含有〈社会〉标签的文章(134)

一团和气

【2016-02-16】

@whigzhou: 个人主义必定伴随着对抗性,否认对抗、讲究隐忍退让、一团和气、齐心协力拧成一股绳、为此诉诸权威以压制对抗、抹除差异的群体,无论是家庭还是社会,都是容不下个人主义的,我们不能在提倡个人主义的同时否认对抗,而只能在承认对抗的同时设法学会以诚实、体面、守信、有尊严的方式处理对抗。

@whigzhou: 至于从何时开始、在何种程度上将孩子作为独立自主的个人对待,我的看法是分年龄段逐步推进,并鼓励孩子证明自己已配得上更高一级的对待,最终在(more...)

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【2016-02-16】 @whigzhou: 个人主义必定伴随着对抗性,否认对抗、讲究隐忍退让、一团和气、齐心协力拧成一股绳、为此诉诸权威以压制对抗、抹除差异的群体,无论是家庭还是社会,都是容不下个人主义的,我们不能在提倡个人主义的同时否认对抗,而只能在承认对抗的同时设法学会以诚实、体面、守信、有尊严的方式处理对抗。 @whigzhou: 至于从何时开始、在何种程度上将孩子作为独立自主的个人对待,我的看法是分年龄段逐步推进,并鼓励孩子证明自己已配得上更高一级的对待,最终在某个时刻承认其自由人的地位,至于我家的猫,则注定只能永远处于我的权威主义控制之下。 @rainbowend:把儿童培养成成人的一大目标就是让他像个人一样为自己争取利益表达诉求, 同时也学会有礼貌的沟通达成妥协吧。把这说成对抗性也太怪了 @whigzhou: 把礼貌和对抗对立起来才叫怪,两支球队可以很有礼貌很讲规则很有尊严的进行对抗 @whigzhou: 自由主义者最具误导性的一句格言是,人生而自由,要我说,“人生而为暴徒”更接近真相,自由是已经学会收好爪子的好猫们所创造的俱乐部公共品,加入这个俱乐部的资格不是与生俱来的,既要学会收好爪子,否则就是暴徒,又要学会在必要时挥出爪子,否则便是奴隶。 @whigzhou: 文明社会驯服暴徒的方式有两种,一是权威主义的压制和惩戒,让暴徒了解不收好爪子的惨痛代价,二是对合作性的社会奖励机制,让暴徒意识到,收好爪子也可以维护自己的利益,还能带来合作收益,第一种方式导向专制社会,第二种导向自由社会。  
呼之欲出

【2016-04-16】

@whigzhou: 个人禀赋可遗传性,社会阶梯对个人禀赋的选择,择偶的同质化倾向,阶层内婚,阶级分化,族群禀赋差异化,地区经济分化,大国-单一民族国家-城邦小国的根本区别……,把Charles MurrayGarett JonesGregory Clark的工作合起来看,貌似就通了,有关社会演化和长期经济表现的一幅新图景呼之欲出。

@whigzhou: 这几年我在经济问题上经历了一次思想转变,越来越相信culture matters, genetic matters,在写作《自私的皮球》时,我基本上还是个制度主义者,虽然也相信文化重要,但(more...)

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【2016-04-16】 @whigzhou: 个人禀赋可遗传性,社会阶梯对个人禀赋的选择,择偶的同质化倾向,阶层内婚,阶级分化,族群禀赋差异化,地区经济分化,大国-单一民族国家-城邦小国的根本区别……,把[[Charles Murray]],[[Garett Jones]]和[[Gregory Clark]]的工作合起来看,貌似就通了,有关社会演化和长期经济表现的一幅新图景呼之欲出。 @whigzhou: 这几年我在经济问题上经历了一次思想转变,越来越相信culture matters, genetic matters,在写作《自私的皮球》时,我基本上还是个制度主义者,虽然也相信文化重要,但认为其对宏观经济表现的影响是通过制度间接发生的,然而越来越多的事实让我难以否认,文化的作用是直接的和压倒性的。 @whigzhou: 转变最初起于对南北欧的比较,北欧(包括英德)在制度上也有种种问题,但表现总是比南欧强很多,日耳曼/拉丁这条分界线实在太清晰了,怎么辩解否认都不可能 @whigzhou: 想来想去,一个直觉上的印象反而比种种“客观原因”更有说服力:南欧的政治家(和他们的民众一样)普遍没有责任感,没有政治担当,没有认错然后做个决断的能力,只会命苦怪别人,就这么简单 @whigzhou: 看看希腊人在债务危机后的丑态,一门心思只想着赖账,从不想想自己有什么问题,和西班牙政府在历史上无数次赖账如出一辙,这种事情北欧人就做不出来,默克尔移民大放水这件事情虽然是做得很坏,但不得不承认她是有担当的,在非常清楚代价的情况下勇于承担责任的,这种事情你在南欧永远看不到 @whigzhou: 我曾经认为夏威夷是个支持制度主义的鲜明案例,但后来发现,直到几十年前,欧裔和日裔加起来还占夏威夷人口多数 @whigzhou: 然后我又看了一下波多黎各和英属洪都拉斯(包括伯利兹),很明显的制度主义反例 @whigzhou: 可以设想一下,其他条件不变,把波多黎各或洪都拉斯的70%人口全部换成日裔,会是什么样,要我说答案很明显 @养猪专业户王福贵:特别想听听您对南北朝鲜,东西德国的解读。 @whigzhou: 外部强加的制度当然可以造成很大差别,这个以前说过很多了,现在我想强调的是,对于某些文化,某些族群,外部再怎么强加制度,可能都不会达到很好的状态,当然,正面外部力量可以让它避免最坏的状态(比如变成朝鲜) @whigzhou: 简单说,在所有拉丁社会中,波多黎各当然已经非常好了,再怎么说,因为有美国,它不会变成阿根廷,或委内瑞拉,或古巴,而我的意思是,它也不大会变成夏威夷,变成韩国,变成香港,论制度条件,英属/美属加勒比的条件再理想不过了,但并未冒出任何加勒比小龙 @whigzhou: 再看以色列,不考虑文化/遗传因素的话,当初的条件真是恶劣到无以复加,建国者满脑子共产主义,沉重战争负担,重税,重管制,恶性通胀,啥坏事都摊上过,最后愣是给拗过来了。 @whigzhou: 转个两年前的旧帖,大意如此。//@whigzhou: 随着技术/文化/制度的丰满成熟,地理因素对社会间差异变得越来越无关,地理大发现以来,英国人无论到哪里都能建立起自由社会,德国人和日本人无论到哪个自由社会都会成为模范公民,犹太人和华人无论到哪个自由社会都比其他民族会挣钱……,换句话说:更成熟的文化与制度更有能力控制和适应各种环境。  
[译文]农作物类型如何影响制度进化

Cereals, appropriability, and hierarchy
谷物、可收夺性和等级制

作者:Joram Mayshar, Omer Moav, Zvika Neeman, Luigi Pascali @2015-9-11
译者:Luis Rightcon(@Rightcon)
校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
来源:VoxEU,http://www.voxeu.org/article/neolithic-roots-economic-institutions

Conventional theory suggests that hierarchy and state institutions emerged due to increased productivity following the Neolithic transition to farming. This column argues that these social developments were a result of an increase in the ability of both robbers and the emergent elite to appropriate crops. Hierarchy and state institutions developed, therefore, only in regions where appropriable cereal crops had sufficient productivity advantage over non-appropriable roots and tubers.

传统理论认为,等级制和国家产生的缘由在于:人类在新石器时代农业转向时出现了生产率增长。而本专栏则指出,上述社会发展是掠夺者和新生的精英分子收夺谷物的能力上升的结果。因此,仅仅是在那些易于收夺的谷物比其他不易收夺的块根和块茎作物在产量上拥有充分优势的地区,才会产生等级制和国家。

What explains underdevelopment?
欠发达的原因是什么?

One of the most pressing problems of our age is the underdevelopment of countries in which government malfunction seems endemic. Many of these countries are located close to the Equato(more...)

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Cereals, appropriability, and hierarchy 谷物、可收夺性和等级制 作者:Joram Mayshar, Omer Moav, Zvika Neeman, Luigi Pascali @2015-9-11 译者:Luis Rightcon(@Rightcon) 校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 来源:VoxEU,http://www.voxeu.org/article/neolithic-roots-economic-institutions Conventional theory suggests that hierarchy and state institutions emerged due to increased productivity following the Neolithic transition to farming. This column argues that these social developments were a result of an increase in the ability of both robbers and the emergent elite to appropriate crops. Hierarchy and state institutions developed, therefore, only in regions where appropriable cereal crops had sufficient productivity advantage over non-appropriable roots and tubers. 传统理论认为,等级制和国家产生的缘由在于:人类在新石器时代农业转向时出现了生产率增长。而本专栏则指出,上述社会发展是掠夺者和新生的精英分子收夺谷物的能力上升的结果。因此,仅仅是在那些易于收夺的谷物比其他不易收夺的块根和块茎作物在产量上拥有充分优势的地区,才会产生等级制和国家。 What explains underdevelopment? 欠发达的原因是什么? One of the most pressing problems of our age is the underdevelopment of countries in which government malfunction seems endemic. Many of these countries are located close to the Equator. Acemoglu et al. (2001) point to extractive institutions as the root cause for underdevelopment. Besley and Persson (2014) emphasise the persistent effects of low fiscal capacity in underdeveloped countries. 我们这个时代最为紧迫的问题之一就是存在许多欠发达国家,而政府失灵在这些国家极为常见。它们大多数都位于赤道附近。Acemoglu等(2001年)认为,榨取型制度是欠发达的根本原因。Besley和Persson(2014年)强调,欠发达国家财政能力的低弱具有持久影响。 On the other hand, Diamond (1997) argues that it is geographical factors that explain why some regions of the world remain underdeveloped. In particular, he argues that the east-west orientation of Eurasia resulted in greater variety and productivity of cultivable crops, and in larger economic surplus, which facilitated the development of state institutions in this major landmass. Less fortunate regions, including New Guinea and sub-Saharan Africa, were left underdeveloped due to low land productivity. 而另一方面,Diamond(1997年)则提出,地理因素能够解释为什么世界某些地区会停留在欠发达状态。具体来说,他指出,欧亚大陆的东西走向使得适合驯化的谷物产量更大、种类更多,也使其经济剩余更多,后者为这块大陆上的国家制度的发展提供了便利。至于那些不那么幸运的地域,诸如新几内亚、撒哈拉以南非洲等,就因为土地生产率低下而停留在了欠发达状态。 In a recent paper (Mayshar et al. 2015), we contend that fiscal capacity and viable state institutions are conditioned to a major extent by geography. Thus, like Diamond, we argue that geography matters a great deal. But in contrast to Diamond, and against conventional opinion, we contend that it is not high farming productivity and the availability of food surplus that accounts for the economic success of Eurasia. 在最近的一篇论文(Mayshar等,2015年)中,我们主张:财政能力和国家机构的维系,很大程度上受地理条件限制。因此和Diamond一样,我们认为地理条件异常重要。不过与Diamond和其他传统观点不同的是,我们认为欧亚大陆的经济成功并非源于高农业生产率和获得粮食盈余的可能性。
  • We propose an alternative mechanism by which environmental factors imply the appropriability of crops and thereby the emergence of complex social institutions.
  • 我们提出了一个(用于解释国家起源的)替代机制:环境因素决定谷物的可收夺性,从而决定了复杂社会制度的产生。
To understand why surplus is neither necessary nor sufficient for the emergence of hierarchy, consider a hypothetical community of farmers who cultivate cassava (a major source of calories in sub-Saharan Africa, and the main crop cultivated in Nigeria), and assume that the annual output is well above subsistence. 为了理解为什么粮食盈余既不是等级制产生的必要条件,也不是充分条件,让我们假设:有这么一个种植木薯(撒哈拉以南非洲的一种主要热量来源,尼日利亚的主要农作物)的农民群体,并且假设每年的产量远远超过生存所需。 Cassava is a perennial root that is highly perishable upon harvest. Since this crop rots shortly after harvest, it isn't stored and it is thus difficult to steal or confiscate. As a result, the assumed available surplus would not facilitate the emergence of a non-food producing elite, and may be expected to lead to a population increase. 木薯是多年生宿根植物,收获以后很容易腐烂。既然这种作物在收获后不久就会腐烂,它就不会被贮藏,因此很难被盗取或征用。结果就是,这种假定可以获得的粮食盈余将不会促成那些不事农业生产的统治精英的产生,而且可能会导致人口增长。 Consider now another hypothetical farming community that grows a cereal grain – such as wheat, rice or maize – yet with an annual produce that just meets each family's subsistence needs, without any surplus. Since the grain has to be harvested within a short period and then stored until the next harvest, a visiting robber or tax collector could readily confiscate part of the stored produce. Such ongoing confiscation may be expected to lead to a downward adjustment in population density, but it will nevertheless facilitate the emergence of non-producing elite, even though there was no surplus. 现在设想另外一个种植谷类作物的农民群体——比如小麦、稻米或者玉米,且假定这些作物的年产量只能刚好满足每个家庭的生存需求,没有任何盈余。因为粮食作物要在很短时间内收割完毕,并需要一直贮藏到下次收获,所以袭击而来的盗贼或者税吏可以很容易地拿走储藏量的一部分。这种不断出现的损失,可能会导致人口密度下降,但是它却会促进不事生产的统治精英的产生,尽管完全没有粮食盈余。 Emergence of fiscal capacity and hierarchy and the cultivation of cereals 财政能力及等级制的产生与谷物栽培的关系 This simple scenario shows that surplus isn't a precondition for taxation. It also illustrates our alternative theory that the transition to agriculture enabled hierarchy to emerge only where the cultivated crops were vulnerable to appropriation. 这个简单的设想表明,粮食盈余并不是税收的前提条件。同时,它也说明了我们所提出的新理论——农业转向促成了等级制的萌生,但这一过程只会发生在所培植的作物很容易被掠夺的地方。
  • In particular, we contend that the Neolithic emergence of fiscal capacity andhierarchy was conditioned on the cultivation of appropriable cereals as the staple crops, in contrast to less appropriable staples such as roots and tubers.
  • 具体来说,我们认为,财政能力与等级制在新石器时代出现,需要一个前提条件:以易于收夺的谷类为主要作物,而不是以不易收夺的块根和块茎作物等为主要作物。
According to this theory, complex hierarchy did not emerge among hunter-gatherers because hunter-gatherers essentially live from hand-to-mouth, with little that can be expropriated from them to feed a would-be elite. 根据这一理论,狩猎采集者群体中间没能产生复杂的等级制,是因为他们本质上是现挣现吃的,在他们身上很难征用到足够的资源来供养潜在的统治精英。
  • Thus, rather than surplus facilitating the emergence of the elite, we argue that the elite only emerged when and where it was possible to expropriate crops.
  • 因此,并非粮食盈余促进了统治精英的出现。我们认为,只有在粮食收成容易被征用的地方和时期,才会产生统治精英。
Due to increasing returns to scale in the provision of protection from theft, early farmers had to aggregate and to cooperate to defend their stored grains. Food storage and the demand for protection thus led to population agglomeration in villages and to the creation of a non-food producing elite that oversaw the provision of protection. 鉴于防备盗窃所带来的收益是随规模递增的,远古时代的农民们必须聚集在一起共同合作来守护他们的储粮。因此,食物贮藏和保护的需要使得人口集聚成村落,并且创造了负责提供保护而不事农业生产的精英。 Once a group became larger than a few dozen immediate kin, it is unlikely that those who sought protection services were as forthcoming in financing the security they desired. This public-good nature of protection was resolved by the ability of those in charge of protecting the stored food to appropriate the necessary means. 而一旦某个群体的数量超过了几十个直系亲属的规模的话,那么这些寻求保护性服务的人们就不太可能心甘情愿地支付维持众人渴望的安全所需的费用。解决安全保卫的这种公共物品性质,要求那些负责保护储粮的人提高自身对于必要财产的征用能力。
  • That is, we argue that it was this transformation of the appropriation technology, due to the transition to cereals, which created both the demand for protection and the means for its provision.
  • 也就是说,我们认为,是由于征用技术随着谷物种植出现而发生转变,才既创造了对于安全保卫的需求,也创造了提供安全保卫的手段。
This is how we explain the emergence of complex and hereditary social hierarchy, and eventually the state. 这就是我们解释复杂的、世袭性的社会等级制乃至国家最终形成的方法。 Applied to Diamond's prototypic contrast between Eurasia and New Guinea, our theory suggests that the crucial distinction between these two regions is that farming in Eurasia relied on the cultivation of cereals, while in New Guinea it relied mostly on the cultivation of tubers (yam and taro, and, more recently, sweet potato) and bananas, where long-term storage is neither feasible (due to perishability) nor necessary (because harvesting is essentially non-seasonal). 应用于Diamond对比欧亚大陆和新几内亚的原型理论,我们的理论表明:这两个地域之间最关键的差别是欧亚大陆的农业依赖于谷物栽培,而新几内亚依赖的主要是块茎作物(白薯,芋头,最近也有甘薯)和香蕉,这些作物既不可能长期保存(因为易腐性),又没有必要长期保存(因为收获时节基本上是非季节性的)。 This provided farmers in New Guinea with sufficient immunity against bandits and potential tax collectors. More generally, we contend that the underdevelopment of tropical areas is not due to low land fertility but rather the reverse. Farmers in the tropics can choose to cultivate highly productive, non-appropriable tuber crops. This inhibits both the demand for socially provided protection and the emergence of a protection-providing elite. It is a curse of plenty. 这使得新几内亚的农民们对抢匪和潜在的税吏有足够的免疫力。更一般地说,我们认为,热带地区的欠发达原因并不是土壤产出低,而是恰好相反。热带地区的农民可以选择种植高产量而不易收夺的块茎作物。这样就既抑制了对于作为社会公共品提供的保护的需求,也妨碍了负责提供保护的统治精英的出现。这是一种资源诅咒。 In the empirical section of our paper we demonstrate that, contrary to the standard productivity-and-surplus theory, land productivity per se has no direct effect on hierarchy. We also show that, consistent with our theory, the cultivation of roots or tubers is indeed detrimental to hierarchy. 在论文的实证部分,我们证明了,与标准的生产率—盈余理论不同,土地生产率本身对于等级制形成没有直接影响。我们同时也表明,种植块根和块茎作物确实是不利于等级制的形成,这与我们的理论一致。 Empirical finding 实证结果 These results are established by employing two datasets with information on social hierarchy: a cross section and a panel of countries. For our cross-sectional analysis we use Murdock's (1967) Ethnographic Atlas, which contains information on cultural, institutional, and economic features of 1,267 societies from around the world at an idealised time period of first contact with Europeans. Our main outcome variable is ‘jurisdictional hierarchy beyond the local community’. The Ethnographic Atlas also provides information on the major crop type grown by societies that practice agriculture. 上述结果是基于应用两个包含社会等级制信息的数据集而得出的:一组是截面数据,一组则是面板数据。在截面分析中,我们使用了Murdock的“民族志图集”(1967年),其中包含了世界各地1267个社群在刚刚接触欧洲人的理想化时间段内的文化、制度和经济特征方面的信息。我们主要的结果变量是“超越地方性社群的管辖层级”。“民族志地图”里面也提供了各个从事农业的社群所种植的主要作物种类的信息。 Since the cultivated crop is a decision variable, we instrument for the crop type by using data on land suitability for different crops from the Food and Agriculture Organisation. We first show that the decision whether to cultivate cereals as a main crop depends positively on the productivity advantage of cereals over roots and tubers (in terms of potential caloric yields per hectare). 因为农作物是我们模型中的决策变量【编注:指模型中可加以控制或先于其他参数而改变的主动变量】,我们利用联合国粮农组织有关土地对不同作物之适宜性的数据,来推测各社群的农作物类型。首先我们分析表明,是否将谷物作为主要作物,实际上依赖于谷物对于块根和块茎作物的生产率优势(以每公顷的潜在热量产出计算)。 We then find that societies tend to have a more complex hierarchal organisation where the productivity advantage of cereals over roots and tubers is higher, as predicted by our theory. Furthermore, we find that societies that practice agriculture are more hierarchical only where they cultivate cereals. This means that societies that cultivate roots and tubers have similar levels of hierarchy to those of pastoral or foraging societies. 而后我们发现,那些谷物比根块茎作物拥有更高生产率优势的社群,往往会拥有更复杂的层级机构,这与我们所提理论的预期相符。此外,我们发现,在从事农业生产的社群中,只有种植谷物的那些才具有更多的等级性质。这意味着,种植根块茎的社群与游牧社群或采集社群具有相似的社会分层水平。 We also show that land productivity, measured by the potential yield of calories per acre of the most productive crop in each area, does not affect hierarchy once we control for the productivity advantage of cereals. Thus, our empirical findings challenge the conventional argument that it is increased land productivity that leads to more hierarchical societies. 我们还展示了,一旦控制了谷物的生产率优势,土地生产率(以每个地方最适应生产的作物的每英亩潜在热量产出计算)就不会影响社会等级性。因此,我们的实证结果质疑了土地生产率提高导致社会等级性增强的传统理论。 Although this cross-sectional analysis accounts for a wide range of confounding factors, we cannot rule out completely that omitted variables may bias the estimates. To overcome this concern, we employ another dataset compiled by Borcan et al. (2014). This is a panel, based on present-day boundaries of 159 countries, with institutional information every five decades over the last millennium. 虽然这个截面分析考虑到了很多干扰因子,但我们依然不能完全排除遗漏某些变量造成推算偏差的可能性。为了解除这一疑虑,我们应用了另外一个由Borcan等人(2014年)编制的数据集。这是一项历时性数据,以159个国家的现代边界为基础,包含有过去一千年中每隔五十年的制度信息。 This panel enables us to exploit the ‘Columbian exchange’ of crops across continents as a natural experiment. The new crops that became available after 1492 in the New and the Old World changed both the productivity of land and the productivity advantage of cereals over roots and tubers in the majority of the countries in the sample. 这项历时性数据使得我们可以把农作物跨越各大陆的“哥伦布交换”当作一个自然实验来利用。对于样本国家中的大多数而言,新旧两个大陆在1492年之后所得到的新型农作物都既改变了他们的土地生产率,也改变了谷物相对块根块茎作物的生产率优势。 Consistent with our theory, the panel regressions confirm that an increase in the productivity advantage of cereals over roots and tubers has a positive impact on hierarchical complexity, while an increase in land productivity does not. 与我们的理论一致的是,基于历时性数据的回归分析证实:如果谷物作物相对于块根块茎作物的生产率优势增加,那就会对社会分层的复杂性产生正面影响,而土地生产率的增加则不会引发这种正面影响。 Concluding remarks 结论 These findings support our theory that it is not agricultural productivity and surplus per se that explains more complex hierarchical societies, but rather the productivity advantage of cereals over roots and tubers, the type of crop that is cultivated as a result, and the appropriability of the crop type. Given that the productivity of roots and tubers is typically high in the tropics, these results also support the claim that deep-rooted geographical factors may explain the current weakness of state institutions in these regions. 这些发现支持了我们的理论:农业生产率和粮食盈余本身并不能解释更为复杂的等级制社会的出现,毋宁说,它们之出现,原因在于谷物作物相对于块根块茎作物的生产率优势,也就是由此导致的栽培农作物的种类选择以及此种农作物的可收夺性。鉴于块根块茎作物在热带地区产量一般来说更高,上述结论也支持这样一种说法:这些地域的国家机构的孱弱现状,可能从深层次的地理原因方面可以得到解释。 (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——

[译文]蜂巢思维

Hive Mind
蜂巢思维

作者:Robin Hanson @ 2015-11-13
译者:Veidt(@Veidt)
校对:龟海海
来源:overcomingbias.com,http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/statestupidity.html

Some people like murder mystery novels. I much prefer intellectual mysteries like that in Garett Jones’ new book Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own:

有些人喜欢看谋杀悬疑小说,而我则更青睐那些智力悬疑类著作,例如Garett Jones的新书《蜂巢思维:为什么你们国家的整体智商水平甚至比你自己的智商还要重要》中所描述的:

Over a decade ago I began my research into how IQ matters for nations. I soon found that the strong link between average IQ and national productivity couldn’t be explained with just the conventional finding that IQ predicts higher wages. IQ apparently mattered far more for nations than for individuals.

在十年前我开始研究智商对国家意味着什么。我很快就发现,国民的平均智商与国家生产率之间的强相关性,并不能以高智商预示着高薪资这一传统发现来解释。智商对国家的作用显然比对个人重要得多。

In my early work, I estimated that IQ mattered about six times more for nations than for individuals: your nation’s IQ mattered so much more than your own. That puzzle, that paradox of IQ, is what set me on my intellectual journey. …

在我早期的研究中,我曾经做过一个估测,智商对国家所发挥的作用要比对于个人所发挥的作用高大约6倍,也就是说:你所在国家的平均智商水平比你自己的智商水平要重要的多。这个谜题,或者叫“智商悖论”,让我踏上了这条智力探索的漫漫长路…

I’ll lay out five major channels for how IQ can pay off more for nations than for you as an individual:

我将在下面列举五个方面的依据说明智商对国家的(more...)

