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Is America going to decline like other great nations have before? The author thinks not, arguing that the type of society being created in America is quite unlike any that has gone before it. Read what he has to say and see whether you agree.
美国是否会如同历史上其他强国一样走向衰亡？作者持否定观点，认为美国创建的社会模式不同于任何已出现的社会模式。读一读他的观点，看看你是否同意。
America as a Collage
Ryzsard Kapuscinski
1 The mere fact that America still attracts millions of people is evidence that it is not in decline. People aren't attracted to a place of decline. Signs of decline are sure to be found in a place as complex as America: debt, crime, the homeless, drugs, dropouts. But the main characteristic of America, the first and most enduring impression, is dynamism, energy, aggressiveness, forward movement.
美国大拼盘
里扎德·卡普钦斯基
仅看美国依然吸引着千百万人这一事实就足以证明美国并未衰落。人们不会被吸引到一个衰落的地方。在美国这样一个错综复杂的国家，当然能看到衰落的迹象，如债务、犯罪活动、无家可归者、吸毒、逃避现实社会的人。但美国的主要特征，亦即它给人的最初的、最持久的印象，却是充满活力、生机勃勃、不断进取、积极向上。
2 It is so hard to think of this nation in decline when you know that there are vast regions of the planet which are absolutely paralyzed, incapable of any improvement at all.
如果你知道世界上有广大地区完全处于瘫痪状态，无法取得任何进步时，那就难以想象这个国家在衰落。
3 It is difficult for me to agree with Paul Kennedy's thesis in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers that America must inevitably follow historical precedent. That's the way history used to be -- all powerful nations declined and gave way to other empires. But maybe there is another way to look at what is happening. I have a sense that what is going on here concerns much more than the fate of a nation.
我很难同意保罗·肯尼迪在《列强之兴衰》中的论点， 即美国将不可避免地重蹈历史覆辙。历史一直如此循环—强国衰落，为新兴的帝国所取代。但或许我们能从另外一个角度看待正在发生的一切。我有种感觉，这个国家正在发生的一切不仅仅关乎一国之命运。
4 It may be that the Euro-centered American nation is declining as it gives way to a new Pacific civilization that will include, but not be limited to, America. Historically speaking, America may not decline, but instead fuse with the Pacific culture to create a kind of vast Pacific collage, a mix of Hispanic and Asian cultures linked through the most modern communication technologies.
以欧洲为中心的美国或许是在衰落，正由一个新的太平洋文化所取代，这一文化包括但并不局限于美国。从历史的角度来看，美国或许不会衰落，相反，它将与太平洋文化相融合，创建一种广泛的太平洋拼盘文化，一种依靠最现代的通讯技术连接的拉丁文化与亚洲文化的混合文化。
5 Traditional history has been a history of nations. But here, for the first time since the Roman Empire, there is the possibility of creating the history of a civilization. Now is the first chance on a new basis with new technologies to create a civilization of unprecedented openness and pluralism. A civilization of the polycentric mind. A civilization that leaves behind forever the ethnocentric, tribal mentality. The mentality of destruction. 传统意义上的历史一直是各个国家的历史。但在美国，自罗马帝国以来，首次出现了创建一个文化的历史的可能。现在第一次有了这样一个机遇，在新的基础上用新技术创建一个有着前所未有的开放性的多元文化。一个有着多种精神中心的文化。一个永远抛弃种族中心主义心态、部落心态的文化。那是一种破坏性的心态。
6 Los Angeles is a premonition of this new civilization.
洛杉矶就是这一新兴文化的先兆。
7 Linked more to the Third World and Asia than to the Europe of America's racial and cultural roots, Los Angeles and southern California will enter the twenty-first century as a multiracial and multicultural society. This is absolutely new. There is no previous example of a civilization that is being simultaneously created by so many races, nationalities, and cultures. This new type of cultural pluralism is completely unknown in the history of mankind.
洛杉矶以及南加州与第三世界和亚洲的联系要比与美国的民族、文化之根欧洲的联系密切，因此将以一个多民族、多元文化的社会进入21世纪。这是一种全新的现象。一个文化由如此之多的种族、民族和文化同时创建，这样的先例从未有过。这种新型的文化多元化在人类历史上闻所未闻。
8 America is becoming more plural every day because of the unbelievable facility of the new Third World immigrants to put a piece of their original culture inside of American culture. The notion of a "dominant" American culture is changing every moment. It is incredible coming to America to find you are somewhere else -- in Seoul, in Taipei, in Mexico City. You can travel inside this Korean culture right on the streets of Los Angeles. Inhabitants of this vast city become internal tourists in the place of their own residence.
