Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress (Ep. 182)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
Today I’m chatting with Noam Chomsky, who needs no introduction.
今天我正在和诺姆·乔姆斯基聊天，他不需要介绍。
Noam, welcome.
诺姆，欢迎。
Good to be with you.
很高兴和你在一起。
If I think of your thought, and I compare it to the thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt, what’s the common ontological element in both of your thoughts that leads you to more or less agree on both language and liberty?
如果我想到你的思想，并将其与威廉·冯·洪堡的思想进行比较，那么你们两个思想中的共同本体论元素是什么，导致你们在语言和自由方面或多或少达成一致？
Von Humboldt was, first of all, a great linguist who recognized some fundamental principles of language which were rare at the time and are only beginning to be understood.
首先，冯·洪堡是一位伟大的语言学家，他认识到一些当时很少见且刚刚开始被理解的语言基本原理。
But in the social and political domain, he was not only the founder of the modern research university, but also one of the founders of classical liberalism.
但在社会政治领域，他不仅是现代研究型大学的创始人，而且是古典自由主义的创始人之一。
His fundamental principle — as he said, it’s actually an epigram for John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty — is that the fundamental right of every person is to be free from external illegitimate constraints, free to inquire, to create, to pursue their own interests and concerns without arbitrary authority of any sort restricting or limiting them.
他的基本原则——正如他所说，这实际上是约翰·斯图尔特·密尔《论自由》的警句——是每个人的基本权利是不受外部非法约束，自由地探究、创造、追求自己的利益和关切，而不受任何形式的专断权威的限制或限制。
Now, you’ve argued that Humboldt was a Platonist of some kind, that he viewed learning as some notion of reminiscence.
现在，您认为洪堡是某种柏拉图主义者，他将学习视为某种回忆的概念。
Are you, in the same regard, also a Platonist?
同样地，你也是柏拉图主义者吗？
Leibniz pointed out that Plato’s theory of reminiscence was basically correct, but it had to be purged of the error of reminiscence — in other words, not an earlier life, but rather something intrinsic to our nature.
莱布尼茨指出，柏拉图的回忆理论基本上是正确的，但必须清除其中的“回忆”错误——换句话说，“回忆”不是早年的生活，而是我们本性固有的东西。
Leibniz couldn’t have proceeded as we can today, but now we would say something that has evolved and has become intrinsic to our nature.
莱布尼茨不可能像我们今天那样进行，但现在我们会说一些已经进化并成为我们本性固有的东西。
For people like Humboldt, what was crucial to our nature was what is sometimes called the instinct for freedom.
对于像洪堡这样的人来说，对我们的本性至关重要的是有时被称为自由的本能。
Basic, fundamental human property should lie at the basis of our social and economic reasoning.
最基本的人类财产应该成为我们社会和经济推理的基础。
It’s also the critical property of human language and thought, as was recognized in the early Scientific Revolution — Galileo, Leibniz — a little later, people like Humboldt in the Romantic era.
它也是人类语言和思想的关键属性，正如早期科学革命——伽利略、莱布尼茨——稍后，浪漫主义时代的洪堡等人所认识到的那样。
The fundamental property of human language is this unique capacity to create, unboundedly, many new thoughts in our minds, and even to be able to convey to others who have no access to our minds their innermost workings.
人类语言的基本属性是这种独特的能力，可以在我们的头脑中无限地创造许多新思想，甚至能够向那些无法进入我们思想的人传达他们最内在的运作方式。
Galileo himself thought the alphabet was the most spectacular of human inventions because it provided a means to carry out this miracle.
伽利略本人认为字母表是人类最壮观的发明，因为它提供了实现这一奇迹的手段。
Humboldt’s formulation was that language enables language and thought, which were always pretty much identified.
洪堡的表述是，语言促成了语言和思想，而语言和思想总是被确定的。
Language enables what he called infinite use of finite means.
语言可以实现他所谓的有限手段的无限使用。
We have a finite system.
我们有一个有限的系统。
We make unbounded use of it.
我们无限制地使用它。
Those conceptions weren’t very well understood until the mid-20th century with the development of the theory of computation by Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, and other great mathematicians, 1930s and ’40s.
直到 20 世纪中叶，随着 Kurt Gödel、Alan Turing 和其他伟大数学家在 20 世纪 30 年代和 40 年代计算理论的发展，这些概念才得到很好的理解。
But now the concept of finite means that provide infinite scope is quite well understood.
但现在提供无限范围的有限手段的概念已经很好理解了。
In fact, everyone has it in their laptop by now.
事实上，现在每个人的笔记本电脑中都有它。
Was it the distinction between natural and artificial language that led Rousseau astray on politics?
是自然语言与人工语言之间的区别导致卢梭在政治上误入歧途吗？
That led .
这导致了。
.
。
.
。
?
？
Rousseau.
卢梭。
You’re a left libertarian.
你是左翼自由主义者。
Rousseau is in some ways almost a totalitarian, right?
卢梭在某些方面几乎是一个极权主义者，对吧？
Rousseau is a very mixed character.
卢梭是一个非常复杂的人物。
He’s not a systematic thinker.
他不是一个系统的思想家。
You can find all sorts of things in Rousseau.
你可以在卢梭身上找到各种各样的东西。
If you look at the Second Discourse on Inequality, it’s highly libertarian, deriving from basically Cartesian principles about the uniqueness and creativity of human thought and language onto a fairly libertarian conception of social organization.
如果你看一下《关于不平等的第二次论述》，它是高度自由主义的，源自笛卡尔关于人类思想和语言的独特性和创造力的基本原则，以及相当自由主义的社会组织概念。
That’s one Rousseau.
这就是卢梭。
You can also find a very different one.
您还可以找到一款非常不同的产品。
On evolutionary approaches to language
关于语言的进化方法
Why are you skeptical of evolutionary approaches to language?
您为什么对语言的进化方法持怀疑态度？
I’m not.
我不是。
I’m skeptical of mistaken misunderstandings of evolution, which lead to all sorts of errors in thinking about how language evolved.
我对进化论的错误理解持怀疑态度，这种误解会导致人们在思考语言如何进化时出现各种各样的错误。
In the modern period, 20th century, mainly under the impact of behaviorism, some other modern tendencies, a misunderstood version of Darwinism, it generally came to be believed — and still is believed in many quarters — that human language, and first of all that language was — the tradition from classical Greece up through the 19th century was that language is fundamentally an instrument of thought.
在20世纪的现代时期，主要是在行为主义、其他一些现代倾向、被误解的达尔文主义的影响下，人们普遍相信——并且在许多方面仍然相信——人类语言，首先是语言——从古希腊到19世纪的传统是，语言从根本上来说是一种思想工具。
Thought is what is generated by language.
思想是由语言产生的。
Language generates thought.
语言产生思想。
They’re intimately related, if not indistinguishable.
它们是密切相关的，甚至是不可区分的。
Language was described as audible thought.
语言被描述为可听的思想。
It need not be audible, we know now.
我们现在知道，它不必是可听见的。
The 20th century changed that.
20世纪改变了这一点。
Under behaviorist influences, it came to be thinking of language as basically an instrument of communication, which evolved from animal systems.
