Fareed Zakaria on the Age of Revolutions, the Power of Ideas, and the Rewards of Intellectual Curiosity (Ep. 208)

Special thanks to an anonymous donor who “supports the mission of CWT” for sponsoring this transcript.

特别感谢一位“支持 CWT 使命”的匿名捐赠者赞助这份文字记录。

I got to know him when I was 10 years old.

我10岁时就认识了他。

He was my mom’s boss.

他是我妈妈的老板。

My mother worked at a magazine called the Illustrated Weekly of India.

我母亲在一家名为《印度画报周刊》的杂志社工作。

He was an extraordinary character.

他是一个非凡的人物。

He was a novelist who had also been a diplomat, and then he had become editor of this magazine.

他是一名小说家，也曾是一名外交官，然后他成为了这本杂志的编辑。

He was a kind of intellectual — I don’t know that we have as many of these kinds of people as we used to.

他是一位知识分子——我不知道我们现在这样的人还没有以前那么多了。

He was a novelist who won a couple of awards for his books.

他是一位小说家，曾因其著作获得过多项奖项。

He was a great lover of the English language and of poetry, in particular.

他非常热爱英语，尤其是诗歌。

It was infectious.

它具有传染性。

He gave me this real love of the language and love of poetry that I still have to this day.

他给了我对语言和诗歌的真正热爱，直到今天我仍然如此。

He, in a sense, taught me how to write, made me understand what good writing was, turned me on to people like George Orwell.

从某种意义上说，他教会了我如何写作，让我明白什么是好的写作，让我对乔治·奥威尔这样的人产生了兴趣。

I just have this very fond memory.

我只是拥有这段非常美好的回忆。

He also taught me how to play tennis, how to swim, all kinds of things.

他还教我如何打网球、如何游泳等等各种各样的事情。

My father was not very athletic, so he filled that role in a way.

我父亲的运动能力不太好，所以他在某种程度上填补了这个角色。

So, that’s who he is.

所以，他就是这样的人。

As you know, the list is long.

如您所知，这个清单很长。

I tried to go through everybody who had really helped me along the way.

我试着回顾一下一路上真正帮助过我的每个人。

I think I looked this up once, but Henry Kissinger’s memoirs came out when I was 14, I think.

我想我查过一次，但我想亨利·基辛格的回忆录是在我 14 岁的时候出版的。

I remember reading them because I remember my mom — at that point, she was working at the Times of India.

我记得读过它们是因为我记得我的妈妈——当时她在《印度时报》工作。

They excerpted it.

他们摘录了它。

I remember telling her that they had chosen some of the wrong excerpts, that there were other parts that would have been better.

我记得告诉她他们选择了一些错误的摘录，还有其他部分会更好。

I must have read enough of it to have had an opinion.

我一定读了足够多的内容才能发表意见。

On his father’s socialism

论他父亲的社会主义

He was politically so interesting and forward-leaning, but he was a hopeless social — a sort of social democrat, but veering towards socialism.

他在政治上非常有趣且具有前瞻性，但他是一个绝望的社会主义者——一种社会民主党人，但却转向了社会主义。

Both these guys were.

这两个人都是。

Here’s why, I think.

我想这就是原因。

For that whole generation of people — by the way, my father got a scholarship to London University and went to study with Harold Laski, the great British socialist economist.

对于那一代人来说——顺便说一下，我父亲获得了伦敦大学的奖学金，跟随英国伟大的社会主义经济学家哈罗德·拉斯基学习。

Laski told him, “You are actually not an economist; you are a historian.” So, my father went on and got a PhD at London University in Indian history.

拉斯基告诉他：“你实际上不是经济学家；你是历史学家。”因此，我父亲继续在伦敦大学获得印度历史博士学位。

That whole generation of Indians who wanted independence were imbued with .

整整一代想要独立的印度人都充满了这种渴望。

.

。

.

。

There were two things going on.

有两件事正在发生。

One, the only people in Britain who supported Indian independence were the Labour Party and the Fabian Socialists.

第一，英国唯一支持印度独立的人是工党和费边社会主义者。

All their allies were all socialists.

他们所有的盟友都是社会主义者。

There was a common cause and there was a symbiosis because these were your friends, these were your allies, these were the only people supporting you, the cause that mattered the most to you in your life.

有一个共同的事业，也有一种共生关系，因为这些是你的朋友，这些是你的盟友，这些是唯一支持你的人，这些事业对你来说是生命中最重要的。

The second part was, a lot of people who came out of third-world countries felt, “We are never going to catch up with the West if we just wait for the market to work its way over hundreds of years.” They looked at, in the ’30s, the Soviet Union and thought, “This is a way to accelerate modernization, industrialization.” They all were much more comfortable with the idea of something that sped up the historical process of modernization.

第二部分是，许多来自第三世界国家的人感到，“如果我们只是等待市场发挥作用数百年，我们永远无法赶上西方。”他们观察了20世纪30年代的苏联并认为：“这是加速现代化、工业化的一种方式。”他们都对加速现代化历史进程的想法感到更加满意。

My own view was, that was a big mistake, though I do think there are elements of what the state was able to do that perhaps were better done in a place like South Korea than in India, but that really explains it.

我自己的观点是，这是一个很大的错误，尽管我确实认为国家能够做的某些事情也许在韩国这样的地方比在印度做得更好，但这确实解释了这一点。

My father was in Britain in ’45 as a student.

45 年，我父亲在英国读书。

As a British subject then, you got to vote in the election if you were in London, if you were in Britain.

作为英国臣民，如果你在伦敦，如果你在英国，你就必须在选举中投票。

I said to him, “Who did you vote for in the 1945 election?” Remember, this is the famous election right after World War II, in which Churchill gets defeated, and he gets up the next morning and looks at the papers, and his wife says to him, “Darling, it’s a blessing in disguise.” He says, “Well, at the moment it seems very effectively disguised.”

我对他说：“1945 年的选举你把票投给了谁？”请记住，这是二战后著名的选举，丘吉尔在这次选举中失败了，第二天早上他起床看报纸，他的妻子对他说：“亲爱的，这真是因祸得福。”他说：“嗯，目前看来它伪装得非常有效。”

My father voted in that election.

我父亲在那次选举中投票了。

I said to him, “You’re a huge fan of Churchill,” because I’d grown up around all the Churchill books, and my father could quote the speeches.

我对他说，“你是丘吉尔的超级粉丝”，因为我是在所有丘吉尔书籍的陪伴下长大的，我父亲可以引用这些演讲。

I said, “Did you vote for Churchill?” He said, “Oh good lord, no.” I said, “Why?

我说：“你投票给丘吉尔了吗？”他说：“天哪，不。”我说：“为什么？

I thought you were a great admirer of his.” He said, “Look, on the issue that mattered most to me in life, he was an unreconstructed imperialist.

我以为你是他的崇拜者。”他说：“看，在我生命中最重要的问题上，他是一个顽固的帝国主义者。

A vote for Labour was a vote for Indian independence.

投票给工党就是投票给印度独立。

A vote for Churchill was a vote for the continuation of the empire.” That, again, is why their friends were all socialists.

投票给丘吉尔就是投票给帝国的延续。”这又是为什么他们的朋友都是社会主义者的原因。

On the Bengali intelligentsia

论孟加拉知识分子

Milton Friedman used to say that there are two groups of people who don’t like the free market.

米尔顿·弗里德曼曾经说过，有两类人不喜欢自由市场。

Academics, intellectuals because they think they can do it better than the market, and businessmen because they don’t like competition.

学者、知识分子，因为他们认为自己可以比市场做得更好，商人，因为他们不喜欢竞争。

What they really want — this is a variation of the Peter Thiel argument — what they all really want is to be monopolists.

他们真正想要的是——“这是彼得泰尔论点的变体”——“他们真正想要的是成为垄断者。

That former part is, I think, what explains the Bengali intellectuals.

我认为前一部分可以解释孟加拉知识分子。

By the way, many of the policy intellectuals of India in the ’50s and ’60s, who were very much socialists, were brilliant.

顺便说一句，印度 50 年代和 60 年代的许多政策知识分子都是非常出色的社会主义者。

This is not a case of stupid people.

