 原标题：Benjamin Franklin and the Self-Made Man: Making America 首刊日期：2021 年 9 月 27 日 Self-made men existed before America, but they were rare. 在美国诞生前，白手起家的人有，但他们很稀少。 After the American Revolution, they became much more common. 美国革命后，他们变得更为普遍。 They came from everywhere. 他们来自世界各地。 They are still coming. 他们还在不断出现。 Benjamin Franklin was and remains the prototype. 本杰明·富兰克林是且仍然是其原型。 One of his recent biographers Walter Isaacson put it this way: 他最新传记的作者沃尔特·艾萨克森这么说： “He was the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become.” 「他是他那个时代最有成就的美国人，也是在发明美国之后形成的社会类型方面最有影响力的人。」 Franklin’s life, no less than his ideas, conveys the indomitable spirit of both invention and, just as important, self-invention, that define Americans and make them almost instantly distinguishable, even today, by people around the world. 富兰克林的一生，如他的思想一样，表现了不屈不挠的发明精神，以及同样重要的自我创新精神，正是这种精神定义了美国人，使他们即使在今天也能被全世界的人们立即辨别出来。 Born in Boston in 1705, the youngest son in a family of seventeen children, Franklin was at various times America’s leading scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and publisher. 富兰克林 1705 年出生在波士顿，是家里 17 个孩子中最小的，他在不同时期里是顶尖的科学家、发明家、外交家、作家以及出版家。 It’s hard to imagine one person could accomplish so much in one life. 很难想象一个人在一生中能取得这么多成就。 He conducted early experiments in electricity, devised bifocal glasses, designed a new type of stove, organized lending libraries, formed Philadelphia’s first fire department, and founded the college that became the University of Pennsylvania. 他进行了早期的电力实验，发明了双焦眼镜，设计了一种新型炉具，组建了借阅图书馆，成立了费城的第一个消防队，并创办了后来成为宾夕法尼亚大学的学院。 His own formal education was two years of high school. His informal education—what he taught himself and learned from others—never ended. 他自己的正式教育是两年高中。他的非正式教育——自学还有向他人学习——从未停止。 His “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” which dispensed practical daily wisdom and wisecracks in equal measure was the most popular publication of its day. 他的《穷查理宝典》提供了实用的日常智慧和同样多的妙语，是当时最受欢迎的出版物。 If there was something important going on, Franklin was in the middle of it. 如果发生了什么重要的事，富兰克林一定参与其中。 He was the guiding spirit of the American Founding. 他是美国建国的精神领袖。 He desperately tried to keep America out of a war with Britain, offering the British government every kind of compromise to avoid the conflict. But when his efforts were rejected and he realized separation from the mother country was inevitable, he threw his heart and soul into the revolutionary cause, the struggle for independence. 他拼命想阻止美国与英国开战，向英国政府提出了各种妥协以避免冲突。但是，当他的努力被拒绝后，他意识到与祖国分离已是不可避免的，于是他全身心地投入到革命事业中，为独立而斗争。 As the American envoy in France during the war, he was more responsible than any other person in bringing the French to the American side. Without this alliance, it’s unlikely the rebels would have won. It is more likely, in fact, that they would have lost and all the Founders, including Franklin, would have been tried, convicted, and executed as traitors to the British Crown. 作为战争期间美国驻法国的特使，他作了最大贡献将法国人拉到美国一边。如果没有这一联盟，叛军是不太可能获胜的。其实更可能的是，他们会战败，包括富兰克林在内的所有建国者都会作为英国王室的叛徒被审判、定罪并处决。 When the new country won its freedom, Franklin, then in his eighth decade and near the end of his life was again on center stage, helping to guide the quarreling delegates toward a new constitution. A novus ordo seclorum, a new order for the ages, he called it. 当这个新国家赢得自由时，当时已年过八旬、接近生命终点的富兰克林再次站到舞台中央，帮助引导争吵中的代表们制定新宪法。他称之为 Novus ordo seclorum，历久的新秩序。 