StevenPinker_为你消除对暴力的误解【中英文对照】

1.Images like this, from the Auschwitz concentration camp, have been seared into our consciousness during the 20th century and have given us a new understanding of who we are,
这幅照片摄于奥斯维辛集中营 类似这样的场景构成我们对20世纪的感知的一部分 并且让我们对自身有了新的认识
2.where we’ve come from and the times we live in.
让我们重新审视自己所处的环境和时代
3.During the 20th century, we witnessed the atrocities of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Rwanda and other genocides, and even though the 21st century is only seven years old,
在20世纪里,我们见证了 斯大林、希特勒、毛泽东、波尔布特的种种暴行，卢旺达种族大屠杀等等 尽管21世纪才过了7年
4.we have already witnessed an ongoing genocide in Darfur and the daily horrors of Iraq.
我们也目睹了达富尔正在进行中的种族大屠杀 以及伊拉克频繁的战乱
5.This has led to a common understanding of our situation, namely: that modernity has brought us terrible violence, and perhaps that native peoples lived in a state of harmony that we have departed from to our peril.
这些事件导致我们对现状的如下认识 暴力是现代社会的衍生品 也许，远古人们还能和睦相处，而今人已经做不到这点了
6.Here is an example from an op-ed on Thanksgiving in the Boston Globe a couple of years ago, where the writer wrote, “The Indian life
我可以举一个例子 几年前，波士顿环球报中有一篇专栏文章 作者关于感恩节写道
7.was a difficult one, but there were no employment problems, community harmony was strong, substance abuse unknown, crime nearly non-existent, what warfare there was between tribes
“虽然印第安人生活艰苦，但是他们不会面临失业问题 他们邻里和睦，没有人滥用毒品 基本上没有犯罪，即使在两个部落之间爆发战争
8.was largely ritualistic and seldom resulted in indiscriminate or wholesale slaughter.” Now, you’re all familiar with this treacle.
也通常是形式上的，鲜有导致部族歧视和大规模屠杀” 大家对于这种论调已经耳熟能详了
9.We teach it to our children; we hear it on television and in story books. Now, the original title of this session was, “Everything You Know Is Wrong,” and I’m going to present evidence
我们从电视及书本中了解到这些，并且这样教育孩子 这个讲座最初定的题目是 “你所知道的错误信息”，我现在就要给出证据
10.that this particular part of our common understanding is wrong: that in fact our ancestors were far more violent than we are, that violence has been in decline for long stretches of time,
推翻大家原先对于暴力的一些认识 实际上，我们的祖先要比我们暴力得多 随着时间的推移，暴力出现的频率一直在走低
11.and that today we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.
我想现在很有可能正处于人类历史上最和平的时期
12.Now, in the decade of Darfur and Iraq, a statement like that might seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. But I’m going to try to convince you
在这个达富尔和伊拉克烽烟四起的年代 说是史上最和平的年代，听上去像天方夜谭 但是我现在就要向你证明
13.that that is the correct picture. The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years,
事实就是如此。暴力行为的减少趋势 呈现不规律性。可以以千年、 百年、十年或年为单位观察
14.although there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the 16th century. One sees it all over the world, although not homogeneously.
尽管在16世纪的理性时代初期 似乎存在过一个最高点。 这是普遍现象，而不局限在一地
15.It’s especially evident in the West, beginning with England and Holland around the time of the Enlightenment.
在西方尤其明显，从英国 和荷兰在启蒙时期开始
16.Let me take you on a journey of several powers of 10 — from the millennium scale to the year scale — to try to persuade you of this. Until 10,000 years ago, all humans
让我带你看看以10为衡量方式的一些权利– 从以千年为单位到以年为单位 来试着告诉你们这点。直到一万年前
17.lived as hunter-gatherers, without permanent settlements or government. And this is the state that’s commonly thought to be one of primordial harmony. But the archaeologist
人类以打猎为生，没有固定聚居地、政府 这个状态通常被认为是 原始的和谐状态。
18.Lawrence Keeley, looking at casualty rates among contemporary hunter-gatherers — which is our best source of evidence about this way of life — has shown a rather different conclusion.
但考古学家Lawrence Keeley 通过观察当代狩猎者的死亡率——这类生活方式 最好的证据来源——得出了不同的结论
19.Here is a graph that he put together showing the percentage of male deaths due to warfare in a number of foraging or hunting and gathering societies.
