Ross Douthat on Decadence and Dynamism (Ep. 91)
Hello, and welcome to Conversations with Tyler.
您好，欢迎收看与泰勒对话。
I’m here once again with Ross Douthat.
我和罗斯·杜塔特再次来到这里。
Ross has a new book out, which I’m a big, big fan of, called The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.
罗斯出版了一本新书，我是这本书的超级粉丝，书名叫《颓废社会：我们如何成为自己成功的受害者》。
Ross, welcome.
罗斯，欢迎。
Thank you for having me back, Tyler.
谢谢你让我回来，泰勒。
It’s an honor.
这是一种荣幸。
A very simple question about decadence.
一个关于颓废的非常简单的问题。
I read in the New York Times this morning, which is late February, “In the past several years, Kanye West has announced so many plans.
今天早上，也就是二月底，我在《纽约时报》上读到，“在过去的几年里，坎耶·维斯特宣布了很多计划。
That he wants to start a church.
他想建立一座教堂。
That he plans to run for president in 2024.
他计划于 2024 年竞选总统。
That he will invent a method for autocorrecting emoticons.
他将发明一种自动更正表情符号的方法。
That he aims to redesign the standard American home.
他的目标是重新设计标准的美国住宅。
That he might legally change his name to ‘Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West’ for a year.”
他可以合法地将自己的名字改为‘基督教天才亿万富翁坎耶·韦斯特’一年。”
Is Kanye decadent?
坎耶颓废了吗？
No.
不。
Why not?
为什么不呢？
Kanye is not decadent because decadence involves drift, repetition, and stalemate, and Kanye’s public persona is defined by creativity, conversion, and reinvention.
坎耶并不颓废，因为颓废涉及漂移、重复和僵局，而坎耶的公众形象是由创造力、转变和重塑所定义的。
Now, that’s not to say that Kanye might not participate in decadence.
现在，这并不是说坎耶可能不会参与颓废。
One of the implicit or explicit arguments of my book is that even when you’re a rebel against decadence, it’s very hard to escape these fundamental forces in our society dragging us towards stalemates and repetition.
我的书中或明或暗的论点之一是，即使你是一个反抗颓废的人，也很难摆脱我们社会中这些将我们拖向僵局和重复的基本力量。
So maybe all of Kanye’s reinventions and plans to reinvent the question mark come to nothing in the end.
所以也许 Kanye 的所有改造和改造问号的计划最终都化为泡影。
But the fact of his ambitions and the fact that he has actually invented a church, right?
但他的野心和他实际上发明了一座教堂的事实，对吗？
Kanye has a cult.
坎耶有一个邪教。
He has Sunday services that are a unique phenomenon amongst celebrities.
他的周日礼拜在名人中是一种独特的现象。
So even if there are limits on what he can achieve, he is a force for anti-decadence in a decadent society.
所以即使他的成就有限，他也是颓废社会中一股反颓废的力量。
So does the popularity of Kanye suggest we’re moving away from decadence?
那么 Kanye 的流行是否表明我们正在远离颓废呢？
Or is that a kind of placebo we use to insulate ourselves from dynamism?
或者这是我们用来使自己免受活力影响的一种安慰剂？
“Oh, I like Kanye.” And then we go about being decadent.
“哦，我喜欢坎耶。”然后我们就开始颓废。
That’s probably a little bit of both.
这可能是两者兼而有之。
You can see this in politics, right?
你可以在政治中看到这一点，对吧？
When I started writing the book, a long time ago now, the populist moment hadn’t really arrived in the Western world.
很久以前，当我开始写这本书时，西方世界的民粹主义时刻还没有真正到来。
So one of the questions hanging over the argument is, Does the populist moment prove that decadence is coming to an end?
因此，争论中悬而未决的问题之一是，民粹主义时刻是否证明颓废即将结束？
Does it end with populism and nationalism and the return of history?
它会以民粹主义和民族主义以及历史的回归而结束吗？
I think that’s an open question.
我认为这是一个悬而未决的问题。
The answer that I lean towards in the book is that it doesn’t, that these rebellions are sort of more performative and virtual than real.
我在书中倾向于的答案是事实并非如此，这些叛乱更多的是表演性和虚拟性，而不是真实的。
But their appeal suggests that people aren’t content with decadence, and that is a sign that maybe, at some point, it will come to an end.
但它们的吸引力表明人们并不满足于颓废，这表明颓废也许在某个时候会结束。
Support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump partakes of decadence but also represents a desire for something else.
对伯尼·桑德斯和唐纳德·特朗普的支持体现了颓废，但也代表了对其他事物的渴望。
And as long as that desire is there, there has to be some possibility of escape.
只要有这种欲望，就一定有逃避的可能性。
Our mutual acquaintance, Roger Scruton, who died recently — he seemed to love fox hunting and the operas of Richard Wagner.
我们共同的熟人罗杰·斯克鲁顿（Roger Scruton）最近去世了，他似乎很喜欢猎狐和理查德·瓦格纳的歌剧。
Was that decadence, or is that innovation?
这是颓废，还是创新？
I think there are forms of antiquarianism that are sufficiently antiquarian to cease to be decadent and to become almost innovative.
我认为有些形式的古物主义已经足够古物化，不再颓废，而是变得近乎创新。
So you could argue that we’ve reached a point where our culture — our mass culture, but also our elite culture — is sufficiently dominated by just repetitions of cultural forms and products from the baby boomer era.
因此，你可能会说，我们已经达到了这样一个地步：我们的文化——我们的大众文化，还有我们的精英文化——完全被婴儿潮一代文化形式和产品的重复所主导。
That to be an antiquarian, to reach back towards traditions and forms and aesthetic forms that were popular 150 years ago, is also an escape from decadence.
成为一名古物学家，追溯 150 年前流行的传统、形式和审美形式，也是对颓废的一种逃避。
So there we go.
我们就这样吧。
Kanye isn’t decadent; Roger Scruton isn’t decadent.
Kanye 并不颓废；他并不颓废。罗杰·斯克鲁顿并不颓废。
We’re whittling away at my thesis one celebrity, or late celebrity, at a time.
我们每次都会削减一位名人或已故名人的论文。
Are you decadent?
你颓废吗？
You wrote a column about architecture, and in that column you say, “Making American architecture a little more traditional .
您写了一篇关于建筑的专栏，在该专栏中您说：“让美国建筑变得更传统一点……”
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certainly wouldn’t hurt.”
当然不会受伤。”
Shouldn’t American architecture be more like Kanye West?
美国建筑不应该更像坎耶·维斯特吗？
Yes, that is decadent.
是的，那就是颓废。
Absolutely.
绝对地。
I would say that, basically, the place that modern architecture has ended up and the traditionalist alternative are both sort of decadent, and I prefer the traditionalist forms on aesthetic grounds.
我想说，基本上，现代建筑和传统主义建筑的结局都是颓废的，从审美角度来看，我更喜欢传统主义形式。
But I recognize that they are not dynamic and innovative, that you’re accepting that we’ve reached some dead end in architectural style making and choosing the beauties of traditional forms over some of .
但我认识到它们不是充满活力和创新的，你承认我们在建筑风格的制定和选择传统形式的美而不是某些形式方面已经走到了死胡同。
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Frankly, the less the ugliness, the more the mediocrity that, I think, a lot of post-1960s architectural forms have ended up with.
坦率地说，丑陋程度越低，我认为许多 20 世纪 60 年代后的建筑形式最终都会变得平庸。
So under my definition, the golden age of brutalism is not decadent.
所以根据我的定义，野蛮主义的黄金时代并不是颓废的。
It’s bad, right?
这很糟糕，对吧？
I don’t like brutalist architecture —
我不喜欢粗野主义建筑——
I do.
我愿意。
But we can find common ground, at least, in that it was trying to create a distinctive style for a disenchanted age and express something about modernity and the forms.
但我们至少可以找到共同点，因为它试图为一个幻灭的时代创造一种独特的风格，并表达一些关于现代性和形式的东西。
Whereas I think that — and I say this: I’m not a professional architecture critic, so take this with a grain of salt — but the last 25 years of public architecture has been less spectacularly ugly and more just mediocre imitations of more striking modernist forms.
然而我认为——我这么说：我不是一个专业的建筑评论家，所以对此持保留态度——但过去 25 年的公共建筑并没有那么丑陋，而只是对更引人注目的现代主义形式的平庸模仿。
But you probably have stronger opinions on this than I do, ultimately.
但最终你对此的看法可能比我更强烈。
I’m more of an optimist about architecture.
我对建筑更加乐观。
The new art and interiors of homes, it seems to me, have become much better.
在我看来，新的家居艺术和室内装饰已经变得更好了。
It’s hard to see them precisely because they’re interiors.
很难准确地看到它们，因为它们是室内的。
But when I was a kid, it was very rare you’d see a nice interior of any home, even of a wealthy person.
但当我还是个孩子的时候，你很少会看到任何房子有漂亮的内饰，即使是有钱人的房子。
Now, even an upper-middle-class person, you might think, “My goodness, that looks amazing.”
现在，即使是中上阶层人士，你也可能会想，“天哪，这看起来太棒了。”
I was in someone’s house in Lubbock.
我当时在拉伯克某人的家里。
It was gorgeous.
太漂亮了。
That’s Lubbock, Texas, right?
那是德克萨斯州拉伯克，对吗？
Yes, HGTV — the interiors suggest a certain kind of aesthetic progress, although in other ways, HGTV is decadent, so it’s complicated.
是的，HGTV——内饰暗示着某种审美进步，尽管在其他方面，HGTV 是颓废的，所以它很复杂。
There’s a famous quotation, with the source actually being contested or unknown, and it goes as follows: “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” True or false?
有一句著名的引言，其来源实际上是有争议的或未知的，其内容如下：“美国是唯一一个从野蛮走向颓废而中间没有文明的国家。”是真是假？
Was that not Clemenceau?
那不是克列孟梭吗？
People don’t agree.
人们不同意。
People don’t —
人们不——
Probably it was someone before him, some version of that.
可能是在他之前的某个人，某个版本。
Yeah.
是的。
I enjoy that quote without agreeing with it.
我很喜欢这句话，但并不同意。
I think that America, in many respects, really did represent a particular peak of civilizational progress in the years of its ascent from somewhere in the 19th century up until the moon landing.
我认为，从 19 世纪的某个时期到登月，美国在许多方面确实代表了文明进步的一个特殊高峰。
So I would defend the civilization of the Americans.
所以我会捍卫美国人的文明。
It’s particular.
这是特别的。
There are certain forms — high cultural forms — that America has not specialized in.
有些形式——高雅文化形式——是美国不擅长的。
But America has produced a lot of great mass art, and a certain amount of good elite art, and a lot of impressive technological progress.
但美国创造了许多伟大的大众艺术，以及一定数量的优秀精英艺术，以及许多令人印象深刻的技术进步。
And I think that adds up to civilization, not barbarism.
我认为这意味着文明，而不是野蛮。
Was the moon landing, in some sense, a mistake?
从某种意义上说，登月是一个错误吗？
That after we did that, we patted ourselves on the back too much, and we weren’t sure what to do for an encore, however glorious it may have been?
在我们这样做之后，我们太过自夸了，我们不知道该做什么来重演，无论它有多光荣？
No, it wasn’t.
不，不是。
It wasn’t a mistake.
