一个更大的频率区间内拥有更好的听力。一般来说，我们能够很好地听清1.0-6.0千赫之间的声音，口语交流时发出的许多声音就处于这一区间内。绝大多数元音大概落在2.0千赫以下，更高的频率则主要包含辅音。 Thanks to testing of their hearing in the lab, we know that chimpanzees and most other primates aren’t as sensitive in that same range. Chimpanzee hearing – like most other primates who also live in Africa, including baboons – shows a loss in sensitivity between 1.0-4.0 kHz. In contrast, human beings maintain good hearing throughout this frequency range. 基于实验室的听力测量，我们知道黑猩猩和绝大多数其他灵长动物对于上述频率区间并没有这么敏感。黑猩猩的听力在1.0-4.0千赫区间内丧失了敏感性，其他绝大多数生活于非洲的灵长动物也是如此，包括狒狒。人类与之不同，在这一频率区间内仍然能有很好的听力。 We’re interested in finding out when this human hearing pattern first emerged during our evolutionary history. In particular, if we could find a similar pattern of good hearing between 1.0-6.0 kHz in a fossil human species, then we could make an argument that language was present. 我们的兴趣是想要找出人类的这种听觉模式在进化史上最早出现于何时。特别是，如果我们能从某个人类化石上面找到在1.0-6.0千赫之间拥有良好听力这种类似模式，那么我们就可以论证说语言已经存在。 Testing the hearing of a long-gone individual 测量远古人类的听力 To study hearing using fossils, we measure a large number of dimensions of the ancient ears – including the length of the ear canal, the size of the ear drum and so on – using virtual reconstructions of the fragile skulls on the computer. Then we input all these data into a computer model. 使用化石来测量听力，我们需要在电脑上对易碎的头骨进行虚拟重构，然后测量古人耳朵的许许多多指标，包括耳道长度、耳膜大小等等。然后我们将所有这些数据都输入一个电脑模型之中。 Published previously in the bioengineering literature, the model predicts how a person hears based on his ear anatomy. It studies the capacity of the ear as a receiver of a signal, similar to an antenna. The results tell us how efficiently the ear transmits sound energy from the environment to the brain. 这个模型此前已经在生物工程文献中发表，能够根据一个人的耳朵构造预测其听力。它研究了耳朵作为与天线类似的信号接收器的能力，其结果能告诉我们耳朵将周围环境中的声能传输到大脑的效率。 We first tested the model on chimpanzee skulls, and got results similar to those of researchers who tested chimpanzee hearing in the lab. Since we know the model accurately predicts how humans hear and how chimpanzees hear, it should provide reliable results for our fossil human ancestors as well. 我们在黑猩猩头骨上面检验了这个模型，得到的结果与研究人员在实验室得到的黑猩猩听力相似。因此，我们知道这个模型能够准确预测人类听力和黑猩猩听力，所以将它应用于古人化石上面，也应该能够为我们提供可靠的结论。 What do the fossils tell us? 化石告诉了我们什么？ Previously, we studied the hearing abilities in several fossil hominin individuals from the site of the Sima de los Huesos (Pit of the Bones) in northern Spain. These fossils are about 430,000 years old, and anthropologists consider them to represent ancestors of the later Neanderthals. Based on ear bone measurements we took, the computer model calculated that hearing abilities in the Sima hominins were nearly identical to living humans in showing a broad region of good hearing. 此前，我们已经研究过西班牙北部“胡瑟裂谷”（西班牙语意为“骨坑”）遗址的几个古人类化石的听觉能力。这些化石大概是43万年前的，人类学家认为他们代表了晚期尼安德特人的祖先。基于我们所进行的耳骨测量，电脑模型计算出“裂谷”古人类的听觉能力与现存人类的几近相同，都在很大范围内表现出良好听力。 In our current study published in Science Advances, we worked with much earlier hominin individuals, representing the species Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus. These fossils were excavated at the sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans in South Africa, and likely date to around two million years ago. 在发表于《科学进展》上的最新研究中，我们研究了更为远古的古人类，即非洲南猿和傍人粗壮种。这些化石是在南非的斯特克方藤和斯沃特兰斯遗址发掘出来的，很可能存活于约200万年以前。 Auditory sensitivity between 0.5-5.0 kHz for chimpanzees, humans and the early hominins. Points higher on the curve indicate greater auditory sensitivity. (A) Region of maximum sensitivity. The early hominins are shifted toward slightly higher frequencies compared with chimpanzees. (B) Hearing results. The early hominins are more sensitive than either chimpanzees or humans up to around 3 kHz. Above around 3.5 kHz, the early hominins resemble chimpanzees more closely in showing a drop-off in sensitivity. 黑猩猩、人类和早期古人类在0.5-5.0千赫之间的听觉敏感度。曲线中更高的点代表更高的听觉敏感度。（A）代表敏感度最高区间。与黑猩猩相比，早期古人类的对应区间向更高频率略有偏移。（B）代表听力结果。在约3千赫之前，早期古人类的敏感度既高于黑猩猩，也高于人类。在高于3.5千赫的区间，早期古人类更接近黑猩猩，表现出敏感度的下降。 When we measured their ear structures and modeled their hearing, we found they had a hearing pattern that was more similar to a chimpanzee – but slightly modified in the human direction. In fact, these early hominins showed better hearing than either chimpanzees or modern humans from about 1.0-3.0 kHz, and the region of best hearing was shifted toward slightly higher frequencies compared with chimpanzees. 在测量了他们的耳朵构造并用模型计算了其听力以后，我们发现他们的听觉模式更接近于黑猩猩，但朝人类的方向略有修正。事实上，在1.0-3.0千赫区间，这些早期古人类的听力比黑猩猩或现代人的都要好。而且与黑猩猩相比，他们的最佳听力区间向高频率方向略有偏移。 It turns out this auditory pattern may have been a particular advantage for living on the savanna. We know A. africanus and and P. robustus regularly occupied the savanna, since as much as half of their diet was made up of resources found in open environments, based on measurements of isotopes in their teeth. 原来，对于稀树大草原上的生活而言，这种听力模式可能别有优势。我们知道，非洲南猿和傍人粗壮种经常会生活在稀树大草原上，因为他们的食谱有一半来自于开阔环境中才能找到的资源，而这是对他们牙齿中的同位素进行测量后发现的。 In more open environments, sound waves don’t travel as far as they do in the rain forest canopy. Sound signals tends to fade out sooner, and short-range communication is favored on the savanna. The hearing pattern of these early hominins – greater sensitivity than humans or chimpanzees to frequencies between 1.0-3.0 kHz and maximum sensitivity at slightly higher frequencies than in chimps – that would work well in these conditions. 在更为开阔的环境中，声波传播不到热带雨林密林中那么远。声音信号消逝更快，因此在稀树大草原上短程交流更受喜爱。在这种环境中，这些早期古人类的听觉模式（在1.0-3.0千赫的频率区间中比黑猩猩或现代人更敏感，且敏感度最高区间的对应频率比黑猩猩要稍高一些）相当适用。 From hearing to talking 从听到说 A. africanus and P. robustus had hearing abilities similar to a chimpanzee, but with some slight differences in the direction of humans. 非洲南猿和傍人粗壮种的听觉能力与黑猩猩近似，同时向人类的方向略有偏差。 There is a general consensus among anthropologists that the small brain size and ape-like cranial anatomy and vocal tract in these early hominins indicates they likely did not have the capacity for language. 人类学家中存在一个普遍共识：这些早期古人类的大脑尺寸较小、颅骨构造和声道更像猿，表明他们很可能并不具备语言能力。 My colleagues and I aren’t arguing that these early hominins had language, with its implications of symbolic content. They certainly could communicate vocally, though. All primates do, and many species regularly emit a variety of vocalizations including grunts, screams, howls and so on. 我和同僚并不是争论说这些早期古人类拥有语言，因为语言包含有符号性内容这层意思。但是，他们肯定能够进行口头交流。所有灵长动物都能做到这一点，而且许多物种还能经常性地发出各种不同的声音，包括咕噜、尖叫、咆哮等等。 But these South African fossils have given us another hearing data point as we try to puzzle out the emergence of language. Two million years ago, it looks like they didn’t have language. But 430,000 years ago, it looks like the Sima de los Huesos hominins did. We suspect that sometime between these early South African forms and the later more human-like forms from the Sima, language emerged. Now we just need to narrow that window. 但在我们尝试解答语言起源的难题时，南非的这些化石给我们提供了另外一组听力数据论点。200万年前，他们似乎还没有语言。但43万年前，似乎“胡瑟裂谷”的古人类已经拥有语言了。我们估计，大概在这些早期南非种和更晚的更像人类的“裂谷”种之间的某个时候，语言就出现了。现在，我们只需要把这个窗口期进一步缩短。 We hope to continue this kind of work on hearing patterns in different groups of ancient hominins from various places and time periods. The discovery of a new hominin species, Homo naledi, announced just a couple of weeks ago from a different site in South Africa, underscores how much there is left to uncover. 我们希望把这项工作继续做下去，研究来自不同地区和时期的不同古人类群体的听觉模式。仅在数周之前，南非另外一个遗址又宣布发现了一种新的古人类物种，即纳勒迪人。这一发现凸显了我们还有多少事情需要去发现。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Lenin’s Ghost: How Did Marxist Professors Create a New Wave of Political Leaders? 列宁的幽灵：马克思主义学者是如何培养出新一拨政治领袖的？ 作者：Mihail Neamtu @ 2016-1-12 译者：小册子（@昵称被抢的小册子） 校对：慕白（@李凤阳他说） 来源：Law & Liberty，http://www.libertylawsite.org/2016/01/22/lenins-ghost-how-did-marxist-professors-create-a-new-wave-of-political-leaders/ Europe has by no means recovered from its crisis. The new wave of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East has worsened the economic forecast. The economies of the Eurozone, with a collective growth rate of under 1.5 percent in 2015, are almost stagnant. Gone are the days of the German economic miracle. Nowadays, nearly 4.5 million young persons under 25 are unemployed in the EU-28 — a staggering figure, to which Chancellor Merkel just added an extra million refugees. Particularly in the Mediterranean countries, youth unemployment is at very high levels: 47.9 percent in Greece, 47.7 percent in Spain and 39.8 percent in Italy. 欧洲还远未从危机中恢复过来，来自非洲、亚洲和中东的新一波移民令经济预测更加悲观。欧元区的经济发展几近停滞，其2015年整体增长率不足1.5%。德国创造经济奇迹的时期早已远去，如今欧盟28国25岁以下年轻人的失业人数接近4500万，令人瞠目结舌，而德国总理默克尔还刚刚再往上面增加了100万难民。年轻人的失业率在地中海沿岸国家尤其居高不下：希腊为47.9%，西班牙为47.7%，意大利则为39.8%。 Confronted with this bleak picture, politicians, journalists, religious leaders, and public intellectuals all search for an explanation. Why is the European dream failing so many young people? How long will the economic recovery last? Will the EU be able to cope with another massive crash of the financial international system? 面对这般凄惨景况，政治家、记者、宗教领袖以及公共知识分子都在寻找个中原因。为什么欧洲梦会让如此多的年轻人无法企及？经济复苏还能维持多久？欧盟有没有能力应对另一次国际金融系统崩溃的巨大冲击？ While experts ponder such questions, legions of university students face the grim, day-to-day reality. Still in their thirties, they cannot leave their parents’ homes. It would be hard to find university graduates from Thessalonica or Malaga with bank savings or with enough funds to allow them to establish a family of their own. Many rely directly on social benefits, while switching from one low-paid job to another. In the public square, the notion of individual responsibility has become unfashionable. Angry crowds demonstrating in Athens, Madrid, or Bucharest call for ever new governmental solutions. 专家们在思考这些问题，而众多大学生则日复一复地面对残酷现实。他们已经三十多岁，但仍未能脱离父母独立生活。在萨洛尼卡和马拉加的大学毕业生当中，极少人有存款或其他财务来源足以让他们组建自己的家庭。他们当中很多人不停地辗转于不同的低薪工作，转工期间仅能依靠社会救济过活。“个人责任”的观念在社会上不再那么时髦了，雅典、马德里和布加勒斯特都有愤怒的群众游行示威，要求政府提供更新的解决方案。 In this atmosphere, both far Right parties and far Left political platforms have been mounting radical proposals. Populism is on the rise, in the form of nationalism, or revolutionary Marxism, or in some cases a strange mix of the two—as can be seen in the “Red-Brown-White” coalition that constitutes Vladimir Putin’s motley political base. Odd as it may seem, the two extremes can, as with the far-Left Syriza and the Independent Greeks (ANEL), a new Rightwing party, march together shoulder to shoulder. 在这种氛围下，无论极右政党还是极左政治联盟都不停地提出激进的建议。民粹主义正在升温，表现形式有民族主义，有宣扬革命的马克思主义，也有两者的奇特组合——例如普京混杂政权基础中的“红-棕-白”政治联盟【译注：在俄罗斯的政治语境中，红色代表社会主义和共产主义，棕色代表极端民族主义，白色代表君主政体】。虽然看起来很古怪，但是位处两个对立极端的势力（正如希腊的激进左翼联盟(Syriza)和新右翼政党独立希腊人(ANEL)那样）却可以并肩前行。 The present essay will examine the Left side of the ledger to see what intellectual and cultural forces account for the resurgence of Left radicalism in various European countries. My claim is that old-school Marxists in Western academia have managed to produce a new class of revolutionary politicians, who are currently challenging the foundations of the Western capitalist order. 本文将研究政治光谱中的左翼，以寻找极左激进思潮在欧洲各国重新抬头背后的思想与文化推力。我的看法是，西方学术界中老派的马克思主义者已经培养出了新一批的革命政客，而这些政客正在对西方资本主义秩序的根基提出挑战。 We have, for example, the British Labor Party’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn, an anti-NATO politician and welfare devotee. He has called for a friendlier approach to Putin’s Russia. (In accord with the above-noted trend, this puts him in line with Rightwing populists in his country, of the UKIP Party, and Marine Le Pen of the National Front in France.) 例如，英国工党的新党魁科尔宾就是一个反北约的政客，也是福利主义的狂热信徒。他还呼吁以友善的态度对待普京治下的俄罗斯（在前文所述的趋势之下，科尔宾凭着他的这一主张，与英国独立党的右翼民粹主义者，以及法国民族阵线的马琳•勒庞，成为同道中人）。 In Spain, there has emerged Podemos, a Leftwing movement that ran candidates for the general elections under the motto Libertad, igualdad, y fraternidad, and that late last year won 20.65 percent of the national vote, vaulting to the position of third largest political organization in the country.A 37-year-old political science professor named Pablo Manuel Iglesias Turrión is the leader of Podemos, which means “We Can”—an echo of Barack Obama’s “Yes, We Can.” 而西班牙则冒出了一个叫“我们可以”的左翼团体，他们派出代表以“自由、平等、博爱”的口号参加大选，并在去年年底赢得全国20.65%的选票，一跃成为全国第三大政治组织。“我们可以”的领袖，是一个名叫伊格莱西亚斯的37岁政治学教授。“我们可以”这个名字，呼应了奥巴马的竞选口号“是的，我们可以”。 Iglesias, an admirer of the Bolshevik Revolution, was a member of the Spanish Communist Party until 1999. In 2014, Comrade Iglesias was elected to the European Parliament as a member of his new party. Its growth in the last election came after it gathered in representatives of Izquierda Anticapitalista, an organization that includes some Trotskyites and Gramscians. (Sample press release from that group: “Toward a Democratic Disruption and an End to Austerity”). 伊格莱西亚斯对布尔什维克革命心怀敬佩，他自己在1999年之前也是西班牙共产党员。2014年，伊格莱西亚斯同志以其新政党【译注：即“我们可以”】成员的身份，成为欧洲议会的议员。在去年的大选中冒升之前，“我们可以”吸收了政治组织“左翼反资本主义”的代表，而该组织网罗的是一些托派和葛兰西学派的人。（该组织对外发表的范文之一：“迈向民主之崩溃与紧缩政策之终结”。） Podemos takes pride in presenting youthful faces to the Spanish electorate, and advocates of liberation theology (in the person of Teresa Forcades, “the radical Catalan nun on a mission,” as London’s Guardian newspaper called her). In the land of Don Quixote, Pope Francis’ sympathy for the Bolivarian economic model did make a lasting impression. “我们可以”让年轻人更多地参与政治，让他们成为解放神学倡导者（例如被伦敦《卫报》称之为“肩负使命的加泰罗尼亚激进修女”的特蕾莎•福加德斯），并以此为傲。在这片诞生了堂吉诃德的土地上，教宗方济各对玻利维亚经济模式的同情的确令人经久不忘。 In fact among former leaders of Podemos, one counts Juan Carlos Monedero, an advisor to the late Hugo Chávez. Incidentally, Hugo Chávez and his successor in Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, have sponsored Spain’s Leftwing parties and associations in the same explicit manner that President Putin has channeled Russian rubles toward his political puppets from Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. 实际上，“我们可以”的前领袖之一胡安•卡洛斯•莫内德罗就在委内瑞拉总统查韦斯执政后期担任其顾问。顺便说一句，查韦斯和他的继任人尼古拉斯•马杜罗都毫不掩饰地为西班牙左翼的政党和组织提供资助，与普京总统向他在乌克兰、摩尔多瓦和格鲁吉亚的傀儡政权输送卢布同出一辙。 The European Left, in short, is very much alive and kicking. From Britain, Greece, and Spain to the Die Linke party in Germany, the heirs of Marx show a remarkable efflorescence, resembling the Greek mythological Hydra endowed with multiple serpentine heads, despite its one and only reptilian body. We may ask ourselves who the future Heracles will be, slaying the beast with the humor of Winston Churchill and the manly determination of Mrs. Thatcher… 简而言之，欧洲的左翼势力仍生机勃勃。从英国、希腊、西班牙，到德国的左翼党，马克思的继承人向世人展现了他们的欣欣向荣，一如希腊神话中的九头蛇，尽管只有一副羸弱的身躯，却生出许多个蛇头。我们也许可以问问自己，谁将成为未来的赫拉克勒斯，以丘吉尔的幽默和撒切尔夫人的铁腕，手刃这头怪兽。 Why are the ghosts of Marxism haunting the political life of Europe? Mainly because neither the structural evils of communist ideology nor its perpetrators in the former Soviet bloc have  experienced a proper Nurnberg-style scrutiny. After the Second World War, the dismantling of the Nazi network in Germany created the proper context for the carrying out of the Marshall Plan. 为何马克思主义在欧洲政坛阴魂不散？这主要是因为，无论是共产主义意识形态在体制上的恶性，还是前苏维埃统治集团中的恶徒，都没有经历过一场纽伦堡审判式的彻底清算。二战之后，纳粹主义机体在德国土崩瓦解，为实行马歇尔计划提供了适当条件。 After 1989, the EU’s expansion toward former Socialist republics did not require a similar political lustration. To this day, most of the societal and economic disasters produced by the communist experiment remain largely unknown to the general public from the Western European countries, particularly those not yet born at the time of the 1989 revolutions or who were young at the time 1989年之后，欧盟向前社会主义国家扩张，却并没有要求在政治体制上进行类似的清理。时至今日，共产主义实验在社会制度和经济上所造成的重大灾难，大多仍不为西欧普通民众所知，尤其是那些在1989年还没出生——或当时还很年轻——的民众。 It was widely expected that these revolutions would put Leftist academics, or at least most of them, out of business. Their voices were certainly muted for a time, but that time has expired. Rejecting the notion of public penance, old Marxist professors have resumed their project, and carried on with their negation of historical facts. By spinning their simplistic understanding of the relationship between labor and capital, Marxist ideologues in the North-Atlantic hemisphere have hatched a new generation—one that seeks, and in many cases finds, electoral validation. 人们曾普遍预期，在经历了那些革命之后，就算不是全部，起码绝大部分的左翼学者不会再有市场。他们的确销声匿迹了一段时间，然而这段时间已经过去了。那些老派马克思主义学者又开始重操旧业，他们仍然拒绝接受公开忏悔的理念，继续否定历史事实。基于对劳动力与资本两者间关系的粗浅理解，北大西洋区的马克思主义追随者们牵强附会地虚构编造，孵化出了新一代——他们寻求通过参选得到承认，有好些已经获得成功。 Just as the young Barack Obama absorbed Frank Marshall Davis’ worldview in the 1970s, so too have European elites imbibed the vapors of the Maoist philosopher Alain Badiou in Paris, the late historian Eric Hobsbawm in London, cultural critic Slavoj Žižek in Ljubljana, or the Hungarian writer G.M. Tamás in Budapest. Such Marxist professors are responsible, indeed, for the birth of a new generation of historically ignorant opinion-makers in Europe. 和巴拉克•奥巴马年轻时吸收了1970年代弗兰克•马歇尔•戴维斯的世界观一样，欧洲精英阶层也受到了马克思主义学者影响，当中有巴黎的毛主义哲学家阿兰•巴迪欧，伦敦的当代历史学家艾瑞克•霍布斯鮑姆，卢布尔雅那的文化评论家斯拉沃热•齐泽克，以及布达佩斯的匈牙利作家贾斯伯•米克罗斯•塔马斯。欧洲出现了对历史愚昧无知的新一代意见领袖，这些马克思主义学者对此难辞其咎。 The economic crisis of late 2008 proved to be a good moment for high-brow academics and social justice street activists. They came together with the dream of rekindling the May 1968 movement against the bourgeois, middle-class establishment in France. Alienated youth flooded social media with Marxist jingles about American imperialism, the existence of banks and mortgages, the privatization of state assets, and the hierarchical structures of traditional family (depicted as sexist and homophobic). 2008年末爆发的经济危机，成了撮合高高在上的学术界和追求社会公义的街头行动家的大好时机。他们梦想着重燃法国1968年5月反资产阶级风暴之火，走到了一起。离群索居的年轻人在社交媒体大肆张贴马克思主义的宣传短曲，攻击美帝国主义，反对银行与抵押贷款、国有资产私有化以及传统家庭等级制度（认为这是性别歧视和恐同的表现）。 Day and night during—and since—the Great Recession, on television and radio programs, at public rallies, and throughout academic colloquia, utopians recycle the mantras of “equality,” “identity politics,” “prejudice,” and “discrimination.” At times, the fresh young European Marxists may speak more eloquently than the worn-out Bernie Sanders does in the Democratic Party’s primaries. However, this lyrical exaltation of Marxism brings nothing new in terms of understanding economic cycles or the way out of poverty. 自2008年经济大衰退开始，不切实际的空想家们无论在电视和电台节目、公众集会，还是学术界的研讨会上，都日以继夜地把“平等”“身份政治”“偏见”和“ 歧视”等概念像咒语一样翻来覆去地念诵。有时候，年轻的欧洲马克思主义者说起话来，比疲惫的桑德斯在民主党党内初选的演说还要滔滔不绝。然而，无论听起来多么激动人心，马克思主义仍然不能为研究经济规律和摆脱贫穷带来任何新东西。 Podemos and Syriza won their respective elections by vaguely promising the voters another future—a distant reality in which decisions about individual happiness would be made through a Rousseau-styled “collective deliberation.” How would poverty be eliminated? Through cooperatives, we are told, which would be less profit-driven than the “neoliberal enterprises” but which would benefit from a state-controlled redistribution of wealth. “我们可以”和激进左翼联盟通过含糊其辞地承诺选民“另一个”未来，赢得了西班牙和希腊的大选。而在这个遥远的未来中，有关个人幸福的问题则需要通过卢梭式的“集体研究”来决定。该怎样消灭贫穷呢？据说可以通过合作社，因为合作社不像“新自由主义企业”那样唯利是图，还可以从国家控制下的财富再分配中获益。 The call to ideological warfare from Podemos (be it in the form of political correctness, student strikes, militias on campuses, or voluntary sit-ins) flirts with the image of a cosmic deliverance from the “hegemonic powers” of capitalism. The relationship between the individual and the crowd is construed erotically. Comrade Iglesias’ speeches set the stage for a quasi-spiritual, if not mystical, interpretation of the revolutionary endeavor. “我们可以”所宣扬的意识形态斗争（无论是以讲求政治正确、学生罢课、校园民兵组织，还是自愿静坐的形式）引发了全球摆脱资本主义霸权这一遐想。个人与集体的关系被描绘得很诱人。伊格莱西亚斯同志的演讲令人容易对革命行动产生类似宗教般的，甚至神秘的理解。 