在行为主义的影响下，人们开始认为语言基本上是一种从动物系统进化而来的交流工具。
Every animal down to bacteria has some kind of communication system.
每一种动物（小到细菌）都有某种通讯系统。
Even trees communicate.
甚至树木也会交流。
The assumption is human language is a more developed form of communication.
假设人类语言是一种更发达的交流形式。
It’s controversial, but my own view is that recent work shows that the tradition was quite right, that that’s not the way human language and thought evolved at all.
这是有争议的，但我自己的观点是，最近的研究表明这个传统是完全正确的，这根本不是人类语言和思想进化的方式。
They evolved in quite a different way, which is completely consistent with the actual theory of evolution, not the naive version that’s often believed.
它们以完全不同的方式进化，这与实际的进化论完全一致，而不是人们通常相信的天真的版本。
It may be, for example, that natural selection played very little or almost no role in the evolution of language and thought, but that’s quite consistent with the theory of evolution.
例如，自然选择在语言和思想的进化中可能发挥很小或几乎没有作用，但这与进化论非常一致。
Many other things happen in evolution beyond natural selection, and, in fact, there’s pretty good evidence for that.
除了自然选择之外，进化过程中还发生了许多其他事情，事实上，有很好的证据证明这一点。
We have only fragmentary evidence from the archeological record, but it’s pretty clear by now that humans appeared on Earth very recently — modern humans 200,000 to 300,000 years ago.
我们只有考古记录中的零碎证据，但现在已经很清楚，人类是最近才出现在地球上的——20万到30万年前的现代人类。
It’s nothing in evolutionary time.
这在进化时代不算什么。
And we now have genomic analysis — pretty sound — that shows that the small modern homo sapiens groups that emerged very quickly began to separate quickly again in evolutionary time, maybe 50,000 years.
我们现在的基因组分析表明，快速出现的小型现代智人群体在进化时间（也许是 50,000 年）中再次开始快速分离。
We know that they all share the faculty of language and thought.
我们知道他们都有共同的语言和思想能力。
There seems to be no distinction among living humans in this regard, including the descendants of those who separated maybe 150,000 years ago.
在这方面，活着的人类似乎没有什么区别，包括大约 15 万年前分开的人的后代。
That indicates that these capacities were already in place before the separation.
这表明这些能力在分离之前就已经到位。
If you look in the archeological record prior to the appearance of modern humans, there’s almost no evidence of any more than very superficial symbolic activity, notches on a bone or something like that.
如果你查看现代人类出现之前的考古记录，几乎没有任何证据表明除了非常肤浅的象征活动、骨头上的刻痕或类似的东西之外。
Not long after the appearance of humans, you start getting extremely rich records of advanced creative activity — the cave paintings, for example, which are pretty remarkable.
人类出现后不久，你就开始获得极其丰富的先进创造性活动的记录——例如洞穴壁画，它们非常引人注目。
I was lucky enough to be able to get into Lascaux before it was sealed, and it’s astonishing.
我很幸运能够在拉斯科被封锁之前进入它，这真是令人惊讶。
You can understand why Picasso, when he saw it, said, “We haven’t learned anything in tens of thousands of years.” Well, Lascaux is fairly recent, maybe 30,000 years ago, but no, goes back to maybe 80,000 years.
你可以理解为什么毕加索看到后说：“我们几万年什么也没学到。”好吧，拉斯科是相当近的，也许是 30,000 年前，但不是，可以追溯到 80,000 年前。
These seem like long numbers, but in evolutionary time, these are the flick of an eye.
这些看似很长的数字，但在进化的时间里，这些只是眨眼的功夫。
Well, what does all this suggest?
那么，这一切说明了什么？
Suggests that something happened along with the appearance of modern humans, namely the emergence of these capacities that we’re talking about, that amazed Galileo, Humboldt, and others.
表明随着现代人类的出现，发生了一些事情，即我们正在谈论的这些能力的出现，这让伽利略、洪堡和其他人感到惊讶。
And nothing’s changed since.
从那以后一切都没有改变。
There’s been no change that we can detect in the nature of these cognitive capacities, which seem to be species properties of humans in the technical sense, meaning common to all humans (apart from extreme pathology) and completely unique — nothing like them anywhere in the animal world.
我们无法察觉到这些认知能力的本质发生了任何变化，从技术意义上来说，这似乎是人类的物种属性，这意味着对所有人类来说都是共同的（除了极端病理学），而且是完全独特的——与动物世界中的任何地方都没有一样。
Will misunderstandings of Darwinian evolution lead you to think that this is inconsistent with it?
对达尔文进化论的误解会导致你认为这与其不一致吗？
It’s actually quite consistent with the modern theory of evolution.
这实际上与现代进化论非常一致。
Darwin did have a famous statement saying that all evolutionary changes have to be very small.
达尔文确实有一个著名的说法，那就是所有的进化变化都必须非常小。
He even said, “If this turns out not to be true, my total theory collapses.”
他甚至说：“如果事实证明这不是真的，我的整个理论就会崩溃。”
Well, it’s now known that that’s just not true.
好吧，现在我们知道事实并非如此。
There are major changes that take place.
正在发生重大变化。
Suddenly, a lot is known about this.
突然间，人们对这件事了解了很多。
One of them may well have been, seems to have been whatever happened pretty much along with the appearance of modern humans which provided these capacities, which again have no analog in the animal world and are common to the species.
其中之一很可能是，似乎是随着现代人类的出现而发生的几乎所有事情，它们提供了这些能力，这些能力在动物世界中又没有类似物，并且是该物种所共有的。
On large language models
关于大型语言模型
Now, you’ve been very critical of large language models.
现在，您对大型语言模型非常批评。
There’s a recent essay by Stephen Wolfram, where he argues the success of those models is actually evidence for your theory of language — that they must, in some way, be picking up or detecting an underlying structure to language because their means are otherwise too limited to be successful.
斯蒂芬·沃尔弗拉姆 (Stephen Wolfram) 最近发表了一篇文章，他认为这些模型的成功实际上是语言理论的证据——它们必须以某种方式拾取或检测语言的潜在结构，因为否则它们的手段太有限而无法成功。
What’s your response to that view?
您对这种观点有何回应？
He’s a brilliant scientist.
他是一位杰出的科学家。
I’ve talked to him sometimes.
我有时和他聊过。
I think this is partly true but partly misleading.
我认为这部分是正确的，但部分是误导性的。
The large language models have a fundamental property which demonstrates that they cannot tell you anything about language and thought.
大型语言模型有一个基本属性，表明它们无法告诉您有关语言和思想的任何信息。
Very simple property: its built-in principle can’t be modified, namely, they work just as well for impossible languages as for possible languages.
非常简单的属性：它的内置原理无法修改，即它们对于不可能的语言和可能的语言都同样有效。
It’s as if somebody came along with a new periodic table of the elements which included all the elements and all impossible elements and couldn’t make any distinction on them.
就好像有人提出了一个新的元素周期表，其中包括所有元素和所有不可能的元素，并且无法对它们进行任何区分。
It would tell us nothing about chemistry.
