Musa al-Gharbi on Elite Wokeness, Islam, and Social Movements (Ep. 224)

Thank you to listener John Beatty for sponsoring this transcript.

感谢听众约翰·比蒂赞助这份文字记录。

Musa, welcome.

穆萨，欢迎。

On the rise and fall of the Great Awokening

论大觉醒的兴衰

In the book, looking at a lot of different empirical measures, and in some of my other published research before the book, I argue that it seems like starting after 2011 with race, gender, and sexuality and stuff — but starting a year before that with Occupy Wall Street and things like this — but basically, starting after around 2010, there was this significant shift among knowledge economy professionals in how we talk and think about social justice issues.

在书中，我审视了许多不同的实证措施，以及我在本书之前发表的其他一些研究，我认为，似乎从 2011 年之后开始涉及种族、性别和性取向之类的东西 ——但早于一年前就开始了“占领华尔街”之类的事情 ——但基本上，从 2010 年左右开始，知识经济专业人士在如何谈论和思考社会正义问题方面发生了重大转变。

That does seem to have peaked around 2021.

这似乎确实在 2021 年左右达到了顶峰。

Looking at the measures that I was looking at in the book, it seems like a lot of those are on the decline now, yes.

看看我在书中看到的措施，似乎其中很多现在都在下降，是的。

To that question — why did they come about, why did they end — what I argue in the book is, there seems to be two elements that are important predictors for when an awokening might come about.

对于这个问题——“它们为什么会出现，它们为什么会结束”——“我在书中争论的是，似乎有两个因素是觉醒何时可能发生的重要预测因素。

One of them is that they tend to happen during moments of elite overproduction, when it becomes particularly acute.

其中之一是，它们往往发生在精英生产过剩的时期，此时这种情况变得特别严重。

This is a term drawn from Jack Goldsmith and Peter Turchin, for people who are not already familiar with it, which is basically when society starts producing more people who think that they should be elites than we have capacity to actually give those people the lives they feel like they deserve.

这是杰克·戈德史密斯（Jack Goldsmith）和彼得·图尔钦（Peter Turchin）为那些还不熟悉它的人提炼的一个术语，基本上是当社会开始产生更多认为自己应该成为精英的人，而我们实际上没有能力为这些人提供他们认为应得的生活时。

We have growing numbers of people who did everything right: They did all the extracurriculars, they got good grades in school, they graduated from college — even from the right college in the right majors — but they’re having a hard time getting the kinds of six-figure jobs they expected.

我们有越来越多的人做的一切都是正确的：他们完成了所有的课外活动，他们在学校取得了好成绩，他们从大学毕业 ——“甚至是从正确的大学选择了正确的专业”——但是他们很难获得他们所期望的六位数的工作。

They can’t buy a house.

他们买不起房子。

They’re not being able to get married and live the kind of standard of living their parents had and so on.

他们无法结婚并过上父母那样的生活水平等等。

When you have growing numbers of elites and elite aspirants that find themselves in that position, then what they tend to do is grow really dissatisfied.

当越来越多的精英和有志于成为精英的人发现自己处于这种境地时，他们往往会变得非常不满。

Another thing that’s really important, that ultimately leads these awokenings to fizzle out, is that at the end — so the elite overproduction creates the motive.

另一件真正重要的事情最终导致这些觉醒以失败告终，那就是，最终——精英的生产过剩创造了动机。

It creates the motive for a lot of these elites to condemn the prevailing order and the people who are at the top and who were successful, and to try to purge some of those people and create room for themselves and so on.

它为许多精英提供了谴责现行秩序以及那些处于顶层和成功人士的动机，并试图清除其中一些人并为自己创造空间等等。

So they have a motive, but they don’t always have the means.

所以他们有动机，但他们并不总是有手段。

This is because, as Shamus Khan and others have argued, there’s this countercyclical nature of fortunes between elites and nonelites.

这是因为，正如沙姆斯·汗（Shamus Khan）和其他人所说，精英和非精英之间的财富存在这种反周期性质。

When times that are relatively good for elites — when the goods and services that they can acquire — they have a lot power over workers to get goods and services at cheap rates and things like this.

当精英阶层相对有利的时候——“当他们可以获得商品和服务时”——他们对工人有很大的权力，可以以低廉的价格获得商品和服务等等。

Anyway, so times that are good for elites tend to be a little tougher for ordinary workers, but on the flip side, times that are tough for elites tend to be pretty decent for a lot of other people.

无论如何，对精英有利的时期往往对普通工人来说会比较困难，但另一方面，对精英不利的时期往往对很多其他人来说相当不错。

It’s hard for elites to get anyone to care if they’re having a tough time in a lot of circumstances.

如果精英们在很多情况下都遇到困难，那么他们很难让任何人关心他们。

But there are some moments when these trajectories get collapsed, when things have been bad and worse for ordinary people for a while, and all of a sudden, they’re bad for a nontrivial share of elites too.

但在某些时刻，这些轨迹会崩溃，一段时间以来，情况对普通人来说越来越糟糕，突然之间，对于相当一部分精英来说，情况也变得很糟糕。

Then those are the moments when the awokenings tend to — because you have a large share of the public, large swaths of the public that is also frustrated and wants to see some kind of change.

然后就是觉醒的时刻——因为有很大一部分公众，很大一部分公众也感到沮丧，希望看到某种改变。

This creates a kind of opening for these frustrated elites.

这为这些失意的精英创造了一种机会。

One of the reasons why awokenings fizzle out is, when you have this moment where these two things come together, then that creates the conditions for the awokening to take off.

觉醒失败的原因之一是，当你在这一刻将这两件事结合在一起时，这就为觉醒的起飞创造了条件。

But one problem is that, as it rolls on, these alliances between frustrated people who want to be elites and other people, they tend to be unstable.

但一个问题是，随着事情的发展，那些想要成为精英的失意者和其他人之间的联盟往往不稳定。

They’re unstable in part because, at the end of the day, what a lot of the erstwhile elites want to do is they want to be elites.

他们不稳定的部分原因是，归根结底，许多昔日的精英想做的就是成为精英。

That’s the main thing they’re concerned about.

这是他们最关心的事情。

They want to find a way to get themselves in the elite structure, practically speaking.