The Leftist revolutionaries accuse “the agents of laissez-faire capitalism” of having created a new class of underpaid employees. They depict students, workers, and trade unionists as innocent victims of a vast conspiracy set up by the owners of multinational companies. In response to the selfish individualism of the Right, the new Marxists celebrate the collectivist frenzy of anti-bourgeois demonstrators. By singing the litany of “fairness,” they forget the importance of moral virtue, human character, and individual responsibility. They avoid addressing the psychological dimension of behavioral traits such as laziness, low-esteem, or procrastination. 左翼革命家们谴责“自由放任的资本主义代理人”制造了新的受剥削阶层，他们认为跨国公司股东之间互相勾结，而学生、工人、工会会员则是这一巨大阴谋的无辜受害者。针对右翼利己的个人主义，新马克思主义者为反资产阶级示威者的集体主义狂热唱赞歌。在喋喋不休地歌颂“公正”的时候，他们忘却了道德伦理、人类本性与个人责任的重要性，而且对诸如懒惰、缺乏自尊和拖延等行为特征的心理因素避而不谈。 Professor Claude Karnoouh (who taught Marxist sociology at a prominent university in the central Romanian region of Transylvania) argues that free markets produce social disasters by destroying neighborhoods and towns. He nowhere takes into account the creative nature of capitalist disruptions, so powerfully defended by Joseph Schumpeter and strikingly visible in the recent replacement of old postal offices by email (or in the mass-production of electronic tablets and the rapid decline of desktop computers). 在位于罗马尼亚中部特兰西瓦尼亚地区某知名大学教授马克思主义社会学的克劳德•卡努教授认为，自由市场摧毁了社区和小城镇，制造了社会灾难。但他完全没有考虑到资本主义式破坏的创造性本质，而这一点已经得到了约瑟夫•熊彼特强有力的论证，并且在近年来电子邮件取代传统邮局（或者平板电脑盛行和桌面电脑式微）的范例中得到清晰的体现。 The Marxist revolutionaries of 21st century Europe ignore the subtle contrivances of human motivation and organizational behavior, which typically make people leave behind the poor conditions of their ancestors, acquire new skills, and transcend the national barriers in search for a better life. 那些针对人类动机和组织行为的微妙设置，能够驱使人们挣脱先辈的困境，学习新的技能，超越国家壁垒，以求改善生活，而二十一世纪欧洲的马克思主义革命家忽略了这一点。 Also based on false assumptions is Podemos’ rhetoric against corruption. It underestimates the welfare state’s role in diminishing individual freedom and economic opportunity for young Spaniards and young people everywhere. In search of the heroic proletariat, Professor Iglesias is still obsessed with the class struggle and the victory of workers through larger trade unions and more frequent strikes. He ignores that every individual is paid for the skills, and for the needs, that he or she brings to the marketplace. “我们可以”针对贪污腐败的激烈言辞，也建基于错误假设之上，他们低估了福利制度对西班牙乃至世界各地的年轻人的个体自由和经济发展的抑制作用。怀着对英雄无产阶级的向往，伊格莱西亚斯教授仍然沉迷于阶级斗争，渴望工人阶级通过更大规模的工会和更频繁的示威来获得胜利。每个人的薪水都是由其在市场上展现出来的技能和对这种技能的需求决定的，但他完全无视这一点。 The leaders of Podemos and Syriza are blind to the differences between an Anglo American approach to economic competition (as a cure to favoritism) and a South American (but of course not uniquely South American) support for state monopoly. Rampant corruption stems not only from the ills of human nature (“the greed of the Wall Street party,” as Iglesias puts it). Corruption is the result of poor institutional arrangements: volatile property rights, overregulation, laws preventing the free association of individuals, rigged contracts pushed by central governments, as well as high taxes for small businesses. It is corruption that kills the natural instinct for entrepreneurship, individual freedom, personal growth, and economic development. 英语美洲鼓励经济竞争（以避免偏袒徇私），南美洲（当然也不仅限于南美洲）支持国家垄断，但“我们可以”和激进左翼联盟的领袖对两者间的差异却视而不见。猖獗的贪污腐败行为不仅仅源于人性中之恶（伊格莱西亚斯谓之为“华尔街派对中的贪婪”），也源于糟糕的制度安排：产权缺乏保障、过度监管、法律限制自由结社、中央政府非法操纵合同，以及对小企业高额征税。正是贪污腐败扼杀了与生俱来的创业精神、个体自由、个人成长与经济发展。 Speaking of poverty and wealth, the Jacobins haven’t managed to create a single socialist success story. No one in contemporary Cuba, Laos, or North Korea goes to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner.” Except for the privileged nomenklatura and the party apparatchiks, ordinary people from socialist countries have never experienced the coexistence of these leisurely activities. 说到贫穷与财富，雅各宾派并没能创造出社会主义的成功案例，一个都没有。在当代的古巴、老挝或者朝鲜，都没有人能够“上午打猎，下午捕鱼，晚上喂牛，晚饭后搞批判”【编注：语出马克思《德意志意识形态》（1845）第9页】。除了拥有特权的某些阶层和党员，社会主义国家的平民百姓从未过上这种悠闲生活。 Why should we believe that Syriza or Podemos will unchain millions of unemployed people through the shameless rescue of Lenin? In recent times, countries run by radical socialist governments have made no significant contribution to the flourishing of scientific research or to the groundbreaking technological innovations which have spread across the world. 我们为什么要相信，“我们可以”和激进左翼联盟搬出列宁的那一套，就能解救数以百万计的失业人口呢？在近代社会，科学研究百花齐放，科技创新突破惠及全球，但激进社会主义政权领导的国家从未对此做出过任何重大贡献。 Neither Communist China nor authoritarian Russia can boast impressive advances in the field of medical science. Such achievements still crown the healthcare systems of the free world. From its very first political application in real time and real history, Marxist ideology has been a painful failure of astonishing proportions. 无论是共产主义中国，还是威权主义俄国，都没能在医学研究领域取得引以为豪的突破进展。那些令人瞩目的成就，仍然出自自由国度的医疗系统。从其历史上第一次付诸政治实践开始，马克思主义意识形态带来的从来都是极其惨痛的失败。 What about the scientific claims made by Karl Marx (1818–1883)? As Dr. Paul Aligică from George Mason University once put it, Marxist economists currently employ epistemic tools that resemble the phlogiston theory used by the 17th century physicists. Das Kapital can explain the wealth and the poverty of nations with the same measure of clarity that Johann Joachim Becher’s (1635–1682) alchemist views of combustion help us understand a Ferrari engine. 那么马克思在科学方面的论断又是否有过什么贡献呢？正如乔治梅森大学的保罗•阿里吉卡博士曾经说的那样，马克思主义经济学家如今使用的认知工具，类似于17世纪物理学家使用的燃素理论。用《资本论》来解释国家的财富和贫穷，和以约翰•约钦姆•贝歇尔（1635-1682年）炼金术的燃烧理论来研究法拉利引擎，效度不相伯仲。 A century and half since the Communist Manifesto was published, the entire scientific scaffolding of Marxism has fallen to pieces. Marx got it all wrong when he spoke about the future developments of the Western society. As a reductionist theory, Marxism today cannot account for the economic transformation of the West. 自《共产党宣言》发表一个半世纪以来，马克思主义的整个科学理论框架已经分崩离析，支离破碎。马克思对西方社会的未来展望，无一应验。作为一种还原主义理论，如今马克思主义完全无法解释西方国家的经济转型。 Let us compare the income and lifestyle of a 19th century worker from a steel factory in Manchester, England with the monthly salary and the spare time enjoyed by a Google employee at the dawn of the third millennium. Would a ship worker from Gdansk in the early 1980s have dreamt of possessing a satellite home television or a mobile phone in his pocket? What is, then, left of all Marxist “prophecies”? 我们不妨将19世纪英国曼彻斯特钢铁厂工人的月薪和生活方式，和21世纪初谷歌员工的月薪与闲暇时间进行对比。1980年代初格但斯克的船坞工人能想象家里装上卫星电视，兜里揣着手机吗？那马克思主义的“预言”还剩下些什么？ Since Marxist doctrine has no scientific grounding, it would seem to follow that its popularity ought to be examined from the perspective of rhetoric, theology, or literary studies. Decades ago, Robert C. Tucker convincingly argued that myth is a central category in the writings of the young Marx. 马克思主义学说没有科学基础，因此要分析它为何盛行，似乎应该从修辞艺术、宗教信仰和文学研究角度入手。数十年前，罗伯特•塔克就已经很有力地论述过，神话是马克思年轻时写作的中心主题。 From time immemorial, people cherished the eschatological promise of a savior (rebranded by Marx as “the proletariat” and by Stalin under the name of “the Party leader”). Since Marxism is neither a serious economic theory nor a rigorous social science, we would understand it better as the secular religion of modernity, which uses a redemptive language for the alienated masses. 自古以来，人们就对承诺拯救万民于水火的救世主心怀向往（马克思将其包装为“无产阶级”，而斯大林则称其为“党的领袖”）。鉴于马克思主义既不是严肃的经济理论，也不是严谨的社会科学，因此要更好地理解这一理论，我们应该将其视作追求现代性的世俗宗教，它运用救赎的语言来面对异化了的普罗大众。 Alain Besançon identified the presence of Gnostic themes in the Marxist narrative of class warfare, while the University of Chicago’s Mircea Eliade has shown the extent to which the historicist myth of a classless society projects the image of a Golden Age into modern times. 阿兰•贝桑松指出，马克思主义对于阶级斗争的叙述中包含了诺斯替派的主张，而芝加哥大学的米尔恰•伊利亚德则指出，消除社会阶级乃历史必然这一迷思，其实很大程度上只是一厢情愿地将希腊的黄金时代投射到现代社会之中。 Traditional societies had foundational stories about charismatic, heroic individuals who fought against an evil enemy and promised a radical, not an incremental, improvement of the human condition. Marxists revolutionaries have taken up this apocalyptic imagery. The new small “c” catholic church is the international socialist movement, which brings to the afflicted world a message of a redeemed humanity. 传统社会总流传着一些英雄故事，这些英雄魅力非凡，勇于对抗恶势力，他们许诺的不是渐进的改良，而是一夜之间改善人们的生活现状。马克思主义革命家宣扬的就是这种末日天启般的景象。这一新的全人类的教会就是国际社会主义运动，他们宣称，要为这个受尽磨难的世界带来人性救赎的福音。 Prime Minister Tsipras (known as the Greek “Che Guevara”) said that “the communist regime . . . at least had humanity at the center of their thinking.” Young and radical politicians such as he do not feel the need to explain the criminal deeds of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. 被称为“希腊的切•格瓦拉”的希腊总理齐普拉斯说，“共产主义政权……起码以人道主义作为核心考量。”像他那样年轻激进的政客们，似乎从不觉得有必要解释1917年布尔什维克革命所犯下的罪行。 Instead of looking at the horrors of the Gulag, the leaders of Syriza and Podemos offer their audience the same toxic and yet mesmerizing incantations that make people forget about the Ukrainian Holodomor or about the Stalinist labor camps of Perm, Volga Canal, and Pitești (the latter experiment being described by Vladimir Tismăneanu in his 2014 book on The Devil in History). 激进左翼联盟和“我们可以”的领袖们也无视古拉格的丑陋和残酷，他们拿催眠咒语来荼毒信众，让他们忘记乌克兰大饥荒，忘记设在彼尔姆、伏尔加运河与皮特什蒂的斯大林式劳改营（弗拉迪米尔•蒂斯马尼努在他2014年出版的《历史中的魔鬼》中对皮特什蒂的实验项目也有所描述）。 When a freely elected leader of a European nation can say that “humanity” was “at the center” of the communist experiment, we must pause and ask ourselves: How can Europe regain the vast amount of moral clarity it has lost since the 1989-1991 period? Will perhaps the foe of the former evil empire make a Reaganite comeback to help Europe find its way? Might we believe that a future President of the United States will call out the new Jacobins? May we hope that future leaders of democratic parties will stop indulging in a shameless nostalgia for Marx and Lenin? 连一个欧洲国家自由选举产生的领导人，都能说出“人道主义”处于共产主义实践的“核心位置”这样的话来，我们必须停下来问问自己：欧洲如何能重新厘清自1989-1991年巨变以来就已经变得模糊的道德观念？过往邪恶帝国的敌人会不会以一个里根式的王者归来，帮助欧洲重回正轨？我们会不会相信美国未来的总统会请新雅各宾派重出江湖？我们可不可以希望未来民主政党的领导人不要再不知廉耻地缅怀马克思和列宁？ It is a matter of historical record that, like the victims of the Shoah, the prisoners of communism underwent unimaginable physical degradation and psychological torture. Who will educate the Prime Minister of Greece and tell him of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s long-lasting witness? Who will enlighten Pablo Iglesias Turrión about the black mass which, in the name of humanity, the KGB proxies organized at Pitești Prison during the late 1950s? Students of theology living under communism were forced to denounce God, to mock Christ, and to blaspheme the name of the Virgin Mary under the burden of extreme beatings and despicable sufferings. 就如同电影《浩劫》中的受害人那样，共产主义的囚徒经受了无法想象的身体摧残和心理折磨，这是铁一般的历史事实。难道没有人教育一下希腊总理，告诉他索尔仁尼琴长期以来所目睹的那些惨况？难道没有人告诉伊格莱西亚斯，1950年代末克格勃特工以人道主义的名义在皮特什蒂监狱组织的黑色弥撒是什么？生活在共产主义国家的神学学生，在酷刑的胁迫之下，要被迫批判上帝，嘲笑耶稣基督，亵渎中伤圣母玛利亚。 Such was the “love” for “humanity” that millions of people witnessed during the 20th century. Such are the untruths that vote-seeking, parliament-leading Marxist revolutionaries want to pour into the minds of ordinary men and women, who may begin their adult life by searching for a better job, but might end their pursuit of happiness by embracing an obsolete and evil ideology. 这些就是数以百万计的民众在20世纪所亲眼目睹的“人道主义”之“爱”，这些也是唯选票是图的马克思主义革命家们想对普通民众灌输的颠倒黑白的谎言。人们原本不过是想在成年后找一份好点的工作，但却可能只因向一种过时而邪恶的意识形态张开怀抱，而令追求幸福的梦想彻底破灭。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Strangled by Roots 根之牵绊 作者：Steven Pinker @ 2007-8-6 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 来源：New Republic，http://www.newrepublic.com/article/77729/strangled-roots The genealogy craze in America. 美国的家谱热。 New technologies often have unforeseeable consequences. Michael Faraday could not have anticipated the rise of the electric guitar and its effects on our culture, nor did the inventors of the laser realize they had laid the ground for a thriving industry of tattoo removal. And it is safe to say that Watson and Crick could not have foreseen a day when an analysis of Oprah Winfrey's DNA would tell her that she was descended from the Kpelle people of the Liberian rainforest. "I feel empowered by this," she said upon hearing the news, overcoming her disappointment that her ancestors were not Zulu warriors. 新科技通常会带来一些意料之外的后果。迈克尔·法拉第不可能会预料到电吉他的兴起及其对我们文化的影响，激光的发明者也不会想到他们会为纹身消除业的繁荣打下基础。可以肯定地说，沃森和克里克【译注：DNA双螺旋结构的发现者。】不可能预见到会有这么一天：对奥普拉·温弗里【译注：美国脱口秀女王。】做个DNA分析，就能告诉她，她是利比里亚热带雨林中的Kpelle人的后代。“我感觉因此而充满力量”，听到这个消息后，她如是说，克服了此前因祖先不是祖鲁战士而产生的失望感。 A fascination with ancestry has long been part of the human condition, from the "begat's" of the Bible to the Roots miniseries and the restoration of Ellis Island. But with the advent of the Internet and genomic technology, genealogy has entered a new age. The past year has served up a series of high-profile revelations. 对家世的痴迷长久以来就是人类状态的一部分，从《圣经》中的“某某生某某”到电视连续剧《根》，再到埃利斯岛的重建【译注：埃利斯岛为纽约一小岛，曾长期用作移民检查站】，皆是其表现。但随着互联网和基因组技术的到来，家系学已经迈入了新的时代。去年就涌现了一系列热度很高的现象。 The news that Barack Obama's ancestors owned slaves was a bit more surprising than the news that Strom Thurmond's did, but it was more surprising still to be told that among the Thurmond family's slaves were the ancestors of Al Sharpton. 比起Strom Thurmond【译注：前美国参议员，支持种族隔离政策】的祖先曾经蓄奴这一消息来说，巴拉克·奥巴马的祖先也曾蓄奴更令人惊讶，但尤为令人惊讶的是，我们得知，Thurmond家族的奴隶中包括有Al Sharpton的祖先。 And Henry Louis Gates Jr., the host of the fascinating PBS series African American Lives, which explored the family trees of six prominent African Americans, was astounded to learn that half of his own ancestry was European, including Irish kinsmen on his father's side and two Jewish women on his mother's. PBS有个非常好看的系列栏目《非裔美国人的生活》，曾探寻过六位杰出非裔美国人的家族树，其主持人Henry Louis Gates Jr.惊讶地发现，他的祖先中有一半是欧洲人，父系这边有爱尔兰亲戚，而母系那边则有两位犹太女性。 Few of us can expect that a search for ancestors will bring us an inheritance, a title, or a coat of arms: the rewards of genealogy are mostly psychological. As Winfrey put it, "Knowing your family history is knowing your worth." The sentiment, though, is dubious--not just on moral grounds but on biological ones. 极少有人会期待通过追寻祖先而获得一份遗产、一个头衔或者一枚盾徽。家谱学的回报主要在于心理方面。正如Winfrey所说的那样，“认识自己的家族史就是认识自己的价值。”然而，这种心理感情很难站住脚——不仅仅从道德层面看是如此，从生物层面看也是如此。 A closer look at the human drive to know one's family tree uncovers a number of tensions between our intuitions of kinship and the facts of kinship. Some of those facts show that the findings of the new genealogy should not have been surprising at all. And others, tacitly appreciated for millennia, have recently been neglected to our peril. 更加仔细地分析一下人类认识自己家族树的冲动，我们就能得知，在我们对于亲缘关系的直觉与事实上的亲缘关系之间存在诸多张力。其中部分事实表明，新家谱学的发现根本不应当令人感到惊奇。而历经千年被人心照不宣地领会的另一些事实，其最近遭遇的忽视则会陷我们于危险之中。 For all its fascination, kinship is a surprisingly neglected topic in the behavioral sciences. A Martian reading a textbook in psychology would get no inkling that human beings treated their relatives any differently from strangers. Many social scientists have gone so far as to claim that kinship is a social construction with no connection to biology. 尽管人们对它痴迷如狂，但令人惊讶的是，亲缘关系在行为科学中一直是个不受关注的题目。如果有个火星人来读读我们的心理学教科书，关于人类对待自己的亲属与对待陌生人会有何不同，他完全不会得到任何线索。许多社会科学家走得如此之远，乃至宣称亲缘关系是一种社会建构，与生物学没有任何关系。 But assuming the creationists are wrong and humans are products of evolution, it would be surprising if our species entirely escaped the powerful forces that shape organisms' behavior toward their kin. Genetics and evolutionary theory predict that the biology of kinship should have biased our thoughts and emotions about relatives in several ways. 但是，假设创世主义者是错的，人类是进化的产物，那么，要说我们这个物种彻底逃脱了那一塑造了有机体对待自己亲属的行为的强大力量，那会很让人意外的。遗传学和进化理论预言，亲缘关系的生物学应当会通过多种方式使得我们对亲属的想法和情感发生偏移。 The first is the simple fact that blood relatives are likely to share genes. To the extent that minds are shaped by genomes, relatives are likely to be of like minds. Close relatives, whether raised together or apart, have been found to be correlated in intelligence, personality, tastes, and vices. The discovery of an ancestor is thus felt to reflect on the descendant, who may feel he has an explanation for the kind of person he is, and who can claim to have a dose of the ancestor's praiseworthy traits. 首先就有一个简单的事实：血亲之间很可能共享基因。就心智由基因组塑造而言，亲属有可能具有相似的心智。我们已经发现，近亲属，无论是一起还是分开成长，会在智力、个性、品味和缺点方面相互关联。因此对祖先的观察，似乎就会反映在其后裔身上，其子孙可能会觉得他找到了他成为某种类型人物的理由，并且也可声称自己具有其祖先身上部分值得赞扬的特征。 A promotional spot for Coca-Cola in African American Lives juxtaposes footage of African Americans with images of traditional Africans and says, "She has her great-great-great-grandmother's eye for adornment. He is fit and agile, like his forefathers." 《非裔美国人的生活》插播过一个可口可乐的促销广告，里面把非裔美国人的镜头和传统非洲人的画面放在一块，说“她和她的曾曾曾祖母对装扮的品味一致。他健壮灵敏，跟他的祖先一样。” The similarities among blood relatives mean that they are likely to share values, and shared values can lead to easy solidarity because of what ecologists call mutualism and economists call positive externalities. A pair of associates with the same interests can benefit each other just by being selfish--always the most painless route to altruism. If two roommates have similar tastes in music, each will benefit the other every time she brings home a new CD, and each has a reason to value the other's well-being. To identify a blood relative, then, is to identify a potential soul mate. Adoptees who track down their biological parents and siblings often report an instant solidarity as they quickly discover shared quirks and passions. 血亲之间的相似性意味着他们有可能共享价值观，而共享价值观使得相互团结更为容易，原因则在于生态学家所说的“互惠共生”和经济学家所称的“正外部性”。一对伙伴，如果利益相同，那么只需做到行为自利就能有益于彼此——而这总是实现利他的最不费力的办法。如果两位室友音乐品味相同，那么任何时候其中任何一位带回一张新CD，都会使另外一位受益，并且每个人都有理由珍视另外一个人的福祉。因此，确定血亲就是确定一位潜在的灵魂伴侣。被收养的人在搜寻到自己的生父生母和兄弟姐妹后，通常会提到一种立即出现的休戚与共之感，因为他们很快就会发觉彼此的癖好和喜爱相似。 A more direct tug of shared genes on family emotions comes from the phenomenon that biologists call inclusive fitness, kin selection, and nepotistic altruism. The overlap of genes among relatives does more than make them similar; it alters the dynamics of natural selection. Over evolutionary time, any gene that predisposed a person to be nice to a relative would have had some chance of helping out a copy of itself inside that relative, and the gene would have been favored by natural selection and entrenched in the genome (as long as the average benefit to the relative, discounted by the probability that the gene is shared, exceeds the average cost to the favor-doer). 共享基因对家族情感的更直接作用来自生物学家所称的“内含适应性”、“亲缘选择”和“亲缘利他”现象。亲属之间基因的重叠不仅仅使得他们相似，而且改变了自然选择的动力机制。在进化过程中，任何基因，如果它会使得一个人倾向于善待亲属，它就有可能帮助到那个亲属身上该基因的复制品，于是这个基因就会受到自然选择的偏爱，使自己在基因组中盘踞下来（只要该亲属的平均得益乘以两人共享该基因的概率后仍高于施以援手者的平均成本）。 A sharing of genes at the genetic level sets the evolutionary stage for feelings of solidarity and affection at the emotional level, and that in turn shapes much of human life. In traditional societies, genetic relatives are more likely to live together, work together, protect each other, and adopt each other's orphaned children, and are less likely to attack, feud with, and kill each other. Even in modern societies, which tend to weaken ties of kinship, studies have shown that the more closely two people are genetically related, the more inclined they are to come to each other's aid, especially in life-or-death situations. 遗传层面上共享基因，为情感层面上的团结感和偏爱感设定了进化平台，而这些情感现象又进一步塑造了人类生活的很大一部分。在传统社会中，血亲更有可能生活、工作在一起，保护彼此，收养彼此的孤儿，相互之间发生攻击、仇争、杀害的可能性更小。