它不会告诉我们任何有关化学的信息。
That’s what large language models are.
这就是大型语言模型。
You give them a data set that violates all the principles of language, it will do fine, doesn’t make any distinction.
你给他们一个违反所有语言原则的数据集，它会做得很好，没有任何区别。
What the systems do, basically, is scan an astronomical amount of data, find statistical regularities, string things together.
基本上，系统所做的就是扫描天文数字量的数据，找到统计规律，将事物串联起来。
And using these regularities, they can make a pretty good prediction about what word is likely to come next after a sequence of words.
利用这些规律，他们可以很好地预测一系列单词之后接下来可能出现的单词。
A lot of very clever programming, a lot of massive computer power, and of course, unbelievable amounts of data, but as I say, it does exactly as well with impossible systems as with languages.
许多非常聪明的编程，大量的强大计算机能力，当然还有令人难以置信的大量数据，但正如我所说，它对于不可能的系统的表现与语言一样好。
Therefore, in principle, it’s telling you nothing about language.
因此，原则上，它并没有告诉你任何关于语言的信息。
Like all organisms, we have innate capacities.
像所有有机体一样，我们具有与生俱来的能力。
There’s something about our genetic endowment that determines that the embryo grows arms not wings, and there’s something about the genetic endowment that says that a newborn infant can instantly pick out parts of the noise that surrounds it and say to itself, “Those parts are language.
我们的遗传天赋决定了胚胎会长出手臂而不是翅膀，而遗传天赋也表明，新生婴儿可以立即辨别出周围噪音的某些部分，并对自己说：“这些部分就是语言。
I’m going to” — not consciously, of course; it’s all totally reflexive — “These parts are language.
我会“ ——”当然，不是有意识的；这一切都是完全反射性的 —— “这些部分就是语言。
I’m going to pursue a course of maturation, a well-determined course of maturation, which means that by about two or three years old, I’ve basically absorbed the fundamentals of language.”
我将追求一个成熟的过程，一个明确的成熟过程，这意味着到大约两三岁的时候，我基本上已经吸收了语言的基础知识。”
Now, you can take the smartest chimpanzee or the dogs under my desk — they can listen to this noise forever.
现在，你可以把最聪明的黑猩猩或狗放在我的桌子下面 ——它们可以永远聆听这种噪音。
They have no idea there’s anything there but noise.
他们不知道那里除了噪音之外还有什么。
Well, that’s a fundamental property of humans built in.
嗯，这是人类与生俱来的基本属性。
It’s the reason why you and I can be having this discussion now, but a troop of chimpanzees can’t be.
这就是为什么你和我现在可以进行这样的讨论，但一群黑猩猩却不能。
Do you think your critiques of media and the idea of manufacturing consent in any way spring from your underlying views on language?
您认为您对媒体的批评和制造同意的想法是否源于您对语言的基本观点？
More from my views on social and political structure.
更多来自我对社会和政治结构的看法。
In fact, the phrase manufacturing consent was not mine.
事实上，“制造许可”这个词不是我的。
I borrowed it from Walter Lippmann, as you know, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century.
我从沃尔特·李普曼（Walter Lippmann）那里借用了它，如你所知，他是 20 世纪领先的公共知识分子。
Good liberal, the Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal.
优秀的自由主义者，威尔逊-罗斯福-肯尼迪式的自由主义者。
He was a member of Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda machine.
他是伍德罗·威尔逊宣传机器的成员。
I don’t want to tell you this — you know it as well as I do — but for the record, Wilson was elected in 1916 on a pacifist program.
我不想告诉你这个 ——你和我一样清楚这一点——但郑重声明，威尔逊是在和平主义纲领下于 1916 年当选的。
“I’m going to keep you out of war.” The US population didn’t want to get into the European war.
“我会让你远离战争。”美国人民不想卷入欧洲战争。
Very quickly, he decided that the United States should enter the war on the Allied side, and he had a problem.
很快，他决定美国应该加入同盟国一边参战，但他遇到了一个问题。
How do you turn a pacifist population into raving anti-German maniacs?
如何将和平主义者变成狂热的反德狂人？
He succeeded brilliantly.
他取得了辉煌的成功。
Part of the device was a commission that Wilson set up called the Committee on Public Information, which, of course, means disinformation.
该装置的一部分是威尔逊设立的一个委员会，称为公共信息委员会，这当然意味着虚假信息。
Creel commissioners, it was called.
这就是所谓的鱼篓专员。
Walter Lippmann was a member of it.
沃尔特·李普曼是其中的一员。
Another member of it was Edward Bernays, who went on to be one of the main founders of the public relations industry.
该组织的另一位成员是爱德华·伯内斯（Edward Bernays），他后来成为公共关系行业的主要创始人之一。
Both Wilson and Bernays were very impressed with what Lippmann called “manufacture of consent” and Bernays called “engineering of consent” — how these techniques could control the public, shape opinion, completely turn them into, in this case, fanatic anti-German people who wanted to kill everything German.
威尔逊和伯奈斯都对李普曼所说的“同意的制造”和伯奈斯所说的“同意的工程”印象深刻——这些技术如何控制公众，塑造舆论，在这种情况下将他们完全变成狂热的反德人，他们想要杀死一切德国人。
Can’t say frankfurter; you have to say hotdog.
不能说法兰克福；你必须说热狗。
You have to change your name if you’re German to something else.
如果你是德国人，你必须把你的名字改成别的名字。
Also, a huge attack on labor came out of it.
此外，它还引发了对劳工的巨大攻击。
It was very effective for the corporate sector.
这对企业部门非常有效。
They meant to smash the labor unions with all kinds of claims of anti-patriotism and so on.
他们用各种反爱国主义等主张来打压工会。
Well, Lippmann, in particular, was very persuaded by this, as Bernays was.
嗯，尤其是李普曼，就像伯奈斯一样，对此深信不疑。
Lippmann called it a new art in the practice of democracy.
李普曼称其为民主实践的新艺术。
It’s important to understand that both Lippmann and Bernays adopted the standard liberal position, that the population is, as the terms were, stupid and ignorant.
重要的是要理解，李普曼和伯奈斯都采用了标准的自由主义立场，即人们，正如术语所说，是愚蠢和无知的。
They don’t know what’s good for them.
他们不知道什么对他们有好处。
We, the responsible men, have to do their planning for their benefit, of course.
当然，我们这些负责任的人必须为他们的利益做好计划。
Meanwhile, we have to, as Lippmann put it, protect ourselves from the roar and the trampling of the bewildered herd.
与此同时，正如李普曼所说，我们必须保护自己免受迷惑牛群的咆哮和践踏。
A very Leninist doctrine, if you think of it.
如果你仔细想想的话，这是一个非常列宁主义的学说。
Very similar rhetoric.
非常相似的言辞。
That goes right up to the present distinction that was made in the Kennedy years between what were called the technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals, the good guys who worked on policy and so on, and the value-oriented intellectuals, the bad guys — what McGeorge Bundy called “the wild men in the wings” — who talk about ridiculous things like justice and rights and so on.
