B2U1 Man and Nature
Reading Text One>Text One
How Modern Life Became Disconnected from Nature
Selin Kesebir & Pelin Kesebir
Culture Notes
1 It’s hard to overstate how much good nature does for our well-being: Study after study documents the psychological and physical benefits of connecting with nature. People who are more connected with nature are happier, feel more vital, and have more meaning in their lives.
大自然给予我们的厚待怎么说都不为过：一项又一项的研究证明，亲近大自然让我们的身心受益匪浅。与大自然接触越密切，人们就越快乐，感觉更有活力，生活也更有意义。
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2 Even in small doses, nature is a potent elixir: When their hospital room had flowers and foliage, post-surgery patients needed less painkillers and reported less fatigue. And merely looking at pictures of nature does speed up mental restoration and improves cognitive functioning.
即便“微量注射”，大自然也是一剂“强心剂”：病房里摆上鲜花和绿植，术后的病人对止痛药的需求就会减少，也会感觉没那么疲倦。光是看看大自然的图片都着实能促进心理康复、改善认知功能。
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3 These studies, along with hundreds of others, all point to the same conclusion: We stand to benefit tremendously from nurturing a strong connection with nature. Yet our connection to nature seems more tenuous than ever today — a time when our children can name more game characters than wildlife species.
这些研究与其他数百项研究都揭示了同一个结论：我们从培育与大自然的紧密联系中获益良多。然而，如今我们与大自然的联系似乎比以往任何时候都要脆弱──在这个时代，我们的孩子能说出的游戏角色比他们认识的野生物种还要多。
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4 It is widely accepted that we are more disconnected from nature today than we were a century ago, but is that actually true? A recent study we conducted suggests that it is — and that may be bad news not only for our well-being but also for the environment.
人们普遍认为，比起100年前，我们与大自然疏远了不少，但事实真的如此吗？我们最近进行的一项研究表明，确实如此。这对我们的身心健康、对环境而言都可能是个坏消息。
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5 Our Growing Disconnection from Nature
To find out how the human relation to nature has changed over time, we asked ourselves: How can we define and measure all the various ways in which people connect with nature? How can we count all the times people stop to watch a sunset or listen to birds chirping, or how long they spend walking tree-lined streets? We could certainly ask these questions to living people, but we couldn’t ask people who lived a hundred years ago.
我们与大自然日益疏远
为了理清人类与大自然的关系如何随着时间的推移发生变化，我们想了这几个问题：如何界定和衡量人们接触大自然的所有方式？如何数得清人们驻足观赏日落、聆听鸟语或漫步于绿荫道上的次数呢？我们当然可以向健在的人们提出这些问题，却无法向生活在一百年前的人发问。
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6 Instead, we turned to the cultural products they created. Works of popular culture, we reasoned, should reflect the extent to which nature occupies our collective consciousness. If novelists, songwriters, or filmmakers have fewer encounters with nature these days than before, or if these encounters make less of an impression on them, or if they don’t expect their audiences to respond to it, nature should feature less frequently in their works.
于是，我们转而研究他们创作的文化作品。我们推断，流行文化作品应该反映出大自然占据我们集体意识的程度。如果现在的小说家、词曲作者或电影制作人与大自然的接触比以前少了，或者这些接触给他们留下的印象淡了，或者他们不期望大众对大自然作出什么反应，那么大自然应当不会经常出现在他们的作品中。
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7 We created a list of 186 nature-related words belonging to four categories: general words related to nature (e.g., autumn, cloud, lake, moonlight), names of flowers (e.g., bluebell, edelweiss, foxglove, rose), names of trees (e.g., cedar, laburnum, whitebeam, willow), and names of birds (e.g., finch, hummingbird, meadowlark, spoonbill).
我们创建了一个词汇表，收录了186个与大自然相关的词语，并分为四类：与自然相关的一般词语（如：秋天、云朵、湖泊、月光），花的名称（如：蓝铃花、雪绒花、毛地黄、玫瑰），树的名称（如：雪松、水黄皮、白面子、柳树），鸟的名称（如：雀鸟、蜂鸟、草地鹨、琵鹭）。
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8 Next, we checked how frequently these 186 words appeared in works of popular culture over time, including English fiction books written between 1901 and 2000, songs listed as the top 100 between 1950 and 2011, and storylines of movies made between 1930 and 2014.