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Hive Mind 蜂巢思维 作者:Robin Hanson @ 2015-11-13 译者:Veidt(@Veidt) 校对:龟海海 来源:overcomingbias.com,http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/statestupidity.html Some people like murder mystery novels. I much prefer intellectual mysteries like that in Garett Jones’ new book Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own: 有些人喜欢看谋杀悬疑小说,而我则更青睐那些智力悬疑类著作,例如Garett Jones的新书《蜂巢思维:为什么你们国家的整体智商水平甚至比你自己的智商还要重要》中所描述的:
Over a decade ago I began my research into how IQ matters for nations. I soon found that the strong link between average IQ and national productivity couldn't be explained with just the conventional finding that IQ predicts higher wages. IQ apparently mattered far more for nations than for individuals. 在十年前我开始研究智商对国家意味着什么。我很快就发现,国民的平均智商与国家生产率之间的强相关性,并不能以高智商预示着高薪资这一传统发现来解释。智商对国家的作用显然比对个人重要得多。 In my early work, I estimated that IQ mattered about six times more for nations than for individuals: your nation’s IQ mattered so much more than your own. That puzzle, that paradox of IQ, is what set me on my intellectual journey. … 在我早期的研究中,我曾经做过一个估测,智商对国家所发挥的作用要比对于个人所发挥的作用高大约6倍,也就是说:你所在国家的平均智商水平比你自己的智商水平要重要的多。这个谜题,或者叫“智商悖论”,让我踏上了这条智力探索的漫漫长路... I’ll lay out five major channels for how IQ can pay off more for nations than for you as an individual: 我将在下面列举五个方面的依据说明智商对国家的影响要远远超出对个人的影响: 1. High-scoring people tend to save more, and some of that savings stays in their home country. More savings mean more machines, more computers, more technology to work with, which helps make everyone in the nation more productive. 1. 高智商的人更会储蓄,而其中的部分储蓄将留在他们的母国。更多储蓄意味着更多的机器,更多电脑,更多可运用的技术,而这些都能帮助生活在这个国家的所有人变得更有效率。 2. High-scoring groups tend to be more cooperative. And cooperation is a key ingredient for building higher-quality governments and more productive businesses. 2. 高智商的群体倾向于更具合作性。而合作则是建设更高质量的政府和更高效企业的一个关键因素。 3. High-scoring groups are more likely to support market-oriented policies, a key to national prosperity. People who do well on standardized tests also tend to be better at remembering information, and informed voters are an important ingredient for good government. 3. 高智商的人群更倾向于支持亲市场政策,这是国家繁荣的关键。那些在标准智商测试中得分更高的人同样也在记忆信息方面拥有优势,而博闻多识的选民是构建良好政府的重要因素。 4. High-scoring groups will tend to be more successful at using highly productive team-based technology. With these “weakest link” technologies, one misstep can destroy the product’s value, so getting high-quality workers together is crucial. Think about computer chips, summer blockbuster films, cooperative mega-mergers. 4. 高智商的人群在使用那些高效的基于团队协作的技术上要做得更好。在这些“最弱一环”【编注:Weakest Link是BBC二台的一档竞赛游戏节目,参赛者需一环扣一环的连续正确解答问题,以最终赢得奖金,每一回合过后,参赛者互相投票选出该回合的“最弱一环”,当选者出局离场。】技术中,任何一步差错都可能会毁掉整个产品的价值,所以让高素质工人进行协作至关重要。想想那些电脑芯片,夏季震撼的电影大片,还有巨型公司的兼并,都是此类协作的产物。 5. The human tendency to conform, at least a little, creates a fifth channel that multiplies the effect of the other four: the imitation channel, the peer effect channel. Even a small tendency to conform, to act just a little bit like those around us, too try to fit in, tends to quietly shape our behavior. If you have cooperative, patient, well-informed neighbors, that probably makes you a bit more cooperative, patient, and well-informed. 5. 人类多少有一点顺从倾向,这创造出了能够放大上述四类作用的第五种效应:那就是模仿效应,或“伙伴效应”。即使是很小一点顺从倾向,也就是行动得更像我们身边的人一些,或者说试图适应身边的人,都很可能在潜移默化中塑造我们的行为。如果你拥有富于合作性,有耐心而且博闻多识的邻居,那么这可能也会让你也变得更有合作性,更耐心,也更博闻多识。 Of course, test scores don’t explain everything about the wealth of nations: I’m only claiming that IQ-type scores explain about half of everything across countries – and much less within a country.
当然,智力测试得分无法解释关于国家富裕程度的一切:我只是说智商类测试得分能够解释国家间大约一半的财富差异——而对一个国家内部的差异,它能解释的部分则要小得多。 The question of why IQ matters more for nations than individuals does indeed seem quite important, and quite puzzling, and Jones is to be praised for his readable and informative book calling it to our attention. And the five explanations Jones offers are indeed, as he claims, channels by which each of us benefits from the IQ of the people around us. 为什么智商对于国家的影响相比对个人的影响要大得多这个问题看来的确很重要,而且也着实是个谜,因此我认为本书作者Jones应该为他这部兼具可读性和信息量并让我们充分意识到这个问题的著作而获得称赞。如他所言,上面所提到的五种解释的确都是我们受益于自己身边人群智商的渠道。 However (you knew that was coming, right?), when we benefit from the IQ of people nearby who are within the scope of shared social institutions, then institution access prices can reflect these benefits. For example, employers can pay more for a smart employee who is not only more productive personally, but also raises the productivity of co-workers. Landlords can offer lower rents to people that other renters want to be near. Stores can offer discounts to customers that other customers like nearby when they are shopping. And clubs can offer discounts to entice memberships from those with which others like to associate. 然而(你知道我会这么说的,对吧?),当我们在共享社会机构的范围内从身边人群的智商中受益时,这些机构的准入价格便可体现这种益处的大小。例如,雇主可以为一名不仅自己生产率高,而且还能提升同事生产率的雇员发放更多的工资。土地主可以向其他租户都愿意靠近的那家租户收取更低的地租。商店可以向那些在购物时有很多人愿意接近的顾客提供折扣价格。而俱乐部也可以通过向那些其他人都愿意结交的人提供折扣来吸引他们成为自己的会员。 So simple economic theory leads us to expect that the benefits that smart people give to others nearby, within these shared priced-entry institutions, will be reflected in their incomes. 因此简单的经济理论便可让我们得出这样的预期,那些聪明人通过共享一个有偿准入的机构而带给身边人的好处,将最终反映在他们的收入上。 Specifically, people can plausibly pay more to live, club, shop, and work near and influenced by others who are more patient, cooperative, informed, and reliable. So these local benefits of smart associates do not plausibly explain the difference between how individual and national IQ correlate with income. 具体地说,人们完全可以花更多钱以换取生活在这些更有耐心,更富合作性,更博闻多识,也更可靠的人身边,在其附近购物,参与社团活动,并受其影响完全。所以这些聪明的被结交者们为身边人带来的局部收益,并不能合理地解释个人智商与收入的相关性为何不同于与国家平均智商与收入之间的相关性。【编注:意思是,假如高智商个体能够以本节所述方式将其带给身边人的利益(一种正外部性)内化为私人收入,这一相关性差别就不会存在。】 To explain this key difference (a factor of six!) we need big market or government failures. These could result if: 想要解释这一关键差异(第六个因素!),我们需要看看大市场或者政府的失败。下面几个原因可能导致这样的结果:
  • Small social institutions such as firms, clubs, malls, and rental housing suffer some severe and as yet unidentified market failures which prevent them from favoring the smart.
  • 诸如企业,俱乐部,超市和房屋租赁这类小型社会机构,可能会经历一些严重而又找不到原因的市场失灵,这阻止了它们对于聪明人的偏好。
  • Benefits from the smart span such long social distances that they are not encompassed by shared social institutions with low enough transaction costs to allow deals to favor the smart. Maybe, for example, large metropolitan areas just can’t make effective deals on policies to favor attracting the smart, and pushing away the stupid.
  • 聪明人所带来的好处,所发挥作用的社会跨度太大,以至于它们无法以足够低的交易成本被囊括进一个共同的社会机构中,从而让该机构能够做出偏爱聪明人的安排。举例来说,也许大都市地区的确无法就吸引聪明人并赶走蠢人的政策达成有效的安排。
  • Governments with structures that fail to prevent the stupid and impatient from greatly influencing government policy. Such prevention might happen via restricting the franchise in democracies, by auctioning governance to a highest bidder, or via institutions like futarchy tied to long-term outcomes.
有组织构架的政府,可能也无法阻止那些愚蠢而缺乏耐心的人对其政策施加巨大影响【编注:此句原文语法不完整,姑作此解】。此类预防性措施的可能实现途径是,通过将治理权拍卖给出价最高者,来限制民主机制中的选举投票权,或者通过类似futarchy的制度【译注:futarchy是由经济学家Robin Hanson设想的一种制度,在其中,候选人只提出价值主张供选民选择,而采用何种政策来追求这些价值的问题,则交给一个预测市场(比如赌博市场或其他金融衍生品市场)来回答。】而将政策与长期后果捆绑在一起。 This third explanation seems by far the most plausible to me, especially via the government impatience channel. After all, while the stupid might be persuaded to see a benefit in adopting government institutions that give more influence to the smart, the impatient may just not see much benefit from their point of view in having a more patient government. 第三种解释在我看来是最合理的(且远比其他解释高明),特别是在政府治理缺乏耐心这方面。毕竟,即使那些愚蠢的人能被说服,看到让聪明人在政府机构中发挥更大影响力的好处,那些目光短浅的人却很可能无法看到拥有一个更加富有耐心的政府能为他们带来多少好处。 Adopting this as my tentative explanation, I must admit to now being more nervous about allowing more impatient and stupid immigrants, though as Bryan Caplan points out, that still allows for taking on billions of smart immigrants. 我必须承认,在把这作为我的一种尝试性解释的同时,我对于这个国家接纳更多没耐心且愚蠢的移民这一政策感到担忧,虽然如Bryan Caplan所指出,该政策让我们拥有了接纳数十亿聪明移民的机会。 But even if I’m now mildly more reluctant to take on certain kinds of immigrants, I’ll blame that mainly on our poor governance institutions, which give too much weight to the stupid and the impatient. 不过,尽管现在我对接纳某些特定类型的移民变得更不情愿了,我还是会将这主要归咎于我们糟糕的治理机构,是它们把过大的权重放给了那些愚蠢而不耐心的移民。 P.S. I’m aware that Jones has a formal model wherein a certain kind of nation-IQ correlation is larger than a certain kind of individual-IQ correlation. 补充:我知道Jones有一个正规模型,在这个模型中,某种特定的国家财富与智商之间的相关性要大于个人财富与智商之间的相关性。 The model has two industries, one where reliability matters greatly, and one where it matters much less, and two kinds of workers, a set of identical and very reliable workers and another set of less reliable workers who vary in their reliability. 该模型假设有两种产业,可靠性在其中的一种产业中非常重要,而在另一种产业中则不那么重要,同时还假设有两类工人,其中一类工人有着相同水平的高可靠性,而另一类工人的可靠性水平较低且参差不齐。 Only the identical very reliable workers work in the industry where reliability matters a lot, but some of these workers also work in the industry where reliability matters less, and within that second industry, there is only a weak correlation between reliability and wages. But if we compare nations that differ in the value of the high identical reliability among the workers in the industry where reliability matters, we’ll see that national income varies greatly with this reliability parameter. 在可靠性很重要的产业中工作的,都是那些拥有同等高度可靠的工人,而同样也有一些拥有相同水平的高可靠性工人在另一个对可靠性要求不那么高的产业里工作,在这第二个产业中,工人的可靠性和工资水平之间仅仅有很弱的相关性。但如果我们在国与国之间比较那些在对可靠性要求较高的产业中工作的拥有同等高可靠性工人的价值,那么可靠性这个参数会导致的差异就大得多了。 Yes this is a valid formal model, but it seems fragile and I doubt it robustly generalizes well to more complex situations; I just don’t think it works as a robust account of why national IQ matters more than individual IQ for wages. 的确,这是一个有效的正规模型,但它看起来很脆弱,而且我对该模型能否被稳健地推广到一些更加复杂的情境中去也表示怀疑;原因是我不认为它能够作为一个稳健的解释来说明为什么国家的智商水平对工资的影响要大于个人的智商水平。 (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——

上海丈母娘

【2016-03-07】

@Ent_evo 一个理科生对三八劳动妇女节的杂感 http://t.cn/Rw3aI8T

@Ent_evo: 转眼一年了,好像也没有什么变化

@whigzhou: “为“男性掌控资源”这一现状公开辩护的人,通常绕来绕去总会绕到生物属性上面……这恐怕并不是最重要的理由,但这应该是唯一还能拿出来说说而不被骂成狗的理由了”——为什么需要辩护?若一种现状并非强制或权利缺失的结果,它就不需要辩护

@whigzhou: 或者说,选择自由就是充分的辩护理由

@whigzhou: 比如一种(more...)

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【2016-03-07】 @Ent_evo 一个理科生对三八劳动妇女节的杂感 http://t.cn/Rw3aI8T @Ent_evo: 转眼一年了,好像也没有什么变化 @whigzhou: “为“男性掌控资源”这一现状公开辩护的人,通常绕来绕去总会绕到生物属性上面……这恐怕并不是最重要的理由,但这应该是唯一还能拿出来说说而不被骂成狗的理由了”——为什么需要辩护?若一种现状并非强制或权利缺失的结果,它就不需要辩护 @whigzhou: 或者说,选择自由就是充分的辩护理由 @whigzhou: 比如一种简单的可能情形,被认为“掌控着资源”(其实这种说法很可疑,姑且接受)的那些职业圈,充满尔虞我诈穷凶极恶的好斗氛围,多数女性不喜欢进入,那你们有什么好操心的? @whigzhou: “掌控着资源”这种说法之可疑,可以考虑这样一种可能情形:某女要求某男必须挣来很多钱才肯嫁给他,嫁了后用这些钱养大五个儿子,并教导、鼓励、帮助这五个儿子个个又挣来大钱,那么究竟是谁在“掌控着资源”? @能年驼背母猴子的长颈鹿:然而资源的获取是由男性决定的 @whigzhou: 上海丈母娘好像不同意这说法 @whigzhou: 认为女性职业选择比男性更受限是传统农业社会的特点,是又一个流行谬见,实际上,传统社会规范对两性之社会角色所施加的约束同样严格,两性中哪一个职业选择更宽,随分工结构而异,许多社会的女性职业选择(或经济活动类型)比男性更丰富,比如西非和东南亚,出入本地市场做小生意的,大部分是女性。 @whigzhou: 在铁路之前早期工业时代,欧美工厂大部分雇工是婚前年轻女性,当时的工厂销售半径小,其规模无法提供大批常年全日制职位,多数雇工职位是季节性或高度波动性的,因而作为家庭收入支柱的成年男性不会轻易转去工厂,能够雇到的,大多是在婚前为自己攒点嫁妆的年轻女孩。 @whigzhou: 直到有了铁路电报之后,出现众多面向全国性市场的规模化连续生产工厂,能够提供大量全日制职位,成年男性才大批成为工厂雇工,等到他们成了雇工市场主力之后,便开始组织工会,用劳工法和最低工资法努力将女性驱赶出雇工市场 @whigzhou: 西非约鲁巴人是典型的父权社会,但其贸易活动几乎完全由女性包办
[译文]巴尔的摩悲剧,谁之过?

Whose Fault is Baltimore
巴尔的摩骚乱谁之过?

时间:@ 2015-4-30
译者:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny)
校对:龟海海
来源:The Burning Platform,http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/04/30/whose-fault-is-baltimore/

I’ve seen the liberal lying MSM pondering how WE could allow the riots, looting, burning and lawlessness to happen, as if it is our collective fault. Obama stands before his teleprompter and pontificates about the need for us to end the poverty that supposedly led to Purge Night in Charm City.

我看到那些满嘴跑火车的自由派主流媒体成天思考我们(又被代表)怎么能容忍暴动、抢劫、纵火和无法无天,就好像这是整个城市的错。奥巴马站在他的提词器前武断地宣称消除贫困的必要,似乎这贫困将会导致“净化之夜”在这魅力之城上演。【译注:电影《净化》中,未来的美国变成了一个极权的警察国家。每年的3月21日晚7点到次日早7点被称作净化之夜,在此期间所有的暴力犯罪都是合法的。

That term cracks me up. The city has so much charm, its football team once snuck out of town overnight and headed to Indianapolis. It has so much charm its baseball team was forced to play a game with no fans in the stands.

这情景让我反胃。这座城市是如此有魅力,它的橄榄球队曾半夜溜出城跑到印第安纳波利斯去;它如此有魅力,它的棒球队曾被迫在没有一个球迷的球场上打比赛。

I think most people can agree that Freddie Gray, a petty drug dealer, was killed in police custody for the crime of looking suspicious. The policemen who killed him d(more...)

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Whose Fault is Baltimore 巴尔的摩骚乱谁之过? 时间:@ 2015-4-30 译者:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 校对:龟海海 来源:The Burning Platform,http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/04/30/whose-fault-is-baltimore/ I’ve seen the liberal lying MSM pondering how WE could allow the riots, looting, burning and lawlessness to happen, as if it is our collective fault. Obama stands before his teleprompter and pontificates about the need for us to end the poverty that supposedly led to Purge Night in Charm City. 我看到那些满嘴跑火车的自由派主流媒体成天思考我们(又被代表)怎么能容忍暴动、抢劫、纵火和无法无天,就好像这是整个城市的错。奥巴马站在他的提词器前武断地宣称消除贫困的必要,似乎这贫困将会导致“净化之夜”在这魅力之城上演。【译注:电影《净化》中,未来的美国变成了一个极权的警察国家。每年的3月21日晚7点到次日早7点被称作净化之夜,在此期间所有的暴力犯罪都是合法的。】 That term cracks me up. The city has so much charm, its football team once snuck out of town overnight and headed to Indianapolis. It has so much charm its baseball team was forced to play a game with no fans in the stands. 这情景让我反胃。这座城市是如此有魅力,它的橄榄球队曾半夜溜出城跑到印第安纳波利斯去;它如此有魅力,它的棒球队曾被迫在没有一个球迷的球场上打比赛。 I think most people can agree that Freddie Gray, a petty drug dealer, was killed in police custody for the crime of looking suspicious. The policemen who killed him deserve to go to jail for murder. As usual, the powers that be circled the wagons and intended to exonerate the hero first responders. 我想大部分人都会同意,Freddie Gray——一个小混混毒贩子——仅仅因为看起来可疑而被捕并在羁押期间遭到杀害。那些杀害他的警察理应为谋杀而坐牢。同往常一样,权贵们对此事会引起的风波早有准备,并且打算赦免那英雄的第一响应者【first responder,指突发状况时首先到场的警察、医护人员等。】。 The people of Baltimore had a right to be pissed. They had a right to protest. They didn’t have a right to burn businesses and cars. They didn’t have the right to riot, loot, and injure others. 巴尔的摩的人们有权感到愤怒,他们有权游行示威。但他们没有权利去焚烧商场和汽车,他们没权利暴乱、抢劫和伤害他人。 It is the police department created and controlled for decades by Democratic progressive politicians that has committed the atrocities against the people who have been electing these progressives year after year. Baltimore has a corrupt, reckless, out of control police department enabled by a crooked and incompetent Baltimore politicians. The rap sheet for Baltimore’s finest is long: 由民主党的进步派政客创建并控制了数十年的警察局屡屡犯下暴行,而人们年复一年地把这些进步派选上台。巴尔的摩有个腐败的、厚颜无耻的、失控的警察局,全靠一群腐败无能的政客得以运转。巴警察局干过的好事可不少:
  • Police commissioner Ed Norris was sent to prison on corruption charges (2004)
  • 2004年警察局长Ed Norris因为腐败而于锒铛入狱。
  • Two detectives were sentenced to 454 years in prison for dealing drugs (2005)
  • 2005年两位警探因为贩毒而被判刑454年。
  • An officer was dismissed after being videotaped verbally abusing a 14-year-old and then failing to file a report on his use of force against the same teenager (2011)
  • 2011年一位警官对一名14岁少年言语虐待并被拍摄下来,而后他无法书面解释为何对同一位少年使用武力,最终被解职。
  • An officer was been fired for sexually abusing a minor (2014)
  • 2014年,一位警官因为性虐待未成年人而被开除。
  • The city paid a quarter-million-dollar settlement to a man police illegally arrested for the non-crime of recording them at work with his mobile phone.
  • 巴市曾付过一笔25万美元的庭外和解费,只因警员们非法拘捕一位拿手机拍摄他们执法的男士。
The cries of racism and white oppression ring hollow. It’s a tired storyline. Facts are always inconvenient to race baiters with an agenda to extract more money from whites with a guilty conscience and the inability or unwillingness to speak the truth. Let’s examine some facts about good old Charm City, USA. 对种族主义和白人迫害的哭诉是空洞无力的,这也是陈词滥调了。对种族迫害论者而言,事实真相往往不合时宜,他们总是试图通过白人的负罪感、在说出真相上的无能或不情愿,来攫取更多的钱财。让我们来看看巴尔的摩这传说中的“魅力之城”都有哪些丰功伟绩吧。
  • The fine citizens of this metropolis have not elected a Republican as mayor since 1963, before the War on Poverty began. That mayor’s 4 year term is the only interruption in Democrat rule since 1947. They have had Democrat control for 64 of the last 68 years, and sole control for the last 48 years straight.
  • 自打1963年起,巴市的良民们就没有选出过哪怕一位共和党的市长,那时“向贫穷开战”还未开始【War on Poverty,指美国第三十六任总统林登·贝恩斯·约翰逊推行的一系列福利法案。】从1947年起,市长的4年任期限制就是民主党统治的仅有停顿。68年间,民主党主政了64年,过去的48年民主党更是大权独揽。
  • Their mayor is black. Their previous mayor, Sheila Dixon, was black. She was convicted of embezzlement in 2010 and couldn’t finish her term. They had a white mayor (current Democratic Presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley) for eight years. The mayor before him was black.
  • 他们的现任市长是黑人。他们的前任市长,Shiela Dixon,是黑人。她因为在2010年挪用公款而未能干满任期。他们曾有过一个干了八年的白人市长(如今民主党的热门总统竞选人Martin O’Malley)。在他之前,市长也是黑人。
  • Their City Council consists of 15 members. All fifteen are Democrats. The Council President is black. Democrats have had control of legislation in Baltimore for the last 50 years. Every program, policy, initiative, or school curriculum that exists in Baltimore was enacted by liberal Democrats.
  • 他们的市议会由15名成员组成,15人全是民主党。市议会的主席是黑人。过去50年,民主党控制了巴市的立法,巴尔的摩的每一个项目、政策、动议,甚至学校课程,都是由自由派民主党人制定颁布。
  • The Police Commissioner is black. Approximately 50% of the police force is black.
  • 警察局长是黑人。大约一半的警察也是黑人。
  • The School Superintendent is black, along with the School Board. The district has an annual budget of $1.32 billion to teach 84,000 kids. The Baltimore school system ranks second among the nation’s 100 largest school districts in how much it spent per pupil at $15,700 per student. Only NYC spends more. Only two thirds of students graduate high school, despite this high level of spending.
  • 校监是黑人,全体校董会也是黑人。学区每年拥有13.2亿美元预算作为84000个孩子的教育经费。在全美最大的100个学区中,巴尔的摩的教学系统花在每个学生身上的经费位列第二,平均每人高达15700美元,只有纽约市花得比这更多。尽管有如此高的花销,只有三分之二的学生从高中毕业。
  • The average SAT scores of Baltimore City public school students are: 379 in Reading; 376 in Math; 381 in Writing. These are the scores of the best of the best in Baltimore schools who actually think they should get into college. The average scores in the country, which still suck, are around 500. Students with these scores have about a 15% chance of graduating college. This is the ROI you get after spending $188,000 per student over their 12 year academic career.
  • 巴市公立学校学生的SAT成绩平均为:阅读379分,数学376分,作文381分。这还是那些自认应该进入大学的顶尖学生的分数。全国的平均分,虽然低但也有500左右。有着这成绩的学生有15%的机会从大学毕业。这就是在一个学生12年的学习生涯中花掉188000美元的投资回报率。
  • The population of Baltimore is 623,000 and 63% are black. Median household income is $41,000, with 24% living below the poverty line. The home ownership rate is 48%. The percentage of college graduates is 27%.
  • 巴市有623000人口,其中63%是黑人。每户人家的年平均收入是41000美元,24%的家庭生活在贫困线以下。48%的人拥有自己的房屋。只有27%的人是大学毕业生。
  • The population was 950,000 in 1950, so it has fallen by 35% in the last 65 years. The population was 24% black in 1950. Decades of liberal Democrat policies drove most of the white population out of the city.
  • 1950年的人口总数是950000,过去65年降低了35%。1950年黑人占人口总数的24%。数十年来民主党的政策将大多数白人赶出了这座城市。
  • Baltimore’s violent crime rate is 370% higher than the U.S. rate. They have over 200 murders, 300 rapes, 3,600 robberies, 4,600 assaults, 7,800 burglaries, and 22,000 thefts per year. These are all 2 to 4 times the U.S. averages per 100,000 people.
  • 巴市的暴力犯罪率是比全美水平高出3.7倍。这里一年发生200起命案、300起强奸案、3600起抢劫案、4600次人身伤害、7800起入室抢劫和22000起盗窃案。每一项都是全美每十万人平均犯案率的二至四倍。
  • Over 35% of all Baltimore residents get food stamps. Over 85% of the kids get free breakfasts and lunches at school. More than 60% of Baltimore residents are receiving some form of government assistance.
  • 超过35%的巴市居民领取食物救济券。超过85%的小孩在学校领取免费的早晨和午餐。全市超过60%的居民领取政府发放的某种救济。
  • Baltimore’s welfare paradise is paid for by outrageously high taxes. It’s income tax rate of 3.2% is on top of the state rate of 4.75%. It’s property tax rate is more than double the other counties in Maryland. The sales tax rate is 6%. Corporations pay an income tax rate of 8.25%.
  • 巴市的这种福利天堂是靠高得离谱的税收支撑的。个人所得税在州税率4.75%的基础上额外多收3.2%。。它的财产税比马里兰州其他郡的两倍还高。它的消费税为6%。公司要付的所得税为8.25%。
  • The percentage of out of wedlock births to black women in Baltimore exceeds 72%. Baltimore and Detroit are the two cities with populations over 600,000 with the highest percentage of single parent households – 59% to 61%.
  • 在巴市,黑人妇女婚外生育的比例高达72%。巴尔的摩和底特律都有超过60万的人口,它们的单亲家庭比例也是全美最高——分别为59%和61%。
  • The reported unemployment rate for Baltimore is 8.2%, one of the highest in the country. In reality, 42% of the working age population is not working. Young black men between the ages of 20 and 24 have a reported unemployment rate of 37%. But in reality, it is north of 60%. The number of employees in 1990 totaled 475,000. Today they total 365,000, down 23%.
  • 据报道,巴市的失业率为8.2%,为全国失业率最高的城市之一。事实上,42%的适龄人口都没有工作。20至24岁的黑人男性失业率据报道为37%,事实上远远不止60%。1990年,雇员的总数为475000,今天这个数字为365000,下降了23%。
It doesn’t take a village to raze, burn, and loot a village. It just takes 50 years of liberal economic and social policies. Of course the liberal media, liberal politicians, and liberal voters don’t think anyone should be blamed for the disaster that Baltimore and every other Democrat controlled urban shithole (Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Atlanta, Cleveland) have become over the last 50 years. 毁掉一个村子无须全村出力【编注:此处取典于一句非洲谚语“It takes a village to raise a child”,意思是为孩子成长提供文化环境的是整个社区,而非仅仅是个体家庭】,50年的自由派经济和社会政策足矣。当然,自由派媒体、政客和选民并不认为谁应该为过去50年巴尔的摩以及其他(底特律、费城、圣路易斯、亚特兰大、克利夫兰)民主党控制下的都市粪坑里所发生的灾难而受责难。 Community organizer Adam Jackson, living up to the standards of Organizer in Chief Obama, declared that in Baltimore “the Democrats and the Republicans have both failed.” At least progressive community organizers have a sense of humor. How can Republicans have failed if the mayors and City Council have been 100% Democrat since the mid 1960s? I wonder how many Republicans were among the youths burning, looting, and destroying the city this week. 社区组织者Adam Jackson倒是挺合奥巴马老大对组织者的口味,他宣称在巴尔的摩“民主党和共和党都是失败者”。至少这些人还挺幽默的,当巴尔的摩的市长和市议会从60年代中期开始便全是民主党人,共和党的失败倒是从何说起?我倒是想知道在这周的青年纵火、抢劫和破坏活动中有几个共和党参与。 No Republican, and definitely no conservative, is responsible for the poverty, crime, educational failure, and disintegration of this lesson in Democratic rule. Baltimore’s police department is the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party, enabled by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing Democratic creation. They get all the credit for what Baltimore has become. The mayor of Baltimore is an incompetent bumbling fool. These corrupt, arrogant left wing boobs are incapable of running a school system, police department, or economy. 没有共和党,当然更没有保守主义,这便是贫穷、犯罪、教育失败和民主党秩序崩溃的原因。巴尔的摩警察局就是民主党进步派的造物,奉行的是黑人本位政策。这完全是左翼民主党人的杰作,巴尔的摩的今天全拜其所赐。巴尔的摩市长就是个无能蠢货。这些腐败的、自以为是左翼笨蛋根本无力让教育系统、警察局或是城市经济正常运转。 They know how to play race politics to get elected. They know how to increase taxes on the few remaining producers in order to redistribute it to their black voters. They know how to destroy businesses and jobs. They know how to create a welfare mindset among black people, enslaving them in poverty, dependency, and ignorance. Blacks have suffered the most from Democratic black rule. 他们知道怎么打好种族这张牌来当选。他们知道如何对仅存的几个企业征税,好把财富重新分配给他们的黑人选民。他们知道怎么毁掉商业和工作岗位。他们知道怎么让黑人对福利上瘾,用贫穷、依赖和无知去奴役他们。民主党的“黑人统治”给黑人带来的伤害恰恰最大。 These riots will result in less businesses, less jobs and less taxes for the city. Blacks will be hurt the most, but they will continue to vote for Democrats. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Believing liberal welfare policies will fix the problems created by liberal welfare policies is insane. Liberalism is a disease of the brain and has infected a vast swath of America, especially in urban enclaves across the land. 这些暴乱将让这座城市的商业、工作岗位和税收越来越少。黑人将最受伤,但他们还是会给民主党投票。疯狂的市民总是种下同样的因却期盼着不同的果。相信自由派的福利政策会解决自由派福利政策带来的问题,这就是疯狂。自由主义是一种观念疾病,并已经感染了一大帮美国人,尤其是那些在城市孤岛里的居民。 Baltimore and every other Democrat controlled urban enclave in America are destined for decline, destruction, and civic decay. Baltimore cannot be fixed by spending more money on welfare programs. The country has spent $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs since LBJ declared his war on poverty. 巴尔的摩和其他民主党控制下的城市孤岛注定会衰败、毁灭、民生凋敝。靠在福利项目上花更多钱救不了巴尔的摩。自林登·约翰逊总统宣布“向贫穷开战”以来,这个国家已经花了22万亿美元在消除贫困的项目上了。 They haven’t moved the dial on poverty one iota. They have created generations of dependent black people, trapped in urban ghettos like Baltimore. If you can’t educate children for $15,700 per year, then you won’t educate them any better for $18,000 per year. Liberals will never admit their policies, programs, and corrupt practices created this national disaster. 他们在贫穷问题上毫无建树。他们培养了一代代习惯于依赖的黑人,这些人便被困在像巴尔的摩这样的贫民窟里。如果你一年花15700美元教育不好一个小孩,那你一年花18000美元也无济于事。自由派不会承认他们的政策、项目和腐败的作风导致了这个全国性的灾难。 Liberal welfare policies have encouraged and rewarded out of wedlock births. The 72% black out of wedlock birth rate is the single biggest cause of Baltimore’s long-term decline. Children without fathers are destined to be uneducated, unemployed, and underachieving. Children raised by married working parents who provide good role models are not on the streets. They are studying. They are not looting, killing, robbing or having kids when they are teenagers. 此外,自由派的福利政策无疑鼓励了非婚生育。72%的非婚生育率是巴尔的摩长期衰败的最大缘由。没有父亲的孩子们注定无法受到良好教育、注定失业并一事无成。那些双亲都有工作且能为表率的孩子们是不会在街头游手好闲的——他们要学习。他们不会去抢、去杀,不会十几岁就为人父母。 There are no guarantees in life, but being stupid, lazy and ignorant guarantees a life of poverty. Liberal welfare policies pay these people to have more kids out of wedlock in order to maximize their welfare payments. There have now been three generations of black people entrapped by these demented welfare programs. 没有什么能担保你有一个好的生活,但愚蠢、懒惰和无知却保准让你的生活一贫如洗。自由派的福利政策付钱给这些人,好让他们非婚生育更多的孩子以获得最多的福利款。已有整整三代黑人被困在这些疯狂的福利项目之中。 There is no will among the recipients or distributors of race based welfare payments to change their policies or programs. Therefore, every time a white cop kills a black person or a white store owner kills a black thief in Baltimore or any urban ghetto, the potential for riots, looting, and burning of businesses will rear its ugly head. 福利款的接受者或是发放者都没有意愿去改变这些基于种族的福利政策或项目。因此,在巴尔的摩或其他某个城市贫民窟,每当一个白人警察杀死一个黑人或是一个白人店主杀死一个黑人小偷,骚乱、抢劫、纵火等丑恶行径便会抬头。 The only guarantee is the liberals running the urban ghetto will not accept blame for what they have wrought. Farewell to the America of personal responsibility, work ethic, marriage, family, and valuing education. 唯一确定的是,控制这些城市贫民窟的自由派是不会接受任何对他们所犯好事的批评的。向那个推崇个人责任、勤勉美德,赞美婚姻、家庭并珍视教育的美国道别吧! The esteemed mayor of Baltimore Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (of course a liberal black woman must hyphenate her name) summed up the disease of liberalism after her peeps had destroyed their neighborhoods the night before: 我们尊敬的巴尔地摩市市长Stephanie Rawlings-Blake(哦,当然,一个自由派的黑人妇女的名字中自然会有连字符,以显示她已婚或来自少数族裔)在其同胞于昨晚破坏了他们的社区后,这样总结自由主义的病症:
“It’s a very delicate balancing act, because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” “(警方的行动)有一种微妙的平衡,因为当我们试图确保抗议者不被车流和其他来往的东西伤害的同时,也给了那些想要搞破坏的人以机会。”
You reap what you sow America. 你们曾在美国大地播撒下那些种子,如今正在收获它们结出的果实。 (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——