这一直到肯尼迪时代对所谓的技术官僚和政策导向的知识分子（致力于政策等工作的好人）和价值导向的知识分子、坏人（麦乔治·邦迪所说的“野人”）之间所做的区分，他们谈论正义和权利等荒谬的事情。
This is a very consistent property of the intellectual classes from way back, pretty much independent of political commitment.
这是知识分子阶级自古以来的一贯特征，几乎与政治承诺无关。
In any event, manufacture of consent was, just to quote some more Lippmann — he said the public can be spectators but not participants in action.
无论如何，制造同意只是引用李普曼的话——他说公众可以是旁观者，但不能是行动的参与者。
They are not supposed to take part in any public affairs.
他们不应该参与任何公共事务。
We do that.
我们这样做。
As Reinhold Niebuhr put it, they have to be fed necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications while we take care of things for the common good.
正如莱因霍尔德·尼布尔（Reinhold Niebuhr）所说，当我们为了共同利益而处理事情时，他们必须被灌输必要的幻想和情感上强烈的过度简单化。
One aspect of this was separating the economy from public affairs.
其中一方面是将经济与公共事务分开。
Economists played a major role in this, including liberal economists.
经济学家在其中发挥了重要作用，其中包括自由派经济学家。
Mainly liberal economists separate the economy, which is just pure science.
主要是自由派经济学家把经济分开，这只是纯科学。
We take care of the science.
我们关心科学。
The public should have nothing to do with it.
公众不应该与此事有任何关系。
All of these are major strains in modern thought.
所有这些都是现代思想的主要压力。
They have much earlier origins.
它们的起源要早得多。
In the book that Edward Herman and I wrote about manufacturing consent, we selected these conceptions, looked at the structure of the media, and tried to show that, in fact, the institutional structure of the media — these conceptions of the nature of the intellectual were combined to yield a very effective propaganda system.
在爱德华·赫尔曼和我写的关于制造同意的书中，我们选择了这些概念，研究了媒体的结构，并试图表明，事实上，媒体的制度结构——这些关于知识分子本质的概念结合在一起，产生了一个非常有效的宣传系统。
On the prospect of progress
关于进展的前景
You seem to be relatively optimistic about the future.
看来你对未来还是比较乐观的。
If human beings are so susceptible to propaganda, why be so optimistic?
如果人类如此容易受到宣传的影响，为什么还要如此乐观呢？
Shouldn’t you just think we’re stuck in a continual illusory equilibrium where people feed us BS and we just keep on believing it?
难道你不应该认为我们陷入了一种持续的虚幻平衡之中，人们向我们灌输胡言乱语，而我们却继续相信它吗？
First of all, I wish I could say that I were relatively optimistic.
首先，我希望我能说我相对乐观。
If you look at the way the world is going today, it’s extremely hard to be optimistic.
如果你看看当今世界的发展方向，你会发现很难保持乐观。
We are facing two enormous crises.
我们正面临两个巨大的危机。
There’s a reason why the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was recently moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
《原子科学家公报》的世界末日时钟最近被移至距离午夜 90 秒是有原因的。
One is the growing threat of nuclear war, which will be terminal war.
一是核战争的威胁日益增长，这将是最终的战争。
Another is the failure to take the necessary and feasible steps to deal with an existential crisis of environmental destruction.
另一个是未能采取必要和可行的步骤来应对环境破坏的生存危机。
We are moving in the opposite direction on both, and there’s not a lot of time.
我们在两者上都朝着相反的方向前进，而且时间不多了。
The leadership elements across the board and around the world — very few exceptions — are dedicated to racing to the precipice as quickly as possible.
全世界范围内的领导层——“极少数例外”——都致力于尽快走向悬崖。
That’s not much grounds for optimism.
这并没有太多乐观的理由。
Nevertheless, there are grounds.
尽管如此，还是有根据的。
If you look over history, people have organized, resisted, stood up, overthrown repressive autocratic structures, created a broader reign of freedom and justice.
如果你回顾历史，人们就会组织起来、抵抗起来、站起来，推翻了专制的专制结构，创造了更广泛的自由和正义的统治。
Plenty of awful things remain, but if you look back at what used to be perfectly acceptable, you can see we’ve come a long way, even just in the last couple of decades.
许多可怕的事情仍然存在，但如果你回顾一下过去完全可以接受的事情，你就会发现我们已经取得了很大的进步，即使是在过去的几十年里。
Go back to the 1960s, for example.
例如，回到 20 世纪 60 年代。
In the 1960s, the United States had anti-miscegenation laws which were so extreme that the Nazis refused to accept them.
20世纪60年代，美国制定了极端的反异族通婚法，以至于纳粹拒绝接受。
We had federally mandated housing segregation that meant that Afro-Americans, Black Americans — maybe in the growth period of the 1950s and ’60s, that a Black man could get a decent job at an auto plant, but he couldn’t buy one of the homes in Levittown.
我们有联邦政府强制实行的住房隔离，这意味着非裔美国人、美国黑人——也许在 20 世纪 50 年代和 60 年代的成长期，黑人可以在汽车厂找到一份体面的工作，但他买不到莱维敦的一栋房子。
He couldn’t.
他不能。
Of course, wealth in the United States, for most people, is property owning.
当然，在美国，对于大多数人来说，财富就是拥有财产。
The Black population was cut out from this opportunity in the ’50s and ’60s to enter, at some level at least, into mainstream American society by federal laws which mandated segregation, less in the late ‘60s.
在上世纪 50 年代和 60 年代，黑人人口被强制种族隔离的联邦法律剥夺了至少在某种程度上进入美国主流社会的机会，而在 60 年代末则更少。
Women’s rights.
妇女权利。
Women were still, in the 1960s, under federal law, not regarded as peers, basically regarded as property.
在 20 世纪 60 年代，根据联邦法律，女性仍然不被视为同等地位，基本上被视为财产。
Wasn’t until 1975 that the Supreme Court finally ruled that women have the right to serve on a federal jury, for example, would be peers.
直到 1975 年，最高法院才最终裁定女性有权担任联邦陪审团成员，例如，将成为同侪。
All sorts of changes have taken place.
各种变化都发生了。
Country’s much more civilized than it was just 50 or 60 years ago.
这个国家比50或60年前文明得多。
Didn’t happen by magic.
不是魔法发生的。
It happened by lots of popular struggle.
它是通过许多民众斗争而发生的。
You go back in history — there’re more and more examples of that.
回顾历史 ——这样的例子越来越多。
You can see it right now.
你现在就可以看到它。
I mentioned that the leadership class is racing to disaster, but there’s a lot of activism among the public, mainly young people saying, “We insist on a better future.” You see it at the COP meetings, the regular meetings, COP26, 27.
我提到领导阶层正在走向灾难，但公众中有很多激进分子，主要是年轻人，他们说，“我们坚持更美好的未来。”你可以在 COP 会议、例行会议、COP26、27 上看到它。
Now there are actually two meetings going on, like in Glasgow — last time was Sharm El Sheikh.
现在实际上有两次会议正在进行，就像在格拉斯哥一样——上次是在沙姆沙伊赫。
That’s so far away nobody could come.