这不是一个错误。
You had to do it.
你必须这么做。
It was the thing to be done.
这是我们要做的事情。
It was the furthest step we could take into space that was dramatic and a sort of embodiment of human beings going beyond the planet Earth.
这是我们进入太空所能迈出的最远的一步，具有戏剧性，也是人类超越地球的体现。
But why did we basically stop a little bit after that?
但为什么在那之后我们基本上就停下来了呢？
What I want to say, as a critic of decadence, is that there was some failure of will or of nerve and so on, but you know —
作为颓废的批评者，我想说的是，其中存在一些意志或勇气等方面的失败，但你知道——
But that’s endogenous, right?
但这是内生的，对吗？
Right.
正确的。
You have to acknowledge that the problem with space is that, under current technological conditions, the moon landing was what we could do, and there wasn’t that much else that we could do, certainly that had the presumable financial rewards or opportunities for people starting new lives.
你必须承认，太空的问题在于，在当前的技术条件下，登月是我们能做的，我们没有什么其他可以做的，当然，这可以为人们提供可能的经济回报或开始新生活的机会。
All of the things that drove ages of discovery in earlier periods in human history just weren’t available and still aren’t available.
所有在人类历史早期推动发现的事物都无法实现，而且仍然无法实现。
And whatever the sort of psychological civilizational factors at work, that’s the dominant reality that people like me, who really want to go into space, have to acknowledge.
无论哪种心理文明因素在起作用，这都是像我这样真正想要进入太空的人必须承认的主导现实。
But we did settle Nevada afterwards, right?
但后来我们确实在内华达定居了，对吗？
Is that not the greater achievement?
这难道不是更大的成就吗？
They’re both dry, distant.
它们都很干燥、遥远。
The settlement of Nevada is, in a sense, yes, maybe the last great blow against decadence struck, but the way we settled it was not universally .
从某种意义上说，内华达的解决，是的，也许是对颓废的最后一次巨大打击，但我们解决它的方式并不普遍。
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I think you can see Las Vegas is decadent under the standard definition of decadence which involves —
我想你可以看到拉斯维加斯在颓废的标准定义下是颓废的，其中包括——
But not yours.
但不是你的。
No, but it’s decadent under mine, too, in the sense that it represents a kind of simulated sublimity where you are creating models of all of the great achievements of the human species in the modern world and practicing various forms of entertainment around them.
不，但在我看来，它也是颓废的，因为它代表了一种模拟的崇高，你正在为现代世界中人类的所有伟大成就创造模型，并在它们周围实践各种形式的娱乐。
So in that sense, it is under my definition too, not just the chocolates-and-bondage-dens definition.
所以从这个意义上说，它也在我的定义之下，而不仅仅是巧克力和束缚巢穴的定义。
I think it is decadent.
我认为这是颓废的。
I borrow this concept of the technological sublime from David Nye, and before him, Perry Miller, a couple of great American historians — this idea that American history is punctuated by these moments of some technological breakthrough that’s also a kind of wonder of the world.
我从大卫·奈（David Nye）和他之前的佩里·米勒（Perry Miller）两位伟大的美国历史学家那里借用了技术崇高的概念——这种观点认为美国历史上不时出现一些技术突破的时刻，这也是世界的奇迹。
And that is distinctively American in a way that is not — in spite of the Eiffel Tower and other things as European examples, does sometimes seem to the more sophisticated European mind, maybe mildly barbaric — our delight in our steam engines and transcontinental railways.
这在某种程度上是美国特有的，尽管埃菲尔铁塔和其他东西都是欧洲的例子，但有时在更成熟的欧洲人看来，也许有点野蛮——我们对蒸汽机和横贯大陆铁路的喜悦。
But I think it’s been a distinctive part of the American experience that has run out since the moon landing.
但我认为这是自登月以来美国经验的一个独特部分。
And Las Vegas and the iPhone, in different ways, are imitations of that but are more focused on simulation and entertainment than the steamship and the railway and the space shuttle were.
拉斯维加斯和iPhone以不同的方式模仿了它，但比轮船、铁路和航天飞机更注重模拟和娱乐。
Of all the Western nations, given your notion of decadence, which is the least decadent?
在所有西方国家中，按照你的颓废观念，哪个是最不颓废的？
Are we counting Israel as Western?
我们是否将以色列视为西方国家？
Not for the purposes of this question.
不是为了这个问题的目的。
Then probably the United States of America.
然后可能是美利坚合众国。
And what would be number two?
第二名是什么？
I have an impulse to say France, which is sort of strange, right?
我有一种冲动说法国，这有点奇怪吧？
France?
法国？
Why France?
为什么是法国？
I would put it this way: I think France is, in certain ways, very advanced in decadence, but it’s also a place where a lot of forces of post-decadence — whatever that may be — are sort of in play in really interesting ways.
我会这样说：我认为法国在某些方面在颓废方面非常先进，但它也是一个许多后颓废力量（无论是什么）以非常有趣的方式发挥作用的地方。
It’s a place that has some of the most interesting political and intellectual debates about liberalism and post-liberalism, even though it hasn’t actually seen a far-right or far-left party take power.
这是一个关于自由主义和后自由主义的一些最有趣的政治和知识辩论的地方，尽管它实际上并没有看到极右或极左政党掌权。
It’s a place that’s a particular example of the uneasy confrontation between a decadent Europe and Islam and Islamic immigration.
这里是颓废的欧洲与伊斯兰教和伊斯兰移民之间令人不安的对抗的一个特殊例子。
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the great chronicler of decadence, Michel Houellebecq, comes from France.
我不认为伟大的颓废编年史家米歇尔·维勒贝克（Michel Houellebecq）来自法国，这并非巧合。
In that sense, I think France is both further advanced in its decadence, but also, therefore, more interested in and open to whatever strange things lie beyond.
从这个意义上说，我认为法国不仅在颓废方面更加先进，而且因此对周围的任何奇怪事物更感兴趣并持开放态度。
But that’s speculative.
但这是推测性的。
Are you long or short France?
您是做多还是做空法国？
I am long France in the sense that I think that it is the most likely crucible for whatever forces are going to reshape Europe over the next 100 years.
我看多法国，因为我认为无论何种力量将在未来 100 年内重塑欧洲，法国最有可能成为最严峻的考验。
I am short France in the sense that that means it is the place most likely to have a civil war, maybe in the next 100 years.
我做空法国，因为这意味着它是最有可能发生内战的地方，也许在未来 100 年。
So, long in terms of drama, short maybe in terms of stability.
所以，就戏剧性而言，长，就稳定性而言，可能短。
I think that means short.
我认为这意味着短。
Only if you’re an investor, not if you’re a journalist.
仅当您是投资者时才如此，如果您是记者则不然。
What if I were to argue Canada is, in fact, highly innovative?
如果我认为加拿大实际上具有高度创新性怎么办？
They seem to have completely sane governance, which is now all of a sudden a novelty, and several of their major cities have foreign-born populations of more than half the total.
他们似乎拥有完全理智的治理，这现在突然成为一种新鲜事，而且他们的几个主要城市的外国出生人口占总人口的一半以上。
It works very well.
它运作得很好。
Yes.
是的。
Also, a lot of those populations are non-Western, different religions.
此外，其中很多人口都是非西方的、不同的宗教。
In world history, this is quite astonishing: sane governance and so many foreigners, and their cities are wonderful.
在世界历史上，这是相当惊人的：理智的治理和如此多的外国人，他们的城市都很棒。
Why isn’t that this phenomenal innovation and Canada is the least decadent country, in your sense?
在您看来，为什么这不是一项非凡的创新，而加拿大是最不颓废的国家呢？
I think that’s a reasonable argument, and the careful reader of my book will notice that I don’t talk a great deal about Canada, in part because it doesn’t display as fully a lot of the manifestations of decadence that I’m talking about — political gridlock and sclerosis — which I think fits much of Western Europe, fits the United States, in certain ways fits the Pacific Rim.
我认为这是一个合理的论点，仔细阅读我的书的读者会注意到，我并没有过多谈论加拿大，部分原因是它没有充分展示我所谈论的许多颓废表现——政治僵局和硬化——我认为这适合西欧，适合美国，在某些方面适合环太平洋地区。
It has some of the same issues of demographic decline as other countries, but it’s not as steep as East Asia.
它与其他国家一样存在一些相同的人口下降问题，但不像东亚那么严重。
And, as you say, it has managed a certain kind of immigrant assimilation in ways that other Western countries are struggling with.
而且，正如你所说，它以其他西方国家正在努力解决的方式管理了某种移民同化。
In that sense, Canada — if it is decadent, it has decadence without some of the more extreme difficulties associated with it.
从这个意义上说，加拿大——如果它是颓废的，它已经颓废了，但没有与之相关的一些更极端的困难。
I guess my question for you, as an observer of Canada, is, At what point does this sort of Canadian exceptionalism start to dramatically influence the world?
作为加拿大的观察者，我想我要问你的问题是，这种加拿大例外论从什么时候开始对世界产生巨大影响？
And fundamentally, should we think of Canada as a large country, which it is, or as a small country, which it also is?
从根本上说，我们应该将加拿大视为一个大国（事实如此），还是一个小国家（事实如此）？
Small country.
小国家。
Right.
正确的。
In some ways, like the Nordics.
在某些方面，就像北欧人。
I’m not sure Canadian exceptionalism will last, but I find striking the question, Why don’t more Americans actually want to move to Canada?
我不确定加拿大的例外论会持续下去，但我发现一个引人注目的问题：为什么没有更多的美国人真正想搬到加拿大？
They would take either of us, right?
他们会带走我们中的任何一个，对吗？
That’s very flattering to us, but —
这对我们来说非常受宠若惊，但是——
We’re still sitting here in Northern Virginia.
我们仍然坐在弗吉尼亚州北部。
My wife has descended from Canadians on one side, from Newfoundland and Ontario.
我的妻子是加拿大人的后裔，来自纽芬兰和安大略省。
And when things get particularly hot on Twitter, she will sometimes suggest that she needs to reclaim her Canadian citizenship.
当推特上的事情变得特别热门时，她有时会建议她需要重新获得加拿大公民身份。
But I actually think that is how certain Americans think of Canada — not as a land of opportunity, but as sort of a stable and lower-risk version of the US to which they can abscond.
但我实际上认为这就是某些美国人对加拿大的看法——不是一个充满机遇的土地，而是一个他们可以潜逃的稳定且风险较低的美国版本。
And to the extent that’s true, then that suggests that there is this kind of resilient dynamism in the US that comes with risks but doesn’t seem to be on offer in Canada.
如果这是真的，那就表明美国存在这种弹性活力，但也存在风险，但加拿大似乎并不具备这种活力。
But do you think that’s out of date?
但你认为这已经过时了吗？
How dynamic do you think Canada is right now?
您认为加拿大目前的活力如何？
I think market size matters greatly.
我认为市场规模非常重要。
So talented Canadians come to the US in great numbers, but not so much vice versa.
因此，大量有才华的加拿大人来到美国，但反之亦然。
So it could just be that people care about market size much more than they care about the kinds of issues you and I talk about, and that always gives me pause.
因此，可能只是人们更关心市场规模，而不是你和我谈论的问题，这总是让我犹豫不决。
Just size of the country seems to be a more important variable relative to the amount of print space it gets from public intellectuals.
