【推文】M.A. Franklin - What happens when the average man, raised in unprecedented comfort, decides he..
連結
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原文及個人翻譯
José Ortega y Gasset watched Europe triple its population in a single century and asked:
What happens when the average man, raised in unprecedented comfort, decides he owes nothing to the civilization that made his life possible?
His answer, written in 1930, predicted the exact world we live in today. (thread) 🧵
何塞·奧爾特加·伊·加塞特目睹了歐洲在一個世紀內將人口翻三倍，並問道： 當普通人，在空前舒適的環境中長大，決定他對創造了他生活可能性的文明沒有任何義務時，會發生什麼？
他的答案發表於1930年，預測了我們今天所處的世界。(續) 🧵
Ortega divided humanity into two types.
Type 1: The noble man. Someone who holds himself to standards beyond what is required. He seeks difficulty. He imposes obligations on himself. Life for him is discipline and striving.
Type 2: The mass-man. Someone content to be identical to everyone else. He demands nothing of himself. He floats. He thinks nothing of watching 5+ hours of TV on a Saturday afternoon.
The mass-man is not defined by income or job title. A factory worker can have a noble soul. A professor can be pure mass-man.
奧爾特加將人類分為兩種：
第一類：高貴的人。他以超越最低要求的標準要求自己。他追求挑戰。他給自己施加義務。對他來說，生活就是紀律和奮鬥。
第二類：大眾人。一個滿足於與其他人完全相同的人。他不要求自己做任何事情。他隨波逐流。他毫不在意在週六下午花5個小時看電視。
大眾人並非由收入或職位來定義。一名工廠工人可以擁有高貴的靈魂。一位教授可以是純粹的大眾人。
The test is simple:
Does this person believe he has the right to opinions he never earned through effort? Does he feel complete without ever having stretched beyond what comes easy?
If yes, you are looking at the mass-man.
Ortega saw mass-men flooding every institution in Europe. Government. Art. Science. Universities. Publishing.
What happens when the mass-man wasn't just consuming culture, but was running it? Gifted a huge inheritance he didn't value or understand?
And more importantly, what produced the mass-man?
測試很簡單： 這個人是否認為他有權擁有那些他從未通過努力獲得的觀點？ 他是否在沒有曾超越容易的事情的情況下就感到滿足？ 如果答案是肯定的，那麼你正在看著一個大眾人。
奧爾特加看到大眾人湧入歐洲的每一個機構：政府、藝術、科學、大學、出版業。 當大眾人不僅僅是在消費文化，而且還在主導文化時會發生什麼？ 他們繼承了一大筆他們不重視或不理解的財產？ 更重要的是，是什麼產生了大眾人？
The 19th century performed the greatest experiment in history. It combined liberal democracy, scientific method, and industrial capitalism.
Europe went from 180 million people to 460 million in just over a hundred years.
That single century produced more material comfort, more safety, more possibility than the previous twelve centuries combined.
The average man born into this world experienced something no human being had ever experienced before.
No famine pressing in. No plague lurking. No rigid caste locking him in place. Roads, medicine, law, comfort, leisure. All of it handed to him at birth like air.
You probably won't be surprised by what this produced. 👇
19世紀進行了有史以來最偉大的實驗。它結合了自由民主、科學方法和工業資本主義。 歐洲在短短一百多年的時間內，從1.8億人增長到4.6億人。 僅此一個世紀就創造了比前十二個世紀總和更多的物質舒適、安全和可能性。
出生在這個世界上的普通人體驗到了前所未有的事物。 沒有飢荒逼近。沒有瘟疫潛伏。沒有嚴格的等級制度將他束縛在原地。道路、醫療、法律、舒適、休閒，所有這些都像空氣一樣在他出生時就賦予了他。 你可能不會對這會產生什麼結果感到驚訝。 👇
It produced the psychology of a spoiled child.
