引用

彭总 的 Hyperculture

Stephen Bertman

1 High-speed living enforces a live-for-the-present mentality that obscures history and memory. We must restore a balance of the past, present, and future.

2 The airplanes that first attempted to break the sound barrier were ripped apart when they tried to penetrate the turbulent pressure waves rushing ahead of them. Only redesigned aircraft—with thinner, swept-back wings and streamlined fuselages—permitted test pilots to puncture the invisible wall of compressed air.

3 The principles of physics that explain the sound barrier can also help us understand the origin and nature of stress in our lives. As the velocity of everyday life increases—as we fly faster and faster through the atmosphere of daily experience—our “aircraft” encounters a turbulence it was never designed to withstand. As our speed increases, invisible pressures buildup, pressures strong enough to shatter the structural integrity of our personalities and our relationships. Ultimately, we may lose control, or the craft we fly may disintegrate.

4 The simple solution, of course, is to slow down. But if we cannot slow down—or choose not to—the only remaining answer is to redesign our lives, to adapt structurally to our newfound speed. But what does “adapt structurally” rally mean? An aircraft can be given swept-back wings that help it break the sound barrier, but we are human beings, not machines. What parts of our lives can we alter? And if the stress each of us feels is experienced socially as well as individually, what changes must society as a whole make to accommodate itself to faster times?

5 The answers to these questions will ultimately define the quality of American life. For the adaptations we make to speed alter the fundamental nature of our existence, not only in terms of our behavior but also in terms of our priorities. A faster society is a different society, different not merely in its velocity but in its values. Not stress but rather our accommodations to it will determine the future character of our civilization.

Social Acceleration

6 In 1970, Alvin Toffler described the symptoms of a new disease he called “future shock.” According to Toffler, future shock was a psycho-biological condition induced by subjecting individuals to “too much change in too short a time.” Toffler argued that technological and social changes were taking place so rapidly that people could no longer adapt to them. “Future shock,” he wrote “is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future…[U]nless man quickly learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as in society at large, we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown.”

7 Since the publication of Future Shock almost 30 years ago, the rate of social change has radically increased. Largely responsible for this increase has been the rapid development and deployment of older technologies and the swift introduction and growth of new ones. Supported by an electronic network of instantaneous communications, our culture has been transformed into a globally integrated system in which the prime and unchallenged directive is to keep up with change.

8 The computer received scant attention in Future Shock—and the understandably so. After all, the first word processor did not appear until 1970; the first silicon chip, not until 1971; the first personal computer, not until 1975. Even as late as 1984, only eight out of 100 American households had a computer. In just two years, however, the figure doubled. And by 1994, there was a computer in more than one out of every three American homes. Meanwhile, computer speed was increasing at a rate of 55% a year, and e-mail and Internet use were just starting to become commonplace.

9 At the same time, other technologies were revving America up. Sales of cell phones and fax machines, numbered in the low hundreds of thousands in 1980s, climbed to 7 million a year in just a decade. And by 1997, some 2 million Americans were carrying electronic pagers.

10 Yet more important than the popularity of any one of these technologies is their combination, which radically reinforces and intensifies their individual impacts. It is their electronic linkage that keeps pictures, sounds, and data continually coursing on a nonstop, high-speed track, saturating our environment with instancy. And the more that society depends upon electronic information flow and entertainment, the more our everyday lives need to keep up with its speed-of-light pace, since our economic and emotional existence is wired into its circuitry.

11 Without question, this speed can be exhilarating. It brings us what we need and want faster than ever before. But that same speed can also add stress to our lives.

12 For example, in a national survey conducted in 1986 by the Louis Harris organization, one out of three Americans said they live with stress nearly every day. And six out of 10 said they experienced “great stress” once or twice a week. In 1994, two out of 10 people questioned reported feeling great stress almost every day, according to the findings of the Prevention Index survey.

13 In addition, use-of-time studies by University of Maryland sociologist John Robinson have revealed a progressive increase in hurriedness over the years. In 1965, 25% of those surveyed said their lives were rushed all the time. By 1975, the figure had risen to 28%; by 1985, it had climbed to 32. And, more recently in 1992, Penn State researchers Geoffrey Godbey and Alan Graefe put the figure at 38%, almost a 50% increase from 1965. Strikingly, those who lived in small towns felt as rushed as those who lived in big cities. Just as strikingly, both groups felt their lives were hurried not only at work but also at play.

14 The presence of stress in our lives is also revealed by the printed word. In the last five years, almost 400 articles on stress and time management have appeared in popular national magazines. In addition, there are some 900 books currently in print on these topics. All these publications do more than just show that stress is a popular subject. They also demonstrate how little control we seem to have over it.