这是他统计出的图表 显示出在一些游牧民族中 男性因战争而死所占的比列
20.The red bars correspond to the likelihood that a man will die at the hands of another man, as opposed to passing away of natural causes, in a variety of foraging societies
红色条表示男性死于其他人之手的可能性 对应自然死亡 数据源于新几内亚高地和亚马逊雨林的
21.in the New Guinea Highlands and the Amazon Rainforest.
一些游牧民族
22.And they range from a rate of almost a 60 percent chance that a man will die at the hands of another man to, in the case of the Gebusi,
游牧民族成员死于他人之手的比例 在Gebusi民族的接近60%
23.only a 15 percent chance. The tiny little blue bar in the lower left hand corner plots the corresponding statistic from United States
和15%之间变换。左下角的蓝色条 描绘了在20世纪的美国和欧洲
24.and Europe in the 20th century, and includes all the deaths of both World Wars. If the death rate in tribal warfare had prevailed during the 20th century, there would have been two billion deaths rather than 100 million.
相应的数据，包括了 两次世界大战的死者。如果部落战争中的死亡率是普遍现象 那么在20世纪，死于战争的人数应该是20亿而不是1亿
25.Also at the millennium scale, we can look at the way of life of early civilizations such as the ones described in the Bible. And in this supposed source of our moral values
同样以千年为范围 我们来看看被记录在圣经中的早期文明生活方式 在圣经这本我们理论上的道德准则中
26.one can read descriptions of what was expected in warfare, such as the following from Numbers 31: “And they warred against the Midianites as the Lord commanded Moses,
我们可以看到对于战争行为的描述 比如民数记31中所记载的： “他们就照耶和华所吩咐摩西的，与米甸人打仗，
27.and they slew all the males. And Moses said unto them, ‘Have you saved all the women alive? Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man
杀了所有的男丁。摩西对他们说： 你们要存留这一切妇女的活命么？所以， 你们要把一切的男孩和所有已嫁的女子都杀了。
28.by lying with him, but all the women children that have not know a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.'” In other words,
但女孩子中，凡没有出嫁的， 你们都可以存留他的活命。”换句话说
29.kill the men, kill the children, if you see any virgins then you can keep them alive so that you can rape them.
杀掉男人和小孩，但如果看到少女 就可以留下活口来占有她们。
30.You can find four or five passages in the Bible of this ilk.
在圣经中能找到四、五段这样的记录
31.Also in the Bible one sees that the death penalty was the accepted punishment for crimes such as homosexuality, adultery, blasphemy, idolatry, talking back to your parents —
同样，在圣经中死刑是种可接受的惩罚方式 对于例如同性恋、通奸、 语秽、盲目崇拜、说父母坏话—
32.(Laughter) — and picking up sticks on the Sabbath.
(笑声)—在安息日劳动等罪行
33.Well, let’s click the zoom lens down one order of magnitude and look at the century scale.
现在，让我们放大一格 来观察下以世纪为单位的数据
34.Although we don’t have statistics for warfare throughout the Middle Ages to modern times, we know just from conventional history — the evidence
尽管我们没有从中世纪到现代的 所有战争数据 我们仅仅依据现有历史—
35.has been under our nose all along that there has been a reduction in socially sanctioned forms of violence.
人类社会所支持的暴力行为一直在减少 这样的证据一直近在眼前
36.For example, any social history will reveal that mutilation and torture were routine forms of criminal punishment. The kind of infraction
例如，任何文明史都曾记录 截肢或酷刑是常见的罪行惩罚方式。
37.today that would give you a fine, in those days would result in your tongue being cut out, your ears being cut off, you being blinded,
现在只能让你被罚款的违规，在过去可能导致 割舌，割耳，挖眼
38.a hand being chopped off and so on.
斩手等结果
39.There were numerous ingenious forms of sadistic capital punishment: burning at the stake, disemboweling, breaking on the wheel, being pulled apart by horses and so on.