这不是愚蠢的人的情况。

They were all educated at places like Berkeley and the London School of Economics and Harvard.

他们都在伯克利、伦敦经济学院和哈佛大学等地接受过教育。

We see the same phenomenon now, when you watch the Biden administration putting in all these rules about chip making and things like that.

现在，当你看到拜登政府制定有关芯片制造之类的所有规则时，我们会看到同样的现象。

They think they can figure out the direction the economy is going in, the way it should be guided.

他们认为自己能够弄清楚经济的发展方向以及经济的引导方式。

I think that the reality is, the market is much more powerful than they are in these areas.

我认为现实是，市场在这些领域比他们强大得多。

To give you one simple example, they decided, “Okay, we need to be making high-end chips.” Who do they bet on?

举一个简单的例子，他们决定：“好吧，我们需要制造高端芯片。”他们赌谁？

They bet on Intel, a company that has failed miserably to compete with TSMC, the great Taiwanese chip manufacturer.

他们押注于英特尔，这家公司在与台湾芯片制造商台积电的竞争中惨败。

Intel is now getting multi-billion-dollar grants from the United States government, from the European Union, because it fills all the categories that you’re looking for: big company, stable and well-run, in some sense, can guarantee a lot of jobs.

英特尔现在正在从美国政府、欧盟获得数十亿美元的资助，因为它满足了你所寻找的所有类别：大公司，稳定且运营良好，从某种意义上说，可以保证大量就业机会。

But of course, the reality is that chip making is so complicated.

但当然，现实是芯片制造是如此复杂。

The future of chip making seems to be moving to companies like Nvidia and AMD and Micron, leaving Intel far behind.

芯片制造的未来似乎正在转向英伟达、AMD 和美光等公司，将英特尔远远抛在了后面。

Intel had lost the last war and got rewarded for its failure by being given a check by the US government, saying try again, and now it seems failing in this next war.

英特尔在上一场战争中失败了，并因失败而得到了美国政府的奖励，并说再试一次，现在它似乎在下一场战争中失败了。

Who knew that, actually, it’s Nvidia, whose chips turned out to be designed for gaming, turned out to be ideal for artificial intelligence?

谁知道，实际上是英伟达，它的芯片原来是为游戏而设计的，却是人工智能的理想选择？

That’s a perfect example of how the Hayekian market signals that come bottom-up are much more powerful than a political elite who tries to tell you what it is.

这是一个完美的例子，说明了自下而上的哈耶克市场信号比试图告诉你它是什么的政治精英要强大得多。

But to answer your question, political elites love the idea that political elites get to direct the economy.

但要回答你的问题，政治精英喜欢政治精英指导经济的想法。

On religious experience

论宗教体验

The second thing I would say is an admiration for Christianity for its extraordinary emphasis on being nice to people who have not been lucky in life.

我要说的第二件事是对基督教的钦佩，因为它非常强调善待生活中不幸运的人。

I would say that’s, to me, the central message of Christianity that I take, certainly from the Sermon on the Mount, and it’s imbued through the Book of Common Prayer: to be nice to the people who have been less fortunate than you.

我想说，对我来说，这就是我从登山宝训中学到的基督教的核心信息，它也通过公祷书渗透其中：善待那些比你不幸的人。

Be nice to poor people.

对穷人好一点。

Recognize that in God’s kingdom, the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

认识到在神的国度里，最先的将是最后的，最后的将是最先的。

There is an enormous emphasis on the idea that those things that make you powerful in this world are not the things that really matter, that your dignity as a human being doesn’t come from that.

人们非常强调这样一种观点：那些让你在这个世界上变得强大的东西并不是真正重要的东西，你作为一个人的尊严也不是来自于此。

I think that’s a very powerful idea.

我认为这是一个非常强大的想法。

It’s a very revolutionary idea.

这是一个非常革命性的想法。

Tom Holland has a very good book about this.

汤姆·赫兰德（Tom Holland）有一本关于这方面的好书。

He’s a wonderful historian in Britain.

他是英国一位出色的历史学家。

I think it’s called Dominion.

我想这就是所谓的统治。

I think that one of the most sickening things to look at in America is these televangelists who take advantage of ordinary people and their faith.

我认为在美国最令人作呕的事情之一就是这些电视布道者利用普通人和他们的信仰。

Clearly, to me, they seem to have constructed an elaborate and deeply corrupt racket out of the whole thing.

显然，在我看来，他们似乎从整件事中精心策划了一个极其腐败的骗局。

I think there’s something about it architecturally, which is that there is a serenity about it.

我认为它在建筑上有一些东西，那就是它有一种宁静。

Sometimes you can find Hindu temples that are very elaborate.

有时您会发现非常精致的印度教寺庙。

Sikhism is a kind of offshoot of Hinduism.

锡克教是印度教的一个分支。

The Hindu temples can be very elaborate, but very elaborate and ornate.

印度教寺庙可以非常精致，但是非常精致和华丽。

This somehow has a simplicity to it.

这在某种程度上很简单。

When you add to that the water — I’ve always thought that water adds an enormously calming effect.

当你添加水时 —— 我一直认为水会带来极大的镇静效果。

It’s something about that combination, I think, but I’m just speculating.

我认为这与这种组合有关，但我只是猜测。

If you’re speaking one of the languages, there’s a way to alternate between both, which a lot of Indian politicians used to do as a way of signaling a broad embrace of both the Hindu and the Muslim communities.

如果你说其中一种语言，有一种方法可以在两种语言之间交替使用，许多印度政客过去常常这样做，以此来表示广泛接受印度教和穆斯林社区。

Nehru, India’s first prime minister, used to often do that.

印度首任总理尼赫鲁曾经经常这样做。

He would say, “I am delighted to be coming here to your home.” He’d repeat the word home, first in Urdu, then in Hindi, so that in effect, both constituencies were covered.

他会说：“我很高兴来到你家。”他会重复“家”这个词，首先用乌尔都语，然后用印地语，这样实际上两个选区都被覆盖了。

Modi, by contrast, India’s current prime minister, is a great Hindu nationalist.

相比之下，印度现任总理莫迪是一位伟大的印度教民族主义者。

He takes pains almost never to use an Urdu word when he speaks.

他说话时几乎不使用乌尔都语单词。

He speaks in a kind of highly Sanskritized Hindi that most Indians actually find hard to understand because the everyday language, Bollywood Hindi, is a mixture of Hindi words and Urdu words, so there are Persian and Sanskrit origins.

他说的是一种高度梵语化的印地语，大多数印度人实际上很难理解这种语言，因为日常语言宝莱坞印地语是印地语和乌尔都语单词的混合体，因此有波斯语和梵语的起源。

But for Modi and for people of his ilk in the BJP — his party — it’s very important to “cleanse the language Hindi from foreign influences.” That is why they will speak a very Sanskritized Hindi.

但对于莫迪和印度人民党（他的政党）中的同类人士来说，“清除印地语免受外国影响”非常重要。这就是为什么他们会说非常梵语化的印地语。

It was horrendously executed.

它被可怕地处决了。

The person who drew the lines, a man named Radcliffe, had never been to India.

划定界限的人名叫拉德克利夫，他从未去过印度。

He’d never been east of the Suez and was given this task, and he did it in a month or two, probably caused a million-and-a-half to two million lives lost, maybe 10 million people displaced.

他从未去过苏伊士运河以东，却被赋予了这项任务，而他在一两个月内就完成了，可能导致一百五十万人丧生，可能导致一千万人流离失所。

It broke that wonderfully diverse, syncretic aspect of India.

它打破了印度奇妙的多元化、融合性的一面。

If you look at cities like Delhi and Lahore, what was beautiful about them is that they mix together all the influences of India: Hindu, Muslim, Punjabi, Sindhi.

如果你看看像德里和拉合尔这样的城市，它们的美妙之处在于它们融合了印度的所有影响：印度教、穆斯林、旁遮普语、信德语。

Now what you have is much more bifurcated.

现在你所拥有的更加分裂了。

If you go to Lahore, Lahore is a Muslim city in Pakistan, and it has a Punjabi influence.