由于来自第三世界的新移民所具有的将本族文化融入美国文化的令人难以置信的本领，美国正变得越来越多元化。美国有“主导”文化的概念时刻在改变。来到美国，你会不可思议地发现自己身在别地—来到了汉城，台北，墨西哥城。你在洛杉矶街头行走， 就可以感受到韩国的文化氛围。这个大城市的居民成了自己居住地的游客。
9 There are large communities of Laotians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Iranians, Japanese, Koreans, Armenians, Chinese. We find here Little Taipei, Little Saigon, Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Little Central America, the Iranian neighborhood in Westwood, the Armenian community in Hollywood, and the vast Mexican-American areas of East Los Angeles. Eighty-one languages, few of them European, are spoken in the elementary school system of the city of Los Angeles.
这里有规模很大的社区，住着老挝人、越南人、柬埔寨人、墨西哥人、萨尔瓦多人、危地马拉人、伊朗人、日本人、韩国人、亚美尼亚人以及中国人。这里我们能找到小台北、小西贡、小东京、韩国城、小中美洲、威斯特伍德的伊朗人社区、好莱坞的亚美尼亚人社区，以及东洛杉矶墨西哥裔美国人范围很大的居住区。洛杉矶市的小学系统共使用81种语言，其中鲜有欧洲语言。
10 This transformation of American culture anticipates the general trend in the composition of mankind. Ninety percent of the immigrants to this city are from the Third World. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 90 percent of the world's population will be dark-skinned; the white race will be no more than 11 percent of all human beings living on our planet.
美国文化的这一变化预示着人类构成的普遍趋势。洛杉矶市90%的移民来自第三世界。到21世纪初，90%的世界人口将是深肤色的；所有生活在地球上的人中，白人不会超过11%。
11 Something that can only be seen in America: In the landscaped, ultraclean high-technology parks of northern Orange County there is a personal computer company that seven years ago did not exist. There were only strawberry fields where the plant is. Now, there is a $500 million company with factories in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well.
只有在美国才会出现这种情况：在北部桔县环境作过美化的、超净的高科技园区，有家7年前尚不存在的个人电脑公司。公司的所在地那时还是草莓地。如今，这是一家有着5亿美元资产、在香港和台湾都设有工厂的大公司。
12 The company was founded by three young immigrants -- a Pakistani Muslim and two Chinese from Hong Kong. They only became citizens in 1984. Each individual is now probably worth $30 million.
这家公司由3位年轻的移民创办—一位巴基斯坦穆斯林和两位来自香港的中国人。他们1984年才成为美国公民。如今他们每个人的身价都可能值3千万美元。
13 Walking through this company we see only young, dark faces -- Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Mexicans -- and the most advanced technology. The culture of the work force is a mix of Hispanic-Catholic family values and Asian-Confucian group loyalty. Employment notices are never posted; hiring is done through the network of families that live in southern California. Not infrequently, employees ask to work an extra twenty hours a week to earn enough money to help members of their extended family buy their first home.
在这家公司走走，我们看到的都是年轻的深肤色面孔—越南人、柬埔寨人、老挝人和墨西哥人—还有最先进的技术。员工文化混合着拉丁美洲天主教的家庭价值观念和亚洲儒家的效忠集体的观念。招聘从来不张贴告示；用人都是通过在南加州居住的家庭网络完成的。雇员常常会要求一周加班20小时，好多赚钱帮助大家庭成员购买房屋。
14 In Los Angeles, traditional Third World cultures are, for the first time, fusing with the most modern mentalities and technologies.
在洛杉矶，第三世界国家的传统文化首次与最先进的理念和技术相融合。
15 Usually, the contact between developed and underdeveloped worlds has the character of exploitation -- just taking people's labor and resources and giving them nothing. And the border between races has usually been a border of tension, of crisis. Here we see a revolution that is constructive.
发达国家与不发达国家的关系通常有剥削榨取这一特点—掠夺劳力和资源，不给任何回报。种族交界处往往是关系紧张的交界处，是危机的交界处。而在这里，我们看到了一场建设性的革命。
16 This Pacific Rim civilization being created is a new relationship between development and underdevelopment. Here, there is openness. There is hope. And a future. There is a multicultural crowd. But it is not fighting. It is cooperating, peacefully competing, building. For the first time in four hundred years of relations between the nonwhite Western world and the white Western world, the general character of the relationship is cooperation and construction, not exploitation, not destruction.