实际上，他们希望找到一种方法让自己进入精英阶层。

That’s what motivates a lot of their activism.

这就是他们积极行动的动力。

When some of them do manage to get folded in, they tend to disengage.

当其中一些确实设法折叠起来时，它们往往会脱离。

That’s one thing.

这是一回事。

There tend to be tensions within a lot of organizations between symbolic capitalists and what you might call normies because we tend to talk and think about a lot of social problems in ways that are very different from other people.

在许多组织内，象征性资本家和你所谓的规范之间往往存在紧张关系，因为我们倾向于以与其他人非常不同的方式谈论和思考许多社会问题。

We tend to go about politics in a different way than other people, and this alienates people.

我们倾向于以与其他人不同的方式参与政治，这会疏远人们。

You start seeing these internal tensions develop within social movements.

你开始看到这些内部紧张局势在社会运动中发展。

This is also one of the reasons why they just can’t sustain themselves, is because the coalition itself is unstable in a deep way.

这也是他们无法维持的原因之一，因为联盟本身就很不稳定。

This is one of the reasons why awokenings typically don’t result in revolutions if they go on beyond a certain period of time.

这就是为什么觉醒持续超过一定时间通常不会导致革命的原因之一。

They have a hard time retaining their coherence.

他们很难保持连贯性。

So on the Left, there’s some long-term investment in teaching in America’s top universities.

因此，左派对美国顶尖大学的教学进行了一些长期投资。

You produce a lot of troops who could become journalists, and they’re mostly left-leaning.

你培养了很多可以成为记者的军队，而且他们大多是左倾。

Then 2011, 2012 — there’s something about the interaction of social media and, say, The New York Times and other major outlets, where all of a sudden they have a much bigger incentive to have a lot of articles about race, gender, Black Lives Matter, whatever.

然后是 2011 年、2012 年——社交媒体以及《纽约时报》和其他主要媒体的互动，突然间他们有更大的动力发表大量有关种族、性别、黑人生命也是命等问题的文章。

When those two things come together, wokeness takes off based on a background in Christianity and growing feminization of society.

当这两件事结合在一起时，觉醒就会基于基督教的背景和社会日益女性化的背景而兴起。

By the time you get to something like 2021, enough of mainstream media has broken down that it’s simply social media out there going crazy.

到了 2021 年，足够多的主流媒体已经崩溃，社交媒体变得疯狂。

That just gives us a lot of diversity of bizarre views rather than just sheer wokeness — and besides, Elon is owning Twitter, so wokeness ends.

这给我们带来了很多奇怪的观点，而不仅仅是纯粹的觉醒 ——而且，埃隆拥有 Twitter，所以觉醒结束了。

What’s wrong with that account?

该帐户有什么问题吗？

Things like social media obviously do change the way interactions play out.

社交媒体等事物显然确实改变了互动的方式。

But you can see, actually, that things like social media or changes in the media landscape after 2010 — one limitation for using those kinds of explanations to explain the current moment is that it becomes hard, then, to understand how or why it was the case that .

但事实上，你可以看到，像社交媒体或 2010 年后媒体格局的变化这样的事情 ——使用这些解释来解释当前时刻的一个限制是，很难理解如何或为何会出现这种情况。

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There were three previous episodes like this, one in the 1920s through the early ’30s, one in the mid-1960s to the late ’70s, and then one in the late ’80s through early ’90s.

类似的事情以前发生过三集，一集发生在 20 年代到 30 年代初，一集发生在 1960 年代中期到 70 年代末，另一集发生在 80 年代末到 90 年代初。

In all cases where we didn’t have social media, where the structure of media enterprises was importantly different than it is today, and before you had Gen Z “kids these days” with their idiosyncratic attitudes, or before a lot of these professions were as feminized as they were today.

在我们没有社交媒体的所有情况下，媒体企业的结构与今天有很大不同，在Z世代“现在的孩子”有着独特的态度之前，或者在许多这些职业像今天这样女性化之前。

I think all of those factors you said actually do matter, and they matter in the sense — because each of these episodes, there’s so much in common, an insane amount.

我认为你所说的所有这些因素实际上都很重要，而且从某种意义上来说它们很重要——因为每一集都有很多共同点，数量惊人。

When you read the book and I walk through some of these — I think a lot of readers will be troubled, maybe, by how similar these episodes are.

当你读这本书时，我会浏览其中的一些内容 ——我想很多读者可能会因为这些情节的相似程度而感到困扰。

But they’re also importantly different.

但它们也有重要的不同。

They don’t play out identically.

它们的表现并不相同。

They are importantly different: The role that symbolic capitalists occupy in society changed immensely over the last century.

它们有重要的不同之处：象征资本家在社会中所扮演的角色在上个世纪发生了巨大变化。

The constitution of these fields has changed immensely.

这些领域的构成发生了巨大变化。

There are a lot more women; there are a lot more nonwhite people in these professions than there were in the past, and so on and so forth.

女性数量更多；这些职业中的非白人比过去多得多，等等。

All of those factors you described: I think they actually do matter, especially for understanding the ways in which this period of awokening might differ from previous episodes, but I don’t think they explain why awokenings happen at all.

你描述的所有这些因素：我认为它们确实很重要，特别是对于理解这一时期的觉醒可能与之前的剧集不同的方式，但我认为它们根本无法解释觉醒发生的原因。

What I argue in the book is that the — for instance, when we look at the last period of awokening in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it was much less — that was the last time we had these struggles over what they call political correctness, or the PC culture, which we call wokeness today.

我在书中认为，“例如，当我们回顾上世纪 80 年代末和 90 年代初的觉醒时期时，我们会发现，那是我们最后一次就所谓的政治正确性或个人电脑文化（我们今天称之为觉醒）进行斗争的时候。”

As I argue in the book, it didn’t last as long, that awokening.

正如我在书中所说，这种觉醒并没有持续那么久。

It was shorter than most of the others, actually.

实际上，它比其他大多数都短。

Shorter than the one in the ’60s, shorter than the one after 2010.

比60年代短，比2010年后短。

It was a little shorter, and it also wasn’t quite as dramatic.

它有点短，而且也没有那么戏剧化。

I think there are these kind of contextual factors that significantly inform how severe it is or how long it lasts, how long it’s able to sustain itself or how long it is until the frustrated elites get — enough of them get satisfied that they disengage.