如果你去拉合尔，拉合尔是巴基斯坦的一个穆斯林城市，它受到旁遮普语的影响。

Delhi has become, essentially, much more Indian and Hindu and has lost that Muslim influence.

从本质上讲，德里已经变得更加印度化和印度化，并且失去了穆斯林的影响力。

To me, as somebody who really loves cosmopolitanism and diversity, it’s sad to see that.

对我来说，作为一个真正热爱世界主义和多样性的人，看到这一点很难过。

It’s almost like you’ve lost something that really made these places wonderfully rich.

就好像你失去了一些真正让这些地方变得异常富裕的东西。

I feel the same way when you read about the history of Europe.

当你读到欧洲的历史时，我也有同样的感觉。

You think of a place like Vienna, which, in its most dazzling moment, was dazzling precisely because it was this polyglot population of people coming from all over the Habsburg Empire.

你会想到像维也纳这样的地方，它在最耀眼的时刻之所以令人眼花缭乱，正是因为它是来自哈布斯堡帝国各地的多语言人口。

A large segment of it was Jewish, and it had, as a result — think about Freud and Klimt and the music that came out of there, and the architecture that came out at the turn of the 19th century.

其中很大一部分是犹太人，因此，它思考了弗洛伊德和克里姆特以及从那里产生的音乐，以及 19 世纪之交出现的建筑。

And it’s all gone.

一切都消失了。

It’s like, at this point, a somewhat beautiful but slightly dull Austrian city.

此时，它就像一座有点美丽但又有点沉闷的奥地利城市。

It’s not even that; they don’t vote for Muslim parties.

甚至不是那样；他们不投票给穆斯林政党。

In general, they vote for the Congress Party, which is a secular party.

一般来说，他们投票给国大党，这是一个世俗政党。

They don’t, even in their voting — forget terrorism — they don’t even vote for specifically Muslim or Islamic fundamentalist parties.

他们甚至在投票时也没有——“忘记恐怖主义”——他们甚至不投票给特定的穆斯林或伊斯兰原教旨主义政党。

I think, in a sense, Islam fit in within that tapestry very easily, and it’s been around for a while.

我认为，从某种意义上说，伊斯兰教很容易融入到这个挂毯中，而且它已经存在了一段时间了。

When people talk about cleansing India, Hindu nationals talk about cleansing India of foreign influences.

当人们谈论净化印度时，印度教国民谈论的是净化印度的外国影响。

Islam has been in India since the 11th century, so it’s been around for a long time.

伊斯兰教从11世纪就已经在印度存在了，所以它已经存在了很长时间。

People, I think, feel comfortable and don’t feel the need to assert that distinctive identity by voting in a parochial way.

我认为，人们感觉很舒服，并且觉得没有必要通过狭隘的方式投票来维护这种独特的身份。

Some of that is changing, and I worry about it because there is much more sustained persecution of Muslims these days in India, but I still think, in many ways, India is a wonder of this.

其中一些正在发生变化，我对此感到担忧，因为如今印度对穆斯林的迫害更加持续，但我仍然认为，在很多方面，印度都是一个奇迹。

There’s nothing quite like it, no country quite like it.

没有什么比得上它，没有一个国家比得上它。

There are 15 official languages, and those are real languages, languages with thousands of years of literature and poetry.

有15种官方语言，这些都是真正的语言，具有数千年文学和诗歌的语言。

These are not dialects.

这些不是方言。

They have 400 dialects in India.

印度有 400 种方言。

Yet there’s something that unifies the country, almost geographically, civilizationally.

然而，有一些东西几乎在地理上、文明上将这个国家团结起来。

On being good at politics

论善于政治

You have to be pretty ruthless, pretty expedient.

你必须非常无情，非常权宜之计。

You have to make alliances.

你必须结成联盟。

I wouldn’t say you have to be deceptive, but you have to do a little bit of overpromising and switching horses when it seems necessary.

我并不是说你必须欺骗，但你必须做出一些过度承诺，​​并在必要时改变立场。

I don’t know if I decided this consciously, but I think one of the reasons I’m a journalist and not an active participant is that I saw what it does to you as a person, and I didn’t love that.

我不知道我是否有意识地做出了这个决定，但我认为我作为一名记者而不是一名积极参与者的原因之一是我看到了它对你作为一个人的影响，但我不喜欢那样。

I was very good at it, I will boastfully say.

我会自豪地说，我非常擅长。

One, he had read his Foreign Affairs articles, mostly in Foreign Affairs.

第一，他读过他的外交文章，大部分是在《外交》上。

Two, he knew that Kissinger advised Nelson Rockefeller, and Nixon had a little bit of that envy of the Eastern establishment.

第二，他知道基辛格是纳尔逊·洛克菲勒的顾问，​​而尼克松对东方当权派有一点嫉妒。

When Carter appointed Brzezinski, Brzezinski was a famous academic, again, had never held a government job.

当卡特任命布热津斯基时，布热津斯基是一位著名的学者，但他从未担任过政府职务。

There was something about the Cold War which made people think the stakes were so high, you had to find the most brilliant person you could, or something like that.

冷战让人们认为赌注如此之高，你必须找到你能找到的最聪明的人，或者类似的东西。

In the last 30 or 40 years, the trend has moved much further away from that, and much more toward loyalty, toward people who have been supporting you, who have been on your team, who have worked on your campaign.

在过去的 30 或 40 年里，这种趋势已经远离了这一点，并且更多地转向忠诚度，转向那些一直支持你、在你的团队中、为你的竞选活动工作过的人。

I’ve never wanted to do that.

我从来不想那样做。

I’ve never done that.

我从来没有这样做过。

I always thought that that was people who are using an old standard, which is, “Here’s this guy who writes really interesting stuff on foreign policy.

我一直认为那些人使用的是旧标准，即“这个人在外交政策方面写了非常有趣的东西。

Maybe he’s going to hold high government office.” I don’t think people like me are asked to do that kind of thing anymore.

也许他会担任高级政府职务。”我认为像我这样的人不会再被要求做那样的​​事情了。

It’s a separate question as to whether I’d do it.

至于我是否会这样做，这是一个单独的问题。

I have been asked to serve in government several times but never at that level.

我曾多次被邀请在政府任职，但从未达到过这个级别。

I’ve never really wanted to do it because I’ve realized it’s a version of what I was saying to you about the Yale Political Union.

我从来没有真正想要这样做，因为我意识到这就是我对你们所说的耶鲁政治联盟的一个版本。

I’m not a very good courtier, and you have to be a courtier if you’re going to serve.

我不是一个很好的朝臣，如果你要侍奉，你就必须是一个朝臣。

You lose your own voice.

你失去了自己的声音。

You have to take on the voice of the principal, the president, and you have to be a good team player.

你必须代表校长、总裁的声音，你必须成为一名优秀的团队合作者。

I’ve always liked my own independence, my own voice, and so, even though I was flattered at times when I’d be offered these things, it never quite made sense to me.

我一直喜欢自己的独立性，自己的声音，因此，尽管有时当有人向我提供这些东西时我感到受宠若惊，但这对我来说从来都没有多大意义。

I always found some excuse.

我总是找一些借口。

Economists have a wonderful phrase, revealed preferences.

经济学家有句绝妙的话：显示偏好。

After about the third time I was offered something, when I turned it down, I realized to myself, “You know what?

大约第三次有人向我提供某种东西后，当我拒绝它时，我对自己意识到：“你知道吗？

My revealed preference is, I do not want to go into government.”

我透露的偏好是，我不想进入政府。”

Brad Berenson was another person who was very good, who I think served in the Bush White House in the Office of Legal Counsel and then became general counsel to GE.

布拉德·贝伦森（Brad Berenson）是另一个非常优秀的人，我认为他曾在布什政府的法律顾问办公室任职，然后成为通用电气的总法律顾问。

I would say those two more than anyone else.

我比任何人都更愿意说这两个。

I remember once being asked when I was a graduate student at Harvard — Tony Lake was then national security adviser, and his office called and said — I’d written something in the New York Times, I think — “Mr. Lake would like you to come to the White House to brief him.”