那地方太远了，谁也来不了。
But in Glasgow, there was a meeting going on inside the halls, where the elegant ladies and gentlemen were doing nothing, and outside in the streets, there were tens of thousands of young people demonstrating, saying, “We have to take steps to prevent a disaster that you all know is coming from heating the environment, and we demand it and insist on it.” One of those meetings is a reason for pessimism; the other’s a reason for optimism.
但在格拉斯哥，大厅里正在举行一场会议，优雅的女士们先生们无所事事，而外面的街道上，有成千上万的年轻人示威，他们说：“我们必须采取措施，防止一场你们都知道的环境供暖灾难，我们要求并坚持这样做。”其中一次会议是悲观情绪的一个原因；另一个是乐观的理由。
On nuclear war, what has been your opinion of the doctrines of Thomas Schelling?
关于核战争，您对托马斯·谢林的学说有何看法？
It’s okay.
没关系。
At an abstract level, yes, you can talk about these things.
在抽象层面上，是的，你可以谈论这些事情。
Fact of the matter is that even contemplating the possibility of nuclear war is insane, literally insane.
事实是，即使考虑核战争的可能性也是疯狂的，确实是疯狂的。
There cannot be a nuclear war between major powers.
大国之间不可能发生核战争。
The country that launches a first strike will be destroyed, even if there’s no retaliatory strike, just from the effects of nuclear winter.
即使没有报复性打击，发动第一次打击的国家也将因核冬天的影响而被摧毁。
There’s a lot of casual talk about these things, and Schelling can carry out his game theoretical analyses and so on.
这些事情有很多随意的谈论，谢林可以进行他的博弈论分析等等。
But the basic point is, every step has to be taken to ensure that there is no possibility of this happening.
但基本点是，必须采取每一步来确保这种情况不会发生。
There are people who understand that, people like former Defense Secretary William Perry, for example.
有些人理解这一点，例如像前国防部长威廉·佩里这样的人。
He spent his whole life in the nuclear establishment in the state system.
他一生都在国家系统的核心机构中度过。
He says he’s terrified, doubly terrified.
他说他很害怕，双重的害怕。
Terrified once because we’re racing toward disaster day by day.
曾经害怕过，因为我们日复一日地奔向灾难。
Doubly terrified because there’s no attention being given to it.
加倍害怕，因为没有人关注它。
Sometimes it’s just astonishing.
有时这真是令人惊讶。
The Pew polling agency, a couple of weeks ago, came out with .
皮尤民意调查机构几周前发布了这一结果。
.
。
.
。
They give regular studies of public attitudes on all sorts of things, very valuable.
他们定期研究公众对各种事物的态度，非常有价值。
The latest one, they gave people a couple of dozen choices of issues and asked them to rank them in terms of urgency.
在最新的一项中，他们给了人们几十个问题的选择，并要求他们根据紧急程度对它们进行排名。
Nuclear war was not even on the list.
核战争甚至不在名单上。
Climate change was on the list.
气候变化也在名单上。
It was ranked at the bottom of the 21 choices.
它在21个选择中排名垫底。
That’s manufacture of consent in a form which is going to destroy us all.
这是以一种会毁灭我们所有人的形式制造同意。
On the left libertarian legacy
论左翼自由主义遗产
Why does the whole left libertarian tradition, at least to me, seem to be so weak today?
为什么整个左翼自由主义传统，至少对我来说，今天似乎如此软弱？
If I mention Rudolf Rocker to someone, the chance they have heard of him is extremely small.
如果我向某人提到鲁道夫·洛克，他们听说过他的机会非常小。
I’m sure you experience the same.
我相信你也有同样的经历。
Maybe they’ve heard of him because they’ve read your writings, but to have heard of him separately?
也许他们听说过他是因为读过你的作品，但是是单独听说过他吗？
That hardly ever happens.
这种情况几乎不会发生。
The New Left of the 1960s mostly has vanished.
20世纪60年代的新左派基本上已经消失了。
How and why did that happen?
这是如何以及为何发生的？
I don’t think it’s true.
我认为这不是真的。
I think the New Left of the 1960s, which incidentally was a very brief period — it scattered, splintered, but it left a major imprint.
我认为 20 世纪 60 年代的新左派，顺便说一句，这是一个非常短暂的时期——它分散、分裂，但留下了重要的印记。
What I’ve just described was largely an effect of the New Left of the ’60s.
我刚才所描述的很大程度上是六十年代新左派的影响。
It civilized the society in many ways.
它在很多方面使社会变得文明。
Things were just taken for granted in the ’60s.
在 60 年代，一切都被认为是理所当然的。
You couldn’t possibly even say no. Well, that’s the effect of the activism of mostly young people, what was called the New Left.
你甚至不可能拒绝。嗯，这就是大多数年轻人的激进主义的影响，即所谓的新左派。
It’s not a movement, but it’s all over the place.
这不是一场运动，但它无处不在。
It’s changed the way we see and think of things, almost everybody.
它改变了我们看待和思考事物的方式，几乎改变了每个人。
It’s libertarian, socialism, anarchism.
这是自由主义、社会主义、无政府主义。
Of course, they’re not going to be popular.
当然，它们不会受欢迎。
We have a class-based society, rigid class-based society.
我们有一个阶级社会，严格的阶级社会。
The business classes, the ultra-rich are dedicated to class war.
商业阶层、超级富豪致力于阶级斗争。
They’re basically vulgar Marxists, fight values inverted, constantly fighting a harsh class war.
他们基本上是庸俗的马克思主义者，反对价值观的倒置，不断进行残酷的阶级战争。
They control the resources, control the institutions, control the economy.
他们控制资源，控制机构，控制经济。
So yes, ideas that they don’t like, you don’t hear.
所以，是的，他们不喜欢的想法，你不会听到。
Nothing novel about that.
这没什么新奇的。
Go back to George Orwell.
回到乔治·奥威尔。
In one of his essays, he wrote about how in England .
在他的一篇文章中，他写到了在英国的情况。
.
。
.
。
It was set in free England.
故事发生在自由的英格兰。
Unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force just because of the class nature of the society and the subordination of intellectuals to power.
仅仅因为社会的阶级性质和知识分子对权力的服从，不受欢迎的思想就可以在不使用武力的情况下被镇压。
Incidentally, his essay was suppressed, just to make it a little more dramatic.
顺便说一句，他的文章被压制了，只是为了让它变得更有戏剧性。
Found later in his unpublished essays.
后来在他未发表的论文中发现。
If I think of some of the New Left critics of say, the Cold War, the revisionists — you have Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism, Sidney Lens, D.F.
如果我想到一些新左派批评者，比如冷战、修正主义者，你就会想到西摩·梅尔曼、五角大楼资本主义、西德尼·朗斯、D.F.
Fleming.
弗莱明.
I’m sure you knew many or all of these people.
我确信您认识其中的许多人或全部。
To me, they sound, if anything, more like the Trumpian right than, say, the Democratic Party.
对我来说，如果有什么不同的话，他们听起来更像特朗普右翼，而不是民主党。
There’s been this odd inversion where foreign policy ideas, fears of a deep state manipulating the system — those have shifted to the Trumpists.
出现了这种奇怪的倒置，外交政策理念、对深层政府操纵体系的担忧——这些都转移到了特朗普主义者身上。
What do you make of that?