相对于公共知识分子获得的印刷版面数量，国家的面积似乎是一个更重要的变量。
And that’s why we don’t want to go to Canada.
这就是为什么我们不想去加拿大。
Plus, it’s cold.
另外，天气很冷。
It is cold.
天气很冷。
And all Canadians live in a very narrow strip of Canada.
所有加拿大人都生活在加拿大一个非常狭窄的地带。
The population distribution is, as you would expect, extraordinarily compressed.
正如你所预料的那样，人口分布异常压缩。
In effect, geographically, it functions like a very nice northern province of the US with an immense and entertaining hinterland.
实际上，从地理上看，它的功能就像美国一个非常美丽的北部省份，拥有广阔而有趣的腹地。
They will get mad at you for saying that.
他们会因为你这么说而生气。
To me, it feels more like a series of independent city-states on our margins, but I think I would find it problematic to live in a city-state, even in the US.
对我来说，它感觉更像是我们边缘的一系列独立城邦，但我认为我会发现生活在城邦中是有问题的，即使是在美国。
When I go to Texas, I feel comfortable.
当我去德克萨斯州时，我感觉很舒服。
It’s like I’m in a big country.
就像我在一个大国一样。
But when I go to Rhode Island, I feel claustrophobic.
但当我去罗德岛时，我感到幽闭恐惧症。
But also, the city-state model historically, the most dynamic .
而且，城邦模式也是历史上最具活力的。
.
。
.
。
If you think of, obviously, Venice as a city-state, but even quasi city-states, like you can see the Low Countries in the 17th century as quasi city-states functioning within a landscape of empire.
显然，如果您将威尼斯视为一个城邦，甚至是准城邦，那么您可以将 17 世纪的低地国家视为在帝国景观中运作的准城邦。
But they have tended to be influential, in part, because of their geographic placement.
但它们往往具有影响力，部分原因在于它们的地理位置。
Maybe that matters less globally than it once did, but it still feels like Toronto is a terrific city, but it’s not .
也许这在全球范围内不再像以前那么重要，但人们仍然感觉多伦多是一个很棒的城市，但事实并非如此。
.
。
.
。
If Toronto were dropped down in a different part of the world, it might be a more influential city.
如果把多伦多放到世界的另一个地方，它可能会是一个更有影响力的城市。
Is decadence cyclical, or it just keeps on getting worse and worse?
颓废是周期性的，还是只会变得越来越糟？
I think that it can be cyclical.
我认为它可以是周期性的。
One way to look at it is that, under my definition, it’s a very normal thing for human societies to enter into, perhaps much more normal than the kind of dynamism that we have taken for granted in the US.
一种看待它的方式是，根据我的定义，这是人类社会进入的非常正常的事情，也许比我们在美国认为理所当然的那种活力要正常得多。
And to the extent that it reflects patterns of prosperity leading to torpor and stagnation, you would expect a kind of cyclical phenomenon, right?
从某种程度上来说，它反映了繁荣导致迟钝和停滞的模式，你会期待一种周期性现象，对吗？
To take the demographic example, you have real, substantial demographic decline in the Western world.
以人口为例，西方世界的人口数量确实大幅下降。
Some of that just reflects the fact that we had this huge influential generation, the baby boom generation, that didn’t have nearly as many kids as their parents did and has sort of bestridden our world for a long time.
其中一些只是反映了这样一个事实：我们有影响力巨大的一代，即婴儿潮一代，他们的孩子数量远不及他们的父母那么多，但他们已经在我们的世界上占据了很长一段时间。
It’s possible — it’s sort of a subtheme of the book that, as the baby boom generation passes to their reward, that decadence will ease a little bit, and there’ll be more room for young people to do creative things and attain positions of power and all these kinds of things, and the demographic landscape of Western societies will change a little bit.
这是有可能的——这可以说是本书的一个副主题，随着婴儿潮一代获得回报，颓废现象将会有所缓解，年轻人将有更多的空间去做创造性的事情，获得权力地位以及所有这些事情，西方社会的人口格局也会发生一些变化。
So in that sense, I think you can tell a cyclical story and certainly can see cyclical stories in history.
所以从这个意义上说，我认为你可以讲述一个循环的故事，当然也可以看到历史上的循环故事。
I do think, though, that if you just push existing trend lines in the Western world forward, you would say the decadence is likely to deepen, at least over the next 25 to 40 years.
不过，我确实认为，如果你只是推动西方世界现有的趋势线向前发展，你会说颓废可能会加深，至少在未来 25 到 40 年是这样。
Right now, just to stay with fertility, there does seem to be a kind of low fertility trap that countries get into, where you have small families.
目前，为了保持生育率，一些国家似乎确实陷入了一种低生育率陷阱，即家庭规模较小的国家。
Growth and vigor slow down, and in that landscape, there’s less support for having children.
生长速度和活力都会减慢，在这种情况下，对生孩子的支持也减少了。
So fertility rates stay low, and that drives economic growth rates lower, and those things feed on one another.
因此，生育率保持在较低水平，这会导致经济增长率下降，而这些因素会相互影响。
That’s why I spend a certain amount of the later parts of the book talking about scenarios that are more disjunctive, where you need something unexpected and dramatic to happen to shift things.
这就是为什么我在本书的后面部分花了大量的时间来讨论更具分离性的场景，在这些场景中，你需要一些意想不到的、戏剧性的事情发生来改变事情。
Maybe that’s a particular invention that we’re on the cusp of reaching, or maybe it’s a religious revival that we don’t expect.
也许这是我们即将实现的一项特殊发明，或者也许这是我们意想不到的宗教复兴。
I think the decadence we have now requires some sort of disjunctive event to shift us out of it, which could very well happen.
我认为我们现在所面临的颓废需要某种脱节事件来使我们摆脱困境，这很可能会发生。
But if you just plot the course of the United States forward to 2050, I would say that we stay decadent.
但如果你只是规划美国到 2050 年的发展方向，我会说我们仍然颓废。
Maybe the problem with the low birth rate — it’s not that kids aren’t fun, but men are not fun.
也许是低出生率的问题——不是孩子不好玩，而是男人不好玩。
So once women have some wealth or employment opportunities at all, they don’t need men as much.
因此，一旦女性拥有了一些财富或就业机会，她们就不再那么需要男性了。
Those men don’t compete as much to marry those women.
这些男人不会为了娶那些女人而进行太多的竞争。
You have families forming later or not at all, or there’s high rate of single motherhood of course.
有些家庭较晚组建，或者根本没有组建家庭，当然，单亲母亲的比例也很高。
But you’ll just have fewer kids.
但你的孩子只会更少。
What would possibly reverse the problem of men simply not being that much fun?
什么才能扭转男人不那么有趣的问题呢？
I think it’s a hard question.
我认为这是一个很难回答的问题。
Your kids are a lot of fun, right?
你的孩子很有趣，对吧？
Right, but you’re right, that’s if you track right.
是的，但你是对的，前提是你的追踪正确。
If you track fertility declines in not just the US but, to take a strong case, Finland, which has had, in spite of all its social supports for child-rearing that are the envy of family policy experts the world over — their fertility rate keeps falling.
如果你不仅追踪美国的生育率下降情况，而且举一个强有力的例子，芬兰的生育率持续下降，尽管其对养育子女的所有社会支持令全世界的家庭政策专家羡慕不已。
And it seems to be just a consequence of all the trends you said: delayed marriage, delayed family formation, and men, in particular, not seeming to have a clearly defined role.
这似乎只是你所说的所有趋势的结果：延迟结婚、延迟组建家庭，尤其是男性，似乎没有明确界定的角色。
I go back and forth on this because on the one hand, we have three kids, we’re about to have a fourth —
我在这个问题上反复讨论，因为一方面，我们有三个孩子，我们即将有第四个——
Oh, congratulations.
哦，恭喜。
Thank you.
谢谢。
And it seems to me, as an observer of marriages and child-rearing, that men are very important, even in our postfeminist, postindustrial age —
在我看来，作为婚姻和养育孩子的观察者，即使在我们的后女权主义、后工业时代，男性也非常重要——
The good ones.
好的人。
Right, the good ones.
对了，好人。
But that should create an incentive for cultures and societies to form good ones and to figure out, How do you form good men in this landscape?
但这应该会激励文化和社会形成优秀的人，并弄清楚，如何在这个环境中培养优秀的人？
And we haven’t.
我们还没有。
It’s pretty clear that we aren’t figuring out exactly how to do that.
很明显，我们还没有弄清楚如何做到这一点。
Instead, you have these selection effects, where you increasingly have male spaces and female spaces that aren’t single-sex spaces.
相反，你会产生这些选择效应，其中越来越多的男性空间和女性空间不是单一性别的空间。
They aren’t spaces where women go to be women, and men go to be men, and then they meet in the dating market.
它们不是女人成为女人，男人成为男人，然后他们在约会市场上相遇的地方。
They are spaces that are heavily female but have a certain percentage of males, or heavily male but have a certain percentage of females, have their own sort of self-contained dating markets where, because of the imbalance, there ends up being hostility between the sexes.
这些空间以女性为主，但也有一定比例的男性，或者以男性为主，但也有一定比例的女性，拥有自己独立的约会市场，由于不平衡，最终导致两性之间存在敌意。
Thus, you have the far-right incels online, complaining about how women are terrible because in their world, there aren’t very many women.
因此，网上有极右的非自愿独身者，他们抱怨女性有多糟糕，因为在他们的世界里，女性并不多。
So all of the incentives are for women to behave like normal human beings and take advantage of their position.
因此，所有的激励措施都是为了让女性像正常人一样行事并利用她们的地位。
And then on the other side, in left-wing academic environments, you have fewer men, so the men don’t behave as well, and the women feel like the men are terrible.
另一方面，在左翼学术环境中，男性较少，因此男性表现不佳，女性则觉得男性很糟糕。
That seems like a hard cycle to break, and it does seem like you would need some sort of effectively cultural campaign around rebuilding male education and manhood.
这似乎是一个难以打破的循环，而且似乎确实需要某种有效的文化运动来重建男性教育和男子气概。
Right now, the models for that are polarized between conservative religious models that, as a conservative religious person, I’m in favor of, but they obviously have a limited purchase in the culture as a whole, and then more feminist models that are trying to remake men along the lines of female virtues that I don’t think actually work, that don’t effectively identify core ways of making men successful as men.
目前，这种模式在两极分化：保守的宗教模式，作为一个保守的宗教人士，我赞成，但他们显然对整个文化的购买力有限；然后是更多的女权主义模式，试图按照女性美德来重塑男性，我认为这些模式实际上行不通，不能有效地识别让男性作为男性取得成功的核心方法。
But I do think — to be the social conservative for a minute — I do think pornography plays a really nasty role in all of this.
但我确实认为——作为社会保守派一分钟——我确实认为色情在这一切中扮演着非常令人讨厌的角色。
A society that stigmatized and limited pornography would have at least slightly better men.
一个污蔑和限制色情的社会至少会有稍微好一点的男人。
I think readily available, constantly available pornography pushes men away from women, pushes men away from the cultivation of masculine virtues, makes them less marriageable, makes them literally more impotent in certain ways, and is a sort of underappreciated aspect in the decline of men.