这一创建中的环太平洋文化是发达与不发达之间一种新型的关系。这里有开放精神。这里有希望，有前途。这里是一个多元文化的群体，但没有冲突，而是进行合作，进行和平竞争，进行建设。在非白种人的西方世界与白种人的西方世界400多年的关系史上，双方关系的基本特性第一次表现为合作与建设，而不是剥削，不是破坏。
17 Unlike any other place on the planet, Los Angeles shows us the potential of development once the Third World mentality merges with an open sense of possibility, a culture of organization, a Western conception of time.
不同于世界上任何其他地方，洛杉矶向我们表明，第三世界的心态一旦与充满机会的开放精神相融合，与有条有理的文化相融合，与西方的时间观念相融合，就会具有发展的潜能。
18 For the destructive, paralyzed world where I have spent most of my life, it is important, simply, that such a possibility as Los Angeles exists.
对那个我在其间度过大半生的破坏性、停滞不前的社会来说，说实在话，存在着洛杉矶这样一种发展前景意义十分重大。
19 To adjust the concept of time is the most difficult thing. It is a key revolution of development.
调整时间观念最为困难。这是发展的一个关键变革。
20 Western culture is a culture of arithmetical time. Time is organized by the clock. In non-Western culture, time is a measure between events. We arrange a meeting at nine o'clock but the man doesn't show up. We become anxious, offended. He doesn't understand our anxiety because for him, the moment he arrives is the measure of time. He is on time when he arrives.
西方文化是计算时间的文化。时间由时钟来安排。在非西方文化中，时间是以事件与事件之间的间隔来计算。我们安排在9点开会，但人没来。我们焦急不安，感到很生气。他无法理解我们为何那么焦急，因为对他而言，他到达的一刻才算时间。他到了，就是准时了。
21 In 1924, the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos wrote a book dreaming of the possibility that, in the future, all races on the planet would merge into one type of man. This type of man is being borne in Los Angeles, in the cultural sense if not the anthropological sense. A vast mosaic of different races, cultures, religions, and moral habits are working toward one common aim. From the perspective of a world submerged in religious, ethnic, and racial conflict, this harmonious cooperation is something unbelievable. It is truly striking.
1924年，墨西哥哲学家荷塞·伐斯冈萨雷斯在他的一本著作中，梦想着未来地球上所有不同种族都融合成一种类型人的可能性。在文化的意义上，即便不是在人种的意义上，这样一种类型的人正在洛杉矶诞生。由不同种族、不同文化、不同宗教和不同道德行为组成的巨大合成体正奔向一个共同的目标。世界充满着宗教的、种族的、民族的冲突，从这个角度来看，这种融洽的合作令人难以置信。的确令人瞩目。
22 What is the common aim that harmonizes competing cultures in one place?
使得在一个地区的相互竞争的文化和谐共存的共同目标是什么呢？
23 It is not only the better living standard. What attracts immigrants to America is the essential characteristic of American culture: the chance to try. There is a combination of two things that are important: culture and space. The culture allows you to try to be somebody -- to find yourself, your place, your status. And there is space not only in a geographical sense, but in the sense of opportunity, of social mobility. In societies that are in crisis and in societies which are stagnant -- or even in those which are stable -- there is no chance to try. You are defined in advance. Destiny has already sentenced you.
目标不仅仅是更高的生活水准。吸引移民前来美国的是美国文化的主要特性：有尝试的机会。文化与空间这两个重要方面结合了起来。文化使你得以想办法出人头地—去发现自我，找到自己的位置、自己的地位。还有空间，不仅仅是地理意义上的空间，更是指机会，指社会身份的流动性。在充满危机的社会中，在停滞不前的社会中—甚至在那些稳定的社会中—没有尝试的机会。你一生已被预先决定。命运已经将你注定。
24 This is what unites the diverse races and cultures in America. If the immigrant to America at first fails, he always thinks, "I will try again." If he had failed in the old society, he would be discouraged and pessimistic, accepting the place that was given to him. In America, he's thinking, "I will have another chance, I will try again." That keeps him going. He's full of hope.
正是这一点，使得美国的不同种族和文化连结在一起。如果美国移民开始时遭遇失败，他总是想：“我要再试一下。”如果他在原来的社会中遭遇失败，他就会失去信心，变得悲观失望，接受自己所处的地位。在美国，他想的是：“我还会有机会，我还要试一下。”这使他坚持下去。他充满了希望。
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