[译文]比利时的法外之地

苍白无力的欧洲普世主义
Europe’s Bloodless Universalism

作者:Theodore Dalrymple @ 2015-11-19
译者:Veidt(@Veidt)
校对:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny)
来源:Library of Law and Liberty,http://www.libertylawsite.org/2015/11/19/europes-bloodless-universalism/

By now the story of Omar Ismail Mostefai, the first of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks to be named, is depressingly familiar. One could almost have written his biography before knowing anything about him. A petty criminal of Alger(more...)

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苍白无力的欧洲普世主义 Europe’s Bloodless Universalism 作者:Theodore Dalrymple @ 2015-11-19 译者:Veidt(@Veidt) 校对:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 来源:Library of Law and Liberty,http://www.libertylawsite.org/2015/11/19/europes-bloodless-universalism/ By now the story of Omar Ismail Mostefai, the first of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks to be named, is depressingly familiar. One could almost have written his biography before knowing anything about him. A petty criminal of Algerian parentage from what all the world now calls the banlieue, he was sustained largely by the social security system, an erstwhile fan of rap music, and a votary of what might be called the continuation of criminality by other means, which is to say Islamism and the grandiose purpose in life that it gives to its adherents. For feeble minds, the extremity of the consequences for self and others serves as some kind of guarantee that their cause is just. 到今天,巴黎袭击事件中第一个确定姓名的案犯Omar Ismail Mostefai的故事已经家喻户晓了。即使对他完全不了解,人们也能凭猜测为他写出一本传记。一个小混混,有着阿尔及利亚血统,成长于今天被世人称为“暴力街区”的市郊,主要依靠社保体系生活,曾经是饶舌音乐的爱好者,热诚地致力于伊斯兰教和它给予信徒们的宏伟人生目标——或者,从另一种意义上也可以说,是持续犯罪。对那些意志薄弱的人来说,最终将自己和他人带向死亡,也有着某种正当理由。 Nor was the connection to Molenbeek, a neighborhood in Brussels where at least three of the terrorists lived, much of a surprise to anyone. Brussels—the “capital of Europe,” be it remembered—is slightly more than a quarter Muslim, and nearly 100 percent of Molenbeek’s residents are Muslims of North African background. When a few years ago I was shown around the place, my acquaintances told me it was virtually extraterritorial as far as the Belgian state was concerned—apart from the collection of social security, of course. 而他与莫伦贝克区(至少三名参与巴黎恐袭的恐怖分子都来自这里)之间的联系也丝毫不会让人感到惊奇。布鲁塞尔——人们记忆中的“欧洲之都”——的穆斯林人口占比略高于四分之一,而几乎所有的莫伦贝克区居民都是北非裔穆斯林。几年前一些熟人带着我在那里参观的时候,他们告诉我,对比利时政府来说,这个区域几乎就是“免受司法管辖的治外之地”——当然,除了它还享受着这个国家的社保体系之外。 All the women wore headscarves, and the young men dressed like American rap music fans. The police rarely entered and were far more concerned not to offend Muslim sensibilities—for example, by not being seen to eat during Ramadan—than to find or capture the miscreants who made the area so dangerously crime-ridden. Businesses there (so my guides told me) paid no taxes but were not investigated for evasion by the tax authorities: it was the tax authorities who did the evading. 那里所有的女人都戴着头巾,而年轻男人都穿得像是美国饶舌音乐的狂热粉丝。警察很少进入这个区域,相比追踪和抓捕那些将这里变成一个犯罪猖獗之地的恶棍,他们更关心的是千万不要触碰到穆斯林的敏感之处——例如,不要在斋月期间被穆斯林看到在白天吃东西。在那里做各种生意(我的导游告诉我)都不交税,而且也不会受到税务局的调查:相反,税务局只要一听这个地方就会躲得远远的。 Everyone knew Islamist preaching and plotting were rife in Molenbeek, but nothing was done to stop it, in order to keep the tense and fragile peace going as long as possible. Sympathy for terrorism was the norm—or, it would be more correct to say, that no one dared publicly voice opposition to it. 所有人都知道,莫伦贝克区伊斯兰极端分子的宣传策划工作十分猖獗,却没有任何加以阻止的努力,而这只是为了将现有的脆弱和平状态维持得尽量久一些。对恐怖主义的同情成为常态——或者更准确的说,没有谁敢于公开反对。 If my informants were right, this was the perfect place for psychopaths with an illusion of purpose to flourish and make plans undisturbed by the authorities, while being supported by the welfare state. Events since have demonstrated that they did not exaggerate (as, to my regret, I rather suspected at the time that they did, for alarm is so often disproportionate to the reality that gives rise to it). 如果告诉我这些的人是对的,那么对于那些抱有疯狂幻想并且希望在不受当局干扰的状态下筹划自己行动的疯子们而言,这里就是人间天堂,与此同时,他们还能够享受福利国家的支持。之后发生的事件已经证明了他们并没有夸大其词(而令我后悔的是,当时他们提醒我时,我也对他们的看法表示怀疑,相比警告成真后人们所面对的残酷现实,之前的警告声总是显得微不足道)。 Recall that the terrorists who were disarmed on the train from Amsterdam to Paris in August came from Molenbeek, as did the man who killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014. More volunteers to fight for ISIS have come from Molenbeek than anywhere else in Europe. 回想一下,今年8月那帮在阿姆斯特丹开往巴黎的火车上被人们提前发现并解除了武装的恐怖分子就来自于莫伦贝克区,而那个2014年在布鲁塞尔的犹太人博物馆里杀害了4个人的凶手也同样来自那里。莫伦贝克区为ISIS提供了比全欧洲任何其它地方都要多的志愿战士。 The Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel, has now virtually admitted that the area was extraterritorial to Belgium, and out of all control. The time had come “to focus more on repression,” he said. But whether the determination or sufficient political unity necessary to carry it out will last is doubtful. Repression requires discrimination; we live in a regime in which murderers may come and go, but social security goes on forever. 现在,比利时首相米歇尔实际上已经承认该区域已成比利时的“治外之地”,并且已经完全失去了控制。他说,现在应该“把更多的注意力集中在压制上”。但这种决心是否能得以坚持,或者,为实现这一目标所必须的足够的政治团结能够得以坚持,是值得怀疑的。压制就意味着区别对待,但在我们如今生活的这个社会制度下,杀人犯来来去去,而社会保障则永不中断。 Do we have the stomach to tar many people with the same brush? That we now know that terrorists among the Syrian refugees have entered Europe, which was precisely the objection of those opposed to accepting them (who were vilified by immigration-liberals for their moral obtuseness or nastiness, and have been proven right, which is even more unforgivable), now raises the disturbing question: How many innocent people should Europe accept for one suicide bomber? 但我们要不要一竿子打倒一船人呢?现在我们已经知道,有些恐怖分子藏在叙利亚难民队伍里混入了欧洲,这正是之前那些反对接纳叙利亚难民入欧的人们所提出的拒绝理由(为了诋毁他们,那些移民自由派们给他们扣上了“道德迟钝”或“道德败坏”之类的帽子,但最终事实证明他们的担忧是对的,这就让我们所犯下的错误变得更加不可原谅),而现状又给我们提出了一个令人困扰的问题:为了一个自杀式炸弹袭击者欧洲要接纳多少无辜的难民? A striking thing about the immigration debate before the massacres of November 13 was the almost complete absence of references, at least by the “respectable” politicians, to the national interest of the various countries. The debate was couched in Kantian moral terms. Sweden, for example, which has no imperative to take refugees other than moral grandiosity and its desire to feel itself virtuous, has had a hard enough time integrating the immigrants it has already taken; their entry has made that country one with nearly the highest crime rate in Western Europe. Current family re-unification laws in Europe mean that the numbers any country agrees to take will soon be expanded. 11月13日的巴黎大屠杀发生之前,在有关移民政策的辩论中令人吃惊的一点是,几乎完全没有人——至少那些“令人尊敬的”政客们中没有人——提及各国的国家利益。这场辩论是以一种康德式道德辩论的方式进行的。举例来说,除了道德上华而不实的崇高感以及让自己觉得高尚之外,瑞典并没有任何必要去接收难民,整合已接收的难民也让其已经历了一段非常困难的时期;这些难民进入之后,几乎把瑞典变成了整个西欧犯罪率最高的国家。而当前欧洲有关家庭重聚的法律则意味着,很快每个国家都将同意接收数量更多的难民。 There is a real moral dilemma, of course. Recently in Bodrum, on the Aegean coast of Turkey, I was approached by a family of four Syrian refugees begging for alms. The father of the family showed me his Syrian passport (precisely of the kind so easily forged by the terrorists), but all I could see was his wife and two small children who were obviously bereft of support and who would obviously suffer without charity. That day, 22 refugees were reported drowned as they tried to reach Turkey by boat, an occurrence so regular that it was not reported in the Western press. No one undertakes such a journey lightly: only safety or an egocentric thirst for “martyrdom” could impel him. 显然,这里有个道德困境。最近在土耳其爱琴海沿岸城市博德鲁姆,一个叙利亚难民的四口之家走近我,希望我能施舍给他们些什么。这家的父亲给我看了他的叙利亚护照(正是那种恐怖分子非常容易伪造的护照),但我所看到的只是他妻子和两个年幼的孩子所表现出的无助,如果得不到施舍,他们显然会吃很多苦。在同一天,当地新闻报道了22名难民在乘船试图前往土耳其的途中溺水身亡的消息,而由于这类事情发生得如此频繁,西方媒体甚至都没有报道这条消息。没有人会轻易选择踏上这样一段旅途:只有对安全的强烈渴求或是个人主义的“殉道”热望才能让人踏上这条路。 Europe has nothing equivalent to national interest, and if it did, it would have no way of acting on it. A kind of bloodless universalism has rushed in to fill the vacuum, whose consequences are now visible to all. The first thing President Hollande tried to do after the attacks was close the borders; he now talks (understandably, of course) of national security. He talks also of defeating ISIS militarily, but France, along with all of the other European countries, has run down its armed forces in the name of the social security that paid for at least some of the terrorists. 欧洲没有国家利益之类的东西,即使有,也不存在以之为名做些什么的政治途径。于是一种苍白无力的普世主义便趁虚而入填补了这一空白,其后果已经呈现在了每个人面前。巴黎恐怖袭击发生后,奥朗德总统试图做的第一件事就是关闭边境;他现在开始谈论国家安全了(当然,这可以理解)。他同样开始谈论军事打击ISIS,然而法国和其它的欧洲国家一样,已经以社保资金不足为由削减了自己武装力量,而这些钱中至少有一部分落入了恐怖分子的口袋。 Just because Europe’s weakness is clear doesn’t mean that our heads are clear. Three days after the attacks, the most influential newspaper in Britain (and in certain ways the best), the liberal-Left Guardian, ran 40 small photos of some the victims, with the headline, “Killed in the Pitiless Name of Terrorism.” 虽然欧洲的弱点已展露无遗,但这并不意味着我们的脑子就清醒了。在巴黎恐怖袭击发生仅仅三天之后,英国最具影响力的报纸(从某些角度说也是最好的)——左翼自由派的《卫报》,刊登了40张遇害者的小幅照片,而使用的标题则是“以冷酷的恐怖主义之名而遭杀害”。 They were not killed in the pitiless name of terrorism, of course. They were killed in the pitiless name of Islam—not the only possible interpretation if Islam, no doubt, but still in its name. In the cowardice of this headline was the encapsulated all the weakness of Europe, a real encouragement to the terrorists. 当然,他们并非以冷酷的恐怖主义之名而被杀死。他们是以冷酷无情的伊斯兰之名而被杀死——是的,这不是解读伊斯兰的唯一方式,但这些杀戮仍是以伊斯兰之名而行。《卫报》标题中所表现出的懦弱是今天欧洲所有弱点的集中体现,而这对恐怖分子们来说则是一种实实在在的激励。 (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——

超越邓巴数系列

#1:规模局限的含义
#2:扩张的动力
#3:祖先的记忆
#4:婚姻粘结剂
#5:青春的躁动
#6:武人的兴起
#7:暴力的垄断

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[译文]科举的虹吸作用

Imperial exams and human capital
科举考试与人力资本

作者:Stephen Hsu @ 2015-5-20
译者:Luis Rightcon(@Rightcon)
校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
来源:Information Processing,http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2015/05/imperial-exams-and-human-capital.html

The dangers of rent seeking and the educational signaling trap. Although the imperial examinations were probably g loaded (and hence supplied the bureaucracy with talented administrators for hundreds of years), it would have been better to examine candidates on useful knowledge, which every participant would then acquire to some degree.

寻租的危险和教育信号陷阱。尽管科举考试基于一般智力因素(因此几百年来为官僚机构输送了很多优秀的行政人员)【校注:G因素,或一般智力因素,心理学上指人类一切认知活动都依赖的智力因素】,但如果它考察的是候选者的实用知识,那会更好,这样每个候选者都可以对这种知识有所掌握。

See also Les Grandes Ecoles Chinoises and History Repeats.

另请参考我的博文:“中国大学”和“历史在重复”

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Imperial exams and human capital 科举考试与人力资本 作者:Stephen Hsu @ 2015-5-20 译者:Luis Rightcon(@Rightcon) 校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 来源:Information Processing,http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2015/05/imperial-exams-and-human-capital.html The dangers of rent seeking and the educational signaling trap. Although the imperial examinations were probably g loaded (and hence supplied the bureaucracy with talented administrators for hundreds of years), it would have been better to examine candidates on useful knowledge, which every participant would then acquire to some degree. 寻租的危险和教育信号陷阱。尽管科举考试基于一般智力因素(因此几百年来为官僚机构输送了很多优秀的行政人员)【校注:G因素,或一般智力因素,心理学上指人类一切认知活动都依赖的智力因素】,但如果它考察的是候选者的实用知识,那会更好,这样每个候选者都可以对这种知识有所掌握。 See also Les Grandes Ecoles Chinoises and History Repeats. 另请参考我的博文:“中国大学”和“历史在重复”
Farewell to Confucianism: The Modernizing Effect of Dismantling China’s Imperial Examination System Ying Bai The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 这里是香港科技大学Ying Bai的论文“告别儒家:中国废除科举制度的现代化影响” Imperial China employed a civil examination system to select scholar bureaucrats as ruling elites. This institution dissuaded high-performing individuals from pursuing some modernization activities, such as establishing modern firms or studying overseas. This study uses prefecture-level panel data from 1896-1910 to compare the effects of the chance of passing the civil examination on modernization before and after the abolition of the examination system. 中华帝国采用科举考试制度筛选士大夫来作为统治精英。这一机制阻止了优秀的个人从事一些现代化的活动,如建立现代企业或者去海外学习。本研究使用了从1896年到1910年废科举前后的府级名册数据,来考察科举晋身机会对现代化的影响。 Its findings show that prefectures with higher quotas of successful candidates tended to establish more modern firms and send more students to Japan once the examination system was abolished. As higher quotas were assigned to prefectures that had an agricultural tax in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643) of more than 150,000 stones, I adopt a regression discontinuity design to generate an instrument to resolve the potential endogeneity, and find that the results remain robust. 研究结果表明,废科举之后,那些科举取士配额较多的府建立的现代企业更多,向日本派遣的留学生也更多。由于那些在明朝时期(1368-1643)缴纳农业税超过15万石的府拥有的取士配额更多,我采用断点回归方法生成了一种工具,以解决潜在的内生相关性问题,发现结果依然稳固。【校注:此为论文“摘要”
From the paper: 论文内容摘录:
Rent seeking is costly to economic growth if “the ablest young people become rent seekers [rather] than producers” (Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny 1991: 529). Theoretical studies suggest that if a society specifies a higher payoff for rent seeking rather than productive activities, more talent would be allocated in unproductive directions (Acemoglu 1995; Baumol 1990; Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny 1991, 1993). 对于经济增长来说,寻租行为代价非常昂贵——如果“最优秀的年轻人倾向于成为寻租者,而不是生产者” (Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny 1991: 529) 的话。理论研究表明,如果社会让寻租行为比生产行为获利更多的话,更多有才能的人将会被分配到不事生产的方向(Acemoglu 1995; Baumol 1990; Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny 1991, 1993)。 This was the case in late Imperial China, when a large part of the ruling class – scholar bureaucrats – was selected on the basis of the imperial civil examination. The Chinese elites were provided with great incentives to invest in a traditional education and take the civil examination, and hence few incentives to study other “useful knowledge” (Kuznets 1965), such as Western science and technology.2 Thus the civil examination constituted an institutional obstacle to the rise of modern science and industry (Baumol 1990; Clark and Feenstra 2003; Huff 2003; Lin 1995). 这就是中华帝国晚期的情况,统治阶级的很大一部分——即士大夫们——以科举考试的形式选拔出来。中国的精英们具有极大的激励来投资于传统教育,并且参加科举考试,因此对于其他“实用知识”就不那么热情了(Kuznets 1965),比如说西方科学技术。这样,科举考试就构成了现代科学技术发展的制度性障碍(Baumol 1990; Clark and Feenstra 2003; Huff 2003; Lin 1995)。 This paper identifies the negative incentive effect of the civil exam on modernization by exploring the impact of the system’s abolition in 1904-05. The main empirical difficulty is that the abolition was universal, with no regional variation in policy implementation. To better understand the modernizing effect of the system’s abolition, I employ a simple conceptual framework that incorporates two choices open to Chinese elites: to learn from the West and pursue some modernization activities or to invest in preparing for the civil examination. 本文通过探索1904-1905年间废除科举考试的影响,来鉴别科举考试对于现代化的负面激励效应。主要的实证困难在于这一废除举动是全国性的,没有政策实施上的地区差异。为了更好地理解废除科举体制对于现代化建设的影响,我采用了一个简单的概念框架,其中包括了中国精英们在当时的两个选项:向西方学习并实行一些现代化举动,或是为准备科举考试而增加投入。 In this model, the elites with a greater chance of passing the examination would be less likely to learn from the West; they would tend to pursue more modernization activities after its abolition. Accordingly, the regions with a higher chance of passing the exam should be those with a larger increase in modernization activities after the abolition, which makes it possible to employ a difference-in-differences (DID) method to identify the causal effect of abolishing the civil examination on modernization. 在这个模型中,那些更有可能通过科举考试的精英们将不太可能向西方学习;而废除科举后他们将倾向于更多进行现代化活动。于是,科举晋身机会更大的地区应当也是那些废除科举之后现代化活动更为活跃的地区,这就使得我可以采用双重差分(DID)方法来鉴别废除科举制对于现代化的因果效应。 I exploit the variation in the probability of passing the examination among prefectures – an administrative level between the provincial and county levels. To control the regional composition of successful candidates, the central government of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) allocated a quota of successful candidates to each prefecture. In terms of the chances of individual participants – measured by the ratio of quotas to population – there were great inequalities among the regions (Chang 1955). 我利用了不同府在科举通过率上的差异——“府”这一地方的管理层级介于省级和县级之间。为了控制中选者的地域构成,清王朝(1644-1911)把取士名额分配到府。以个人投考者的成功率衡量——以配额占总人口比率计——不同地区很不平均(Chang 1955)。 To measure the level of modernization activities in a region, I employ (1) the number of newly modern private firms (per million inhabitants) above a designated size that has equipping steam engine or electricity as a proxy for the adoption of Western technology and (2) the number of new Chinese students in Japan – the most import host country of Chinese overseas students (per million inhabitants) as a proxy of learning Western science. Though the two measures might capture other things, for instance entrepreneurship or human capital accumulation, the two activities are both intense in modern science and technology, and thus employed as the proxies of modernization. ... 为衡量某个地区的现代化活动水平,我采用了(1)新成立的、具有一定规模、并应用了蒸汽机或者电力的现代私企数量(每百万居民),来代表对于西方科技的应用情况;以及(2)(每百万居民中)新近去往日本的中国留学生数量(日本是中国海外留学生的最主要目的地),来代表对于西方科学的学习情况。虽然这两者可能都会捕捉到其他东西,比如企业家或者人力资本积累,但这两个活动在现代科学技术中都是非常剧烈的,所以可用于代表现代化进程……
From Credentialism and elite employment: 以下摘自我之前的博文“文凭主义与精英雇佣”:
Evaluators relied so intensely on “school” as a criterion of evaluation not because they believed that the content of elite curricula better prepared students for life in their firms – in fact, evaluators tended to believe that elite and, in particular, super-elite instruction was “too abstract,” “overly theoretical,” or even “useless” compared to the more “practical” and “relevant” training offered at “lesser” institutions – but rather due to the strong cultural meanings and character judgments evaluators attributed to admission and enrollment at an elite school. I discuss the meanings evaluators attributed to educational prestige in their order of prevalence among respondents. ... 评价者们过于依赖于把“学校”作为评估的标准,这不是因为他们相信精英教育的内容可以使学生更善于应对公司生活——事实上,评价者倾向于相信,与“更差”的机构所提供的更“实用”和“更有意义”的训练相比,精英教育、特别是超级精英教育“太抽象”、“过于理论化”、甚或是“根本没用”——而是因为评价者给精英学校的招生录取赋予了丰厚的文化内涵和个性判断。我将按照它们各自在受访者中的流行程度次序,来讨论评价者在教育声望上所赋予的意义……
(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——