我认为，随手可得、持续不断的色情内容让男人远离女人，让男人远离男性美德的培养，让他们更不适合结婚，让他们在某些方面变得更加无能，并且是男性衰落的一个未被充分认识的方面。
In the theology of original sin, what percentage of men are the good ones?
在原罪神学中，有多少比例的人是好人？
Zero.
零。
Zero.
零。
Well, setting aside Jesus.
好吧，把耶稣放在一边。
But the famous phrase, “the line between good and evil runs through every human heart” — we just had this horrifying thing in my own Catholic world where Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche — this set of communities where people care for the disabled, but really, they’re communities where people live together.
但那句著名的短语，“善恶之间的界限贯穿了每个人心”——我们刚刚在我自己的天主教世界里发生了这件可怕的事情，方舟创始人让·瓦尼埃——这些社区是人们关心残疾人的社区，但实际上，它们是人们共同生活的社区。
It’s not hospitals for disabled people.
这不是残疾人医院。
It’s communities of people living together — who had died recently, was considered a living saint, and had done incredibly good things.
这是一群生活在一起的人——他们最近去世了，被认为是活着的圣人，并且做了令人难以置信的善事。
I personally know people, young men, whose lives were transformed by working in these communities or just writing about these communities.
我个人认识一些人，年轻人，他们的生活因在这些社区工作或只是撰写有关这些社区的文章而改变。
It came out that he had, not a Harvey Weinstein problem, but a milder religious version where he had pressured women, including nuns, into sexual relationships.
事实证明，他的问题不是哈维·韦恩斯坦的问题，而是一个温和的宗教问题，他向包括修女在内的女性施压，让她们发生性关系。
To their credit, the community put out a report about this.
值得赞扬的是，社区就此发布了一份报告。
But men, Catholic men, that I know or observe on the internet were particularly devastated by this because he was this model of saintly Catholic masculinity for them, so it’s a terrible thing.
但我认识或在互联网上观察到的男性，天主教男性对此尤其感到震惊，因为他对他们来说是神圣天主教男子气概的典范，所以这是一件可怕的事情。
But it’s also — I’m circling around back to your original question — because it doesn’t take away, it doesn’t eliminate the good things he did.
但这也是——我回到你原来的问题——因为它不会剥夺、也不会消除他所做的好事。
He did tremendously good things.
他做了很多好事。
He had saintly aspects, but he wasn’t a saint.
他有圣人的一面，但他并不是圣人。
He had that line running right down the middle of his heart.
那条线一直延伸到他的心中央。
Do the arguments of your new book lead you to admire Mormonism more?
你的新书中的论点是否让你更加钦佩摩门教？
I admired Mormonism a great deal —
我非常钦佩摩门教——
But at the margin, right?
但在边缘，对吗？
— before I wrote the book, but yes!
——在我写这本书之前，但是是的！
You asked about nondecadent spaces in the Western world.
您询问了西方世界的非颓废空间。
Israel is one, and you could argue reasonably, I think, that Utah is another.
以色列是其中之一，我认为你可以合理地争辩说，犹他州是另一个。
There is a difficulty for Mormons in that the founding of their faith and some of the pretty obvious controversies associated with it have pushed them a little bit away from certain forms of intellectual and theological work that you would want a really successful religious community bent on evangelizing the United States to be able to do.
摩门教徒面临的困难在于，他们信仰的建立以及与之相关的一些相当明显的争议使他们有点远离某些形式的知识和神学工作，而你会希望一个真正成功的宗教团体致力于向美国传播福音。
So that is sort of my non-Mormon Christian caveat about Mormonism.
这就是我对摩门教的非摩门教基督徒的警告。
But in general, I went out to Salt Lake City when Mitt Romney was running for president.
但总的来说，当米特·罗姆尼竞选总统时，我去了盐湖城。
They were trying to introduce journalists to Mormondom.
他们试图向记者介绍摩门教。
We didn’t get to see their Holy of Holies, but we got tours of the missionary centers and the supermarket/food banks that they run for low-income people.
我们没有看到他们的至圣所，但我们参观了他们为低收入人群经营的传教中心和超市/食品银行。
Speaking as a member of a Christian church — Catholicism — that has entered into its own obvious form of decadence in the US over the last 50 years, it’s a shaming experience in certain ways to see what the Mormons can do in the most basic forms of Christianity: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help drug addicts, help people get their lives together while also serving God.
作为基督教会（天主教）的成员，在过去的 50 年里，天主教会在美国已经进入了明显的颓废状态，从某些方面来说，看到摩门教徒在最基本的基督教形式中所做的事情是一种耻辱的经历：为饥饿者提供食物，为裸体者提供衣服，帮助吸毒成瘾者，帮助人们过上和谐的生活，同时侍奉上帝。
It’s a remarkable and admirable thing that, basically, every other Christian church in the US should be envious of.
这是一件了不起且令人钦佩的事情，基本上，美国所有其他基督教会都应该羡慕。
And they combine this — in a way that does fit with some of my speculations in the book — with this strong interest in economic development and technological progress.
他们将这一点（以一种确实符合我在书中的一些推测的方式）与对经济发展和技术进步的强烈兴趣结合起来。
There isn’t high Mormon theology and high Mormon aesthetics, but certainly, the technical side of Americanness is very much on display in Mormon culture.
虽然没有高尚的摩门教神学和高尚的摩门教美学，但可以肯定的是，美国性的技术方面在摩门教文化中得到了充分展示。
If you see Israel as relatively nondecadent, do you then infer that being under military threat all of the time is what keeps decadence away?
如果你认为以色列相对不颓废，那么你是否可以推断，一直处于军事威胁之下才能避免颓废？
Certainly that is one thing, yeah, Israel — there seems to be some sort of existential issue involved in how people think about the future, and part of the book is suggesting that there is a loss of optimism in the Western world, a sense that frontiers are closed.
当然，这是一回事，是的，以色列——人们如何看待未来似乎涉及某种存在主义问题，这本书的一部分暗示西方世界正在失去乐观主义，一种边界被封闭的感觉。
We’re not going to go to the stars.
我们不会去星星。
We’re stuck here with ourselves.
我们被自己困在这里了。
We’re bored.
我们很无聊。
What do we do now?
我们现在做什么？
But there’s also a sense in which extreme pessimism or extreme concern about the future can be a spur against decadence.
但从某种意义上说，极度悲观或对未来的极度担忧也可能成为对抗颓废的动力。
And what’s so striking about Israel in demographic terms is that Israel is the one country at its level of income that has a birth rate, not just at replacement, but way above replacement.
以色列在人口方面的惊人之处在于，在其收入水平上，以色列是唯一一个拥有高出生率的国家，不仅达到更替水平，而且远远高于更替水平。
It’s dipped a little in the last couple of years.
过去几年略有下降。
And people hear that statistic and say, “Well, it’s just the Ultra-Orthodox having big families.”
人们听到这个统计数据后会说：“好吧，这只是极端正统派拥有大家庭而已。”
But in fact, secular Israelis have much larger than American average families as well, again, in a landscape where their children are in more geopolitical peril than children in the US, in a country that is built out of a desert on a narrow strip of land up against the Mediterranean.
但事实上，世俗的以色列人的家庭规模也比美国普通人要大得多，同样，他们的孩子比美国的孩子面临更多的地缘政治危险，而美国是一个建在沙漠上、紧邻地中海的狭长土地上的国家。
Now politically — we’re recording this in the midst of the interregnum between Israeli elections, of which we’re on track to have 17 in the next year or so — I think that you can see elements of the same political decadence on display in other countries on display in Israel too.
现在在政治上——我们在以色列选举之间的空档期记录这一点，预计明年左右将举行 17 次选举——我认为你也可以在以色列的其他国家看到同样的政治颓废元素。
So I don’t want to suggest that they’re exempt from the trends I’m describing, but they are — like the Mormons — exceptional relative to the rich society norm.
因此，我并不是说他们可以免受我所描述的趋势的影响，但他们——就像摩门教徒一样——相对于富裕社会的规范来说是例外的。
To get back to the theme of your own decadence — you’ve written columns skeptical of the internet.
回到你自己的颓废主题——你写了一些对互联网持怀疑态度的专栏。
You mentioned pornography a moment ago, which is usually now consumed over the internet.
您刚才提到了色情内容，现在通常通过互联网消费色情内容。
Presumably when it comes to CRISPR babies and transhumanism and genetic engineering, you’re at least partly skeptical, maybe very skeptical.
想必当谈到 CRISPR 婴儿、超人类主义和基因工程时，你至少部分持怀疑态度，也许非常持怀疑态度。
But if you think those are the areas right now where we’re seeing the major advances, isn’t it the case that, to overcome decadence, you have to actually embrace the innovations that you yourself are not comfortable with?
但如果你认为这些是我们现在看到重大进步的领域，那么为了克服颓废，你是否必须真正接受你自己不喜欢的创新？
The printing press in its early days led to religious wars.
早期的印刷机导致了宗教战争。
The Catholic Church —
天主教堂——
I would have certainly been against the printing press, yes.
是的，我肯定会反对印刷机。
Definitely, there are places where there is a tension between my Catholic or Christian moral commitments and my desire to escape decadence, and certainly I think elements of transhumanism are one of them.
当然，在某些地方，我的天主教或基督教道德承诺与我逃避颓废的愿望之间存在紧张关系，当然我认为超人类主义的元素就是其中之一。
And I say as much in the book — you could imagine a real transhuman revolution that would not be decadent, that would mark the end of decadence as I’m describing it, but that I would not welcome.
我在书中说了很多——你可以想象一场真正的超人类革命，它不会是颓废的，这将标志着颓废的结束，正如我所描述的那样，但我不会欢迎。
Decadence isn’t necessarily a moral judgment.
颓废不一定是道德判断。
I’m stealing my definition from Jacques Barzun, who said, “It’s not a slur, the term, it’s a technical label.” And in that sense, to the extent that it’s a technical label, you have to be able to say things could happen that ended decadence and didn’t lead to collapse or catastrophe, that led to development, change, dynamism, that from a moral perspective I might find repellent.
我的定义是从 Jacques Barzun 那里偷来的，他说：“这个术语不是诽谤，而是一个技术标签。”从这个意义上说，就它是一个技术标签而言，你必须能够说可能会发生一些事情，结束颓废，不会导致崩溃或灾难，导致发展、变化、活力，从道德角度来看，我可能会觉得令人厌恶。
It’s also why I’m drawn much more to the older frontier, the idea of the space program and space as a frontier, because that’s a case that I think the idea of human beings, as they are, going exploring seems to me much more fundamentally appealing than the idea of human beings staying put and changing who we are.
这也是为什么我对古老的前沿、太空计划和太空作为前沿的想法更感兴趣，因为在这种情况下，我认为人类进行探索的想法对我来说比人类留在原地并改变我们是谁的想法更具吸引力。
I’m drawn much more to the older frontier, the idea of the space program and space as a frontier, because that’s a case that I think the idea of human beings, as they are, going exploring seems to me much more fundamentally appealing than the idea of human beings staying put and changing who we are.
我更喜欢古老的前沿，即太空计划和太空作为前沿的想法，因为在这种情况下，我认为人类去探索的想法在我看来比人类留在原地并改变我们是谁的想法更具吸引力。
I can imagine someone with a different worldview having the opposite reaction, although Silicon Valley seems to have both reactions.