即便是在倾向于削弱亲缘关系的现代社会，也有研究表明，两个人在遗传上的关系更为接近，他们就更有可能帮助彼此，特别是在生死存亡之际。 Solidarity between pairs of relatives is further amplified by the fact that they have other relatives in common. My brother and I are close not just because each of us has copies of genes in the other, but because we share a mother, a father, a sister, and nieces and nephews, so our genetic interests are yoked together. 一对亲属之间的团结还会进一步被他们共同拥有其他亲戚这一事实放大。我和我哥哥亲近，这不仅仅是因为我们身上具有彼此部分基因的复制品，而且因为我们共同拥有一个母亲、一个父亲、一个妹妹，还有其他侄子侄女，所以我们的遗传利益是套在一起的。 This triangular altruism also explains why non-blood relatives can feel various degrees of affinity--most dramatically in the case of a husband and wife, whose long-term genetic interests are fused in their children, and to a lesser extent in the case of stepsiblings and in-laws, as long as they are not in zero-sum competition for the common relative's affections or resources. 这种三角利他也能解释为何非血亲也能感受到不同程度的亲和——特别突出表现在夫妻关系这一例子中，其长期遗传利益融于他们的子女身上，相对不那么明显的例子则是继亲和姻亲，只要他们并非处于一种争夺共有亲戚的喜爱或资源的零和竞争之中。 But now comes a crucial bit of arithmetic. In sexually reproducing species, every organism has two parents, and every organism makes up half the parentage of each of its offspring. The result is that as people are separated by more generations, they are related to an exponentially greater number of people, and their genetic relatedness to any of them plummets, also exponentially. 但现在要来点关键性的算术了。在有性繁殖生物中，每一个有机体都有一对父母，且每一个有机体都构成其任一后代之父母中的一半。结果就是，人们之间的代际隔离越远，他们之间存在亲属关系的人口数量以指数方式增加，而与其中任何一个的遗传相关性也以指数方式减少。 Going upward, you have two parents, with whom you share half your genes apiece; four grandparents, with whom you share one-quarter; eight great-grandparents; sixteen great-great-grandparents; and so on. Going downward, if you and your descendants have two children apiece, then you'll have four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and so on. And going sideways, you share half your genes with your sibling, one-eighth with each of your first cousins, one-thirty-second with each of your second cousins, and so on. 向上，你有一对父母，你与之各自分享一半基因；4个祖父母，你与之分享1/4；8个曾祖父母；16个曾曾祖父母；如此等等。向下，如果你和你的后代各自都生两个小孩，你就会有4个孙儿女，8个曾孙儿女，如此等等。向两边，你和你的兄弟姐妹分享一半基因，与每个第一代堂表亲分享1/8基因，与每个第二代堂表亲分享1/32，如此等等。 Exponential functions quickly explode to unimaginable magnitudes or peter out to infinitesimal ones, and the inability of our intuition to keep track of them leads to many paradoxes of kinship. In an old Smothers Brothers routine, Tommy explained why the population explosion is a myth. We have two parents, he noted, and four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on. The further back you go, the more ancestors you have. So, he concluded, "The population isn't growing--it's tapering off!" 指数函数很快就会使量级得到不可想象的爆发，或者使之快速减少为无限之小，我们的直觉将无力掌握，而这会引发关于亲缘关系的许多悖论。在“斯马瑟兄弟”的一个保留老节目中，Tommy解释了为啥人口爆炸只是一个神话。他说，我们有一对父母，4个祖父母，8个曾祖父母，16个曾曾祖父母，如此等等。越往回数，你的祖先就越多。所以，他的结论是，“人口并没有增加，而是在逐渐减少！” Like many of their jokes, this one depends on a subtle truth. If you assume twenty-five years per generation, you can calculate that you had around three billion ancestors at the time of the signing of the Magna Carta, one hundred billion during the Norman invasion, two quintillion at the fall of the Roman Empire, and around 1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 at the birth of Jesus. Needless to say, the Earth did not contain a fraction of that many people in those eras. 跟他们讲的许多笑话一样，这个笑话底下也有一个微妙的真理。如果假定25年为一代，你就能算出，在《大宪章》签署的时候，你的祖先大概有30亿个，在诺曼征服的时候大概有1000亿，而在罗马帝国灭亡时大概有2万亿，而在耶稣诞生时有大概有1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000个。不用说，在那些年代，地球人口还达不到这些数量中的一小部分。 The paradox is resolved by the realization that our ancestors must have married their cousins of various distances and removes, so that vast numbers of the slots in one's family tree are filled by the same individuals. Imagine, in an extreme case, that your parents were first cousins. Then two of your great-grandparents on your mother's side would also be your great-grandparents on your father's side--you would have six great-grandparents instead of eight. 解决这一悖论，需要我们认识到，我们的祖先必定与其各类远房表亲结了婚，使得某人的家庭树上的许多空位是由同一人占据的。想象一个极端的例子，假定你的父母是第一代堂表亲。那么你在你母亲那边的两位曾祖同时也会是你在你父亲这边的曾祖——你的曾祖将是6个而非8个。 Genealogists call this "pedigree collapse": the necessity that as you trace your family tree backward, it will fan out for a number of generations until it begins to encompass most of the people in the available population, whereupon it falls back on itself, coinciding with the original growth of that population. The rate of collapse depends on the size of the pool of potential mates and the average rate and closeness of cousin marriages. 家谱学家称之为“谱系崩塌”，即存在一种必然：随着你向前追溯家庭树，它在数代人之间将呈扇形展开，直到它开始包括整个可及群体的绝大部分，这时它就不再展开，只与那一群体的增长保持一致。崩塌的速度取决于潜在配偶的可用规模以及堂表亲结婚的平均比例和亲缘度。 But the fact that our ancestors never covered the surface of the Earth ten deep shows that medium-distant-cousin marriages must have been the rule rather than the exception over most of human history. This chronic incest, by the way, did not turn our ancestors into the cast of Deliverance. The degree of relatedness, and hence the risk that a harmful recessive gene will meet a copy of itself in a child, falls off a cliff as you move from siblings to first cousins to more distant cousins. 但我们的祖先从未将整个地球表面满满铺上十层这一事实表明，中等亲缘度的堂表亲间婚姻必定曾是人类历史绝大部分时期中的常态而非例外。顺便要说，这种惯常性乱伦并未将我们的祖先变成电影《生死狂澜》中的角色【译注：电影中的四个角色在广袤平和的大自然面前将人性中最丑陋的一面赤裸裸地暴露了出来】。随着通婚对象从兄弟姐妹到第一代堂表亲到更远距离的堂表亲，亲缘程度急剧下降，从而有害的隐形基因能在孩子身上碰到其复制品的风险也随之下降。 The same arithmetic that makes an individual's pedigree collapse onto itself also makes everyone's pedigree collapse into everyone else's. We are all related--not just in the obvious sense that we are all descended from the same population of the first humans, but also because everyone's ancestors mated with everyone else's at many points since that dawn of humanity. There aren't enough ancestors to go around for everyone to have a family tree of his or her own. 使得某个人的谱系崩塌的算术，同样也会使得其他每个人的谱系崩塌到别人的谱系上。我们都是亲戚——这不仅仅是因为，在很显白的意义上，我们都源自于同一初民种群，而且是因为，自人类出现以来的许多不同时点上，每个人的祖先都曾与另一个人的祖先结成配偶。世上就不存在那么多祖先，不足以让每个人都拥有只属于他/她自己的家族树。 So it is a mathematical necessity, not a surprise, that genealogy will turn up strange bedfellows. George W. Bush is a distant cousin of his electoral opponents Al Gore and John Kerry (as well as of Richard Nixon, Ernest Hemingway, Queen Elizabeth, and, through her, every European monarch). Gore, for his part, is a descendant of Charlemagne, and Kerry is a descendant of Mary, Queen of Scots--and presumably also (thanks to his recently-discovered-to-be-Jewish paternal grandfather) of rabbis, cantors, and medieval moneylenders. 所以家谱学会发现许多令人奇怪的关系，这是一种数学必然，而非意外。乔治·W·布什是其竞选对手阿尔·戈尔和约翰·克里（此外还有理查德·尼克松、欧内斯特·海明威、伊丽莎白女王，以及通过女王延伸到每一位欧洲君主）的远房堂表亲。而戈尔自己，则是查理曼大帝的后代，克里则是苏格兰玛丽女王的后代——同时可能还是犹太拉比、唱诗班领唱人和中世纪放债人的后代（因为我们新近发现他的祖先是犹太人）。 This brings up another corollary of the mathematics of kinship: a single mating between people from two ethnic groups results in all their descendants being related to both groups in perpetuity. So even occasional couplings across racial and ethnic lines can entangle family trees, explaining why humans, that peripatetic and sexually omnivorous species, are genetically fairly homogeneous, despite our worldwide distribution. 这就引出了亲缘关系数学的一个必然推论：两个种族群体之间的某一次联姻，就会导致他们的所有后代都永远与两个群体均有亲戚关系。所以，即使跨人种和跨种族边界的配对只是偶然出现，也能将各自的家族树缠到一块，从而能够解释，为什么人类这种四处迁徙、性开放的物种尽管遍布全球，但在基因上则大体上是同质的。 The genealogical ties connecting American presidents and European royalty are not a sign of some vast transatlantic ruling caste. Every noteworthy person is related to other noteworthy people (together, of course, with countless not-so-noteworthy people). One genealogist with too much time on his hands showed that the late Senator Alan Cranston was related to Emily Dickinson, George Plimpton, Margaret Mead, the actress Julie Harris, the Dow family of chemical fame, and Queen Geraldine of Albania. 美国总统与欧洲皇室之间的家谱关系并不表明存在某种庞大的跨大西洋统治阶级。每个名人都跟其他名人有亲戚关系（当然，也都跟无数的非名人有亲戚关系）。某位时间特别充裕的家谱学家曾表明，已故参议员Alan Cranston跟艾米丽·迪金森、George Plimpton、玛格丽特·米德、女演员Julie Harris、化学领域极富盛名的陶氏家族、阿尔巴尼亚的Geraldine王后都有亲戚关系。 Another discovered that Tom Hanks, the star of The Da Vinci Code, has blood ties with many of the historical figures mentioned in the film, including William the Conqueror, Shakespeare, and Henry VIII. Also recently revealed is the fact that Paris Hilton is related to fellow celebrity jailbirds Zsa Zsa Gabor and G. Gordon Liddy. Finding kinship ties among famous people is shooting ducks in a barrel. 另一个则发现，电影《达芬奇密码》的主演汤姆·汉克斯跟影片中提及的许多历史人物都有血缘联系，包括征服者威廉、莎士比亚、亨利八世等。另外，最近有人发现了另一个事实，帕里斯·希尔顿跟另外两位明星囚犯Zsa Zsa Gabor和G. Gordon Liddy有亲戚关系。在名人之间寻找亲缘关系就像是在橡木桶里面射鸭子一样容易。 And before you brag about the talent or courage you share with some illustrious kinsman, remember that the exponential mathematics of relatedness successively halves the number of genes shared by relatives with every link separating them. You share only 3 percent of your genes with your second cousin, and the same proportion with your great-great-great-grandmother. 在夸耀自己分享有某个著名族人的天赋或勇气之前，你最好能记住，亲戚之间每隔开一层关系，亲缘关系数学上的指数关系就会将他们的共有基因数量减半一次。你与你的第二堂表亲只共享3%的基因，跟你的曾曾曾祖母也是如此。 It is important to remember that psychological traits are nowhere near completely heritable in the first place, so the chances that you got your eye for adornment from that ancestor in the gorgeous dashiki are rather small. Do not expect genetically inspired largesse from the rich relative uncovered by your genealogy service, either. A gift from a second cousin would have to result in a thirty-two-fold increase in the number of your surviving descendants compared to his for a desire to bestow it upon you to have evolved. 记住这一条很重要：首先，心理特征是很难完全继承的，因此你得到你那穿着黑人花褂子的祖先所拥有的那种对于装扮的眼光，这样的几率相当小。也不要奢望通过家谱搜寻服务找到的那些富裕亲戚会因为受遗传关系激励而对你慷慨解囊。要使你的一位隔代表亲产生出馈赠于你的欲望，那将要求，送与你的礼物会让你增加的存活后代数目32倍于同一礼物用在他自己身上的效果。 The relentless decimation of resources (both genetic and financial) across generations is the rationale behind the feudal practice of primogeniture, in which all the family estate was bequeathed to the eldest son. And it is why in modern times family fortunes can dissipate so quickly--"three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves," as Nicholas Murray Butler put it. 资源（无论是遗传的还是财务的）在代际之间的持续分解正是长子继承制这种封建做法的背后道理所在，通过长子继承制，家族的财产被遗留给最年长的儿子。这也是为何现代家庭的财产会消散得如此之快——正如Nicholas Murray Butler所说，“富不过三代”。 The geometric decay of relatedness also takes some of the fun out of two of the main tools used by genetic-ancestry services: the analysis of mitochondrial DNA (which is passed from mother to daughter) and of Y-chromosomes (which are passed from father to son). Since they trace ancestry only through the all-female or all-male branch of your family tree, they can identify only one tendril, which diminishes exponentially the further back you go. 亲缘关系的几何衰减也会使得基因血统搜寻服务主要采用的两大工具——即线粒体DNA（从母亲传递给女儿）分析和Y染色体（从父亲传递给儿子）分析——不再那么好玩。因为这两种工具在你的家族树上搜寻血统时，要么是沿纯母系进行，要么是沿纯父系进行，因此它们找到的只是其中一脉，且会随着往回追溯以指数方式削减。 Winfrey's mitochondrial DNA does not show that she is a Kpelle, but rather that she is one-sixty-fourth (or perhaps even 1/128th or 1/256th) Kpelle. Many African Americans who seek their paternal ancestor, and therefore a sense of their African roots, via Y-chromosome analysis discover to their dismay that this root lies in Germany or Scotland. Winfrey的线粒体DNA并没能说明她是Kpelle人，而只能说明她是1/64（或者甚至可能是1/128或1/256）个Kpelle人。许多非裔美国人通过Y染色体分析来寻找他们的父系祖先，从而想获得一种寻根非洲的感觉，但却失望地发现这一根脉位于德国或苏格兰。 If family ties are so biologically tenuous, why does kinship loom so large in the human psyche? One reason is that our intuitions about kinship evolved when we lived in villages and bands whose small size and limited mobility ensured that most marriages were between closer cousins, and hence the genetic overlap between relatives was close enough to be biologically significant. Today we project these feelings of affinity onto relatives who are far more distant--indeed, arbitrarily distant, thanks to the wonders of Internet and DNA genealogy. 如果家族纽带在生物学上如此单薄，为什么亲缘关系会如此巍然地耸立于人类心灵之中？一个原因在于，我们对于亲缘关系的直觉已在村庄和游团生活阶段得以进化，那种群体规模很小且流动性受限，使得多数婚姻都发生于较亲近的表亲之间，从而使得亲戚之间的基因重叠足够稠密，因而在生物学上很显著。今天，我们将这类亲密感投射到与我们血缘距离远得多的亲戚身上——实际上，由于神奇的互联网和DNA家系分析，这种距离可以无限远。 But the other reason is that our sense of kinship is triggered not by relatedness itself, but by the perception of relatedness. After all, when we encounter a possible relative, we generally do not demand a cheek swab and analyze its DNA. Instead we rely on cues that in the evolutionary past tended to correlate with relatedness. 但另一个原因在于，我们的亲缘感并不由亲缘关系本身引发，而是由对亲缘关系的感知引发。别忘了，如果我们碰到一个可能的亲戚，我们通常并不会要求做一个口腔拭子采集【编注：即用棉签刮擦口腔内膜，这是采集个人DNA样本的常用简易方法】并分析其DNA。相反，我们依赖的是在过去的进化过程中指向亲缘关系的线索。 Recent experiments by Debra Lieberman, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides have shown that two kinds of life experience are crucial in triggering family feelings toward siblings (such as doing them favors and being willing to donate a kidney to them). One consists of observing the sibling being cared for by one's mother when it was an infant. The other is having grown up in the same household as the sibling. Debra Lieberman, John Tooby和Leda Cosmides最近所做的实验已经表明，在引发对于兄弟姐妹的家庭感情方面（比如给他们帮忙或者愿意捐赠一个肾给他们之类），有两类生活经历非常关键。一是观察到兄弟姐妹在婴儿时期被自己的母亲照顾。二是与该兄弟姐妹共同成长于同一个家庭。 That is why children adopted at birth can be emotionally close to their parents and siblings despite the lack of genetic overlap: the early close association sets off everyone's kinship detectors, a kind of benign illusion. And because these experiences also trigger repugnance at the thought of having sex with the relative, incest avoidance is not perfectly correlated with biological relatedness. 这就是为何出生时即被收养的儿童，尽管在基因上不存在重叠，但仍能与其父母及兄弟姐妹情感上很亲近的原因所在：早期的亲密关系触发了人们的亲缘关系探测器，这是一种良性的幻觉。并且由于这种经历也同样会引发对于与亲戚发生性关系的念头的恶心感，因此乱伦回避并不与生物亲缘关系完全对应。 Unrelated children who are brought up together (like nursery-mates in kibbutzim) tend to shun each other as sexual partners in adulthood, as if they were siblings. And children who meet a parent or sibling for the first time in adulthood can find him or her sexually attractive, as the novelist Kathryn Harrison recounted in The Kiss, her memoir of a four-year affair with her father. 没有亲缘关系的儿童，如果一起长大（如以色列集体农场中的托儿所同伴），长大后在选择性伴侣时也倾向于避开彼此，好像他们就是兄弟姐妹一样。而假如孩子们长大后才第一次看到父母或兄弟姐妹时，也可能觉得他或她具有性吸引力，这一点小说作家Kathryn Harrison在《罪之吻》这本关于她与其父4年私通经历的回忆录中有所叙述。 When it comes to individual people, then, kinship is in the mind of the beholder. That creates an opening through which manipulators can flood people's kinship sense with cues that mimic the signals of biological relatedness. This kind of mind control is a strong temptation to anyone who wants to foster cohesion among people who are not closely related. 论到个体，那么亲缘关系便取决于观察者的心思。这就为操控者使用模拟生物性亲属信号的线索来淹没冲击人们的亲属感提供了机会。这类精神控制，对于任何想要在并非近缘亲戚的人们之间塑造团结的人来说，是种巨大的诱惑。 Contrary to a shibboleth of the American right, family values do not uphold religion and country; they subvert them. An extended family is a rival coalition to any other group, held together not by an ideology or social contract or common purpose but by brute genetic relatedness. And it is a coalition with an unfair advantage: relatives care for one another more than comrades do. 与美国右派的某一陈腐观念相左，家庭价值观并不支撑宗教和国家；相反，它们起的是破坏作用。一个大家庭，通过直接的遗传相关性而非意识形态或社会契约或共同目标联合在一起，作为一种联合体，就是任何其他团体的竞争者。并且这种联合体具有一种难以平衡的优势：亲戚比同志更加关心彼此。 Religions and political movements thus have to undermine family loyalties. Marxist collectivization and Moonie programming are obvious recent examples, but millennia before them Jesus momentously declared, "A man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." 因此，宗教和政治运动必须破坏家庭忠诚。马克思主义的集体化和文鲜明统一教的计划都是近期的显例，但数千年前耶稣就郑重宣布过：“人的仇敌，就是自己家里的人。爱父母过于爱我的，不配作我的门徒；爱儿女过于爱我的，不配作我的门徒。” Successful coalitions often try to co-opt family feelings by tricking the brain into perceiving the coalition as kin. Though the most potent technique--forcing people to grow up in a single household--is impractical, other kinds of kinship illusion have repeatedly been invented. 成功的联合体通常会尝试吸纳家庭感，方法是哄骗大脑将这种联合体认知为家族。尽管最为有效的技术——即强迫人们在单一家庭中长大——不具备可操作性，但其他许多种类的家族幻觉已被反复发明。 The anthropologist Alan Fiske notes that communal meals are one of the most common bonding rituals the world over, partly because they simulate family experiences, partly because people believe that you are what you eat, and so if you eat the same stuff you are the same stuff. 人类学家Alan Fiske提到，共餐是世界范围内最为常见的团结仪式之一，部分是因为它们能够模拟家庭经历，部分是因为人们相信“你是你所食”，所以如果你们吃的是同样的东西，那么你们就是同样的东西。 Many tribes and coalitions (such as the Mafia) cut their fingers and rub them together to allow their blood to mingle, hence the expression "blood brothers." People also disfigure their bodies--by scarring, tattooing, piercing, hairstyling, and circumcision and other forms of genital mutilation--as if to make the group look like a separate race or species, biologically distinct from other human groups. 许多部落和联合体（如黑手党）的成员会切破手指、相互摩擦以使血液混合，从而产生“歃血兄弟”这种表述。人们也会损毁自己的身体——如制造伤疤、纹身、穿刺、装扮发型、割包皮及以其他形式损毁生殖器，似乎以此来使得该群体看似一个单独的种族或物种，与其他人群具有生物学上的差别。 Language provides another way to co-opt the warm and fuzzy feelings people have toward their relatives. One common trick is the use of kinship metaphors: brethren, brotherhood, fraternity, sisterhood, sorority, the fatherland, the mother country, the family of man, and so on. 对于人们对其亲戚所具有的这种温暖而朦胧的感情，语言提供了另一种吸纳方式。常见的一种花招是使用亲戚暗喻：同胞、手足、兄弟会、姐妹感情、姐妹会、祖国、母国、人类大家庭等等。 These tactics are provably effective: experiments have shown that people are more convinced by a political speech if the speaker engages them with the language of kinship. Myths and ideologies are also commonly put to use. People are told that they are descended from a patriarch or a primeval couple, or that they are connected to a natal land, or that they came into being in the same act of creation, or that they are related to the same totemic animal. 这些策略经证明是有效的：实验已经表明，如果政治演说的演讲者用亲缘关系的语言来吸引听众，人们就会更为信服。神话和意识形态也经常被采用。人们被告知，他们都源自同一个族长或同一对原始夫妻，或者他们都与同一个出生地相联系，或者他们之存在是源于同一个创世行为，或者他们与同一个图腾动物相关。 In large part, the institutions of modernity depend on a dissolution of family ties. It is hard to run an effective organization if you cannot fire the knucklehead brother-in-law forced on you by your wife's family, nor can civil society function if the instruments of government are treated as the spoils of the most powerful local clan. 很大程度上，现代性的制度依赖于家庭纽带的瓦解。如果你没法开除由你老婆的娘家塞给你的笨蛋小舅子，那你就没法有效运营一个组织，或者，如果政府的诸多手段都被视为某个地方强势氏族的战利品，那么政治社会就没法运转。 Public safety is more effectively guaranteed by a disinterested police and court system than by a threat that your male relatives will avenge your murder, and national defense above all depends on the willingness of citizens to neglect the bonds of kinship. 比起血仇威胁（即你的男性亲戚会报复杀害你的凶手）来，一个无私的警察和法院体制能更为有效地保证公共安全，而国防则尤其依赖于公民们忽略亲缘关系纽带的意愿。 In The Godfather: Part II, Sonny Corleone upbraids Michael for his sympathy with the men who enlisted after Pearl Harbor: "They're saps because they risk their lives for strangers. Your country ain't your blood. Remember that." 在《教父2》中，麦克同情珍珠港事件爆发后从军的某人，杉尼·科里昂因而对其加以斥责。“他们都是蠢货，因为他们用自己的生命去冒险，为的却是些陌生人。你的国家不是你的血。记住这个。” In the struggle between society and family, the exponential mathematics of kinship ordinarily works to the advantage of society. As time passes or groups get larger, family trees intertwine, dynasties dissipate, and nepotistic emotions get diluted. 在社会与家庭的厮打中，亲缘关系的指数衰减特性通常有利于社会。随着时间推移或群体扩大，家族树之间会相互缠扰，世家会烟消云散，而裙带感情会逐渐稀释。 