【时代周刊 20160630】当今美国光明的一面

满仓

【中文标题】当今美国光明的一面
【原文标题】The Bright Side in America Today
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】David Von Drehle
【原文链接】http://time.com/4389183/the-bright-side-in-america-today/?xid=homepage&pcd=hp-magmod



我的工作就是时事评论，所以人们经常和我分享他们的想法和顾虑。目前看来，我听到的最多的问题就是，今天是美国历史上最分裂的年代吗？我想每个学生都曾经学习过残酷的内战历史——60万人死亡、总统被暗杀、南部11个州的经济被彻底摧毁，这种事情我可以列举很多。

是的，以前的局势更加糟糕。但是，人们对这个问题的执着令人颇为担忧。

我认为，这个问题反映出人们对于美国是否变得更加孱弱的广泛担忧，当时代的进程需要我们团结起来的时候，我们往往执着于彼此之间的差异。在美国诞辰240周年之际，我们必须要问，我们是否比以往做出了更加充分的准备应对国内的紧张局势和国际社会的混乱局面——从难民危机到英国脱欧？随着年龄的增长，我们是否变得更加强大，抑或美国的社会制度变得更加脆弱？

我们那些年事已高的党派似乎已经锁定了近代史上最不招人待见的两位总统候选人。唐纳德•特朗普，这位共和党人蔑视一切礼貌和客套。民主党人希拉里•克林顿获取党派提名的手段让党内发生分歧，她的个人信誉已经不复存在。两人都拥有狂热的支持者，但是根据民意调查的结果来看，数千万美国人仅仅是在皮肤灼伤与荨麻疹之间做出选择，甚至是在恐惧与厌恶之间做出选择。

美国民众生活中的其它支柱也凸显大厦将倾之势。国会、媒体、大企业和华尔街挥霍了人们寄予的信任。官场中的人物，从法官、警察到教师和政府官员，都在民众质疑的大潮中摇摇欲坠。根据皮尤调查中心提供的数据，宗教活动——尤其是基督教——大幅减少。象牙塔中的学术活动也举步维艰。

无论我们是否和历史上一样陷入分裂的局面，纷争永远难以抹平。在一代人的时间里，我们从一个经验分享的文化背景转化为以个人选择为基础的激进民主文化。我们现在可以自由选择自己的阅读内容，而是不由某些强势的出版商替我们做出选择。我们想看什么就看什么，想什么时候看就什么时候看。无论我们居住在那里，都可以建立自己所认可的社交圈子，而且如果我们愿意，这些虚拟的市镇广场可以无限强化我们的观点，也可以加深我们的仇恨。以强化社交圈和滋生不和为目的，很多人攫取了巨额财富，也派生出众多就业岗位。

难怪民众的情绪会变得郁闷。我们的工作方式、沟通方式、我们性交、育儿和衰老的方式，一切都待价而沽。这种迅速的变化必然伴随着大量的心理暴力行为。

历史学家亨利•亚当斯在他的经典自传作品中提到了这个问题。20世纪初，X射线、汽车和无线通讯技术刚刚出现，他来到巴黎一个展览馆的大厅，身处于发出微微轰鸣声的发电机旁边——那是一种从未出现过的工业艺术品。“这是一种崭新的、混乱的力量，”他这样描述那些看不见又无法抗拒的转变。“人们让自己置身于一个新的宇宙中，”亚当斯“发现自己躺在1900年博览会机械展厅中，任由自己的脖子被突然出现的崭新的一股力量所扼住。”

崭新混乱的力量。亚当斯用这几个字表明了接踵而来、一直持续到今天的技术断层。混乱指的是无政府主义的状态，无视权威，是代表极度分裂的政治术语。

想一想，如果亚当斯看到手持超级电脑、基因排序、人工智能用和蔼的语音报告天气、厨房里播放着DJ音乐，那他会断掉多少根骨头？如果查询医生账单这样一个简单的工作让他接触到了触控面板、机器人、通过卫星转接来自孟买或马尼拉的热线服务电话，那么中风和瘫痪是必不可免的了。