我可以想象具有不同世界观的人会有相反的反应，尽管硅谷似乎两种反应都有。
You have both investment in space and investment in transhumanism, so they’re playing both sides of the escape-from-decadence scenario.
你既有对太空的投资，也有对超人类主义的投资，所以他们在逃避颓废的场景中扮演着两面角色。
You’ve argued at times that popes should never step down.
您有时认为教皇不应该下台。
Would you feel the same way if life extension meant that popes would live to the age of 140 or 150?
如果延长寿命意味着教皇可以活到 140 岁或 150 岁，你会有同样的感觉吗？
In that scenario — now we’re into totally speculative terrain — I think that you would expect popes to be elected later, and I think a 50-year pontificate is generally an unwise thing for the Catholic Church in the same way that a 50-year span of governance by any really powerful figure often ends up in bad places in the end.
在这种情况下——现在我们完全陷入了推测的境地——我认为你会期望教皇会在晚些时候选举出来，而且我认为对天主教会来说，50 年的教皇任期通常是一件不明智的事情，就像任何真正有权势的人物在 50 年的统治中最终往往会陷入糟糕的境地一样。
But in the scenario you’re describing, I would imagine that you would elect popes at the ripe late middle age of 120 —
但在你描述的场景中，我想象你会在 120 岁的中年晚期选举教皇——
New York Times columnists also, right?
《纽约时报》的专栏作家也是如此，对吧？
Well, that would be —
嗯，那就是——
You’d be 117, and you’d finally get a column.
你已经 117 岁了，你终于得到了一篇专栏。
I think in that case, yeah, you would — maybe 93.
我想在那种情况下，是的，你会——也许 93。
The perfect zone for the columnist would be age 80 to 100, and then you would step down.
专栏作家的最佳年龄是 80 岁到 100 岁，然后你就会辞职。
I’ve been a columnist for 10 years, and my assumption is that I will run out of things to say at some point.
我担任专栏作家已有 10 年了，我的假设是在某个时候我会无话可说。
I just turned 40, so maybe 50 is the point at which I want to have fully transitioned to writing fantasy novels instead.
我刚满 40 岁，所以也许 50 岁是我想完全过渡到写奇幻小说的阶段。
I’ve argued that Peter Thiel is the most influential public intellectual on the right today.
我认为彼得泰尔是当今右翼最有影响力的公共知识分子。
Agree or disagree?
同意还是不同意？
Mostly agree.
大多同意。
Why?
为什么？
Well, first I should say, I have to agree because anyone who reads the book will find a number of quotations from Peter Thiel throughout.
好吧，首先我应该说，我必须同意，因为任何读过这本书的人都会在全文中找到彼得泰尔的许多引文。
And I have, with some emendations, mostly accepted his analysis of the technological and economic component of our stagnation.
经过一些修正，我基本上接受了他对我们停滞的技术和经济因素的分析。
So I am indebted to him.
所以我很亏欠他。
I think that he — in his own evolution — has followed, but in certain ways blazed a trail for other evolutions of younger conservative intellectuals who are, in certain ways, in search of a new fusionism — one way to put it.
我认为他——在他自己的演变中——已经追随了，但在某些方面为年轻保守派知识分子的其他演变开辟了道路，这些知识分子在某些方面正在寻找一种新的融合主义——一种说法。
Modern conservatism begins with the fusionism of social conservatism and mid-century Hayekian — Hayek to Rand — that wide spectrum of libertarianism.
现代保守主义始于社会保守主义和中世纪哈耶克主义——从哈耶克到兰德——广泛的自由主义的融合。
There’s a general sense that that kind of fusion has broken down, and you have people who imagine a new conservatism that’s just social conservatism.
人们普遍认为这种融合已经破裂，有人想象出一种新的保守主义，那就是社会保守主义。
Then you have libertarians who imagine a libertarianism that leaves conservatism behind.
然后，自由主义者想象出一种将保守主义抛在身后的自由主义。
But there are a lot of people who want to put things back together again, but in a slightly different way, and to make an argument that’s maybe like the argument that I end up with in the book, that there is some interesting alchemy between a society that looks a little further back and a little further ahead.
但有很多人想要把事情重新组合起来，但以一种稍微不同的方式，并提出一个可能像我在书中最后的论点那样的论点，即一个回顾得更远的社会和看得更远的未来之间存在着一些有趣的炼金术。
So what I was saying earlier about Scruton, right?
那么我之前所说的关于斯克鲁顿的事情，对吗？
The idea that looking back to the 19th century or the 17th century isn’t necessarily decadent because it also lets you, maybe, look a little further ahead.
回顾 19 世纪或 17 世纪的想法并不一定是颓废的，因为它也许还可以让你看得更远一些。
I think that’s, in certain ways, there in at least some of Thiel’s stuff where he’s simultaneously sympathetic to .
我认为，在某些方面，至少在泰尔的一些作品中，他同时表示同情。
.
。
.
。
He’s an eccentric Christian of some sort, maybe.
也许他是一个有点古怪的基督徒。
He’s, at the very least, sympathetic to religious conservatives in a way that other Silicon Valley figures are not.
至少，他对宗教保守派的同情是其他硅谷人士所不具备的。
At the same time, he is a dynamist in a way that the most Burkean version of social conservatism isn’t.
与此同时，他是一位充满活力的人，而最伯克式的社会保守主义则不然。
You’ve written about the idea of state capacity libertarianism, right?
您已经写过关于国家能力自由主义的想法，对吧？
I think that’s one example of ways in which people who are skeptical of wherever liberalism is right now are trying to forge something else.
我认为这是那些对自由主义目前所处位置持怀疑态度的人试图打造其他东西的例子之一。
So some combination of a strong state, some kind of small-c conservative social renewal, and some sort of futurism offers some kind of alchemy.
因此，强大的国家、某种小型保守的社会复兴和某种未来主义的某种结合提供了某种炼金术。
Thiel — he wrote Zero to One, which has an implicit political teaching, but there isn’t a Thielian manifesto at the moment.
蒂尔——他写了《从零到一》，其中隐含着政治教义，但目前还没有蒂尔宣言。
I think his influence is in the inchoateness of his combination of ideas, sort of speaking to the inchoateness of other people’s combinations of ideas.
我认为他的影响力在于他的思想组合的不成熟性，有点像其他人的思想组合的不成熟性。
He wrote an essay — there was a piece very critical of him, of course, I think in New York Magazine — but that looked at this essay he wrote for First Things a little while ago that had this very particular point aimed at Christian readers where he said, “Look, the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city.”
他写了一篇文章——当然，我认为《纽约杂志》上有一篇文章对他非常批评——但是看看他不久前为《First Things》写的这篇文章，这篇文章针对基督徒读者提出了一个非常特殊的观点，他说：“看，圣经始于花园，终于城市。”
I’d read that essay when he wrote it, and I think it actually did have some subconscious or conscious influence on me where I think there’s a strong religious, conservative draw towards pastoralism, towards the idea — my friend Rod Dreher’s book, The Benedict Option, has this idea of the retreat into the monastery, the retreat into the Wendell Berry farming community, and so on.
当他写那篇文章时，我读过那篇文章，我认为它确实对我产生了一些潜意识或有意识的影响，我认为对田园主义和这个想法有一种强烈的宗教和保守的吸引力——我的朋友罗德·德雷尔的书《本尼迪克特选择》中有这样的想法：隐居到修道院，隐居到温德尔·贝里农业社区，等等。
And I think that has to be — for Christianity to be a plausible faith for our civilization — that has to be balanced with a certain kind of the futurist optimism that has always been part of Christian cultures.
我认为，为了让基督教成为我们文明的合理信仰，基督教必须与一直是基督教文化一部分的某种未来主义乐观主义相平衡。
And I think that —
我认为——
Always?
总是？
Two thousand years of history probably offers a lot of counterexamples, but I think the Christian world, in general, has been hospitable to dynamism.
两千多年的历史可能提供了很多反例，但我认为基督教世界总体上对活力持欢迎态度。
I think that’s a fair characterization of the history of Christianity, yeah.
我认为这是对基督教历史的公平描述，是的。
Do you think there could be a Peter Thiel manifesto, whether written by him or someone else?
您认为是否可能存在彼得泰尔宣言，无论是由他还是其他人撰写的？
Or does the very existence of the Bible, or possibly the church, render that impossible, and thus much of it has to exist on the Straussian plane?
或者，圣经的存在，或者可能是教会的存在，是否使这变得不可能，因此其中的大部分内容必须存在于施特劳斯的平面上？
And if thus more powerful —
如果因此更强大——
Tell me more.
告诉我更多。
What do you mean by the existence of the Bible or the church?
圣经或教会的存在是什么意思？
The Bible sets out a very definite worldview — or worldviews, of course, depending on how you read it or even what you consider to be the Bible.
圣经提出了一个非常明确的世界观——当然，这取决于你如何阅读它，甚至取决于你认为圣经是什么。
But if you write a manifesto, you then have to lay out, What in the Bible are you agreeing with or not?
但如果你写一份宣言，你就必须列出，你同意或不同意圣经中的哪些内容？
And the manifesto then becomes quite subordinate or overly rebellious, and maybe the ideas are most powerful in the Straussian realm, where notions are hinted at, and you have to put the pieces together for yourself.
然后宣言就变得相当从属或过度叛逆，也许这些想法在施特劳斯领域是最有力的，那里的概念被暗示，你必须自己把各个部分拼凑起来。
There’s a certain power to all of the ideas not being fully spelled out, and they also can evolve more freely in a dynamic way, which reflects the dynamism.
所有未完全阐明的想法都有一定的力量，而且它们还可以以动态的方式更自由地演变，这体现了活力。
That’s possible.
这是可能的。
I think it’s particularly possible for someone like Thiel, who clearly has a very heterodox relationship, whatever it may be, to Christian faith.
我认为对于像泰尔这样的人来说尤其有可能，他显然与基督教信仰有着非常非正统的关系，无论是什么。
So yeah, you’re right that any manifesto he put out would highlight more clearly his points of tension with both the religious traditions that he is in dialogue with and the different broken factions of conservatism that he’s in dialogue with.
所以，是的，你是对的，他发表的任何宣言都会更清楚地强调他与他正在对话的宗教传统以及他正在与之对话的不同破碎的保守派派别的紧张点。
And the Thielian ethos, to me — well, it’s a venture capitalist’s ethos in the sense that he’s invested in Christianity and invested in transhumanism, so eternal life.
蒂尔的精神，对我来说——好吧，这是一个风险投资家的精神，因为他投资于基督教和超人类主义，所以投资于永生。
He’s got an investment in eternal life and an investment in physical immortality, and he’s invested in disaster preparedness but also willing to invest — which I as a pundit was not — in the candidacy of Donald Trump.
他对永生和身体不朽进行了投资，对备灾进行了投资，但也愿意对唐纳德·特朗普的候选资格进行投资——而我作为专家则不愿意投资。
So in that sense, a specific manifesto would limit his capacity to be poking at a lot of different points of our decadence and seeing where you could push your finger through.
因此，从这个意义上说，一份具体的宣言将限制他探究我们颓废的许多不同点并看看你可以在哪里插手的能力。
Maybe that’s not the right metaphor.
也许这不是正确的比喻。
Other than just mentioning the pope, do you think that most young people today could answer, with any kind of specificity, what is the difference between Catholics and Protestants in the United States?