超越邓巴数#5:青春的躁动

超越邓巴数#5:青春的躁动
辉格
2015年10月7日

当多个群体联合成为更大社会时,总是面临这样一个组织问题:如何将维持秩序和协调集体行动的权力集团的规模限制得足够小,以确保其紧密合作;在前面的文章里,我已介绍了几种方法:1)强化父权和宗族,以将权力限制在长辈手里,2)赋予长支与幼支以不平等地位,从而将权力集中在长支手里,3)通过婚姻关系的内聚化,形成上层姻亲联盟,并垄断权力。

后两种方法都意味着地位分化,然而,只有当权势能够跨代积累时,个体和支系间的权势差异才能固化成阶层,进而形成稳定牢固的权力集团;可继承的财产权恰好创造了这样的条件,但是,不同类型的财产权有着不同的积累特性,而后者限定了地位分化的可能性,从而将社会大型化引向不同方向。

早期农民的主要财产是土地和牲畜,在旧大陆的多数农业社会,种植和畜牧都以某种比例混合搭配;在跨代传承过程中,土地数量要恒定的多(尽管也会因土壤退化或河流改道等原因而变动),牲畜数量则波动很大,而且出于生产组织的考虑,人们在处置土地产权时,有着普遍的抗分割倾向,即便不得不分也会尽可能推迟,而畜群则很容易分割,事实上也总是一有机会就分割。

例如,蒙古游牧者的多妻家庭,每位妻子和她的孩子们拥有单独的帐幕和自己的畜群,构成独立家户,而约鲁巴宗族社区(规模常达数百人)的土地归宗族集体所有,核心家庭只拥有使用权,成员去世后就被收回重新分配,马里多贡人(Dogon)的多妻家庭则处于中间状态:土地由家庭集体所有,并由长妻带领诸妻共同耕种,而牲畜则由每位妻子分别拥有,类似情况在非洲农牧混业社会十分常见。

土地和牲畜的差异也体现在分割时机上,畜牧者往往在男孩成年时便分给他几头牲口,作为其建立自己畜群的启动资本,到他结婚时,再分走一群牲畜(否则就无法成家),所以,以畜牧为主业者,家产分割继承是随每个继承人结婚而逐次进行的,最后父母保留的那一份由幼子继承,相比之下,以种植为主业者,通常要等到大家长去世之后,或宗族裂变之际,才一次性分家,在采用长子继承制的社会,甚至在分家时,也只分牲畜(和其他动产)而不分土地。

由于畜产的固有分割倾向,很难跨代积累,每一代的财富差异很快被子女数量所抹平,这样,以牲畜为主要资产的社会就难以形成稳定的阶层分化,因而无法通过上述后两条途径实现大型化,结果,要么停留在碎片化状态(就像中亚游牧民在多数时候那样),要么必须找出其他途径,他们找到的方法之一,是(more...)

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超越邓巴数#5:青春的躁动 辉格 2015年10月7日 当多个群体联合成为更大社会时,总是面临这样一个组织问题:如何将维持秩序和协调集体行动的权力集团的规模限制得足够小,以确保其紧密合作;在前面的文章里,我已介绍了几种方法:1)强化父权和宗族,以将权力限制在长辈手里,2)赋予长支与幼支以不平等地位,从而将权力集中在长支手里,3)通过婚姻关系的内聚化,形成上层姻亲联盟,并垄断权力。 后两种方法都意味着地位分化,然而,只有当权势能够跨代积累时,个体和支系间的权势差异才能固化成阶层,进而形成稳定牢固的权力集团;可继承的财产权恰好创造了这样的条件,但是,不同类型的财产权有着不同的积累特性,而后者限定了地位分化的可能性,从而将社会大型化引向不同方向。 早期农民的主要财产是土地和牲畜,在旧大陆的多数农业社会,种植和畜牧都以某种比例混合搭配;在跨代传承过程中,土地数量要恒定的多(尽管也会因土壤退化或河流改道等原因而变动),牲畜数量则波动很大,而且出于生产组织的考虑,人们在处置土地产权时,有着普遍的抗分割倾向,即便不得不分也会尽可能推迟,而畜群则很容易分割,事实上也总是一有机会就分割。 例如,蒙古游牧者的多妻家庭,每位妻子和她的孩子们拥有单独的帐幕和自己的畜群,构成独立家户,而约鲁巴宗族社区(规模常达数百人)的土地归宗族集体所有,核心家庭只拥有使用权,成员去世后就被收回重新分配,马里多贡人([[Dogon]])的多妻家庭则处于中间状态:土地由家庭集体所有,并由长妻带领诸妻共同耕种,而牲畜则由每位妻子分别拥有,类似情况在非洲农牧混业社会十分常见。 土地和牲畜的差异也体现在分割时机上,畜牧者往往在男孩成年时便分给他几头牲口,作为其建立自己畜群的启动资本,到他结婚时,再分走一群牲畜(否则就无法成家),所以,以畜牧为主业者,家产分割继承是随每个继承人结婚而逐次进行的,最后父母保留的那一份由幼子继承,相比之下,以种植为主业者,通常要等到大家长去世之后,或宗族裂变之际,才一次性分家,在采用长子继承制的社会,甚至在分家时,也只分牲畜(和其他动产)而不分土地。 由于畜产的固有分割倾向,很难跨代积累,每一代的财富差异很快被子女数量所抹平,这样,以牲畜为主要资产的社会就难以形成稳定的阶层分化,因而无法通过上述后两条途径实现大型化,结果,要么停留在碎片化状态(就像中亚游牧民在多数时候那样),要么必须找出其他途径,他们找到的方法之一,是年龄组([[age set]])。 年龄组是这样一种制度(本文介绍的是非洲的年龄组,南岛和美洲的年龄组性质有所不同):所有男性按年龄和资质被分入依次相继的五六个组别,这些组大致可归为四个阶段:未成年、战士、长老、隐退者,其中战士和长老还常分为新晋和资深两组;各组在发型、服饰、文身、彩绘等身体装饰上有着显著区分,在社会分工中承担不同任务,有着各自的社会地位和相应的义务,遵循不同的社会规范。 每隔若干年(短则六七年,长则十几年),当长老们决定晋升一批新战士时,符合条件者便在经历一系列仪式和品质考验之后,升入上一组;对于个人,最关键的两个环节是经由成年礼而成为战士和从战士晋升为长老,前者意味着被共同体接纳为有用一员,而后者往往与结婚成家的权利联系在一起,并在公共事务决策中拥有发言权。 非洲成年礼的核心是割礼,其过程极为痛苦,远不像现代医学条件下的包皮环切术那么轻松,接受割礼的男孩,不仅不许挣扎、呻吟、眨眼、扭头,还要长时间忍受众人刻意营造的恐怖气氛:在仪式临近前几天,前辈们就不断渲染割礼有多痛苦难熬,施礼当天早晨,男孩被一桶冰水浇头,接着,父辈谆谆教诲割礼有多重要,母亲手执棍子随时准备在他表现出怯懦时给予痛打,兄弟们以几近辱骂呵斥的口吻大声质疑他能否经受住考验,姐妹们则在一旁紧张的走来走去,担心着兄弟的怯懦会影响自己未来嫁个好丈夫。割礼所留下的伤疤,往往要过三四个月才完全愈合。 也有些成年礼不是割礼,但同样痛苦,比如南苏丹努尔人([[Nuer]])的额部切割:顺着抬头纹的路线,从左耳到右耳,切出六道深入额骨的切口,切口之深,从遗骸头骨上都能看到。 年龄组普遍存在于非洲的农牧混业社会,从非亚语系的奥罗莫人([[Oromo]]),到尼罗-撒哈拉语系的马赛人([[Maasai]]),到尼日尔-刚果语系的祖鲁人([[Zulu]]),横跨非洲三大语系,如此广泛的流行,表明它作为一种社会组织工具大概颇有成效,才会被众多民族所模仿,那么,它是如何起作用的呢? 年龄组在实践中有很多变化,最重要的区别是对各组成员所施加的约束,强弱十分不同,处于光谱最弱一端的是努尔人,他们的年龄组最松散,大致是一种区分尊卑和声望的标志,功能上有点像军衔,其约束力限于社交和仪式性场合,比如节庆宴会上某人该坐在什么位置,或者两个陌生人相遇时,是该平等相待还是尊卑有别,它带给群体的组织功能是最弱的。 肯尼亚的马赛人则处于光谱另一端,男孩一旦晋升为战士,便离开所在家庭,和同组兄弟集中居住在村外的专属营地里,并开始接受资深战士的训练,担负起保卫社区的责任,包括巡视领地边界,寻找新牧场(特别是在旱季来临之前),击退盗牛团伙,对外发动盗牛突袭,猎杀领地内危及牲畜的食肉动物(主要是狮子——有人因此误以为猎杀狮子是成年礼的一部分,其实那只是新晋战士迅速建立声望的多种方法之一),等等。 年龄组对马赛男性施加的最重要约束是,战士不可以结婚,也被禁止与任何已接受割礼的女孩交往,只有在晋升为长老之后,才能回到原先的家族,并娶妻成家;由于两次新战士招募之间通常相隔15年,而接受成年礼的年龄下限大约14岁,所以,晋升长老时至少已经29岁,运气差的话已接近45岁(13岁时刚好错过一次招募,于是28岁成为战士,43岁熬成长老)。 这显然是一种严酷的老人统治,通过禁止年轻男性结婚,并赋予其最危险的任务,老人们降低了自己面临的资源竞争(包括性资源);和普通的家长制和宗族老人政治不同的是,通过强化同龄合作,长老组将家长权威集体化了,因而可以更有效的压制年轻人的反抗,而同龄合作的强化,恰恰又得益于同组长老早年在战士组中长达十五年的共同居住和集体行动经历。 长期合作所建立的兄弟情谊可以达到这样的程度:同组伙伴(age mate)被认为应该分享任何东西,甚至是妻子,当伙伴来访时,主人会在晚上让出他的茅屋,让妻子和来访者自己决定是否一起过夜。 可是长老们如何压制晚辈的反抗呢?要知道,刚刚经历了成年礼的新战士,大多处于好斗而危险的青春期,正是制造骚乱和挑战权威最积极的叛逆阶段,青春期躁动带来的高犯罪率也是每个现代社会面临的一大麻烦,欧美的大量犯罪学研究都显示,在所有社会中,15-19岁总是暴力犯罪率最高的年龄段,而且远远高于其他年龄段。 【图1:美国青少年犯罪率,来源:http://www.crimesciencejournal.com/content/4/1/16】 按某些进化心理学理论,青春期躁动并非由性功能发育所附带的有害副产品,而是年轻男性为自己在即将进入的社会竞技场中争得有利地位的一种方式,暴涨的雄性激素只是执行这一心理功能的媒介;这种躁动就像把一群母鸡刚刚放到一起时所引发的频繁啄击一样,等到啄序确立下来,就相安无事了。 支持这一适应性解释的一个证据是,在地位高度平等、没有阶层分化的小型狩猎采集社会,比如卡拉哈里沙漠的桑人(San)游团中,青春期躁动的表现要轻微的多,因为既然没有明显地位差别,也就没啥好争的。 那么长老如何避免这一躁动伤及自己呢?答案就隐藏在躁动的性质之中,由于它是一种适应,躁动和所谓“叛逆”的指向并非随机,而是相当有策略的,简单说就是欺软怕硬,这一点从校园团伙和街头帮派中很容易观察到,许多挑衅和惹是生非只是为了测试对方是否好欺负,以便将自己的啄序排到他前面,只有当大量年轻人找不到比自己更软弱的欺负对象时,青春期躁动才会因绝望反扑而伤及当权者。 年龄组和成年礼的要点在于,通过一系列精心安排的震慑性仪式和清晰可见的晋升阶梯,明确告诉其成员:你目前处于啄序的哪个位置,而且不必着急,只要你活得足够久,总有一天会升到高位,同时,它并不试图压制年轻人的躁动,相反它还鼓励和嘉奖这一躁动,并将其引向群体外部,把他们的好斗和不满变成服务于群体利益的战斗力。 实际上,类似的机制普遍存在于各种需要人为排定啄序的组织机构中,大学里老生仪式性欺负新生,军队中老兵考验新兵,秘密会社的残酷入会仪式,监狱里对新来囚犯的虐待,往往都是极具羞辱性和压制性的,排定啄序的用意昭然若揭;极度夸张的闹洞房习俗,或许也是出于类似心理,因为结婚和成年一样,也是社会地位的一次重大晋升。 总结起来,年龄组制度的妙处在于,它同时解决了这些社会面临的几大组织问题: 1)通过深化年龄段之间的垂直不平等,从而在维持个体间和家族支系间平等的条件下,控制了当权集团的规模——这意味着同等规模的当权集团能够管理更大型的社会; 2)通过细分年龄组,并在各组间实行社会分工,从而将每类公共事务上所需要的紧密合作圈子规模限制在邓巴数之下; 3)通过另辟战士营地并建立军事化集体生活,将战士组升级成了真正的战争团队,为其成员日后成为当权长老时保持紧密合作创造了条件; 4)通过强化年龄段之间等级区分和长老权威,将冲突压力引向外部,由于晚辈在家长去世前无望分到大额家产,不得不在群体外部寻找机会,积极发动袭击,特别是盗牛袭击; 5)让年轻组别承担主要战争任务,使得死亡率分布像低年龄段偏移,从而降低每个晋升环节的竞争压力。 基于这些组织优势,许多非洲农牧混业社会建立起了部落和部落联盟一级的政治结构,人数可达数千和数万人,若辅以选举制从而组建更高层次联盟,更可达到数十上百万人的规模。 奥罗莫人于16至19世纪间在埃塞俄比亚建立的嘎达(Gadaa)体制或许展示了它的极限能力,这是个三级共同体,其最高层酋长会议(luba)由各支系选举产生,任期八年——也就是奥罗莫年龄组的间隔年数,在较低层次上,资深长老组直接实施集体统治;有意思的是,奥罗莫人每过八年招募新战士组时,都要发动一场对外战争,此类战争还专门有个名字叫butta,从1522年到1618年共发动了12场butta。 年龄组所带来的战斗力,从祖鲁王国的崛起中也可窥见一斑,祖鲁军队的基本作战单位Impi的前身便是战士组,受所在部落长老和酋长的支配,服务于部落利益,后来,得益于其前辈丁吉斯瓦约([[Dingiswayo]])在数十个部落组成的联盟中所建立的霸权,祖鲁王国的创建者沙卡([[Shaka]])在持续不断的征战中逐渐强化了对这些战士组的控制,最终通过打散部落编制而消除了其部落身份,成为直接服务于祖鲁国王的国家军队。 作为一种军事组织,年龄组的痕迹甚至在罗马军团中也可看到,罗马军团(早期)的步兵基本作战单位是一个四排阵列,每排由一个120人小队构成20×6的小矩阵,这四排由前至后分别由少年兵(velites)、青年兵(hastati)、壮年兵(principie)和老兵(triarii)组成;如此排阵的结果,无疑也是越年轻的士兵死亡率越高(少年兵或许是例外,他们虽然冲在最前面,但以投掷标枪为主,并不近身接战)。 或许并非巧合的是,罗马(至少在早期)也是实行民主选举的平等社会,而且,直到公元前1000年左右的青铜时代晚期,古拉丁人仍以畜牧为主业,以季节性移牧([[transhumance]])方式过着半定居生活。  
超越邓巴数#4:婚姻粘结剂

超越邓巴数#4:婚姻粘结剂
辉格
2015年9月29日

通过组织宗族和强化父权而扩展父系继嗣群,终究会因亲缘渐疏和协调成本剧增而遭遇极限,西非约鲁巴宗族社区和华南众多单姓村显示了,其规模最多比狩猎采集游团高出一两个数量级(几百到几千人),若要组织起更大型社会,便需要借助各种社会粘结剂,将多个父系群联合成单一政治结构,而婚姻是最古老也最常见的粘结剂。

婚姻的粘结作用,在前定居社会便已存在,列维-斯特劳斯发现,相邻的若干继嗣群之间建立固定通婚关系,以交表婚之类的形式相互交换女性,是初民社会的普遍做法;持久通婚维系了群体间血缘纽带,促进语言上的融合,共享文化元素,让双方更容易结盟共同对抗其他群体,即便发生冲突也比较容易协商停战,所有这些,都有助于它们建立更高一级的政治共同体。

此类固定结对通婚关系广泛存在于澳洲土著和北美印第安人中,其最显著特点是,它是群体本位而非个体本位的,缺乏定居者所熟悉的从个体出发的各种亲属称谓,有关亲属关系的词汇,所指称的都是按继嗣群(或曰氏族,常由图腾标识)、性别和辈份三个维度所划分出的一个组别,婚姻必须发生在两个特定组别之间。(值得留意的是:这种模式常被错误的称为“群婚制”,实际上,其中每桩婚姻都发生在男女个体之间,并非群婚。)

典型的做法是,两个父系群结对通婚,澳洲西北阿纳姆地的雍古人(Yolngu),20个氏族分为两个被人类学家称为半偶族(moiety)的组,每个半偶族的女性只能嫁到另一个半偶族;这确保了夫妻双方的血缘不会比一级表亲更近;周人姬姓与姜姓的持续频繁通婚,或许也是此类安排的延续;不那么系统化的交表婚则更为普遍,几乎见于所有古代社会。

以此为基础,还发展出了更复杂的结对安排,比如西澳的马图苏利纳人(Martuthunira)采用一种双(more...)