我认为，有一些背景因素可以显着地告诉我们事情的严重程度或持续时间，它能够维持多久，或者直到沮丧的精英们得到“足够多的人满足于他们脱离接触”为止。

My guess is that it’s more of a random walk, but I’m open to persuasion.

我的猜测是，这更像是随机游走，但我愿意接受说服。

The question is, Is there some kind of similar factors that predispose people towards neuroticism and also predispose them towards leftism?

问题是，是否存在某种类似的因素使人们倾向于神经质，也倾向于左倾？

Or is there some way in which progressive ideology might feed into neuroticism?

或者进步的意识形态是否会以某种方式助长神经质？

For instance, by — in a lot of social-justice-oriented spaces, there’s research that white people when they engage with minorities, white progressives when they engage with minorities, they do things like competence downshifting.

例如，在许多以社会正义为导向的空间中，有研究表明，白人在与少数族裔打交道时，白人进步主义者在与少数族裔打交道时，会做出诸如降低能力之类的事情。

Which is, when white conservatives talk to minorities and you ask them, “What’s your job?

也就是说，当白人保守派与少数族裔交谈时，你问他们，“你的工作是什么？

What do you do?” They answer those kinds of questions the same whether they’re talking to a black person or a white person.

你做什么？无论是与黑人还是白人交谈，他们对此类问题的回答都是一样的。

For progressives and liberals, when they’re talking to a white person they’ll give a more sophisticated answer about what it is they do, but then when they’re talking to a black person, even when you control class markers and stuff, they downshift.

对于进步主义者和自由主义者来说，当他们与白人交谈时，他们会对自己的所作所为给出更复杂的答案，但当他们与黑人交谈时，即使你控制阶级标记和其他东西，他们也会放慢速度。

They talk in simpler language and in a way that’s kind of patronizing.

他们用更简单的语言交谈，而且说话的方式有点居高临下。

You see this in a range of studies: that white liberals tend to be more conscious of race and therefore change in a more dramatic way how they engage with nonwhites versus whites.

你可以在一系列研究中看到这一点：白人自由主义者往往更有种族意识，因此以更戏剧性的方式改变他们与非白人和白人打交道的方式。

This kind of rumination, like, “Oh, am I possibly offending someone?

这种沉思，就像，“哦，我可能冒犯某人了吗？

Am I saying the right thing?

我说得对吗？

What is this person thinking of me?

这个人在想我什么？

Do they think I’m racist?

他们认为我是种族主义者吗？

Do they think I’m a good ally?” There’s probably a sense in which sometimes people internalizing these progressive commitments and really wanting to be a good ally and wondering if they’re a good ally and wondering if the people that they’re trying to ally with perceive them to be a good ally, and stuff like that, can feed into .

他们认为我是一个好的盟友吗？”有时人们可能会内化这些进步的承诺，真的想成为一个好的盟友，想知道自己是否是一个好的盟友，想知道他们试图与之结盟的人是否认为他们是一个好的盟友，诸如此类的事情可以融入其中。

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It could be that the progressive ideology itself exacerbates neuroticism, or it could be that there’s something about, if you’re already neurotic, that could also just make these kinds of ideologies more attractive to you compared to ideologies where you wouldn’t worry about what is this other person — I think the relationship there is unclear.

可能是进步意识形态本身加剧了神经质，或者可能是，如果你已经神经质了，与那些你不会担心另一个人是什么的意识形态相比，这也可能会让这些意识形态对你更有吸引力 —— 我认为其中的关系尚不清楚。

It’s interesting.

这很有趣。

Is it a common drivers thing?

这是常见的司机问题吗？

One thing I will say, that I do talk about a little bit in the book, is that the symbolic professions — in virtue of gatekeeping who becomes part of them by college degrees and as a result of other factors, like the socioeconomic communities symbolic capitalists tend to grow up in, etc., etc. — it is the case that the people who get folded into the symbolic professions tend to think about the social world at all times, even when we’re not in periods of awokening.

我要说的一件事，我确实在书中谈到了一点，就是象征性职业——凭借大学学位和其他因素（例如象征性资本家往往成长的社会经济社区等）而成为象征性职业一部分的看门人——事实是，那些融入象征性职业的人往往会在任何时候都思考社会世界，即使我们不处于经济繁荣时期。觉醒。

They tend to have very idiosyncratic psychological profiles and modes of engagement in politics that are very different than most people.

他们往往有非常独特的心理特征和参与政治的方式，与大多数人非常不同。

We tend to be more ideological in general.

总的来说，我们倾向于更加意识形态化。

We tend to be more extreme.

我们往往会变得更加极端。

We’re more likely to hold extreme political views.

我们更有可能持有极端的政治观点。

In some ways, we’re more dogmatic, more conformist.

在某些方面，我们更加教条、更加墨守成规。

We’re very conscientious, on the positive side.

我们非常认真，积极的一面。

We tend to be more cognitively sophisticated and so on.

我们的认知往往更加复杂等等。

So the professions themselves select for this unusual slice of society to begin with, and then how that relates to the views we hold, I think, is a really interesting question.

因此，职业本身首先会选择社会中这个不寻常的部分，然后这与我们所持有的观点有何关系，我认为，这是一个非常有趣的问题。

I’m not completely sold on an answer yet.

我还没有完全相信这个答案。

On Muslim wokeness

关于穆斯林的觉醒

For instance, the Black Lives Matter movement had — if you go to symbolic hubs around the world, including places like Seoul, South Korea, where there’s not really a meaningful percentage of black people in South Korea, but they had Black Lives Matter protests.

例如，“黑人的命也是命”运动——如果你去世界各地的象征性中心，包括韩国首尔等地，那里的黑人在韩国所占的比例并不大，但他们却举行了“黑人的命也是命”抗议活动。

And the same thing with Occupy Wall Street protests or #MeToo or the March for Science.

占领华尔街抗议活动、#MeToo 运动或科学游行也是如此。

They played out in a lot of these very heterogeneous international contexts, but in all cases, almost exclusively among symbolic capitalists and in symbolic economy hubs.

它们在许多非常异质的国际环境中上演，但在所有情况下，几乎都只在象征性资本家和象征性经济中心中发生。

It seems like there are this set of commonalities in terms of our politics, in terms of our interests, in terms of social position, other things like that, that do seem to drive similar things — not identical.