除了提到教皇之外，您认为今天的大多数年轻人是否可以明确地回答美国的天主教徒和新教徒之间有什么区别？
No.
不。
Does that concern you?
这与你有关吗？
Do you care?
你关心吗？
Yes, of course.
是的当然。
What’s the difference they should focus on that they’re not grasping right now?
他们应该关注但现在还没有意识到的区别是什么？
In fairness, you don’t want to overestimate the capacities of normal human beings in times past, right?
公平地说，你不想高估过去正常人的能力，对吗？
It is not the case that there was some golden age of Christian history where farmers and peasants in rural Germany could recite the anathemas of the Council of Trent.
基督教历史上并不是有某个黄金时代，德国农村的农民和农民可以背诵特伦特会议的咒语。
I mean, this is —
我的意思是，这是——
But they would read pamphlets about the anathemas of the Council of Trent.
但他们会阅读有关特伦托会议的诅咒的小册子。
Or they would have an intuitive grasp.
或者他们会有直觉的把握。
I think if you asked a lot of people prior to Vatican II, what are the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, they wouldn’t cite the Council of Trent.
我想如果你在梵蒂冈二世之前问很多人，天主教和新教之间有什么区别，他们不会引用特伦特会议。
They would say, if they were Protestant, that Catholics have weird superstitious rituals and spooky nuns and priests.
他们会说，如果他们是新教徒，天主教徒有奇怪的迷信仪式和幽灵般的修女和牧师。
And if they were Catholic, they would say Protestants don’t really believe in the Virgin Mary, to be crude.
如果他们是天主教徒，粗鲁地说，他们会说新教徒并不真正相信圣母玛利亚。
A signal failure of Catholicism since the ’60s — it’s not defined necessarily in the inability of people to recite the catechism, chapter and verse, but it’s more in that cultural and liturgical distinctive area.
自 60 年代以来天主教的一个明显失败——它不一定是因为人们无法背诵教义问答、章节和诗句，但更多的是在文化和礼拜仪式的独特领域。
So if you go into a typical suburban Catholic church — and I’ve been to mass in a lot of them — it can feel like a mainline church with a tiny bit more formality and a statue of Mary.
因此，如果你走进一座典型的郊区天主教堂——我去过很多教堂里的弥撒——它会感觉像是一座主线教堂，只是稍微正式一点，还有一座玛丽雕像。
And that, I think, is a mark of Catholicism’s attempt to assimilate to what was, in the ’60s, still a Protestant mainstream.
我认为，这是天主教试图融入 60 年代新教主流的标志。
But now that that Protestant mainstream is gone, it just leaves Catholicism as this extra mainline denomination.
但现在新教主流已经消失，只剩下天主教作为这个额外的主流教派。
And that will — since we’re talking about ways out of decadence — I do expect that to change over the next 50 years because I think Catholicism, more than evangelicalism, is likely to go into steeper decline over the next generation institutionally.
由于我们谈论的是摆脱颓废的方法，所以我确实预计这种情况会在未来 50 年发生改变，因为我认为天主教比福音派更可能在下一代制度上陷入更严重的衰落。
What will be left behind will be a weirder and more distinctive Catholic faith that will have some clearer differences from its Protestant neighbors than exist right now.
留下的将是一种更怪异、更独特的天主教信仰，与现在的新教邻居有一些更明显的区别。
But that’s a case of shrinking in order to become distinctive and dynamic again.
但这是为了再次变得独特和充满活力而缩小的情况。
If you’re worried about some aspects of the relative decline of Catholicism, why make marriage of the priesthood such a central issue for the church?
如果你担心天主教相对衰落的某些方面，为什么要把神职人员的婚姻作为教会的中心问题呢？
As you well know, the Orthodox Church in the East has a very different attitude toward marriage of priests, and they are, broadly, a Catholic church, historically.
众所周知，东方的东正教对神父的婚姻有着截然不同的态度，从历史上看，他们大体上是天主教会。
Why not side with them?
为什么不站在他们一边呢？
They are still distinctive, right?
他们还是很有特色的，对吧？
No one would confuse them with modern American Protestantism.
没有人会把它们与现代美国新教混淆。
They are still distinctive.
他们还是很有特色的。
There are some wrinkles there.
那里有一些皱纹。
A lot of the Orthodox churches don’t let married men become bishops, and it’s a little bit more complex.
许多东正教教堂不允许已婚男性成为主教，而且情况有点复杂。
But in general, it’s a case of — just to analyze it in cultural terms, leaving theology out of it — it’s another case of giving up a distinctive, giving up something that separates you and distinguishes you from other churches and suggest to people that there’s something interesting and particularist going on here.
但总的来说，这是一个例子——只是用文化的角度来分析它，把神学排除在外——这是另一种放弃独特性的例子，放弃一些使你与其他教会区分开来的东西，并向人们暗示这里正在发生一些有趣和特殊的东西。
Then there are structural hurdles, too.
此外还存在结构性障碍。
The Catholic Church is not actually set up to provide for married pastors and their families.
天主教会实际上并不是为了供养已婚牧师及其家人而设立的。
But that’d be self-financing, right?
但这是自筹资金，对吗？
If they chose to do it?
如果他们选择这么做呢？
Well, they’d have to.
好吧，他们必须这样做。
They could try and finance themselves.
他们可以尝试自己融资。
Yeah, that is what —
是的，那就是——
But more people would become priests if they could marry.
但如果可以结婚，会有更多的人成为牧师。
See, I’m not completely sure.
看，我并不完全确定。
I think you would see a temporary bump in the number of people becoming priests, but in general, there’s a problem of talent recruitment for mainline Protestant denominations, too.
我认为你会看到成为牧师的人数暂时增加，但总的来说，主流新教教派也存在人才招募问题。
And also — this is the more Catholic argument — there’s a dynamic relationship in a healthy Christianity between a church having strong models of celibate life and strong models of married life.
而且——这是更天主教的论点——在健康的基督教中，具有强烈的独身生活模式的教会和具有强烈的婚姻生活模式的教会之间存在着动态的关系。
When that goes away, in fact, married life gets harder, too, because there’s this sense that everyone is supposed to get married.
事实上，当这种情况消失时，婚姻生活也会变得更加困难，因为有一种感觉，每个人都应该结婚。
If you’re not married, you’re defective, and marriage is the highest form of life.
如果你没有结婚，你就是有缺陷的，而婚姻是人生的最高形式。
So, if your marriage isn’t particularly happy, then you should get out of it and find a better marriage.
所以，如果你的婚姻不是特别幸福，那么你应该摆脱它，寻找更好的婚姻。
In fact, I think having a commitment to celibacy at the heart of your religion is better for the diversity of human types and experiences than just making marriage the summit of all things.
事实上，我认为以独身为核心的宗教信仰比仅仅让婚姻成为一切事物的顶峰更有利于人类类型和经历的多样性。
And it’s also — this is more of the argument of my last book than this one, but they relate to one another, I suppose — part of what I find attractive and persuasive about Catholicism is that, not always and everywhere, but in particular ways, it has preserved commitments to the radical side of the New Testament, the nonbourgeois side.
而且——这更多是我上一本书的论点，而不是这本书的论点，但我想它们是相互关联的——我认为天主教有吸引力和有说服力的部分在于，它并非总是、无处不在，但以特定的方式，保留了对新约激进方面、非资产阶级方面的承诺。
I think that’s true in the Church’s resistance to divorce, which has crumbled a bit under this pontificate, but it’s true in issues of celibacy as well.
我认为教会对离婚的抵制确实如此，在这位教宗的领导下，教会的抵抗已经有些崩溃，但在独身问题上也是如此。
If you read the New Testament, and especially if you read the Gospels, but Paul’s letters too, you would not come away convinced that this is a religion that’s all about Ross Douthat and his wife and four kids as the model Christian, right?
如果你读过《新约》，特别是如果你读过《福音书》，但也读过保罗的书信，你不会相信这是一个以罗斯·杜塔特和他的妻子和四个孩子为典范的基督教的宗教，对吧？
The model Christian is somebody doing something much more radical.
基督徒的典范是做一些更激进的事情的人。
And if you drop that or downgrade it from its position in the church, then a piece of New Testament radicalism goes away.
如果你放弃它或降低它在教会中的地位，那么新约激进主义的一部分就会消失。
If you read the New Testament, and especially if you read the Gospels, but Paul’s letters too, you would not come away convinced that this is a religion that’s all about Ross Douthat and his wife and four kids as the model Christian, right?
如果你读过《新约》，特别是如果你读过《福音书》，但也读过保罗的书信，你不会相信这是一个以罗斯·杜塔特和他的妻子和四个孩子为典范的基督教的宗教，对吧？
The model Christian is somebody doing something much more radical.
基督徒的典范是做一些更激进的事情的人。
And you know that New Testament radicalism is literally what I think God has given us in his most direct and intimate revelation.
你知道，我认为新约激进主义实际上是上帝在他最直接和最亲密的启示中给我们的。
So it would be a bad idea to jettison it.
因此，放弃它是一个坏主意。
Here’s a reader question: “I believe 95 percent of Catholic universities are Catholic in name only.
这是一个读者提问：“我相信 95% 的天主教大学只是名义上的天主教大学。
Does he agree?
他同意吗？
In what direction does he hope for the future of Catholic universities?
他对天主教大学的未来有何期许？
Should the Church withdraw its sanction?”
教会应该撤销其制裁吗？”
I don’t know about 95 percent, but I think, generally, Catholic universities have followed the same path of imitation and assimilation that I was describing earlier.
我不知道百分之九十五，但我认为，一般来说，天主教大学都遵循了我之前描述的模仿和同化的道路。
But say Georgetown — that’s nominally Catholic.
但是乔治城——名义上是天主教徒。
But if you went there, it would in no way shape your time as a student, or .
但如果你去了那里，它绝不会影响你作为学生的时间，或者……。
.
。
.
。
?
？
No, I don’t want to be particularly harsh on Georgetown, but I do think it’s the Catholic university that’s most assimilated to the secular model of elite education.
不，我不想对乔治城大学特别严厉，但我确实认为天主教大学最接近精英教育的世俗模式。
If you went to a school like Notre Dame, it’s possible to go through Notre Dame without having — I should say “Noter Dame,” not Notre Dame; I sound pretentious — it’s possible to go to Notre Dame and have a very mild exposure to Catholicism.
如果你去了像巴黎圣母院这样的学校，你可以在没有——我应该说“巴黎圣母院”，而不是巴黎圣母院的情况下通过巴黎圣母院；我听起来很自命不凡——去巴黎圣母院并稍微接触一下天主教是可能的。
But there is an intense Catholic subculture there.
但那里有一种强烈的天主教亚文化。
There’s a beautiful basilica at the heart of campus.
校园中心有一座美丽的大教堂。
There’s still a real Catholic culture.
仍然有真正的天主教文化。
And that’s a very successful top-tier university.
那是一所非常成功的顶级大学。
When I talk to Catholic academics at those kinds of schools, they will often say that the thing that the university supplies — in many cases, it’s not a Catholic identity for every student, but it’s a preservation of a Catholic option and a sort of potential encounter with religion that is not available at a secular university.
当我与这类学校的天主教学者交谈时，他们经常会说，大学提供的东西——在很多情况下，并不是每个学生都有天主教身份，但它是对天主教选择的保留，以及一种与宗教的潜在接触，这是世俗大学所不具备的。
This is what a professor at Boston College — which should be cited as another example of a somewhat secularized Jesuit university — said to me.