But families can defend themselves with a potent tactic: they can graft the twig tips of the family tree together by cousin marriage. If you force your daughter to marry her first cousin, then your son-in-law is your nephew, her father-in-law is your brother, your parents' estate will be worth twice as much per grandchild, and the couple will never have to bicker about which side of the family to visit on holidays. 但家庭可以用一种强大的策略来捍卫自身：他们能够通过堂表亲婚姻来嫁接家族树上的小小树梢。如果你强迫你的女儿嫁给她的第一代堂表亲，那么你的女婿就是你的侄子，她的公公就是你的兄弟，且你父母相对于每个孙子而言的财产价值会翻倍，且这对夫妇永远无需为了假日应该回哪方家里而斗嘴。 For these reasons, clans and dynasties in many cultures encourage first-or second-cousin marriage, tolerating the slightly elevated risk of genetic disease. Not only does cousin marriage amplify the average degree of relatedness among members of the clan, but it enmeshes them in a network of triangular relationships, with kinsmen valuing each other because of their many mutual kin as well as their own relatedness. 出于这些理由，许多文化中的氏族和世家会鼓励第一代或第二代堂表亲婚姻，并容忍遗传病风险的些许提高。堂表亲婚姻不但会放大氏族成员之间的平均亲缘程度，而且还会将氏族成员网罗进一个三角亲戚关系的网络之中，其中的同族会因为他们之间的众多共同亲戚及自己的亲缘关系而彼此关心。 As a result, the extended family, clan, or tribe can emerge as a powerfully cohesive bloc--and one with little common cause with other families, clans, or tribes in the larger polity that comprises them. The anthropologist Nancy Thornhill has shown that the prohibitions against incestuous marriages in most societies are not public-health measures aimed at reducing birth defects but the society's way of fighting back against extended families. 结果，大型的家族、氏族或部落有可能以一种强大的凝聚集团的形式出现——与它们所属的更大政治体中的其他家族、氏族或部落没有什么共同目标。人类学家Nancy Thornhill已经向我们展示，绝大部分社会中的血亲结婚禁令并不是旨在减少生育缺陷的公共健康措施，而是用以压制大型家族的一种方式。 In January 2003, during the buildup to the war in Iraq, the journalist and blogger Steven Sailer published an article in The American Conservative in which he warned readers about a feature of that country that had been ignored in the ongoing debate. As in many traditional Middle Eastern societies, Iraqis tend to marry their cousins. About half of all marriages are consanguineous (including that of Saddam Hussein, who filled many government positions with his relatives from Tikrit). 2003年1月，在为伊拉克战争造势时期，新闻记者和博客作者Steven Sailer在《美国保守派》杂志上发表了一篇文章，提醒读者注意在当时的社会讨论中遭到忽视的一个伊拉克的特征。跟许多传统的中东社会一样，伊拉克人倾向于和堂表亲结婚。大约半数婚姻属于血亲结婚（包括萨达姆·侯赛因的婚姻，他在许多政府职位上塞进了他那些来自提克里特市的亲戚）。 The connection between Iraqis' strong family ties and their tribalism, corruption, and lack of commitment to an overarching nation had long been noted by those familiar with the country. In 1931, King Faisal described his subjects as "devoid of any patriotic idea … connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil; prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatsoever." Sailer presciently suggested that Iraqi family structure and its mismatch with the sensibilities of civil society would frustrate any attempt at democratic nation-building. 熟悉这个国家的人久已注意到，在伊拉克人的强大家庭纽带与他们的部落意识、腐败及他们对涵盖一切的国家缺乏忠诚等现象之间存在关联。1931年，费萨尔国王【译注：即费萨尔一世，哈希姆家族成员，1921-1933年间任伊拉克国王】称其臣民“缺乏任何爱国观念……彼此之间没有共同纽带，响应邪恶；倾向无政府，永远准备着起来反对任何政府。”Sailer预见性地指出，伊拉克的家庭结构及其与公民社会情感不相匹配的现状，将会挫败任何构建民主国家的企图。 Outside a small family circle, the links of kinship are biologically trifling, vulnerable to manipulation, and inimical to modernity. For all that, the almost mystical bond that we feel with those whom we perceive as kin continues to be a potent force in human affairs. It is no small irony that in an age in which technology allows us to indulge these emotions as never before, our political culture systematically misunderstands them. 在小家庭圈子以外，亲缘关系的联系在生物学上极为微弱，易于被操控，并与现代性相抵触。尽管如此，我们对那些我们认为是亲戚的人的感情几乎是一种神秘主义的亲和，它将继续是人类事务中的一种强大力量。在技术已经允许我们旷古未有地纵情于这类感情的时代，我们的政治文化却系统性地对它们存有误会，这真是个相当大的反讽。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Your Ancestors, Your Fate 你的祖先，你的命运 作者：Gregory Clark @ 2014-2-21 翻译：Drunkplane（@Drunkplane-zny） 校对：慕白（@李凤阳他说） 来源：The New York Times，http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/your-fate-thank-your-ancestors/?_r=0 Inequality of income and wealth has risen in America since the 1970s, yet a large-scale research study recently found that social mobility hadn’t changed much during that time. How can that be? 美国社会的收入和财富不平等自1970年代就一直在攀升，然而近期一项大规模调查研究发现，社会的流动性在这段时间内并没有发生大的变化。怎么回事呢？ The study, by researchers at Harvard and Berkeley, tells only part of the story. It may be true that mobility hasn’t slowed — but, more to the point, mobility has always been slow. 这项由哈佛和伯克利大学进行的研究其实只讲述了整个故事的一个方面。是的，流动性也许并没有变得更低，但更关键的是，流动性一直就很低。 When you look across centuries, and at social status broadly measured — not just income and wealth, but also occupation, education and longevity — social mobility is much slower than many of us believe, or want to believe. This is true in Sweden, a social welfare state; England, where industrial capitalism was born; the United States, one of the most heterogeneous societies in history; and India, a fairly new democracy hobbled by the legacy of caste. 当你的目光扫过几个世纪，从更广义的度量标准审视社会地位这个概念——不仅仅是收入和财富，还包括职业、教育水平和寿命——你会发现社会流动性比我们许多人相信的，或希望的要低得多。在许多国家，比如瑞典（一个社会福利国家）、英国（工业资本主义诞生之地）、美国（历史上多样性最丰富的社会之一）、印度（一个受种姓制度拖累的年轻的民主国家），情况皆是如此。 Capitalism has not led to pervasive, rapid mobility. Nor have democratization, mass public education, the decline of nepotism, redistributive taxation, the emancipation of women, or even, as in China, socialist revolution. 资本主义并没有导致广泛的、快速的社会流动。民主化同样没有，大众教育、裙带主义的衰退、以重新分配财富为目的的税收、妇女解放、甚至社会主义改革（比如中国），这些全都没有导致广泛的、快速的社会流动。 To a striking extent, your overall life chances can be predicted not just from your parents’ status but also from your great-great-great-grandparents’. The recent study suggests that 10 percent of variation in income can be predicted based on your parents’ earnings. In contrast, my colleagues and I estimate that 50 to 60 percent of variation in overall status is determined by your lineage. 你整体的人生际遇不仅仅能从你父母的社会地位，也能从你的曾-曾-曾祖父母的社会地位预测出来，准确程度足以令人吃惊。最新的研究表明，收入差异【编注：即偏离基准值的幅度】中，10%可以从你父母的收入得到预测。而我的同事和我估计，就广义的社会地位来讲，其差异幅度的50-60%都由你的血统决定了。 The fortunes of high-status families inexorably fall, and those of low-status families rise, toward the average — what social scientists call “regression to the mean” — but the process can take 10 to 15 generations (300 to 450 years), much longer than most social scientists have estimated in the past. 高门注定跌落，而寒门势必崛起，两者向均值趋同——即社会学家所谓的“均值回归”——这个过程会发生，但需要10至15代人的时间（300至450年），比过去大多数社会学家估计的都要长得多。 We came to these conclusions after examining reams of data on surnames, a surprisingly strong indicator of social status, in eight countries — Chile, China, England, India, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the United States — going back centuries. Across all of them, rare or distinctive surnames associated with elite families many generations ago are still disproportionately represented among today’s elites. 让人始料未及的是，姓氏是社会地位的一个有力指标，我们对其相关数据做了海量的分析，最终得到上述结论。这些数据来自八个国家：智利、中国、英国、印度、日本、韩国、瑞典和美国，并向上追溯了数个世纪。在所有国家中，来自精英家族的罕见或特别的姓氏在许多代之后在精英阶层的名单中仍占有很高比例。 Does this imply that individuals have no control over their life outcomes? No. In modern meritocratic societies, success still depends on individual effort. Our findings suggest, however, that the compulsion to strive, the talent to prosper and the ability to overcome failure are strongly inherited. 这是不是意味着个人对自己的命运毫无掌控之力？不。在现代精英统治的社会里，成功依然依赖个人奋斗。我们的发现只是表明，出人头地的欲望、发家致富的天赋和战胜失败的能力都有很大一部分来自遗传。 We can’t know for certain what the mechanism of that inheritance is, though we know that genetics plays a surprisingly strong role. Alternative explanations that are in vogue — cultural traits, family economic resources, social networks — don’t hold up to scrutiny. 我们无法确切知晓这种遗传的机制是什么，但是我们知道基因在此出人意料地扮演了一个重要角色。其他流行的解释——文化特质、家庭经济资源、人脉——则经不起推敲。 Because our findings run against the intuition that modernity, and in particular capitalism, has eroded the impact of ancestry on a person’s life chances, I need to explain how we arrived at them. 因为我们的发现与这样一种直觉相悖，那就是：现代化，尤其是资本主义，已经弱化了血统对一个人生活际遇的影响。所以我有必要解释下我们是怎么得到这些发现的。 Let’s start with Sweden, which — like Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway — is one of the world’s most equal societies in terms of income. To our surprise, we found that social mobility in Sweden today was no greater than in Britain or the United States today — or even Sweden in the 18th century. 让我们从瑞典开始。同丹麦、芬兰、冰岛和挪威一样，瑞典是世界上收入最平等的国家之一。让我们吃惊的是，我们发现当今瑞典的社会流动性并不比当今英国或是美国更高，甚至也不高于18世纪的瑞典。 Sweden still has a nobility. Those nobles no longer hold de facto political power, but their family records are stored by the Riddarhuset (House of Nobility), a society created in 1626. We estimate that about 56,000 Swedes hold rare surnames associated with the three historic tiers of nobles. (Variations on the names of the unfortunate Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of “Hamlet” are on the list.) 瑞典仍然存在贵族。这些贵族不再享有实际的政治权力，但他们的家族记录则被贵族院（Riddarhuset）——这一创立于1626年的机构存档。据我们估计，大约有56,000位瑞典人的姓氏同历史上的三阶贵族有联系。【译注：瑞典的贵族分为三个等级，领主（lord）、骑士（knight）和士绅（esquire）。】（比如《哈姆雷特》一剧中两个不幸人物的姓氏Rosencrantz和Guildenstern就在其中。） Another elite group are Swedes whose ancestors — a rising educated class of clerics, scholars, merchants — Latinized their surnames in the 17th and 18th centuries (like the father of the botanist Carolus Linnaeus). Adopting elite names was limited by law in Sweden in 1901, so a vast majority of people holding them are descended from prominent families. 另一个精英群体的先辈则是崛起的教士、学者或商人，他们受过教育并于17世纪到18世纪之间把自己的姓氏拉丁化，比如植物学家林奈（Carolus Linnaeus）的父亲。1901年瑞典立法限制采用精英姓氏的行为，所以今天拥有这些姓氏的人大多出身于名门望族。 Given the egalitarian nature of Swedish society, one would expect that people with these elite surnames should be no better off than other Swedes. That isn’t so. In a sample of six Stockholm-area municipalities in 2008, rich and poor, we found that the average taxable income of people with noble names was 44 percent higher than that of people with the common surname Andersson. Those with Latinized names had average taxable incomes 27 percent higher than those named Andersson. 考虑到瑞典社会的平等主义性质，可以预计拥有这些精英姓氏的人不会比其他瑞典人要混得好。事实并非如此。2008年我們所做的一項研究对斯德哥尔摩地区六个贫富不一的自治市进行了取样，研究发现拥有贵族姓氏的人，其应税所得（taxable income）要比拥有Andersson这一普通姓氏的人高44%。那些拥有拉丁化名字的人，其平均应税所得要比Andersson们高27%。 Surnames of titled nobles (counts and barons) are represented in the register of the Swedish Bar Association at six times the rate they occur in the general population (three times the rate, for untitled-noble and Latinized surnames). The same goes for Swedish doctors. 有封号贵族（伯爵或男爵）的姓氏出现在瑞典律师协会登记名单中的比例是他们在全体国民中比例的六倍（对无封号贵族以及拉丁化姓氏，则是3倍）。在瑞典的医生群体当中，情况也是如此。 Among those who completed master’s theses at Uppsala University from 2000 to 2012, Swedes with elite surnames were overrepresented by 60 to 80 percent compared with those with the common surname prefixes Lund- and Berg-. 2000年至2012年，在乌普萨拉大学完成硕士论文的学生中，拥有精英姓氏的瑞典学生的代表率要比有着普通姓名前缀Lund-、Berg-的学生高60%到80%。【译注：文中多次用到“代表率”这个指标，是指被考察群体在某特征人群中的占比除以其在全国人口中的占比，若得数远大于1，则是过度代表（overrepresented），若得数小于1，则是代表不足（underrepresented）。】 Over centuries, there is movement toward the mean, but it is slow. In three of the Royal Academies of Sweden, half of the members from 1740 to 1769 held one of the elite surnames in our sample; by 2010, only 4 percent did — but these surnames were held by just 0.7 percent of all Swedes, so they were still strongly overrepresented. In short, nearly 100 years of social democratic policies in Sweden, while creating a very egalitarian society, have failed to accelerate social mobility. 数世纪以来，均值回归化的趋势一直存在，但速度缓慢。在三所瑞典皇家学院，我们调查的样本人群中有一半在1740年至1769年间拥有一个精英姓氏；到2010年，这个比例仅为4%——但是全体瑞典人中只有0.7%的人拥有这些精英姓氏，所以精英姓氏的高代表率仍显得非常突出。简而言之，瑞典近100年的社会民主化政策虽然创造了一个平等主义的社会，却没能加速社会流动性。 What if we go back even further in time — to medieval England? 如果我们在时间上回溯得更远——到中世纪的英格兰，又会怎样呢？ We estimate that one-tenth of all surnames in contemporary England can be traced to the occupation of a medieval ancestor — names like Smith (the most common surname in the United States, England and Australia), Baker, Butler, Carter, Chamberlain, Cook, Shepherd, Stewart and Wright. Tax records suggest that most surnames became heritable by 1300. 我们估计十分之一的当今英格兰姓氏可以同其中世纪的祖先的职业联系起来——比如Smith（美国、英格兰和澳大利亚最常见的姓氏）、Baker、Butler、Carter、Chamberlain、Cook、Shepherd、Stewart and Wright。【译注：从Smith到Wright，这些姓氏分别对应着铁匠、烤面包师、管家、马车司机、封建领主的大管家、厨师、牧羊人、事务官、修船工。】税赋记录显示，大多数姓氏从1300年前后开始变成了可继承姓氏。 We compared the frequency of these common surnames in the population as a whole against elite groups, as drawn from several sources, including membership rolls at Oxford and Cambridge, dating as far back as 1170, and probate records from 1384 onward. 我们对比了人群中这些普通姓氏和精英姓氏出现的频率，数据来源有几个，包括最早追溯至1170年的牛津与剑桥录取名单，和1384年以来的遗嘱记录。 We found that late medieval England was no less mobile than modern England — contrary to the common assumption of a static feudal order. It took just seven generations for the successful descendants of illiterate village artisans of 1300 to be incorporated fully into the educated elite of 1500 — that is, the frequency of their names in the Oxbridge rolls reached the level around where it is today. By 1620, according to probate records, people with names like Butcher and Baker had nearly as much wealth as people with high-status surnames like Rochester and Radcliffe. 我们发现，中世纪晚期英格兰的社会流动性不比现代英国差——这和静止的封建秩序这一通常印象恰恰相反。公元1300年一个目不识丁的村夫的后代仅仅需要7代便可在1500年成为彻头彻尾的受过良好教育的精英分子——也就是说，他们的姓氏出现在牛津剑桥录取名单上的频率已经和今天差不多了。到1620年，根据遗嘱记录，有着像Butcher和Baker这样平民姓氏的人已经和有着诸如Rochester 和Radcliffe这种高贵姓氏的人一样富有了。 Take Chaucer. A commoner by birth — his name probably comes from the French word for shoemaker — he became a courtier, a diplomat and a member of Parliament, and his great-great-grandson was even briefly considered heir to the throne during the reign of Richard III. 比如著名的英国诗人乔叟（Chaucer），他出生在一个平凡的家庭——他的姓氏可能来自法语，意思是鞋匠——却成为了朝臣、外交家和国会议员。他的曾-曾孙甚至在理查三世时期被短暂地视作王位的继承人。 Of course, mobility, in medieval times as now, worked both ways. Just as Chaucer’s progeny prospered, other previously well-off families declined. The medieval noble surname Cholmondeley was, by the 19th century, held by a good number of farm laborers. 当然，不管是在中世纪还是当代，社会流动性都是双向的。当乔叟的后代们飞黄腾达时，其他曾经辉煌的家族也在衰落。中世纪时的贵族姓氏Cholmondeley到了19世纪，已为许多农民拥有。 In any generation, happy accidents (including extraordinary talent) will produce new high-status families. It is impossible to predict which particular families are likely to experience such boosts. What is predictable is what the path to elite status will look like, and the path back to the mean. Both happen at a very slow pace. 在任何时代，天上掉下的馅饼（包括超凡的天才）都可以成就新的上层家族。预测具体哪些家庭会碰上这样的运气是不可能的。可以预测的是通向精英阶层的道路和重回平民阶级的道路。两个方向的流动都非常缓慢。 For all the creative destruction unleashed by capitalism, the industrial revolution did not accelerate mobility. Looking at 181 rare surnames held by the wealthiest 15 percent of English and Welsh people in the mid-19th century — to be clear, these were not the same elite surnames as in the medieval era — we found that people with these surnames who died between 1999 and 2012 were more than three times as wealthy as the average person. 虽然资本主义带来了种种创造性破坏，但工业革命并没有加速社会流动。举例来说，19世纪中期英格兰和威尔士最富有的15%的人当中，有181个贵族姓氏（当然，这些姓氏与中世纪的精英姓氏已有不同），我们发现，在1999年到2012年间死亡的拥有这些姓氏的人士的财富是普通人的三倍还多。 If your surname is rare, and someone with that surname attended Oxford or Cambridge around 1800, your odds of being enrolled at those universities are nearly four times greater than the average person. This slowness of mobility has persisted despite a vast expansion in public financing for secondary and university education, and the adoption of much more open and meritocratic admissions at both schools. 如果你的姓氏很少见，而且拥有你的姓氏的人在1800年进入了牛津或剑桥，那么你被这两所大学录取的几率就比普通人高三倍。尽管对中学和大学教育的公共开支大幅增加，而且两所大学的录取条件也已变得更加公开、更加以实力为考量，但社会流动缓慢状况仍在继续。 What about America, the self-proclaimed land of opportunity? 那么美国，这个自诩“机会的国度”，其情况又如何呢? We selected a sampling of high- and low-status American surnames. The elite ones were held by descendants of Ivy League alumni who graduated by 1850, exceptionally wealthy people with rare surnames in 1923-24 (when public inspection of income-tax payments was legal) and Ashkenazi Jews. The low-status names were associated with black Americans whose ancestors most likely arrived as slaves, and the descendants of French colonists in North America before 1763. 我们挑选了一些代表社会上层和下层的姓氏作为样本。上层姓氏的拥有者们一部分是1850年毕业的常青藤校友的后代，他们是绝对的富人，在1923-24年拥有少见的姓氏（那时对个人所得税支付情况进行公开检查仍是合法的），另一部分则是阿什肯纳兹犹太人。下层姓氏的拥有者则是美国黑人和1763年前在北美的法国殖民者的后裔，前者的祖先大多以奴隶的身份来到美国。 We chose only surnames closely correlated with these subgroups — for example, Rabinowitz for American Jews, and Washington for black Americans. 我们只选择与上述背景紧密相关的姓氏——比如，Rabinowitz代表了美国犹太人，而Washington则是典型的美国黑人。 We used two indicators of social status: the American Medical Association’s directory of physicians and registries of licensed attorneys, along with their dates of registration, in 25 states, covering 74 percent of the population. 我们采纳了两个衡量社会地位的指标：美国医学协会的内科医生名录和执业律师注册名单，以及注册时间，调查覆盖25个州，涵盖了此类人口的74%。 In the early to mid-20th century we found the expected regression toward the mean for all of these groups, except for Jews and blacks — which reflects the reality of quotas that had barred Jews from many elite schools, and of racial segregation, which was not fully outlawed until the 1960s. 我们发现，在20世纪初期至中叶，所有这些群体都如预想那样出现了均值回归的情形，只有犹太人和黑人除外——这反应了当时的现实状况：一是配额制限制了犹太人进入许多精英学校的机会，二是种族隔离，直到1960年代种族隔离才被全面视作非法。 Starting in the 1970s, Jews began, over all, a decline in social status, while blacks began a corresponding rise, at least as measured by the doctors’ directory. But both trends are very slow. At the current rate, for example, it will be 300 years before Ashkenazi Jews cease to be overrepresented among American doctors, and even 200 years from now the descendants of enslaved African-Americans will still be underrepresented. 从1970年代起，整体而言犹太人的社会地位开始下降，而黑人的社会地位则相应地开始上升，至少医生名录反映出的状况如此。但这两种趋势都十分缓慢。比方说，按现在的速度，得过300年后，阿什肯纳兹犹太人在美国医生群体中的过度代表情形才会消失，甚至200年后，曾为奴隶的非洲裔美国人的后代在医生群体中仍将存在代表不足的情形。 Family names tell you, for better or worse, a lot: The average life span of an American with the typically Jewish surname Katz is 80.2 years, compared with 64.6 years for those with the surname Begay (or Begaye), which is strongly associated with Native Americans. Heberts, whites of New France descent, live on average three years less than Dohertys, whites of Irish descent. 不管是好是坏，姓氏总是包含有大量信息：拥有典型的犹太姓氏Katz的美国人，其平均寿命是80.2岁，与此相对的则是拥有Begay（或是Begaye）这一与美洲土著紧密相关的姓氏的人，他们平均寿命只有64.6岁。新法兰西殖民地的白人后代比爱尔兰白人后代平均少活3年，前者的典型姓名是Hebert，而后者往往姓Doherty。 But to be clear, we found no evidence that certain racial groups innately did better than others. Very high-status groups in America include Ashkenazi Jews, Egyptian Copts, Iranian Muslims, Indian Hindus and Christians, and West Africans. The descendants of French Canadian settlers don’t suffer racial discrimination, but their upward mobility, like that of blacks, has been slow. 不过要澄清的是，我们发现并没有证据显示某些种族天生就比其他种族过得好。在美国拥有非常高社会地位的族群包括阿什肯纳兹犹太人、埃及科普特人、伊朗穆斯林、来自印度的印度教徒和基督徒，以及西非移民。法裔加拿大移民的后裔并没有种族歧视的烦恼，但同黑人一样，他们向社会上层的流动一直很缓慢。 Chen (a common Chinese surname) is of higher status than Churchill. Appiah (a Ghanaian surname) is higher than Olson (or Olsen), a common white surname of average status. Very little information about status can be surmised by the most common American surnames — the top five are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones, which all originated in England — because they are held by a mix of whites and blacks. 