我记得有一次我在哈佛读研究生的时候被问到——托尼·莱克当时担任国家安全顾问，他的办公室打来电话说——我在《纽约时报》上写过一些东西，我想——“莱克先生希望你到白宫向他通报情况。”

I walked in and there were five people around the table: Tony Lake; Deputy National Security Advisor Sandy Berger; George Stephanopoulos, who was then director of communications at the White House; Joe Nye, who was a senior professor at Harvard; one other person; and myself.

我走进去，桌子周围有五个人：托尼·莱克（Tony Lake）；副国家安全顾问桑迪·伯杰；乔治·斯特凡诺普洛斯 (George Stephanopoulos)，时任白宫通讯主管；乔·奈（Joe Nye），哈佛大学资深教授；另一个人；和我自己。

And I kept thinking to myself, “Are they going to realize at some point that I’m not an American citizen?

我一直在想，“他们会在某个时候意识到我不是美国公民吗？

They’re asking me for my advice on what America should do, and I am on a student visa.” And of course, nobody ever did, which is one of the great glories of America.

他们向我征求关于美国应该做什么的建议，而我持有学生签证。”当然，从来没有人这样做过，这是美国的伟大荣耀之一。

On Walter Isaacson

关于沃尔特·艾萨克森

We were chatting about books, and somehow The Wise Men came up, and I puffed myself up as a graduate student and said, “Oh, I just reviewed that book for the American Scholar, the magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa.” I said, “I just reviewed that book.” He looked at me, and he said, “Yes, and I wrote it.” I learned from him — you know, more than anything else, Walter had this wonderful ambition.

我们正在谈论书籍，不知怎的，《智者》出现了，我以研究生的身份自夸说：“哦，我刚刚为美国学者杂志（Phi Beta Kappa 的杂志）评论了那本书。”我说：“我刚刚评论了那本书。”他看着我，说：“是的，我写的。”我从他身上学到了——你知道，最重要的是，沃尔特有这个伟大的抱负。

I say wonderful because he was a journalist, but he decided he was going to write this book about American foreign policy, about the group of people after World War II who really charted the course of American foreign policy, charted the course of the American century.

我说精彩是因为他是一名记者，但他决定写这本关于美国外交政策的书，关于二战后一群真正描绘了美国外交政策进程、描绘了美国世纪进程的人。

Then he decides to write a biography of Henry Kissinger.

然后他决定写一本亨利·基辛格的传记。

Then he decides to write a book about Einstein.

然后他决定写一本关于爱因斯坦的书。

I think, particularly when you’re trained as an academic, as I was, you get into silos and you think to yourself, “Well, I only know about this one thing.” Walter has this amazing breadth about him, where he’s willing to take on anything — Leonardo da Vinci — and he pulls it off.

我认为，特别是当你像我一样接受过学者培训时，你会陷入孤岛，你会对自己说：“好吧，我只知道这一件事。”沃尔特有着惊人的广度，他愿意承担任何事情——“列奥纳多·达·芬奇”——并且他成功了。

The books are amazing, I think, that sense of that breadth of ambition I’ve always loved.

我认为这些书太棒了，我一直很喜欢那种雄心勃勃的感觉。

The United States by 1880, by most measures, had overtaken Britain as the leading industrial power in the world, but if you looked at its army, its navy, its diplomatic representation, and the number of embassies it had around the world, it ranked 20th in the world.

从大多数标准来看，到 1880 年，美国已经超过英国，成为世界领先的工业强国，但如果你看看它的陆军、海军、外交代表以及在世界各地拥有的大使馆数量，它在世界上排名第 20 位。

I think it had many, many fewer foreign outposts than Italy.

我认为它的外国前哨基地比意大利少得多。

It had a smaller army than most European nations.

它的军队规模比大多数欧洲国家都要小。

So, what explained this massive delay in America rising politically and diplomatically and militarily?

那么，是什么解释了美国在政治、外交和军事上崛起的巨大延迟呢？

My simple answer was that the United States was a very unusual creature in the modern world.

我的简单回答是，美国是现代世界中一个非常不寻常的生物。

It was a very strong nation with a very weak state.

这是一个非常强大的国家，但国家却非常弱小。

The federal government in the United States did not have the capacity to extract the resources from the society at large because you didn’t have income taxes in those days.

美国联邦政府没有能力从整个社会提取资源，因为当时没有所得税。

You still had the state militia systems, where the federal troops — it was not that easy, particularly in the shadow of the Civil War, for the federal government to raise troops.

仍然有州民兵系统，其中有联邦军队——联邦政府筹集军队并不容易，特别是在内战的阴影下。

There were all these obstacles to America translating its national power into state power that could be used.

美国将其国家力量转化为可以使用的国家力量存在着种种障碍。

Now, the reason I did it was, partly I was fascinated by it.

现在，我这样做的原因部分是因为我对它着迷。

Paul Kennedy had been my adviser at Yale, and he had been writing The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, his great tome at the time.

保罗·肯尼迪曾是我在耶鲁大学的顾问，他当时正在撰写《大国的兴衰》，这是他当时的巨著。

The second reason I did it was I wanted to get a job in academia.

我这样做的第二个原因是我想在学术界找到一份工作。

And this conformed to certain academic fashions at the time about testing hypotheses and testing various theories of realpolitik, called realism and classical realism and defensive realism, all of which I now look back with a certain amount of regret because I think it added unnecessary theoretical layers to what was actually a very elegant historical thesis.

这符合当时关于检验假设和检验各种现实政治理论的某些学术时尚，称为现实主义、古典现实主义和防御现实主义，所有这些现在我带着一定的遗憾回顾，因为我认为它为实际上非常优雅的历史论文添加了不必要的理论层次。

Look, I was an immigrant kid.

看，我是一个移民孩子。

I wanted a job, and so part of the point was to write it in the style that would get me a job, and it succeeded.

我想要一份工作，所以重点是以能让我找到工作的风格来写它，而且它成功了。

I think it would’ve succeeded at that.

我认为它会成功的。

It was a well-regarded dissertation; it got published by Princeton.

这是一篇广受好评的论文；它由普林斯顿出版。

But by then, I decided to move away from academia.

但那时我决定离开学术界。

It was moving much more toward a huge emphasis on things like rational choice, on game theory There was an economist envy.

它更加注重理性选择、博弈论等事物，这引起了经济学家的羡慕。

Just as economists have math envy, political scientists have economist envy.

正如经济学家羡慕数学一样，政治科学家也羡慕经济学家。

It was moving in that direction.

它正在朝那个方向发展。

Whether it was the right direction or not, it was not something I felt like I would thrive in.

无论这个方向是否正确，我都觉得这不是我会茁壮成长的事情。

The second piece of it was actually very much related to Huntington.

第二件事其实和亨廷顿有很大关系。

Sam Huntington was quite an extraordinary character, probably the most important social scientist in the second half of the 20th century.

萨姆·亨廷顿是一位非同寻常的人物，可能是 20 世纪下半叶最重要的社会科学家。

Huge contributions to several fields of political science.

对政治学的多个领域做出了巨大贡献。

He lived next to me.

他住在我旁边。

Me, obviously in a tiny graduate student apartment, but he in a townhouse on Beacon Hill.

我显然住在一间狭小的研究生公寓里，但他住在灯塔山的一栋联排别墅里。

I would sometimes talk to him.

我有时会和他说话。

We’d have coffee in the mornings.

我们早上喝咖啡。

He had a routine, which is, he’d get up about 6:00 a.m.

他有一个惯例，就是早上 6:00 左右起床。

He’d go down to the basement of his townhouse, and at 6:30, he would start writing or working on whatever his next big research project was.

他会到联排别墅的地下室，在 6:30 开始写作或研究他的下一个大型研究项目。

He’d do that, uninterrupted, for three hours at least, sometimes four.

他会不间断地这样做，至少三个小时，有时四个小时。

Then, at about 9:30, 10:00, he would take the subway to Harvard.

然后，大约在9:30、10:00，他会乘坐地铁前往哈佛。

His point was, you got to start the day by doing the important work of academia, which is producing knowledge.

他的观点是，你必须从学术界的重要工作开始新的一天，即生产知识。

All the rest of it — teaching, committee meetings, all that — you can do later.