这是波士顿学院（波士顿学院应该被视为稍微世俗化的耶稣会大学的另一个例子）的一位教授对我说的话。
He said, “Look, BC is not going to become as Catholic as it was 50 years ago overnight, but it’s a place where the administration and the president want to preserve some Catholicism within the school.”
他说：“看，BC 省不会像 50 年前那样一夜之间变得像天主教徒一样，但政府和总统希望在学校内保留一些天主教信仰。”
And to the extent that schools are trying to do that, I don’t think the Church should withdraw its sanction.
如果学校试图这样做，我认为教会不应该撤回其制裁。
That said, I do think there’s a certain range of schools that are now very much quasi secularized, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the Church just recognized that, and they came to effective parting of the ways.
也就是说，我确实认为现在有一定范围的学校已经非常准世俗化，如果教会认识到这一点，并且他们有效地分道扬镳，那也不是一件坏事。
But I have more hope for the Notre Dame model than maybe your correspondent does.
但我对巴黎圣母院模型的希望可能比你们的记者更大。
Does the Vatican have too few employees?
梵蒂冈的员工太少了吗？
There’s a Slate article — it claimed in 2012, the Roman Curia has fewer than 3,000 employees.
Slate 上有一篇文章在 2012 年声称，罗马教廷的员工不到 3,000 名。
Walmart headquarters at the time had 12,000.
沃尔玛总部当时有12,000人。
If the Church is a quite significant global operation, can it be argued, in fact, that it’s not bureaucratic enough?
如果教会是一个相当重要的全球运作机构，那么实际上是否可以说它不够官僚化？
They don’t actually have state capacity in the sense that state capacity libertarianism might approve of.
他们实际上并不具备自由意志主义可能认可的国家能力。
Right.
正确的。
State capacity libertarianism would disapprove of the Vatican model.
国家能力自由主义不赞成梵蒂冈模式。
And it reflects the reality that media coverage of the Catholic Church doesn’t always reflect, which is that in Catholic ecclesiology and the theory of the institution, bishops are really supposed to be pretty autonomous in governance.
它反映了媒体对天主教会的报道并不总是反映的现实，即在天主教教会论和机构理论中，主教确实应该在治理方面具有相当的自主权。
And the purpose of Rome is the promotion of missionary work and the protection of doctrine, and it’s not supposed to be micromanaging the governance of the world Church.
罗马的目的是促进传教工作和保护教义，而不是对世界教会的治理进行微观管理。
Now, I think what we’ve seen over the last 30 years — and it’s been thrown into sharp relief by the sex abuse crisis — is that the modern world may not allow that model to exist; that if you have this global institution that has a celebrity figure at the center of it, who is the focus of endless media attention, you can’t, in effect, get away with saying, “Well, the pope is the pope, but sex abuse is an American problem.”
现在，我认为过去 30 年我们所看到的——性虐待危机使这一点更加突出——现代世界可能不允许这种模式存在；如果你有一个以名人为中心的全球机构，他是媒体无休止关注的焦点，那么你实际上不能说：“好吧，教皇就是教皇，但性虐待是美国的问题。”
And to that extent, there is a case that the Church needs more employees and a more efficient and centralized bureaucracy.
从这个意义上说，教会需要更多的员工和更高效、更集中的官僚机构。
But then that also coexists with the problem that the model of Catholicism is still a model that was modern in the 16th century.
但这也同时存在一个问题，即天主教的模式仍然是16世纪的现代模式。
It’s still much more of a court model than a bureaucratic model, and pope after pope has theoretically tried to change this and has not succeeded.
它仍然更像是一种法庭模式，而不是官僚模式，理论上，一个又一个教皇试图改变这一点，但没有成功。
Part of the reality is, as you well know, as a world traveler, the Italians are very good at running courts that exclude outsiders and prevent them from changing the way things are done.
正如你所知，部分现实是，作为一名环游世界的旅行者，意大利人非常擅长管理法庭，排除外来者并阻止他们改变做事的方式。
Time and again, some Anglo-Saxon or German blunderer gets put in charge of some Vatican dicastery and discovers that, in fact, the reforms he intends are just not quite possible.
一次又一次，一些盎格鲁撒克逊人或德国人的错误被任命负责梵蒂冈的一些教区，并发现事实上他想要的改革不太可能实现。
And you know, in certain ways, that’s a side of decadence that you can bemoan, but in certain ways, you have to respect, too.
你知道，在某些方面，这是颓废的一面，你可以哀叹，但在某些方面，你也必须尊重。
Abortion, presumably, is an important issue for you.
堕胎对您来说可能是一个重要问题。
Given that, why not just outright support President Trump?
鉴于此，为什么不直接支持特朗普总统呢？
That’s a good question, and the basic answer that I’ve had is twofold.
这是一个很好的问题，我得到的基本答案是双重的。
One, I’ve had, throughout Trump’s ascent and well into his presidency, an expectation that the gap between his skill level and competence and the challenges of being president was large enough that over a long enough time horizon, he would lead the US into some sort of catastrophe that would have a dramatically negative effect on the political causes that I care about, even —
第一，在特朗普的崛起和担任总统的整个过程中，我一直期望他的技能水平和能力与担任总统的挑战之间的差距足够大，以至于在足够长的时间范围内，他将带领美国陷入某种灾难，这将对我关心的政治事业产生巨大的负面影响，甚至 -
But it would have to kill many millions of people to outweigh the expected value of the change in abortion policy.
但它必须杀死数百万人，才能超过堕胎政策改变的预期价值。
But my assumption is that you don’t get a substantial and long-lasting change in abortion policy without a pro-life political coalition that’s capable of governing the country for a long period of time.
但我的假设是，如果没有一个能够长期治理国家的反堕胎政治联盟，堕胎政策就不会发生实质性和持久的变化。
Maybe I read too much into this experience, but I came of age with George W.
也许我对这段经历了解太多，但我是和乔治·W·布什一起长大的。
Bush’s presidency, who was a pro-life president, who put conservative justices on the Supreme Court.
布什总统是一位反堕胎总统，他在最高法院任命了保守派法官。
Then his foreign policy mistakes and other issues led to his presidency ending in total catastrophe.
然后，他的外交政策错误和其他问题导致他的总统任期以彻底的灾难告终。
This is unprovable, but I think there is some connection between the subsequent decline of religious affiliation and the total rout of social conservatives on issues of same-sex marriage and this sense that people had in the mid-2000s that religious conservatism was associated with a totally incompetent president and a botched war and then a financial crisis.
这是无法证明的，但我认为随后宗教信仰的下降与社会保守派在同性婚姻问题上的彻底溃败之间存在某种联系，而人们在2000年代中期的这种感觉认为宗教保守主义与完全无能的总统和一场拙劣的战争以及随后的金融危机有关。
So I’ve imagined something similar as the likely endgame for Trump, that something — to pick an example from the news this winter and likely this spring, the coronavirus — that the incapacities of his White House are more likely to lead to some catastrophic failure that dramatically discredits his party and destroys his presidency.
因此，我想象了与特朗普可能的结局类似的事情——从今年冬天和可能今年春天的新闻中举个例子，即冠状病毒——他的白宫的无能更有可能导致一些灾难性的失败，从而极大地损害他的政党的声誉并摧毁他的总统职位。
Now, that being said, generally the Trump era has been more stable, more sustainably decadent, if you will, than I expected.
话虽如此，总的来说，特朗普时代比我预期的更加稳定，更加持续的颓废（如果你愿意的话）。
And in that sense, I can certainly see why a certain faction of Never Trump says, “Well, we overestimated the tail risks of this presidency, and things are more stable than we thought, and therefore we should welcome his judicial appointments and embrace him for a second term.”
从这个意义上说，我当然可以理解为什么特朗普的某个派系会说：“好吧，我们高估了本届总统任期的尾部风险，事情比我们想象的更稳定，因此我们应该欢迎他的司法任命并拥抱他连任。”
And it could be that I do too much cultural analysis in a way.
从某种程度上来说，可能是我做了太多的文化分析。
I spend too much time thinking, “Well, what do younger people in churches think of the hypocrisy involved in evangelical support for Trump?
我花了太多时间思考：“教会里的年轻人如何看待福音派支持特朗普的虚伪行为？
And won’t that lead to a further decline for Christianity that outweighs any gains?” Maybe that kind of analysis is too much analysis —
这不会导致基督教进一步衰落，甚至超过其进步吗？”也许这样的分析太多了——
Just who wins might be what matters, right?
谁获胜可能才是最重要的，对吧？
Right, right.
对，对。
Maybe —
也许——
If Bernie Sanders wins, that helps one set of ideas, and all the other complicated second-order effects will dwindle.
如果伯尼·桑德斯获胜，这将有助于一套想法，而所有其他复杂的二阶效应都会减弱。
Exactly, and you don’t know .
确实如此，而你却不知道。
.
。
.
。
The pundit’s mistake is sometimes to try and think 14 steps ahead, and the partisan mind may have a certain advantage, where it just says, “No, we have to win this election and let the future take care of itself.” That still hasn’t brought me around to supporting Trump, but I think my arguments against supporting him are weaker than they were, again, pending the outcome of whatever happens with the coronavirus.
专家的错误有时是试图提前思考 14 步，而党派思维可能有一定的优势，它只是说：“不，我们必须赢得这次选举，让未来自行发展。”这仍然没有让我转而支持特朗普，但我认为我反对支持他的理由比以前更弱，再次等待冠状病毒发生的结果。
We live in an America that supposedly respects religions.
我们生活在一个据称尊重宗教的美国。
Yet, if you were to try to argue in public that, say, a child were possessed by demons, you would be mocked and called insane, whether or not it were true.
然而，如果你试图在公开场合争论，比如说，一个孩子被恶魔附身，你就会被嘲笑并被称为疯子，无论这是否属实。
Where do you personally draw the line?
您个人的界限在哪里？
You respect religions, but are there claims you hear that, when you hear them, you think, “That’s so implausible.
你尊重宗教，但你是否听到过这样的说法，当你听到它们时，你会想：“这太难以置信了。
It couldn’t possibly be true”?
这不可能是真的”？
You file it in the insane category the way most people, when they would hear you talk of a child being possessed by demons, would think that’s insane and not required by their supposed respective religions.
你把它归入疯狂类别，就像大多数人听到你谈论一个孩子被恶魔附身时，会认为这是疯狂的，并且不是他们各自的宗教所要求的。
Do you see what I’m asking?
你明白我在问什么吗？
I do.
我愿意。
I think it is quite possible for a child to become possessed by demons.
我觉得小孩子被鬼附身的可能性是很大的。
And I actually mildly disagree.
我实际上有点不同意。
I think in the circles in which you and I move, that claim would be just greeted with automatic mockery.
我想，在你我所处的圈子里，这种说法只会自然而然地遭到嘲笑。
But I think in American culture writ large, there is plenty of space for at least openness to ideas of the supernatural and the demonic.
但我认为，在美国文化中，至少有足够的空间对超自然和恶魔的思想持开放态度。
Yeah, the mockery is still — even in our more secularized age — an elite phenomenon.
是的，即使在我们这个更加世俗化的时代，嘲笑仍然是一种精英现象。
I’ve struggled to persuade my secular friends of this view, but it’s still the old Chestertonian view that I find the improbable harder to swallow than the impossible.