接下来，我们核查了这186个词语在不同时期的流行文化作品中出现的频率，包括1901年至2000年间创作的英文小说、1950年至2011年间排行前100位的歌曲，以及1930年至2014年间所拍摄电影的情节梗概。
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9 Across millions of fiction books, thousands of songs, and hundreds of thousands of movie and documentary storylines, our analyses revealed a clear and consistent trend: Nature features significantly less in popular culture today than it did in the first half of the 20th century, with a steady decline after the 1950s. For every three nature-related words in the popular songs of the 1950s, for example, there is only slightly more than one 50 years later.
我们分析了几百万本小说、数千首歌曲、几十万部电影和纪录片的情节梗概，发现了一个明显而一致的趋势：与20世纪前半叶相比，大自然在当今流行文化中出现的频率明显降低，20世纪50年代之后更是持续下降。例如，20世纪50年代的流行歌曲中所包含的自然相关词语，每三个中仅有一个多一点出现在50年后的歌曲中。
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10 A look at some of the hit titles from 1957 makes clear how things have changed over time: They include “Butterfly,” “Moonlight Gambler,” “White Silver Sands,” “Rainbow,” “Honeycomb,” “In the Middle of an Island,” “Over the Mountain, Across the Sea,” “Blueberry Hill,” and “Dark Moon.” In these songs, nature often provides the backdrop to and imagery of love, as in “Stardust” which starts with:
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart
You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
回顾1957年某些热门歌曲的歌名，你就能清楚地看出时代的变迁：那时的歌名有《蝴蝶》《月光赌客》《白银沙》《彩虹》《蜂巢》《在岛中央》《翻山过海》《蓝莓山》和《暗月》。在这些歌曲中，大自然常常充当爱情的背景和意象，就像《星尘》一曲开头的这段：
黄昏时分的淡紫暮色
悄悄拂过我心中草地
星星爬上高高的夜空
总在提醒我们的分离
你沿径徘徊离我远去
留下一曲永恒的旋律
爱已然化为昨夜星尘
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11 Fifty years later in 2007, there are only four nature-related hit titles: “Snow (Hey Oh),” “Cyclone,” “Summer Love,” and “Make It Rain.”
50年后的2007年，只有四首歌名与大自然有关的热门歌曲：《雪（嘿！哦！）》《旋风》《夏之恋》和《落雨吧》。
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12 This pattern of decline didn’t hold for another group of words we tested — nouns related to human-made environments, such as bed, bowl, brick, and hall — suggesting that nature is a unique case.
在我们测试的另一组与人造环境有关的名词（比如：床、碗、砖、大厅）中，这种下降的趋势并没有出现，这表明大自然相关词汇的出现频率是个独特的案例。
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13 The Source of Our Nature Deficit
How can we explain this shrinking of nature in our collective imagination and cultural conversation? A closer look at the data yields an interesting clue: References to nature declined after, but not before, the 1950s.
与大自然联系减少的由来
大自然在我们的集体想象和文化对话中有所减少，这该作何解释呢？仔细观察一下这些数据，我们发现了一个有趣的线索：从20世纪50年代起，提及大自然的次数开始减少，但在此之前并非如此。
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14 The trend of urbanization — which swallows up natural areas and cuts people off from natural surroundings — is typically used to explain the weakening human connection to nature, but our findings are not consistent with that account. Urbanization rates did not change from the first half of the 20th century to the second in the US and UK, where most works we studied originated.
人们通常将人类与大自然联系的日益减弱归结于城市化的趋势，认为城市化吞噬了自然区域，切断了人们与自然环境的联系，但我们的发现与这种解释并不一致。我们研究的大多数作品都来自美英两国，而这两国的城市化水平从20世纪上半叶到下半叶并没有发生什么变化。
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15 Instead, our findings point to a different explanation for our disconnection from nature: technological change, and in particular the burgeoning of indoor and virtual recreation options. The 1950s saw the rapid rise of television as the most popular medium of entertainment. Video games first appeared in the 1970s and have since been a popular pastime, while the Internet has been claiming more and more leisure time since the late 1990s. It stands to reason that these technologies partially substituted for nature as a source of recreation and entertainment. Classic paintings such as Winslow Homer’s Snap the Whip (1872) or Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886) point to a time when children played in wide open green fields and adults spent their Sunday afternoons in nature.