姓Chen（常见的华裔姓氏）的比姓Churchill的社会地位高。姓Appiah（常见加纳姓氏）的比姓Olson（或Olsen）的社会地位高，后者是常见的普通白人的姓氏。从美国最常见的姓氏中很难得出关于社会地位的信息（前五位的姓氏是Smith、Johnson、Williams、Brown和Jones，他们都源自英格兰），因为这些人中有白人也有黑人。 Our findings were replicated in Chile, India, Japan, South Korea and, surprisingly, China, which stands out as a demonstration of the resilience of status — even after a Communist revolution nearly unparalleled in its ferocity, class hatred and mass displacement. 我们的发现在智利、印度、日本、韩国和中国都得到了印证。在中国的惊人发现向我们清晰地展示了社会地位的难以撼动，即便是在一场共产主义革命之后（其残暴程度、阶级仇恨的强度和人口迁移规模前所未有），情形仍是如此。 Hundreds of thousands of relatively prosperous mainland Chinese fled to Taiwan with the Nationalists in the late 1940s. Under Communist agrarian reform, as much as 43 percent of all land was seized and redistributed. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 saw purges of scholars and other former elites and “class enemies.” 1940年代末期，数百万大陆居民随国民党逃到台湾，他们都是相对富裕的中国人。中共的土地革命夺取了43%的土地并将其重新分配。1966年至1976年的文化大革命对学者、其他前社会精英分子以及“阶级敌人”进行了大清洗。 In China, there are only about 4,000 surnames; the 100 most common are held by nearly 85 percent of the population. Yet we were able to identify 13 rare surnames that were exceptionally overrepresented among successful candidates in imperial examinations in the 19th century. Remarkably, holders of these 13 surnames are disproportionately found now among professors and students at elite universities, government officials, and heads of corporate boards. Social mobility in the Communist era has accelerated, but by very little. Mao failed. 在中国，总共只有大约4,000种姓氏，其中最常见的100个占了85%的人口。不过我们仍选出了13种罕见姓氏，拥有这些姓氏的人在19世纪的科举考试成功者中的过度代表情形十分突出。在今天，这13个姓氏的拥有者在教授、名牌大学的学生、政府官员和公司高管中的占比也较高。在共产主义的时代，中国的社会流动性曾得到提升，但十分微弱。毛泽东的努力失败了。 These findings may surprise two groups that are often politically opposed: those who believe that certain “cultures” are higher-achieving than others and those who attribute success to family resources and social networks. 这些发现可能会让两种人吃惊，而这两种人通常在政见上互相对立：一是那些相信某些“文化”能比其他文化取得更大成就的人，二是那些将成功归因为家族资源和社会关系的人。 Culture is a nebulous category and it can’t explain the constant regression of family status — from the top and the bottom. High-status social groups in America are astonishingly diverse. There are representatives from nearly every major religious and ethnic group in the world — except for the group that led to the argument for culture as the foundation of social success: white European Protestants. Muslims are low-status in much of India and Europe, but Iranian Muslims are among the most elite of all groups in America. 文化这个范畴太过含糊不清，并不能解释家族地位的均值回归——不管是从高处回归还是从低处回归。美国上层社会群体是非常多元化的，这一点相当令人吃惊。在这些拥有较高社会地位的人中，你可以找到全世界几乎所有主要宗教和种族的代表——但没有来自欧洲的白人新教徒，这一群体往往被拿来佐证文化是取得社会成功的基础。穆斯林在印度和欧洲的大部分地区都处在社会底层，但是伊朗穆斯林却是美国最精英的群体之一。 Family resources and social networks are not irrelevant. Evidence has been found that programs from early childhood education to socioeconomic and racial classroom integration can yield lasting benefits for poor children. But the potential of such programs to alter the overall rate of social mobility in any major way is low. The societies that invest the most in helping disadvantaged children, like the Nordic countries, have produced absolute, commendable benefits for these children, but they have not changed their relative social position. 家族资源和人脉并不是无关的。有证据显示，从早期的儿童教育到社会经济和种族的一体化教育，这样的项目能够为贫穷家庭的孩子带来持续的好处。但是此类项目提高社会流动性的潜力都是很低的。那些煞费苦心帮助条件不利儿童的社会，比如北欧的国家，已经取得了明显的、可圈可点的益处，但都没能改变这些儿童的相对社会地位。 The notion of genetic transmission of “social competence” — some mysterious mix of drive and ability — may unsettle us. But studies of adoption, in some ways the most dramatic of social interventions, support this view. “社会竞争力”——某种神秘的内驱力和能力的混合体——能够通过基因遗传，这一想法也许会让我们感到不安。但是对领养（在某些方面这可谓是最激烈的社会干预行为了）的研究却支持这一观点。 A number of studies of adopted children in the United States and Nordic countries show convincingly that their life chances are more strongly predicted from their biological parents than their adoptive families. In America, for example, the I.Q. of adopted children correlates with their adoptive parents’ when they are young, but the correlation is close to zero by adulthood. There is a low correlation between the incomes and educational attainment of adopted children and those of their adoptive parents. 对美国和北欧被领养小孩的一些调查研究极有说服力地表明，从这些小孩的生物学父母——而非他们的养父母身上——的情况更能预测出他们的生活境遇。比如在美国，被领养小孩的智商在他们还小时同他们的养父母相关，但是当他们成年了，这种相关性就接近于0了。被领养孩子的收入和受教育程度同他们养父母的相关性不大。 These studies, along with studies of correlations across various types of siblings (identical twins, fraternal twins, half siblings) suggest that genetics is the main carrier of social status. 上述研究，加上对不同类型的兄弟姐妹（同卵双胞胎、异卵双胞胎、同母异父或同父异母）之间相关性的研究，都表明基因是决定社会地位的主要因素。 If we are right that nature predominates over nurture, and explains the low rate of social mobility, is that inherently a tragedy? It depends on your point of view. 如果真是大自然主导了出人头地的机会，并且是低社会流动性的罪魁祸首，那岂不是说，从根本上而言，这就是一个悲剧？这要看你怎么想。 The idea that low-status ancestors might keep someone down many generations later runs against most people’s notions of fairness. But at the same time, the large investments made by the super-elite in their kids — like those of the Manhattan hedge-funders who spend a fortune on preschool — are of no avail in preventing long-run downward mobility. 来自社会底层的祖先会让某人在时隔许多代以后仍然处在社会底层，这样的观点与大多数人对公平的理解相抵触。但同时，上层精英对孩子们的大量投资——比如对学前教育一掷千金的曼哈顿对冲基金经理们——并不能阻止子孙们在长久的时间跨度中社会地位的衰落。 Our findings do suggest that intermarriage among people of different strata will raise mobility over time. India, we found, has exceptionally low mobility in part because religion and caste have barred intermarriage. As long as mating is assortative — partners are of similar social status, regardless of ethnic, national or religious background — social mobility will remain low. 我们的发现确实表明不同社会地位的人通婚会在长期内增加社会流动性。我们发现印度的社会流动性异常之低，部分原因便是宗教和种姓制度阻碍了这种通婚。只要婚姻奉行“非同类不婚”原则——拥有相似的社会地位，不管其种族、国籍或是宗教背景如何——社会流动性就会一直处在低水平。 As the political theorist John Rawls suggested in his landmark work “A Theory of Justice” (1971), innate differences in talent and drive mean that, to create a fair society, the disadvantages of low social status should be limited. We are not suggesting that the fact of slow mobility means that policies to lift up the lives of the disadvantaged are for naught — quite the opposite. Sweden is, for the less well off, a better place to live than the United States, and that is a good thing. And opportunities for people to flourish to the best of their abilities are essential. 政治理论家罗尔斯在他里程碑式著作《正义论》（1971年）中提出，才干和内驱力的先天差异意味着，要创造一个公平的社会，卑微出身带来的不利需要予以限制。我们不是暗示社会流动性低这一事实意味着那些帮助处于不利地位的人的政策就是徒劳的——恰恰相反。瑞典，对生活并不宽裕的人来说，是个比美国更好的选择，而这是好事。让人们有机会最大限度地发挥他们的能力是至关重要的。 Large-scale, rapid social mobility is impossible to legislate. What governments can do is ameliorate the effects of life’s inherent unfairness. Where we will fall within the social spectrum is largely fated at birth. Given that fact, we have to decide how much reward, or punishment, should be attached to what is ultimately fickle and arbitrary, the lottery of your lineage. 大范围的、快速的社会流动是无法通过立法来实现的。政府能做的是削弱先天不公平所带来的后果。我们会处在阶层光谱的哪个位置，基本上在我们出生时就已经决定了。基于这一事实，我们必须决定的是，由“族谱彩票”这一终归是无情而武断的因素所决定的赏罚额该有多大。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Kerry: Doubters of Global-warming Apocalypse Must Be Silenced 克里：必须让怀疑全球变暖末日灾难的人闭嘴 作者：William F. Jasper @ 2015-11-20 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：慕白（@李凤阳他说） 来源：New American，http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/21999-kerry-doubters-of-global-warming- In a speech delivered November 10 at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to be intentionally amping up the already incendiary rhetoric aimed at those scientists and citizens who express doubt or skepticism about — or opposition to — the wild, apocalyptic claims of the climate-change choir. 针对气候变化合唱团做出的鲁莽轻率的末日灾难预言，部分科学家及某些公民表达了自己的犹豫或怀疑，或反对。他们本就已经处在煽动人心的批评言论包围之下，而国务卿克里11月10日在弗吉尼亚州的欧道明大学诺福克分校发表的演讲则似乎是故意要加大力度煽风点火。 “The science tells us unequivocally, those who continue to make climate change a political fight put us all at risk,” Kerry said. “And we cannot sit idly by and allow them to do that.” “科学无可置辩地告诉我们，如果有人还要继续把气候变化问题转变为政治斗争，他们就会将我们所有人都推向悬崖”，克里说。“我们绝不能袖手旁观，任由他们这么干。” This was not the first time Secretary Kerry has made comments that lightly veil an implicit threat aimed at climate realists. Kerry, who has been beating the anthropogenic (manmade) global  warming (AGW) drum loudly all year long, in preparation for the imminent UN Climate Summit in Paris, made a similar comment before the Atlantic Council in March. 国务卿克里已经不是第一次发表这种隐隐透着对气候现实主义者的含蓄威胁的言论。整整一年来，克里一直在大声敲响人类活动（人为的）造成全球变暖（AGW）这面大鼓，以此为即将在巴黎召开的联合国气候峰会作准备。三月份，他在大西洋理事会上就已经发表过类似评论。 “When an apple falls from a tree, it will drop toward the ground. We know that because of the basic laws of physics. Science tells us that gravity exists, and no one disputes that,” Kerry said, in statement of supposedly unassailable logic that should end all debate. “Science also tells us that when the water temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it turns to ice. No one disputes that,” he continued. “苹果从树上下落，它就会掉到地上。基于物理学的基本规律，我们确知这一点。科学告诉我们存在重力，没人会对此提出质疑”，克里如是说，其口气似乎是要用铁一般的逻辑终结一切争议。他接着说，“科学还告诉我们，如果水温降到华氏32度以下，就会变成冰。也没有谁对此提出质疑。” Then came the “logical” clincher: “So when science tells us that our climate is changing and human beings are largely causing that change, by what right do people stand up and just say, ‘well, I dispute that, or I deny that elementary truth?’” 然后“逻辑”铁证就来了：“因此我们就要问，当科学告诉我们气候正在发生变化并且这种变化主要是由人类导致的时候，人们有什么权利直接站出来说‘我不同意，或我拒绝接受这个基本真理’？” Yes, by what right? After all, they are “putting us all at risk,” right? “And we cannot sit idly by and allow them to do that,” can we? 对，有什么权利？毕竟他们“正把我们推向悬崖”，不是吗？“我们绝不能袖手旁观，任由他们这么干”，对吧？ Kerry doesn’t say what “we” can do to stop these doubters who put us all at risk, but he is playing to a powerful global choir that has already been salting public opinion with invective, the purpose of which is to demonize and criminalize those who challenge the “elementary truth” or the “settled science” of the AGW alarmists. 克里没有说的是，为要阻止这些把我们所有人都推向悬崖的怀疑者，“我们”能够做些什么。但他的言论是在迎合一个势力强大的全球大合唱，后者一直在用攻击谩骂来挑拨公众意见，目的在于妖魔化那些挑战“人为全球暖化说”警世派的“基本真理”或“牢固科学”的人，让公众相信这些人的所作所为是在犯罪。 Recently, as we have reported, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called on the Obama administration earlier this year to use the anti-mafia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to persecute heretics who cast doubt on the AGW dogma. 不久前我们曾报道过，美国参议员Sheldon Whitehouse（罗得岛州民主党人士）今年初呼吁奥巴马政府利用《反不正当敛财及腐败组织法》（RICO）这一反黑法案来追究那些对“人为全球暖化说”教义表示怀疑的异端分子的责任。 That tyrannical proposal, which should have earned Senator Whitehouse an immediate recall effort, was echoed shortly afterward when a group of 20 so-called climate scientists sent a letter to President Obama urging him to use the federal RICO statute to prosecute their fellow scientists who disagree with them and publicly expose the fallacies and fraud underpinning the “settled science” of cataclysmic climate change. 这是一个暴虐的提议， Whitehouse参议员本应立即手忙脚乱地收回，但相反地，他却很快就听到了回声。一个由20位所谓气候科学家组成的团体致信奥巴马总统，要求他启用联邦RICO法案起诉其他科学家，只因他们持有不同意见，并且公开揭露灾难性气候变化的“牢固科学”所倚为支撑的谬误和欺诈。 Talking Points Memo (TPM) infamously published an article (which has since been removed from its website) entiled, “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers.” “谈话要点备忘录”（TPM）曾刊登过一篇题为“我们什么时候会把全球变暖抵赖派们送进监狱或处决了事”的文章（现已从其网站上撤下），舆论为之哗然。 Posted under the pseudonym “The Insolent Braggart,” the profane incitement to violence and intolerance of diverse opinion stated: 文章以“狂野吹牛人”为笔名发表，无耻地煽动对不同意见采取暴力和不宽容态度。文中写道： What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don’t want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it’s a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth. 这些笨蛋最让人不爽的地方就是，他们都是些政客，都是些贪得无厌的混蛋，凡是自己的利益一点都不愿放弃。他们依靠的都是些伪科学，或者都是些基因最低贱的科学家，这些人为了一点点钱就可以篡改数据。世界上绝大多数科学才俊都同意并且深知，我们面对的是一个非常严肃的麻烦，有可能会对地球生命造成无法形容的巨大损害。 So when the right wing f***tards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events — how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn’t we start punishing them now? 所以，如果让这些右翼傻x把事情搞到无可挽回，毁灭性的后果就在眼前，并且我们能够看到世界末日之类的事情就要发生，如果到了这种时候，我们要如何惩罚那些应当为此负责的人。那时候必定为时已晚。所以，难道我们不应该现在就开始惩罚他们吗？ Very prominent voices in the climate-alarmism choir have been priming the lynch mob. 在气候变化危言警世者煽动暴民动用私刑的大合唱中，这是非常突出的声音。 James Hansen, the discredited NASA climateer and “grandfather” of the AGW lobby, called for prosecution of climate-catastrophe skeptics for “high crimes against humanity.” James Hansen是NASA里一位声名扫地的气候学家，也是“人为全球暖化说”游说活动的“老祖宗”。他也曾呼吁以“反人类重罪”的名义起诉那些怀疑气候灾变的人。 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is notorious for his environmental extremism, has said of climate realists who doubt the UN IPCC dogma: “This is treason, and we need to start treating them as traitors.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 向来因其环保极端主义立场而臭名远扬。针对怀疑联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会教条的气候现实主义者，他曾经如此说：“这就是叛国罪，我们应该现在就开始将他们视同叛徒来处理。” Joe Romm, a former Clinton administration official who now runs the influential alarmist ClimateProgress website, published a commenter who ominously threatened climate skeptics: “It is not my wrath you need fear when there’s an entire generation that will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds.” Joe Roman曾在克林顿政府担任官员，现在运营着危言警世派一个非常有影响力的网站，叫做“气候进步”。他之前曾发表过一位评论员的文章，该文阴狠地威胁气候变化怀疑论者：“在整整一代人都随时准备要趁你睡着把你和你的同类们统统勒死之际，你要害怕的并不是我的愤怒。” This may not be an idle threat, as millions of school kids are being brainwashed with emotional AGW propaganda in classrooms across the nation, and around the world. Romm later took the comment down, but defended it by claiming it “was clearly not a threat but a prediction,” and those who detected a threat had “misread it.” 这种威胁恐怕并不是空口说白话，此时此刻，全国各地及全世界的课堂里，数以百万计的在校学生正在被洗脑，接受“人为全球暖化说”的情绪化宣传。Romm 后来把这一评论撤下了网站，但又为之辩护，称其“明显不是威胁，只是预测”，所有从中察觉到威胁的人都“误解了文意”。 Bill Nye, of TV fame as “The Science Guy,” recently appeared on the Huffington Post’s TV program, where he called on the host to stop using the term “skeptic” and use the more hateful term “denier” when referring to climate realists. “We just don’t like to use that word [skepticism],” Nye told host Josh Zepps. “These people are deniers.” Bill Nye在电视上的“科学哥”身份广为人知。他最近在参加《赫芬顿邮报》的一个电视节目时，要求主持人不要使用“怀疑论者”这一词汇来称呼气候现实主义者，而是用一个更具仇视性的词汇：“抵赖派”。“我们就是不喜欢用这个词（怀疑主义）”，Nye对主持人Josh Zepps说。“这些人就是抵赖派。” In a November 6, 2015 interview with Salon, Nye again hit the theme of tarring opponents with the “denier” label, censoring them, and denying them a place at the “debate” table. “Part of the solution to this problem or this set of problems associated with climate change is getting the deniers out of our discourse,” said Nye. “You know, we can’t have these people — they’re absolutely toxic.” 在2015年11月6日接受“沙龙”采访时，Nye又一次找到了节奏，用“抵赖派”的标签污蔑对手、封他们的口，并拒绝让他们在“辩论”桌上拥有一席之地。“要解决与气候变化有关的这一问题或这一套问题，要求我们先将抵赖派赶出对话席”，Nye如是说。“你知道吧，这些人不能出现，他们绝对有毒。” Nye was one of the signers of a letter sent to media organizations last December calling on journalists to stigmatize AGW skeptics as “deniers.” Among the dozens of academics who signed the letter (which was larded heavily with psychologists and social “science” professors) were, notably, the two academics most responsible for concocting the fraudulent claim that “97 percent” of scientists endorse the “overwhelming consensus” that AGW is a serious danger: John Cook and Naomi Oreskes. 去年12月，曾有人写信呼吁新闻记者使用“抵赖派”这一蔑称来称呼“人为全球暖化说”的怀疑者，Nye正是联署人之一。参与联署的学者一共有几十位（为信件增色的主要是心理学家和社会“科学”教授）。其中最出名的是这两位，John Cook和Naomi Oreskes，正是他们俩一起炮制出了一个欺骗性的说法：“97%”的科学家赞同人为制造的气候变化确属严重危害这一“压倒性共识”。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Free-Market Environmentalism 自由市场环保主义 作者：Richard L. Stroup 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值） 来源：EconLib， http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeMarketEnvironmentalism.html Free-market environmentalism emphasizes markets as a solution to environmental problems. Proponents argue that free markets can be more successful than government—and have been more successful historically—in solving many environmental problems. 自由市场环保主义强调将市场作为环境问题的解决办法。这一观念的倡议者认为，在解决许多环境问题方面，自由市场能够做得比政府更成功——历史上也一直更为成功。 This interest in free-market environmentalism is somewhat ironic because environmental problems have often been seen as a form of market failure (see PUBLIC GOODS and EXTERNALITIES). In the traditional view, many environmental problems are caused by decision makers who reduce their costs by polluting those who are downwind or downstream; other environmental problems are caused by private decision makers’ inability to produce “public goods” (such as preservation of wild species) because no one has to pay to get the benefits of this preservation. 对自由市场环保主义的关注多少有点反讽，因为环保问题一向都被看作是一种市场失灵的体现（见词条“公共物品”和“外部性”）。传统观点认为，许多环境问题之产生，是由于决策者会通过污染处于下风向或下游的人们来减少自身的成本；其他环境问题之产生，则是由于私人决策者无力生产“公共物品”（如野生物种保护），因为人们无需支付价格就能获得此种保护所带来的收益。 While these problems can be quite real, growing evidence indicates that governments often fail to control pollution or to provide public goods at reasonable cost. Furthermore, the private sector is often more responsive than government to environmental demands. This evidence, which is supported by much economic theory, has led to a reconsideration of the traditional view. 尽管这类问题相当实际，但是越来越多的证据表明，政府常常无法以合理的价格控制污染或提供公共物品。此外，私营部门通常比政府更能响应环保需求。此类证据得到了许多经济理论的支持，现已引导人们重新考量传统观点。 The failures of centralized government control in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union awakened further interest in free-market environmentalism in the early 1990s. As glasnost lifted the veil of secrecy, press reports identified large areas where brown haze hung in the air, people’s eyes routinely burned from chemical fumes, and drivers had to use headlights in the middle of the day. 在1990年代早期，东欧和苏联中央集权政府的控制失败进一步唤醒了人们对自由市场环保主义的关注。随着“公开性”政策拉开遮掩的帷幕，新闻媒体报道了在被黄色雾霾覆盖的大片地区中人们的眼睛经常因化学烟雾而刺痛，以及司机们大白天都需要开车灯。 In 1990 the Wall Street Journal quoted a claim by Hungarian doctors that 10 percent of the deaths in Hungary might be directly related to pollution. The New York Times reported that parts of the town of Merseburg, East Germany, were “permanently covered by a white chemical dust, and a sour smell fills people’s nostrils.” 《华尔街日报》在1990年曾引用过一些匈牙利医生的说法，即匈牙利10%的死亡与污染直接相关。《纽约时报》报道说，在东德梅泽堡，市镇的部分地区“常年覆盖着一层白色化学粉尘，一股股恶臭扑鼻而来。” For markets to work in the environmental field, as in any other, rights to each important resource must be clearly defined, easily defended against invasion, and divestible (transferable) by owners on terms agreeable to buyer and seller. 要让市场在环保领域发挥作用，跟在其他领域一样，对于重要资源的权利归属必须得到清晰界定（defined），对于侵犯行为能够轻松防卫（defended），并且权利所有人应当能基于买卖双方均能接受的条款而剥离（divestible）（或转让）之。 Well-functioning markets, in short, require “3-D” PROPERTY RIGHTS. When the first two are present—clear definition and easy DEFENSE of one’s rights—no one is forced to accept pollution beyond the standard acceptable to the community. Local standards differ because people with similar preferences and those seeking similar opportunities often cluster together. 简而言之，运转良好的市场要求存在这种“3D”财产权。一旦具备前面两条（某人的权利界定清晰并易于防卫），就没有任何人会被迫接受超过所在社群接受标准的污染。各地标准会有所不同，因为具有相同偏好的人和追寻相同机遇的人通常会聚集在一起。 