15 Like it or not, we’ve all been drafted into an army, a peacetime army that fights on the battlefield of everyday life. We wage “time wars” to use author Jeremy Rifkin’s term: wars between the slower pace our minds and bodies crave and the faster tempo our technology demands. We are all combat veterans of such wars.

The Power of Now

16 As we travel at warp speed, we fall under the sway of a new force, the power of now. The power of now is the intense energy of an unconditional present, a present uncompromised by any other dimension of time. Under its all-consuming power, the priorities we live by are transformed in a final act of adaptation to electronic speed. Our lives cease to be what they once were, not because life itself has changed, but because the way we see it has been altered.

17 The power of now replaces the long term with the short term, duration with immediacy, permanence with transience, memory with sensation, insight with impulse.

18 Unlike the monastery or the desert, where mystics once attained transcendent perspective by withdrawing from the world, the real of now is an environment of pervasive sensory stimulation and swift flux, a continually altered cosmos that offers us no fixed horizon. As a consequence, our lives come to be characterized more by their random trajectory than by any reasoned destination.

19 The individual, the family, and society at large are all being transformed by the power of now. Not only is it altering their nature, it is changing the very meaning these words have in our minds. Thus, under its influence, both reality and our understanding of reality are being reshaped.

The Fluid individual

20 The power of now immerses each of us in an atmosphere of transience and flux. We float on the current of an electromagnetic sea whose waves are visible on the screens of television sets and computers. Even as it seductively entertains or informs us with its content, each medium indoctrinates us with its form, a form characterized by instantly changing images. As result, we become progressively desensitized to the importance of continuity and wholeness in our lives. Inured to what is temporary, we lose touch with the permanent.

21 In a culture fed by a fast-moving electronic stream, those who “go with the flow” to find excitement and fulfillment inexorably speed up their lives. More than simply inducing stress, the prolonged acceleration of behavior can lead to marked changes in personality, changes evident in one’s external appearance and inner sensibilities. Through diets, steroids, and plastic surgery, people seek the transformation of the outer self in the shortest possible time. Meanwhile, through psychotropic drugs and teachings that promise shortcuts to happiness and well-being, they seek the transformation of the inner self as well.

22 By assigning the highest priority to speed, the power of now undermines the value of those experiences and activities that require slowness to develop: psychological maturation, the building of meaningful and lasting human relationships, the doing of careful and responsible work, the creation and appreciation of the arts, and the search for answers to life’s greatest problems and mysteries. At the same time, by encouraging the immediate gratification of the senses, the power of now obscures the need to cultivate those skills and virtues—patience, commitment, self-denial, and even self-sacrifice without which no civilization can long endure.

23 Fulfilling the need to feel a certain way, satisfying the desire to look a certain way, the power of now shapes the individual within and without. Like a chameleon, whose colors change to match the background against which it moves, the individual fluidly glides across the landscape of time, continually altered in body and mind by the addictive energy of an artificial present.

The Centrifugal Family

24 The symbolic gravity that once let families keep their feet on the ground has been replaced by a new, whirling momentum that has torn the traditional family asunder, confusing old identities and relationships. As a result, the “centrifugal family” has become one of the most salient features of today’s society.

25 The force of social acceleration has in fact modified the very definition of love. Influenced by high-speed technology and a culture of quick turnaround time and instant results, people expect life to express-deliver the love they need, and they grow restive when it does not. We come to expect the imperfect human beings in our lives to operate as efficiently as our computers and we quickly lose patience with those we might otherwise love if they do not respond as swiftly, or obey as readily, as the machines we know.

26 As a consequence, marriage—a pursuit implying a commitment that reaches across time—is fast becoming an anachronism. The fact that our material culture is imparts the expectation of impermanence to our human relationships as well. Traditional marriage thus becomes vulnerable to erosion precisely because it stands as an affirmation of constancy in an increasingly inconstant world.

27 Social acceleration is also responsible for a deterioration in the meaning of parenthood and childhood. In a fast-moving, sensually oriented society like ours, the virtues of sacrifice and long-term commitment—so essential to effective parenthood—become rare. At the same time, acceleration corrupts the very meaning of childhood. Children born in a microwave culture absorb its tempo internally and “mature” too fast, precociously experimenting with behaviors ranging from spending money to having sex, while lacking the judgment that only gradual maturation can provide.