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超越邓巴数#4:婚姻粘结剂 辉格 2015年9月29日 通过组织宗族和强化父权而扩展父系继嗣群,终究会因亲缘渐疏和协调成本剧增而遭遇极限,西非约鲁巴宗族社区和华南众多单姓村显示了,其规模最多比狩猎采集游团高出一两个数量级(几百到几千人),若要组织起更大型社会,便需要借助各种社会粘结剂,将多个父系群联合成单一政治结构,而婚姻是最古老也最常见的粘结剂。 婚姻的粘结作用,在前定居社会便已存在,列维-斯特劳斯发现,相邻的若干继嗣群之间建立固定通婚关系,以交表婚之类的形式相互交换女性,是初民社会的普遍做法;持久通婚维系了群体间血缘纽带,促进语言上的融合,共享文化元素,让双方更容易结盟共同对抗其他群体,即便发生冲突也比较容易协商停战,所有这些,都有助于它们建立更高一级的政治共同体。 此类固定结对通婚关系广泛存在于澳洲土著和北美印第安人中,其最显著特点是,它是群体本位而非个体本位的,缺乏定居者所熟悉的从个体出发的各种亲属称谓,有关亲属关系的词汇,所指称的都是按继嗣群(或曰氏族,常由图腾标识)、性别和辈份三个维度所划分出的一个组别,婚姻必须发生在两个特定组别之间。(值得留意的是:这种模式常被错误的称为“群婚制”,实际上,其中每桩婚姻都发生在男女个体之间,并非群婚。) 典型的做法是,两个父系群结对通婚,澳洲西北阿纳姆地的雍古人([[Yolngu]]),20个氏族分为两个被人类学家称为半偶族([[moiety]])的组,每个半偶族的女性只能嫁到另一个半偶族;这确保了夫妻双方的血缘不会比一级表亲更近;周人姬姓与姜姓的持续频繁通婚,或许也是此类安排的延续;不那么系统化的交表婚则更为普遍,几乎见于所有古代社会。 以此为基础,还发展出了更复杂的结对安排,比如西澳的马图苏利纳人([[Martuthunira]])采用一种双代交替的半偶族模式,运作机制如下图所示: 【图一】 每个半偶群的奇数辈和偶数辈又分成两个组,一个半偶群的奇数辈,只能和对方的奇数辈婚配。这样就把婚姻限制在了同辈之间,避免了娶到姨母或外甥女的可能性。这同时也起到了拉远夫妻血缘的效果,因为交表兄妹的亲缘系数比舅甥或姨甥小了一半;周人宗法制中的昭穆轮替标记法,或许也有类似用意。 为将更多单系继嗣群拉进固定通婚关系,从而扩大内婚群的规模,有些族群还采用了一种单向循环通婚圈,例如缅甸山区从事游耕的克钦人(Kachin)和苏门答腊种植水稻为生的巴塔克人([[Batak]]),由三到六个父系群组成循环圈:A群男性从B群娶妻,B从C娶,C从A娶;这种安排不仅进一步拉远了夫妻血缘,也提升了内婚群的遗传多样性。 结对通婚关系促进群体间合作的效果十分显著,雍古人活动范围内的各种自然物——土地、河流、鱼种、山岩等等——都被赋予了和某一半偶族相同的名称,这显然是两组群体就共同领地内自然资源分配所达成的一种协调,而这一成就是在完全缺乏高级政治结构的条件下达成的。 也正是借助循环通婚圈,克钦人才可能在文化和种族成分极为复杂横断山区建立多种族复合社区,在埃德蒙·利奇([[Edmund Leach]])调查的一个500人社区(帕朗)中,六种语言并存,仍可维持大致和平,对外关系中还表现出了相当团结性。 然而正如澳洲土著的经验所显示,固定通婚关系本身并不能带来高级政治结构,而充其量只能产生一个文化共同体,即有着粗略地理边界、较强血缘纽带、具有一定文化同质性的血缘/文化群([[ethnic group]]),澳洲人始终缺乏游团以上的部落结构,因而澳洲也是唯一一个英国殖民者未能与当地土著达成土地协议的殖民地,因为找不到适当的谈判和签约对手。 若要借助婚姻粘结剂建立更大社会,还需要父系群本身的升级改造(如我在上一篇所述),以及群内的等级分化和政治权力崛起,这一点,我们需要从群体角度转到个体角度才能看清。 在一个缺乏人身与财产权普遍保护,离开熟人小群体便毫无安全可言的霍布斯世界,姻亲关系对个人利益极为重要;当你在群体之外寻求合作与帮助时,它常常也是唯一的来源;当你为狩猎、作战,或采集某些重要材料(比如石料或盐),或从事交易,或战败逃亡,而需要穿越相邻群体的地盘时,若在该群体中无人为你提供担保和庇护,是极其危险的;所以,在霍布斯世界,陌生群体间的商品交易普遍采用“沉默交易”的方式,以避免近距离接触。 姻亲是个人将其互惠合作网络延伸至群体之外的主要途径,重要的是,它带来的一些合作关系是群内合作所无法替代的,包括:拓宽安全活动范围和信息来源,饥荒时的求助对象,发生群内冲突时的临时避难所,交易对象,和第三方建立合作或交易关系的中间人或担保人,等等。 马林诺夫斯基在其名著《西太平洋的航行者》中描述的特罗布里恩岛民的库拉圈交易是个很好的例子,分布在方圆数百英里海域的数十个岛屿的居民中,存在一个奇特的双向礼物流动圈,该圈每一环由来自不同群体的一对成员结成,在专门为此而举行的聚会上,双方隆重交换礼物——臂镯和项圈,用于仪式性场合上佩戴——,两种礼物总是朝相对方向流动,有数千人卷入这一交换活动。 乍看起来,库拉交换纯属仪式,毫无实用价值,其实不然,正是这种仪式性交换,为结成库拉对的两个人创造了定期拜访对方社区、参与其聚会和双方友好交往的机会,在库拉交换中拜访对方的人,都会随船携带一些实用商品用于交易,与我们主题有关的要点是:一个人库拉伙伴通常都是他的姻亲。 看上面的介绍,你可能会觉得这些群体和睦友好,实际上并非如此,库拉关系只是让群体间交往能够发生(否则根本无法和平接触),但平时关系仍然充满敌意和恐惧,远远谈不上友好;为了克服恐惧、确保自己不受对方伤害,拜访者在整个交易旅程中会施行大量巫术,一位土著对人类学家如此描述其即将拜访的库拉伙伴:
多布人没我们这么好;他们凶恶,他们是食人族!我们来多布时,十分害怕。他们会杀死我们。但看到我们吐出施过法术的姜汁,他们的头脑改变了。他们放下矛枪,友善的招待我们。
当拜访船队接近对方岛屿时,他们反复念诵类似这样的咒语:
尔之凶恶消失,消失,噢,多布男人! 尔之矛枪消失,消失,噢,多布男人! 尔之战争油彩消失,消失,噢,多布男人! ……
另一个故事则说明了在这种恐惧氛围中,拥有库拉伙伴的价值:一个叫Kaypoyla男人,航行中搁浅于一个陌生岛屿,同伴全部被杀死吃掉,他被留作下一顿美餐,夜晚侥幸逃出,流落至另一岛上,次日醒来发现自己被一群人围着,幸运的是,其中一位是他的库拉伙伴,于是被送回了家。 在特罗布里恩,一位酋长的地位很大程度上体现在众多妻子(常多达十几个)带给他的庞大姻亲网络上,通过与妻子兄弟的互惠交换,常积累起显示其权势的巨大甘薯库存,姻亲网络也让他在库拉圈中地位显赫,普通人一般只有几位库拉伙伴,而酋长则有上百位;人类学家蒂莫西·厄尔([[Timothy Earle]])也发现,在部落向酋邦的发展过程中,酋长们建立其权势地位的手段之一,便是通过精心安排婚姻来建立姻亲网络。 对于社会结构来说,重要的是,姻亲关系的上述作用,被宗族组织和父权成倍放大了,并且反过来强化了后两者;若没有紧密的宗族关系,一位男性从一桩婚姻中得到的姻亲就十分有限,岳父加上妻子的兄弟,但宗族的存在使得婚姻不仅是一对男女的联合,也是两个家族的联合,随着繁复婚姻仪式的逐步推进,双方众多成员的关系全面重组,并在此后的周期性节庆聚宴上得到反复强化,这也是为何在具有宗族组织的社会中,婚姻和生育仪式发展得那么繁杂隆重。 类似的,假如没有强父权,男性从婚姻中得到的姻亲数量,便主要取决于妻子数量,而在高度平等主义的前定居社会,多妻较少见,而且妻子数较平均(但也有例外,比如澳洲,但那里的高多妻率同样伴随着强父权和老人政治),但父权改变了姻亲性质,在控制了子女婚姻之后,长辈取代结婚者本人而成为姻亲关系的主导者,这样一来,一位男性能够主动建立并从中获益的姻亲关系,便大大增加了。 宗族和父权不仅拓展了个人发展姻亲的潜力,而且拉大了个体之间和家族支系之间社会地位的不均等;在游团一级的小型简单社会中,尽管个体境遇和生活成就也有着巨大差异,但这差异主要表现为后代数量,很少能积累起可以传给后代的资源,而现在,由于宗族使得姻亲关系成为两个家族的广泛结合,因而这一关系网成了家族支系的集体资产,而同时,由长辈安排子女婚姻,使得这一资产具有了可遗传性,这就好比现代家族企业在晚辈接班时,长辈会把整个商业关系网络连同有形资产一起传给他。 借助长辈所积累的资源,成功者的后辈从人生起步时便取得了竞争优势,这便构成了一种正反馈,使得父系群中发达的支系愈加发达,最终在群体内形成地位分化;这一分化也将自动克服我在上一篇中指出的父系群扩张所面临的一个障碍:当家长联盟向更高层次发展时,由于共祖已不在世,由谁来代表更高级支系?很明显,拥有压倒性权势的支系家长更有机会成为族长。 当若干相邻群体皆发生地位分化之后,权势家庭之间便倾向于相互通婚,并逐渐形成一个上层姻亲网络;这个圈子将带给其成员众多优势:从事甚至垄断跨群体的长距离贸易,在冲突中获得权势姻亲的襄助,影响联盟关系使其有利于自己;经过代代相袭,权势强弱不再只是个人境遇的差别,而成了固有地位,权势者逐渐成为固化成一个贵族阶层。 和族长联盟一样,权势姻亲联盟也可将若干群体连结为一个政治共同体,但效果更好;由于血缘随代际更替而逐渐疏远,单系群不可避免处于持续的分支裂变之中,成吉思汗的儿子们还能紧密合作,孙子辈就开始分裂,但还勉强能召集起忽里勒台,到第四代就形同陌路了;相反,姻亲关系则可以每代刷新,保持亲缘距离不变。 阿兹特克的事例很好的演示了,姻亲联盟在维系一个大型共同体时是如何起作用的;阿兹特克由数百个城邦组成,其中三个强势城邦联合成为霸主,垄断城邦间贸易,并向各邦索取贡赋,国王一般与友邦王室通婚,并通常将其正妻所生嫡女嫁给友邦王族或本邦高级贵族,而将庶女嫁给较低级贵族或有权势的家族首领,类似的,贵族在本邦同侪中通婚,也将庶女嫁给有权势平民,或战功卓著的武士,相比之下,下层平民的婚姻则限于所居住社区,每个社区由若干家族构成内婚群。 这样,在社会结构的每个层次上,国王或贵族通过正妻和嫡子女的婚姻而构建了一个维持该层次统治阶层的横向姻亲联盟,而通过庶妻和庶子女的婚姻则构建了一个纵向姻亲网络,将其合作关系和控制力向下延伸,如此便搭建起一个组织紧密的多层次政治结构,其中每个层次上的姻亲网络有着不同的覆盖范围,因而其合作圈规模皆可限于邓巴数之下。 类似景象在前现代欧洲也可看到,王室在全欧洲联姻,贵族在整个王国通婚,而普通人的婚嫁对象则很少越出邻近几个镇区;得益于阶层分化,婚姻为多层社会同时提供了横向和纵向的粘结纽带,然而,高级政治结构在创造出文明社会之前,许多功能仍有待开发,也还需要其他粘结剂,我会在后面的文章里逐一考察。  
欧洲的文化分界线

【2015-10-29】

@海德沙龙 《欧元危机背后的微观病灶》在有关欧元危机的报道和评论中,货币政策、财政赤字、物价、失业率等宏观因素总是处于议论焦点,微观层面却很少得到关注,经济学家Christian Thimann在比较了各欧元国过去15年贸易差额后发现:顺差国顺差恒增,逆差国逆差同样恒增,这只能从微观方面理解

@whigzhou: 分隔顺差区和逆差区的界线真是太眼熟了~

@whigzhou: 日耳曼vs非日耳曼(more...)

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6933
【2015-10-29】 @海德沙龙 《欧元危机背后的微观病灶》在有关欧元危机的报道和评论中,货币政策、财政赤字、物价、失业率等宏观因素总是处于议论焦点,微观层面却很少得到关注,经济学家Christian Thimann在比较了各欧元国过去15年贸易差额后发现:顺差国顺差恒增,逆差国逆差同样恒增,这只能从微观方面理解 @whigzhou: 分隔顺差区和逆差区的界线真是太眼熟了~ @whigzhou: 日耳曼vs非日耳曼,新教vs天主教/东正教,文化禀赋真是千年难改啊 @whigzhou: 个人责任vs命苦赖别人,重诺守信vs说话当放屁,遵守规则愿赌服输vs习惯性耍赖……
[译文]千禧一代是如何被宠坏的?

The Coddling of the American Mind
美国精神的娇惯

作者:GREG LUKIANOFF,JONATHAN HAIDT @ 2015-9
译者:Horace Rae(@sheldon_rae)
校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy),小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子)
来源:The Atlantic,http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

以情感安康为名,大学生如今愈发强烈地要求保护自己,不愿听到他们不喜欢的言语和思想。下文解释了为什么这一趋势无论对教育还是心理健康都是灾难性的。

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress.

当今美国高校中存在一个奇怪的现象。一场运动正在蓬勃发展,它不受引导,主要由学生推动,目的是把可能造成冒犯或引起不适的言语、思想和议题从校园中清除出去。去年12月,Jeannie Suk在《纽约客》一篇在线文章中写到,有法学院的学生要求她在哈佛的同僚停止讲授强奸法——有一次,甚至要求他们停止使用“violate”一词(比如在“that violates the law”中)【译注:该词兼有“违反”、“侵犯”、“亵渎”与“强奸”之义】以免引起学生不适。

In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her.

今年二月,西北大学教授Laura Kipnis在《高等教育纪事报》上发表了一篇文章,讲述高校里新出现的一种性妄想政治,有学生因为被这篇文章以及她发布的一条推特所冒犯,对其提出基于“第九条”的控诉【译注:指《联邦教育法修正案》第九条,禁止教育领域性别歧视】,她因此遭受了漫长的调查。

In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

今年六月,一位使用化名以保护自己的教授为Vox写了一篇文章,描述他现在在教学中需要多么小心翼翼,文章的标题是:“我是一名自由派教授,我被我的自由派学生吓坏了”。包括Chris Rock在内的许多当红谐星,已经不在大学校园演出了(详情见Caitlin Flanagan在本月杂志上的文章)。 Jerry Seinfeld和Bill Maher已公开批评大学生的过度敏感,说他们中太多人连一个玩笑也开不起了。

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance.Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American.

有两个晦涩的术语已经变成了校园里的日常用语。“微冒犯”(microaggression)表示表面本无恶意但仍被认为具有侵犯性的小举动或用语选择。举个例子,某些校园规则规定,询问亚裔或拉丁裔美国人“你出生在哪里?”就是一种“微冒犯”,因为这一提问暗示了这个人不是真正的美国人。

Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

“刺激警告”是上课时教授们在讲授易触发强烈情绪波动的内容前被认为应该发出的警告。举个例子,有些学生要求教授预先警告Chinua Achebe的《瓦解》包含有种族暴力内容,F. Scott Fitzgerald的《了不起的盖茨比》描绘了厌女症和肢体暴力。他们认为这些著作可能会“刺激”过往的心灵创伤,因此之前遭受过种族主义和家庭暴力伤害的学生就可以选择跳过这些著作。

Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.”

一些近期的校园现象近乎荒诞。今年四月,为了引起对针对亚裔的“微冒犯”的重视,布兰迪斯大学亚裔美国学生联合会在一个学术报告厅的台阶上做了一个展示,内容是“微冒犯”的例子,比如“你们不是应该非常擅长数学吗?”和“我是色盲!我分辨不出种族。”但是另一些亚裔美国学生则提出强烈反对,他们认为这个展示本身就是一种“微冒犯”。后来联合会撤除了这些展品,会长向全体学生发了一封电子邮件,向所有“被‘微冒犯’伤害或刺激”的人道歉。


According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided.

按照最基本的心理学原则,帮助焦虑症患者逃避他们惧怕的事物是完全错误的。


This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”

这种新的风气正在渐渐制度化,而且正在影响课堂上可以讲授的内容,甚至成为讨论问题的基础。例如在2014-15学年间,行政官员在教职员领导培训课程上为加州大学系统10所院校的院长和系主任们介绍了“微冒犯”的例子。冒犯性语言的清单包括:“美国是充满机会的国度”和“我相信这份工作应该给最有资格的人”。

The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That(more...)