Parts of Montana, for example, where the key economic activity is ranching, are “range country.” In those areas, anyone who does not want the neighbors’ cattle disturbing his or her garden has the duty to fence the garden to keep the cattle out. On the really large ranches of range country, that solution is far cheaper than fencing all the range on the ranch. But much of the state is not range country. There, the property right standards are different: It is the duty of the cattle owner to keep livestock fenced in. People in the two areas have different priorities based on goals that differ between the communities. 比如，在蒙大拿州的部分地区，关键的经济活动是牧场经营，可以说是“牧乡”。在这类地区，任何人如果不希望邻居的牧群打扰他或她的园子，自己就有义务修建花园栅栏，把牧群拦在外边。在牧乡的大型牧场上，这种解决办法远比给牧地上所有牧场都装上栅栏要来得便宜。但蒙大拿州许多其它地区并不是牧乡。在这些地方，财产权的标准就有所不同：牧群所有者有义务将牲畜用栅栏围住。不同地区的人们考虑的优先次序不同，根源在于不同社群拥有不同的目标。 Similarly, the “acceptable noise” standard in a vibrant neighborhood of the inner city with many young people might differ from that of a dignified neighborhood populated mainly by well-to-do retirees. “Noise pollution” in one community might be acceptable in another, because a standard that limits one limits all in the community. Those who sometimes enjoy loud music at home may be willing to accept some of it from others. 类似地，内城区年轻人很多的那些小区活力十足，这些地方的“可容忍噪音”标准可能就会不同于居民主要为生活优裕的退休人员的高端小区。某个社群的“噪音污染”在另外一个社群可能是可接受的，因为限制单个人的标准应当对于社群内的所有人都适用。偶尔喜欢在家里听听吵闹音乐的那些人很可能也愿意接受别人家里不时放放这种音乐。 Each individual has a right against invasion of himself and his property, and the courts will defend that right, but the standard that defines an unacceptable invasion can vary from one community to another. And finally, when the third characteristic of property rights—divestibility—is present, each owner has an incentive to be a good steward: preservation of the owner’s wealth (the value of his or her property) depends on good stewardship. 每个个体都有权反对对他本人及其财产的侵犯，且法院会捍卫这种权利。但在不同社群之间，如何界定不可容忍之侵犯的标准是可以不同的。最后，当财产权具备第三个特征（即可剥离性）时，每个所有者就都有做好管理人的激励：良好的管理才能维护业主的财富（财产的价值）。 Environmental problems stem from the absence or incompleteness of these characteristics of property rights. When rights to resources are defined and easily defended against invasion, all individuals or CORPORATIONS, whether potential polluters or potential victims, have an incentive to avoid pollution problems. When air or water pollution damages a privately owned asset, the owner whose wealth is threatened will gain by seeing—in court if necessary—that the threat is abated. 环境问题的根源在于财产权不具备或部分缺失上述特性。如果资源的权属界定清晰，对于侵权能够轻松防卫，那么所有个体或公司，不管他们是潜在污染者还是潜在受害者，就都具有激励去避免污染。当空气污染或水污染损害到私人所有的资产时，财富受到威胁的所有者通过确保威胁得以解除（必要时通过法院）就能获利。 In England and Scotland, for example, unlike in the United States, the right to fish for sport and commerce is a privately owned, transferable right. This means that owners of fishing rights can obtain damages and injunctions against polluters of streams. Owners of these rights vigorously defend them, even though the owners are often small anglers’ clubs with modest means. 比如，英格兰和苏格兰就与美国不同，以运动和商业为目的的钓鱼活动是私有的、可转让的权利。这就意味着钓鱼权的所有者能够从河流污染者那里获得赔偿或是用禁令禁止污染河流的行为。这些权利的所有者会积极地捍卫权利，尽管他们通常都只是些小型垂钓俱乐部，财产并不太多。 Fishers clearly gain, but there is a cost to them also. In 2005, for example, INTERNET advertisements offered fishing in the chalk streams of the River Anton, Hampshire, at 50 pounds British per day, or about $90 U.S. On the River Avon in Wiltshire, the price per day was 150 pounds, or $270. Valuable fishing rights encouraged their owners to form an association prepared to go to court when polluters violate their fishing rights. Such suits were successful well before Earth Day in 1970, and before pollution control became part of public policy. 钓鱼的人显然会得利，但他们也需承担成本。比如，2005年，网上广告说到汉普郡一条白垩河（安东河）上钓鱼每天需50英镑，合90美元；而在维尔特郡的埃文河上，价格更是高达每天150英镑，合270美元。价值高昂的钓鱼权促使其所有者组成联盟，一旦污染者损害他们的钓鱼权，就时刻准备走上法庭。早在1970年“世界地球日”诞生之前很久，早在污染控制进入公共政策之前很久，这类诉讼就已经很成功了。 Once rights against pollution are established by precedent, as these were many years ago, going to court is seldom necessary. Potential plaintiffs who recognize they are likely to lose do not want to add court costs to their losses. 一旦反对污染的权利经由先例得以确立，就像上述权利多年以前实现的那样，以后就很少有必要上法庭了。如果潜在的原告察觉到他们很可能会输掉官司，他们就不会愿意再往自己的损失上添一份诉讼开销。 Thus, LIABILITY for pollution is a powerful motivator when a factory or other potentially polluting asset is privately owned. The case of the Love Canal, a notorious waste dump, illustrates this point. As long as Hooker Chemical Company owned the Love Canal waste site, it was designed, maintained, and operated (in the late 1940s and 1950s) in a way that met even the Environmental Protection Agency standards of 1980. The corporation wanted to avoid any damaging leaks, for which it would have to pay. 因此，当工厂或其它有可能造成污染的资产为私人所有时，对造成的污染需付的责任就是一个强大的激励因素。发生在“爱河”这一臭名远扬的废料堆上的事件很好地表明了这一点。在胡克化学公司拥有“爱河”填埋场期间，它的设计、维持和运转（从1940年代晚期至1950年代）始终都做得很好，甚至能够满足美国环保署1980年的标准。公司希望能够避免任何有害泄露，要不然它就得出钱。 Only when the waste site was taken over by local government—under threat of eminent domain, for the cost of one dollar, and in spite of warnings by Hooker about the chemicals—was the site mistreated in ways that led to chemical leakage. The government decision makers lacked personal or corporate liability for their decisions. 只有在填埋场被当地政府接管（在政府威胁实施土地征用的情况下，胡克公司以一美元价格转让，并且当时它还就化学品提出过警告）以后，场地才遭到滥用，最后导致了化学泄露。政府决策者不需为他们的决定承担个体或公司责任。 They built a school on part of the site, removed part of the protective clay cap to use as fill dirt for another school site, and sold off the remaining part of the Love Canal site to a developer without warning him of the dangers as Hooker had warned them. The local government also punched holes in the impermeable clay walls to build water lines and a highway. This allowed the toxic wastes to escape when rainwater, no longer kept out by the partially removed clay cap, washed them through the gaps created in the walls. 他们在填埋场的部分地面上建了一所学校；移除了部分起保护作用的黏土盖层，用到另一学校工地去做填土；把“爱河”填埋场的剩余部分卖给了开发商，却没有像胡克公司那样附上危险警告。当地政府还在不渗水的黏土墙上开挖孔洞，用于建设水管和公路。由于黏土盖层部分被拆，挡不住雨水，结果有毒废弃物就被雨水从墙上的破洞里冲刷了出来。 The school district owning the land had a laudable but narrow goal: it wanted to provide EDUCATION cheaply for district children. Government decision makers are seldom held accountable for broader social goals in the way that private owners are by liability rules and potential PROFITS. Of course, anyone, including private parties, can make mistakes, but the decision maker whose private wealth is on the line tends to be more circumspect. The liability that holds private decision makers accountable is largely missing in the public sector. 拥有这片土地的学区所抱持的目标虽然值得称赞，但却过于狭隘：它就想为学区的孩子们提供便宜的教育。政府决策者几乎从来不会因更广泛的社会目标而遭到问责，这一点与私人所有者不同，后者需受责任原则和潜在利益的限制。当然，任何人都可能犯错，包括私方在内。但是，当决策者需要用个人财富来承担风险时，他会更加慎重。与对私人决策者问责的情况不同，在公共部门中，问责要求总体上是缺失的。 Nor does the government sector have the long-range view that property rights provide, which leads to protection of resources for the future. As long as the third D, divestibility, is present, property rights provide long-term incentives for maximizing the value of property. If I mine my land and impair its future PRODUCTIVITY or its groundwater, the reduction in the land’s value reduces my current wealth. 政府部门也不具备财产权所带来的长远视野，而这种视野会鼓励资源保护，以备未来之需。只要财产权具备第三个“D”即“可剥离性”，财产权就能提供将财物价值最大化的长期激励。如果我在我的土地上进行开采，破坏了它未来的生产率或其地下水，那么土地价值的减少就会导致我当前的财富的减少。 That is because land’s current worth equals the PRESENT VALUE of all future services. Fewer services or greater costs in the future mean lower value now. In fact, on the day an appraiser or potential buyer can first see that there will be problems in the future, my wealth declines. The reverse also is true: any new way to produce more value—preserving scenic value as I log my land, for example, to attract paying recreationists—is capitalized into the asset’s present value. 这是因为，土地的当前价值等于所有未来得益的折现值。未来得益减少或成本增加就意味着当前价值变低。事实上，只要有一个估价人或潜在买家首先看出未来会出问题，从这时起，我的财富就减少了。这话反过来也成立：任何能够产出更多价值的新办法（比如伐木时注意保护地面的观赏价值以吸引付费消遣的客人）都可以折算为资产的现值。 Because the owner’s wealth depends on good stewardship, even a shortsighted owner has the incentive to act as if he or she cares about the future usefulness of the resource. This is true even if an asset is owned by a corporation. Corporate officers may be concerned mainly about the short term, but as financial economists such as Harvard Business School’s Michael C. Jensen have noted, even they have to care about the future. If current actions are known to cause future problems, or if a current INVESTMENT promises future benefits, the stock price rises or falls to reflect the change. Corporate officers are informed by (and are judged by) these stock price changes. 财产所有者的财富取决于良好的管理，因此，即便是目光短浅的所有者也有动力表现出关心资源未来价值的样子。即便资产由公司所有，情况也是如此。公司管理者更多关心的可能是短期，但是正如哈佛商学院的Michael C. Jensen等金融经济学家所指出的那样，即便是这些人，也不得不着眼长远。如果人们知道当前行为在未来有可能引起麻烦，或者他们知道当前投资有望在未来获利，那么这种变化就会在股票价格的涨落上体现出来。公司管理人能够通过这种股票价格变化来获得信息，他们的工作成效也能由此得以判断。 This ability and incentive to engage in farsighted behavior is lacking in the political sector. Consider the example of Seattle’s Ravenna Park. At the turn of the twentieth century it was a privately owned park that contained magnificent Douglas firs. A husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Beck, had developed it into a family recreation area that, in good weather, brought in thousands of people a day. 政府部门缺乏行长远之事的能力和动力。这方面可以看看西雅图拉文纳公园的例子。20世纪初，这一公园属于私人所有，里面长有华贵的花旗松。W. W. Beck夫妇将公园打理成了一个家庭休闲场所，天气好的时候每天能吸引数千人来玩。 Concern that a future owner might not take proper care of it, however, caused the local government to “preserve” this beautiful place. The owners did not want to part with it, but the city initiated condemnation proceedings and bought the park. 然而，当地政府担心下一位所有者不会用心打理公园，因此要“保护”该公园。尽管公园所有者不愿意，但该市启动了征用程序，最终买下了公园。 But since they had no personal property or income at stake, local officials allowed the park to deteriorate. In fact, the tall trees began to disappear soon after the city bought it in 1911. A group of concerned citizens brought the theft of the trees to officials’ attention, but the logging continued. 然而，由于当地官员并不需要担心私人财产或收入受损，公园状况在他们的管理下日益恶化。事实上，在市政府于1911年买下之后，公园里面的高大树木很快就开始消失。一群热心市民还曾将偷树贼逮捕送官，但砍伐并没有停止。 Gradually, the park became unattractive. By 1972 it was an ugly, dangerous hangout for drug users. The Becks, operating privately at no cost to taxpayers, but supported instead by user fees, had done a far better job of managing the park they had created. 日复一日，这个公园不再有吸引力了。到1972年，它已经变成了一个丑陋危险的地方，只有吸毒者出没。Beck夫妇的私人经营没有花费纳税人一分钱，但他们能够得到使用者付费。在管理他们创造出来的这一公园方面，他们的成绩可漂亮多了。 Could parks, even national parks like Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, be run privately, by individuals, clubs, or firms, in the way the Becks ran Ravenna Park? Would park users suffer if they had to support the parks they used through fees rather than taxes? 公园、甚至是像大峡谷这样的国家公园是否能够以Beck夫妇经营拉夫纳公园的方式，由私人（包括个体、俱乐部或公司）来经营呢？如果公园使用者需要通过付费而非纳税的方式来维持他们所用的公园，他们因此就受损了吗？ Donald Leal and Holly Fretwell studied national parks and compared certain of them with state parks nearby. The latter had similar characteristics but, unlike the national parks, were supported in large part by user fees. Donald Leal和Holly Fretwell对国家公园进行了研究，并将其中部分与临近的州立公园进行了比较。州立公园与国家公园在许多地方都很相似，但有一个区别：它们大部分都通过使用者付费来维持。 The comparisons were interesting. Leal and Fretwell noted, in 1997, that sixteen state park systems earned at least half their operating funds from fees. The push for greater revenue led park managers to provide better services, and more people were served. 比较结果非常有意思。Leal和Fretwell在1997年提到，有16个州立公园体系通过收费赚取到了一半以上的运营经费。为了获得更大收益，公园管理者愿意提供更好服务，公园也迎来了更多的游客。 For example, in contrast to nearby national parks with similar natural features, Texas state parks offered trail runs, fun runs, “owl prowls,” alligator watching, wildlife safaris, and even a longhorn cattle drive. Costs in the state parks were also lower. Park users seem happy to pay more at the parks when they enjoy more and better services. 比如，与附近自然景观相似的国家公园相比，德克萨斯的州立公园向游客开放山路跑、乐跑、“寻找猫头鹰”、鳄鱼观赏、野生动物游猎，甚至包括长角牛骑行等活动。州立公园的支出也更低一些。如果能够享受到更多更好的服务，逛公园的人似乎很乐意花更多钱。 Private individuals and groups have preserved wildlife habitats and scenic lands in thousands of places in the United States. The 2003 Land Trust Alliance Census Tables list 1,537 local, state, and regional land trusts serving this purpose. Many other state and local groups have similar projects as a sideline, and national groups such as The Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society have hundreds more. 私人和私人团体已经在美国数千个地方对野生动物栖息地和风景胜地进行了保护。土地信托联盟2003年的普查表中列有1537个地方性、全州性以及地区性的土地信托在从事这一事业。还有许多其他全州性或地方性的团体业余举办类似项目，而全国性团体如“大自然保护协会”和“奥杜邦协会”则有数百个此类项目。 None of these is owned by the government. Using the market, such groups do not have to convince the majority that their project is desirable, nor do they have to fight the majority in choosing how to manage the site. The result, as the federal government’s Council on ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY has reported, is an enormous and healthy diversity of approaches. 这些团体全都不归政府所有。由于它们利用的是市场，它们在其项目值得与否的问题上不用去说服多数人。同样，在选择如何管理保护地的问题上，它们也无需和多数人争执。结果，照联邦政府环境质量委员会报告的说法，我们在保护方法上具备了极为丰富且极为有益的多样性。 Nevertheless, it is important to note that the government is still involved, even in the case of privately donated and privately owned trust lands. Most of these private conservation choices benefit from tax advantages, as conservers gain charitable deductions from taxable income. Tax law, therefore, influences what sorts of donations qualify; it also increases the total amounts by rewarding all qualifying choices by tax reductions. 不过，有一个重要之处值得注意，那就是这里仍然会牵涉到政府，即便是那些私人捐赠或私人所有的信托土地也是如此。绝大多数选择进行私人环保的经营者都会获得税赋优惠，因为保护者的应税收入能够获得慈善事业减免。因此，税法会影响到哪种捐赠符合条件。它也能通过税赋减免来奖赏所有符合条件的选择，从而增加此类捐赠总量。 Who gains from the increased conservation? Most often it is first and foremost the nearby landowners. When donors of trust lands retain adjacent property, they benefit from the existence of the trust lands to a degree greater than other citizens more distant. Open space usually raises the value of nearby lands. 谁会从环保增进中获益？绝大多数时候，首先是临近地区的土地所有者。如果信托土地的捐赠者保留有临近地产，他们就会从信托土地的存在中获益，且这种获益程度会高于离该信托土地相对更远的市民。开阔的空间通常都能增加附近土地的价值。 Further, when many polluters and those who receive the pollution are involved, how can property rights force accountability? The nearest receivers may be hurt the most, and may be able to sue polluters—but not always. Consider an extreme case: the potential GLOBAL WARMING impact of carbon dioxide produced by the burning of wood or fossil fuels. If climate change results, the effects are worldwide. 更进一步说，如果涉及到的污染者和受污者人数众多，财产权又如何能推动问责呢？离得最近的受污染者可能受损最大，也可能有能力起诉污染者，但情况并非总是如此。这里可以考虑一个极端例子，即燃烧木头或化石燃料所产生的二氧化碳可能造成的全球变暖影响。如果气候变化发生，其影响将会遍及全球。 Nearly everyone uses the ENERGY from such fuels, and if the threat of global warming from a buildup of carbon dioxide turns out to be as serious as some claim, then those harmed by global warming will be hard-pressed to assert their property rights against all the energy producers or users of the world. The same is true for those exposed to pollutants produced by autos and industries in the Los Angeles air basin. Private, enforceable, and tradable property rights can work wonders, but they are not a cure-all. 如果二氧化碳增加所导致的全球变暖最后确实像某些人所宣称的那么严重，由于几乎所有人都使用此类燃料所产生的能源，全球变暖的受害者就要针对全世界的能源生产者或使用者主张其财产权利，而这会相当艰难。同理，洛杉矶空气盆地中受到汽车和工业污染物影响的人也很难主张其权利。私人所有的、可强制生效的、可交易的财产权能发挥妙用，但并非万灵药。 Still, even the lack of property rights today does not mean that a useful property rights solution is forever impossible. Property rights tend to evolve as technology, preferences, and prices provide added incentives and new technical options. Early in American history, property rights in cattle seemed impossible to establish and enforce on the Great Plains. But the growing value of such rights led to the use of mounted cowboys to protect herds and, eventually, barbed wire to fence the range. 不过，即便目前缺失相关的财产权，也并不意味着可行的财产权解决方案永远不可能出现。财产权常常会跟着技术、偏好和价格所导致的激励和新技术的增加而发生演变。在美国早期历史上，大平原上似乎根本不可能建立和实施对牛群的财产权。但随着这一权利的价值增加，人们开始利用牛仔骑士保护畜群，最终还用上了带刺铁丝网来围护牧场。 As economists Terry Anderson and Peter J. Hill have shown, the plains lost their status as commons and were privatized. Advances in technology may yet allow the establishment of enforceable rights to schools of whales in the oceans, migratory birds in the air, and—who knows?—even the presence of an atmosphere that clearly does not promote damaging climate change. Such is the hope of free-market environmentalism. 经济学家Terry Anderson和Peter J. Hill已经表明，草原由此失去了公地地位，被私有化了。随着技术的进步，将来某个时候，对于海中的鲸群、空中的候鸟，甚至是（天知道呢）对于一种明显不会造成有害气候变化的气体的存在，我们都可能建立起一种可以强制生效的权利。这正是自由市场环保主义的愿景。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