我一直在努力说服我的世俗朋友接受这一观点，但这仍然是古老的切斯特顿观点，即我发现不可能的事情比不可能的事情更难接受。
We were talking about Mormonism earlier, and my objection to Mormonism is not the idea of the Angel Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith.
我们之前讨论过摩门教，我对摩门教的反对并不是天使莫罗尼出现在约瑟·史密斯面前。
It’s the claim that there existed these large-scale civilizations in Central America for which we have no archeological evidence.
这是关于中美洲存在这些大规模文明的说法，但我们没有考古证据。
I’m much more skeptical of claims that should be amenable to real-world, scientific, archeological — what have you — testing, and don’t pan out, than I am to supernatural claims.
与超自然的主张相比，我对那些应该经受现实世界的、科学的、考古学的——你有的——测试但不会成功的主张更加持怀疑态度。
Again, I recognize that’s a minority view in our peer group, but I’m a pretty convinced supernaturalist.
再说一遍，我承认这在我们的同行群体中只是少数人的观点，但我是一个非常确信的超自然主义者。
The literature on demonic possession is .
有关恶魔附身的文献是。
.
。
.
。
It’s unwise to spend too much time with it because it leads to dark places, but I think it’s quite convincing that there is something going on there that is not adequately explained by existing theories of psychology and the human mind.
花太多时间在它上面是不明智的，因为它会导致黑暗的地方，但我认为相当有说服力的是，那里正在发生一些现有的心理学和人类思想理论无法充分解释的事情。
What’s your point estimate of the probability that what we now call UFOs are, in fact, something interesting and mysterious and related to some kind of life from a distance?
您对我们现在所说的不明飞行物实际上是某种有趣而神秘的东西并且与远方的某种生命有关的可能性的估计是多少？
Right now.
现在。
My probability that they are something interesting and mysterious is very high.
我认为它们是有趣且神秘的东西的可能性非常高。
I would say 80 percent, 85 percent.
我想说80%、85%。
That they are related to life from a distant planet is a lot lower.
它们与来自遥远星球的生命的相关性要低得多。
I would say quite, quite low, maybe 10-15 percent.
我想说相当非常低，也许 10-15%。
That’s very high.
那是非常高的。
DOUTHAT: That’s actually high.
DOUTHAT：这实际上很高。
I’m going to lose all credibility, so I should go a little lower.
我将失去所有可信度，所以我应该降低一点。
But I think there are two things going on with UFOs.
但我认为不明飞行物有两件事。
One, there is a historical continuity that I find very persuasive between human stories of fairy encounters from the Middle Ages and the pre-modern period and stories of alien abductions, where you have similar depictions of the creatures involved, similar emphasis on trickery and people playing games with human beings, similar emphasis on sex and quasi-medical experimentation, all of these kinds of things.
第一，我发现中世纪和前现代时期的童话遭遇的人类故事和外星人绑架的故事之间存在着非常有说服力的历史连续性，其中对所涉及的生物有相似的描述，相似地强调欺骗和人们与人类玩游戏，相似地强调性和准医学实验，所有这些事情。
What that suggests to me is, on the one hand, that you should assign some probability to the possibility that there are supernatural beings who like to mess with us, who are neither angelic nor demonic.
一方面，这对我来说意味着，你应该为存在喜欢扰乱我们的超自然生物的可能性分配一些概率，他们既不是天使也不是恶魔。
But leaving that aside, there is some kind of human experience that we don’t fully understand that is not just made up, that is maybe some sort of union, unconscious thing that gets interpreted as aliens in one age and as fairies in another, but it’s real and interesting even if the fairies themselves aren’t real.
但撇开这一点不谈，有一些我们并不完全理解的人类经历，它不仅仅是虚构的，这可能是某种联合、无意识的东西，在一个时代被解释为外星人，在另一个时代被解释为仙女，但即使仙女本身并不真实，它也是真实而有趣的。
That’s one area.
那是一个区域。
Then you have the UFOs that we pick up on video, that we now actually have published in my own newspaper — pretty compelling videographic evidence.
然后你就有了我们在视频中看到的不明飞行物，我们现在实际上已经在我自己的报纸上发表了这些——非常令人信服的视频证据。
It could be that that’s one more example — if the fairies are real — that this is just one more way they mess with us.
这可能是又一个例子——如果仙女是真实的——这只是他们扰乱我们的另一种方式。
I think I would assign a slightly higher probability to the weird-advanced-military-technology explanation for those, that they seem a little different from the UFO abduction stories.
我想我会给那些奇怪的先进军事技术解释分配一个稍高的可能性，它们似乎与不明飞行物绑架故事有点不同。
Put it this way: There are unidentified flying objects that we can see on videos, that pilots have seen, that are presumably not a hallucination and therefore must represent, one, the supernatural, two, advanced military technology, or three, visitors from another planet.
这么说吧：我们可以在视频中看到、飞行员也看到过一些不明飞行物，它们可能不是幻觉，因此一定代表着，一是超自然现象，二是先进的军事技术，三是来自另一个星球的访客。
Right?
正确的？
Yes.
是的。
Three final questions —
最后三个问题——
Wait, I know it’s not my interview, but what is your assigned probability of those options?
等等，我知道这不是我的面试，但是你指定的这些选项的概率是多少？
It’s called Conversations with Tyler, right?
这就是《与泰勒对话》，对吧？
Not by Tyler.
不是泰勒写的。
I said on Marginal Revolution I thought it was maybe up to a 5 percent chance it was real beings, and then I talked myself down to about 1 percent.
我在《边际革命》中说过，我认为它是真实存在的可能性高达 5%，然后我把自己的可能性降低到了 1% 左右。
But 1 percent is still quite high.
但1%仍然相当高。
One percent is still a lot.
百分之一还是很多的。
So, we should be thinking and talking about it more.
所以，我们应该多思考、多讨论。
What probability do you assign to the supernatural when you think about these?
当你想到这些时，你认为超自然现象的可能性有多大？
Not for this in particular, but generally.
不是特别针对这个，而是一般情况。
Like if I came to you, and I said, “Tyler, I want you to read the literature on hauntings and ghosts.” Going into reading that literature, what probability do you assign that ghosts are in some sense real?
就像我来找你一样，我说：“泰勒，我希望你阅读有关闹鬼和鬼魂的文献。”阅读这些文献后，您认为鬼魂在某种意义上是真实存在的概率有多大？
That’s a difficult question because I am so willing to entertain the notion that the true model of physics is so weird.
这是一个很难回答的问题，因为我非常愿意接受这样一个观点：真正的物理模型是如此奇怪。
It could be weirder than religion —
这可能比宗教更奇怪——
That is fair.
那是公平的。
So what you’re calling supernatural, I could say parallel universes.
所以你所说的超自然现象，我可以说是平行宇宙。
I’ll accept it.
我会接受的。
So I don’t dismiss the weirdness, but I don’t know what should make me call it supernatural for almost tautological reasons.
所以我不会忽视这种奇怪之处，但我不知道是什么让我因为几乎同义反复的原因而称其为超自然现象。
Yeah.
是的。
One of the UFO obsessives who pivoted to this fairy interpretation had basically that view.
一位转向这种童话解释的不明飞行物迷基本上持有这种观点。
He was arguing that it is a parallel, a bizarre parallel-dimension-being effect.
他认为这是一种平行、一种奇怪的平行维度存在效应。
So I’ll allow it.
所以我会允许的。
You’re good.
你很厉害。
Three last questions.
最后三个问题。
As technology advances, won’t we need to end most lives by euthanasia?
随着技术的进步，我们是否需要通过安乐死来结束大多数生命？
Not people who fall off cliffs, but you could always hook someone up and keep them going.
不是那些从悬崖上掉下来的人，但你总能把某人拉起来并让他们继续前进。
So, won’t euthanasia become, say, the case for 80 percent of deaths?
那么，安乐死不会导致 80% 的死亡吗？
I understand why people are skeptical of it, but I generally buy the distinction that my own church makes between the withdrawal of care and the injection of lethal drugs.
我理解为什么人们对此持怀疑态度，但我通常相信我自己的教会对撤销护理和注射致命药物之间的区别。
I know that there are areas where that line gets blurry, but I think, yes, over a long enough life-expectancy horizon, human beings would need to create a culture of refusing and withdrawing care.
我知道有些领域的界限变得模糊，但我认为，是的，在足够长的预期寿命范围内，人类需要创造一种拒绝和撤回护理的文化。
But that is still different from, at least right now, the means we have where you’re actually actively hastening death through interventions designed to do so.
但这仍然不同于，至少现在，我们所拥有的手段实际上是通过旨在这样做的干预措施来积极加速死亡。
Last two questions.
最后两个问题。
First, is Connecticut good?
首先，康涅狄格州好吗？
Yes.
是的。
I just did an interview with a very nice reporter for Connecticut Magazine where I was trying to explain .
我刚刚接受了《康涅狄格杂志》一位非常好的记者的采访，我试图对此进行解释。
.
。
.
。
I was saying positive things about Connecticut, but then also saying that it was an example of decadence.
我对康涅狄格州说了一些积极的话，但随后又说这是一个颓废的例子。
It’s a very wealthy American state that has a lot of old institutions.
这是一个非常富裕的美国州，拥有许多古老的机构。
Yale University, in the city that I live in, that is getting older and has trouble attracting young people.
耶鲁大学在我居住的城市，正在老化，难以吸引年轻人。
It’s not a dynamic state, or not as dynamic as it once was.
这不是一个动态状态，或者不像以前那样动态。
But I grew up in Connecticut, so I have that sort of partisanship, but I like living there.
但我在康涅狄格州长大，所以我有这种党派偏见，但我喜欢住在那里。
I like its mix of intimacy and history and the New England landscape.
我喜欢它的亲密感和历史以及新英格兰风景的结合。
And I think that if you could rescue Connecticut from decadence, maybe you could rescue the whole world.
我认为，如果你能将康涅狄格州从颓废中拯救出来，也许你就能拯救整个世界。
So —
所以——
Finally, is Lyme disease good?
最后，莱姆病好不好？
In the sense that God uses all things for good, yes, but not in any sense besides that.
是的，从上帝使用万物为善的意义上来说，但除此之外没有其他任何意义。
And the next book I’m actually under contract for is about Lyme disease.
我实际上签约的下一本书是关于莱姆病的。
In your own experience with it.
根据您自己的经验。
My own experience, but I do think of it, in part, as my own very small attempt to work against decadence.
我自己的经历，但我确实认为它在某种程度上是我自己对抗颓废的微小尝试。
If I could convince readers that there are, in fact, better treatments for Lyme disease available and help people make progress against one particular disease, then maybe that’s a more effective anti-decadence effort than writing an entire book bemoaning the state of civilization.
如果我能让读者相信，事实上，有更好的治疗莱姆病的方法，并帮助人们在对抗某种特定疾病方面取得进展，那么这也许是比写整本书哀叹文明状况更有效的反颓废努力。
Ross, thank you very much.
罗斯，非常感谢你。
And again, I’d like to recommend his book to you all, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.
我想再次向大家推荐他的书《颓废社会：我们如何成为自己成功的受害者》。
Thank you.
谢谢。
Thank you, Tyler.
谢谢你，泰勒。