The mass-man looked at civilization's gifts and assumed they were natural. Like sunlight. Like gravity. He used the motor-car but felt zero gratitude toward the centuries of effort that brought it about.
He swallowed the aspirin but never once wondered what it took to invent it.
And all while he consumed the fruit, he burned the tree.
Ortega identified three traits of this new man:
1. He believes life is easy and limitless by default.
2. He considers his own opinions, appetites, and tastes to be excellent without evidence.
3. He intervenes in everything, imposing his views by force, with no respect for expertise or tradition.
These traits probably bring to mind certain people in your life.
它產生了一種被寵壞孩子的心理。
大眾人看待文明的禮物，並認為它們是理所當然的，就像陽光一樣，就像重力一樣。他使用汽車，但對帶來它的幾個世紀的努力沒有任何感激之情。他吞下阿司匹林，但從未想過要發明它需要付出什麼代價。而且，當他享用著果實時，他卻在燒毀樹木。
奧爾特加確定了這種新人類的三個特徵：
他認為生活是輕鬆且無限的，這是預設的。
他認為自己的觀點、慾望和品味非常優秀，而無需任何證據。
他干涉一切事情，強行施加自己的觀點，不尊重專業知識或傳統。
這些特徵可能讓你聯想到你生活中的某些人。
Without the noble man setting standards, Ortega saw four things vanish:
The willingness to listen.
The ability to defer to earned authority.
The discipline required to sustain complex institutions.
The spiritual energy that produces science, art, and genuine political thought.What replaces these? "Direct action." Raw force.
A mob wrecking the bakery because bread is scarce.
One generation of neglect and the jungle returns.
在沒有高貴的人設定標準的情況下，奧爾特加看到四件事情消失：
願意傾聽的意願
向獲得權威的人表示尊重的能力
維持複雜機構所需的紀律
產生科學、藝術和真正政治思想的精神能量
取而代之的是什麼？「直接行動」。原始的力量。
一群人破壞麵包店，因為麵包稀缺。
一代人的忽視，叢林就會回來。
Ortega called this "the vertical invasion of the barbarians."
Not barbarians from outside the gates, but barbarians produced by civilization itself. People who use every tool of the modern world while despising the principles that created those tools.
The new primitive rides in the motor-car but thinks it grew on a tree. Or worse. He thinks it has always existed.
Ortega predicted that science would be the first victim...
Science wouldn't halt, but fewer people would care about pure science. They would demand its products while starving it of devotion.
Doctors and engineers would practice their trades with the same mindset as someone buying aspirin.
Mechanical use with zero understanding of foundations.
奧爾特加稱此為「野蠻人的垂直入侵」。
不是來自城門外的野蠻人，而是由文明本身產生的野蠻人。他們利用現代世界的所有工具，同時鄙視創造這些工具的原則。
新原始人開著汽車，但認為它是從樹上長出來的。或者更糟的是，他認為它一直存在。
奧爾特加預測科學將是第一個受害者…… 科學不會停止發展，但會越來越少的人關心純粹的科學。他們會要求科學產品，同時剝奪其奉獻精神。
醫生和工程師會以與購買阿司匹林的人相同的思維方式來行使他們的職業。
機械性地去使用，而完全不了解基礎知識。
He saw this beginning in the 1920s.
But his most dire prediction was about the State...
The State becomes a button the mass-man presses whenever he wants something.
Got a problem? Demand the government solve it.
Got a creative minority producing something uncomfortable? Crush it with the State's machinery.
Society creates the State to serve it, then the State devours society. The skeleton eats the flesh.
他於 1920 年代看到了這一現象的開始。 但他最可怕的預測是關於國家…… 國家變成了一個按鈕，大眾人可以在想要任何東西時按下它。
遇到問題了嗎？要求政府解決它。有少數群體創造了一些令人不舒服的東西嗎？用國家的機器來壓制它們。
社會創造國家來服務自己，然後國家吞噬了社會。骨骼吃掉了血肉。
The prototype of the mass-man is the specialist.