剩下的一切————教学、委员会会议，所有这些————你可以稍后再做。

He was so disciplined about that, that every five years or so, he put out another major piece of work, another major book.

他对此非常自律，每隔五年左右，他就会推出另一部重要作品，另一部重要著作。

I looked at that, and I said to myself, I do not have the self-discipline to perform at that level.

我看着那个，我对自己说，我没有自律能力来达到那个水平。

I need to go into something that has deadlines, that has structure, that has more feedback because, as you know well, Tyler, there’s a very lonely aspect to being an academic.

我需要研究一些有截止日期、有结构、有更多反馈的事情，因为泰勒，你很清楚，作为一名学者有一个非常孤独的方面。

There’s a lot of fun, and there’s lots of interesting things, but a lot of it is just sitting by yourself.

有很多乐趣，有很多有趣的事情，但很多只是你一个人坐着。

In the new Leonard Bernstein movie, there’s a point at which Bradley Cooper says — I’m guessing this comes out of a Bernstein interview, where he was asked what’s the difference between being a conductor and a composer — he says, “Well, being a performer, you have a constant relationship with the outside world.

在伦纳德·伯恩斯坦的新电影中，布莱德利·库珀说：“我猜这来自伯恩斯坦的一次采访，当他被问到作为指挥家和作曲家之间有什么区别时，他说，“嗯，作为一名表演者，你与外界有着持续的关系。

You have a grand outer life, a life directed outward.

你有一个宏伟的外在生活，一个向外导向的生活。

But as a composer, as a creator, you only have a grand internal life.”

但作为作曲家、创作者，你只有宏大的内心生活。”

It’s all within you, and you have to be able to generate ideas from that lonely space.

这一切都在你的内心，你必须能够从那个孤独的空间中产生想法。

I’ve always found that hard.

我一直觉得这很难。

For me, writing books is the hardest thing I do.

对我来说，写书是我所做的最困难的事情。

I feel like I have to do it because I feel as though everything else is trivia — the television, column, everything else.

我觉得我必须这样做，因为我觉得其他一切都是琐事——电视、专栏，其他一切。

I think it’s important, but it’s relatively — in my conception, in my hierarchy, it’s trivia.

我认为这很重要，但它是相对的——在我的观念中，在我的等级制度中，它是琐事。

The most important thing you can do is to try and write books that make a difference, that put new ideas into the world, but it’s the hardest thing for me.

你能做的最重要的事情就是尝试写一些有所作为的书，将新的想法带入世界，但这对我来说是最难的事情。

On editing Foreign Affairs

关于编辑外交事务

Walter says to me, “Well, I don’t know that you should really go into academia.

沃尔特对我说：“好吧，我不知道你真的应该进入学术界。

There’s this job out there, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, and the editor-in-chief is much older.

那里有一份工作，《外交事务》的总编辑，主编年纪要大得多。

He’s a real journalist.

他是一名真正的记者。

You would balance him out really well.

你会很好地平衡他。

You should try and get that job.” I remember telling him, “Walter, didn’t you hear me?

你应该尝试得到那份工作。”我记得我告诉他：“沃尔特，你没听到我说话吗？

I think I’m going to get to be an assistant professor at Harvard.” He looks at me and says, “Did you hear what I just told you?

我想我会成为哈佛大学的助理教授。”他看着我，说道：“你听到我刚才说的话了吗？

I think you could be managing editor of Foreign Affairs.”

我认为你可以担任《外交事务》的总编辑。”

I realized that we were both totally socialized by our respective careers.

我意识到我们都因各自的职业而完全社交化。

In graduate school, you’re on a conveyor belt, and the end of the conveyor belt is becoming a great professor, and what better place to start than Harvard?

在研究生院，你在传送带上，传送带的末端正在成为一名伟大的教授，还有什么地方比哈佛更好呢？

In journalism, the idea of being managing editor by the time you’re 28 is .

在新闻业，28 岁时成为总编辑的想法是。

.

。

.

。

Each of us was reflecting our biases and our silos.

我们每个人都在反映我们的偏见和孤岛。

But I went home and I realized I’d really always loved journalism.

但我回到家后，我意识到我真的一直很喜欢新闻业。

I’d started a magazine when I was in high school.

我在高中时创办了一本杂志。

I’d been the editor of the Yale political monthly.

我曾是耶鲁大学政治月刊的编辑。

Every summer job I’d ever had, I worked at a magazine or a newspaper because I found them fun.

我做过的每个暑期工作，我都会在杂志或报纸工作，因为我发现它们很有趣。

Again, revealed preferences telling you more than what you say to yourself.

再次强调，显露的偏好告诉你的不仅仅是你对自己说的话。

So, I called him up and said, “Yes, throw my hat in the ring.” Then I discovered it was very tough because I was 28, and everybody else who was being interviewed was 45-plus.

所以，我打电话给他说：“是的，把我的帽子扔到擂台上吧。”然后我发现这非常艰难，因为我 28 岁，而其他接受面试的人都在 45 岁以上。

They had much more experience than I did.

他们的经验比我丰富得多。

I had to really hustle to be viable, but without that lunch with Walter, it wouldn’t have happened.

我必须非常努力才能生存，但如果没有和沃尔特共进午餐，这一切就不会发生。

On the clash of civilizations

论文明的冲突

Sam very much felt that I shouldn’t take the job, so I said to him, “I am going to do it, but can I ask a favor?

Sam 非常觉得我不应该接受这份工作，所以我对他说：“我愿意做，但是我能帮个忙吗？

You sent me a draft of an essay you’ve been writing, for my comments, a few months ago, called ‘The Clash of Civilizations.’ Can I take that with me to Foreign Affairs and publish it?” That’s how it became, so I took it with me.

几个月前，你给我寄了一篇你一直在写的文章草稿，供我评论，文章名为《文明的冲突》。我可以把它带到外交部并发表吗？事情就是这样，所以我就把它带走了。

We edited it, and we made it the first-time-ever lead essay.

我们对其进行了编辑，并将其设为有史以来第一篇主文。

Foreign Affairs had never had a lead essay before.

《外交事务》以前从未有过主文。

The typeface was all the same.

字体都是一样的。

We redesigned the magazine, and we made this the clear cover essay.

我们重新设计了杂志，并将其作为清晰的封面文章。

If you think about the rise of al-Qaida, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, you think about the return of a certain kind of Chinese nationalism in China — I think that piece of it — you look at the rise of Hindu nationalism in India — he really understood that people were going to fall back on these older, descriptive identities in a way that they had not during the Cold War.

如果你想到基地组织的崛起，伊斯兰原教旨主义的兴起，你就会想到某种中国民族主义在中国的回归 ——“我认为其中的一部分”——“你看看印度教民族主义在印度的兴起”——“他真的明白，人们将会以一种冷战期间没有的方式回归到这些古老的、描述性的身份认同上。”

What I think he got wrong was, international relations is fundamentally a struggle for power, and that a lot of those power struggles — it’s not that they are motivated by things that are completely contradictory to identity politics, but they sometimes match up and they sometimes don’t.

我认为他错了，国际关系从根本上来说是一场权力斗争，而且很多权力斗争并不是因为与身份政治完全矛盾的事物而激发的，而是它们有时匹配，有时不匹配。

Many of the wars in the Arab world have been Arab on Arab, Muslim on Muslim.

阿拉伯世界的许多战争都是阿拉伯人对阿拉伯人、穆斯林对穆斯林的战争。

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he was invading another fellow Arab, fellow Sunni state.

当萨达姆·侯赛因入侵科威特时，他正在入侵另一个阿拉伯同胞、逊尼派国家。

As you point out, a number of the African conflicts are, essentially, you’d have to say, conflicts within civilizations.

正如你所指出的，你不得不说，许多非洲冲突本质上是文明内部的冲突。

Some of the conflicts are ones where people find odd bedfellows so that the Chinese and the Russians are allying, even though, in a sense, they’re two different civilizations.

在一些冲突中，人们找到了奇怪的伙伴，因此中国和俄罗斯结盟，尽管从某种意义上来说，它们是两个不同的文明。

There’s a long history of this.

这有很长的历史。

Richelieu, when he was running France, the great Catholic power, allied routinely with Protestant powers.