在2016年的独立日，我们自然而然地感觉到自己成为了某种新生自由的人质，被蒙住眼睛，绑在一个叫做“改变”的横冲直撞的卡车后备箱里。在这条通往未来的颠簸路面上，我们所遭受的每一个瘀青和挫伤都让我们离那难以看清的悲惨结局更近。

从另一个角度来说，每年的7月4日都会让我们想起美国是个永不止歇的革命者。无论改变让我们觉得意气风发还是沮丧疲惫，最终我们还是掌握着历史进程的缰绳。而且这其中的原因——既有趣又讽刺——恰恰是当前让我们分裂的原因——个人主义。尽管数字化大暴动带来了扭曲和混乱，但美国最强大的力量依然是它的人民。

我们将决策权下放，释放个人的决定权和创造力，就是我们当前最光明的一面。从布鲁塞尔到北京，从国会到教堂，决策机构都茫然不知所措，但是我们依然着眼于草根阶层，并祈祷。“光明的一面”并不等于“简单的一面”，如今没有所谓简单的事情，但希望正是如此。

从更深层次的角度来说，美国人从来不相信那种“力量”，无论是无政府主义的力量还是其它什么力量。我们认可不受管制的技术、人口、经济发展趋势，我们经常让这些趋势打击自己的信心、破坏我们的情绪。但是作为文化遗产，美国人无视那些不可逾越的障碍、潜在的风险和历史的命运。我们相信发明家、改革者、先驱者、手艺人、艺术家、战略家、黑客，甚至古怪极端的人，总之相信个体。美国对于哲学独特的贡献在于务实主义和自给自足。相比于意识形态，我们更相信自由发挥，我们在混乱中寻找突破，这就是我们自我服务手册的信息来源。甚至死亡也不是一个令我们信服的力量。典型的美国人、发明家、梦想家雷•库兹维尔，他给出的建议是“活得长久，寿比南山”。

美国对于个人的信仰在亚历西斯•德•托克维尔将近两个世纪前来访这个国家时引起了他的注意，这位法国贵族“发现了一种模式，他认为形象地表明美国人是如何解决问题的：普通人在社区层面自发采取行动。”美国非盈利组织、代表这个国家慈善文化的Bridgespan集团的保罗•卡特说：“今天我们可以看到，这不仅仅是一种行为模式，而且是深植于我们内心的文化基因。”

在美国，自行车技师发明了飞行的方法；幼年时期的报童后来发明了灯泡；脚下一双沾满泥巴的靴子的科学家用更少的资源养活了更多的人口，从而解除了人口炸弹。在美国，震动全世界的公司在车库中诞生。美国缺少计划、活力充沛、先丢出一个目标，然后拼命达成。就像是把成吨的意大利面甩到一面墙上，满怀信心地期望有几根面条会粘在上面。

一旦真有面条粘在上面，星星之火马上会成为燎原之势，也就是成为后世人们所描述的那种扼喉之力。美国历史的中流砥柱实际上是个人的传记——从擅长科学和外交，把一个崭新的国家树立在世界版图上的精明企业家本•富兰克林，到勘探宾夕法尼亚岩石寻找鲸油替代品的石油先驱埃德温•德雷克，到奴隶的后代、用自己的聪明才智和勤奋付出建立了化妆品帝国的莎拉•布雷德拉夫•沃克尔，到用自由撰稿作品派生出现代环境保护主义的生物学家蕾切尔•卡逊，到比尔•休利特和大卫•帕卡德帕在加利福尼亚州罗奥图一个车库中成立的一个电子公司，他们的第一笔大买卖交易的对象是同样在堪萨斯州一个车库中成立的沃尔特•迪斯尼公司。