就我们的政治、我们的利益、社会地位以及其他类似的事情而言，似乎存在着这组共性，它们似乎确实推动了类似的事情 —— 不相同。

How would things play out in a Muslim society specifically, and how would it maybe be different from — I suspect — and actually, I don’t need to suspect: It is just the case that in a lot of Muslim societies .

具体来说，在穆斯林社会中事情会如何发展，它可能与“-”我怀疑“-”有什么不同，实际上，我不需要怀疑：在很多穆斯林社会中都是如此。

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Like, say, if you look at Turkey, they had a number of protests related to the Erdogan government and some perceived oppressive or power-grabbing moves by Erdogan and his coalition that were unrelated to the Great Awokening.

比如说，如果你看看土耳其，他们发生了许多与埃尔多安政府有关的抗议活动，以及埃尔多安及其联盟的一些被认为与大觉醒无关的压迫或夺权行动。

They were about, like, “This guy is doing this thing right now, and we think it’s bad.” But it is the case, when you look at some of the protest movements that have happened in places like Istanbul that are more connected to the global-ish protest movements that you see in America — even in those contexts, things like pushing for feminism or gay rights, while much riskier and more controversial in a place like Istanbul than in London.

他们的意思是，“这个人现在正在做这件事，我们认为这很糟糕。”但事实就是这样，当你看看在伊斯坦布尔等地发生的一些抗议运动时，它们与你在美国看到的全球性抗议运动有更多的联系——即使在这些背景下，比如推动女权主义或同性恋权利，而在伊斯坦布尔这样的地方比在伦敦更具风险和更具争议性。

You do actually see some of those elements around gender and sexuality and stuff playing out in these movements.

你确实看到了一些关于性别和性的元素以及这些运动中正在发生的事情。

One thing that’s different is, the justification is sometimes less — sometimes it’s purely pretty secular people who are participating in it as well, because in a lot of societies and cultures, not just in the United States, symbolic capitalists are often less oriented towards especially traditional forms of religion.

不同之处在于，其理由有时较少——有时也纯粹是相当世俗的人参与其中，因为在许多社会和文化中，不仅仅是在美国，象征资本家往往不太倾向于特别传统的宗教形式。

Actually, this is one thing that I think is interesting.

其实，这是我觉得很有趣的一件事。

And I think this goes to the heart of what you were asking about in some ways.

我认为这在某些方面触及了您所问问题的核心。

There is this interesting relationship between wokeness and a kind of Protestantism —

觉醒与某种新教之间存在着这种有趣的关系 ——

Part of Joe Henrich’s argument in The WEIRDest People in the World is that actually what helped push for these unique ways of thinking about society and the world was actually not Protestantism; it was the Catholic Church’s marriage and family program that forbade things like cousin marriage and had all of these other — forbade and concubines and all this, and had all these other downstream effects.

乔·亨里奇在《世界上最奇怪的人》中的部分论点是，实际上推动这些​​独特的社会和世界思考方式的并不是新教；而是新教。天主教会的婚姻和家庭计划禁止表亲婚姻之类的事情，并产生了所有这些其他的——禁止和纳妾之类的事情，并产生了所有这些其他下游影响。

He shows that, actually, places that the Catholic Church had stronger and more pronounced rule over are actually more characteristically WEIRD.

他表明，实际上，天主教会拥有更强大和更明显统治的地方实际上更具怪异特征。

I think that that story that Henrich tells sits at an interesting angle with what I just said about Protestantism.

我认为亨里奇讲述的那个故事与我刚才所说的新教的故事有一个有趣的角度。

But I think both are actually true; I’m just not sure how to exactly reconcile them.

但我认为两者都是正确的。我只是不确定如何准确地协调它们。

Either way, the point is, most Islamic societies — and actually not just Islamic societies, but even societies like China and so on, have importantly different cultural-historical heritages.

不管怎样，关键是，大多数伊斯兰社会——实际上不仅是伊斯兰社会，甚至像中国等社会也拥有截然不同的文化历史遗产。

Maybe not as different as — I wrote a piece for a sociology journal, Socius, about social science during the Islamic Commonwealth period.

也许不像 —— 我为社会学杂志《Socius》写了一篇关于伊斯兰联邦时期社会科学的文章。

One of the big arguments that I make in that paper is that a lot of the ways that we understand — a lot of the associations that people have today about Islamic culture and how it’s different from the West and why it’s different from the West, a lot of these trends — some of them have deep, long-standing historical roots, but some of them are actually of more contemporary vintage.

我在那篇论文中提出的重要论点之一是，我们理解的很多方式——当今人们对伊斯兰文化的很多联想，以及它与西方的不同之处以及它为何与西方不同，其中很多趋势——其中一些具有深厚的、长期的历史根源，但其中一些实际上具有更现代的复古性。

But I’ll say there’s this tendency in the social sciences — especially in my field, which I don’t love — where you’ll see social theorists make an argument about how it might be that some particular set of society might have unique insight over society compared to most other Americans.

但我要说的是，社会科学中存在这种趋势——尤其是在我不喜欢的领域——你会看到社会理论家就某些特定的社会群体与大多数其他美国人相比如何可能对社会有独特的洞察力进行争论。

It just tends to always be the specific slice of society that the theorist themselves belongs to.

它往往总是理论家本身所属的社会的特定部分。

It ends up being a story about, Why am I smarter than everyone else?

它最终成为一个关于“为什么我比其他人都聪明？”的故事。

Why can I see things that everyone else can’t see?

为什么我能看到别人看不到的东西？

I actually do think there’s truth to that broad point, that you and I probably do perceive and reason about the world in different ways, in no small part because we have very different life experiences, very different commitments, social ties, social networks, and all of that.

事实上，我确实认为这个广泛的观点是正确的，你和我可能确实以不同的方式感知和推理世界，这在很大程度上是因为我们有非常不同的生活经历、非常不同的承诺、社会关系、社交网络等等。

That seems perfectly plausible to me.

这对我来说似乎完全合理。

I just have an aversion to narratives that, again, are common in my field, that argue that there’s some subset of people who have especially acute understandings of the social world — rather than the point that I made and that I think you also make, which is that we all have actually partially situated knowledge.

