新概念英語第四冊(含lrc文本)Lesson 45 Of men and galaxies

[ti:δ?] [by:https://www.lrc.com.cn] [00:05.26]Lesson 45 [00:06.05] Of men and galaxies [00:12.61]What is the most influential factor in any human society? [00:18.33]In man's early days,competition with other creatures must have been critical. [00:24.61]But this phase of our development is now finished. [00:28.35]Indeed, [00:29.29]we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. [00:35.07]I am sure that,without modern weapons, [00:37.76]I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, [00:43.16]and in this I do not think that I stand alone. [00:47.36]The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. [00:51.26]But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays [00:58.23]Competition between ourselves,person against person, [01:01.96]community against community,still persists,however; [01:05.93]and it is as fierce as it ever was. [01:09.36]But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. [01:15.78]It is not a simple competition [01:18.15]for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, [01:22.52]because the environment that determines our evolution [01:25.06]is no longer essentially physical. [01:28.52]Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. [01:32.72]Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, [01:38.04]both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, [01:42.66]and probably with rather similar natural resources. [01:46.77]Yet their present development is wholly different, [01:50.00]not so much because of different people even, [01:52.54]but because of the different thoughts that exist in the minds of their inhabitants. [01:57.85]This is the point I wish to emphasize. [02:01.69]The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds [02:07.88]It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, [02:13.05]the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. [02:19.50]Ideas are dangerous. [02:21.80]The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by [02:28.48]Indeed,the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society [02:33.94]because when you are inside a community, [02:36.81]you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree [02:41.32]that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. [02:46.23]It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. [02:53.17]I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world [02:58.67]that would utterly destroy us. [03:01.02]I would like to give you an example,but fortunately I cannot do so. [03:06.66]Perhaps it will suffice to mention the nuclear bomb. [03:10.64]Imagine the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, [03:15.44]one that still does not possess the bomb,of making it aware of the possibility, [03:20.39]of supplying suffcient details to enable the thing to be constructed [03:26.22]20 or 30 pages of information [03:28.82]handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925, [03:34.31]would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. [03:38.54]It is a strange thought,but I believe a correct one, [03:41.77]that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information [03:45.31]would be capable of turning the presentday world upside down,or even destroying it. [03:51.77]I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, [03:56.45]but of course I cannot do so [03:58.42]because I am a prisoner of the present-day world,just as all of you are. [04:04.38]We cannot think outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to [04:09.83]or,to be more accurate we can think only a very little way outside [04:15.27]and then only if we are very original.

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