除却历史上这些伟大的故事，美国人民的力量在全球化、数字化、非居间化、激进化等世界上头等混乱大事面前似乎显得微不足道，这些问题既庞大，又颇在眉睫，大得令人难以理解，重要得令人难以忽视。而且，人民的力量很容易被认为是自私、自恋、不负责任的代名词。

个人主义之所以是一个强大、有利的因素，是因为人民的力量决定了美国的繁荣。

这个幸运又不完美的国家恰恰具备一个国家发展所需要的一切因素，这要感谢地理、军事、智慧和运气等因素的结合。美国物产富饶，非物质财富更加丰富。受到东西方海洋的保护，以及南北边境的和平，美国所享受到的安全状况与从前世界超级大国所面临的威胁不可同日而语。尽管历史上出现过针对移民的冲突，以及在种族和性别问题上愚蠢的争论，我们优秀的人力资本从未枯竭。美国的学术界和实验室在源源不断的资金的支持下，持续贡献出卓越的研究结果。与大部分国家相比，我们可以公开交换信息，人们可以自由移动，更容易获得资金支持。

我们从一开始就在争论财富的分配，谁应该得到多少？什么才算公平？什么叫做效率？但除了极少的例外情况，争论往往是在民间、文明的范畴之内，并没有引发暴力，这要感谢国家对法治的尊重。

当物质资源的极大丰富遭遇到个人主义，美国变成了一个在转盘上每一个数字上都下注的赌徒。大部分赌资无法收回，就像大部分新兴企业会倒闭，很多新想法并不成熟，大部分改革都是断断续续的，很多发明很快被丢弃。这都没有关系，因为赌徒可以承受这些大量的错误，以换取最终正确的选择。一个可以容纳失败，并将其作为成功的一部分的体制，是在容易犯错的人类社会中获取胜利的最高希望。

当然，我们永远无法拒绝在一盘赌局中押上所有赌资的诱惑，我们被一个号称知道所有问题答案的世界领导人的形象所迷惑。我们委托专家设计了一个理想的政府架构，我们还尝试与各类意识形态和经济体制交好——今年我们考虑的内容就包括民族主义、社会主义和放任自由注意。当领导者出现了错误，政府架构陷入停顿，意识形态和经济体制并不客观，我们的幻想难免破灭。

但是无论如何，我们没有失去深植于内心的务实主义情怀。美国之所以繁荣，是因为有激发别人能动性的领导人，当政府释放出人民的力量，我们可以做得最好。自上而下的解决方案等于把单一的赌注押在一个人、一个观点或者一个项目上，而自下而上的方案在整个赌场中的每一个赌桌上都有下注。

在巨大变革的旋风中，难免会有说“不”的冲动，也就是试图阻止一些事情的发生。你甚至可以在今年最积极的话语中听到这样的声音。“让美国再一次伟大起来”——特朗普的竞选口号奏响了一个强势音符。但仔细听，它的意思是说美国曾经很伟大，直到什么事情改变了它的地位。伯尼•桑德斯的口号是“一个值得相信的未来”，意思或许是要否定已经展开的未来画面。

亨利•亚当斯当年在巴黎的理解并没有错误：促成改变的混乱的力量无法抗拒，只能被引导，或许还可以被利用，但最终必须被接受。但是，接受改变、向其学习、充分利用它，这就是行动的核心内容。这些针对改变的响应，就是我们生活的真谛，由社区、家庭中的个人，凭借自己的力量做出改变。

当我们回顾过去的240年，道路崎岖不平，但方向无比睿智。我们看到并不完美但远见卓识的先驱们把他们的信仰更多地寄托于“是”，而不是“否”，平等的理念——是，自由的生活——是，对于追求幸福的精彩描述——是。他们知道，在一个不断走向现代化的世界中的生活，必须要以个人为基础。因此必须要包容成功和失败，要允许梦想大事件、思考小事件，可以成就巨额财富，也可以关注于阳台上的花花草草。