你对此有何看法？
How do you feel?
你感觉如何？
The revisionists didn’t talk about a deep state.
修正主义者没有谈论深层政府。
They talked about the existing public institutions; the corporate sector, which has an overwhelming role in determining state policy; the military-industrial system, which is a large part of the economy.
他们谈论了现有的公共机构；企业部门在决定国家政策方面发挥着压倒性的作用；军工体系是经济的重要组成部分。
You read people like the main writers at the time — Gabriel Kolko, others — they were talking about how this determines the nature of policy.
你读过像当时的主要作家那样的人——“加布里埃尔·科尔科（Gabriel Kolko），其他人”——他们正在谈论这如何决定政策的性质。
The new right has some of that rhetoric, but it’s a joke.
新右翼有一些这样的言论，但这是一个笑话。
The right wing of the Republican Party are just servile worshipers of the very rich in the corporate sector.
共和党的右翼只是企业界富豪的奴性崇拜者。
Just take a look at their legislative programs.
只要看看他们的立法计划就知道了。
During the Trump years, there was one major legislation — what Joseph Stiglitz called the Donor Relief Act of 2017 — a tax cut that was a gift to the super-rich in the corporate sector at the expense of everyone else.
在特朗普执政期间，有一项重大立法——约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨所说的《2017 年捐助者救济法案》——一项减税，以牺牲其他人的利益为代价，向企业界的超级富豪赠送礼物。
Take a look at their programs right now.
现在就看看他们的节目吧。
Main programs are, first of all, guarantee that it’s a red line.
主要方案是，首先保证红线。
You cannot touch the huge Trump tax cut.
你无法触及特朗普的巨额减税政策。
Now, what you have to do is defund the Internal Revenue Service.
现在，你要做的就是取消国税局的资金。
Why?
为什么？
Because they go after tax cheats, who are the wealthy and the privileged.
因为他们追捕逃税者，他们是富人和特权阶层。
Can’t do that.
不能那样做。
We have to protect them, save them.
我们必须保护他们，拯救他们。
Meanwhile, what Trump managed to do pretty effectively, as a good demagogue, is stand up with a banner in one hand that tells working people, “I love you,” while with the other hand, you stab them in the back.
与此同时，作为一名优秀的煽动者，特朗普成功地做到了，他一手举着横幅，告诉劳动人民“我爱你们”，而另一只手则在背后捅他们一刀。
That’s basically the policy.
这基本上就是政策。
When you look at foreign policy — Tucker Carlson and the rest, who say, “We don’t want to waste money in Europe,” but there’s a bottom line to that.
当你审视外交政策时，塔克·卡尔森和其他人会说，“我们不想在欧洲浪费钱”，但这是有底线的。
“We want to save our resources for a war against China.” It’s insane.
“我们想为针对中国的战争节省资源。”这太疯狂了。
You’re right about the Democrats.
你对民主党的看法是对的。
Their foreign policy group is in the hands of, basically, old neoconservatives.
他们的外交政策小组基本上掌握在老旧的新保守派手中。
That’s true, the group around Biden, but the GOP is even more dangerous.
拜登周围的团体确实如此，但共和党更危险。
If I look back on someone like Susan Sontag — she becomes, it seems to be, a Maoist.
如果我回顾像苏珊·桑塔格这样的人，她似乎就变成了毛主义者。
Why is it that left libertarianism touches her and many others so little?
为什么左翼自由主义对她和其他许多人影响如此之小？
What’s the appeal of Maoism?
毛主义的魅力何在？
Isn’t that the opposite of left libertarianism and what you stand for?
这不是左派自由主义和你所主张的对立面吗？
There was a tendency in what’s called, among left intellectuals, late ’60s, early ’70s, to flirt with Maoism.
60 年代末、70 年代初，左派知识分子中有一种所谓的与毛主义调情的倾向。
They had no idea what it was.
他们不知道那是什么。
It was a very mixed story.
这是一个非常复杂的故事。
Had very brutal, harsh elements, destructive elements.
有非常残酷、严酷的元素、破坏性的元素。
There are also aspects of Maoism which aren’t discussed much here.
毛主义还有一些方面这里没有过多讨论。
The scholarship is aware of them.
奖学金了解他们。
One of the things that the Maoist policies did was save a hundred million people.
毛主义政策所做的事情之一就是拯救了一亿人。
A hundred million people were saved from death and starvation, as compared with democratic, capitalist India in the same years.
与同期民主资本主义的印度相比，一亿人免于死亡和饥饿。
You look from 1949 liberation to 1979, compare the demographics of the two countries.
你看看从1949年解放到1979年，比较一下两个国家的人口统计数据。
There’s a gap of a hundred million people killed in India as compared with China, simply because of the lack of carrying out rural development and healthcare programs.
印度的死亡人数与中国相比存在一亿人的差距，这仅仅是因为农村发展和医疗保健项目的缺乏。
There’s no big secret about this.
这并没有什么大秘密。
It’s discussed by some of the leading scholars like Amartya Sen, for example, a Nobel Laureate in Indian economics.
印度经济学诺贝尔奖得主阿马蒂亚·森等一些顶尖学者对此进行了讨论。
This is one of his main specialties, hardly obscure, but you don’t hear about it.
这是他的主要专长之一，并不鲜为人知，但你却没有听说过。
That’s manufacture of consent again.
这又是制造同意。
But this is not why people on the left flirted with Maoism.
但这并不是左翼人士热衷于毛主义的原因。
They had all sorts of confused ideas about Maoism.
他们对毛主义有各种各样混乱的想法。
In fact, if you want the most enthusiastic Maoist in the country, his name happens to be Henry Kissinger.
事实上，如果你想要这个国家最热情的毛主义者，他的名字恰好是亨利·基辛格。
He adored Mao, he worshiped him.
他崇拜毛泽东，崇拜他。
If you want a picture of this, I urge that you take a look at a very important scholarly work that just appeared, Carolyn Eisenberg’s extensive, detailed study of the Nixon-Kissinger years, using extensive archival material.
如果你想了解这一点，我强烈建议你看一下刚刚出版的一本非常重要的学术著作，卡罗琳·艾森伯格使用大量档案材料对尼克松-基辛格时代进行了广泛而详细的研究。
One of the things that comes out is Kissinger’s starry-eyed adoration for Mao.
其中一件事情就是基辛格对毛泽东的不切实际的崇拜。
He himself was a terrible sycophant for Mao in particular.
他本人尤其是毛泽东的一个可怕的阿谀奉承者。
On the development trajectories of Nicaragua and Cuba
论尼加拉瓜和古巴的发展轨迹
Which do you feel has seen a better trajectory if you compare the two countries: Nicaragua, which has experimented partially with socialism, and Panama, which has been more capitalistic?
如果比较这两个国家，您认为哪个国家的发展轨迹更好：尼加拉瓜（进行了部分社会主义试验）和巴拿马（更加资本主义）？
Hasn’t Panama just done much, much better than Nicaragua?
巴拿马不是比尼加拉瓜做得好得多吗？
And I’ve been to both countries in the last 10 years.