相反，我们的发现表明：现代人与大自然的疏离有另一种解释，即技术的变革，尤其是室内活动和虚拟娱乐的蓬勃发展。20世纪50年代，电视迅速崛起，成为最受欢迎的娱乐媒体。电子游戏最早出现于70年代，并在此后成为一种流行的消遣方式。而互联网自90年代末以来，占据了人们越来越多的休闲时间。毫无疑问，这些技术在一定程度上取代了大自然中的休闲娱乐方式。像温斯洛•霍默的《甩鞭子》，或修拉的《大碗岛的星期天下午》等经典画作都描绘了这样一个年代：孩子们在开阔的绿地上玩耍，成年人则在大自然中度过他们的星期天下午。
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16 To the extent that the disappearance of nature vocabulary from the cultural conversation reflects an actual distancing from nature, our findings are cause for concern. Aside from its well-being benefits, a connection to nature strongly predicts pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Such a love for nature is often born from exposure to nature as a child. This is what made author Richard Louv write, “As the care of nature increasingly becomes an intellectual concept severed from the joyful experience of the outdoors, you have to wonder: Where will future environmentalists come from?”
既然自然相关词汇从文化作品中消失反映出人与自然确有疏离，我们的研究发现的确令人担忧。与自然的联系不但有益健康，还能鲜明预示未来亲环境的态度和行为。这种对大自然的热爱往往源自孩童时代与大自然的亲密接触。作家理查德•卢夫因而这样写道：“当关爱自然越来越成为一种抽象概念、与户外的愉悦体验割裂开来时，你不得不思忖：未来的环保主义者将来自何方？”
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17 It’s worth remembering that cultural products such as songs and films not only reflect the prevailing culture — they also shape it. Modern artists have the opportunity to send the message that nature is worth paying attention to and to help awaken curiosity, appreciation, and respect for nature, as some did back in the 1960s and 1970s. Artistic creations that help us connect with nature are crucial at a time like this, when nature seems to need our attention and care more than ever.
我们有必要牢记这一点，诸如歌曲、电影这类的文化产品不仅能反映主流文化，还能起到塑造的作用。现代的艺术家们有机会传达这样的信息：大自然值得关注，也有机会帮助唤醒人们对大自然的好奇心、欣赏与尊重，就像20世纪六七十年代一些艺术家所做的那样。在这个时代，大自然似乎比以往都更需要我们的关注和爱护，帮助我们与大自然建立联系的艺术创作尤为重要。
Reading Text Two>Text Two
Man and Nature: A Powerful Connection, Now Fractured
Blake Skylar
Culture Notes
1 I recently went on a hike in the Ned Brown Forest Preserve, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Just a half-hour bus ride outside of Chicago, it is the closest I can get to nature right now. I don’t have a car, and the full commute to this preserve is roughly two hours — two trains and a bus, to be specific. As someone who grew up with a deep appreciation for nature, wildlife, and conservation, it is important to me not only to maintain that sense of oneness with the Earth, but also to make it a permanent facet of my life. Where living in a city lays heaps of stress upon me, getting away into the woods — even for a day — lets it all drain away like water through a sieve.
最近，我去了趟伊利诺伊州的埃尔克格罗夫村，到内德布朗森林保护区徒步旅行。这里离芝加哥只有半小时公交车程，是我现在亲近大自然最近的去处。我没有车，到保护区全程花了约两小时──具体说来，坐了两趟火车，再加一趟大巴。对从小到大一直深爱着大自然、野外生物和自然保护区的我来说，保持与地球融为一体的感觉，并让它成为我生命中永恒的一部分，这非常重要。都市生活让我背负重重压力，逃离到森林中，哪怕只一天，压力都会如过筛之水一般流走。
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2 With my fondness for nature also came learning and knowledge. I can identify which trees are white oaks and which are silky oaks by looking at the leaves. I can usually tell which way is North by studying the lichens growing on the sides of trees. After living just three years in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, I can track and identify footprints in the snow, including those made by deer, bears, and bobcats. I can tell a pignut from a shagbark hickory nut. And, unlike when I’m walking around in a city, I can always find my way out of the woods and back home.
