lessontwo年轻人的四种选择.docxVIP

葛优大哥《高级英语》自学笔记 上册第2课“年轻人的四种选择” PAGE 7 / NUMPAGES 7 Lesson Two Four Choices for Young People 年轻人的四种选择 Text Shortly before his graduation, Jim Binns, president of the senior class at Stanford University, wrote me about some of his misgivings. “More than any other generation,” he said, “our generation views the adult world with great skepticism… there is also an increased tendency to reject completely that world.” 在毕业前不久，斯坦福大学毕业班班主席吉姆·滨丝给我写了一封信，谈到了他的一些不安。他在信中说：“与其他任何一代人相比，我们这一代人在看待成人世界时抱有更大的疑虑……同时越来越倾向于全盘否定成人世界。” Apparently he speaks for a lot of his contemporaries. During the last few years, I have listened to scores of young people, in college and out, who were just as nervous about the grown-up world. Roughly, their attitude might be summed up about like this: “The world is in pretty much of a mess, full of injustice, poverty, and war. The people responsible are, presumably, the adults who have been running things. If they can’t do better than that, what have they got to teach our generation? That kind of lesson we can do without.” 显然他的话代表了许多同龄人的观点，在过去的几年中，我听到过大学内外许多年轻人的谈话，他们对成人世界同样也感到不安。大致来说，他们的态度可以归纳如下：“这个世界处于混乱的状态，到处充满不平等、贫困和战争。对此该负责的大概应该是那些管理这个世界的成年人吧。如果他们仅能做到这些，他们又能拿什么来教育我们呢？这样的教导，我们根本不需要。” These conclusions strike me as reasonable, at least from their point of view. The relevant question for the arriving generation is not whether our society is imperfect (we can take that for granted), but how to deal with it. For all its harshness and irrationality, it is the only world we’ve got. Choosing a strategy to cope with it, then, is the first decision young adults have to make, and usually the most important decision of their lifetime. So far as I have been able to discover, there only four basic alternatives: 我觉得这些结论合情合理，至少从他们的角度来看是这样的。对于成长中的这辈人来说，有价值的问题不是社会是否不完美（我们认为那是当然的），而是应该怎样对待这个社会。尽管这个社会严酷而荒谬，但它毕竟是我们惟一拥有的世界。因此选择一个策略去应付这个社会是刚刚步入成年的年轻人必须做出的第一个决定。依我看只有四种基本选择： Ⅰ、Drop Out 脱离传统社会 This is one of the oldest expedients, and it can be practiced anywhere, at any age