At a low point in the great Philadelphia debate over the nation’s founding document when everyone, including Washington, was willing to give it up as a bad job, Franklin single-handedly saved the enterprise and revived the spirits of the delegates by summoning them to an inspirational prayer. 在费城关于建国文件的大辩论中，在最低谷的时候，在所有人包括华盛顿在内都宁愿放弃的时候，富兰克林以一己之力挽救了这项事业，并通过召集代表们进行鼓舞人心的祈祷来重振他们的精神。 And it was Franklin who summed up the event for posterity. When asked what kind of government the convention had created, he quipped “A republic, if you can keep it.” 也正是富兰克林为后人总结了这次事件。当被问到会议创建了什么样的政府时，他说：「一个共和国，如果你能保得住。」 Franklin viewed America itself as a great invention, a new kind of nation for a new kind of man. Even so, Isaacson concludes, “The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.” 富兰克林认为美国本身就是一项伟大的发明，是为一种新的人建立的新的国家。即便如此，艾萨克森总结说：「富兰克林发明过最有趣的，并不断重新发明的，就是他自己。」 His brilliant Autobiography reveals a polymath who was endlessly curious and endlessly and pleasantly surprised by life. He was also never quite satisfied. In a way that is again quintessentially American, he sought to make it (whatever it was he was working on) better. 他出色的自传展现了一个博学家，他有着无尽的好奇心和对生活无尽的、愉快的惊喜。他也从未完全满足，而以一种也很典型的美国方式，试图让它（无论他做的是什么）变得更好。 So, he saw construction workers with axes building a fort and timed them to see how long it took; inquired into the art by which native Indians concealed their fires; conducted experiments and published his observations on electricity. 因此，他看到建筑工人拿斧头建造堡垒，为他们计时看要花多长时间；探究印第安人隐藏火种的技艺；进行实验并发表他对电的观察。 Franklin took this curiosity and turned it on himself. He viewed his own life not simply as a story of change, but rather as a continuing quest for self-improvement. 富兰克林利用这种好奇心，把它应用在自己身上。他认为自己的生活不仅仅是一个变化的故事，更是一个不断追求自我改进的过程。 He describes in his autobiography how he made a list of what he termed the seven virtues—temperance, industry, sincerity, and so on—and then enumerated them in a single column down the left-hand side of a page. At the top, he listed the seven days of the week. His plan was to take the first virtue and practice it for one week straight. 他在自传中描述了他是如何列出他所称的七种美德：节制、勤奋、真诚等等，然后在纸的左侧纵列列出它们。在顶部，他列出了一周中的七天。他的计划是选择第一种美德并连续练习一周。 He noted his progress each day with a checkmark. If he could practice a virtue for seven days without a lapse, he reasoned, he would internalize it. It would become part of his character. 他每天都会记下他的进展。他认为，如果他能连续七天不间断地练习一种美德，他就能将其内化。这将成为他品格的一部分。 And as his life suggests, it worked. 正如他生活所表明的那样，这确实管用。 This wise, self-deprecating, life-loving man was an American original, and yet he was also the progenitor of an American type—one who follows his own path. Benjamin Franklin types from all over the world came in droves to America because this was the place where they could best pursue their passion. In America, class didn’t matter. Country of origin didn’t matter. Level of education didn’t matter. All that mattered was talent, hard work, and luck. In America, you could make of yourself what you will, and you still can. Just as Benjamin Franklin did. 这位睿智、自谦、热爱生活的人是地道的美国人，他也是一种美国特点的先驱：遵循自己的道路。来自世界各地像本杰明·富兰克林那样的人成群结队地来到美国，因为这里是他们能够最好地追求自己激情的地方。在美国，阶层并不重要。原籍国不重要。教育水平也不重要。重要的是天赋、努力工作和运气。在美国，你可以使自己成为你想要的人，你仍然可以做到，就像本杰明·富兰克林那样。 He is the original embodiment of the American idea of the self-directed life, an idea that still defines the American experience. 他最早体现了美国人自主生活的理念，这一理念仍然定义着美国经验。 I’m Dinesh D’Souza for Prager University. 我是迪内希·德·索萨，为 PragerU 制作。 |
|
|
来自： mynotebook > 《待分类》