对大自然的喜爱也带给我学问与知识。只看看树叶，我就能认出哪些树是白栎，哪些是银桦。观察树木周边的青苔，我就能判断出哪边是北。在宾夕法尼亚州的波科诺斯住了短短三年，我就能追踪并识别出雪地里动物的足迹，包括鹿、熊、红猫等。我能分得清光滑山核桃树和小糙皮山核桃树。而且，和走在城市里的时候不同，身处森林里的我总能找到回家的路。
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3 As I’m writing this, I’m recalling the very valid criticisms that some of my urban friends have leveled at me, whenever I would bring up the issue of rural living and a connection with Mother Earth. “People just can’t live like that anymore,” is the main counterargument that I hear; “We are no longer a society that can sustain itself by hunting, fishing, and farming.” Or, the more pragmatic person will say, “People live in the cities because they need to have jobs and support themselves.”
写下这些文字时，我回想起我的一些城里朋友对我提出的那些颇为在理的批评。只要我提起去乡野生活、亲近地球母亲的话题，一般就会听到他们这样反驳：“人们再也过不了那样的日子了”，“我们已不再是一个靠狩猎、捕鱼、耕田来维持生计的社会了”。或者，更务实的人会说：“人们住在城里，是因为他们需要工作、需要养活自己。”
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4 I agree! Big Business has crushed independent places where people can work. Everyone I know is working at Walmart, or K-Mart, or Applebee’s, or McDonald’s. Many, many jobs have left even the suburbs, and of those that remain, few pay higher than minimum wage. If you want to get a higher-paying job, these days, the city is your best bet.
我同意！大企业挤垮了人们可以任职的个体店铺。我认识的人都在沃尔玛、凯马特、红苹蜜或麦当劳上班。大批工作岗位甚至已经撤离了郊区，那些郊区仅存的工作中，很少有薪资水平高于最低工资标准的。如今，如果你想找一份薪资较高的工作，去城里是最好的选择。
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5 Well, we have trapped ourselves; that I’ll admit to. I’m not saying that it’s possible or even advisable for everyone to make a transition toward greener, more rustic living. But as an individual, I don’t think it’s impossible for someone to do just that. In the near future, I hope to teach myself how to hunt, how to clean and debone fish, how to grow basic plants and vegetables, and find a way to live successfully in an area closer to the wilderness. Ideally, I’d live in a cabin somewhere. But everything takes time, work, and a realistic outlook. I personally think that romanticizing nature is all well and good, but that if you truly want to make it a large part of your life, you have to be pragmatic and self-sufficient. You need to try and remove your dependency on other people, and especially on the city in which you may live.
好吧，我们已经把自己困住了，这一点我承认。我并不是说每个人都可能去过一种更绿色、更乡野的生活，我甚至不建议大家这样做。但就个人而言，我认为，有人能做到这一点也不是不可能。在不久的将来，我想要自学如何捕猎、如何拾掇鱼和剔鱼骨、如何种植常见的花木蔬菜，想办法在接近荒野的地方美美地生活。理想情况下，我想住在某个地方的小木屋里。但是，万事都需付出时间、劳作，还要讲究实际。我个人认为，将大自然想象得很浪漫没有错，但如果你真的想让自然成为你生活中的重要组成部分，就必须真打实干、自给自足。你得要努力摆脱对他人的依赖，尤其是对所居住城市的依赖。
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6 The bigger point of this article is, I suppose, more of a philosophical dilemma. By attaching ourselves to these giant steel traps — these metropolises of concrete and metal that are an offence to the land upon which they were built — we have severely damaged our relationship with nature. I believe that there is a shared consciousness within all trees and plants, and at the center of that consciousness is the Earth.
我认为这篇文章更大的意义在于，它探讨的更多是一种哲学困境。这些由混凝土和金属构建的大都市，它们的存在本身就是对其脚下土地的一种冒犯。而我们把自己拴在这些巨型钢铁捕兽夹上，严重破坏了我们与大自然
7 Regardless, I do feel this way, and when we drill into the Earth for natural gas extraction, or spew oil into the sea, or tear apart an entire forest for the purpose of industrialization … to me, that is equal to violence. We have inflicted wound after wound after wound upon the Earth, and while climate change is by and large caused by Man, perhaps it’s a just punishment for what we have done.
不管怎样，我确实有这种感觉，当我们为了开采天然气而钻探地球、向海洋喷泄油污，或打着工业化的旗号而摧毁整片森林······我觉得，这与暴力无异。我们给地球留下了一个又一个、一个又一个的伤口，虽说气候变化主要是由人类造成的，但这也许是对我们所作所为的一种公正的惩罚吧。
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8 We are here as caretakers and stewards of the planet. And there is a piece of wisdom I once heard: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” This is to say that we must work hard to make it a good place for generations who will live here in the future. We have not done that; and that’s on us.