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The Coddling of the American Mind 美国精神的娇惯 作者:GREG LUKIANOFF,JONATHAN HAIDT @ 2015-9 译者:Horace Rae(@sheldon_rae) 校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy),小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子) 来源:The Atlantic,http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health. 以情感安康为名,大学生如今愈发强烈地要求保护自己,不愿听到他们不喜欢的言语和思想。下文解释了为什么这一趋势无论对教育还是心理健康都是灾难性的。 Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. 当今美国高校中存在一个奇怪的现象。一场运动正在蓬勃发展,它不受引导,主要由学生推动,目的是把可能造成冒犯或引起不适的言语、思想和议题从校园中清除出去。去年12月,Jeannie Suk在《纽约客》一篇在线文章中写到,有法学院的学生要求她在哈佛的同僚停止讲授强奸法——有一次,甚至要求他们停止使用“violate”一词(比如在“that violates the law”中)【译注:该词兼有“违反”、“侵犯”、“亵渎”与“强奸”之义】以免引起学生不适。 In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. 今年二月,西北大学教授Laura Kipnis在《高等教育纪事报》上发表了一篇文章,讲述高校里新出现的一种性妄想政治,有学生因为被这篇文章以及她发布的一条推特所冒犯,对其提出基于“第九条”的控诉【译注:指《联邦教育法修正案》第九条,禁止教育领域性别歧视】,她因此遭受了漫长的调查。 In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke. 今年六月,一位使用化名以保护自己的教授为Vox写了一篇文章,描述他现在在教学中需要多么小心翼翼,文章的标题是:“我是一名自由派教授,我被我的自由派学生吓坏了”。包括Chris Rock在内的许多当红谐星,已经不在大学校园演出了(详情见Caitlin Flanagan在本月杂志上的文章)。 Jerry Seinfeld和Bill Maher已公开批评大学生的过度敏感,说他们中太多人连一个玩笑也开不起了。 Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance.Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. 有两个晦涩的术语已经变成了校园里的日常用语。“微冒犯”(microaggression)表示表面本无恶意但仍被认为具有侵犯性的小举动或用语选择。举个例子,某些校园规则规定,询问亚裔或拉丁裔美国人“你出生在哪里?”就是一种“微冒犯”,因为这一提问暗示了这个人不是真正的美国人。 Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma. “刺激警告”是上课时教授们在讲授易触发强烈情绪波动的内容前被认为应该发出的警告。举个例子,有些学生要求教授预先警告Chinua Achebe的《瓦解》包含有种族暴力内容,F. Scott Fitzgerald的《了不起的盖茨比》描绘了厌女症和肢体暴力。他们认为这些著作可能会“刺激”过往的心灵创伤,因此之前遭受过种族主义和家庭暴力伤害的学生就可以选择跳过这些著作。 Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.” 一些近期的校园现象近乎荒诞。今年四月,为了引起对针对亚裔的“微冒犯”的重视,布兰迪斯大学亚裔美国学生联合会在一个学术报告厅的台阶上做了一个展示,内容是“微冒犯”的例子,比如“你们不是应该非常擅长数学吗?”和“我是色盲!我分辨不出种族。”但是另一些亚裔美国学生则提出强烈反对,他们认为这个展示本身就是一种“微冒犯”。后来联合会撤除了这些展品,会长向全体学生发了一封电子邮件,向所有“被‘微冒犯’伤害或刺激”的人道歉。
According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. 按照最基本的心理学原则,帮助焦虑症患者逃避他们惧怕的事物是完全错误的。
This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” 这种新的风气正在渐渐制度化,而且正在影响课堂上可以讲授的内容,甚至成为讨论问题的基础。例如在2014-15学年间,行政官员在教职员领导培训课程上为加州大学系统10所院校的院长和系主任们介绍了“微冒犯”的例子。冒犯性语言的清单包括:“美国是充满机会的国度”和“我相信这份工作应该给最有资格的人”。 The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives. 媒体通常将这种变化描述为政治正确的复兴。这种说法部分正确,尽管现在发生的事情和上世纪八、九十年代发生的事情存在着重大差异。过去的运动试图限制言论(尤其是针对边缘群体的仇恨言论),但是它们也挑战文学、哲学和历史各方面的正统,试图通过容纳更加多元的视角来对之加以拓展。 The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. 当下的运动则主要关注情感安康。不仅如此,它假定大学生的心理脆弱不堪,因此提升了保护学生免受心理伤害这一目标的重要性。这场运动的终极目标,似乎是要屏蔽一切让学生不舒服的言语和观点,把大学校园变成一个“安全场所”。 And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse. 再进一步,这场运动试图让每一个妨碍这一目标的人受到惩罚,无心而为也不可原谅。你可以把这种冲动的念头称作“报复性保护”,它正在创造一种文化,在这种文化下,每一个人都必须三思而后言,以免被人指控麻木不仁、有攻击性,甚至更糟糕的罪名。 We have been studying this development for a while now, with rising alarm. (Greg Lukianoff is a constitutional lawyer and the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and academic freedom on campus, and has advocated for students and faculty involved in many of the incidents this article describes; Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who studies the American culture wars. The stories of how we each came to this subject can be read here.) 我们研究这场运动已有一段时间了,情况越来越吓人。(Greg Lukianoff是一名宪法律师学者,也是个人教育权利基金会的主席兼CEO。该基金会致力于捍卫校园中的言论自由和学术自由,并且曾声援那些卷入本文所描述诸多事件的学生和教师;Jonathan Haidt是一位社会心理学家,他研究美国的文化战争。关于我们各自都是如何开始研究这个课题的,请见这里http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/greg-lukianoffs-story/399359/) The dangers that these trends pose to scholarship and to the quality of American universities are significant; we could write a whole essay detailing them. But in this essay we focus on a different question: What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? 这种趋势对学术研究和美国大学教育的质量构成了严重威胁;我们可以写一整篇论文来详细论述。但是本文关注的是另一个问题:这种娇呵严护对学生自身有什么影响?它是否能帮助到它本打算帮助的人? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors? 对无意的怠慢加以管制,给经典文学作品贴上警示标签,以其它种种方式传达这么一层意思:言词可能构成暴力,需要受到既被视作保护者又被视作检举人的校方的严格控制——学生花了四年甚至更多时间生活在这样的社区之中,究竟会学到什么呢? There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding. “不要教学生思考什么,要教给他们如何思考。”这句话在教育圈内广为人知。这一理念最早起码可追溯至苏格拉底。现在,我们把鼓励批判性思考的教育方法——部分通过鼓励学生质疑自己未经检验的信念以及从周遭等所接收到的知识——称作“苏格拉底法”。在通往理解的道路上,这些质疑可能带来不适,甚至引起愤怒。 But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. 但是报复性保护则教育学生以一种完全不同的方式思考。它无法给学生的职业生涯提供多少帮助,因为在职场我们往往需要与我们不认同甚至认为是完全错误的观点和人进行智识交锋。报复性保护也会带来更直接的伤害。 A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically. 致力于管制言论和惩罚发声者的校园文化容易导致一种思维方式,它与早已被认知行为治疗师们确认为焦虑症和抑郁症病因的那种思维方式惊人相似。新的保护可能会令学生陷入病态思维。 How Did We Get Here? 何以到了这一步? It’s difficult to know exactly why vindictive protectiveness has burst forth so powerfully in the past few years. The phenomenon may be related to recent changes in the interpretation of federal antidiscrimination statutes (about which more later). But the answer probably involves generational shifts as well. Childhood itself has changed greatly during the past generation. Many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers can remember riding their bicycles around their hometowns, unchaperoned by adults, by the time they were 8 or 9 years old. In the hours after school, kids were expected to occupy themselves, getting into minor scrapes and learning from their experiences. 想要弄清为什么过去几年报复性保护如此猖獗并不容易。这一现象可能与最近对联邦反歧视法条的解释变化有关(以下稍后再详论这一点),但是答案也可能涉及代际差异,如今的孩童时代和上一代很不一样了。许多“婴儿潮一代”和“X一代”【译注:约指1965-1975年间生人】还有在家乡骑自行车四处兜风的记忆,当时他们只有八九岁,没有父母陪伴在旁。放学后,孩子们应该自己玩自己的,受些小挫折并从经验中吸取教训。 But “free range” childhood became less common in the 1980s. The surge in crime from the ’60s through the early ’90s made Baby Boomer parents more protective than their own parents had been. Stories of abducted children appeared more frequently in the news, and in 1984, images of them began showing up on milk cartons. In response, many parents pulled in the reins and worked harder to keep their children safe. 但是在1980年代,“放养”的童年越来越少了。1960年代到1990年代初的罪案攀升,使得婴儿潮时期出生的父母们比他们自己的父母更加护犊心切。拐卖儿童的事情越来越常见,在1984年,被拐卖儿童的照片都开始出现在牛奶盒上了。因此,许多家长勒紧了缰绳,努力保证自己孩子的安全。 The flight to safety also happened at school. Dangerous play structures were removed from playgrounds; peanut butter was banned from student lunches. After the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, many schools cracked down on bullying, implementing “zero tolerance” policies. In a variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well. 学校也加强了对安全的重视。操场上的危险游乐设施被拆除;学生午餐中禁用花生黄油。自从1999年科罗拉多州科伦拜恩大屠杀之后,许多学校严厉惩处欺凌事件,实行“零容忍”政策。生于1980年之后的一代——即“千禧一代”——以不同方式从大人们那里得到了一致的信息:生活危机满布,但大人们会竭尽所能保护你们免受伤害,既要防范陌生人,也要防范你们同伴。 These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. 同是这一批孩子,成长在一个政治上日益两极分化的文化中(这一两极化今天仍在继续)。共和党人和民主党人从来都互无好感,但是回溯到1970年代的调查数据显示,两党相互厌恶的程度总体来看也曾出奇地温和。 Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races. 此后,负面情绪就一直在稳步扩张,在进入新世纪后尤其严重。政治学家称这种现象为“情绪性党派两极化”。这对任何一个民主政体都是很严重的问题。鉴于一方一直在妖魔化另一方,达成共识就越来越困难。近来有研究显示,党派之间隐形和无意识的偏见,丝毫不逊色于种族之间的偏见。 So it’s not hard to imagine why students arriving on campus today might be more desirous of protection and more hostile toward ideological opponents than in generations past. This hostility, and the self-righteousness fueled by strong partisan emotions, can be expected to add force to any moral crusade. A principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds.” Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor. 所以,我们不难想象为什么现在的学生比上几代人更加渴望受保护,对意识形态对立方有更强烈的敌意。这种敌意和由强烈党派感情激发的自命正直感,可想而知就是各种道德讨伐的助推器。道德心理学的一条原则是:“道德约束人,也让人盲目。”我们在作出道德判断的时候,同时也表达了对一个群体的忠诚。但是这可能会影响我们进行批判性思考的能力。承认对手的观点具有任何的合理性,风险都很大——队友们可能会把你当成叛徒。 Social media makes it extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors. Facebook was founded in 2004, and since 2006 it has allowed children as young as 13 to join. This means that the first wave of students who spent all their teen years using Facebook reached college in 2011, and graduated from college only this year. 社交媒体使得加入道德讨伐易如反掌,也让表达团结与愤怒和排斥叛徒变得更加容易。Facebook成立于2004年,从2007年开始,它就允许低至13岁的孩子加入。这意味着第一批从青少年时期起就一直在用Facebook的孩子在2011年进入大学,今年才大学毕业。 These first true “social-media natives” may be different from members of previous generations in how they go about sharing their moral judgments and supporting one another in moral campaigns and conflicts. We find much to like about these trends; young people today are engaged with one another, with news stories, and with prosocial endeavors to a greater degree than when the dominant technology was television. But social media has also fundamentally shifted the balance of power in relationships between students and faculty; the latter increasingly fear what students might do to their reputations and careers by stirring up online mobs against them. 第一批真正的“社交媒体原生族”与此前几代人的不同之处,在于他们如何分享道德判断,在道德运动与道德冲突中如何彼此支持。这种趋势有其可喜之处:当今的年轻人与其他人在互相联系,分享新鲜事,与以电视为主导技术的时期相比,对社会交往更为投入。但是社交媒体也从根本上打破了学生和教师之间的权力平衡:后者越来越害怕学生会在网上煽动暴民打击自己,从而损害自己的名声和职业前途。 We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades. Some portion of the increase is surely due to better diagnosis and greater willingness to seek help, but most experts seem to agree that some portion of the trend is real. 我们并不打算暗示一种简单的因果关系,但是近几十年来,不管在校内还是校外,青年人患心理疾病的比例都在上升。比例的提高,一定有部分是源于更高的诊断水平和更强的求诊意愿,但是大部分专家似乎都同意,这一统计趋势至少有部分是反映了患病率的真实上升。 Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools. The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising. 2013年,所有接受美国高校咨询联合会调查的校园心理健康指导员都报告说,自己学校患有严重精神疾病的学生数目在上升。学生自己报告的情绪焦虑比率也很高,而且还在上升。 In a 2014 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the past 12 months, up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier. Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile, and this has surely changed the way university faculty and administrators interact with them. The question is whether some of those changes might be doing more harm than good. 2014年,美国高校健康联合会的一个调查显示,54%的大学生表示在过去12个月中“感受到了高度焦虑”,五年前同一调查的结果是49%。学生们报告的情绪危机似乎越来越多;许多人非常脆弱,这当然也改变了高校教师和行政人员与他们互动的方式。问题就是,是否其中有些改变可能弊大于利? The Thinking Cure 思维治疗 For millennia, philosophers have understood that we don’t see life as it is; we see a version distorted by our hopes, fears, and other attachments. The Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.” Marcus Aurelius said, “Life itself is but what you deem it.” The quest for wisdom in many traditions begins with this insight. Early Buddhists and the Stoics, for example, developed practices for reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from the emotional torments of normal mental life. 几千年来,哲学家们都已经认识到,我们看到的不是生活的本来面目:我们看到的是被我们的期望、恐惧以及其他情感所扭曲的一个版本。佛说:“我们的生活是我们心智的创造物。”马可·奥勒留说:“生活就是我们认为的样子。”在许多文化传统中,对智慧的追求就始于这种观点。例如,早期佛教徒和斯多葛主义者就有通过实践训练去抑制情感,理清思维,以及从日常精神生活的情绪折磨中寻求解脱。 Cognitive behavioral therapy is a modern embodiment of this ancient wisdom. It is the most extensively studied nonpharmaceutical treatment of mental illness, and is used widely to treat depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and addiction. It can even be of help to schizophrenics. No other form of psychotherapy has been shown to work for a broader range of problems. 认知行为治疗是这种古老智慧的现代体现。它是精神疾病非药物疗法中被研究的最多的一种。它被广泛应用于治疗抑郁、焦虑症、进食障碍以及药物成瘾,甚至被用于帮助治疗精神分裂。据我们目前所知,没有其它任何心理治疗方法能治疗更多的疾病。 Studies have generally found that it is as effective as antidepressant drugs (such as Prozac) in the treatment of anxiety and depression. The therapy is relatively quick and easy to learn; after a few months of training, many patients can do it on their own. Unlike drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy keeps working long after treatment is stopped, because it teaches thinking skills that people can continue to use. 研究普遍表明它治疗焦虑和抑郁的功效与抗抑郁药物(比如百忧解)不相上下。这种疗法相对容易学,掌握快,只需几个月的训练,许多患者就可以自行运用了。与药物不同,认知行为疗法在疗程结束后仍长期有效,因为它教给患者的思维方法还能继续使用。 The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. You start by learning the names of the dozen or so most common cognitive distortions (such as overgeneralizing, discounting positives, and emotional reasoning; see the list at the bottom of this article). Each time you notice yourself falling prey to one of them, you name it, describe the facts of the situation, consider alternative interpretations, and then choose an interpretation of events more in line with those facts. 认知行为治疗的目标是尽量令患者减少思想扭曲,从而能更精确地观察世界。开始时,你需要学习最常见的十几种认知扭曲的名目(比如以偏概全、低估正面信息,以及情绪化推理等;完整列表见文章末尾)。每当你发现自己陷入了其中某种扭曲状况,先对号入座,描述真实状况,思考其他的解释方式,接下来选择与事实较一致的解释。 Your emotions follow your new interpretation. In time, this process becomes automatic. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way—when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness—they become less depressed, anxious, and angry. 新的解释会引导你的情绪。经过一段时间训练之后,这一处理程序会变得很自动。如果以这种方式改善自己的精神健康状况,人们会将自己从原本充斥于意识中的重复性非理性思想中解脱出来,他们的抑郁、焦虑和愤怒都会随之得到缓解。 The parallel to formal education is clear: cognitive behavioral therapy teaches good critical-thinking skills, the sort that educators have striven for so long to impart. By almost any definition, critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis. But does campus life today foster critical thinking? Or does it coax students to think in more-distorted ways? 这种疗法与正规教育有着不言而喻的相似之处。认知行为疗法教授良好的批判思维方法,而这正是教育者们长久以来努力要传授的。不论怎么说,批判思维都需要把信念建立在证据而非情感或欲望之上,并且需要人们学习如何寻找可能与自己最初假设相抵触的证据,并加以评判。但是,当今的大学教育鼓励批判思维吗?还是这种教育方式在诱使学生以更扭曲的方式思考? Let’s look at recent trends in higher education in light of the distortions that cognitive behavioral therapy identifies. We will draw the names and descriptions of these distortions from David D. Burns’s popular book Feeling Good, as well as from the second edition of Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, by Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn. 让我们按照认知行为疗法界定的各种扭曲来审视近期高等教育中出现的新趋势。我们所使用的思维扭曲的名称和描述,取自David D. Burns广受欢迎的著作《感觉良好》和 Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland和Lata K. McGinn的著作《抑郁症和焦虑症的治疗计划及干预措施》(第二版)。 Higher Education’s Embrace of “Emotional Reasoning” 高等教育欣然接受“情绪化推理” Burns defines emotional reasoning as assuming “that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.’ ” Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as letting “your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.” But, of course, subjective feelings are not always trustworthy guides; unrestrained, they can cause people to lash out at others who have done nothing wrong. Therapy often involves talking yourself down from the idea that each of your emotional responses represents something true or important. Burns将“情绪化推理”定义为:预先假定“你的负面情绪一定反映了事实:‘我感觉是这样,所以事情一定是这样’”。 Leahy、Holland和McGinn将其定义为任凭“你的情绪引导你对现实的解释”。但是,主观感受当然并不一定可靠;如果不受抑制,它可能令人们无端指责完全无辜的人。治疗方案通常包括劝自己放弃这种想法:你的每一个情绪反应都代表了重要的或真实的事情。 Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive” is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense. 情绪化推理主导了许多校园讨论和辩论。宣称某人的用词“有冒犯性”并不只是表达对于冒犯的主观感受,而是公开指责此人犯了客观错误。这是一种要求,要求说话人道歉,或者要求有关当局惩罚他,因为他犯下了罪行。 There have always been some people who believe they have a right not to be offended. Yet throughout American history—from the Victorian era to the free-speech activism of the 1960s and ’70s—radicals have pushed boundaries and mocked prevailing sensibilities. Sometime in the 1980s, however, college campuses began to focus on preventing offensive speech, especially speech that might be hurtful to women or minority groups. The sentiment underpinning this goal was laudable, but it quickly produced some absurd results. 总有些人相信自己拥有不被冒犯的权利。不过,纵观美国历史——从维多利亚时代到1960和70年代的言论自由运动——激进分子一次次拓展边界,蔑视当时盛行的敏感情绪。然而,在1980年代的某个时候,大学校园开始注重管制冒犯性言论,尤其是可能会对女性或少数族裔造成伤害的言论。这一目标所基于的情操值得赞扬,但是它很快就催生了一些荒诞的后果。
What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection? 如果我们鼓励学生在离开成年人的保护茧之前长出一副超级薄弱的外壳,我们究竟是在做什么?
Among the most famous early examples was the so-called water-buffalo incident at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, the university charged an Israeli-born student with racial harassment after he yelled “Shut up, you water buffalo!” to a crowd of black sorority women that was making noise at night outside his dorm-room window. 此类事件最出名的早期案例有发生在宾夕法尼亚大学的所谓“水牛事件”。1993年,该校指控一名生于以色列的学生有种族骚扰罪行,因为他对一些晚上在他宿舍窗外吵闹的黑人女生联谊会成员喊道:“闭嘴,你们这群水牛!” Many scholars and pundits at the time could not see how the termwater buffalo (a rough translation of a Hebrew insult for a thoughtless or rowdy person) was a racial slur against African Americans, and as a result, the case became international news. 当时,许多学者和专家都不理解“水牛”这个词是如何构成对非洲裔美国人的种族诽谤的(实际上,水牛是对希伯来语一个辱骂词汇的粗糙翻译,指不顾旁人或吵闹不堪的人),所以,这件事一时成了国际新闻。 Claims of a right not to be offended have continued to arise since then, and universities have continued to privilege them. In a particularly egregious 2008 case, for instance, Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis found a white student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan. The book honored student opposition to the Ku Klux Klan when it marched on Notre Dame in 1924. Nonetheless, the picture of a Klan rally on the book’s cover offended at least one of the student’s co-workers (he was a janitor as well as a student), and that was enough for a guilty finding by the university’s Affirmative Action Office. 从那时起,对“不被冒犯的权利”的要求开始不断增长,各大学也不断加以纵容。比如,发生在2008年的一个影响极其恶劣的案件中,印第安纳大学与普渡大学印第安纳波利斯联合分校认定一名学生干犯种族骚扰罪行,因为他阅读了一本名叫《圣母大学vs.三K党》的书。这本书纪念了1924年三K党进军圣母大学时反抗他们的学生。虽然如此,该书封面上的三K党集会照片至少冒犯了该学生的一名同事(后者也是学生,同时还是一名楼管)。该大学的反歧视办公室认为这种行为足以构成种族骚扰。 These examples may seem extreme, but the reasoning behind them has become more commonplace on campus in recent years. Last year, at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, an event called Hump Day, which would have allowed people to pet a camel, was abruptly canceled. Students had created a Facebook group where they protested the event for animal cruelty, for being a waste of money, and for being insensitive to people from the Middle East. The inspiration for the camel had almost certainly come from a popular TV commercial in which a camel saunters around an office on a Wednesday, celebrating “hump day”; it was devoid of any reference to Middle Eastern peoples. Nevertheless, the group organizing the event announced on its Facebook page that the event would be canceled because the “program [was] dividing people and would make for an uncomfortable and possibly unsafe environment.” 这些例子也许看起来比较极端,但它们背后的逻辑在大学中近年来越来越常见。去年在明尼苏达州的圣托马斯大学,一个叫驼峰日的活动——意在让人们有机会抚摸一下骆驼——被紧急取消。学生们创建了一个Facebook群组抗议这个活动,理由是虐待动物,浪费金钱,并且不顾及中东学生的感受。该活动的灵感几乎可以肯定是来自一个很受欢迎的电视广告:在某个周三,一只骆驼绕着办公室悠闲散步,庆祝“驼峰日”;它完全和中东人没有关系。尽管如此,活动组织者还是在他们的Facebook主页宣布取消活动,因为“这个活动会造成隔阂,并且可能造成使人不适甚至不安全的环境”。 Because there is a broad ban in academic circles on “blaming the victim,” it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone’s emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one’s group identity. The thin argument “I’m offended” becomes an unbeatable trump card. This leads to what Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at this magazine, calls the “offendedness sweepstakes,” in which opposing parties use claims of offense as cudgels. In the process, the bar for what we consider unacceptable speech is lowered further and further. 正因为学术圈广泛禁止“批评受害者”,所以质疑一个人的情感状态是否合理基本上不可接受(讨论是否真实就更不用说了),尤其是当情感与群体归属有关的时候。一句单薄的“我被冒犯了”,已成了无往不胜的杀手锏。这就导致了本杂志特约编辑Jonathan Rauch所称的“受辱竞赛”现象:双方都以声称遭到冒犯为武器。在这个过程中,界定“不可接受言论”的门槛越来越低。 Since 2013, new pressure from the federal government has reinforced this trend. Federal antidiscrimination statutes regulate on-campus harassment and unequal treatment based on sex, race, religion, and national origin. Until recently, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights acknowledged that speech must be “objectively offensive” before it could be deemed actionable as sexual harassment—it would have to pass the “reasonable person” test. To be prohibited, the office wrote in 2003, allegedly harassing speech would have to go “beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive.” 从2013年起,来自联邦政府的压力更为这种趋势推波助澜。联邦反歧视法对校园中基于性别、种族、宗教和民族的冒犯和不平等对待进行规制。直到不久前,教育部民权署仍规定只有“客观上具有冒犯性”的言论才能被认定为可提起诉讼的性骚扰——它必须通过“公允人”测试【译注:是一种程序机制,用于判别一个明事理的、情感和价值取向适度的、且处于中立地位的社会典型成员,在有关情境中将会持何种看法,最常见的公允人测试是陪审团裁决】。2003年,民权署写道,被指为骚扰的言论必须“不仅仅只是令某些人感到冒犯的观点、言语、符号或思想的表达”,才需要禁止。 But in 2013, the Departments of Justice and Education greatly broadened the definition of sexual harassment to include verbal conduct that is simply “unwelcome.” Out of fear of federal investigations, universities are now applying that standard—defining unwelcome speech as harassment—not just to sex, but to race, religion, and veteran status as well. Everyone is supposed to rely upon his or her own subjective feelings to decide whether a comment by a professor or a fellow student is unwelcome, and therefore grounds for a harassment claim. Emotional reasoning is now accepted as evidence. 但是在2013年,司法部和教育部把性骚扰的范围大大扩展,将仅仅“令人反感”的言语也包括了进去。由于害怕联邦政府的调查,现在各大学正将这种标准——把令人反感的言论定性为骚扰——从性领域扩展应用到种族、宗教,以及兵役状况方面。所有人都应该以自己的主观感受为依据来判定教授或同学的评论是否令人反感,并以此作为控告骚扰的依据。情绪化推理现已被当做证据来看待了。 If our universities are teaching students that their emotions can be used effectively as weapons—or at least as evidence in administrative proceedings—then they are teaching students to nurture a kind of hypersensitivity that will lead them into countless drawn-out conflicts in college and beyond. Schools may be training students in thinking styles that will damage their careers and friendships, along with their mental health. 如果我们的大学在教导学生,他们的感情可以作为有力的武器——至少可以作为证据用于行政诉讼之中——那么,大学就是在培养学生的过度敏感,这会导致学生们陷入无休无止的冲突之中,无论是在校期间还是毕业之后。学校教授学生的思维方式,可能会毁掉他们的职业生涯、友谊,以及精神健康。 Fortune-Telling and Trigger Warnings 悲观预测”与“刺激警告” Burns defines fortune-telling as “anticipat[ing] that things will turn out badly” and feeling “convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.” Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as “predict[ing] the future negatively” or seeing potential danger in an everyday situation. The recent spread of demands for trigger warnings on reading assignments with provocative content is an example of fortune-telling. Burns把“悲观预测”定义为“预料事情会变糟”而且“确信自己的预测已是既成事实”。Leahy、Holland和McGinn将其定义为“对未来做出负面预测”或者从日常事件中看到潜在风险。近期,对具有刺激性内容的阅读材料发出“刺激警告”的要求正在增加,这正是“悲观预测”的实例。 The idea that words (or smells or any sensory input) can trigger searing memories of past trauma—and intense fear that it may be repeated—has been around at least since World War I, when psychiatrists began treating soldiers for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. 文字(或是气味或者任何一种感官输入)会使人回忆起往昔的伤痛,还会引起对这种伤痛再次出现的强烈恐惧,这种观点最早至少可追溯到第一次世界大战时期。当时,精神科医生们开始为士兵们治疗我们现在称之为“创伤后应激障碍”的疾病。 But explicit trigger warnings are believed to have originated much more recently, on message boards in the early days of the Internet. Trigger warnings became particularly prevalent in self-help and feminist forums, where they allowed readers who had suffered from traumatic events like sexual assault to avoid graphic content that might trigger flashbacks or panic attacks. 但人们相信,明确的刺激警告是近期才出现的,最早是在早期互联网的留言板上。刺激警告在自救论坛和女权论坛上广泛流行,这些论坛允许遭受过创伤(比如性侵犯)的读者避开可能引起创伤再现或恐慌发作的图片内容。 Search-engine trends indicate that the phrase broke into mainstream use online around 2011, spiked in 2014, and reached an all-time high in 2015. The use of trigger warnings on campus appears to have followed a similar trajectory; seemingly overnight, students at universities across the country have begun demanding that their professors issue warnings before covering material that might evoke a negative emotional response. 搜索引擎的热词统计显示,在网络上这一术语于2011年进入主流用语,2014年使用量激增,2015年的搜索量达到历史最高。“刺激警告”一词在校园里的使用情况也遵循着同一发展轨迹,仿佛一夜之间,全国的大学生们都开始要求教授在讲授可能引起负面情绪反应的内容前发出警告。 In 2013, a task force composed of administrators, students, recent alumni, and one faculty member at Oberlin College, in Ohio, released an online resource guide for faculty (subsequently retracted in the face of faculty pushback) that included a list of topics warranting trigger warnings. These topics included classism and privilege, among many others. The task force recommended that materials that might trigger negative reactions among students be avoided altogether unless they “contribute directly” to course goals, and suggested that works that were “too important to avoid” be made optional. 2013年,俄亥俄州奥柏林学院一个由行政人员、学生、近期毕业的校友和一名教员组成的特别工作组在网上发表了一份在线资料指南(之后因教职员工反对而撤回),罗列了应当提出“刺激警告”的题材,包括阶级歧视论和特权论,及许多其他内容。这个工作组建议全面剔除可能引起学生负面反应的内容,除非这些内容对课程目标“有直接作用”。工作组还建议将“不可不读”的书目调整成选读内容。 It’s hard to imagine how novels illustrating classism and privilege could provoke or reactivate the kind of terror that is typically implicated in PTSD. Rather, trigger warnings are sometimes demanded for a long list of ideas and attitudes that some students find politically offensive, in the name of preventing other students from being harmed. This is an example of what psychologists call “motivated reasoning”—we spontaneously generate arguments for conclusions we want to support. 