Of men and galaxies

人和星系

In man's early days. competition with other creatures must have been critical. But this phase of our development is now finished. Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone. The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.

在人類早期，人類與其他生物的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)一定是必不可少的。但這個(gè)發(fā)展階段已經(jīng)結(jié)束。確實(shí)，我們今天缺乏對(duì)付原始環(huán)境的實(shí)踐和經(jīng)驗(yàn)。我斷定，如果沒有現(xiàn)代化的武器，要我和一只熊去爭(zhēng)洞穴，我會(huì)出洋相的;我也相信，出洋相者并非我一人。能與競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的生物最后只有蚊子，然而即使蚊子，也由于我們注意清理污水和噴灑化學(xué)藥品就被制服了。

Competition between our selves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.

然而人類之間的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)，人與人，團(tuán)體與團(tuán)體，依然在進(jìn)行著，而且和以前一樣激烈。

But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical. Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources. Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people wish to emphasize. The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.

但是，人與人的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)并不像生物生物學(xué)中想像的那樣是一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)單過程。它已不是為爭(zhēng)得物質(zhì)環(huán)境所決定的東西所決定。摩洛哥和加利福尼亞是地球上緯度極其相似的兩個(gè)地方，都在各自大陸的西海岸，氣候相似，自然資源也可能相似。但是，這兩個(gè)地方目前的發(fā)展程度完全不一樣。這倒不是因?yàn)槿嗣癫煌�，而是由于居民頭腦中的思想不同。 這是我要強(qiáng)調(diào)的論點(diǎn)。我們環(huán)境中最重要的因素就是我們的思想狀況。

It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. Ideas are dangerous. The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us. I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so. Perhaps it will suffice to mention the unclear bomb. Of making the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it. I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.

眾所周知，凡是白人侵入原始文化的地方，破壞作用最大的不是殺人的武器，而是思想。思想是危險(xiǎn)的。宗教法庭對(duì)此是非常清楚的，因此從前它總是把異教徒燒死。的確，言論自由的概念只存在于我們現(xiàn)代社會(huì)中，因?yàn)楫?dāng)你生活在一個(gè)社團(tuán)中時(shí)，社團(tuán)的風(fēng)俗習(xí)慣會(huì)嚴(yán)格地制約你，使你很難有破壞性的想法。只有外部的旁觀者才能灌輸危險(xiǎn)的思想。向現(xiàn)代世界灌輸一種思想以便摧毀我們?nèi)祟愂强赡艿氖�，�?duì)此我并不懷疑。我愿為你舉個(gè)例子，但幸虧我舉不出。也許提一下核彈就足以證明了。對(duì)一個(gè)沿未擁有核彈、但科技相當(dāng)發(fā)達(dá)的社會(huì)，如果告訴它制造核彈的可能性，而且向它提供制造核彈的細(xì)節(jié)，那么可以設(shè)想，這將對(duì)這個(gè)社會(huì)產(chǎn)生何等的影響。如果把二三十頁的情報(bào)交給1952年前后的任何一個(gè)世界強(qiáng)國，就足以改變世界歷史的進(jìn)程。二三十頁材料中的思想和情報(bào)會(huì)便當(dāng)今的世界翻天覆地，甚至毀滅這個(gè)世界。這是個(gè)離奇的想法。不過我認(rèn)為這個(gè)想法是正確的。我常常試圖想像這些紙上所寫的東西，不過我是做不到的，因?yàn)槲液湍銈兇蠹乙粯�，是�?dāng)今世界上的凡人。我閃不能脫離我們大腦所限定的模式去問題，我們只能稍微離開一點(diǎn)兒，就這也需要我們獨(dú)創(chuàng)的思想。

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