黎塞留在统治法国这个天主教大国时，经常与新教势力结盟。

Power politics sometimes transcends identity politics.

权力政治有时超越身份政治。

I think he missed that, but it’s still a very powerful and thought-provoking essay, I think.

我认为他错过了这一点，但我认为这仍然是一篇非常有力且发人深省的文章。

The Arab world had remained absolutely static.

阿拉伯世界完全保持静止状态。

My argument was that it was largely because of the curse of oil and oil wealth, which had impeded modernization.

我的观点是，这很大程度上是因为石油和石油财富的诅咒阻碍了现代化。

But along with that, because of that failed modernization, they had developed this reactionary ideology of Islam, which said the answer is to go further back, not to go forward.

但与此同时，由于现代化的失败，他们发展了这种反动的伊斯兰教意识形态，认为答案是向后退，而不是前进。

“Islam is the solution,” was the cry of the Islamic fundamentalists in the 1970s.

“伊斯兰教是解决方案”，这是 20 世纪 70 年代伊斯兰原教旨主义者的呼声。

The problem that they were saying that Islam is a solution to was the failed modernization, the failed Westernization of these countries.

他们所说的伊斯兰教是解决这些国家失败的现代化、失败的西化的问题。

That toxic mixture was at the heart of what was producing armed reactionary ideologies like al-Qaida and things like that.

这种有毒混合物是产生基地组织等武装反动意识形态的核心。

I really do feel very proud of that essay, but you’re absolutely right that we have 23 more years of data.

我确实对这篇文章感到非常自豪，但你说得对，我们还有 23 年的数据。

What’s interesting is that, partly because of 9/11, which I think in some ways was a great wake-up call, what you have seen is a much greater effort by elites to modernize the societies, not simply to buy a modernity by buying Western goods, but to find ways to actually modernize the society.

有趣的是，部分是因为 9/11（我认为这在某些方面是一个巨大的警钟），你所看到的是精英们为实现社会现代化付出了更大的努力，不仅仅是通过购买西方商品来购买现代化，而是找到真正实现社会现代化的方法。

From all the stuff going on in Saudi Arabia right now, which is, yes, there’s a lot of economic bringing golf and other sports in, but there’s opening up the lives of women, allowing them to be educated, ending the segregation, allowing (famously) them to drive.

从沙特阿拉伯现在发生的所有事情来看，是的，高尔夫和其他运动带来了很多经济增长，但也开放了女性的生活，允许她们接受教育，结束种族隔离，允许她们开车（众所周知）。

And Saudi Arabia, in a way, was at the heart of this problem because it is the richest country and, in many ways, sent the signal of what kind of modernization was compatible with Islam and what was not.

从某种程度上来说，沙特阿拉伯是这个问题的核心，因为它是最富有的国家，并且在很多方面发出了信号，表明什么样的现代化与伊斯兰教相容，什么不相容。

I think that in a way you’ve seen more forward movement in the last 20 years than people realize, even though the regimes have largely stayed dictatorships.

我认为，在某种程度上，过去 20 年里你看到的进步比人们意识到的要多，尽管这些政权在很大程度上仍然是独裁政权。

But that tension still exists, by the way.

但顺便说一句，这种紧张局势仍然存在。

Egypt is a very brutal country because, again, it has fundamentally failed to modernize.

埃及是一个非常残酷的国家，因为它从根本上未能实现现代化。

Iran is a big country, bigger than all of them.

伊朗是一个大国，比所有国家都大。

I think that between the oil wealth and the failed modernization, where the Shah went to .

我认为，在石油财富和失败的现代化之间，国王去了哪里。

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In my current book, I talk about this.

在我当前的书中，我谈到了这一点。

Iran strikes me very much like the French Revolution, where the Shah tried to move much too far, much too fast, much too disruptively — triggered an enormous backlash, which they’re still living with now.

伊朗给我的印象很像法国大革命，国王试图走得太远、太快、太具有破坏性——引发了巨大的反弹，他们现在仍然忍受着这种反弹。

You add to that the oil wealth, which makes it easy to not modernize.

再加上石油财富，很容易不实现现代化。

To just remind people what the problem with oil wealth is, it means you don’t have to modernize your economy.

只是提醒人们石油财富的问题是什么，这意味着你不必实现经济现代化。

You don’t have to modernize your society because you can get enormous wealth just by drilling holes in the ground — actually by paying other people to drill holes in the ground.

你不必使你的社会现代化，因为你只需在地上钻孔就可以获得巨大的财富——实际上是通过付钱给其他人在地上钻孔。

Mostly Western technology is used to extract those resources.

主要使用西方技术来提取这些资源。

So you never get through the painful process of actually modernizing your society, and many of these countries are in that situation.

因此，你永远无法经历真正实现社会现代化的痛苦过程，而许多国家都处于这种情况。

As I said, the Gulf states are so unusual, and it’s not an accident that the most modern of the Gulf cities is Dubai, the one city that has no oil.

正如我所说，海湾国家是如此不寻常，最现代化的海湾城市是迪拜这个没有石油的城市，这并非偶然。

Oil is 10 percent of Dubai’s GDP.

石油占迪拜 GDP 的 10%。

It’s about 90 percent of Abu Dhabi’s.

大约占阿布扎比的 90%。

Even there, you see that variation.

即使在那里，你也能看到这种变化。

The thing that needs explaining is why is Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar — and maybe Saudi — worked, not why do the other ones not work — because the other ones are all like Nigeria, like Venezuela, the oil-rich countries that have never made it.

需要解释的是，为什么迪拜、阿布扎比和卡塔尔——或许还有沙特——起作用了，而不是为什么其他国家不起作用——因为其他国家都像尼日利亚、委内瑞拉一样，都是石油资源丰富的国家，但从未成功过。

There are these small exceptions, and they’re all very small.

有一些小的例外，而且它们都很小。

They’re run by very forward-leaning absolute monarchs who have enormous power and can exercise that power because they have a tiny population.

他们由非常具有前瞻性的绝对君主统治，他们拥有巨大的权力，并且可以行使这种权力，因为他们的人口很少。

They do it in a very rigorous process, where they essentially benchmark against a company like McKinsey or things like that.

他们通过非常严格的流程来做到这一点，基本上以麦肯锡等公司或类似公司为基准。

Of course, you don’t make the same amount, but the idea is that you should be able to make the kind of money that allows you to live a good life, send your kids to schools and colleges, afford healthcare, have a good retirement, so that all those things that tend to be temptations to be corrupt, you don’t need to do because if you just do your job well, you’re going to .

当然，你赚的钱不一样，但我们的想法是，你应该能够赚到足够的钱，让你过上美好的生活，送你的孩子上学和大学，负担得起医疗费用，享受美好的退休生活，这样所有那些往往会诱惑腐败的事情，你就不需要做，因为如果你只要做好你的工作，你就会这么做。

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It’s a perfect example of how there’s nothing cultural about it.

这是一个完美的例子，说明它与文化无关。

There are Chinese bureaucracies in China, and there are a lot of very smart people, but they’re super corrupt.

中国有中国的官僚机构，有很多非常聪明的人，但他们超级腐败。

There are Chinese businessmen in Indonesia, and they’re very corrupt.

印尼有华商，他们非常腐败。

But Singapore managed, through the structure of its system and its laws, to do it.

但新加坡通过其制度结构和法律成功做到了这一点。

Now, to be fair, Lee Kuan Yew would argue that there’s some part of this that is the Chinese Mandarin tradition of trusting bureaucrats and stuff, but I’ve never bought the cultural argument.

现在，公平地说，李光耀会辩称，这其中有一部分是中国普通话的传统，即信任官僚之类的东西，但我从来不相信这种文化论点。

If you look at Max Weber in his book on capitalism, The Protestant Spirit, he basically said the two cultures that are inimical to growth, that are going to be our obstacle to growth, were Catholicism and Confucianism.

如果你看看马克斯·韦伯在他关于资本主义的书《新教精神》中，他基本上说，两种不利于增长、将成为我们增长的障碍的文化是天主教和儒教。

If you look at Spain and Italy over the last 40 years, they’ve grown pretty darn fast, in fact, somewhat faster than some of the larger countries in the North.

