20世纪

独秀文译青年

【中文标题】20世纪

【正文】

The 20th century -- the century ofmetamyths and of megadeaths -- spawned false notions oftotal control, derived from arrogant assertions of total righteousness. Thereligious man of pre-modern times, who accepted reality as God-ordained, hadgiven way to the secular fanatic, increasingly inclined to usurp God in theeffort to construct heaven on earth, subordinating not only nature but humanityitself to his own utopian vision.

20世纪是一个超凡神话的世纪，是一个生灵涂炭的世纪，这个世纪滋生了大量有关完全控制的错误观念，而这些错误观念则根源于对完全正义的傲慢宣称。前近代时期的宗教人认为一切皆是命中注定的，他们已经让路于世俗的狂热信徒，而这些狂热信徒日益想要推翻上帝，以求在地球上建设人间乐土，他们不仅将大自然，也将人类自身看得比他们自己的乌托邦式幻想看得更为次要一些。

In the course of the century, this visionwas perverted into the most costly exercise of political hubris in mankind'shistory: the totalitarian attempt to create coercive utopias. All of reality --on the objective level of social organization and on the subjective level ofpersonal beliefs -- was to be subject to doctrinal control emanating from asingle political center. The price paid in human lives for this excess isbeyond comprehension.

回顾20世纪，这种幻想被人类歪曲滥用，在政治上表现得狂妄自大，为此人类付出了历史上最大的代价：极权主义者试图建立强制乌托邦。所有现实，无论是客观层面的社会组织，还是主观层面的个人信仰，都将依附于源于单一政治中心的教条控制。人类生命里为这种过分所付出的代价是令人无法理解的。

Adding them all up, somewhere between 167million and 175 million individual human beings were deliberately extinguishedthrough politically motivated carnage – the scores of millions of soldiers andcivilians killed in the century's wars, the further scores of millions killedin concentration camps, gulags, forced collectivization, ethnic transplantings,and killing fields decreed by self-deified dictators.

把他们所有加起来，大概1.67亿和1.75亿的人类丧命于有意的政治大屠杀——成千上万的军民死于这个世纪的战争里，更有成千上万的军民被杀害于集中营、劳改营、杀戮场，或者被迫集体化、被迫进行种族移民。这一切都是由那些自我奉若神明的独裁者设定的。

The tens of millions that were killedbecause they were perceived, for racial or social reasons, as unworthy ofliving within the earthly utopia—and the many millions more that were coercedinto living within these systems -- all testify to the hypnotic appeal of themetamyths of Nazism that postulated the end of history and the attainment ofperfection within utopias of total control.

数以百万计的军民惨遭杀害，原因是他们由于政治或社会因素而被认为不配活在尘世的乌托邦——更有好几百万的人被强迫住在这些体系里面——所有这些都体现了纳粹主义蜕变的蛊惑力，纳粹主义要求结束历史，要求完善受到完全控制的乌托邦。

The manifest failure of that endeavor hasgiven way in the West to the current antithesis, which is essentially that ofminimal control over personal and collective desires, sexual appetites, andsocial conduct. But inherent in the almost total rejection of any control isthe notion that all values are subjective and relative.

那种努力显然已经一败涂地，在西方取而代之的是当前的对立面：事实上就是对于个人和集体欲望、性欲以及社会行为的最低控制。这是一种对任何控制几乎都完全拒绝的行为，在这种行为里面深藏着这样一个理念，那就是所有的价值观都是主观且相对的。

In brief, this century has seen mankindmove from experimentation with the coercive utopia of totalitarianism toenjoyment of the permissive cornucopia of today's America—from a passionate embraceof the absolutist metamyths of Hitler, Lenin, Mao, and their followers tocareless toying with relativistic agnosticism.

    简言之，这个世纪已经见证了人类试验用极权主义建立强制乌托邦的失败，见证了人类向当今美国高度自由式社会的转变——从热情拥抱由希特勒、列宁、毛泽东和他们的追随者共同创造的绝对论者的超凡神话一个转变到无忧无虑地玩弄相对不可知论。

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