当前位置:中招首页 -> 外语培训 -> 外语天地 -> 品牌英语 -> 许国璋英语 -> |
lesson 57, New Concept English, book 4
2007-09-20 15:23:09 来源:未知 |
In man's early days, competition with other creatures must have been critical. But this phase of our development is now finished. Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. I am sure that, with- out modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone. The last creature
to compete with man was the mosquito. But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays. Competition between ourselves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was. But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evo- lution is no longer essentially physical. Our environment is chiefly conditioned by the things we believe. Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources. Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people even, but because of the different thoughts that exist in the minds of their inhabitants. This is the point I wish to emphasize. The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds. It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. Ideas are dangerous. The Holy office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modem society because when you are inside a community you are condi- tioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us. I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so. Perhaps it will suffice to mention the nuclear bomb. Imagine the effect on a reasonably ad- vanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it. I have often tried to con- ceive of what those pages might contain, but of course I cannot do so because I am a prisoner of the present-day world, just as all of you are. We cannot think outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.
|
|
|
|
|
|
中招在线版权与免责声明:
① 凡本站注明“稿件来源:中招在线”的所有文字、图片和音视频稿件,版权均属本网所有,任何媒体、网站或个人未经本网协议授权不得转载、链接、转贴或以其他方式复制发表。已经本站协议授权的媒体、网站,在下载使用时必须注明"稿件来源:中招在线",违者本站将依法追究责任。
② 本站注明稿件来源为其他媒体的文/图等稿件均为转载稿,本站转载出于非商业性的教育和科研之目的,并不意味着赞同其观点或证实其内容的真实性。如转载稿涉及版权等问题,请作者在两周内速来电或来函联系。 |
|
|