世界各地有无数种斩首的变态方式 捆在木装上烧，开膛破肚，车裂 五马分尸等等
40.The death penalty was a sanction for a long list of non-violent crimes: criticizing the king, stealing a loaf of bread. Slavery, of course,
而能处以死刑的非暴力罪行有长长的列表： 比如批评国王，偷面包。当然，奴隶制
41.was the preferred labor-saving device, and cruelty was a popular form of entertainment. Perhaps the most vivid example was the practice of cat burning, in which a cat was hoisted
是种理想的节约劳力的制度，而残忍行为 则被当作流行的娱乐方式。也许最生动的例子 是火烧猫的行为。猫在平台上被吊起来
42.on a stage and lowered in a sling into a fire, and the spectators shrieked in laughter as the cat, howling in pain, was burned to death.
通过吊索被慢慢放入火里 猫在火中痛苦地嚎叫直到被烧死 围观的人发出愉快的尖叫
43.What about one-on-one murder? Well, there there are good statistics, because many municipalities recorded the cause of death.
那么一对一的凶杀呢？这个有据可查 因为许多市政当局记录了死因
44.The criminologist Manuel Eisner scoured all of the historical records across Europe for homicide rates in any village, hamlet, town, county
犯罪学家Manuel Eisner 整理了欧洲的所有历史记录 涉及他能找到的乡、村、镇、县的凶杀率
45.that he could find, and he supplemented them with national data when nations started keeping statistics.
然后综合了有数据记录以来的 所有国家数据
46.He plotted on a logarithmic scale, going from 100 deaths per 100,000 people per year, which was approximately the rate of homicide in the Middle Ages. And the figure plummets down
他用对数表示，从每年每十万人中 100例死亡，略等于中世纪的凶杀案发率 数据降低到了
47.to less than one homicide per 100,000 people per year in seven or eight European countries. Then there is a slight uptick in the 1960s. The people who said that rock ‘n roll would lead
每年每十万人中少于1例死亡率 在7、8个欧洲国家。然后1960年代稍有上涨 那些说摇滚导致了道德丧失的部分人
48.to the decline of moral values actually had a grain of truth to that.
确实有一定道理
49.But there was a decline from at least two orders of magnitude in homicide from the Middle Ages to the present, and the elbow occurred in the early 16th century.
但谋杀率数据减少至少有两个数量级 从中世纪到现在 数据拐角出现在16世纪初期
50.Let’s click down to the decade scale.
接下来以十年为单位观察
51.According to non-governmental organizations that keep such statistics, since 1945 in Europe and the Americas there has been a steep decline in interstate wars,
根据一些非政府组织的相关数据 从1945年起，在欧洲和美洲 国家间战争、严重种族暴乱和军事政变
52.in deadly ethnic riots or pogroms and in military coups, even in South America. Worldwide, there’s been a steep decline in deaths in interstate wars. The yellow bars here show the number
数量急剧减少 即使在南美也是如此。在世界范围内 国家间战争的死亡率也急速下降。这里的黄色条
53.of deaths per war per year from 1950 to the present.
显示从1950年到现在每年每场战争的死亡数
54.And, as you can see, the death rate goes down from 65,000 deaths per conflict per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 deaths per conflict per year in this decade, as horrific as it is.
正如你所见，死亡人数从1950年的65000例 每场战争每年，到近十年的2000例 每场战争每年，尽管这些战争显得很残酷。
55.Even in the year scale one can see a decline of violence.
就算是以年为单位也能看出暴力的减少
56.Since the end of the Cold War there have been fewer civil wars, fewer genocides — indeed, a 90 percent reduction since post-World War II highs —
自从冷战终结，内战便很少发生 种族灭绝几乎绝迹。其实，数据从二战之后的最高点降低了90%
57.and even a reversal of the 1960s uptick in homicide and violent crime.
即使在60年代凶杀率和暴力行为有小的上升
58.This is from the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics: you can see that there is a fairly low rate of violence in the ’50s and the ’60s, then it soared upward for several decades and began
这是联邦调查局犯罪统计数据。从中可知 在50至60年代暴力行为发生率相对较低 经历几十年的上升
59.a precipitous decline, starting in the 1990s, so that it went back almost to the level that was last enjoyed in 1960.
在90年代开始骤降 直至回到60年代的水平
60.President Clinton, if you’re here, thank you.
克林顿总统，如果你在的话，非常感谢
61.(Laughter) So the question is: why are so many people so wrong about something so important? I think there are a number of reasons.