我只是对我的领域中常见的叙述感到厌恶，这些叙述认为有一些人对社会世界有着特别敏锐的理解，而不是我提出的观点，我认为你也提出了这一点，即我们实际上都拥有部分定位的知识。

By cramming our stuff together, we get a much more complete, comprehensive, nuanced understanding of the world.

通过将我们的东西塞在一起，我们对世界有了更完整、更全面、更细致的理解。

That seems true to me.

这对我来说似乎是真的。

I don’t think it’s true, though, that Muslims, or people who are mixed race in the case of — or other, depending on what these narratives are, have some kind of special insight.

不过，我不认为穆斯林或混血儿（取决于这些叙述是什么）有某种特殊的洞察力。

On Black Muslims

关于黑人穆斯林

Well, there is this interesting indigenous culture.

嗯，有这种有趣的土著文化。

One thing that’s interesting: if you look at Islam in America, or you look at a lot of mosques and Muslim communities in America — are geared around immigrants and the immigrant experience, because a huge share of the Muslim portion in the United States are first-, second-, sometimes third-generation immigrants, but families that haven’t been in the United States for generations and generations as well.

有一点很有趣：如果你看看美国的伊斯兰教，或者你看看美国的许多清真寺和穆斯林社区，都是以移民和移民经历为中心的，因为美国的穆斯林人口中很大一部分是第一代、第二代、有时是第三代移民，但也有几代人都没有在美国生活过的家庭。

But there is this kind of — an exception to that general pattern is that there is .

但存在这种情况——一般模式的一个例外是存在。

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Although Muslims have been in the United States since the beginning.

尽管穆斯林从一开始就在美国。

The Founders were writing about Islam and Muslims — in fact, using Muslims as kind of a limit case for tolerism.

国父们正在撰写有关伊斯兰教和穆斯林的文章——事实上，他们将穆斯林视为宽容主义的极限案例。

Like, “We should be able to even tolerate those people.” OK.

就像，“我们甚至应该能够容忍那些人。”好的。

But there is something interesting about — there’s this longer indigenous heritage, more indigenous, more uniquely American heritage of Islam in the black community among American descendants of slaves, black community.

但有一些有趣的事情——在美国奴隶后裔的黑人社区中，有更长久、更本土、更独特的美国伊斯兰教遗产。

Yes, and so I think that’s interesting.

是的，所以我认为这很有趣。

Even Malcolm X himself, who was one of the key spokespeople for the politically oriented arm of Black Muslim culture, grew alienated from people like Louis Farrakhan over the course of his life and came to see people like Farrakhan as corrupt, as preaching this kind of gospel — this kind of anti-white, anti-Semitic gospel that’s out of step with Islam as he came to understand it when he went on hajj and stuff.

就连马尔科姆·艾克斯本人，作为黑人穆斯林文化中以政治为导向的分支的主要发言人之一，在他的一生中也逐渐疏远了像路易斯·法拉罕这样的人，并开始认为像法拉罕这样的人是腐败的，他们宣扬的是这种福音——这种反白人、反犹太主义的福音与伊斯兰教格格不入，因为他在朝觐之类的事情上才逐渐理解了这一点。

He came back from the Middle East with a completely different, more universalistic-oriented approach to Islam and began to go to war with Farrakhan and others.

他从中东回来，对伊斯兰教采取了一种完全不同的、更加普世主义的态度，并开始与法拉罕和其他人开战。

And then he was killed.

然后他被杀了。

So I think things like the assassination of Malcolm X and the gradual discrediting of people like Louis Farrakhan have made it such that there’s not really a Black Muslim political force, like a politically mobilized activist base of Black Islam, in the way that there was in the ’60s and ’70s.

因此，我认为，马尔科姆·X 遇刺事件以及路易斯·法拉罕等人的名誉逐渐遭到抹黑，已经导致不再存在真正的黑人穆斯林政治力量，就像 60 年代和 70 年代那样，像黑人伊斯兰教的政治动员活动基础那样。

But there do continue to be a lot of Black Muslims.

但确实仍然有很多黑人穆斯林。

It’s just that they’re not tied to this weird political structure that was the case as they were in the ’60s and ’70s.

只是他们没有像 60 年代和 70 年代那样受制于这种奇怪的政治结构。

It’s actually kind of unfortunate, to my mind, and at odds with the universalistic message of Islam, but you see the same thing in Christian churches in the United States too.

在我看来，这实际上有点不幸，并且与伊斯兰教的普世主义信息不一致，但你在美国的基督教会中也看到了同样的事情。

You have black churches, you have white churches, you have churches with specific subsets of white people, other churches with different — so it goes.

你有黑人教会，你有白人教会，你有特定白人群体的教会，还有其他有不同群体的教会——就这样。

And so I think, actually, if I’m revisiting the initial question, I would sort myself as a Muslim who happens to be black rather than a Black Muslim.

所以我认为，实际上，如果我重新审视最初的问题，我会将自己归类为恰好是黑人的穆斯林，而不是黑人穆斯林。

But the reason I answered the question the way that I did in the first case is just because there’s a deep sense in which — because I’ve been black my whole life, but I’ve been Muslim for a much shorter period of time: about 15 years now, I think.

但我之所以以第一个案例的方式回答这个问题，只是因为有一种深刻的感觉——因为我一生都是黑人，但我成为穆斯林的时间要短得多：我想现在大约有15年了。

I guess of the two identities, one of them has a longer-standing association, which is probably why I answered the question I did.

我猜想，在这两个身份中，其中一个具有长期的关联，这可能就是我回答这个问题的原因。

But now that I understand what you were getting at a little bit better from the follow-up questions, I guess I would understand myself more as a Muslim who happens to be black in the sense that I think that there is this long-standing .

但现在我从后续问题中更好地理解了您的意思，我想我会更了解自己作为一个恰好是黑人的穆斯林，因为我认为这种情况长期存在。

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While I’m more culturally aligned with Black Muslims in America just because, again, there’s a more common set of history and culture in all of this, I subscribe to a more universalistic view of what we should be striving to do as Muslims: to engage with people across faith traditions, across ethnic lines, and so on and so forth, rather than having a parochial, inward-looking view at black people as somehow distinct from everyone else.