今年的7月4日，我们庆祝这个宝贵的遗产。尽管我们的领导人和政府机构最近的日子并不好过，但作为个人，我们依然强大。

我们看到自己在纠结于各自面临的问题，而且知道下个星期、下个月、下一年度还有更多的问题要解决，但我们毫不畏惧。

我们看到人们相互守望、分享知识、整合资源，为那些受到伤害的人提供帮助，为那些努力奋斗的人喝彩。

我们看到自己在废墟上重新集结力量，放弃机械时代而推崇人类的尊严，打造一个完美的冰淇淋蛋卷。

在笼罩在我们头上的层层乌云下，我们在编制着一线希望。我们这些普通人，用我们不完美的方式追求着各自的幸福，我们一起形成了一股无可抗拒的力量。这决不是在变化中的无助，我们继承了强大的遗产，远比任何强权、意识形态和恐怖力量要强大。这是永恒的力量。至于它是否可以赢得未来，那是每天早晨都会重新浮现的问题。

我们可以放心地说：这是我们最有信心的一笔赌注。



原文：

Because I write about current events for a living, people often let me know their thoughts and worries. By far the most common question I hear goes something like this: Have Americans ever been more divided than we are today? Given that every schoolchild learns of our brutal Civil War–in which more than 600,000 people died, a President was assassinated, and the economies of 11 Southern states were decimated–it’s an alarming query.

Yes, things have been much worse … but it’s scary that we’re asking.

I think the question reflects a widespread worry that America is becoming brittle, that we are hung up on differences when the times demand unity of purpose. On this 240th birthday of the USA, it’s fair to ask, Are we any more prepared to absorb domestic tensions and respond to international turmoil–from refugee crises to Brexit–than we were in earlier eras? Are we growing stronger with age, or have the institutions of American society become feeble?

Our wheezy old political parties appear to have settled on two of the least popular presidential candidates in modern history. Donald Trump, the Republican, oozes contempt for the emollient civility of civic life. Democrat Hillary Clinton’s slog to the nomination has left her party divided and her credibility in tatters. Both have their zealous supporters, of course. But judging from surveys, tens of millions of Americans would just as soon pick between sunburn and hives–if not between fear and loathing.

Other pillars of American life are just as shaky. Congress, the media, Big Business and Wall Street have all squandered faith. Authority figures from judges to police officers, schoolteachers to elected officials, are teetering in a rising tide of skepticism. The practice of religion–especially Christianity–is in decline, according to the Pew Research Center, while the ivory tower of academia is besieged.

Whether our divisions are as deep as they have been in the past, it has never been easier to amplify strife. In the space of a generation, we have transformed ourselves from a culture of shared experiences to a radical democracy of personal choice. We now read what we want, not what some powerful publisher chooses for us. We watch what we want, when we want it. We build communities of our choosing no matter where we actually live, and if we wish, these virtual town squares can endlessly reinforce our existing opinions while redoubling our antagonisms. There are fortunes to be made and careers to be built on fostering tribes and nursing grudges.

No wonder the national mood is sour. The way we work, the way we communicate, the way we mate, raise children and grow old: everything is up for grabs. Such rapid change entails a heavy dose of psychic violence.

The historian Henry Adams noted this in his classic autobiography. At the turn of the 20th century, in the dawn of X-rays, automobiles and wireless communication, he found himself standing near a faintly humming electrical generator–the state of the art in unseen power–on display in a Paris exhibition hall. “The new forces were anarchical,” he declared of these invisible, irresistible transformations. “Man had translated himself into a new universe,” and Adams “found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new.”

The new forces were anarchical. With those five words, Adams wrote an apt motto for the chaos and technological disruption to follow, all the way down to this moment. Anarchy is the reign of ungoverned impulses, answering to no authority. It is the political expression of rampant division.

