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Is modern life making us miserable? ‘Civilized to Death’ author Christopher Ryan thinks so. 是不是现代生活让我们更加痛苦了？ 《文明至死》的作者克里斯托弗·莱恩认为是这样的。 By Nick Licata / October 17 , 2019 翻译：Ray︱校对：Sally Book review In “Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress,” author Christopher Ryan proposes a controversial explanation for what’s wrong with our world today: The problem began with the advent of agriculture, and the subsequent shift from a life of communal foraging to one of competition for personal gain. As Ryan explains, scholars wonder why, for thousands of years, when humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, “nothing was happening” to signify progress. The author’s explanation is that humans were essentially happy and satisfied with their lives. When they became civilized, the concept of progress led to misery.在《文明至死：进步的代价》一书中，作者克里斯托弗·莱恩对当今世界的问题提出了一个有争议的解释：这个问题始于农业的出现，以及随后产生的从集体觅食生活方式向争取个人利益生活方式的转变。正如莱恩所解释的，学者们想知道，几千年来，当人类生活在狩猎采集社会时，为什么“什么都没有发生”是表示社会进步。作者的解释是，人类本质上是幸福的，对自己的生活感到满意。当他们变得文明时，进步的概念导致了痛苦的产生。Digging into a treasure trove of research on prehistoric societies and the few existing hunter-forager societies, Ryan demonstrates that measures of health, longevity, security and leisure have all declined with the rise of civilization. He notes that “skeletal remains confirm that neither famine nor obesity were common until the advent of civilization.” And while prehistoric lives were short, data shows that today’s longevity is a net loss from that period in terms of functional longevity; we are simply expanding the amount of time we spend suffering as we die.莱恩挖掘了史前社会和少数现存狩猎觅食社会的研究宝库，证明了随着文明的兴起，健康、长寿、安全和休闲的判定都在下降。他指出，“骨骼遗骸证实，在文明出现之前，饥荒和肥胖都不常见。”虽然史前生命短暂，但数据显示，从功能寿命来看，今天的寿命不过是那一时期的净损失；我们只是在扩大我们在死亡时受苦受难的时间。Ryan posits that civilization has given rise to competitive institutions thriving on ever-expanding commerce, displacing the sense of meaning and happiness that humans experienced during 99% of our existence on this planet. This decline is due to the stratification of communities into hierarchical divisions — between owner and worker, man and woman, wealthy and poor — that accompanied the development of agriculture.莱恩认为文明已经产生了一个充满竞争的习俗，它在不断扩大的商业中蓬勃发展，取代了人类在这个星球上存在时间的99%的意义和幸福感。这种下降是由于随着农业的发展，人们被按照等级划分成不同阶层——所有者和工人、男人和女人、富人和穷人。Ryan uses data from modern-day American life to support this argument. He cites data showing “that 70 percent of Americans hate their jobs …” and “the use of antidepressants in the U.S. is up nearly 400 percent since 1990,” and points out that some of the few nonaddictive drugs that the ancients used to achieve happiness — psychedelics — are illegal. He also considers the ways modern society thwarts the free expression of sexuality, in contrast with the sexually liberal forager communities. Ryan argues that this repression results in enraged perversions of desire, and can even lead to violence, referencing a 2016 essay by philosopher Stephen Asma stating that “Of the past 129 mass shootings in the United States, all but three have been men. The shooter is socially alienated, and he can’t get laid.”莱恩利用现代美国生活的数据来支持这一论点。他引用了“70%的美国人讨厌他们的工作……”和“自1990年以来，美国抗抑郁药的使用率上升了近400%”的数据，并指出古人用来获得幸福的少数非上瘾性药物——迷幻药——是非法的。他还考虑了现代社会阻碍性自由表达的方式，与古代性解放的觅食者群体形成对比。莱恩认为，这种压制会导致愤怒的欲望扭曲，甚至会导致暴力，他引用哲学家斯蒂芬·阿斯玛（Stephen Asma）2016年的一篇文章称，“在美国过去129起大规模枪击案中，除了3起都是男性。枪手在社会上被疏远了，他没有性伴侣。”While these examples illustrate how civilization has corrupted our initial nonaggressive human nature, Ryan doesn’t tackle any possible exceptions. There is not a word about the fate of the foraging Neanderthals, our closest relation in the Homo genus. They disappeared when foraging Homo sapiens came into contact with them. Could our own aggressive behavior account for their demise?虽然这些例子说明了文明是如何腐蚀我们最初的非侵略性人性的，但莱恩并没有解决任何可能的例外情况。对于我们在人类属中最亲密的近亲尼安德特人的命运，目前还没有任何消息。当觅食的智人与它们接触时，它们消失了。我们自己的侵略行为能解释他们的死亡吗？Ryan also draws a hard line between forager and farmer societies, but fails to analyze the role of herders, who are as nomadic as the foragers, but tend animals. Were they inclined toward peaceful or aggressive behavior? The nomadic Mongols, for example, were not considered civilized by the great states that existed in the 13th century, but fell violently to Genghis Khan and his herder-hunter tribes.莱恩也在觅食者和农民社会之间划出了一条强硬的界线，但他没有分析牧民的角色，他们和觅食者一样漂泊，但却照料动物。他们倾向于和平还是侵略性的行为？例如，游牧民族蒙古人不被认为存在于十三世纪的大州文明，而是猛烈地袭击成吉思汗和他的猎人部落。 “Civilized to Death” is a fascinating read, with plenty of academic references. But Ryan provides only a few concrete ideas of how to foster and preserve elements of our lost forager culture. (He does cite progressive European societies’ generous maternity and paternity leave policies as one example.)《文明至死》是一本引人入胜的书，有大量的学术参考文献。但莱恩只提供了一些具体的想法，确定如何培养和保护我们失去的觅食者文化的元素。（他以欧洲进步社会慷慨的产假和陪产假政策为例。）While he barely mentions that foraging societies likely consisted of fewer than 150 people, he does explain that close personal contact was critical to fostering cooperation. He also recognizes that the advent of agriculture accelerated population growth and stratified communities into competing groups, and supports reducing birthrates.虽然他几乎没有提到觅食社会可能只有不到150人一组，但他解释说，密切的个人接触对促进合作至关重要。他还认识到，农业的出现加速了人口增长，并将社区分层为相互竞争的群体，并使得降低出生率。After blaming civilization’s problems on the idea of progress, Ryan returns to it as something positive, describing another period of Enlightenment, when progressive thought celebrated ancient Rome and Greece. This time, progress would mean introducing forager practices into our modern world, replacing top-down corporate structures with communal alternatives.在把文明的问题归咎于进步的观念之后，当进步的思想欢庆古罗马和古希腊时。莱恩又以积极的态度来描述另一个启蒙运动。这一次，进步意味着在我们的现代世界引入觅食者的做法，用公共替代品取代自上而下的公司结构。Progress may just be what saves our civilization.
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