評論
打印
I realize that we are often wary of making these kinds of broad generalizations about different culture groups, and with good reason.
我知道，我們常常對這些不同文化群體的進行各種區分一向很警惕--出于良好的用心，
This is the form that racial and ethnic stereotypes take.
這就是為了避免種族歧視和種族偏見。
We want to believe that we are not prisoners of our ethnic histories.
但我們要相信，我們不是自己種族歷史的囚徒。
But the simple truth is if you want to understand what happened in those small towns in Kentucky in the nineteenth century, you have to go back into the past,
但簡單的事實是，如果你想了解發生在19世紀肯塔基州的這些小城鎮的事，你還必須回到過去
and not just one or two generations, you have to go back two or three or four hundred years to a country on the other side of the ocean
而且不僅僅一兩個世紀。你必須到兩三個或四個世紀以前，在一個大洋彼岸的國家里，
and look closely at what exactly the people in a very specific geographic area of that country did for a living.
密切關注那些來自特殊地理區域的人們到底是怎樣生活的。
The "culture of honor" hypothesis says that it matters where you are from, not just in terms of where you grew up or where your parents grew up,
"榮譽文化"假說的關鍵是你來自哪里，而不只是你在哪里長大，是你的父母、
but in terms of where your great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents grew up and even where your-great-great-great-grandparents grew up.
祖父母甚至曾祖父母乃至輩分更高的先祖們長大的地方。
That is a strange and powerful fact.
這很奇怪，但無可厚非。
It's just the beginning, though, because upon closer examination, culture legacies turned out to be even stranger and more powerful than that.
而且這僅是開始，因為越接近考證，文化傳承的影響反而更顯陌生和更強大。
In the early 1990s, two psychologists at the University of Michigan, Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett, decided to conduct an experiment on the culture of honor.
在90年代初期，密歇根大學的兩位心理學家--多夫·科恩和理查德·尼斯貝特決定進行一項榮譽文化的實驗。
They knew that what happened in places like Harlan in the nineteenth century was, in all likelihood, a product of patterns laid down in the English borderlands centuries before.
他們知道上文中的哈蘭事件，也許是英國邊境爭端的世紀遺留下來的產物。
But their interest was in the present day.
但他們對現在更感興趣，
Was is possible to find remnants of the culture of honor in the modern ear?
如今是否還能尋獲到榮譽文化遺留下來的痕跡？
So they decided to gather together a group of young men and insult them.
所以，他們召集一群年輕的男子進行實驗。