“小小奇迹”不再：美国劳动收入占比下降 A Bit of a Miracle No More：The Decline of the Labor Share 作者：Roc Armenter @ 2015-三季刊 译者：Veidt（@Veidt) 校对：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值） 来源：Business Review，https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/research-and-data/publications/business-review/2015/q3/brq315_a_bit_of_a_miracle_no_more.pdf How is income divided between labor and capital? Every dollar of income earned by U.S. households can be classified as either labor earnings — wages and other forms of compensation — or capital earnings — interest or dividend payments and rent. The split between labor and capital income informs economists’ thinking on several topics and plays a key role in debates regarding income inequality and long-run economic growth. Unfortunately, distinguishing between labor and capital income is not always an easy task. 收入是如何在劳动和资本之间分配的？美国家庭所赚取的每一块钱都可以被归类为劳动收入（工资或其它形式的劳动补偿）或资本收益（利息、股利和租金等）。收入在劳动和资本之间的分配为经济学家们关于许多经济学议题的思考提供了重要信息，并且在关于收入不平等和长期经济增长这些问题的争论中扮演着核心角色。不幸的是，将劳动收入与资本收入区分开并非总是一件易事。 Until recently, the division between labor and capital income had not received much attention. The reason was quite simple: Labor’s share never ventured far from 62 percent of total U.S. income for almost 50 years — through expansions, recessions, high and low inflation, and the long transition from an economy primarily based on manufacturing to one mainly centered on services. 一直以来，区分劳动收入和资本收入的问题并没有受到太大关注，直到最近才有所改观。原因很简单：在将近50年中，美国劳动收入在总收入中所占的比例从来不会偏离62%这个数字太远——不论经济是在扩张还是衰退，也不论通胀率是高是低，在美国经济从以制造业为基础向主要以服务业为核心的漫长转变过程中，这个比例一直很稳定。 As it happened, the overall labor share remained stable as large forces pulling it in opposite directions canceled each other out — a coincidence that John Maynard Keynes famously called “a bit of a miracle.” But the new millennium marked a turning point: Labor’s share began a pronounced fall that continues today. 劳动收入占比在多种强大力量的反向拉扯和相互抵消之下总体保持了稳定这件事情本身——按照约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的著名说法——可以称得上是个“小小奇迹”。但是新千年的到来却标志着一个重要的转折点：劳动收入占比开始明显下降，并且这个趋势一直持续到了现在。 Why did the labor share lose its “miraculous” stability and embark on a steep decline? To investigate this shift, economists must first be sure they are measuring the labor share correctly. Could measurement problems distort our understanding of what has happened to the labor share over time? 为什么劳动收入占比会失去它“奇迹般”的稳定性而开始急剧下降？要研究这一转变，经济学家们的首要任务是确保他们测量劳动收入占比的方法是准确的。测量方法存在问题会歪曲我们对于长期以来劳动收入占比所发生的变化的理解吗？ In this article, I explain the inherent challenges in measuring the labor share and introduce several alternative definitions designed to address some of the measurement problems. As we will see, the overall trend is confirmed across a wide range of definitions. 在这篇文章中，我将解释在测量劳动收入占比时所面临的内在挑战，并介绍几种旨在解决其中一些测量问题的替代性定义。正如我们将看到的，基于一系列不同定义的测量结果都证实了劳动收入占比总体上的下降趋势。 Economists do not yet have a full understanding of the causes behind the labor share’s decline. We can make some progress, though, by noting the impact of wage and productivity trends and shifts between industries. Finally, I discuss several popular hypotheses, based on concurrent phenomena, such as widening wage inequality and globalization, that may account for the labor share’s sharp decline. 经济学家们至今还未能全面地理解劳动收入占比下降背后的原因。即便如此，通过研究工资和生产率的变化趋势以及产业的变迁，我们仍然可以取得一些进展。最后，我将讨论一些流行的假设。这些基于诸如薪资不平等程度加深以及全球化等并发现象的假设也许能解释劳动收入占比的急剧下降。 MEASURING THE U.S. LABOR SHARE 测量美国的劳动收入占比 By construction, all income accounted for in the U.S. economy must be earned either by capital or labor. In some cases, we can easily see whether our income comes from labor or capital: when we earn a wage or a bonus through our labor or when we earn interest from our savings or investment account, which is attributed to capital income, despite the fact that most of us would not think of ourselves as investors. 从定义上说，美国经济中任何的收入要么被资本赚取了，要么就是被劳动赚取了[i]。在一些情形中，我们可以很容易地看出我们的收入是来自于劳动还是资本：当我们通过劳动赚到一份工资或者奖金时，这部分收入显然来自于劳动；虽然我们中的大部分人并不认为自己是投资者，但当我们从储蓄或投资账户中获得利息或投资收益时，这部分收入很明显应该被归为资本收入。 However, it is not always immediately apparent that all income eventually accrues to either capital or labor. For example, when we buy our groceries — creating income for the grocer — we are only vaguely aware that we are also paying the producers, farm workers, and transporters as well as for the harvesters, trucks, trains, coolers, and other capital equipment involved in producing and distributing what we purchase. However, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) constructs the national income and product accounts, it combines data from expenditures and income to ensure that every dollar spent is also counted as a dollar earned by either capital or labor. 然而，所有的收入最终都会被归为资本收入或劳动收入这一点并不总是那么显而易见。举个例子，当我们从杂货店里买东西时——这显然为杂货店主创造了收入——我们仅仅模糊地意识到我们所付的钱同样也为货物的生产者、农场工人、运输工人创造了收入，除此以外，我们还为投资于收割机、卡车、制冷装置和其它一些参与我们所购买货物的生产和分销过程的设备的资本创造了收入。而国家经济分析局（BEA）在构建国民收入和生产账户时将来自支出和来自收入的数据合并在一起，以保证任何一美元的支出也同样要么被资本赚取，要么被劳动赚取。 Of course, nothing is ever so simple economic statistics. First, we lack the detail necessary to split some components of the income data between labor and capital returns. As I will show, the foremost example is the income of self-employed workers, who simply collect the income of their business without distinguishing whether it resulted from their work or their investment. In addition, the housing and the government sectors have their total income arbitrarily assigned as labor and capital income, respectively, in the national income accounts. 当然，经济统计中从来不会有这么简单的事情。首先，我们缺乏将收入数据的某些组成部分划分为劳动或资本回报的一些必要细节。正如我将说明的，这其中最典型的例子就是那些个体经营者的收入，他们仅仅从自己的生意中获得收入，而不区分这些收入是自己的劳动成果还是投资收益。此外，住房部门和政府部门在划分各自国民收入账户中属于劳动收入和资本收入的部分时也都很随意。 The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes the most widely used estimate of the labor share, which combines several data sources and estimates in order to get around some of the measurement problems. However, these problems remain significant enough that economists routinely create alternative definitions and compare results across them, since a single definition of the labor share is unlikely to fit all purposes. 目前使用最广泛的关于劳动收入占比的估计是由国家劳动统计局（BLS）发布的，它将来自多个数据源的数据和估值放在一起，以规避一些测量方法上的问题。但即便如此，这些测量上的问题还是带来了足够明显的影响，这使得经济学家们通常会创造一些对于劳动收入占比的不同定义，并将这些定义下的结果进行比较，因为单一的定义方法不可能适合所有的测量目的。 And what would these purposes be? First, workers and investors respond differently to the same economic conditions and policies. So if we wish to understand how aggregate output will respond, we need to know how to weigh the responses of workers and investors. 那么测量劳动收入占比的目的又有哪些呢？首先，劳工和投资者对于相同的经济状况和政策的反应是截然不同的。所以如果希望了解某种经济状况和政策将如何影响加总的产出，我们就需要知道如何分别衡量劳工和投资者的反应的权重。 Second, assets are notoriously unevenly distributed across households; hence, an increase in the share of income earned by capital contributes to income inequality, as richer households would receive an even larger share of total income. 其次，资产在家庭之间的不均分布一直以来都饱受诟病，而资本收入占比的上升会加深收入不平等的程度，因为更富裕的家庭会在总收入中获得更大的比例。 Third, the tax code treats labor and capital income differently. Labor income is subject to payroll taxes and the usual income tax rate schedule. Corporate profits (the main source of capital income) are subject to corporate taxes as well as dividends and capital gains taxes when profits are distributed to households. A shift in the labor share will impact not only tax revenues but also how the burden of taxation is distributed across households. 第三，税法在对待劳动收入和资本收入时所采用的税收政策是不同的。劳动收入所适用的是工资税和普通的所得税率表。公司利润（资本收入最重要的来源）所适用的则是公司税。而当公司利润被分配给家庭时，这部分利润所适用的则是股利和资本利得税。劳动收入占比的变化不仅将会影响税收的总额，而且还会影响到不同家庭所承担税赋的份额。 Economists also need an estimate of the labor share when determining how much of economic growth can be attributed to labor force growth, capital accumulation, or technological changes — which in turn are key inputs for long-term growth forecasts. 此外，经济学家们也需要对劳动收入占比进行估算来确定经济增长分别在多大程度上可归因于劳动力增长、资本积累以及技术进步——这些因子又都是对长期经济增长进行预测所需的重要变量。 Components of income 收入成分法 The BEA measures output, or gross value added, two different ways in its national income and product accounts (NIPA). The expenditure approach aims to measure the total amount spent on goods and services throughout a year; the income approach instead adds up all the income earned by households. In theory, both measures should yield the same number. In practice, alas, they do not. The discrepancy is due to data limitations and measurement error, though the discrepancy is quite small. 国家经济分析局使用两种方法来测量国民收入和产出账户（NIPA）的总产出（也称总附加值）[ii]。支出法的目标是测量一年中花费在产品和服务上的总支出额；而收入法则将家庭部门的所有收入加总在一起。理论上，两种方法所得到的最终数值应该是相同的。但遗憾的是，实际并非如此。两者间的差异是由数据局限和测量误差所导致的，虽然这个差异其实很小。 The labor share is measured using the income approach. Every dollar of output must be earned by factors of production and distributed to households. What exactly is a factor of production? Were we to measure the output of a factory, we would count as factors of production the workers and managers, all the equipment, the building and land occupied by the factory as well as the electricity, security service, and all the other intermediate inputs used. 劳动收入占比这个指标是使用收入法测得的。总产出中的每一美元都会被各种生产要素所赚取，并最终分配到家庭手中。而生产要素到底是什么呢？在测量一家工厂的产出时，我们会把工人和经理人，所有的设备，工厂所占据的建筑和土地，以及电力，安保服务和所有其他中间投入都当作生产要素。 But because we are measuring the output of the whole economy, we must recognize that the intermediate goods, utilities, and services were produced by some other firm, which in turn uses its own factors of production. Were we to check with, say, the firm producing electricity, we would once again find some workers and managers, equipment, and so on. Now, we could try to track each and every input of production in the U.S., but we would quickly realize that the only factors of production whose income accrues directly to households are labor and capital. 但是由于我们所测量的是整个经济的总产出，我们必须认识到那些中间产品、设施和服务实际上都是由另外的一些企业生产的，而那些企业在生产过程中又会用到它们自己的生产要素。如果我们去看看另一家企业——比如说生产电力的公司——的生产要素，我们会再一次找到一些工人和经理人，生产设备以及其它种种要素。我们可以尝试去追踪美国经济产出中的每一项投入，但是我们会迅速意识到，只有两种要素——劳动和资本——产生的收入将直接归属于家庭收入。 The BEA classifies output into seven groups, as detailed in the table. The second column provides the share of each component relative to the total for 2013. The classification of most income sources as capital or labor income is quite unambiguous. For example, compensation of employees clearly accrues to labor, while corporate profits, rental income, and net interest income are returns to capital. Of the three remaining components, the main challenge is proprietor’s income. 国家经济分析局将产出分为7个大类，如下表所示。表的第二列提供了2013年各个大类占总体的比重。将大多数的收入来源归为劳动收入或资本收入的这种分类方法实际上是相当明确的。举例来说，对雇员的劳动补偿很显然应该归为劳动报酬，而企业利润、租金收入和净利息收入都属于资本收入。在剩下的三个大类中，最主要的挑战是如何界定经营者收入的性质[iii]。 Proprietor’s income is defined as the income of sole proprietorships and partnerships — in other words, the income of self-employed individuals. There is no question that their income is the result of both labor and capital. For example, a freelance journalist may work long hours to document and write a story using a computer and a camera that she or he financed through savings. However, self-employed individuals have no need, economic or fiscal, to distinguish between wages and profits. However, economists do. 经营者收入被定义为个人独资以及合伙企业的收入——换句话说，也就是个体经营者的收入[iv]。毫无疑问，他们的收入同时是劳动投入和资本投入的结果。举例来说，一名自由记者可能会为了撰写一篇报导工作很长时间，而他使用的电脑和相机则是用自己的积蓄购买的。但是，个体经营者完全没有经济或财务上的理由将自己的收入区分为工资和利润。遗憾的是，经济学家们却需要这么做。 The main BLS measure 国家劳动统计局的主流测量方法 The BLS is well aware of these problems and goes to great lengths to disentangle proprietor’s income into its labor and capital income components. First, the BLS uses its data on payroll workers to compute an average hourly wage. The BLS then assumes that a self-employed worker would pay himself or herself the implicit wage rate. Then, using data on hours worked by self-employed workers, it obtains a measure of the labor compensation for self-employed individuals simply by multiplying the average hourly wage by the number of hours worked by the self-employed. The result is then assigned to labor income. The rest of the proprietor’s income is considered capital income. 国家劳动统计局对这些问题心知肚明，它在如何将经营者收入分解为劳动收入部分和资本收入部分这个问题上走得更远。首先，它使用领薪劳工的数据计算出一个平均时薪。然后假设一名自雇者将会按照这个时薪来给自己发工资。之后，使用自雇工人工作时长的数据并通过简单地将自雇者的平均时薪和工作时长相乘，国家劳动统计局就获得了对自雇者劳动报酬的测量数据。这个结果会被归为劳动收入，而这名经营者收入中的剩余部分则被认为是资本收入[v]。 Figure 1 plots the BLS’s headline labor share at an annual frequency from 1950 to 2013. Up until 2001, the labor share displayed some ups and downs, and perhaps a slight downward trend, but it never strayed far from 62 percent. From 2001 onward, though, the labor share has been steadily decreasing, dropping below 60 percent for the first time in 2004 and continuing its fall to 56 percent as of 2014. 图1描述了按国家劳动统计局主流方法计算出的自1950年到2013年的年度劳动收入占比[vi]。直到2001年，劳动收入占比一直都在一个很轻微的下行趋势中起起落落，但是它从来没有离62%这个数字太远。但自2001年以后，劳动收入占比一直在持续下降，在2004年首次跌破60%，并一直持续跌落到2014年的56%[vii]。 An alternative measure 一种替代测量方法 Michael Elsby, Bart Hobijn, and Aysegul Sahin have pointed out that some of the fall in the labor share in the past 15 years is due to how the BLS splits proprietor’s income. Indeed, until 2001, the BLS’s methodology assigned most of proprietor’s income to the labor share, a bit more than four-fifths of it. Since then, less than half of proprietor’s income has been classified as labor income. Michael Elsby, Bart Hobijn和Aysegul Sahin指出，劳动收入占比在过去15年中的下降可部分归因于国家劳动统计局分割经营者收入的方法。事实也的确如此，直到2001年，国家劳动统计局都将经营者收入中的大部分归为劳动收入，比例略高于五分之四。而2001年之后，经营者收入中仅有不到一半的比例被归为劳动收入。 How important is this shift? It is fortunately very easy to produce an alternative measure of the labor share in which a constant fraction of proprietor’s income accrues to labor. Setting that fraction to its historical average prior to 2000 — 85 percent — we can figure out what would be the current labor share under this alternative assumption. 这一变化的影响有多大？幸运的是，我们可以很容易地用一种替代测量方法来对劳动收入占比进行估值，这种方法就是把业主收入按照一个固定比例计算为劳动收入。如果将该比例设定为2000年以前的历史平均值——85%——我们就能计算用该替代方法测量的当前的劳动收入占比。 Figure 2 contrasts the previous headline number against this alternative measure from 1980 onward. 图2对比了国家统计局公布的自1980年以来的劳动收入占比和使用替代方法得到的同时期劳动收入占比。 First, we confirm that through 2000, both the headline and the alternative measure pretty much coincide. Since 2001, though, they diverge, with the drop being noticeably smaller in the alternative measure. Indeed, this divergence suggests that at least one-third and possibly closer to half of the drop in the headline labor share is due to how the BLS treats proprietor’s income. 首先，我们确认直到2000年，按国家劳动统计局的主流方法和这里的替代方法得到的结果基本是吻合的。而自从2001年开始，两者之间的差异开始扩大。按替代方法计算的结果中，劳动收入占比的下降幅度明显要小得多。两者间的差异事实上表明，按国家经济统计局的主流方法计算所得的结果中至少三分之一，甚至很可能接近一半的劳动收入占比降幅是由该方法对待经营者收入的方式所引起的。 Alternatively, we can also proceed by the centuries-tested scientific method of ignoring the problem altogether and compute the compensation or payroll share instead of the labor share. That is, we can assume that none of proprietor’s income accrues to labor. 另外，我们还可以采用一种经过多个世纪检验的“科学方法”——彻底忽略以上不同测量方法的问题，仅仅计算受雇劳工获取的劳动报酬占比，而不计算劳动收入占比。那么，我们就可以假设，经营者的所有收入都不会被归为劳动收入。 This is actually a quite common approach, since detailed payroll data exist for all industries, allowing us to pinpoint which sectors of the economy are responsible for the dynamics of labor income. The compensation share is, obviously, lower than the labor share — but its evolution across time is very similar: stable until the turn of the millennium and a decline since then. 实际上这也是一种很常用的方法。由于所有的行业都有非常详细的工资单数据，这让我们能够详细地查明经济中的哪些部门对劳动收入的变化产生了影响。劳动报酬收入占总收入的比重显然要低于总的劳动收入，但是它随时间变化的轨迹与劳动收入占比的变化轨迹非常相似：在新千年到来之前一直都很稳定，而从那以后就开始持续下降。 Yet another measure 另一种替代测量方法 There is yet another possible way to circumvent the ambiguity regarding proprietor’s income. The data allow us to zoom in to the non-financial corporate business sector. By law, corporations must declare payroll and profits separately for fiscal purposes, so there is actually no proprietor’s income. The downside is, of course, that we are working with only a subset of the economy, albeit a very large one. 还有另外一种可能的方法可以绕过处理经营者收入时面临的模棱两可问题。数据让我们可以更仔细地观察非金融企业部门。在法律上，由于财务方面的原因，公司必须分开报告工资单和利润，因此实际上这里就不存在经营者收入这个概念。但这个方法的缺点在于，我们只能研究整体经济中的一个子集，尽管这是一个相当大的子集[viii]。 Figure 3 plots the BLS headline measure and the labor share of income of the non-financial corporate sector from 1950 to the latest data available. The two series overlap for most of the period, though the headline labor share was consistently about 1 percentage point below that of non-financial firms from 1980 onward. In any case, the message since 2000 is unmistakable: The large drop in the headline measure is fully reflected in this alternative measure. 图3描述了从1950年开始到最近可获取数据的时间段内，分别使用国家劳动统计局的主流方法和非金融企业部门的劳动收入占比数据所得到的结果。虽然自1980年开始，主流方法测得的的劳动收入占比相对非金融企业中的劳动收入占比一直都低了1%左右，但在大多数时间段内，两条曲线的走势都是趋同的。不论在哪种情形下，2000年以来的数据所传递的信号都是明确无误的：主流方法中劳动收入占比的巨大降幅在这种替代方法中也得到了完全的反映。 So, despite the inherent measurement problems, the data are clear: First, the labor share was stable from 1950 to at least near the end of the 1980s. Second, it has fallen precipitously since 2001. While the exact magnitude of the drop may be open to debate, there is no doubt that the downward trend in the labor share since 2001 is unprecedented in the data and, at the time of this writing, shows no signs of abating. 所以如果将这些测量方法所固有的问题放在一边，数据的含义是非常清晰的：首先，从1950年到至少1980年代末，劳动收入占比一直都保持了稳定。第二，从2001年开始，劳动收入占比开始急剧下降。虽然精确的降幅到底是多少仍然有待讨论，但毫无疑问的是，从数据看来，2001年之后的劳动收入占比下降趋势是前所未有的。而直到撰写本文时，这个趋势也丝毫也没有减弱的迹象。 A BIT OF A MIRACLE: 1950-1987 “小小奇迹”：1950-1987 We now take a closer look at the period in which the labor share was stable — roughly from the end of World War II to the late 1980s — by breaking it down by sector. In doing so, we will understand the logic behind the “bit of a miracle” quip. The cutoff date is necessarily 1987, since the industry classification changed in that year. Fortunately, it is also the approximate end date of the stable period for the labor share. 大约从二战结束一直到1980年代末这一时期的美国劳动收入占比一直都很稳定。现在我们来分阶段地仔细审视一下这个时期。这将有助理解这个“小小奇迹”背后的逻辑。我们只能将这一时期的终点选在1987年，因为在1987年，行业的划分标准发生了变化。幸运的是，这一年也恰好几乎是劳动收入占比保持稳定的时代终结的年份。 Since the end of WWII, the U.S. has gone through large structural changes to its sectorial composition. The most significant was the shift from manufacturing to services. In 1950, manufacturing accounted for more than two-thirds of the non-farm business sector. By 1987, manufacturing was just half of the non-farm business sector. Over the same period, services increased from 21 percent to 40 percent of the non-farm business sector. 自从二战结束后，美国经济的产业构成经历了巨大的结构性变化。最明显的变化是经济从制造业向服务业的转型。在1950年，制造业在非农经济中占据的比重超过了三分之二。而到1987年，制造业在非农经济中仅仅占据了一半的比重。同一时期，服务业在非农经济部门中所占的比重则从21%提升到了40%[ix]。 The reader would not be surprised to learn that different sectors use labor and capital in different proportions. In 1950, the manufacturing sector averaged a labor share of 62 percent, with some sub-sectors having even higher labor shares, such as durable goods manufacturing, with a labor share of 77 percent. Services instead relied more on capital and thus had lower labor shares: an average of 48 percent. 对于不同的经济部门中劳动和资本的构成比例不同这一点，相信读者们并不会感到吃惊。在1950年，制造业部门中的平均劳动收入占比是62%，而其中某些子部门的劳动收入占比还要更高，例如在耐用品制造业中，劳动收入占比到了77%[x]。与之相反，服务业则更加依赖于资本，因而其劳动收入占比也更低：平均水平是48%。 Thus, from 1950 to 1987, the sector with a high labor share (manufacturing) was cut in half, while the sector with a low labor share (services) doubled. The aggregate labor share is, naturally, the weighted average across these sectors. Therefore, we would have expected the aggregate labor share to fall. But as we already know, it did not. 也就是说，从1950年到1987年间，劳动收入占比较高的部门（制造业）在经济中的占比下降了接近一半，而劳动收入占比较低的部门（服务业）在经济中的占比则上升了一倍。加总的劳动收入占比很自然地应该等于不同部门劳动收入占比的加权平均值。既然如此，我们应该可以预期，加总的劳动收入占比会下降。但正如我们已经知道的，它并没有下降。 The reason is that, coincidentally with the shift from manufacturing to services, the labor share of the service sector rose sharply, from 48 percent in 1950 to 56 percent in 1987. Education and health services went from labor shares around 50 percent to the highest values in the whole economy, close to 84 percent. In manufacturing, the labor share was substantially more stable, increasing by less than 2 percentage points over the period. 而其中的原因则是在经济从制造业向服务业的转型过程中，服务业中的劳动收入占比却巧合地经历了大幅的上升，从1950年的48%上升到了1987年的56%。教育和医疗服务业中的劳动收入占比从50%左右上升到了整个经济各部门中的最高水平，接近84%[xi]。制造业中的劳动收入占比则持续保持稳定，在整个期间内上升了不到2%。 And this is the “bit of a miracle” — that the forces affecting the labor share across and within sectors just happened to cancel each other out over a period of almost half a century. 而这就是所谓的“小小奇迹”——在接近半个世纪的时间内，部门间和部门内影响劳动收入占比的各种力量恰恰抵消了各自的影响。 A BIT OF A MIRACLE NO MORE: 1987-2011 “小小奇迹”不再：1987-2011 I start by repeating the previous exercise, now over the period 1987 to 2011. As it had from 1950 to 1987, the manufacturing sector kept losing ground to the service sector, albeit at a slower rate. 下面我首先会采取和之前相同的方法来分析美国经济的劳动收入占比，只是将时间段换成1987年-2011年。和1950年-1987年间一样，尽管速度有所下降，但制造业部门在经济中的占比仍然持续被服务业部门所抢占。 By 2011, services accounted for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic output and an even larger fraction of total employment. However, the differences in the labor share between the two sectors were much smaller by the early 1990s, and thus the shift from manufacturing to services had only small downward effects on the overall labor share. 到2011年，服务业在美国经济总产出中所占的比重已经超过了三分之二，而在总就业中的占比甚至更高。然而这两个部门之间劳动收入占比的差异相比1990年代初却缩小了不少，因此，经济从制造业向服务业的转型对总体劳动收入占比仅仅会造成很小的下行作用。 We readily find out which part of the economy is behind the decline of the labor share once we look at the change in the labor share within manufacturing, which dropped almost 10 percentage points. Virtually all the major manufacturing sub-sectors saw their labor shares fall; for non-durable goods manufacturing it dropped from 62 percent to 40 percent. The labor share within the service sector kept increasing, as it had before 1987, but very modestly, only enough to cancel the downward pressure from the shift across sectors. Indeed, had the labor share of income in manufacturing stayed constant, the overall labor share would have barely budged. 只要看看在制造业中劳动收入占比的变化，我们就能很容易地发现经济中的哪一部分是造成劳动收入占比下降的主因。在制造业中，劳动收入占比下降了接近10个百分点。基本上所有主要的制造业子部门都经历了劳动收入占比的下降。在非耐用品制造业中，劳动收入占比从62%下降到了40%。而服务业部门的劳动收入占比相对1987年之前的水平仍然保持了增长，但是增幅非常缓慢，仅仅足够抵消掉由经济从制造业向服务业转型所产生的下行压力。的确，假如制造业中的劳动收入占比能够保持不变，整体经济中的劳动收入占比就几乎不会下降。 