虽然我在文化上与美国的黑人穆斯林更加一致，只是因为所有这一切都有更共同的历史和文化，但我对我们作为穆斯林应该努力做的事情持更普遍的看法：与跨越信仰传统、跨越种族界限等的人们接触，而不是对黑人持有一种狭隘的、内向的观点，认为黑人在某种程度上与其他人不同。

It’s funny.

这很有趣。

So my name is Moses; my son, I named him Ezra.

所以我的名字叫摩西；我的儿子，我给他起名叫以斯拉。

Because Moses was the bringer of the law; Ezra was the restorer of the law or whatever, so there’s this kind of interesting — I do agree that there is this kind of universalistic orientation even in my name.

因为摩西是律法的颁布者；以斯拉是法律或其他什么的恢复者，所以有这种有趣的 —— 我确实同意即使在我的名字里也有这种普遍主义的倾向。

On leaving Catholicism

离开天主教

Even some of the words he used to refer to himself — like he constantly referred to himself as the Son of Man.

甚至他用来称呼自己的一些词——就像他经常称呼自己为“人子”一样。

Well, in the Torah, Ezekiel is repeatedly referred to as the Son of Man, not to indicate that he’s God incarnate, but precisely to remind him that he is not: that he is the son of man.

嗯，在《托拉》中，以西结多次被称为“人子”，并不是为了表明他是上帝的化身，而是为了提醒他，他不是：他是人子。

So Jesus adopting that term for himself, constantly referring to himself in that way, and so on.

所以耶稣用这个词来形容自己，不断地用这种方式指代自己，等等。

Anyway, in this and in many other ways, as I was reading the scriptures, I came to believe that Jesus wasn’t God.

不管怎样，当我读经文时，在这方面和许多其他方面，我开始相信耶稣不是神。

And, in principle, that doesn’t rule out Christianity.

而且，原则上，这并不排除基督教。

In the early church there were a lot of Christians who didn’t believe that Jesus was God, who just viewed him as a prophet.

在早期教会中，有很多基督徒不相信耶稣是神，只是将他视为先知。

But Catholicism didn’t go that route.

但天主教并没有走那条路。

The philosopher Quine had the theory of this kind of way of talking about our beliefs.

哲学家奎因有关于这种谈论我们信仰的方式的理论。

He described them as a web of these interconnected beliefs, where some of them are more central, and if you tear them out of the thing, they don’t just go by themselves.

他将它们描述为由这些相互关联的信念组成的一张网，其中一些信念更为核心，如果你将它们从事物中剥离出来，它们不会自行消失。

They pull a lot of other stuff with them.

他们还带走了很多其他东西。

In the case of — as a Catholic, if you reject the idea that Jesus is God, if you reject the idea of a Trinity of one God in three persons, then that changes a lot.

就作为一名天主教徒而言，如果你拒绝耶稣是上帝的观念，如果你拒绝三位一体的三位一体的上帝的观念，那么情况就会发生很大的变化。

It changes the meaning of sacraments like communion.

它改变了圣餐等圣礼的含义。

It changes the meaning of just so much.

它改变了这么多的意义。

And so there wasn’t really a way to reconcile Catholicism with the beliefs I came to hold about Jesus and what his message was and what his intent was.

因此，没有真正的方法可以使天主教与我对耶稣的信仰以及他的信息和他的意图相调和。

As I left Catholicism, as I became alienated from Catholicism, I gradually came to be alienated from religion writ large and became a somewhat militant atheist for a little bit.

当我离开天主教，当我与天主教疏远时，我逐渐与宗教疏远，并成为一个有点激进的无神论者。

But that’s what started me down the path, basically, is I came to conclude from my study of the scriptures that Jesus probably didn’t understand himself to be God, and that, as a consequence, the religious tradition that I’d been part of, that goes back millennia, and the rituals that we participated in, that people have been doing around the world for all of this time.

但这就是我开始走上这条路的原因，基本上，我从对经文的研究中得出结论，耶稣可能不明白自己是上帝，因此，我所参与的宗教传统可以追溯到几千年前，以及我们参与的仪式，世界各地的人们一直在做。

But, while I do think the Quran is a prophetic work, I actually don’t think — and actually the Quran itself is full — over and over and over again, it stresses this point, actually, that the Torah — well, actually the Torah, the gospels: I actually do recognize those as of equal footing with the — I don’t view them as, in any way, being inferior to the Quran.

但是，虽然我确实认为《古兰经》是一部预言性著作，但我实际上并不认为“——实际上《古兰经》本身是完整的”——它一遍又一遍地强调这一点，实际上，《托拉》——《托拉》，实际上是《托拉》，《福音书》：我实际上确实承认它们与《古兰经》同等重要——我不认为它们在任何方面都低于《古兰经》。

And in fact I would say that my background in Catholicism in some ways enriched my understanding of the Quran.

事实上，我想说，我的天主教背景在某种程度上丰富了我对《古兰经》的理解。

It’s a very rich text for people who have familiarity with the Bible.

对于熟悉圣经的人来说，这是一本内容非常丰富的经文。

I think it’s actually regrettable and unfortunate that more Muslims are less familiar with Judaism and Christianity than, to my mind, would be ideal.

我认为，更多的穆斯林对犹太教和基督教不太熟悉，这实际上是令人遗憾和不幸的，这比我认为的理想情况要多。

So I’m not a Muslim supremacist in that way.

所以我不是一个穆斯林至上主义者。

COWEN: Putting aside Ibn Khaldun, who do you think is the great sociologist of Islam?

考恩：除了伊本·赫勒敦之外，您认为谁是伟大的伊斯兰教社会学家？

Oh, al-Biruni was the other one, which is wild for me to forget him, because he’s actually really important.

哦，比鲁尼是另一位，这让我忘记他真是太疯狂了，因为他实际上非常重要。

But al-Farabi actually is important because he advanced what I think is one of the first robust social construction theories of religion.

但法拉比实际上很重要，因为他提出了我认为最早的强有力的宗教社会建构理论之一。

He tells this really rich story to explain why it is that religions have so much commonality but also why they’re importantly different.

他讲述了这个非常丰富的故事，解释了为什么宗教有如此多的共性，但也解释了为什么它们有如此重要的不同。

The story he tells — he’s pretty militant in his work, or pretty committed in his work, to not basing it on scripture; to make arguments from reason and making observations of the world around him.