那些“创伤后应激障碍”通常所牵涉的恐慌,很难想象会被描绘阶级歧视论和特权论的小说唤起或重新激发出来。确切地说,只有在某些学生眼中有政治冒犯色彩的一系列观念和言论才需要刺激警告,名为避免其他同学受伤害。这就是心理学家所称的“动机性推理”的实例:我们不由自主地为我们想要支持的结论制造论据。 Once you find something hateful, it is easy to argue that exposure to the hateful thing could traumatize some other people. You believe that you know how others will react, and that their reaction could be devastating. Preventing that devastation becomes a moral obligation for the whole community. Books for which students have called publicly for trigger warnings within the past couple of years include Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (at Rutgers, for “suicidal inclinations”) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (at Columbia, for sexual assault). 如果觉得某些东西令你憎恨,就很容易认为其他人与它们接触会受到创伤。你认为你知道别人会作何反应:他们可能会崩溃。避免这种情感崩溃成了整个社会的道德责任。最近几年,学生们公开要求提供刺激警告的著作包括弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫的《达洛维夫人》(在罗格斯大学,因“自杀倾向”)和奥维德的《变形记》(在哥伦比亚大学,因“性侵犯”)。 Jeannie Suk’s New Yorker essay described the difficulties of teaching rape law in the age of trigger warnings. Some students, she wrote, have pressured their professors to avoid teaching the subject in order to protect themselves and their classmates from potential distress. Suk compares this to trying to teach “a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood.” Jeannie Suk在《纽约客》发表的文章讲述了在刺激警告盛行的时代讲授强奸法有多么困难。她写道,有些学生向教授施压,不许教授讲授这一课程,以免自己和同学们可能会承受精神痛苦。Suk将这种境况比作试图教“将要成为外科医生但害怕自己晕血的医学生”。 However, there is a deeper problem with trigger warnings. According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators. 然而,刺激警告还会带来更深层的问题,根据最基本的心理学原则,帮助焦虑症患者逃避他们所惧怕的事物是完全错误的。停电时被困在电梯里的人可能会慌了手脚,以为自己快要死了。这种可怕的经历会改变这个人大脑杏仁核中神经元的反应,导致电梯恐惧症。如果你想让这个女人在余生中保持恐惧,你就应该帮助她远离电梯。 But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance—standing in a building lobby, perhaps—until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she’s standing in the lobby—if the fear is not “reinforced”—then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy. 但是,如果你想让她回归正常,你就应该采用巴甫洛夫的方法,为她进行“暴露治疗”。开始时,你可以让这个女人远观电梯——比如站在大堂里——直到她的不安平复下来。如果站在大堂没有大碍,她的恐惧没有“加强”,她就会开始建立一个新的认识:电梯并不危险。(这种在接触过程中的恐惧消退叫做“习惯化”)。接下来几天,你可以要求她靠近电梯,再之后几天按下电梯按钮,最后走进电梯,上一层楼。这样,杏仁核就会将之前害怕的境况重新与安全和正常联系起来。 Students who call for trigger warnings may be correct that some of their peers are harboring memories of trauma that could be reactivated by course readings. But they are wrong to try to prevent such reactivations. Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life, with its many opportunities for habituation. 要求刺激警告的学生在这一点上可能是正确的:他们的某些同学可能还有创伤记忆,这些记忆可能被阅读材料重新唤起。但是他们要避免唤起这些记忆,却是错误的。患有创伤后应激障碍的学生理应得到治疗,但他们不应该试图回避正常生活,这样他们就错失了许多适应的机会。 Classroom discussions are safe places to be exposed to incidental reminders of trauma (such as the word violate). A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence, so it is a good way to help students change the associations that are causing them discomfort. And they’d better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs. 课堂讨论是偶然接触易于引发创伤回忆的事物(比如词语“强奸”)的安全环境。针对暴力的讨论不大可能伴随真实的暴力,所以这种讨论是帮助学生改变引发不适联想的一剂良方。并且,学生们最好在大学中完成适应过程,因为校园外的世界可不那么愿意满足学生对刺激警告的要求,或者让他们选择半路退出。 The expansive use of trigger warnings may also foster unhealthy mental habits in the vastly larger group of students who do not suffer from PTSD or other anxiety disorders. People acquire their fears not just from their own past experiences, but from social learning as well. If everyone around you acts as though something is dangerous—elevators, certain neighborhoods, novels depicting racism—then you are at risk of acquiring that fear too. 对于更多没有患创伤后应激障碍或其他焦虑症的学生来说,刺激警告的大范围应用也会滋长他们不健康的心理习惯。人们的恐惧,不仅仅来自于自己的经验,也来自于从社会学习。如果你身边的所有人都表现得像是害怕某种东西——电梯、某一片区域、描述种族主义的小说——你也有可能对此产生恐惧。 The psychiatrist Sarah Roff pointed this out last year in an online article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings,” Roff wrote, “is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history.” 精神医生Sarah Roff在《高等教育纪事报》的一篇在线文章中指出了这一点。Roff写道:“我对刺激警告最大的担忧在于,它不仅会影响受过创伤的学生,它还会影响所有学生。它创造了一种氛围,令学生相信讨论历史的阴暗面很危险,会造成伤害。”
The new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion or debate. 这种新的风气正在渐渐制度化,而且正在影响课堂上可以讨论的内容,甚至成为讨论的基础
In an article published last year by Inside Higher Ed, seven humanities professors wrote that the trigger-warning movement was “already having a chilling effect on [their] teaching and pedagogy.” They reported their colleagues’ receiving “phone calls from deans and other administrators investigating student complaints that they have included ‘triggering’ material in their courses, with or without warnings.” 去年,在《高等教育内部观察》的一篇文章中,七位人文学科教授写道,刺激警告运动“已经严重影响(他们的)教学。”他们说,他们的同事“接到院长和其他行政人员的电话,调查学生对他们的投诉:他们在有警告或无警告的情况下,在课程中包含了‘刺激性’内容。” A trigger warning, they wrote, “serves as a guarantee that students will not experience unexpected discomfort and implies that if they do, a contract has been broken.” When students come to expect trigger warnings for any material that makes them uncomfortable, the easiest way for faculty to stay out of trouble is to avoid material that might upset the most sensitive student in the class. 他们写道,一个刺激警告“保证学生不会遭受意外的不适,并且暗示如果这种情况出现了,教师们就违反了契约。”如果学生们要求在所有引起不适的材料前提供刺激警告,教师们避免麻烦的最佳方式,就是剔除有可能会冒犯班级中最敏感学生的材料。 Magnification, Labeling, and Microaggressions 夸大、贴标签和微冒犯 Burns defines magnification as “exaggerat[ing] the importance of things,” and Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define labeling as “assign[ing] global negative traits to yourself and others.” The recent collegiate trend of uncovering allegedly racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise discriminatory microaggressions doesn’tincidentally teach students to focus on small or accidental slights. Its purpose is to get students to focus on them and then relabel the people who have made such remarks as aggressors. Burns把“夸大”定义为“夸张描述事物的重要性”,Leahy、 Holland和McGinn把“贴标签”定义为“把自己或其他人归类于某些负面特征。”近期,大学中有越来越多的个案揭发所谓种族主义、性别歧视、阶级歧视,或者其他歧视性的微冒犯。这种趋势并不是就着事件引导学生们去关注细微或无意识的怠慢。它的目的就是让学生们关注这些东西,然后给说这些话的人贴上侵犯者的标签。 The term microaggression originated in the 1970s and referred to subtle, often unconscious racist affronts. The definition has expanded in recent years to include anything that can be perceived as discriminatory on virtually any basis. For example, in 2013, a student group at UCLA staged a sit-in during a class taught by Val Rust, an education professor. The group read a letter aloud expressing their concerns about the campus’s hostility toward students of color. Although Rust was not explicitly named, the group quite clearly criticized his teaching as microaggressive. In the course of correcting his students’ grammar and spelling, Rust had noted that a student had wrongly capitalized the first letter of the word indigenous. Lowercasing the capital I was an insult to the student and her ideology, the group claimed. “微冒犯”一词产生于1970年代,意指微妙的、通常属于无意识的种族冒犯。近些年,其定义已经扩展到包含几乎任何语境下所有被认为具有歧视性的言论和行为。举个例子,2013年加州大学洛杉矶分校的一个学生团体旁听了教育学教授Val Rust讲授的一节课。这个团体大声宣读了一封信,表示对校园里针对有色人种学生的敌意深感忧虑。尽管没有直接点Rust的名,这个团体显然是在批评他的教学有“微冒犯性”。在纠正学生的语法和拼写的过程中,Rust注意到一个学生错误地把“indigenous”(土著的)的首字母大写了。这个团体宣称,把首字母“i”小写侮辱了这名学生和她的意识形态。 Even joking about microaggressions can be seen as an aggression, warranting punishment. Last fall, Omar Mahmood, a student at the University of Michigan, wrote a satirical column for a conservative student publication, The Michigan Review, poking fun at what he saw as a campus tendency to perceive microaggressions in just about anything. Mahmood was also employed at the campus newspaper, The Michigan DailyThe Daily’s editors said that the way Mahmood had “satirically mocked the experiences of fellow Daily contributors and minority communities on campus … created a conflict of interest.” 就算是拿微冒犯开玩笑也会被视为冒犯,并带来惩罚。去年夏天,密歇根大学的学生Omar Mahmood为一份保守派学生刊物《密歇根评论》写了一篇讽刺性的专栏文章,讽刺他看到的当下大学中把一切都视作微冒犯的趋势。Omar Mahmood也供职于校报《密歇根日报》。《密歇根日报》的编辑说Mahmood“讽刺本杂志撰稿人和校园中少数族裔的经历”的方式“制造了利益冲突”。 The Daily terminated Mahmood after he described the incident to two Web sites, The College Fix and The Daily Caller. A group of women later vandalized Mahmood’s doorway with eggs, hot dogs, gum, and notes with messages such as “Everyone hates you, you violent prick.” When speech comes to be seen as a form of violence, vindictive protectiveness can justify a hostile, and perhaps even violent, response. 在Mahmood向两家网站——The College Fix和The Daily Caller——讲述了这一事件之后,《密歇根日报》解雇了他。后来,一帮女人在Mahmood家门口用鸡蛋、热狗、口香糖和写有诸如“所有的人都恨你,你这个暴徒”之类文字的便条大搞破坏。当言论被视作一种暴力时,报复性保护就为恶意报复,甚至暴力行为赋予了正当性。 In March, the student government at Ithaca College, in upstate New York, went so far as to propose the creation of an anonymous microaggression-reporting system. Student sponsors envisioned some form of disciplinary action against “oppressors” engaged in belittling speech. One of the sponsors of the program said that while “not … every instance will require trial or some kind of harsh punishment,” she wanted the program to be “record-keeping but with impact.” 今年三月,纽约州北部地区的伊萨卡学院,学生会甚至提议建立匿名的微冒犯举报机制。提议的学生设想出一套针对发表歧视性言论的“压迫者”的纪律性惩罚。该项目的一位提议者说,虽然“并不是每一个案例都需要审讯或者某种严酷惩罚”,但是她希望这个项目能“留下记录,产生影响”。 Surely people make subtle or thinly veiled racist or sexist remarks on college campuses, and it is right for students to raise questions and initiate discussions about such cases. But the increased focus on microaggressions coupled with the endorsement of emotional reasoning is a formula for a constant state of outrage, even toward well-meaning speakers trying to engage in genuine discussion. 当然了,人们的确会在大学校园发表委婉的或是稍稍遮掩的种族歧视和性别歧视言论,学生们质疑这种状况并发起讨论也是正确的。但是对微冒犯的关注持续增长加上对情绪化推理的支持,结果就是持续性的愤怒,这种愤怒甚至会针对真心想要讨论问题的善意说话者。 What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt? 如果我们鼓励学生在离开成年人的保护茧、踏入工作岗位之前长出一副超级薄弱的外壳,我们究竟是在做什么?如果我们教会他们质疑自己的情绪化反应、不要妄下定论,他们难道不是会表现得更好吗? Teaching Students to Catastrophize and Have Zero Tolerance 教导学生小题大做、零容忍。 Burns defines catastrophizing as a kind of magnification that turns “commonplace negative events into nightmarish monsters.” Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as believing “that what has happened or will happen” is “so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it.” Requests for trigger warnings involve catastrophizing, but this way of thinking colors other areas of campus thought as well. Burns把“小题大做”定义为“把寻常的负面事物当做梦魇般的妖魔鬼怪”的夸大行为。Leahy、Holland和McGinn把它定义为相信“已发生或将发生之事糟糕得让人难以忍受,乃至你经受不住”。对刺激警告的需求中包含着小题大做的成分,但是这种思考方式也干扰了大学中的其他思想。 Catastrophizing rhetoric about physical danger is employed by campus administrators more commonly than you might think—sometimes, it seems, with cynical ends in mind. For instance, last year administrators at Bergen Community College, in New Jersey, suspended Francis Schmidt, a professor, after he posted a picture of his daughter on his Google+ account. The photo showed her in a yoga pose, wearing a T-shirt that read I will take what is mine with fire & blood, a quote from the HBO show Game of Thrones. 在大学管理者中,描述人身伤害时“小题大做”的情况要比你想象得普遍——有时候看起来像是抱着愤世嫉俗的目的一样。举个例子,新泽西州卑尔根社区学院的教授Francis Schmidt去年在他的Google+账号上发布了一张他女儿的照片之后,被该学院的管理者停职了。照片中,他女儿正做着瑜伽动作,T恤衫上写着“我要用血与火来赢回属于我的一切”,这句话引自HBO的电视剧《权利的游戏》。 Schmidt had filed a grievance against the school about two months earlier after being passed over for a sabbatical. The quote was interpreted as a threat by a campus administrator, who received a notification after Schmidt posted the picture; it had been sent, automatically, to a whole group of contacts. According to Schmidt, a Bergen security official present at a subsequent meeting between administrators and Schmidt thought the word fire could refer to AK-47s. 两个月之前,因为停教休假的请求被拒绝,Schmidt曾向学校表达过不满。在Schmid发布那张照片之后,照片被自动发送给了一组联系人。一位大学管理者得到了推送消息,然后把那张照片解读成了威胁信息。据Schmidt所说,在随后管理者与Schmidt会面时,一位出席的安全官员认为“火”也可能是暗指AK-47。 Then there is the eight-year legal saga at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, where a student was expelled for protesting the construction of a parking garage by posting an allegedly “threatening” collage on Facebook. The collage described the proposed structure as a “memorial” parking garage—a joke referring to a claim by the university president that the garage would be part of his legacy. The president interpreted the collage as a threat against his life. 然后还有佐治亚州瓦尔多斯塔州立大学长达八年的传奇官司。该大学开除了一名学生,因为他为了抗议一个室内停车场的修建,在Facebbok上发表了一幅据称有“威胁性”的拼贴画。那幅画把这个规划中的设施称为“纪念性”停车场。这是个玩笑,影射的是大学校长曾经说过的:这座停车场将会成为他为学校留下的遗产。这位校长将该拼贴画理解为死亡恐吓。 It should be no surprise that students are exhibiting similar sensitivity. At the University of Central Florida in 2013, for example, Hyung-il Jung, an accounting instructor, was suspended after a student reported that Jung had made a threatening comment during a review session. Jung explained to the Orlando Sentinel that the material he was reviewing was difficult, and he’d noticed the pained look on students’ faces, so he made a joke. “It looks like you guys are being slowly suffocated by these questions,” he recalled saying. “Am I on a killing spree or what?” 学生们表现出类似的敏感也就不足为奇了。举个例子,中佛罗里达大学的会计学讲师Hyung-il Jung在2013年被学校停职,因为学生举报他在一节复习课中表达了威胁性言论。Jung向《奥兰多哨兵报》解释说,他在辅导的材料很难,他还注意到了学生们脸上痛苦的表情,所以他开了一个玩笑。他回忆他当时曾说:“你们好像快要被这些问题憋死在这里了呢”,“我这不是在玩杀人游戏吗?” After the student reported Jung’s comment, a group of nearly 20 others e-mailed the UCF administration explaining that the comment had clearly been made in jest. Nevertheless, UCF suspended Jung from all university duties and demanded that he obtain written certification from a mental-health professional that he was “not a threat to [himself] or to the university community” before he would be allowed to return to campus. 在学生举报了Jung的言论之后,有差不多二十个人给中佛罗里达大学的管理部门发电子邮件,解释说那些明显只是玩笑话。尽管如此,中佛罗里达大学还是暂停了Jung的一切学校职务,并且要求他要在获得了来自精神健康专家的书面认可,证明他“对自己和学校成员都不构成威胁”之后,才能回学校上班。 All of these actions teach a common lesson: smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable. 这些事情给了我们同一个教训:聪明人真的会对无伤大雅的言辞反应过度,小题大做,然后要求惩罚所有说过让任何一个人不舒服的话的人。 Mental Filtering and Disinvitation Season “思维过滤”和“撤邀时节” As Burns defines it, mental filtering is “pick[ing] out a negative detail in any situation and dwell[ing] on it exclusively, thus perceiving that the whole situation is negative.” Leahy, Holland, and McGinn refer to this as “negative filtering,” which they define as “focus[ing] almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notic[ing] the positives.” When applied to campus life, mental filtering allows for simpleminded demonization. 按照Burns的定义,“思维过滤”是“从事件中筛选出负面细节,然后只抓住负面细节不放,因而认为整件事都是负面的。”Leahy、Holland和McGinn把它命名为“负面信息过滤”,他们把它定义为“只关注负面,很少留意正面。”把这一概念应用到大学校园,思维过滤使得不加考虑地妖魔化他人成为可能。 Students and faculty members in large numbers modeled this cognitive distortion during 2014’s “disinvitation season.” That’s the time of year—usually early spring—when commencement speakers are announced and when students and professors demand that some of those speakers be disinvited because of things they have said or done. According to data compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, since 2000, at least 240 campaigns have been launched at U.S. universities to prevent public figures from appearing at campus events; most of them have occurred since 2009. 2014年的“撤邀时节”中,大量学生和教职员示范了这种认知扭曲。那是每年宣布毕业典礼演讲人的时间——通常是早春,由于某些演讲者做过的事和说过的话,学生们和教授们要求撤回对他们的邀请。根据个人教育权利基金会整理的数据,自2000年起,美国大学中至少发起了240场抵制公众人物出席大学活动的运动,其中大部分都发生在2009年以后。 Consider two of the most prominent disinvitation targets of 2014: former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde. Rice was the first black female secretary of state; Lagarde was the first woman to become finance minister of a G8 country and the first female head of the IMF. Both speakers could have been seen as highly successful role models for female students, and Rice for minority students as well. But the critics, in effect, discounted any possibility of something positive coming from those speeches. 让我们仔细想想2014年被要求撤回邀请的最知名的两个人:前国务卿康多莉扎·赖斯和国际货币基金组织(IMF)总裁克里斯蒂娜·拉加德。赖斯是首位黑人女国务卿;拉加德是G8国家首位女财长,也是IMF首位女掌门人。这两个人都应该被视作女性学生的杰出榜样才是,赖斯还是少数族裔的榜样。但是,批评者们实际上认为这两人的演讲不可能有什么积极意义。 Members of an academic community should of course be free to raise questions about Rice’s role in the Iraq War or to look skeptically at the IMF’s policies. But should dislike of part of a person’s record disqualify her altogether from sharing her perspectives? 学者们自然可以自由地质疑赖斯在伊拉克战争中的角色,或者用怀疑的眼光审视IMF的政策,但是一个人的某一部分经历令人生厌就意味着这个人没有资格分享她的见解吗? If campus culture conveys the idea that visitors must be pure, with résumés that never offend generally left-leaning campus sensibilities, then higher education will have taken a further step toward intellectual homogeneity and the creation of an environment in which students rarely encounter diverse viewpoints. And universities will have reinforced the belief that it’s okay to filter out the positive. If students graduate believing that they can learn nothing from people they dislike or from those with whom they disagree, we will have done them a great intellectual disservice. 如果大学文化传递的信息是“来访者必须纯洁无暇,其简历完全不曾伤害总体左倾的校园感情”,那么,高等教育就向智力同质化又迈进一步,并且为学生创造了一个遇不到多元化观点的环境。大学也将对“过滤掉积极方面是可以的”这一信念加以巩固。如果学生们毕业的时候相信他们从自己讨厌或反对的人那里学不到任何东西,我们就对他们的智力造成了很大伤害。 What Can We Do Now? 我们现在能做些什么? Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game. 这种试图把学生和可能令他们感情上不舒服的言语、思想和人物隔离开来的做法,贻害无穷。这种努力对职场无益,如果学生还对安全抱着同样的期望,他们在工作场所会陷入没完没了的官司。这对美国的民主也是有害的,这种民主本来就已经被日益恶化的党派纷争破坏得千疮百孔了。当对手的思想、价值观和言论不仅仅被看做是错误观点,而且被看做是对无辜受害人的蓄意伤害,很难想象我们还能找到令政治成为正和博弈的那种相互尊重、友好协商和相互妥协。 Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control. One of the great truths taught by Buddhism (and Stoicism, Hinduism, and many other traditions) is that you can never achieve happiness by making the world conform to your desires. But you can master your desires and habits of thought. This, of course, is the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy. With this in mind, here are some steps that might help reverse the tide of bad thinking on campus. 与其帮助学生避免接触他们必然遇到的言词和观点,大学更应该尽力武装学生,让他们在这个言论不受他们控制的世界里茁壮成长。佛教(以及斯多葛学派、印度教和许多其他传统思想)教给我们的真理之一就是,通过让世界顺应你的要求来获得快乐是永远不可能的。但是你可以掌控自己的思维习惯和欲望。当然了,这就是认知行为疗法的目标。意识到这一点以后,以下是一些可能帮助大学逆转不良思维的步骤。 The biggest single step in the right direction does not involve faculty or university administrators, but rather the federal government, which should release universities from their fear of unreasonable investigation and sanctions by the Department of Education. Congress should define peer-on-peer harassment according to the Supreme Court’s definition in the 1999 case Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. The Davis standard holds that a single comment or thoughtless remark by a student does not equal harassment; harassment requires a pattern of objectively offensive behavior by one student that interferes with another student’s access to education. Establishing the Davis standard would help eliminate universities’ impulse to police their students’ speech so carefully. 迈向正路最重要的一步,需要的不是教职员或者学校管理者,而是联邦政府。政府应该让大学免受教育部不合理的调查和处罚。国会应该按照1999年最高法院在Davis诉门罗郡教育委员会一案中的定义来确定“朋辈间骚扰”的定义。“Davis标准”认定学生所作的一句个别评论或者一句无心话语并不构成骚扰;只有干扰他人正常受教育而且蓄意冒犯别人的惯常行为方式才能构成骚扰。贯彻“Davis标准”,可以避免激发大学严厉管制学生言论。 Universities themselves should try to raise consciousness about the need to balance freedom of speech with the need to make all students feel welcome. Talking openly about such conflicting but important values is just the sort of challenging exercise that any diverse but tolerant community must learn to do. Restrictive speech codes should be abandoned. 大学本身应该深化认识,提醒大家在保证言论自由和保证每个学生都舒服之间需要取得平衡。公开谈论这种具有冲突性却又至关重要的价值,是每个多元而宽容的社会必须学会的挑战。限制性的言论准则应该被废除。 Universities should also officially and strongly discourage trigger warnings. They should endorse the American Association of University Professors’ report on these warnings, which notes, “The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.” 大学也必须从官方立场正式且严厉的阻止刺激警告的蔓延。大学应该赞同美国大学教授联合会关于刺激警告的报告,这份报告写道,“认为学生在课堂中应该受到保护,而不是面对挑战的想法,是把学生当小孩的行为,同时也是反智的”。 Professors should be free to use trigger warnings if they choose to do so, but by explicitly discouraging the practice, universities would help fortify the faculty against student requests for such warnings. 如果出于自愿,教授们应该有使用刺激警告的自由,但是,通过明确地反对刺激警告,大学也能帮助教授拒绝学生的此类要求。 Finally, universities should rethink the skills and values they most want to impart to their incoming students. At present, many freshman-orientation programs try to raise student sensitivity to a nearly impossible level. Teaching students to avoid giving unintentional offense is a worthy goal, especially when the students come from many different cultural backgrounds. 最后,大学应该重新思考他们最想教给学生什么样的技能和价值观。目前,许多面向新生的活动试图把学生的敏感性提升到一个不合理的高度。教导学生避免不小心冒犯别人很有意义,尤其是当学生来自各种不同文化背景的时候。 But students should also be taught how to live in a world full of potential offenses. Why not teach incoming students how to practice cognitive behavioral therapy? Given high and rising rates of mental illness, this simple step would be among the most humane and supportive things a university could do. The cost and time commitment could be kept low: a few group training sessions could be supplemented by Web sites or apps. But the outcome could pay dividends in many ways. 但是学生也应该得到教导,懂得如何生活在一个到处都有潜在冒犯的世界里。为什么不教导学生如何实施认知行为疗法呢?鉴于精神疾病的比率居高不下且仍在上升,把认知行为疗法教给学生就是大学能做的最人道、最有意义的事情了。时间和成本付出都可以很低:只需要几次集体培训课,剩下的就可以靠网站和手机应用来辅助完成,但是学生得到的回报是多方面的。 For example, a shared vocabulary about reasoning, common distortions, and the appropriate use of evidence to draw conclusions would facilitate critical thinking and real debate. It would also tone down the perpetual state of outrage that seems to engulf some colleges these days, allowing students’ minds to open more widely to new ideas and new people. A greater commitment to formal, public debate on campus—and to the assembly of a more politically diverse faculty—would further serve that goal. 例如,建立一套共用的术语,用来描述推理、常见认知扭曲和适当使用证据以引出结论的方法,将会促进批判思维和真正的辩论。这也能缓和近来似乎在大学不断蔓延的愤怒情绪,让学生更容易接受新思想和新人物。在校园内更多地致力于正式、公开的讨论,致力于汇集政见更为多元的教师,会进一步推动这一目标的实现。 Thomas Jefferson, upon founding the University of Virginia, said: 托马斯·杰斐逊在创办弗吉尼亚大学时说:
This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. 这一机构的根基在于不受限制的思想自由。因为在这里,我们跟随真理,不惧它把我们带到哪里;也无须忍受任何错误,只要允许理智与之自由对抗。
We believe that this is still—and will always be—the best attitude for American universities. Faculty, administrators, students, and the federal government all have a role to play in restoring universities to their historic mission. 我们相信这依旧是——并将一直是——对待美国大学的最佳态度。教师、行政人员,学生,以及联邦政府都有责任让大学回到完成其历史使命的轨道上。 Common Cognitive Distortions 常见的认知扭曲 A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’sTreatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012) 这是来自Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland和Lata K. McGinn的《抑郁症和焦虑症的治疗计划及干预措施》(2012年)的一份部分清单。 1.Mind reading.You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” 1.读心术。不需要足够的证据,你就认定自己知道别人想的是什么。“他认为我逊毙了。” 2.Fortune-telling.You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.” 2.悲观预测。你对未来的预测是消极的:事情会越来越糟糕,或者前方危机四伏。“我考试要不及格了”,或者“我得不到这份工作”。 3.Catastrophizing.You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.” 3.小题大做。你相信将发生或已发生的事情会糟糕得让人难以忍受。“如果我失败了就太糟糕了。” 4.Labeling.You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” 4.贴标签。你把自己或其他人归类于某些负面特征。“我不受欢迎”或者“他是个堕落的人。” 5.Discounting positives.You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” 5.低估正面信息。你声称自己或者其他人做的有意义的事微不足道。“老婆就应该那个样子——所以她对我好不值一提。”或者“这些成功很容易取得,所以算不上什么成就。” 6.Negative filtering.You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.” 6.负面过滤。你几乎只关注负面信息,很少留意正面信息。“看看那些不喜欢我的人吧。” 7.Overgeneralizing.You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” 7.以偏概全。你通过一件事就认定整体性的负面模式。“这种事总是发生在我身上。好像我有好多事都干不成。” 8.Dichotomous thinking.You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” 8.二元思维。你以非此即彼的方式审视人和事。“我被所有人拒绝”或“这完全是浪费时间”。 9.Blaming.You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.” 9.迁怒于人。你把其他人当作自己负面情绪的来源,不愿意承担改变自己的责任。“我现在感觉这么糟全都是她的错”或“我所有的问题都是我父母造成的”。 10.What if?You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?” 10.杞人忧天。你一直问“如果某事发生了怎么办?”,并且对所有答案都不满意。“对,但是如果我变得焦虑怎么办?”或者“如果我喘不过气怎么办?” 11.Emotional reasoning.You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” 11.情绪化推理。你让情感引导你去解读现实。“我很沮丧,所以我的婚姻要完蛋了。” 12.Inability to disconfirm.You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable,you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.” 12.无法证伪。你拒绝任何和你的消极想法相抵触的证据或观点。举个例子,你认为“没人喜欢我”,你认为证明别人喜欢你的所有证据都毫不相干。所以,你的思想无法被驳斥。“事情不是这样的。肯定有更深层次的问题,还有其他因素。” (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——