Note that in one sense, the bit of a miracle actually continued from 1987 onward: As manufacturing continued to shrink, decreasing the share of income accruing to labor, services picked up the slack by increasing their share of income accruing to labor, albeit more modestly than before. What ended the “miracle” was the precipitous decline in the labor share within manufacturing. 从这个意义上说，“小小奇迹”实际上在1987年之后也得到了延续：制造业在整体经济中占比的持续收缩减少了总收入中劳动收入的比例，而服务业则在一定程度上通过提升部门内的劳动收入占比收拾了残局，虽然提升的速度相比之前已经减缓了许多。终结“奇迹”的实际上是制造业内部劳动收入占比的急剧下降。 Wages and productivity 工资与劳动生产率 It is worth investigating a bit further what determinants are behind the fall in the labor share within manufacturing, since it played such an important role in the decline of the overall labor share. To this end, note that the change in the labor share in a particular sector is linked to the joint evolution of wages and labor productivity. 由于制造业内部的劳动收入占比下降在整体劳动收入占比的下降中发挥了如此重要的作用，更深入地研究其中的决定因素就显得很有价值了。从这个意义上说，我们需要注意到，某个特定部门内的劳动收入占比是与工资和劳动生产率的联合演化联系在一起的。 Consider a machine operator working in a factory for one hour to produce goods that will have a gross value to the factory owner of $100. If he is paid $60 per hour, labor’s share is approximately 60 percent. For the labor share to change, there are only two possibilities: Either the value of the goods produced must change or the hourly wage must. Conversely, for the labor share to stay constant, the value of the goods and the hourly wage have to move in unison. 假如一名机器操作员在工厂中工作一小时能够生产出对于工厂主而言价值100美元的产品，如果他的时薪是60美元，那么劳动收入占比就大约是60%。一旦劳动收入占比发生变化，仅仅有两种可能的情况：要么是产出的价值发生了变化，要么是操作员的时薪发生了变化。反过来说，如果劳动收入占比保持不变，产出的价值和操作员的时薪就必须总是等比例变化[xii]。 So which one — productivity or wages — brought down the labor share in manufacturing? Fortunately, we do have reliable data on output, wage rates, and hours worked in manufacturing. Figure 4 displays the evolution of labor productivity (that is, output per hour) and wage rates from 1950 onward. Both series are set such that their value in 1949 equals 100. 那么在生产率和工资水平中，究竟是哪一项将制造业中的劳动收入占比拖了下来呢？幸运的是，我们拥有制造业中关于产出，单位时间工资和工作时长的可靠数据。图4显示了自1950年以来劳动生产率（也就是每小时产出）和单位时间工资的演化过程[xiii]。两条曲线都将1949年的水平设定为100[xiv]。 Once again we see two clearly separate periods. Until the early 1980s, labor productivity and wages grew at a very similar rate — if anything, the wage rate out-paced productivity, which, as described earlier, implies that the labor share in manufacturing inched up. By mid-1985, labor productivity took off, while wage growth was very sluggish. Since then, the gap between productivity and wages has kept growing, depressing the labor share. 我们又一次地看到了两个被明显分隔开的时期。直到上世纪80年代早期，劳动生产率和工资都一直在以很接近的速度增长——如果有不同的话，也是工资的增长速度超过了劳动生产率。按照之前的描述，这意味着制造业中的劳动收入占比提高了。到上世纪80年代中期，劳动生产率开始突飞猛进，而工资的增长则变得非常缓慢。从那以后，劳动生产率和工资之间的差距就开始持续扩大，从而不断压低劳动收入占比。 Because an index is used to scale both series, it is a tad difficult to grasp from the figure whether labor productivity accelerated or wage rates stagnated from the 1980s onward. The answer is both things happened. In the 1980s, productivity grew at about its long-term trend rate, but wages were virtually flat, growing less than half a percentage point a year on average over the decade. Wage growth recovered in the 1990s, but productivity actually took off, further increasing the gap. Overall, though, it appears that the fall in the labor share is explained mainly by the sluggish growth of wages rather than above-trend labor productivity. 由于我们使用同一个坐标来衡量两条曲线的变化，想要从图中分辨出1980年后究竟是劳动生产率的增长加速了还是单位时间工资的增长停滞了似乎有些困难。答案是两件事情都发生了。在1980年代，劳动生产率的增长速度基本上等于它的长期平均增长率，但是工资增长则相当平缓，这十年中的年均增长率不到0.5%。工资的增长在1990年代有所恢复，但是生产率的增长则突飞猛进，让两者间的差距越来越大。但是整体看来，劳动收入占比的下降更为主要的原因还是缓慢的工资增长速度，而不是增长的劳动生产率。 CONCURRENT PHENOMENA 一些并发的现象 What is the ultimate cause behind the decline of the labor share in the U.S.? The honest answer is that economists have several hypotheses but no definite answer yet. Rather than go over the sometimes-intricate theories behind these hypotheses, I will discuss the main observation or phenomenon anchoring each one. 美国劳动收入占比下降背后的终极原因到底是什么？诚实的回答是，经济学家们目前只是提出了一些假说，但还没有得到确定的答案[xv]。在本文中，我并不准备把这些假说背后的那些有时看起来错综复杂的理论复述一遍，而将讨论与每个假说相关的主要观察结果或现象。 Capital deepening 资本深化 This is by far the most popular hypothesis: Workers have been replaced by equipment and software. Who has not seen footage of robots working an auto assembly line? Older readers may remember when live tellers and not ATMs dispensed cash at banks. Software is now capable of piloting planes and, even more amazingly, doing our taxes! 这是至今为止最流行的假说：工人正在不断地被设备和软件所替代。今天谁还没有见过机器人在汽车流水线上的身影呢？年纪大一些的读者们可能还记得，在过去银行是使用出纳员而不是ATM机来分发现金的。当时的软件还不具备为飞机导航的能力，而更令今人惊讶的是，它们甚至还无法计算我们的税单！ There is more behind this hypothesis than anecdotes. Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman document a fall in equipment prices. Lawrence Summers proposes that capital should be viewed as at least a partial substitute for labor — more and more so as technology develops. In both models, the idea is similar: Better or cheaper equipment replaces workers and redistributes income from labor to capital. The result is that production becomes more intensive in capital, which is why these theories are often referred to as capital deepening. 这个假说背后有着远比这些旧日轶闻深刻得多的内容。Loukas Karabarbounis和Brent Neiman证明了设备价格的下降趋势。Lawrance Summers则提出，资本至少应该被看作劳动力的一种部分替代——而随着技术的发展，替代的程度也越来越高。在这两个模型中，观点是相似的：更好或者更便宜的设备替代了工人的劳动，并且将之前属于劳动的一部分收入重新分配给了资本。结果就是生产过程的资本密集程度越来越高，这也是这些理论通常被人们称为“资本深化”的原因。 It is important to understand that the capital deepening mechanism must operate at the level of the overall economy. So, when we see a robot replace, say, five workers, we need to remember that the production of the robot itself involved workers, so we are swapping auto assemblers with robot assemblers. It is, of course, still possible that the robot tilts income toward capital, but it is not a foregone conclusion. 重要的是，我们必须懂得资本深化机制只有在整体经济的尺度上才能发挥作用。所以当我们看到一个机器人替代了5名工人时，我们应该记住，机器人的生产本身也需要工人，所以我们只是把汽车装配工换成了机器人装配工而已。当然，机器人的确很有可能会让收入的天平向资本倾斜，但这并非已成定局。 The main challenge to capital deepening is that if a sector is substituting robots for workers to save money or improve the quality of the good being produced, the remaining workers should therefore become more productive and, overall, the sector should be expanding. In other words, capital deepening can reduce the labor share of income, but it does so by making labor productivity accelerate rather than making wages stagnate. As we saw earlier, this does not fit the actual picture of the manufacturing sector at all. 对资本深化理论的主要挑战是，如果某个部门通过使用机器人代替工人来节省成本或者提高所生产的产品质量，那么剩下的工人的生产效率就应该变得更高，而在整体上，这个部门应该会在扩张之中。换句话说，资本深化会降低劳动在总收入中所占的比例，但这是通过让劳动生产率获得提升来完成的，而不是让工资的增长停滞。就像我们之前所看到的，这与制造业所呈现的实际图景完全不相符[xvi]。 Income inequality 收入不平等 The increase in income inequality in the U.S. has lately received a lot of attention. The decline of the labor share is a force toward income inequality because capital is more concentrated across households than labor is. 最近，美国收入不平等的加剧获得了大量的关注。劳动收入占比下降显然是一种加剧收入不平等的力量，因为相比劳动力，资本在家庭间的分布集中度显然更高[xvii]。 It should be noted, though, that the main driver of the increase in income inequality is not capital income but rather wages themselves, particularly at the very top of the pay ladder. As Elsby and his coauthors document, the increase in top wages has actually sustained the labor share. In other words, the decline in the labor share actually understates the increase in income inequality. 但值得一提的是，收入不平等加剧的主要驱动力并不是资本收入，而是工资收入本身，尤其是在工资收入阶梯的顶端[xviii]。正如Elsby和他的合作者们所证明的，顶端工资的增长实际上会起到维持劳动收入占比的作用。换句话说，劳动收入占比的下降实际上还低估了收入不平等程度的加剧。 An interesting question is whether whatever is driving up inequality is also driving down the labor share. Several economists have proposed that technological change is skill biased — that is, it augments productivity more for highly skilled workers than for low-skilled workers. Combined with the idea that capital helps highly skilled workers be more productive but makes unskilled workers redundant, skill bias can explain both the increase in wage inequality and the decline in the labor share. 一个有趣的问题是，任何加剧收入不平等程度的因素是否也同样会降低劳动收入占比呢？一些经济学家提出，技术进步对于工人技能的影响是有偏的——也就是说，相对于低技能的工人，技术进步会更大地提升那些高技能工人的生产力。与之前得出的资本在帮助高技能工人提高生产力同时，让低技能工人变得冗余的观点相结合，“技能偏好”能够同时解释工资收入不平等程度的加剧和劳动收入占比的降低[xix]。 Let us return once more to the car manufacturer example. The robot may be replacing five unskilled workers but may require a qualified operator. The demand for unskilled workers falls, and so do their wages; but the demand for qualified operators increases, and so do their wages. So it is possible to have an increase in wage inequality while factories undergo capital deepening. 让我们再次回到汽车制造商的例子。机器人可能会替代掉5名不熟练的工人，但同时却会需要一名合格的操作员。对不熟练工人的需求下降了，他们的工资收入也会同时下降；但是对合格的操作员的需求和他们的工资水平则会同步提升。所以随着工厂经历资本深化的过程，工资收入的不平等程度也很可能会加剧。 Globalization. 全球化 Another popular hypothesis links the fall in the labor share with the advent of international trade liberalization. There is no question that there has been a substantial increase in trade by U.S. firms in the past few decades. In particular, firms have shifted parts of their production processes to foreign countries to take advantage of cheaper inputs — which, from the perspective of a country like the U.S. that has more capital than other countries, means cheap labor. Industries that are more intensive in labor, such as manufacturing, will be more likely to outsource their production processes abroad, and thus the remaining factories are likely to be the ones that rely more on capital. 另一个流行的假说将劳动收入占比的下降与国际贸易自由化的出现联系在了一起。毫无疑问，在过去的几十年中，美国公司所进行的国际贸易经历了非常显著的增长。尤其值得一提的是，许多美国公司都将它们的一部分生产流程转移到了国外以利用更加便宜的生产要素——对于美国这样一个比他国拥有更多资本的国家来说，也就是劳动力。劳动力更加密集的那些行业，例如制造业，将更有可能将生产流程外包到国外，而那些留在国内的工厂则更可能属于那些对资本依赖程度较高的行业。 Surprisingly, there is not a lot of evidence to support this view. The main challenge to the hypothesis is that U.S. exports and imports are very similar in their factor composition. That is, were trade driving down the labor share, we would observe the U.S. importing goods that use a lot of labor and exporting goods that use a lot of capital. Instead, most international trade involves exchanging goods that are very similar, such as cars. 令人吃惊的是，并没有多少证据能够支持这个观点。这一假说所面临的主要挑战是，美国的进口和出口在要素构成上其实非常相似。也就是说，如果说国际贸易降低了美国的劳动收入占比，那么我们会观察到美国所进口的产品的生产要素中包含大量的劳动，而出口产品的生产要素中则包含大量的资本。但实际上，大多数的国际贸易中所交换的产品都非常相似，例如汽车[xx]。 Another prediction of the globalization theory is that countries the U.S. exports to should see their labor shares increase and — as noted in the accompanying discussion, it appears that the decline in the labor share is a global phenomenon. 支持全球化降低了美国劳动收入占比的理论所作出的另一项预测是，那些从美国进口多于向美国出口的国家的劳动收入占比应该会上升——而我们在之前的讨论中已经提到过，劳动收入占比下降似乎是一个全球性的现象。 Some studies, though, do support this hypothesis. Elsby and his coauthors find some evidence that the labor share fell more in sectors that were more exposed to imports. There is a large body of literature on the impact of trade on wage inequality that only recently has started to consider the impact on the labor share. 事实上，也的确有一些研究支持这个假说。Elsby和他的合作者们发现了一些证据证明在那些受进口冲击更强的行业内，劳动收入占比的确下降得更厉害。已经有大量的文献研究国际贸易对于工资收入不平等的影响，而直到最近，人们才开始考虑它对于劳动收入占比的影响[xxi]。 CONCLUSIONS 结论 Despite several measurement issues and alternative definitions associated with the labor share, the message is quite clear: The 2000s witnessed an unprecedented drop in the labor share of income. Exploring the early period, we saw that the U.S. economy had been able to accommodate the surplus workers from manufacturing only until the late 1980s. 除了一些测量方法上的问题，以及与劳动收入占比相关的一些不同定义之外，我们所获得的信号是非常清晰的：21世纪的前十年见证了美国劳动收入占比的一场史无前例的急剧下降。通过对更早的时期进行研究，我们发现直到1980年代末期，美国一直都能够容纳制造业中多余的劳动力。 We also saw that the stagnation of wages, rather than accelerated labor productivity, has been behind the drop in the labor share from 2000 onward. The review of possible hypotheses behind the decline in the U.S. labor share was, admittedly, quite inconclusive: Economists do not yet have a full grasp of the underlying determinants. 我们还发现，工资增长的停滞，而不是劳动力产出的提升，才是2000年之后劳动收入占比下降的主要原因。需要承认的是，对于一些可能解释美国劳动收入占比下降的假说的回顾并没有得出什么明确的结论：经济学家们仍然没能完整地把握这一现象背后的那些潜在因素。

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[i] 收入中的一小部分实际上直接被政府获取了，我将在之后更详细地讨论这一点。 [ii] 关于NIPA，国家经济分析局提供了多种入门级别的指导教程，可通过访问http://www.bea.gov轻松获得。 [iii] 折旧和税收也分别会遇上一些测量方法上的问题，但我们可以安全地规避它们：本文附带的讨论《其它测量方法上的挑战》对这些额外的问题进行了简要的描述。还可参阅Paul Gomme和Peter Rupert发表于2004年的论文，以获得对所有劳动收入测量方法问题的完整描述。 [iv] 实际上其中还包括一些其它的小成分：例如非盈利机构的收入等。 [v] 国家劳动统计局所采用的方法实际上远非完美：例如，一些岗位上受雇佣劳工的比例可能远高于自雇人员，而这可能导致一些误导性的结果。 [vi] 国家劳动统计局使用的主流劳动收入占比，也被称为“头条劳动收入占比”，包含了所有行业的劳动收入占比数据。可访问http://www.bls.gov/lpc/lpcmethods.htm以了解该测量方法的构建细节。 [vii] 劳动收入占比也会表现出一定的弱周期性，在经济下滑时劳动收入占比通常会上升。但本文关注的焦点是劳动收入占比的长期趋势。 [viii] 需要说明的是，我们只考虑非金融企业。金融部门的收入不稳定是众所周知的，并且存在一些与其自身相关的测量问题——即股票期权和类似的一些支付手段常常被作为支付劳动报酬的方式。 [ix] 这里的占比数据指的是占总经济增加值的比重。与此同时，就业人口的比例结构也发生了类似幅度的转变。在这个时期内，农业部门也经历了相当严重的收缩。 [x] 数据来源于Michael Elsby, Bart Hobijn,和Aysegul Sahin三位作者2013年的论文。这里的劳动收入占比指的是所有受雇劳工的劳动报酬占总经济增加值的比例。 [xi] 服务业中劳动收入占比的提升与William Baumol提出的“服务业的支出病”这一可追溯到上世纪60年代的概念有关，它指的是生产率在服务业中提升的难度本身就较高。可参阅Baumol 2012年的论文获取他最新的观点。 [xii] 这里的计算忽略了之前所提到过的对经营者收入的分解。不过对于制造业部门来说，经营者的收入本来也不会很高。 [xiii] 单位时间“工资”实际上也包含了福利和奖金，它们在总的劳动报酬中所占的比重一直在增加。 [xiv] 图4采纳了Susan Fleck, John Glaser和Shawn Sprague 2011年发表的论文中使用的方法，按照制造业产出的隐含价格指数对于产出的数值进行调整，并按照消费者价格指数对工资率的数值进行调整。 [xv] 一些同行可能会认为“还没有”这个说法并不是很诚实，因为对于经济学家们而言，在他们面临的任何问题面前，他们总是会提出一系列的假说，而得不到确定性的答案。 [xvi] 公平地说，上世纪90年代的情形并不是很符合这个理论，因为劳动生产率的提升在这个阶段的确加速了，而劳动收入占比的下降主要发生在本世纪的前十年中。参阅原文第6页对于技术和工资差异把高技能劳工和低技能劳工区分开来的讨论。 [xvii] 可参阅Margaret Jacobson和Filippo Occhino 2012年的论文对于劳动收入占比对收入不平等影响的研究。 [xviii] 可参阅Thomas Piketty和Emmanuel Saez 2003年的论文以及Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony Atkinson, Piketty和Saez 2013年的论文。 [xix] 学术界关于技术进步对于工人技能的有偏影响以及技能和资本的互补关系这两个论题已经作了大量的研究，Lawrance Katz和Kevin Murphy 1992年的论文，Per Krussel及合作者2002年的论文是这些领域重要的参考文献，但是两篇文章的技术性都很强。可以参阅Keith Sil 2002年发表在《商业评论》上的文章，以获得关于这些问题的更易于理解的讨论。 [xx] 最初观察到这个现象的是Wassily Leontif。可参阅Daniel Trefler 1993年的论文以获得使用更新的数据对国际贸易的要素内容的评估结果。然而，也有一些研究结果挑战他得到的结论，例如可参阅John Romalis 2004年的文章。 [xxi] Avraham Ebenstein及其合作者2013年的论文是一个典型的例子。若想获得对于之前研究结果的综述，可参考Stephen Golub 1998年的论文。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

【2016-05-03】 @whigzhou: 乃国医疗管制，简单说就是，1）穷尽一切办法阻止患者掏出的钱落到真正帮助患者的人手里，尽最大可能的让它落进各类中间人——药监局、卫生局、招标办、医院院长、采购科、医药代表……——的腰包；2）穷尽一切办法阻止好医院/好医生赚钱、建立声誉、扩张壮大，从而将病人最大可能的留给骗子和老军医。 @whigzhou: 所以，莆田系和百度当然是管制的受益者。 @whigzhou: 有关医疗广告，转一篇七年前的旧文  

现代社会与传统社会最根本的不同，在于其流动性，这里说的不是阶层间的，而是社会关系的流动性，对个人而言，就是选择自由，或者说掌握自己命运的可能性；当然，这种可能性仍受制于个人所拥有的不同财富、知识、见识和生活态度，但与传统社会地位相当的人比，今天所有人在居住地、职业、配偶、社交圈和兴趣爱好上，都有着大得多的选择空间。 在古代，绝大多数人一辈子住在出生地，从事与生俱来的身份地位所决定的职业，处于家族、亲戚和邻居组成的社交网中，被各种习俗和传统牢牢束缚着；可能打破这一状态的，往往是灾难性事件；一生中只有两三次像结婚这样的关口才有机会做选择，能经历一两次诸如科举考试之类改变命运的机会，就算得上幸运儿了。 只有贵族子弟和少数处于边缘地位的特殊职业者——行商贩夫，说唱艺人，游方术士，托钵僧人，刺客游侠——，才有机会和能力四处旅行，突破被出身所赋予的那个社会网络而构建自己的社交圈，但即便是他们，也往往为身份所限，或者被排斥于主流社会之外，因而选择余地其实也相当有限。 而且这种选择即便存在，也是成套的，不是可以自由组合的，你选择在某个地方居住，就必须与那里的邻居交往，否则会被视为反社会者而陷于孤立，你与某人结婚，便须对其整个家族承担姻亲义务，你拜某人为师，便自动与一大群师兄师弟成为同门，如果你选择做工匠或开店，就只能住在城内指定区域，甚至被要求穿着特定款式衣服以标示身份。 现代社会的流动性，源自相互交织的多股力量；首先是经济活动的货币化，在缺乏货币化的时候，交易、合作和生产组织往往建立在各种依附关系之上，农民依附于庄园领主，工匠依附于贵族私人作坊，士兵是领主附庸，商人是贵族的贸易代理，歌舞家是贵族的奴婢，诗人是贵族的弄臣，各种管理者则是贵族的家臣，甚至提供宗教服务的僧侣和修道院也常依附于领主。 依附是一种长期契约关系，通常终身不变乃至世代承袭，个人的绝大部分合作与交易对象被锁定于其中，无从选择；这种情况下，满足生活各方面需要的消费品和服务，通常以一揽子套餐的方式提供，庄园农民为其领主提供全套产品和服务，只有少数奢侈品花钱从市场购买，因而领地被称为食邑，领主也包揽了其家臣奴婢的全部生活所需。 在交通不便、贸易不发达、交易费用极高、社区之外充满危险的条件下，这种模式可以给人带来稳定和安全感，但显然也削弱了竞争和生产激励；相反，假如产出分配和劳动报酬简单的以货币支付，再用货币购买各自所需消费品，会更有效率，也更多选择自由；所以一旦社会变得更安全，贸易条件改善，货币就会代替依附关系和生存套餐而成为资源配置、生产组织和消费活动的媒介。 创造流动性的另一股力量是城市化；城市最初在规模经济的驱动下得以扩张，因为密集人口可以支撑更多样化的消费、更精细的分工和更迂回的生产，但规模超出邓巴数两三个数量级的大城市一旦出现，也会改变社交模式；在乡村熟人社会，社交关系是被出身和环境所给定的，而在城市，每个人活动半径内可能接触的人数，远远超出可能与之建立关系的人数，于是便有了选择余地。 第三股力量是非血缘组织的兴起，传统社会高度依赖于血缘与亲属纽带，家族和经由通婚关系结成的家族联盟，是生产、战争、政治、贸易等各种活动赖以开展的组织基础；血缘能提供合作所需要的信任，但也有着无法克服的弊端：家族分支裂变带来的离心力，亲缘与能力不匹配所导致的权力冲突和继承危机，亲亲伦理与专业价值观、职业伦理和商业道德的冲突，等等。 所以，当经济繁荣起来，社会变得更复杂时，家族便难以满足日益多样的组织需要，教会、行会、学校、社团、公司、政党等非血缘组织逐渐在各种领域取代其地位；这些构成社会中间结构的组织，是个人在家族之外寻求保护、发展事业和诉求利益的媒介，也是改变自身命运的机会，要知道，在缺乏普遍司法保护的古代，孤立个人是难以在社会上立足存身的。 这三股力量并不同步，各社会表现也很不同，在中国，货币化和依附关系的松动发生的更早，社会流动性也比较高，或许是因为强大的国家权力扫除了各种资源流动屏障；而在西欧，非血缘组织的发育则更早更充分，基督教（不像儒家）是反祖先崇拜的，其组织也是非家族的，西欧的封建制度也较少依赖血缘纽带；这一反差构成了中西社会面貌差异的重要背景。 上述几方面的变化，最终在宪政与法治的保障之下，在18、19世纪的西欧演变成了一场全面变革，不妨称之为现代化（或从经济学角度称为市场化），传统结构全面松动，各种资源要素、社会关系、生产与消费活动，都从中解放出来，进入市场配置机制，经由非人格化交易而流通，个人也因此而获得前所未有的选择自由。 在现代商业关系中，合作与交易各方只须在生意上发生关系，别无牵扯；现代企业中，雇主与雇员只须在工作时间发生关系，报酬以货币工资一笔了断；在现代社区，邻居之间只须在公共事务上发生关系，亲戚关系也随感情和际遇而异，并无当然义务；总之，现代社会的所有关系都是有限的、非永久性的、可替换的，因而也是个人可选择的。 这并不是说，现代人不和他人建立紧密关系，而是说，他们在生活不同方面（家庭、教育、职业、宗教、爱好、政治、学术等等）分别与不同圈子建立关系，圈子间彼此隔离，互不牵扯；由于这些关系可以单独解除或替换，任何方面的变故都不至于全面颠覆你的生活，因而你在做出选择时也就更为从容自如。 现代化也并非消灭了传统和习俗，而是解除了各种传统之间的紧密耦合关系，个人不再被迫在一整套全面笼罩生活各方面的传统体系中做要么全盘接纳要么彻底抛弃的艰难选择，而是可以在生活不同方面分别追随不同传统，认同不同的价值，习得不同的要素，从而构建起专属于自己的文化体系，拥有独特的文化人格。

人们做各种事情——思考、说话、工作、解决问题、与人交往，或安排生活——的方式，常常会形成固定的模式，并随世代交替而一代代传下去；这些固定套路，在个人叫习惯，在群体叫习俗，在技艺叫门道，在器物或艺术叫风格，在语言叫口音或腔调，在思想叫流派，笼统的，都被称为传统，它们构成了文化的主要内容。 传统得以形成和延续，得益于我们在行动时所固有的保守倾向，尽管人类已经是头脑最开放，心思最活络，最具好奇心和探索精神的动物，却仍无法摆脱这一倾向，因为保守性是生命的基本特征：每一代相当精确的复制上一代，生命的有序结构才得以维持，过高变异率会摧毁任何结构；这一点对文化同样成立，尽管两者所能容忍的临界变异率可能十分不同。 保守性之所以不可或缺，是因为我们在做多数事情时，面临的选择实在太多，而其中只有极少数是可行的，随机改变而得到可行方案的希望极小，获得改进的机会则更为渺茫，所以一旦你有幸找到一种可行方法，最合理的做法就是牢牢记住它并不断加以重复，不要轻易试探其他可能性，除非错误代价很小。 比如种稻，假设播种时间、育秧天数和灌溉次数分别有20种、10种和3种选择，每次灌溉的时间有5种选择，那么种植者一共就有4万多种选择组合，其中或许只有几百种能带来正常收获；此时假如你已找到一种可行组合，尽管可以指望还存在可成倍提高产量的其他组合，试探仍是不合算的：以万分之几的几率获得数倍产量，代价是以99%的几率丧失整季收获；更何况像水稻种植这样的事情，可选参数实际上比这多得多，其组合将是天文数字。 有人可能会问，既然因探索而得益的机会这么小，那么诸如种植水稻的正确方法之类知识最初是怎么获得的？难道不是探索的结果吗？答案之一是达尔文式的：探索的代价确实很高，经常是丢失生命或繁殖机会，但有时生物必须承担这种代价去解决面临的问题，那些没找到解决方案的个体都没留下后代，而我们的历代祖先有幸都找到了，这正是我们存在于世的前提。 其二，获取和背离一种方法的代价是不对称的，因为方法的发现可能改变了成本收益曲线，当我们祖先最初探索谷物种植方法时，以狩猎采集为生，利用闲暇尝试种植，权当消遣，成败无关痛痒，可一旦找到好方法后，谷物便会养活更多人口，越来越多人将生计建立在此之上，不适宜狩猎采集但适宜种植的地方也有了居民，此时种植失败便是灾难了。 其三，许多创新不是有意探索的结果，而是无心之获，可能是一时疏忽差错，或意外干扰，或模仿学习中的误解，或不具备照搬条件时的姑且凑合，这些偏离的后果多半是中性或恶性的，所以生活总是充满失败、灾难、死亡和灭绝，但也有个别偏离得到了好结果，于是有了改良和进步。 保守倾向的另一个理由是，一种方法的长期沿袭，会降低继续使用它的成本，而提高更换它的代价，因为随着该方法的持续反复使用，围绕它的知识、工具、技能、设施等等资源会积累并特化，同一条路走多了，会被踩的更平，沿路陷阱和危险会被发现并记住，重要路标被识别和命名，歇脚点被开辟和修缮，通往它的分支小路也纷纷被踩了出来，此时，弃之另辟它途的机会成本，就比当初选另一条路要高得多，于是路径选择便被锁入在了传统之中。 保守性也引出了我们的另一种倾向——将某些已知可行的方法、策略或原则视为无须考虑而应加以遵行的，是无须其它理由支持而本身有其价值的：起初用果木烤鸭、用橡木制酒桶，只是因为它们方便合用，因循日久，果木烤制和橡木桶储装本身被赋予了价值；如此将工具价值当作终极价值对待，就指导行为的效果而言，起初是完全等价的，可是当情况变化，比如发现了被证明更好的方法时，这种将手段价值化的保守倾向，有时会成为改进的障碍。 不过，此类妨碍与另一种情况常纠缠在一起，颇难区分：策略的价值化，也是防止疏忽大意、偷工减料、欺诈蒙骗等机会主义行为的二阶策略；特别是当我们旨在保守的，是一种与人合作交往（而非独自做事）的策略时，往往会面临牺牲长期利益而谋取短期利益的诱惑，而策略的价值化可以帮助我们抵御这种诱惑：假如我将诚实守信本身视为值得追求的价值，是我人格中值得珍视的部分，而不只是追求长期利益的手段，我就能更好的抵御机会主义。 除了我们固守已知可行方法的保守倾向之外，传统之牢固性还得到了另一种力量的强化，经济学家称之为网络效应，意思是，有些做事方法，只有当别人也采用它时，才是可行的或有优势的，而且采用者越多，优势越大，许多事情都是如此，比如消费规模不足以支撑全日制零售业的地方，商家必须决定哪些日子出摊，某一选择采纳者越多，效果就越好。 此类抉择被称为协调博弈（[[coordination game]]），经验表明，当存在这样的协调需要时，无须中央权威统一指挥，只须借助一些细微线索，或者最初的微小差异，参与者通常很快便可自发达成一致，比如某座庙每月初一十五香客较多，且庙前空地适合摆摊，一些商户便选择这两天在庙前出摊，于是吸引一些买家在这两天去庙里，然后更多商户发现该选择的好处……集日便产生了。 像集日之类由协调博弈而产生的一致选择，被称为聚点（[[focal point]]）[1]，大量习俗和传统皆由这一机制所生成；聚点一旦形成，其地位就会被上面提到的资源特化所加强，起初难分伯仲的其他选项，被迅速排除于考虑之外，此时改变就很难发生了，因为要改就得大家一起改，要让系统从一个聚点转到另一个聚点，后者需要在其他方面展现出巨大优势来弥补其在网络效应和特化资源上的不足。 传统之牢固性，也因其系统性而难以撼动，各种习俗并非孤立存在，而是以错综复杂的方式相互依赖而构成一个体系，因为对于个人，每项选择都限制了他在其他事情上的选择余地，选择一个职业，很大程度上就限定了居住位置、交往圈子、作息安排，甚至娱乐内容、穿着风格和说话腔调也被限定了。 同样，对于群体，每项习俗的存在都将改变其他习俗出现的可能，在婚姻关系不稳定，离婚和单亲家庭普遍的地方，不大会有大额彩礼和贞操习俗，缺乏贞操习俗的地方，就不会有缠足或蒙面头巾之类的习俗，在婆婆权威牢固或有着其他闺禁习俗的地方，就不会有女性割礼这么残酷的贞操控制方式。 文化系统的这一紧密耦合特征，在传统乡村社会比在现代城市社会更为显著，它将指导生活各个侧面的诸多传统紧紧捆绑在一起，个人很难取此而舍彼，即便是那些最有能力把握自己命运的人，而只能在极为有限的几种一揽子套餐中做出选择。 --------------------------------- [1]聚点又称谢林点（Schelling point），由经济学家托马斯·谢林（Thomas Schelling）于1960年在《冲突的策略》一书中提出。