他讲述的故事——他在工作中非常激进，或者说非常致力于他的工作，不以圣经为基础；从理性出发并观察周围的世界。

The story he ends up telling, the social construction narrative he ends up telling about religion, is actually very robustly reinforced in the Quran itself, which is another thing that I think a lot of Muslims don’t fully appreciate: is that al-Farabi’s argument is that religions — they’re divinely inspired but socially constructed.

他最终讲述的故事，他最终讲述的关于宗教的社会建构叙事，实际上在《古兰经》本身中得到了强有力的强化，这是我认为很多穆斯林没有完全理解的另一件事：法拉比的论点是宗教 ——它们是神圣启发的，但又是社会构建的。

They have this origin in deep universal truths, but they also are products of particular times and places that importantly shape how people understand and pursue and relate to those truths in ways that can be, in some cases, even distorting and limiting.

它们起源于深刻的普遍真理，但它们也是特定时间和地点的产物，重要地影响着人们如何理解、追求和联系这些真理，在某些情况下，这些真理甚至可能是扭曲和限制的。

He didn’t exclude his own society and culture or his own religious faith tradition from this point as he was making it.

他在创作时并没有将自己的社会和文化或自己的宗教信仰传统排除在外。

So al-Farabi I think is important.

所以我认为法拉比很重要。

Al-Biruni is actually really great.

Al-Biruni 实际上真的很棒。

He pioneered a lot of what we would call today anthropology, doing these deep ethnographic-oriented studies of a lot of different societies and cultures, pioneering a lot of empirical methods that we use to study society today.

他开创了许多我们今天所说的人类学，对许多不同的社会和文化进行了深入的人种学研究，开创了我们用来研究当今社会的许多实证方法。

Also really important for integrating mathematics into social science, because in Greco-Roman culture, and even in a lot of other contexts, other than traders, math wasn’t used for practical purposes so much.

对于将数学融入社会科学也非常重要，因为在希腊罗马文化中，甚至在除交易者之外的许多其他环境中，数学并没有太多用于实际目的。

In fact, a lot of people pooh-poohed the idea of trying to — and so Biruni was actually really important.

事实上，很多人对尝试这样做的想法嗤之以鼻——因此比鲁尼实际上非常重要。

A lot of his work, like comparing chronologies across cultures and across geographic locations and things like this, was really pioneering in integrating mathematics into the social sciences in a way that wasn’t commonly done before.

他的很多工作，比如比较跨文化、跨地理位置的年表等等，在以一种以前不常见的方式将数学融入社会科学方面确实是开创性的。

And so he’s also really important.

所以他也非常重要。

In fact, prior to that period, there was a lot of rich interplay — there were tensions between Muslim and Christian societies going back centuries, but there was also a lot of very rich cultural transmission, interplay, and so on and so forth as well.

事实上，在那段时期之前，存在着许多丰富的相互作用——穆斯林和基督教社会之间的紧张关系可以追溯到几个世纪前，但也存在着许多非常丰富的文化传播、相互作用等等。

There were these kinds of shifts starting in the late 19th, early 20th century, especially to things like the broad global economic order and seeing the development of capitalism, seeing colonial expansion and also the discovery of things like oil transform .

此类转变始于 19 世纪末、20 世纪初，特别是在广泛的全球经济秩序、资本主义的发展、殖民扩张以及石油转化等事物的发现等方面。

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When you think about Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism was an offshoot that was prominent among a small sect of a very poor society — a poor, pretty remote society in Saudi Arabia.

当你想到沙特阿拉伯时，瓦哈比教是一个分支，在一个非常贫穷的社会（沙特阿拉伯一个贫穷、相当偏远的社会）的一个小教派中很突出。

Discovery of things like oil and the transformation of Saudi Arabia from a rural, poor place into a rich petro state that’s tied to an austere Salafist understanding of religion was a very geopolitically consequential development, and completely transformed in very profound ways that are not fully appreciated, I think, in a lot of these conversations the nature of the geopolitical orientation of Islam in the world.

像石油这样的东西的发现以及沙特阿拉伯从一个农村、贫穷的地方转变为一个富裕的石油国家，这与萨拉菲派对宗教的严肃理解有关，是一个非常具有地缘政治意义的发展，并且以非常深刻的方式彻底改变了，我认为，在很多这样的对话中，没有充分认识到世界上伊斯兰教地缘政治取向的本质。

On Muslim immigration and assimilation in Europe

关于欧洲的穆斯林移民和同化

Even before JD Vance and Donald Trump started talking about this and making it a national issue, there were tensions within Springfield between the Haitians and the long-standing — and people in Haiti are not Muslim.

甚至在 JD 万斯和唐纳德·特朗普开始谈论这个问题并将其作为全国性问题之前，斯普林菲尔德境内的海地人和长期存在的人之间就存在紧张关系，而且海地人不是穆斯林。

But that’s a thing that you would expect.

但这是你所期望的。

On top of that, frankly, it’s often the case that people come to different countries for a reason, because there was also often something that was very unsatisfying about the milieu that they were living in, that was unsustainable or intolerable, and so they come to other countries in search of a different life.

最重要的是，坦率地说，人们来到不同的国家往往是有原因的，因为他们所生活的环境往往也有一些令人非常不满意的地方，这是不可持续或无法忍受的，所以他们来到其他国家寻找不同的生活。

This is also a thing that helps push people towards actually pursuing that different life rather than trying to simply reproduce Sudan in France.

这也有助于推动人们真正追求不同的生活，而不是试图简单地在法国复制苏丹。

Now, that said, there are elements of their own society and culture, of the society and culture they came from, that they think are actually good and worth preserving, or that they think are — like, “I actually think this is a better way of doing things.

现在，也就是说，他们自己的社会和文化，他们来自的社会和文化的一些元素，他们认为实际上是好的并且值得保留，或者他们认为“我实际上认为这是一种更好的做事方式。

Why don’t we do it this way here?” Again, these are negotiations that happen across the board when you have large numbers of migrants.

我们为什么不在这儿这样做呢？”同样，当有大量移民时，这些谈判就会全面发生。

I think a lot of these tensions will persist so long as there are continued waves of migration, but will ultimately — I’m optimistic that there will be some equilibrium.