(笑声) 所以问题是：为什么对于如此重要的问题 有这么多人都持错误观点呢？我想原因很多
62.One of them is we have better reporting: “The Associated Press is a better chronicler of wars over the surface of the Earth than 16th-century monks were.”
其一是有了更多的媒体报道。“在这个世界上， 美联社是比16世纪的僧人 更好的战争编年体作者。”
63.There’s a cognitive illusion: we cognitive psychologists know that the easier it is to recall specific instances of something, the higher the probability that you assign to it.
有这样一个认知幻觉：我们认知学家知道 越容易回忆一些具体的事情， 你就越容易去做。
64.Things that we read about in the paper with gory footage burn into memory more than reports of a lot more people dying in their beds of old age. There are dynamics in the opinion
我们每天读报纸中的血淋淋的描写 它们对我们记忆的影响远远大于更多人在床上老死的报道。 观点和市场宣传上有这么一说：
65.and advocacy markets: no one ever attracted observers, advocates and donors by saying “things just seem to be getting better and better.”
没有人能靠仅仅是说 “事情会变得越来越好的。” 来吸引围观者，宣讲者和捐赠者们
66.(Laughter) There’s guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.
(笑声) 在现代文明社会，我们对待本土人的方式 以及不情愿承认西方文化一些好的方面 让我们觉得内疚
67.And of course, our change in standards can outpace the change in behavior. One of the reasons violence went down is that people got sick of the carnage and cruelty in their time.
当然，我们标准的变化超过了我们行为的变化。 暴力下降的众多原因之一 人们对他们那时的屠杀和残忍性已经厌倦了。
68.That’s a process that seems to be continuing, but if it outstrips behavior by the standards of the day, things always look more barbaric than they would have been
那个过程可能看起来还在继续， 但是如果按照现在的标准它超过了行为， 事情比他们从历史标准上看来
69.by historic standards. So today, we get exercised — and rightly so — if a handful of murderers get executed by lethal injection in Texas after a 15-year appeal process. We don’t consider
要变得更加野蛮。所以，现在，我们受到训练–很应该地– 如果有一小撮杀人犯经过15年的上诉程序 在得克萨斯受到注射死刑的惩罚。我们不认为
70.that a couple of hundred years ago they may have been burned at the stake for criticizing the king after a trial that lasted 10 minutes — and indeed, that that would have been repeated
在几百年前，他们会因为批评国王 在经过10分钟的审判后 被处以火刑–的确，那种情形可能会
71.over and over. Today we look at capital punishment as evidence of how low our behavior can sink, rather than how high our standards have risen.
重复发生。今天，我们把极刑看成 我们行为沦落程度的证据 而不是我们的标准上升到多高的程度。
72.Well, why has violence declined? No one really knows, but I have read four explanations, all of which, I think, have some grain of plausibility. The first is: maybe
那么，为什么暴力下降了呢？没有人能真正回答这个问题， 但是，我读到过四种解释，我认为， 还是比较可信的。第一种解释是：或许
73.Thomas Hobbes got it right. He was the one who said that life in a state of nature was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Not because, he argued,
托马斯霍布斯是正确的。他说过 自然状态下的生命是“孤独，贫穷，肮脏，野蛮 和短暂的。”不是因为，他申辩到，
74.humans have some primordial thirst for blood, or aggressive instinct or territorial imperative, but because of the logic of anarchy. In a state of anarchy
人们对血腥行为，进攻本能或领土保护 的原始本能， 而是因为无政府状态的逻辑型。在无政府状态下，
75.there’s a constant temptation to invade your neighbors preemptively, before they invade you. More recently Thomas Schelling gives the analogy of a homeowner who hears a rustling
在你的邻居侵犯你之前抢先侵占他们 是个永恒的诱惑。最近，托马斯霍布斯 将一个故事作为比喻。一位房东听到地下室沙沙的声音，
76.in the basement. Being a good American, he has a pistol in the nightstand, pulls out his gun, and walks down the stairs.
作为一位好美国公民，他的床头柜里有一把手枪 于是他装上子弹，走下楼梯。
77.And what does he see but a burglar with a gun in his hand.
他看到一个盗贼正拿着一把抢。
78.Each of them is thinking, “I don’t really want to kill that guy, but he’s about to kill me.
他们两个人都在想， “我不想杀掉那个人，但是他可能会杀我。