Book Review
书评
Hello, Stranger. By Will Buckingham.
《你好陌生人》威尔·白金汉
The Power of Strangers. By Joe Keohane.
《陌生人的力量》乔·基奥恩
Fractured. By Jon Yates.
《断裂》乔恩·耶茨
Attitudes to strangers tend to follow a familiar pattern. Children are taught never to speak to unknown grown-ups, especially those regarded by their parents as untrustworthy. The onset of adolescence and young adulthood brings a bursting desire to interact with all sorts of people, particularly the kind who might not elicit family approval. Whether the resulting encounters are sexual or social, they confer a thrilling frisson of escape.
人们对陌生人的态度往往遵循一种常见的模式。孩子们被教育永远不要和不认识的成年人说话，尤其是那些被父母认为不可信赖的人。随着青春期和成年初期而来的，是一种与各种人交往的强烈愿望，尤其是那些可能得不到家人认可的人。无论最终的邂逅是性的还是社交的，它们都给予人一种逃避的快感。
Social circles generally narrow again as people find life-partners, form households and produce offspring of their own. Time becomes scarce; new friendships are often based on sharing the burden of child care. Some people never recover the youthful zest for unforeseen liaisons. Professional duties swell even as parental ones diminish, and the inclination sags. In old age, even if curiosity and charisma remain undimmed, frailty makes new serendipitous connections harder to establish.
当人们找到生活伴侣、组建家庭、繁衍后代时，社交圈通常会再次缩小。时间变得稀缺；新的友谊通常建立在分担照顾孩子的负担之上。有些人永远无法恢复年轻时对意外邂逅的热情。即使作为父母的职责减少，职业责任也会增加，从而降低社交倾向。到了老年，即使好奇心和魅力丝毫不受影响，脆弱也会使新的邂逅更难建立。
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But that is not the whole story. In mid-life and beyond people can still experience the joy of a random meeting, however short, which somehow touches a nerve. That might involve nothing more than a smile, or a chance remark that hits an emotional spot; or it might be an unexpectedly deep conversation on a plane or train, a surge of mutual understanding that is life-affirming even if the interlocutor is never seen again. This aspect of the promise and peril of strangers has enticed storytellers — from the rapture of “Brief Encounter” and “Before Sunrise” to the ruin of “Strangers on a Train”. The knowledge that the exchange will be a one-off can permit a delicious, uninhibited frankness.
但这并不是故事的全部。人到中年或中年以后，仍能体验到偶遇的快乐，尽管这种快乐很短暂，但不知何故却触动了人们的神经。可能只是一个微笑，或者是一句触及到情感点的偶然评论；也可能是在飞机或火车上的一次意外的深度对话，即使相互再也见不到，这股相互理解的浪潮也会给生活带来积极影响。从《相见恨晚》和《爱在黎明破晓前》的狂喜到《火车怪客》的毁灭，陌生人的承诺和危险吸引了各路故事讲述者。认识到交流是一次性的这个前提，才能体会美好的、无拘无束的坦率。
In the age of covid-19 and Zoom, the chronological pattern has been warped. Instead of their hazy possibilities and risks, strangers have assumed an all-too-literal role as a looming source of infection. During lockdowns they are officially to be avoided. Yet youngsters still long, dangerously, for the ecstasy of communion, not just with edgy individuals but anonymous crowds. People of all ages have come to miss the human stimulation of busy high streets or trains, or the comforting sense of fellowship in a cinema or theatre audience.
在新冠肺炎和视频交流的时代，一直以来的模式被改变了。陌生人不再是他们模糊不清的可能性和风险，而是承担了一个完全字面意义上的潜在传染源的角色。在封锁期间，与陌生人接触是被禁止的。然而，危险的是，年轻人仍然渴望交流的狂喜，不仅想与令人激动的个人交流，也想与无名的人群交流。各个年龄层的人已经开始怀念繁忙的大街小巷和车流带给人的刺激，或者在电影院或剧院观众间的舒适的友谊感。
So this is an apt moment for three books about meeting strangers. Will Buckingham has written a moving memoir of finding solace, after the death of his life-partner, in travelling and talking in lands such as Myanmar that are culturally distant from his native England. Joe Keohane, an American journalist, argues that communicating empathetically with strangers is vital and potentially life-changing. Jon Yates, who runs a youth charity based in London, frets that deep fissures in Western societies are making it impossible for people to reach, even casually, between classes, religions, ethnicities and generations.
所以现在是这三本关于与陌生人相遇的书出现的合适时机。威尔·白金汉写了一本感人的回忆录，讲述了他在终生伴侣去世后，在缅甸等地旅行和交谈中寻求治愈的故事，这些地方在文化上与他的祖国英国有着很大差异。美国记者乔·基奥恩认为，与陌生人进行感情深入的交流至关重要，并且可能会改变生活。乔恩·耶茨在伦敦经营着一家青年慈善机构，他担心西方社会的深刻裂痕将使人们无法接触到不同阶层、宗教、种族和代际的人，即使是偶然的接触。
All three authors make sweeping generalisations about the evolution of human society, from hunter-gatherers to the age of Homer and beyond. But they are more interesting when they reflect, using personal experience or scientific research, on how people live and communicate now. In different ways, they all make two separate but related points. First, interacting meaningfully with a new person can bring huge rewards - but it is a skill that must be cultivated and can easily be lost. Second, the self-segregation of modern Western societies means that, for many people, conversing with some fellow citizens seems pointless, undesirable or outlandish. The second problem exacerbates the first: if you consider others beyond the pale, why make the effort to get to know them?
三位作者都对人类社会的演变进行了全面的概括，从狩猎采集者到荷马时代以及更久远的过去。但当它们用个人经验或科学研究来反思人们现在的生活和交流方式时，就更有趣了。他们都以不同的方式提出了两个独立但相关的观点。首先，与陌生人进行有意义的互动可以带来巨大的回报——但这是一项必须经过培养而且很容易丧失的技能。其次，现代西方社会的自我隔离意味着，对许多人来说，与某些同胞交谈似乎是毫无意义的、不可取的或奇怪的。第二个问题加剧了第一个问题：如果你认为其他人行为出格，怎么还会想要努力去了解他们呢？
As both Mr Keohane and Mr Yates emphasise, in Britain and America political divisions have ossified into tribal ones. Supporters and opponents of Brexit live in discrete clusters; Republicans and Democrats see each other as bad people, not fellow Americans whose opinions happen to differ. These opposing sides have become strangers to one another. Mr Buckingham focuses on the pleasures and pitfalls of encounters in remote places where the stakes are lower because the acquaintanceships are bound to be temporary—in a holiday flat-share in Helsinki or while travelling through the Balkans. But, like the other two, he notes that wariness of unfamiliar people is neither new nor insuperable.
正如基奥恩和耶茨所强调的那样，在英国和美国，政治分歧已经僵化为部落分歧。英国退欧的支持者和反对者生活在不同的圈子中;共和党人和民主党人相互视为坏人，而不是意见相左的美国同胞。这些对立的双方彼此都变得陌生起来。白金汉先生专注于在远方相遇的乐趣和诱惑，那里的风险较低，因为相识注定是短暂的——在赫尔辛基的度假公寓里或在巴尔干半岛旅行时。但是，与其它两位一样，他指出，对陌生人的警惕不是什么新鲜事，也不是不可克服的。
来源：经济学人
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