过去十年我去过这两个国家。
To me, it doesn’t seem close.
对我来说，这似乎并不接近。
What am I missing?
我缺少什么？
You’re missing what actually happened.
你错过了实际发生的事情。
Nicaragua in the 1980s was the second-poorest country in Latin America after Haiti.
20世纪80年代的尼加拉瓜是拉丁美洲第二贫穷的国家，仅次于海地。
The Sandinista Revolution in the early ’80s began to change that.
八十年代初的桑地诺革命开始改变这一状况。
It began to institute programs which were very much praised by the World Bank, international financial institutions, organizations like Oxfam, which were finally doing something.
它开始实施一些项目，受到世界银行、国际金融机构、乐施会等组织的高度赞扬，这些组织终于有所作为。
Nicaragua had been in the hands of the United States since late 19th century, and it was a catastrophe like just about every country in US hands.
尼加拉瓜自 19 世纪末以来一直处于美国手中，就像美国手中的几乎所有国家一样，这是一场灾难。
It began to escape from this in the early ’80s.
八十年代初，它开始摆脱这种困境。
Very successful.
非常成功。
Well, Ronald Reagan launched a war against Nicaragua.
好吧，罗纳德·里根对尼加拉瓜发动了战争。
The United States was actually brought to the World Court and condemned for international terrorism, technically unlawful use of force in its war against Nicaragua, ordered to pay substantial reparations.
美国实际上被带到世界法院，并因国际恐怖主义、在对尼加拉瓜的战争中非法使用武力而受到谴责，并被勒令支付大量赔偿。
The Reagan administration and Congress responded by stepping up the war.
里根政府和国会的回应是加剧战争。
Well, the war had an effect.
好吧，战争产生了影响。
It destroyed the programs of development, destroyed the hope, restored Nicaragua back to pretty much US control.
它摧毁了发展计划，摧毁了希望，使尼加拉瓜重新回到了美国的控制之下。
It hasn’t completely succumbed.
它还没有完全屈服。
It’s now dictatorial.
现在是独裁的。
It maintains some social programs, but it’s never been able to carry out the programs that were begun in the early 1980s.
它维持着一些社会项目，但从未能够实施 20 世纪 80 年代初开始的项目。
Now, Panama’s a totally different story.
现在，巴拿马的情况完全不同了。
It’s a place for US investment, capital investment.
这是美国投资、资本投资的地方。
Panama Canal is a huge income resource.
巴拿马运河是一个巨大的收入来源。
There’s just no comparison between the two.
两者之间没有可比性。
Wouldn’t Cuba be better off today — much better off — if it had gone the path of, say, Dominican Republic?
如果古巴走了多米尼加共和国的道路，今天的情况会不会更好——“好得多”？
Invite in a lot of multinational corporations, have free trade zones, special enterprise zones.
邀请了很多跨国公司，有自贸区、企业特区。
Dominican Republic is now one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America.
多米尼加共和国现在是拉丁美洲最富有的国家之一。
So, let’s take Cuba.
那么，让我们以古巴为例。
Cuba is the oldest issue in US foreign policy.
古巴是美国外交政策中最古老的问题。
Goes back to the 1820s, when the US intended to try to take Cuba from Spain and turn it into another slave state.
追溯到1820年代，当时美国试图从西班牙手中夺走古巴，并将其变成另一个奴隶制国家。
John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, realized that you can’t do that now.
国务卿约翰·昆西·亚当斯意识到现在不能这样做。
The British are too powerful.
英国人太强大了。
They won’t let us do it.
他们不会让我们这样做。
We’ll wait until, as he put it, Cuba falls into our hands by the laws of political gravitation.
正如他所说，我们将等到古巴根据政治引力定律落入我们手中。
We’ll get stronger.
我们会变得更强。
Britain will get weaker.
英国将会变得更弱。
Then we can take it over.
然后我们就可以接管它。
1898 — it happened.
1898年————事情发生了。
Cuba was liberating itself from Spain.
古巴正在从西班牙手中解放出来。
US invaded on the pretext of liberating Cuba.
美国以解放古巴为借口入侵。
In fact, it was for preventing Cuba’s liberation from Spain.
事实上，这是为了阻止古巴从西班牙手中解放。
US turned Cuba into a virtual US colony.
美国把古巴变成了虚拟的美国殖民地。
Stayed that way.
就这样呆着。
It was a massive corruption mafia.
这是一个大规模的腐败黑手党。
Brutal conditions, horrible conditions for most of the population.
残酷的条件，对于大多数人来说是可怕的条件。
1959 — Cuba freed itself.
1959年——古巴解放了自己。
Within a few months, US planes from Florida were bombing Cuba.
几个月之内，美国飞机从佛罗里达州轰炸了古巴。
March 1960, year later, Eisenhower administration formally determined to overthrow the government of Cuba.
一年后的1960年3月，艾森豪威尔政府正式决定推翻古巴政府。
Kennedy came in, launched an invasion, failed, initiated a major terrorist war against Cuba.
肯尼迪上任后，发动了入侵，失败了，发起了针对古巴的大规模恐怖战争。
That was a long time ago, right?
那是很久以前的事了，对吧？
Cuba’s had plenty of time to grow and recover, and it’s done terribly.
古巴有足够的时间来成长和恢复，而且做得非常糟糕。
Cuba has been under savage attack for 60 years.
古巴60年来一直遭受野蛮袭击。
It’s astonishing that it’s even survived.
令人惊讶的是它竟然幸存下来。
Well, it’s survived, barely.
好吧，它勉强幸存下来。
It has better health statistics than the United States.
它的健康统计数据比美国更好。
It’s developed a biomedical system which is one of the wonders of the world despite US sanctions, which are so strict that if Cuba wants something to use for vaccines from Sweden, they can’t get it.
尽管美国制裁如此严格，但古巴开发的生物医学系统仍是世界奇迹之一，如果古巴想要从瑞典获得用于疫苗的东西，他们就无法获得。
The United States is a very violent and brutal country.
美国是一个非常暴力和残暴的国家。
When the United States imposes sanctions, they are third-party sanctions.
美国实施制裁是第三方制裁。
Every country in the world has to accept them.
世界上每个国家都必须接受它们。
The world is overwhelmingly opposed.
全世界都强烈反对。
Look at the United Nations.
看看联合国。
The votes are 184 to 2, United States and Israel.
投票结果为 184 比 2，美国和以色列。
Total opposition.
完全反对。
Everybody obeys the US sanctions out of fear of the most violent country in the world.
每个人都出于对世界上最暴力国家的恐惧而遵守美国的制裁。
The fact that Cuba has even survived is an astonishing thing, and if you look at things like health statistics, quality of life, and so on, it’s one of the best in the hemisphere.
古巴幸存下来的事实是一件令人惊讶的事情，如果你看看健康统计数据、生活质量等，你会发现它是西半球最好的国家之一。
Even better than ours.
甚至比我们的还要好。
The European Union can trade with Cuba, right?
欧盟可以与古巴进行贸易，对吧？
No, it cannot.
不，不能。
And a lot of the health statistics have been revealed to be fraudulent.