如果你看看过去 40 年的西班牙和意大利，它们的增长速度相当快，事实上，比北方一些较大的国家要快一些。

If you look at Confucianism — of course, now people say it’s the Confucian ethic that has propelled China forward.

如果你看儒家思想——当然，现在人们说是儒家伦理推动了中国的前进。

The same is true of India.

印度也是如此。

It used to be that people talked about the Hindu growth rate, meaning the low growth rate in the 1950s and ’60s, and now they say there’s something about Indian culture that actually is very pro-entrepreneurial.

过去人们谈论的是印度教增长率，即 20 世纪 50 年代和 60 年代的低增长率，现在他们说印度文化实际上非常支持创业。

I think that culture is a very big grab bag.

我认为文化是一个非常大的袋子。

When you see success or failure, you can always dip into that bag and find something that explains either the failure or the success.

当你看到成功或失败时，你总是可以翻开那个袋子，找到一些可以解释失败或成功的东西。

On returning to classical liberalism

论回归古典自由主义

If you look at the graph of income, of GDP, per capita GDP, it’s like a straight line.

如果你看一下收入、GDP、人均GDP的图表，它就像一条直线。

There’s no improvement until you get to about, roughly speaking, the 17th, 18th century in Europe, and then you see a sharp uptick.

粗略地说，直到 17、18 世纪的欧洲，这种情况才会有任何改善，然后你就会看到急剧上升。

You see this extraordinary rise, and that coincides with the rise of science and intellectual curiosity and the scientific method, and the industrial revolution after that.

你会看到这种非凡的崛起，这与科学、求知欲和科学方法的兴起以及随后的工业革命同时发生。

All that was a product of this great burst of liberal Enlightenment thinking in the West.

所有这一切都是西方自由主义启蒙思想伟大爆发的产物。

I fear that that whole project is now under threat because of all the forces you described: populism from the right and the left, dictatorships and authoritarian regimes that want to manipulate it to serve their purposes.

我担心整个项目现在正受到威胁，因为你所描述的所有力量：来自右翼和左翼的民粹主义、独裁政权和独裁政权想要操纵它来服务于他们的目的。

Part of the reason is it’s just been so successful, that it is producing change and transformation — economically and socially and even personally and psychologically — on a scale that is so disruptive and so troubling to people that they search for solutions.

部分原因是它是如此成功，以至于它正在产生变化和转变——“经济上、社会上，甚至个人和心理上”——其规模是如此具有破坏性，对人们来说如此令人不安，以至于他们寻求解决方案。

If you think about what we’ve gone through in the last 30 years — and this is really the central argument in my book — massive expansion of globalization, massive expansion of information technology so that it has completely upended the old economy.

如果你想想我们在过去30年所经历的事情 ——这确实是我书​​中的中心论点 ——全球化的大规模扩张，信息技术的大规模扩张，以至于它彻底颠覆了旧经济。

All of this happening, and people are overwhelmed, and they search in that age of anxiety.

这一切的发生，让人们不知所措，在那个焦虑的年代里寻找。

They search for a solution, and the easy solutions are the ones offered by the populists.

他们寻找解决方案，而最简单的解决方案就是民粹主义者提供的解决方案。

They’re deeply anti-liberal, illiberal.

他们是极度反自由主义、非自由主义的。

So, I worry that, actually, if we don’t cherish what we have, we’ll lose what has been one of the great, great periods of progress in human history.

所以，我担心，实际上，如果我们不珍惜我们所拥有的，我们就会失去人类历史上最伟大、最伟大的进步时期之一。

As the debate turned into a debate about the preservation of the French monarchy, the people who wanted to preserve the monarch tended to cluster on the right of the presiding officer’s chair, and the people who wanted to get rid of the monarchy tended to gather on the left.

当辩论变成关于保留法国君主制的辩论时，想要保留君主制的人往往聚集在主持者椅子的右侧，而想要摆脱君主制的人则倾向于聚集在左边。

Then this architect, Pierre-Adrien Pâris, designs a new chamber for the National Assembly, which becomes a rectangular box in which there is literally a right side and a left side, and all the people who wanted to preserve the monarchy would congregate on the right and the people — naturally, this was not by requirement — and all the people who wanted to upend the monarchy were on the left.

然后这位建筑师皮埃尔-阿德里安·帕里斯为国民议会设计了一个新的会议厅，它变成了一个长方形的盒子，里面实际上有一个右侧和一个左侧，所有想要保留君主制的人都会聚集在右边，而人民——“当然，这不是必需的”——而所有想要颠覆君主制的人都在左边。

That is how you came up with left-wing and right-wing, which I’ve always thought is a wonderful example of sometimes in history you have these serendipities which then have a very long and powerful effect.

这就是你如何提出左翼和右翼的，我一直认为这是一个很好的例子，在历史上有时你会得到这些偶然的机会，然后产生非常长期和强大的影响。

It’s the beginning of modern economics because it’s economics based not simply on land and agriculture, but on the famous thing that John Locke talked about, which is mixing human beings’ labor with the land.

这是现代经济学的开端，因为它的经济学不仅基于土地和农业，而且基于约翰·洛克谈到的著名的事情，即将人类的劳动与土地混合在一起。

The Dutch literally do this when they reclaim land from the sea and find ways to manage it, and then invent tall ships, which is, in some ways, one of the first great technological revolutions that has a direct economic impact.

荷兰人确实做到了这一点，他们从海洋中开垦土地，找到管理土地的方法，然后发明高大的船只，从某些方面来说，这是最早对经济产生直接影响的伟大技术革命之一。

You put all that together, and the Dutch — they become the richest country in the world, and they become the leading technological power in the world.

把所有这些加在一起，荷兰人——他们成为世界上最富有的国家，他们成为世界领先的技术力量。

It was very important to me to start the story — because they are really the beginnings of modern liberalism.

对我来说，开始这个故事非常重要——因为它们确实是现代自由主义的开端。

And I should be clear, when I say liberalism, I mean classical liberalism, liberalism as in often pertaining to human liberty.

我应该明确的是，当我说自由主义时，我指的是古典自由主义，通常与人类自由有关的自由主义。

First of all, the statistic is misleading because in those days, GDP was simply measured by using population.

首先，这个统计数据具有误导性，因为当时GDP只是用人口来衡量的。

All society was agricultural.

整个社会都是农业社会。

The more people you had, the larger your GDP.

人口越多，GDP 就越大。

It was meaningless because the state could not extract that GDP in any meaningful way, and it’s meaningless because it doesn’t measure progress.

它毫无意义，因为国家无法以任何有意义的方式提取GDP，而且它毫无意义，因为它不衡量进展。

It doesn’t measure per capita GDP growth, which is the most important thing to look at.

它没有衡量人均GDP增长，而人均GDP增长才是最重要的。

If you look at per capita GDP growth from 1350 to 1950, for 600 years, India and China have basically no movement.

如果你看从1350年到1950年的人均GDP增长，600年来，印度和中国基本上没有任何动静。

It’s about $600 in 1350 and $600 in 1950.

1350 年约为 600 美元，1950 年约为 600 美元。

The West, by comparison, moves up 600 percent in that period.

相比之下，西方在此期间上涨了 600%。

It’s roughly $500 per capita GDP to roughly $5,000 per capita GDP.

人均 GDP 约为 500 美元至 5,000 美元左右。

You can also look at all kinds of other measures.

您还可以查看各种其他措施。

You can look at diet.

可以看看饮食。

There are economic historians who’ve done this very well, and people in England were eating four to five times as much grain and protein as people in China and India.

有些经济历史学家在这方面做得很好，英国人吃的谷物和蛋白质是中国和印度人的四到五倍。

You can look at the extraordinary flourishing of science and engineering.

你可以看到科学和工程的非凡繁荣。

You can look at the rise of the great universities.

你可以看看伟大大学的崛起。

It’s all happening in the West.

这一切都发生在西方。

The reason this is important is, people need to understand the rise of the West has been a very profound, deep-rooted historical phenomenon that began sometime in the 15th century.

这一点之所以重要，是因为人们需要了解西方的崛起是一个非常深刻、根深蒂固的历史现象，始于15世纪。

The fact that we’re moving out of that phase is a big, big deal.