[译文]学术界的经济不平等

The Economic Inequality in Academia
学术界的经济不平等

作者:Richard Goldin @ 2015-8-13
译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对:Who视之
来源:Counterpunch,http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/13/progressives-and-the-economic-inequality-in-academia/

In focusing on the wealthy as the singular source of economic inequality, progressive politics obscures the machineries of privilege which function at all levels of society. Individuals are trapped within these mechanisms; their lives lessened in ways that are far more damaging than the actions of the “one per cent.”

进步派政治活动聚焦于有钱人,将之作为经济不平等的唯一源头,从而未能看到在社会各个层面均在发挥作用的特权机制。个体受困于这类机制;他们的生活被削弱,其作用方式远比“1%们”【译注:指占人口总数1%的顶层富人】的行为更为有害。

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The Economic Inequality in Academia 学术界的经济不平等 作者:Richard Goldin @ 2015-8-13 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:Who视之 来源:Counterpunch,http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/13/progressives-and-the-economic-inequality-in-academia/ In focusing on the wealthy as the singular source of economic inequality, progressive politics obscures the machineries of privilege which function at all levels of society. Individuals are trapped within these mechanisms; their lives lessened in ways that are far more damaging than the actions of the “one per cent.” 进步派政治活动聚焦于有钱人,将之作为经济不平等的唯一源头,从而未能看到在社会各个层面均在发挥作用的特权机制。个体受困于这类机制;他们的生活被削弱,其作用方式远比“1%们”【译注:指占人口总数1%的顶层富人】的行为更为有害。 Economic hierarchies are maintained not by brute force, but by strategies which rationalize the privilege of a few and the struggle of many. Within a multitude of economic contexts, structures of inequality are arduously perpetuated, even by those who consistently profess a belief in economic justice. Progressives need to analyze these contradictions and to expose the strategies which are utilized to justify hierarchy. 经济等级制的维系,并不依靠赤裸暴力,它依靠的是将少数人的特权和多数人的挣扎加以合理化的策略。在众多经济情境中,人们,哪怕是那些一贯声称自己信奉经济正义的人,都在竭力维持不平等的结构。进步派人士需要分析这类矛盾现象,并将那些用于为等级制辩护的策略公之于众。 Academia provides an excellent laboratory for this kind of analysis. Within academia, the contradictions between words and practices are particularly stark. Publicly, Professors often denounce the structures of privilege constructed by the top one per cent in this country. Privately, the small, tenured professorial class perpetuates a system through which it acquires disproportionate resources while condemning the majority of university faculty – non tenure-track adjuncts – to often live in near poverty. 学术界为进行这种分析提供了一个绝佳的实验室。言行不一在学术界特别突出。在公开场合,教授们经常谴责由我国顶层1%们构建的特权结构。但在私下里,人数很少的终身教授阶层维持着一个体系,并利用这一体系更多地获取资源,同时迫使大多数的大学教员——非终身教职轨道的受雇教员——经常处于近乎贫困的状态。【译注:美国大学的教师职位晋升分两条轨道,一条通往终身教授,俗称终身规(tenure-track),另一条是受雇教员,处于普通雇员地位,合同期较短,收入也较低。】 While there are clear economic incentives for university administrators to pay the majority of adjuncts severely depressed wages,the financial disparity between tenured/tenure-track Professors and non tenure-track adjuncts (often denoted as Instructors or Lecturers) is not solely an effect of administrative policies. Administrators and the professorial class are complicit in the maintenance of this economic hierarchy and each provides a certain degree of cover for the other. 对于大多数受雇教员,学校管理方出于明显的经济动机,只会支付极低的工资。但是,终身或终身轨教授与非终身轨的受雇教员(常被称为教员或讲师)之间所存在的财务差距,不仅仅是校方管理政策的结果。在维系这种经济等级制方面,校方和教授阶层狼狈为奸,彼此都为对方提供一些掩护。 When pressed on the disparity between their words and their practices, tenured faculty can point to university administrators as the real culprits of adjunct impoverishment. In return, administrators’ harsh financial calculations are softened and obscured by professorial rationalizations which interpret structural hierarchy as merit-based. 当终身教授的言行不一致遭到追问时,他们会将学校管理方指认为受雇教员遭遇贫困的真正祸首。而作为回报,教授们会对结构性的等级差异进行合理化,将之解释为基于品质的差异,于是管理方苛刻的财务算计便得到了柔化和遮掩。 The reinforcement of professorial class privilege begins with the hiring process for the few available tenure-track jobs. Excellence in teaching, without academic publications, will rarely qualify an applicant for a university level tenure-track position. Publishing without any evidence of teaching ability is far more acceptable. However, the current proliferation of graduate students with Ph.Ds., many with publications in top journals, has transformed the work of faculty hiring committees into something of a lottery. 教授阶层特权的强化, 始于数量不多的终身轨空缺岗位的招聘过程。对于一个大学终身轨职位,即使申请者教学特别出色,但只要没有学术出版物,那就不太可能合格。有出版物,但丝毫看不出能够教书的,相较而言明显更受欢迎。不过,由于现下拥有博士学位的毕业生数量激增,而且其中许多在顶尖期刊上发表过文章,教员招聘委员会的工作已经变成了一种抽奖。 Most Lecturers understand that “one’s position in the academic academy hierarchy is largely an accident of birth” and even some tenured faculty admit that their tenured colleagues “got lucky.” The result of this “luck of the draw” is financial security for the chosen few, and financial desperation for the non-tenure track adjuncts – a class that comprises almost seventy per cent of college and university faculties. 多数讲师明白,“一个人在学术研究机构的等级体系中的地位,很大程度上是一种因缘造化”,甚至连一些终身教员也承认他们的终身职同事“运气好”。这种“抽签撞运”的结果,就是被选中的少数人得到了财务保障,而非终身轨的受雇教员则财务窘迫,而后者几乎要占学院及大学教职员工的70%。 The primacy of publishing does not originate solely with the professorial class, but in its hands it has been re-purposed into a tool of class formation and preservation. Members of the faculty hiring committees evaluate new hires with the same criteria by which they were awarded their positions and which constitute their continued financial accumulation. This self-replication is then denoted as “merit;” a designation that separates new hires into two distinct groups while reassuring tenured faculty of their own superior worth. 发表(论文)至上,这并非全然源自教授阶层,但在他们手中,它已然改头换面成为了一种塑造和维护阶层的工具。教员招聘委员会的成员们,拿着他们过去曾据之以获得职位的、让他们得以持续积累财富的同一标准来评价新雇员。然后又把这种自我复制称为“品质”,用这种称呼把新雇员分成两个不同群体,并确保终身教员自己拥有高贵身价。 Even though the hiring process is, at best, a conjecture, once the separation between tenure-track Professor and Lecturer has taken place, the newly hired are fully constructed to align with their new class status. Lecturers are often considered to be hourly employees and their salaries are contingent on the number of courses taught. This compels them to teach as many courses as possible, though the vast majority are limited by course availability to being part-time. Financial survival often remains elusive, and many adjuncts are forced to go on public assistance and food stamps. 尽管招聘过程只能靠猜,可一旦终身轨教授和讲师的分野出现,新雇员就完全被框定了,只能去跟自己的新阶层身份对齐。讲师经常被视为钟点工,薪水因授课门数而异。这就迫使他们尽量多开几门课,然而绝大部分人还是因为可开课程门数受限而只能非全日工作。他们在财务上常陷于窘境,难以自保,许多受雇教员被迫寻求公共救济和食品券。 Tenure-track Professors, however, are often given as minimal teaching loads as possible and are eligible for paid time off from teaching in order to further their research. This disproportionate allocation of resources is designed to move tenure-track Assistant Professors smoothly along the path to tenured Associate and Full Professor. Each new title brings with it an increase in financial reward. A tenured Professor who is teaching far fewer courses and has far fewer students than a Lecturer might still earn five times the salary. 另一方面,学校却尽可能少地将教学任务压给终身轨教授。他们还有资格获得带薪休假,方便他们开展研究。设计这种不成比例的资源分配,是为了顺利推动终身轨助理教授沿着轨道转变为终身副教授和正教授。每一个新的头衔都附带着财务报酬的增加。一个终身教授,即使授课门数和所带学生都远远少于讲师,其薪水却仍是后者的五倍。 There is no significant financial path upwards for Lecturers. According to a recent survey report by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) part-time faculty “experienced little in the way of a career ladder” measured as “higher wages after several years of work.” At the university level, continued excellence in teaching virtually never qualifies a Lecturer for a tenure-track position. But heavy teaching loads limit the ability of Lecturers to engage in the continued research and writing required for such positions. If a Lecturer takes time off for research, they receive no pay for that semester. The CAW notes that the professional commitment and support for part-time faculty is “dismal.” 讲师没有什么明显的的财务上升路径。根据学术劳动力联盟(CAW)近日的一份调查报告,“以工作几年以后工资上升”来衡量,非全日教员“极少经历过职业晋升阶梯”。在大学里,教学上长期出色对一名讲师有资格获得终身教职几乎毫无助益。沉重的教学负担还限制了讲师持续从事研究和写作以满足此类职位要求的能力。假如讲师在某个学期休假去做研究,他们就拿不到该学期的报酬。CAW指出,对非全日教员的职业承诺和职业支持“令人沮丧”。 However, simply increasing resources for Lecturers leaves the fundamental pivot point of the academic hierarchy untouched. The economic stratification within academia is built upon the disproportionate financial rewards given to those who publish articles or books in acceptable academic journals (or with acceptable publishers) over those who teach. Though this structure of incentives and rewards is universal within academia, the strongly disparate financial valuation given to publishing remains unquestioned. 不过,如果只是向讲师们增加资源,那就没有触及学术等级制的根本支点。学术界的经济阶层分化建立于一种不成比例的财务报酬之上,那些在合格的学术期刊(或合格出版社)发表文章或出书的人拿得太多,相比之下教书的人拿得过少。尽管这种激励和报酬结构在学术界极为普遍,但是,发表研究所得到财务估值高的极不相称,这一点无人质疑。 In many of the more theoretical fields of academia, such as political theory, publications are highly self-referential. Observations and arguments are not derived from, nor are they intended to mirror, the complex, multi-faceted contemporary political world. Instead publications refer to other publications in debates about the field’s own abstract conceptual structures. 在许多理论性较强的学术领域,比如政治理论,论文是高度自我引用的。其中的观察和论证既不源自于、也不是为了反映复杂多面的当代政治世界。相反,论文之间相互引证来引证去,只不过是就该领域自己的抽象概念框架之内辩论不休。 It is teachers dedicated to a challenging education who engage in the task of reworking and concretizing theories to make them relevant to students. It is in the classroom where the dialogue between theory and politics takes place; and it is the classroom which sends forth generations of students who can perceive, and possibly undermine, the rationalities of power. 正是那些献身于挑战性教育工作的教师,忙于将理论再加工和具体化,使之变得与学生(的现实关切)相干。正是在课堂上,理论与现实政治之间的对话方才得以发生;也正是从课堂里,送出一代又一代的学生,他们能够领会——还可能消解——权力合理性。 Paths to knowledge are often forged through the interplay of publications and teaching. No objective standard of measurement exists to financially quantify, and differentiate, these approaches or their contributions. Yet a vast and enduring economic hierarchy has emerged grounded in the supposed intrinsic hierarchy between the two. This financial hierarchy is not a dispassionate reflection of an objective reality; it is a strategic effect of the mechanisms underlying class formation and preservation. 通往知识的道路通常都由发表研究和课堂教学的相互作用而铺就。不存在什么客观的测量标准,能对这两条途径或它们的贡献做财务上的量化和区分。但是,两者之间的内在等级区分却已被假定,在这上面还生出一个巨大且持久存在的经济等级制。这种财务等级制不是对客观现实的一种公正反映;它是塑造和维护阶层的底层机制的策略效应。 The primacy of publishing, and the attendant allocation of resources, is utilized not merely to perpetuate two different economic classes, but also to create two different kinds of people. This creation allows the hierarchy of privilege to function as though it represents objective value differences both in terms of the work produced and the individuals who produce it. 发表至上及伴随而来的资源分配,不仅被用来维持两种不同的经济阶层,而且被用来创造两种不同的人。这种创造令特权等级制的运转好像是体现了一种客观的价值差异,既包括产品之间的价值差异,也包括制造产品的个体之间的价值差异。 In any economic hierarchy, once those at the bottom are positioned as “lesser,” all sorts of harms become permissible. Since the financial disparities in academia do not mirror any objective universal value differences in work or aptitude, the hierarchy between adjuncts and Professors needs to be maintained and reinforced by persistent invocations of professorial privilege. 在任何经济等级制中,一旦身处底层的人被定位为“次等”,那么各种伤害就都得到了许可。由于学术界的财务不平等并不反映任何工作或天资方面的客观的普世价值差异,因此受雇教员与教授之间的等级制就需要持续动用教授特权来加以维持和强化。 Even some tenured faculty are critical of the constant assertion of “prerogatives,” and the “arrogance, and fear of being lumped together with the Untouchable Other.” Tenured faculty become experts at delineating “who really counts as part of [the] professional community and who doesn’t.” 甚至一些终身教员都对频繁的“特权”主张以及“傲慢,害怕被人把自己与‘不可触碰的他者’归为一类”等持批评态度。终身教员在准确划分“谁真正属于专业共同体的一部分,谁不属于”方面都成了行家里手。 These protections of class difference require, and cultivate, a disdain for the processes of education, and construct teaching as a burden to be endured. The professorial class strategically utilizes this construction as though it represents an underlying reality – an exercise in class maintenance which punishes both adjuncts and students. 这类对阶层差异的保护,依靠并促进了对课堂教学的蔑视,并将教学塑造成了一种不得不忍受的负担。教授阶层有策略地利用了上述塑造,使之仿佛是对基本现实的反映——这是一种维护阶层的做法,它既损害了受雇教员,也损害了学生。 One of the few options currently available to adjuncts to improve their financial situation is a faculty union. But unions comprised of both tenured and adjunct faculty will never question the mechanisms which underlie the academic hierarchy. Instead, they will ask adjuncts to join in fights for general increases in faculty salaries which disproportionately benefit those who already earn the most. The trade-off for adjuncts is an incremental raise in pay in return for a reinforcement of the structures and relations which perpetuate their impoverishment. 受雇教员要改善其财务状况,当前只有不多的几个可用选项,其中之一就是教员工会。但是,由终身教员和兼职教员共同组成的工会永远不会质疑支撑学术等级制的上述机制。他们只会要求受雇教员参与普遍提高教员薪水的斗争,而这对那些已然挣得最多的人更为有利。这里发生的交换是,兼职人员报酬少量增加,但代价是进一步强化了那些延续他们的贫困状态的结构和关系。 The academic hierarchy will not be altered by resorting to arguments about fairness, equality or basic human decency. Unions composed solely of adjuncts must fight for far greater increases in adjunct salaries as part of a larger struggle to dismantle the entire professorial apparatus of privilege. All progressives should join in this effort. 诉诸公平、平等或人类的基本体面等论证,无助于改变学术界的等级制。纯粹由受雇教员组成的工会必须为这些教员薪水的更大幅度增长而斗争,并将之作为拆除整个教授特权体系的大型斗争的一部分。所有的进步派都应加入这一活动。 The gap between professorial words and actions exemplify the kinds of rationalizations which perpetuate exploitation at all economic levels. The power of the most wealthy in this country will not be impeded if their strategies can be simultaneously decried and emulated. Progressive politics must expose and disrupt these processes, wherever they occur. In this sense, the professorial class should be appearing frequently on progressive media. They have a lot to explain. 教授们的言行差异是在各个经济层面上帮助维持剥削的合理化策略的一个例证。如果这个国家的最富者们的策略在被人谴责的同时还会被人效仿,那么他们的权力将无可阻挡。进步派的政治活动必须揭露并破坏这些方法,不管它们发生在哪儿。在此意义上,教授阶层应当经常上上进步派的媒体。他们有很多事需要解释。 (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——

超越邓巴数#3:祖先的记忆

超越邓巴数#3:祖先的记忆
辉格
2015年9月21日

早期人类社会不仅都是小型熟人社会,而且其中成员都是亲缘相当近的亲属,通常由少则六七个多则二十几个扩展大家庭组成;因为规模太小,这样的群体不太可能是将通婚关系限于其内部的内婚群体,而只能实行外婚,实际上往往是从夫居的外婚父系群,即,男性成年后留在出生群体内,女性则嫁出去,加入丈夫所在群体。

之所以父系群更为普遍,同样是因为战争;首先,群体间冲突的一大动机和内容便是诱拐或掳掠对方女性,而诱拐掳掠的结果自然是从夫居。

其次,在两性分工中,战争从来都是男性的专属,因而男性之间的紧密合作对于群体的生存繁荣更为重要,而我们知道,在缺乏其他组织与制度手段的保障时,亲缘关系是促成和强化合作关系的首要因素,而父系群保证了群内男性有着足够近的亲缘。

然而,也正是因为战争所需要的群体内合作倚重于亲缘关系,对紧密合作的要求也就限制了群体规模;因为亲缘关系要转变成合作意愿,需要相应的识别手段,否则,即便一种基于亲缘的合作策略是有利的,也是无法实施的;而随着代际更替,亲缘渐疏,到一定程度之后亲缘关系就变得难以识别了。

对于某位男性来说,群体内其他男性的脸上并未写着“这是我的三重堂兄弟,和我有着1/64的亲缘”,他头脑里也不可能内置了一个基于汉密尔顿不等式(rB>C)的亲选择算法,实际的亲选择策略,只能借助各种现成可用的间接信号,以及对这些信号敏感的情感机制,来引出大致符合策略要求的合作行为。

传统社会常见的父系扩展家庭里,几位已婚兄弟连同妻儿共同生活于同一家户,他们的儿子们(一重堂兄弟)(more...)

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超越邓巴数#3:祖先的记忆 辉格 2015年9月21日 早期人类社会不仅都是小型熟人社会,而且其中成员都是亲缘相当近的亲属,通常由少则六七个多则二十几个扩展大家庭组成;因为规模太小,这样的群体不太可能是将通婚关系限于其内部的内婚群体,而只能实行外婚,实际上往往是从夫居的外婚父系群,即,男性成年后留在出生群体内,女性则嫁出去,加入丈夫所在群体。 之所以父系群更为普遍,同样是因为战争;首先,群体间冲突的一大动机和内容便是诱拐或掳掠对方女性,而诱拐掳掠的结果自然是从夫居。 其次,在两性分工中,战争从来都是男性的专属,因而男性之间的紧密合作对于群体的生存繁荣更为重要,而我们知道,在缺乏其他组织与制度手段的保障时,亲缘关系是促成和强化合作关系的首要因素,而父系群保证了群内男性有着足够近的亲缘。 然而,也正是因为战争所需要的群体内合作倚重于亲缘关系,对紧密合作的要求也就限制了群体规模;因为亲缘关系要转变成合作意愿,需要相应的识别手段,否则,即便一种基于亲缘的合作策略是有利的,也是无法实施的;而随着代际更替,亲缘渐疏,到一定程度之后亲缘关系就变得难以识别了。 对于某位男性来说,群体内其他男性的脸上并未写着“这是我的三重堂兄弟,和我有着1/64的亲缘”,他头脑里也不可能内置了一个基于汉密尔顿不等式(rB>C)的亲选择算法,实际的亲选择策略,只能借助各种现成可用的间接信号,以及对这些信号敏感的情感机制,来引出大致符合策略要求的合作行为。 传统社会常见的父系扩展家庭里,几位已婚兄弟连同妻儿共同生活于同一家户,他们的儿子们(一重堂兄弟)从小一起玩耍,常被同一位祖母照顾,听同一位祖父讲故事,就很容易发展出家人间的亲密感,这种情感将维持终身,此后,当他们自己有幸成为父亲和祖父时,这一亲情便能够在他们各自带领的扩展家庭之间建立起强有力的合作纽带。 考虑到远古人类的寿命限制,很少有人能活着成为曾祖父,所以最理想情况下,一个人丁兴旺的家族,八九位已成为祖父的堂兄弟,各自率领着三四个核心家庭,构成一个五级父系群,其中辈份最低者拥有共同高祖父,这是个人能够从常规生活经历中感知到的亲缘关系的极限,而这个父系群的在世人数恰好接近邓巴数,当然,多数父系群没这么兴旺,因而人数会更少。 事实上,人类学家也发现,生活在前定居社会的人们,对祖先的记忆多半只限于祖父一辈,再往前就是一片朦胧,往往连名字都说不出;所以,若要将父系群扩展到更大规模,而同时又保持足够紧密的合作,必须借助其他手段来分辨亲缘关系。 办法之一是强化对共同祖先的记忆,在没有文字的时代,这不是件轻松的任务;用图腾和族徽等视觉符号来标识共同祖先和氏族身份,或许是最普遍的解决方案;另一种常见做法是,将从群体共祖通往在世者的系谱编成歌谣或口诀,在各种仪式性场合反复念诵,从而时常唤起在场者的祖先记忆。 南太平洋的萨摩亚人在这件事上就表现的特别认真,每个氏族都有一套叙述系谱的口诀,叫法阿鲁派加(fa'alupega),在萨摩亚村庄处理公共事务的政治集会福努(fono)上,每当一位酋长(代表村里一个氏族)入场时,所有在场的其他酋长都要吟诵前者的法阿鲁派加,表示对其身世的认可,当集会临近结束时,这一吟诵仪式会再重复一遍。 实际上,从自己的本名开始向前追溯、罗列一串父系祖先名,是初民社会中十分流行的做法,在形成稳定的姓氏之前,这是在正式场合称呼人名的常见方式,罗列的长度视需要而定,推测起来,很可能一直罗列到所有在场者的共祖为止,或者到某位声誉卓著的先辈。 这种呼名方式在现代阿拉伯人中仍可见到,而在其他民族中,长串父祖名(patronyms)逐渐被姓氏所取代,但往往仍保留一个父名作为中间名,比如斯拉夫人和荷兰人;出于类似理由,许多民族的多数姓氏,是由父名固化而来,犹太人姓名中的“ben”、阿拉伯人的“ibn”、北欧人的“-son”、爱尔兰人的“Mac-”、诺曼人的“Fitz-”,皆源于此类实践。 东亚人更熟悉的强化记忆方式,是立牌位、建宗庙、修祠堂,还有各种祭祖仪式,类似的祖先崇拜与祭祀活动几乎存在于所有定居社会(后来有些社会缺失这些仪式,通常是因为被晚近发展起来的某种高级宗教排挤了);这些仪式表面上的理由是告慰祖先灵魂,实际上却履行着记忆共同祖先,族内定期聚会以强化血缘纽带,最终巩固群体内合作关系的社会功能。 每个定居民族都有自己的创世神话和始祖传说,始祖常常还会兼任创世之神,在吟诵和记忆共同祖先的一次次努力中,这些始祖的名称、形象和故事被固定下来,随着世代更替而逐渐变得遥远而神秘,最终被神化,或者被附会到某个既已存在的神灵上;这些神话的用意,并非像后来的哲学家那样,试图为世界存在或人类起源给出一个可信解释,而只是强化血缘纽带的一种叙事方式。 然而,祖先记忆和氏族历史叙事,只能为合作提供一种动机,尽管很重要,但并不能解决群体扩大之后必定带来的内部冲突;当父系群规模超出邓巴数时,其中关系最远的青年已是三重或四重堂兄弟,亲缘系数(r)只有1/64或1/128,这么弱的亲缘,很难说服个人冒着牺牲重大利益的风险去和并无深交的远亲合作,只有在群体面临急迫的外部威胁,或者在多方混战中选择站在哪一边、与谁结盟这种场合,才能起些作用。 要组成紧密而足够和谐的大型群体,还需要其他手段,最早发展出的办法是强化父权;试想,当前述五级父系群扩展到六级时,总人数就超出了邓巴数,但是,假如其中各分支的家长有能力约束其成员的行为,压制其攻击和报复行动(这是群体内冲突的主要来源),那就有了一种突破邓巴限制的方法:现在,群体和谐只需要家长们之间达成紧密合作即可。 超越邓巴数#3.f1 如图所示,若每位家长控制一个十几二十人的扩展家庭,并且二三十位家长(他们是三重以内堂兄弟)组成合作联盟,那么群体规模便可达到三四百,而同时,群内每个成员需要长期交往密切合作的熟人数量仍处于邓巴数之下。这样,当分属两个支系的年轻人发生冲突时,纠纷便可由双方家长出面解决,或提交家长会议裁断,并迫使当事人接受裁决结果。 同样,当群体面临外部威胁,或谋求与其他群体结盟,或准备对外发动攻击等公共事务而需要集体行动时,家长联盟将充当决策与执行机构;也可以这样理解:通过强化父权,家长们把家族树最下面一两层排除出了维持群体团结所需要的那个关键合作圈子,从而避开了邓巴限制。 人类学材料显示,上述模式广泛存在于前国家定居社会,而且它正是在定居之后才出现的;游动性的狩猎采集社会大多是平等主义的,没有高度压制性的父权,长辈也很少向晚辈施加强制性规范,而一旦定居下来(或者游动性减弱),父权便出现了,并且在近代化之前的整个文明史上都占据主导地位;当今世界,凡国家权力所不及的定居社会,像阿富汗、索马里、中东和非洲的部落地区,父权仍非常强大,并且是维持基层社会秩序的主要力量。 父权的常见表现有:对家庭财产的控制,并尽可能的延迟分家,控制子女婚姻,社区内的老人政治;因定居而发展出的财产权,是家长执行父权的强大工具,爱尔兰传统社会的家长,会将财产牢牢控制在手里,即便子女都已成家也不分割家产;一些非洲部族的家长更夸张,当家庭财富增长时,优先用于为自己娶更多妻子,生更多孩子,而不是资助成年子女结婚成家(因而多妻往往与强父权相联系)。 这种做法发展到极致时,老男人们几乎垄断了娶妻机会,在非洲班图语民族(例如西非的约鲁巴人和豪萨人,肯尼亚的康巴人)的许多部落中,父权高度发达,多妻制盛行,男性在熬到40岁前很难娶到妻子,而十岁出头的年轻女孩常常被嫁给五六十岁的老男人;贾瑞德·戴蒙德在检查了大量人类学材料后发现,此类现象广泛存在于传统农牧业定居社会中。 其中原理,我们从进化生物学的亲子冲突(parent-offspring conflict)理论的角度可以看得更清楚:尽管父母和子女很大程度上有着共同利益,但两者利益仍有重大区别,父母希望在各子女间恰当分配家庭资源,以便总体上获得最佳繁衍成效,而每个子女都希望更多资源分给自己这一支,所以不希望父亲生太多孩子。 强大的父权改变了亲子冲突中的力量对比,压制了子女需求中偏离父亲愿望的部分,而且宗族组织的发展又强化了这一父权优势:原本,父代的多子策略高度受限于本人寿命,当预期寿命不够长时,继续生育意义就不大了,因为失去父亲保护的孤儿很可能活不到成年,但有了宗族组织,孤儿就有望被亡父的兄弟、堂兄弟和叔伯收养,甚至得到族内救济制度的帮助(救济制度最初就是伴随宗族组织的发达而出现的)。 将亲子冲突理论稍作扩展,可以让我们更好的理解家长制和部落老人政治:个人在家族树上所居层次(俗称辈份)越高,其个体利益和群体利益的重合度就越高,因而长辈总是比晚辈更多的代表群体利益,他们之间若能达成紧密合作,便有望维持群体和谐,并获得集体行动能力,而同时,因为长辈间亲缘更近,长期熟识的几率也更高,因而紧密合作也更容易达成。 父权和家长联盟为扩大父系群提供了组织手段,不过,若仅限于此,群体规模的扩张将十分有限,因为家长联盟的规模本身受限于邓巴数(还要减去每个支系的规模),若要继续扩张,要么让每位家长控制更多成员,要么让家长联盟发展出多个层级,无论哪种安排,高层联盟中的每位成员都将代表一个比扩展家庭更大的支系。 问题是:谁来代表这个支系?假如寿命足够长,一位曾祖父便可代表四世同堂的大家族(比扩展家庭多出一级),但活的曾祖父太少了;一种解决方案是选举,事实上,部落民主制确实存在于一些古代社会;不过,更自然的安排是让长支拥有优先权(说它“自然”是因为其优先权是自动产生的,无须为此精心安排程序机制),比如周代的宗法制,让长支(大宗)对幼支(小宗)拥有某些支配权,并作为族长代表包含二者的上一级支系。 于是就产生了一个三级宗族结构,理论上,这样的安排可以无限制的迭代,从而产生任意规模的宗族,而同时,每一层级的合作圈都限于几十人规模,因而每位家长或族长需要与之保持长期紧密合作关系的人数,也都限于邓巴数之下。 但实际上,组织能力总是受限于交通、通信和信息处理能力等技术性限制,还有更致命的是,委托代理关系和逐级控制关系的不可靠性,随着层级增加,上层族长越来越无法代表下层支系的利益,也越来越难以对后者施加控制,经验表明,具有某种集体行动能力的多级宗族组织,规模上限大约几千,最多上万。 在古代中国,每当蛮族大规模入侵、中原动荡、王朝崩溃、帝国权力瓦解之际,宗族组织便兴旺起来,聚族自保历来是人们应对乱世的最自然反应,古典时代以来的第一轮宗族运动,便兴起于东晋衣冠南渡之时;如果说第一轮运动主要限于士族大家的话,南宋开始的第二轮运动则吸引了所有阶层的兴趣,家族成员无论贫富贵贱都被编入族谱。 和聚居村落的结构布局一样,宗族组织的紧密程度和集体行动能力同样显著相关于所处环境的安全性,华南农耕拓殖前线,或者国家权力因交通不便而难以覆盖的地方,宗族组织便趋于发达和紧密;人类学家林耀华描述的福建义序黄氏宗族,血缘纽带历二十多代六百多年而不断,到1930年代已发展到15个房支,每房又分若干支系,各有祠堂,从核心家庭到宗族,共达七个组织层级,总人口近万。 类似规模的宗族在华南比比皆是,在宗族之间时而发生的大型械斗中,双方常能组织起上千人的参战队伍,可见其规模之大,行动能力之强;华南许多宗族部分的从福建迁入江西,又从江西迁入湖南,但许多迁出支系与留在原地的支系之间仍能保持定期联系。 共同祖先记忆、父权、家长制、族长会议、大型宗族组织,这些由扩大父系群的种种努力所发展出的文化元素,不仅为定居社会的最初大型化创造了组织基础,也为此后的国家起源提供了部分制度准备,父权和族长权,是早期国家创建者所倚赖的诸多政治权力来源之一。 当然,父系结构的扩展只是社会大型化的多条线索之一,要建立起数十上百万人的大型社会,还有很长的路要走,还要等待其他许多方面的文化进化,在后面的文章里,我会继续追寻人类文明的这段旅程。 (本系列文章首发于“大象公会”,纸媒转载请先征得公会同意。)