我们是来保护和看守地球的。我曾听过一句智慧之言：“地球不是我们从祖先手上继承下来的，而是我们从孩子那里借来的。”这意味着，我们必须努力让地球成为一个子孙后代得以生活其中的美好家园。我们没有做到这一点，这归咎于我们。
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9 Richard Nelson, a cultural anthropologist and writer for environmental radio series Encounters, wrote an essay called Eskimo Science. In it, he remarked, “Probably no society has been so deeply alienated as ours from the community of nature; has viewed the natural world from a greater distance of mind; has fallen into a murkier comprehension of its connections with the sustaining environment. Because of this, we have great difficulty understanding our rootedness to Earth, our natural attractions to nonhuman life.”
理查德•纳尔逊是一位文化人类学家，也是电台环境系列节目“遇见”的撰稿人。他写过一篇文章，题为《爱斯基摩人的科学》。文中写道：“或许没有哪个社会像我们这个社会一样，与大自然如此疏离，以如此置身事外的姿态看待自然界，对自身与赖以生存的环境之间的关系有如此模糊不清的理解。正因如此，我们难以明白人类对地球根深蒂固的依赖，以及对自身以外生物的天生喜爱。”
译文
10 That final point Richard made is one I’d like to emphasize, because I feel that the farther away you get from something, the more insensitive to it you become, and the less likely you are to be able to empathize with it. I’m talking in particular about animals. It’s no wonder that we see so many stories in the news of younger teens abusing turtles, or kicking stray cats, or setting dogs ablaze. While this is sickening to us, the emotional weight and the absolute horror of what many of these kids are doing is lost on them.
理查德提出的最后一点也正是我想要强调的，因为我觉得，一个人和某事物越疏远，对它就越不敏感，就越难以与其产生共鸣，这番话对动物而言尤为如此。难怪我们会在新闻中看到有那么多关于青少年虐待海龟、踢打流浪猫、放火烧狗的报道。这些行为令人深恶痛绝，然而，做出这等事的许多孩子却没有情感上的负担，也没有任何惧怕。
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11 When all you have been exposed to are dull cities, without a healthy tree in sight, your respect for the life that lies beyond our urban hideouts — deep in the forests and the oceans — dwindles. And as we continue on this course, you can kiss animal rights and animal welfare goodbye.
如果你终日身处沉闷的都市，目之所及不见一株葱郁之树，你对那些远离我们都市居所、生活在森林和海洋深处的生命就会少一份尊重。长此以往，动物权利和动物福利也将不复存在。
译文
12 Peter Kahn, a psychologist at the University of Washington, states that because so much of daily life is now based on electronic and metropolitan representations of reality, humans are very much at risk of losing touch with nature. “What do we compare technology to?” he asked. “If we compare it to nature, it doesn’t seem to provide as many psychological benefits.” But when technology is considered the new normal, that comparison is rarely made by the average citygoer. One begins to forget that “other, better thing.” “Poor air quality is a good example,” he said. “We can choke on the air, and some people suffer asthma, but we now tend to think that’s a pretty normal part of the human condition.” He concluded, “People might think that technology is partly good because it’s good enough. But it’s not. Because across generations what will happen is that the good enough will become the good. If we don’t change course it will impoverish us as a species.”
华盛顿大学的心理学家彼得•卡恩指出，由于现在大部分的日常生活都是基于电子化和大都市的现实表象，所以人类在很大程度上面临着与自然失去联系的风险。“我们把技术和什么相比？”他问道。“如果我们把技术与自然相比，它似乎并没有给我们的心理带来那么多益处。”但是，当技术被视为一种新常态，一般城市人就很少会作这样的比较了。人们开始淡忘“别的、更好的东西”。“糟糕的空气质量就是一个典型的例子。”他说。“我们可能被空气呛到，有些人会得哮喘，但我们现在倾向于认为，这种情况是人类生活中很正常的一部分。”他总结道：“人们可能会认为，科技之所以在一定程度上是好的，是因为它还行。实则不然。因为过了几代之后，还行的东西会变为好的东西，如果我们现在不加以扭转，科技将会使我们这个物种走向没落。”
译文
13 Look around. I think it’s pretty clear that it’s already happening.
看看周围吧。我想，这一切显然已在发生。
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