我们正在走出这个阶段，这一事实是一件非常非常大的事情。

This is not a momentary blip.

这不是一时的昙花一现。

This is a huge train.

这是一列巨大的火车。

The West define modernity.

西方定义了现代性。

Even when countries try to be modern, they are in some way becoming Western because there is no path we know of to modernity without that.

即使当一些国家试图变得现代化时，它们也在某种程度上变得西方化，因为我们知道，如果不这样做，就没有通往现代化的道路。

One other way of just thinking about how silly that statistic is: in pure GDP terms, China had a larger GDP than Britain in 1900.

另一种思考这个统计数据有多么愚蠢的方式是：以纯粹的 GDP 计算，1900 年中国的 GDP 比英国还多。

Now, look at Britain in 1900: the most advanced industrial society in the world, ruling one-quarter of the world, largest navy in the world, was able to humiliate China by using a small fraction of its military power during the opium era.

现在看看1900年的英国：世界上最先进的工业社会，统治着世界四分之一的土地，世界上最大的海军，在鸦片时代却能用一小部分军力羞辱中国。

That’s what tells you that number is really meaningless.

这就是告诉你这个数字实际上毫无意义。

The West has been significantly more advanced than the rest of the world since the 16th century at least.

至少自 16 世纪以来，西方明显比世界其他地区先进。

I said, “I tell you what, I could write about something I know about as much as foreign affairs.

我说：“我告诉你，我可以写一些我所了解的事情，就像外交事务一样。

It’s wine, and I’ll try and write it in a way that would be of interest to a non-wine drinker.” That was the mandate I set myself, which is, try to write this in a way that is of interest to somebody who wouldn’t.

这是酒，我会尝试以一种不喝酒的人会感兴趣的方式来写它。”这是我给自己设定的任务，即尝试以一种不感兴趣的人感兴趣的方式来写这篇文章。

I try to answer why is it that the British love Bordeaux wines, and they call them claret.

我试图回答为什么英国人喜欢波尔多葡萄酒，他们称之为波尔多葡萄酒。

Red Bordeaux is called claret.

波尔多红葡萄酒被称为波尔多红葡萄酒。

It’s a very long tradition, and people have often said this is an example of British taste and culture.

这是一个非常悠久的传统，人们经常说这是英国品味和文化的一个例子。

Well, of course, it isn’t.

嗯，当然，事实并非如此。

It’s an example of tariff policies for 400 years.

这是400年来关税政策的一个例子。

When Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II in France — for those of you who remember the movie The Lion in Winter with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole — everything that came out of Bordeaux was tax-free to Britain because of this marriage, because Eleanor of Aquitaine was French and came essentially from Bordeaux, and so all Bordeaux products went to Britain tax-free.

当阿基坦的埃莉诺在法国与亨利二世结婚时——“对于那些还记得凯瑟琳·赫本和彼得·奥图尔主演的电影《冬天的狮子》的人来说”——因为这次婚姻，从波尔多出来的所有东西对英国来说都是免税的，因为阿基坦的埃莉诺是法国人，基本上来自波尔多，所以所有波尔多产品都免税销往英国。

As a result, the British developed an enormous liking for this wine.

结果，英国人对这种酒产生了极大的喜爱。

So, it was a good way of trying to get people who are not interested in wine interested in something about wine.

所以，这是一个让对葡萄酒不感兴趣的人对葡萄酒感兴趣的好方法。

On TV journalism and fame

电视新闻和名气

If you look at it from that perspective, you can’t but think that television is superficial because if you take my show, which I’m very proud of, but if you took the transcript of my show, it would probably fit on one page of the New York Times.

如果你从这个角度来看，你不能不认为电视是肤浅的，因为如果你看我的节目，我对此感到非常自豪，但如果你看我的节目的文字记录，它可能会适合纽约时报的一页。

That’s just the nature of television.

这就是电视的本质。

What I came to realize, and what I had to get myself to understand, was that the better way to think about television is, it’s like haiku.

我逐渐意识到，也是我必须让自己理解的是，看待电视的更好方式是，它就像俳句。

You have real constraints in terms of time, but if you use those constraints well and powerfully and effectively, you can have a huge impact because you’re hitting people in a place where print doesn’t often hit.

你在时间方面确实受到限制，但如果你很好、有力、有效地利用这些限制，你就可以产生巨大的影响，因为你在印刷品不常受到影响的地方吸引了人们。

So, I now think of the show very much in those terms.

所以，我现在非常从这些角度思考这个节目。

Each segment of my show is about six to seven minutes, and so I say to myself, “I’ve got six minutes with this person.

我的节目每个片段大约六到七分钟，所以我对自己说，“我和这个人有六分钟的时间。

What is it I can do?

我能做什么呢？

What can I extract?

我可以提取什么？

How can I hone this in a way that the audience gets the maximum insight out of it?”

我怎样才能磨练这一点，让观众从中获得最大的洞察力？”

What’s your own self-account of how that has come to be a good, acceptable, fulfilling life for you, and that you’re not driven crazy by being too busy being famous?

你自己如何看待这对你来说是一种美好的、可以接受的、充实的生活，并且你没有因为太忙于出名而发疯？

Do you know what I’m getting at?

你知道我的意思吗？

But it doesn’t interfere with my life in any way.

但它不会以任何方式干扰我的生活。

It’s a pleasure to have people.

很高兴有人陪伴。

I’ve almost never had somebody — once or twice — somebody come up and be nasty.

我几乎从来没有遇到过有人 ——“一两次”—— 有人上来对我说脏话。

It’s mostly people are very sweet, they’re nice.

大多数人都很可爱，很好。

Occasionally somebody wants a selfie, but it’s really not very intrusive.

偶尔有人想要自拍，但这其实并不太打扰。

As I said, it’s partly because I’m really not that famous.

正如我所说，部分原因是我真的没那么出名。

Where it does have the impact you’re describing is, I have a lot of opportunities in terms of speeches, visiting places, conferences, people wanting to meet — all of that.

它确实产生了你所描述的影响，那就是，我有很多机会发表演讲、参观地方、参加会议、与想要见面的人——所有这些。

You have to make choices.

你必须做出选择。

That part — managing my time — is one of the most difficult parts of my life.

这部分——“管理我的时间”——是我一生中最困难的部分之一。

I’ve tried to do it well.

我已经尽力做好了。

I’ve tried to do it, most importantly, in a way that I still have a very rich personal life, mostly with my kids but also with my close friends.

最重要的是，我努力做到这一点，让我仍然拥有非常丰富的个人生活，主要是和我的孩子们在一起，也和我的亲密朋友在一起。

I’ve maintained a social network that is mostly the people who are really my friends, not the famous people who invite you on their boat.

我维护着一个社交网络，其中大部分是我真正的朋友，而不是邀请你上船的名人。

I know that that’s not real.

我知道那不是真的。

I know that if I didn’t have my job, I wouldn’t get those invitations.

我知道如果我没有工作，我就不会收到这些邀请。

I’ve tried to stay honest with myself that way and to be enormously grateful and thankful for the opportunities, for the luck that has allowed me to do what I do.

我试图以这种方式对自己保持诚实，并非常感激和感谢这些机会，感谢让我能够做我所做的事情的运气。

Be nice to people, be decent, recognize that I’m in an unusually privileged position, and be the best representation I can of myself.

善待他人，为人正派，认识到自己处于异常优越的地位，并尽我所能最好地代表自己。

I think, more than anything else, probably having kids grounds you in that way because you can have all that other stuff, and it makes no difference.

我认为，最重要的是，拥有孩子可能会让你以这种方式立足，因为你可以拥有所有其他东西，这没有什么区别。

You can be a terrible father.

你可能是一个糟糕的父亲。

I probably spend most of my time .

我可能大部分时间都花在了。

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。

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when I think and reflect and be self-critical, I want to be sure that I’ve done right by my kids, I’ve done right by my friends.

当我思考、反思和自我批评时，我想确保我对我的孩子、对我的朋友都做得对。

Photo Credit: Jeremy P.

照片来源：Jeremy P.

Freeman, CNN

弗里曼，美国有线电视新闻网