许多健康统计数据已被揭露是欺诈的。
Latin America can trade with Cuba.
拉丁美洲可以与古巴进行贸易。
You can fly from Mexico to Cuba.
您可以从墨西哥飞往古巴。
If the European Union tries to trade with Cuba, the US threatens it with throwing it out of the international financial system.
如果欧盟试图与古巴进行贸易，美国就会威胁将其从国际金融体系中剔除。
The European Union obeys the US sanctions.
欧盟遵守美国的制裁。
Who’s the thinker on the left, say in the last 20 years, whom you admire the most?
比如说过去 20 年来，您最钦佩的左派思想家是谁？
The people I admire most are the young people in the streets who are on the front line of trying to save the world from disaster.
我最敬佩的人是街头的年轻人，他们奋战在第一线，试图拯救世界免遭灾难。
There are a lot of very good people, but not up to me to rank them.
优秀的人有很多，但不是由我来排名的。
But as a writer, who is it you learn from, you look forward to their next book, you try to meet with?
但作为一名作家，你向谁学习，你期待他们的下一本书，你尝试与谁见面？
I found recently that in this day and age, the easiest way to write and reach people is through the internet because a lot of people don’t read books much anymore.
我最近发现，在当今时代，写作和接触人们最简单的方式是通过互联网，因为很多人不再读书了。
I’ve been doing regular books of interviews and discussions.
我一直在写一些采访和讨论的常规书籍。
Several have come out in the last year and others are in the works, will be out soon.
其中一些已于去年问世，其他一些正在开发中，很快就会问世。
Who’s the thinker on the right whom you’ve admired the most over, say, the last 20 years?
比如，过去 20 年来你最钦佩的右翼思想家是谁？
That’s the same point.
这是同一点。
I read plenty of good work from what’s called right to left, but it’s the quality of the work that counts, not the person.
我从右到左读了很多好作品，但重要的是作品的质量，而不是人。
I don’t rank people.
我不会对人进行排名。
A few questions about the Noam Chomsky production function.
关于诺姆·乔姆斯基生产函数的几个问题。
How have you stayed so mentally vital so late in life?
你为何在这么晚的年纪仍能保持如此旺盛的精神活力？
Just the incentive of so much to do of such enormous significance.
正是激励人们去做这么多具有重大意义的事情。
I don’t see any way to stop in both of the areas that we’ve been talking about.
我看不出有什么办法可以在我们一直在讨论的这两个领域停下来。
I try to maintain a lively commitment to intellectual work.
我努力保持对智力工作的积极投入。
A lot of new work there, but the issues of human concern are just overwhelming.
那里有很多新的工作，但人类关注的问题却是压倒性的。
We have to face the fact that we are in a unique moment of human history.
我们必须面对这样一个事实：我们正处于人类历史上一个独特的时刻。
Nothing like this has ever happened in the couple hundred thousand years that humans have been on earth.
人类在地球上生活了几十万年，从来没有发生过这样的事情。
We now have to decide within a couple of decades whether the human experiment is going to continue or whether it’ll go down in glorious disaster.
我们现在必须在几十年内决定人体实验是否要继续，或者是否会陷入光荣的灾难。
That’s what we’re facing.
这就是我们所面临的。
We know answers, at least possible answers to all of the problems that face us.
我们知道答案，至少知道我们面临的所有问题的可能答案。
We’re not pursuing them.
我们不追捕他们。
The leadership is going in the opposite direction.
领导层正朝着相反的方向前进。
How can anybody relax under these circumstances?
在这种情况下，谁能放松呢？
Do you think it’s genetic that you’re still going, or just essentially voluntarist?
你认为你仍然坚持下去是遗传因素，还是本质上是自愿的？
Nobody knows a thing about it.
没有人知道这件事。
It’s you and Henry Kissinger, right?
是你和亨利·基辛格，对吧？
Who would’ve thought there would be the two of you?
谁会想到会有你们两个？
It’s a mystery, sir, a mystery.
这是一个谜，先生，一个谜。
Why do you answer every email?
为什么你要回复每封电子邮件？
Because I take people seriously.
因为我认真对待别人。
I think people deserve respect.
我认为人们值得尊重。
Two final questions.
最后两个问题。
First, what’s the biggest misperception people have about you?
首先，人们对你最大的误解是什么？
Depends what they read.
取决于他们读什么。
People reading Newsweek, for example — they’ll have the assumption that I think we should hand Ukraine over to the Russians.
例如，阅读《新闻周刊》的人们会认为我认为我们应该将乌克兰交给俄罗斯人。
Sure, that’s the way manufacture of consent works in the ideological journals.
当然，这就是意识形态期刊中制造同意的方式。
If people read what I say, they’ll have a different opinion.
如果人们读了我说的话，他们会有不同的看法。
Final question: What is it that you will do next?
最后一个问题：你接下来要做什么？
Well, the thing I’ll do next, in 10 minutes, is have a long discussion at a major conference — happens to be in Texas — on social and political issues.
好吧，接下来 10 分钟内我要做的就是在一次重要会议上（恰好在德克萨斯州举行）就社会和政治问题进行长时间的讨论。
An annual conference that takes place there.
在那里举行年度会议。
After that, go back to the regular work of the two sides of my brain, social and political issues, and intellectual contributions.
之后，回到我大脑两侧的日常工作，社会和政治问题，以及智力贡献。
In your career, where do you feel it is that you’ve been most wrong?
在你的职业生涯中，你觉得自己最错误的地方在哪里？
There are a lot of things that I have been wrong.
有很多事情我都做错了。
For example, take the Vietnam War.
以越南战争为例。
I was very much involved in it.
我非常投入其中。
In fact, it was my whole life for a couple of years, but I got involved much too late.
事实上，这就是我几年来的全部生活，但我介入得太晚了。
I got seriously involved in the early ’60s, when Kennedy sharply escalated the war.
我在 20 世纪 60 年代初就开始认真参与其中，当时肯尼迪使战争急剧升级。
There was almost nobody concerned with it at that time, but the time to have gotten involved was 10 years earlier.
当时几乎没有人关心这件事，但介入的时间已经是10年前了。
I didn’t know it at the time.
我当时并不知道。
We know now when the government made the basic decisions — early ’50s.
我们现在知道政府是什么时候做出基本决定的——“50 年代初”。
That set the stage for what became the most hideous crime of the 20th century.
这为20世纪最可怕的犯罪埋下了伏笔。
That was the time to be getting involved, not when I did.
那是我参与其中的时候，而不是我参与的时候。
Many other things like that.
还有很多类似的事情。
There’s so much that should be done that I haven’t managed to do.
应该做的事情太多了，但我却没能做到。
Right now, you can say the same thing.
现在，你也可以说同样的话。
The Holocaust isn’t the most hideous crime of the 20th century?
大屠杀不是20世纪最可怕的罪行吗？
The late 20th century.
20世纪末。
Oh, late 20th century.
哦，20世纪末。
Noam Chomsky, thank you very much.
诺姆·乔姆斯基，非常感谢你。
Thank you.
谢谢。
Photo credit: Duncan Rawlinson - Duncan.co
照片来源：邓肯·罗林森 - Duncan.co