28 At the other end of the biological spectrum, the elderly suffer the effects of rapid and turbulent change. In a society governed by the pull of the present, the old are looked upon as increasingly irrelevant—even by themselves—as they continue to lose touch with the quickly shifting topography of the land they once knew. Their most socially acceptable option is to look and act young and not dwell on the past. As a result, the family and society itself come to lose one of their most precious possessions: a sense of connectedness with the past that could, like a gyroscope, stabilize them in turbulent times.

29 It is no accident that the life of the family is endangered today. Long-term commitment, so necessary for family survival, is an alien concept to our society. The idea of continuity is also alien. Continuity emphasizes the meaningful connection of parts, female and male, young and old, into a living whole bonded by common purpose, a whole in which energy (for the family, the energy of love) is given and shared. The increased incidence of family breakdown today contributes to an atmosphere of impermanence that affects every human relationship in society. Family fragmentation has become the rule rather than the exception.

30 One thing is certain: Never before in history has a civilization been so deprived of the cohesiveness of family that is necessary as a defense against the centrifugal force of change.

Hyperculture

31 In a fluid social environment, the acceleration of one activity tends to induce acceleration in other activities. Thus speed begets more speed. While electronic connectivity gives contemporary culture its cohesion, it also sustains its acceleration. The end product is a “hyperculture,” a culture whose most distinguishing trait is a pathological, self-justifying speed inimical to humane values. In such a culture, so-called deviant behavior, including violent and criminal acts, is not an anomaly but is in fact consistent with society’s highest goal: Get as much as you can as fast as you can.

32 Democracy is peculiarly susceptible to a hyperculture’s power. While all forms of government change to some degree, democracy is especially vulnerable because it is designed to respond to the potentially unstable moods and variable sentiments of a large populace. The only stabilizing influences on a democracy are its traditions. A speed-driven hyperculture, however, is anti-traditional. Focused almost exclusively on the present and thereby deprived of long-term historical memory, citizens in a hurried society tend to lack the knowledge and perspective they need to make wise political decisions. The nature of the power of now thus poses a profound challenge to the longevity of our republic.

Three Ways to Resist the POWER OF NOW

33 The power of now demands that we surrender the continuity and stability of the past and the future. To resist these dangers, we must;

Restrain our technology.

34 We can define the kind of life we want—personally and communally—and then select the technologies that truly serve those ends. We must also have the courage to reject technologies that take more than they give. We can:

● Call a regular time-out each day—like a basketball coach who interrupts the fast-moving game—to reflect on whether we are achieving important goals.

● Take a weekly sabbatical: he biblical concept of the Sabbath is a good model for human beings who need to step out of the stream of work to rest and re-new perspective.

● Put time and energy into fulfilling our spiritual aspirations, rather than judging our lives by the objective.

Regain our history.

35 We must aggressively take steps to ensure the preservation of the past and the dissemination of its wisdom and beauty. We can:

● Keep family experiences and memories alive by sharing them with loved ones, especially the young.

● Join together in celebrating ethnic traditions and religious rituals.

● Promote the kind of “back to basics” education that includes a solid foundation in history and literature.

● Support efforts to preserve historic buildings and sites.

Regain our senses.

36 We must look beyond the artificiality and impermanence we have created to capture a sense of what is natural, enduring, and true. To do so is not to renounce the moment, but to rediscover its potential. We must come to see that “slow” is so necessarily bad, nor is “fast” necessarily good. We can:

● Take walks and see the things we miss when we drive.

● Get away from the lights of the city at times and ponder the stars in the night sky.

● Watch the changing of the seasons.

● Unplug the television.

By restraining our technology, retaining our history, and regaining our senses, we can reclaim our lives.

Notes

1. Stephen Bertman Stephen Bertman is an educational consultant, speaker, and professor of classical and modern languages, literatures, and civilizations at Canada’s University of Windsor. He is the author of several books, including Doorways Through Time: The Romance of Archaeology and Cultural Amnesia.

2. future shock Future Shock is a controversial book written by the sociologist and futurologist Alvin Toffler in 1970. Future shock is also a term for certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies, introduced by Toffler in his book of the same name. The concept of future shock was rediscovered in the early 21st century as “The Singularity.” Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change will leave them disconnected, suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation”—future shocked.

3. Sabbath In both Judaism and Christanity, the Sabath (Hebrew “Sabbat”) is a religious day of rest that occurs on the seventh day of the week, Saturday. The Hebrew word means “the [day] of rest.” The institution of the Sabbath was in respect for the day during which God rested after having completed the Creation in six days (Genesis 2:2-3).

Answer the following questions.

1. In what sense does the author compare the stress the modern people suffer in their lives to the design of air cra