Lesson 18 Those Rugged Individuals
美国个体主义价值观
    No ideal may be held more sacred in America, or be more coveted by others, than the principle of individual freedom.
在美国，没有什么理想比个人自由原则更神圣，也没有什么理想比个人自由原则更令人垂涎。
Given the chance to pursue the heart's desires, our Utopian vision claims, each of us has the ability and the right to make our dreams come true.
我们乌托邦式的愿景宣称，只要有机会去追求内心的渴望，我们每个人都有能力和权利去实现自己的梦想。
This extraordinary individualism has prevailed as the core doctrine of the New World through four centuries, bringing with it an unrelenting pressure to prove one's self.
四个世纪以来，这种非凡的个人主义一直是新世界的核心信条，随之而来的是证明自我的无情
压力。
The self-made man has been America's durable icon, whether personified by the prairie homesteader or the high-tech entrepreneur.'
白手起家的人是美国经久不衰的偶像，无论是草原上的农场主还是高科技企业家都是他们的化身。”
    Yet, from the beginning,the idea of a community of rugged individualists struck many as an oxymoron. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville warned that the tendency of Americans to do their own thing could very likely doom the country.
然而，从一开始，由粗犷的个人主义者组成的社会这个想法就给许多人以矛盾的感觉。19世纪30年代，亚历克西斯·德·托克维尔(Alexis de Tocqueville3)警告说，美国人自行其是的倾向很可能会让这个国家走向灭亡。
The Founding Fathers be seeched people to remain involved in community affairs.
开国元勋们鼓励人们继续参与社区事务。
And today, a chorus of critics worries that the philosophy of individualism has slipped its original moorings, threatening the well-being of the nation and, ironically, individuals themselves.
今天，许多批评家担心个人主义哲学已经失去了它最初的根基，威胁到国家的福祉，讽刺的是，也威胁到个人本身。
    When the United States first came into being, most people had never even heard the word individualism.
当美国刚形成时，大多数人甚至从未听说过个人主义这个词。
"Our fathers only knew about egoism," said Tocqueville, who helped coin the term to capture the new way of life in the fledgling nation.Europe, where caste systems determined so much of one's fate, had never had much practical use for individualism.
“我们的父辈只知道自我主义，”托克维尔说，他帮助创造了这个词来捕捉这个新兴国家的新生活方式。在欧洲，种姓制度在很大程度上决定了一个人的命运，个人主义在实际中从未发
挥过多大作用。
Born of the Protestant Reformation,the ethos was carried across the Atlantic by the Puritans, who believed that each person received marching orders directly from God.
这种精神诞生于新教改革，并被清教徒带到了大西洋彼岸。清教徒相信，每个人都直接接受了上帝下达的行军命令。
In their new society, the reformers decided, people would interact as equals, and God would reward the just.
改革者们决定，在他们的新社会里，人们将平等互动，上帝将奖励公正的人。
Their reasoning appealed to other groups landing in the New World, and over time, says Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington,"The Puritan legacy became the American essence."
他们的推理吸引了其他抵达新大陆的体，随着时间的推移，哈佛政治学家塞缪尔·亨廷顿说，“清教徒的遗产成为了美国的精髓。”
    The first American individualists were thoroughly steeped in a one-for-all mentality on the assumption that all moral persons would devote themselves to the good of the group.
第一批美国个人主义者完全沉浸在“人人为我”的心态中，他们认为所有有道德的人都会为集体的利益而献身。
Just before landing in Salem Harbor, John Winthrop, the soon-to-be governor of Massachusetts, reminded parishioners:
就在抵达塞勒姆港之前，即将成为马萨诸塞州州长的约翰·温斯洛普提醒教区居民:
"We must ...make others' conditions our own ... always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body."
“我们必须…把别人的情况变成自己的……在我们面前，我们的社会是一个整体。”
And even as Thomas Jefferson wrote of the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, he pictured a nation of independent yeomen who, after tending their land all day, would gladly participate in community meetings.
即使托马斯·杰斐逊在论述自由和追求幸福的权利时，他也描绘了一个由独立的自耕农组成的国家，这些自耕农在开垦了一整天的土地后，会很高兴地参加社区会议。
Singing solo. wrote怎么读
独唱
Not until the mid-1800s did the pursuit of individual fulfillment come to connote a retreat from the group.
直到19世纪中期，对个人成就感的追求才意味着退出集体。
Ralph Waldo Emerson first preached the concept in his 1841 essay"Self-Reliance."' "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members," he declared. "Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist."
拉尔夫•沃尔多•爱默生(Ralph Waldo Emerson)在他1841年的文章《自立》(self -自强)中首次宣扬了这一概念。他宣称:“世界各地的社会都在密谋反对每一个社会成员的男子气概。”“要成为男人，就必须是不墨守成规的人。”
For him, the self was more important, more interesting, than the group. "I have only one doctrine," he wrote: "the infinitude of the private man." Emerson' s friend Henry David Thoreau went further, deeming it necessary for him to physically part with society to develop his own integrity.
对他来说，自我比体更重要，更有趣。“我只有一个信条，”他写道:“个人的无限。”爱默生的朋友亨利·大卫·梭罗(Henry David Thoreau)则更进一步，认为他有必要脱离社会，以发展自己的正直。
And Walt Whitman, in poems such as"Song of Myself," introduced to the country what Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah calls "expressive individualism," the valuing of personal pleasures such as sensuality and leisure above all else—something that would have been an athema in the religion-dominated Colonies.

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。