Imagine how many bones Adams would break at the sight of handheld supercomputers, of genome sequencers, of artificial brains chatting amiably about the weather while playing DJ on the kitchen counter. What paralysis might beset him when a simple question concerning a doctor’s bill led him first to a touchscreen, then to a robot, then to a voice caroming off a satellite from a call center in Mumbai or Manila?

On this Independence Day 2016, we may reasonably feel like hostages to our own newfound freedom, blindfolded and bound in the trunk of a careening car called change. And every bruise and contusion we suffer jostling down the rutted road to the future brings us a little closer, or so we fear, to an unseen doom.

On the other hand, July 4th is our annual reminder that America is very good at constant revolution. No matter how buffeted and disjointed by change we may feel, in the end we emerge with the reins in our hands. And this is due–interestingly, ironically–to the very same impulse that currently works to divide us: individualism. Despite the distortions created by the digital upheaval, America’s greatest strength is still its people power.

Our ability to decentralize decisionmaking, to unleash the strength and creativity of individuals, is the bright side of our current situation. From Brussels to Beijing, from Congress to the churches, establishments are reeling, but we still look here to the grassroots and cross our fingers. “The bright side” is not the same as “the easy part”–nothing about these times is easy. But it is the way of hope.

Deep down, Americans have never truly believed in “forces,” anarchical or otherwise. We acknowledge ungovernable trends in technology, demographics, economics; we often let these currents swamp our confidence and spoil our moods. But at the level of cultural inheritance, Americans bridle at the idea of implacable tides, unseen currents and historical fates. Instead of forces, we believe in inventors, reformers, pioneers, tinkerers, artists, visionaries, hackers, even crackpots. Individual people. America’s distinctive contributions to philosophy are Pragmatism and Self-Reliance. We favor improvisation over ideology and seek breakthroughs as we muddle through. This is the land that perfected the self-help book. Even death is not an entirely convincing force to us. The quintessentially American Ray Kurzweil–inventor, dreamer, one of a kind–prefers to give how-to advice on “living long enough to live forever.”

America’s faith in individuals caught the attention of Alexis de Tocqueville during his tour of the nation nearly two centuries ago. The French aristocrat “discerned a pattern he saw as defining how Americans attack problems: regular people initiating action in the context of communities,” notes Paul Carttar of the Bridgespan Group, an authority on the nation’s robust nonprofit and charitable culture. “Today, we can see that, far more than just a pattern of behavior, this describes an essential element of our cultural DNA.”

America is bicycle mechanics who figure out how to fly, newsboys who grow up to invent the lightbulb and scientists in muddy boots who defuse the population bomb by feeding more people on fewer resources. It is world-beating companies birthed in spare bedrooms. America is unplanned, nimble, fake-it-’til-you-make-it. It is tons of spaghetti thrown at thousands of walls in the confidence that somewhere, something will stick.

And when it does stick, that little speck or spark of something can grow to unimagined scale–can even become a neck-breaking force for some later generation to reckon with. The spine of American history is individual biographies: from Ben Franklin, the witty entrepreneur whose knack for science and diplomacy put a new nation on the map; to pioneer oilman Edwin Drake, who drilled Pennsylvania rock in search of an alternative to whale-oil lamps; to a daughter of former slaves, Sarah Breedlove Walker, who built a cosmetics empire from her wits and hard work; to Rachel Carson, the government biologist whose freelance writing helped launch modern environmentalism; to Bill Hewlett and David Packard, whose electronics company–created in a Palo Alto, Calif., garage–made its first big sale to Walt Disney’s movie studio–created in a Kansas City, Mo., garage.

In spite of those stories from the past, American people power looks small in comparison to Globalization, Digitalization, Disintermediation, Radicalization–the entropic forces at large in the world that are both vast and immediate, too big to fully grasp, yet too intrusive to ignore. And people power can easily be mistaken for selfishness, narcissism, irresponsibility.

