Four Choise for Young People（two）

Shortly before his graduation,Jim Binne,President of the senior class at Stanford University,wrote me about some of his Misgivings."more than any other generation,"he said,"our generation views the adult world with great skepticism...,there is also an increased tendency to reject completely that world"

Apparently he speaks for a lot of his contemporaries.During the last few years,I have listened to scores of young people,in college and out,who were just as nervous about the grown-up world.Roughly,their attitude might be summed up about like this:"This world is in pretty much of a mess,full of injustice,povertry,and war.The people responsible are,presumably, the adults who have been running things.If they can't do better than that,what have they got to teach our generation?That kind of lesson we can do without."

These conclusions strike me as reasonable,at least from their point of view.The relevant question for the arriving generation is not whether our society is imperfects(we can take that for granted),but how to deal with it.For all its harshness and irrationality,it's the only world we have got,Choosing a strategy to cope with it,then,is the first decision young adults have to make,and usually the most important decision of their lifetime.So far as I have able to discover,there are only four basic alternatives.

1 Drop Out

This is one of the oldest expedients,and it can be practiced anywhere,at any age,and wiht or without the use of hallucinogens.It always has been the strategy of choice for people who find the world too brutal or too complex to be endured.By definition,this way of life is parasitic,In one way or another.its practitioners batten on the society which they scorn and in which they refuse to take any responsibility.Some of us find this distasteful--an undignified kind of life.But for the poor in spirit,with low leverls of both energy and pride,it may be the least intolerable choice available.

II　Flee

This strategy also has ancient antecedents.Ever since civilization began,certain individuals have tried to run away from it in hopes of finding a simpler,more pastoral,and more peaceful life,Unlike the dropouts,they are not parasites. They are willing to support themselves and to contribute something to the general community,but they simply don't like the enviroment of civilazation;that is,the city,with all its ugliness and tension.

The trouble with this soliution is that it no longer is practical on the a large scale.Our planet.unfortunately,is running out of noble savages and unsullied landscapes;except for the polar regions.the frontiers anr gone.A few gentleman farmers with plenty of money can still escape to the bucolic life--but in general the stream of migration if flowing the other way.

III Plot a Revolution

This      strategy is always popular among those who have no patience with the tedious workings of the democratic process or who believe that basic institutions can only be changed by forece.It attracts some of the more active and idealistic younge people of every generation.To them it offers a romantic appeal,usually,symbolized by some dashing and charismatic figure.

It have the even greater appeal of simplicity:"Since this society is hopelessly bad,let;s smash it and build something better on the ruins.

Some of my best friends have been revolutionists.and a few of thme have led reasonably satisfying lives.There are the ones whosed revolutions did not come off;they have been able to keep on cheerfullly plotting their holocausts right into their senescence.Others died young.in prison or on the barricades .But      the most unfortunate are those whose revolutions have succeeded.They lived,in bitter disillusionment,to see the establishment they had overthrown replaced by a new one,just as hard-face and stuffy.

I am not,of course,suggesting that revolutions accomplish nothing.Some(the American Revolution,the French Revolution)clearly do change things for the better.My point is merely that the idealists who make the revolution are bound to be disappointed in either case.For at best their victory never dawns on the shining new world they have dreamed of,cleansed of all human meanness.Instead it dawns on a familiar,workaday place,still in need of groceries and sewage disposal.The revolutionary state,under whatever political label,has to be run-not by violent romantics--but by experts in marketing,santitary engineering,and the management of bureaucracies.

For the idealists who are determined to remake society,but who seek a more practical method than armed revolution,there remains one more alternative.

IV .Try to Change the World Gradually,One Clod at    a Time.

At first glance,this course is far from inviting.It lacks glamour.It promise no quick results.It depends on the exasperating and uncertain instruments of persuasion and democratic decision making.It demands patience,always in short supply.About all that can be said for it is that it sometimes works--that in this particular time and place it offers a better change for remedying some of the world's outranges than any other available strategy.

So at least the historical evidence seems to suggest.When I was graduating from college,my generation also found the world in a mess.The economic machinery had broken down almost everywhere:In this country nearly a quarter of the population was out of work.A major war seemed all too likely.As a college newspaper deditor at that time,I protested against this just as vehemently as student activests are protesting today.

At the same time,my generation was discovering that reforming the world is a little like fighting a military campaign in the Apennines,as soon as you capture one montain range,another one looms just adhead.As the big problems of the thirties were brought under some kind of rough control,new problems took their place--the unprecedented problems of an affluent society,of racial justice,of keeping our cities from becoming uninhabitablely,of coping with war in unfamiliar guise.Most disturbing of all was our discovery of the population explosion.It dawned on us rather suddenly that the numbers of passengers on the small spaceship we inhabit is doubling about every forty years.So long as the earth's population keeps growing at this cancerous rate,all of the other problems appear virtually insoluble.Our cities will continue to become more crowded and noisome.The landspace will get more cluttered,the air and water ever dirtier.The quality of life is likely to become steadily worse for everybody.And warfare on a rising scale seems inevitable if too many bodies have to struggle for ever-dwingling shares of food and living space.

So Jim Binns' generation has a formitable job on its hands.But not,I think,an insuperable one.On the evidence of the past,it can be handled in the same way that hard problems have been coped with before---piecemeal,pragmatically,by the dogged efforts of many people.

affulent 'adj 富裕的，富有的

antecedent    n    先例，前情，祖先

barricade    n    街垒，障碍

batten on    靠损害他人养肥自己

bucolic adj    田园的，农村生活的

cancerous    adj 似癌症的，癌症的

charismatic adj 具有超凡魅力的，能激励忠诚及热情的

cleanse    vt    彻底清洁，使纯洁

to be cleansed of something 彻底清除

cold    n (粘土，泥土等）块

clutter    vt 使杂乱，散乱

disillusionment      n    幻想破灭，醒悟

distasteful adj    令人厌恶的，令人不愉快的

dwindling    adj    减少，缩小

exasperating    adj    令人气恼的，恼人的

expedient      n 权宜之计，应急措施

flee    vi    逃走，逃离，逃避

formidable    adj    大而可怕的，令人畏惧的，难以应付的，极其艰巨的

guise n    伪装，假装

hallucinogen     n    幻觉剂

hard-faced    adj     面貌严厉的

holocaust     n    大屠杀，大破坏，浩劫

idealistic    adj 理想主义的，空想家的，唯心主义者的

insoluble adj    无法解决的，难以解释的，不可溶解的

insuperable    adj    无法克服的

irrationality    n    不合理

migration    v 迁移，迁居，移栖

misgiving    n    疑虑不安，怀疑

noisome    adj    令人不快的，令人讨厌的

parasite     n    寄生虫，食客，靠他人供养的人

parastic    adj     寄生的

pastoral    adj    田园生活的，乡村的

polar    adj    南极或北极的，两极的

practitioner    n    从事者，实践者，开业医生或律师

pragmatically    adv    注重实效地，实用主义地

presumably    adv    推测起来，大概，可能

sanitary    adj     卫生方面，卫生的

senescence    n    老年期

sewage    n    阴沟污水

simplicity    n    简单，单纯，朴素，率直

skepticism    n    怀疑（态度），呆板的，（房间）气闷的

symbolize vt    象征，以符号表示

tedious adj    令人厌烦的，冗长乏味的

undignified adj    不体面的，不庄重的

uninhabitable    adj    不适于居住的

unsullied    adj    未玷污的，没弄脏的

vehemently    adv    激烈地，猛烈地

workaday    adj    平凡庸碌的，工作日的