我认为，只要移民浪潮持续存在，许多紧张局势就会持续存在，但最终会出现——我乐观地认为，将会出现某种平衡。

They’ll work themselves out.

他们会自己解决的。

One source of tension in France, I think, in particular is that France has a — and this is why I think it’s sometimes easier for immigrants to integrate in countries like America, frankly — is France does have this really aggressive, hostile approach to secularism, a really militant approach to secularism.

我认为，法国紧张局势的一个根源是法国有一种“坦率地说，这就是为什么我认为移民有时更容易融入美国等国家”，因为法国确实对世俗主义采取了这种真正激进、敌对的态度，一种真正激进的世俗主义态度。

Where, for instance, in some schools, they try to push pork on kids.

例如，在一些学校，他们试图把猪肉强加给孩子们。

They eliminate non-pork options.

他们消除了非猪肉的选择。

They say, “Your kid is either going to eat the same things as other French kids, or they’re going to go hungry.” That’s the choice they have.

他们说：“你的孩子要么会和其他法国孩子吃同样的东西，要么就会挨饿。”这就是他们的选择。

Or they outlaw things like head coverings, even though nuns, people from Eastern Europe, a lot of people wear head coverings other than Muslims.

或者他们禁止诸如头巾之类的东西，尽管修女，来自东欧的人，很多人都戴着头巾，而不是穆斯林。

But in order to prevent Muslims from following their own cultural traditions, they make it so that no one can wear head coverings.

但为了阻止穆斯林遵循自己的文化传统，他们规定任何人都不能戴头巾。

Actually, they have partial exemptions for nuns, which is interesting, and things like no one can wear crosses or other forms of religious ornaments in a prominent way.

实际上，他们对修女有部分豁免，这很有趣，而且没有人可以显着地佩戴十字架或其他形式的宗教装饰品。

This kind of militant — rather than America’s more pluralistic approach, France has this really militant, confrontational approach to dealing with religious minorities that I think drives a lot of the tensions in France.

这种激进的态度——与美国更为多元化的做法不同，法国在处理宗教少数群体问题上采取了真正激进的、对抗性的做法，我认为这在法国造成了很多紧张局势。

It’s because they do have this really hostile approach towards religion in general, especially public-oriented religion and religious minorities, that I think is unfortunate.

我认为不幸的是，因为他们确实对一般宗教，特别是面向公众的宗教和宗教少数群体采取了这种真正敌对的态度。

So I think some of the problems that you see in France are a product of France, but I think in other cultural contexts where there’s less of that militant, government-oriented hostility towards religion, a lot of these things are easier to resolve.

所以我认为你在法国看到的一些问题是法国的产物，但我认为在其他文化背景下，对宗教的激进的、以政府为导向的敌意较少，很多问题更容易解决。

I used to read a lot of fiction.

我曾经读过很多小说。

I realized as I was writing my book that it had been probably a decade since I had read something that was purposely fiction.

当我写书的时候，我意识到我已经有十年没有读过那些故意虚构的东西了。

So I picked up some books by — I had a couple of books by Umberto Eco that I had wanted to read for a long time: Foucault’s Pendulum, The Name of the Rose.

所以我买了几本书—— 我有几本翁贝托·艾柯（Umberto Eco）的书，我一直想读：《傅科摆》、《玫瑰之名》。

So I dove into those; I really enjoyed them.

所以我深入研究了这些；我真的很喜欢它们。

So I’m trying to get back into reading fiction now, but it had been a long time, I realized.

所以我现在正试图重新开始阅读小说，但我意识到已经过去很长时间了。

Woody Allen, a lot of his movies are great.

伍迪·艾伦，他的很多电影都很棒。

He’s been on a big journey in terms of his filmmaking over the years, from this kind of slapstick, funny stuff to these kinds of — but I think it’s all really interesting and good.

多年来，他在电影制作方面经历了一段漫长的旅程，从这种闹剧、有趣的东西到这些——但我认为这一切都非常有趣和美好。

I love Woody Allen’s movies.

我喜欢伍迪·艾伦的电影。

This book was focused a lot on knowledge economy professionals, on the winners in the knowledge economy, on institutions of knowledge production, and so on and so forth.

本书主要关注知识经济专业人士、知识经济的赢家、知识生产机构等等。

The initial plan for this book, when I pitched it to Princeton, was that I was going to do — part of the book focused on us, on symbolic capitalists, knowledge economy professionals.

当我向普林斯顿大学推销这本书时，我最初的计划是，本书的一部分重点关注我们、符号资本家和知识经济专业人士。

Then, towards the latter end of the book, I was going to turn the analytic lens from the winners in the knowledge economy to people who perceive themselves to be the losers.

然后，在本书的后半部分，我打算将分析镜头从知识经济中的赢家转向那些认为自己是输家的人。

People who are more sociologically distant from us, who provide physical goods and services to people, who live in smaller towns, more rural areas, and so on and so forth.

那些在社会学上与我们距离较远的人，他们为人们提供实物商品和服务，居住在较小的城镇、更多的农村地区等等。

It proved untenable to do that in the space of one book.

事实证明，在一本书的篇幅内做到这一点是站不住脚的。

In fact, even this book, even when we split it into two books, it still took a little bit of cutting and polishing to get it into the state it’s in today.

事实上，即使是这本书，即使我们把它分成两本书，仍然经过了一些切割和打磨，才变成了今天的样子。

So the second book, what I’ll be thinking about for the next couple of years, are going to be people who are more sociologically distant from knowledge economy professionals, and trying to look at the struggle between us and them and to understand it in a deeper way.

因此，我在接下来的几年里将思考的第二本书将是那些在社会学上与知识经济专业人士更加疏远的人，并试图审视我们和他们之间的斗争，并以更深入的方式理解它。

I’ve done some provisional work, and I do have a lot of pretty tight content for the second book.

我已经做了一些临时工作，并且我确实为第二本书准备了很多非常紧凑的内容。

I’ll be shopping it out to publishers after we see how well this one does or not.

在我们看看这个产品的效果如何之后，我会将其购买给出版商。

But I’m going to be doing, of course, a lot of research and thinking about these tensions in the near future, and that will be occupying my brain space.

但当然，在不久的将来我将会对这些紧张局势进行大量研究和思考，这将占据我的大脑空间。