The reason individualism is, ultimately, a powerful and hopeful thing is that people power leverages American abundance.

This fortunate, imperfect country happens to have more than enough of almost everything a nation could possibly need, thanks to the convergence of geography, conquest, wisdom and luck. America enjoys material abundance, and more abstract riches too. Buffered by oceans to the east and west, and peaceful neighbors to the north and south, America enjoys a degree of security unmatched by world powers in earlier ages. Despite periods of conflict over immigration, and the wasteful foolishness of racism and sexism, our well of human capital never runs dry. American academies and laboratories, richly endowed, produce a steady supply of research. And compared with many countries, we enjoy relatively open exchange of information, freedom of movement and access to finance.

From the beginning, we have argued over shares in this abundance. Who gets how much? What’s fair? What’s efficient? But with rare exceptions, those debates have been more civil than violent, thanks to enduring respect for the rule of law.

When abundance is combined with individualism, America is transformed into a gambler at roulette who bets on every number. Most of the bets don’t pay off–just as most new businesses fail, most ideas prove half-baked, most reforms sputter, and most inventions are quickly obsolete. None of that matters, because the gambler can afford to be wrong a lot, in exchange for getting it right. A system that incorporates failure as an inevitable part of success is the best hope of winning with the highly fallible human race.

Of course, the temptation never fades to put all our chips on a single wager. We become enamored with a leader who claims to have all the answers. We commission experts to design an ideal government bureaucracy. We flirt with ideologies and economic systems–this year we’ve been offered a menu ranging from nationalism to socialism to laissez-faire. Inevitably we wind up disillusioned when the leader falls short, the bureaucracy bogs down, the system or ideology proves impractical.

But somehow, our bone-deep pragmatism endures. America thrives under leaders who inspire initiative in others; we do best when government unleashes the people power. Top-down solutions involve a single bet on one person, one idea, one program. Bottom-up grabs a share of every bet in the whole casino.

In the cyclone of change, there is an impulse to say no. To try and somehow stop it from happening. You can hear it in even the most positive-sounding messages this year. “Make America Great Again”–Trump’s campaign slogan–strikes an upbeat tone. But listen carefully, and it says that America used to be great, until something changed. Bernie Sanders offered “A Future to Believe In.” Which presumably entails saying no to the future already unfolding.

Henry Adams got something right all those years ago in Paris: the anarchical forces of change are too strong to resist. They can only be shaped, perhaps exploited and ultimately lived with. But living with change, learning from it, making the best of it–that’s where the action is. These day-by-day, incremental responses are the true stuff of life, worked out by individuals, in communities, in families, by themselves.

When we look back across 240 years, creaky but wiser, we find the flawed but visionary founders placing their faith in yes instead of no. Yes to human rights, yes to the ideal of equality, yes to living free and to what they brilliantly called the pursuit of happiness. They recognized that life in a constantly modernizing world must be lived on an individual basis. There must be room to flourish and to fail, to dream big or to think small, to build a fortune or simply to tend a window box.

This Fourth of July, we celebrate this legacy. Though our leaders and institutions are having a tough time of it lately, as individuals we’re still going strong.

We see ourselves tackling local problems, undaunted by the knowledge that next week will bring new problems to tackle, and next month, and next year.

We see ourselves reaching out to one another, sharing talents, combining energies, offering comfort to those hurting and encouragement to those striving.

We see ourselves building new strength in once broken places, bending the machine age to serve human dignity, and crafting the perfect ice cream cone.

Under the dark cloud that seems to have settled over our times, we are weaving this silver lining. We individual human beings, pursuing our own happiness in our own imperfect ways, together make our own unstoppable force. Far from helpless in the grip of change, we have inherited a power more potent than any strongman, ideology or terror. It is ageless. Whether it is enough to win the future is a question born anew with each morning.

Safe to say, though: it’s our best bet.