The man who knows one tiny corner of one science. Formally ignorant of everything outside it, but carrying the confidence of someone who "knows." He has the arrogance of the learned and the blindness of the ignorant combined.
The learned ignoramus.
Taleb named the same phenomenon in his more modern works: the idiot intellectual.
Ortega called liberal democracy "the supreme form of generosity." A system where the majority voluntarily makes room for the minority. Where the strong limit their own power.
He also said humanity would rush to discard it because it is too difficult, too unnatural.
Too demanding of self-restraint.
The mass-man wants power without discipline and authority without obligation.
大眾人的原型是專家。
他只了解一個科學領域的一小部分的人。 他在該領域之外一無所知，但卻懷著「知道」的自信。 他結合了學者的傲慢和無知的盲目性。受過教育的無知者。
塔勒布在他的現代作品中將這種現象命名為：愚蠢的知識分子。
奧爾特加稱自由民主是「最高形式的慷慨」。 一個多數人自願為少數人讓出空間的制度。 權力者限制自己的力量。 他還說，人類會急於放棄它，因為它太困難、太不自然了。 對自我約束要求太高。 大眾人想要沒有紀律的力量和沒有義務的權威。
Modern man is the heir of Western civilization. He inherited everything. He earned nothing. And now he believes the inheritance is his birthright.
A civilization that stops believing in the difficulty of its own existence is already dying, with comfort as the anesthetic.
Ortega watched Fascism rise in Italy and Bolshevism consolidate in Russia.
He saw both as symptoms of the same disease: mass-man playing at governance, borrowing ideas he never generated, repeating every error history had already catalogued.
現代人是西方文明的繼承者。 他繼承了一切。 他沒有賺取過任何東西。 現在，他認為這種遺產是他與生俱來的權利。
一個停止相信自己存在難度的文明已經瀕臨死亡，而舒適則是一種麻醉劑。
奧爾特加目睹了義大利法西斯主義的興起和俄羅斯布爾什維克的鞏固。 他認為這兩種現象都是同一個疾病的症狀：大眾人扮演統治者的角色，借用他們從未創造過的思想，重複歷史已經記錄的所有錯誤。
But Ortega refused to despair...
He believed the West still contained the principle that could save it.
Not a naive nostalgia for the past nor a doubling down of what had already failed.
The answer was a new enterprise large enough to demand discipline again. Something that would force people to become more than they are.
The mass-man only changes when life stops being easy. When it demands something of him again.
但奧爾特加拒絕絕望…… 他相信西方仍然存在可以拯救它的原則。
不是對過去的幼稚懷舊，也不是對已經失敗的事物的加倍投入。
答案是建立一個新的事業，這個事業足夠龐大，能夠再次要求紀律。
某件事會迫使人們成為比他們現在更好的樣子。
只有當生活不再容易時，大眾人才會改變，當它向他們要求一些東西時。
Ortega wrote: "The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but it will tell us what we ought to avoid."
The road back requires rebuilding what the mass-man considers beneath him: obligation, standards, real effort/discipline, and submission to something greater than appetite.
Modern man must seek to become noble again.
To seek difficulty and impose obligations on himself beyond what is required.Modern man must not "return," because that is impossible. But he must foster an aristocratic impulse, stewarding a vision for the future, taking responsibility for the ground placed directly under his feet.
You have been given a glorious inheritance. Don't squander it.
奧爾特加寫道：「過去不會告訴我們應該做什麼，但它會告訴我們應該避免什麼。」 重回正軌的道路需要重建大眾人認為是低下的事物：義務、標準、真正的努力/紀律以及對比慾望更大的事物的臣服。
現代人必須努力再次變得高尚。 尋求困難，並在自己身上施加最低要求以上的義務。
現代人不能「回歸」，因為這是不可能的。 但他必須培養一種貴族精神，為未來制定願景，並承擔直接在他腳下土地上的責任。
你繼承了一份輝煌的遺產。 不要浪費它。