2023年12月六级第2套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

Psychologists have long been in disagreement as to whether competition is a learned or a genetic component of human behavior. Whatever it is, you cannot but recognize the effect competition is exerting in academics and many other areas of contemporary life.

心理学家长期以来对于竞争是人类行为中习得的还是遗传的组成部分存在分歧。无论它是哪种，你不得不承认竞争在学术和当代生活许多其他领域所产生的影响。

Psychologically speaking, competition has been seen as an inevitable consequence of human drives. According to Sigmund Freud, humans are born screaming for attention and full of organic drives for fulfillment in various areas. Initially, we compete for the attention of our parents. Thereafter, we are at the mercy of a battle between our base impulses for self-fulfillment and social and cultural norms which prohibit pure indulgence.

从心理学角度来看，竞争被视为人类驱动力的不可避免的结果。根据西格蒙德·弗洛伊德的观点，人类出生时就渴望关注，并充满了在各个领域实现满足的有机驱动力。最初，我们竞争父母的关注。此后，我们受制于我们自我实现的原始冲动与禁止纯粹放纵的社会和文化规范之间的斗争。

Current work in anthropology (人类学) has suggested, however, that this view of the role of competition in human behavior may be incorrect. Thomas Hobbes, one of the great philosophers of the seventeenth century, is perhaps best remembered for his characterization of the "natural world," that is, the world before the imposition of the will of humanity, as being "nasty, brutish, and short." This image of the pre-rational world is still widely held, reinforced by Charles Darwin's highly influential work, The Origin of Species, which established the doctrine of natural selection. This doctrine, which takes for granted that those species best able to adapt to and master the natural environment in which they live will survive, has suggested that the struggle for survival is an inherent human trait which determines a person's success. Darwin's theory has even been summarized as "survival of the fittest"—a phrase Darwin himself never used—further highlighting competition's role in success. As it has often been pointed out, however, there is nothing in the concept of natural selection that suggests that competition is the most successful strategy for "survival of the fittest." Darwin asserted in The Origin of Species that the struggles he was describing should be viewed as metaphors and could easily include dependence and cooperation.

然而，当前人类学的工作表明，这种关于竞争在人类行为中作用的观点可能是不正确的。托马斯·霍布斯，十七世纪伟大的哲学家之一，或许最令人铭记的是他对“自然世界”——即人类意志强加之前的世界——的描述，称其为“肮脏、野蛮和短暂的”。这种前理性世界的形象仍然被广泛接受，并因查尔斯·达尔文极具影响力的作品《物种起源》而得到强化，该作品确立了自然选择学说。这一学说理所当然地认为，那些最能适应和掌握其生存环境的物种将生存下来，它表明生存斗争是决定一个人成功的内在人类特征。达尔文的理论甚至被总结为“适者生存”——达尔文本人从未使用过这一短语——进一步强调了竞争在成功中的作用。然而，正如经常指出的那样，自然选择的概念中没有任何东西表明竞争是“适者生存”的最成功策略。达尔文在《物种起源》中声称，他所描述的斗争应被视为隐喻，并且很容易包括依赖和合作。

Many studies have been conducted to test the importance placed on competition as opposed to other values, such as cooperation—by various cultures, and generally conclude that Americans uniquely praise competition as natural, inevitable, and desirable. In 1937, the world-renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead published Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples, based on her studies of several societies that did not prize competition, and, in fact, seemed at times to place a negative value on it. One such society was the Zuni Indians of Arizona, and they, Mead found, valued cooperation far more than competition. After studying dozens of such cultures, Mead's final conclusion was that competitiveness is a culturally created aspect of human behavior, and that its prevalence in a particular society is relative to how that society values it.

许多研究已经进行，以测试各种文化对竞争而非其他价值观（如合作）的重视程度，这些研究普遍得出结论，美国人独特地赞扬竞争是自然的、不可避免的和理想的。1937年，世界著名人类学家玛格丽特·米德发表了《原始民族之间的合作与竞争》，基于她对几个不珍视竞争、实际上有时甚至赋予其负面价值的社会的研究。其中一个社会是亚利桑那州的祖尼印第安人，米德发现，他们重视合作远胜于竞争。在研究了数十种这样的文化后，米德的最终结论是，竞争是人类行为中文化创造的方面，它在特定社会中的流行程度与该社会对其重视程度有关。