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為了瞭解現場有多少人可能認為我的演講具有實用價值,請各位舉手回答我的問題。現場有誰超過65歲,或希望活到65歲以後,或父母、祖父母的壽命超過65歲,請舉手。
(笑聲)好,你們就是可能認為我的演講具實用價值的人。(笑聲)其餘的人或許不認為我的演講和你有切身關係,但我認為你還是會發現這個主題十分吸引人。
我要談的是傳統社會中的老化情形。這個主題只是我新書中的一個章節,將傳統小型部落社會與大型現代社會做比較。其中涵蓋許多主題,例如撫養孩子、老化情形、健康問題、危機處理、解決紛爭、宗教議題及語言多樣性。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
To give me an idea of how many of you here may find what I'm about to tell you of practical value, let me ask you please to raise your hands: Who here is either over 65 years old or hopes to live past age 65 or has parents or grandparents who did live or have lived past 65, raise your hands please. (Laughter)
Okay. You are the people to whom my talk will be of practical value. (Laughter) The rest of you won't find my talk personally relevant, but I think that you will still find the subject fascinating.
I'm going to talk about growing older in traditional societies. This subject constitutes just one chapter of my latest book, which compares traditional, small, tribal societies with our large, modern societies, with respect to many topics such as bringing up children, growing older, health, dealing with danger, settling disputes, religion and speaking more than one language.
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在大部分人類歷史中扮演主要角色的部落社會,比近期的大型現代社會更加多元化。所有大型社會都有政府組織,其中大部份民眾彼此毫不熟悉。大型社會彼此相似,但不同於部落社會。部落社會由數千種關於如何經營人類社會之自然試驗打造而成,我們或許能從這些試驗中學到一些東西。我們不該將部落社會視為原始、落後的社會,但也不該將其美化成快樂、安詳的社會。我們所知的某些部落習俗或許令人心生恐懼,但某些部落習俗或許令人欽羨不已,懷疑我們本身是否能適應那些習俗。
美國大多數老年人在生命最後階段並未和子女同住,也不曾與大部分早年老友保持聯繫,他們通常住在養老院中。然而在傳統社會中,老年人往往與子女、親戚及終身好友共同生活。相較於現代社會,在眾多傳統社會中,對待老年人的方式存在極大差異,從「極差」到「極佳」都有。
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Those tribal societies, which constituted all human societies for most of human history, are far more diverse than are our modern, recent, big societies. All big societies that have governments, and where most people are strangers to each other, are inevitably similar to each other and different from tribal societies. Tribes constitute thousands of natural experiments in how to run a human society. They constitute experiments from which we ourselves may be able to learn. Tribal societies shouldn't be scorned as primitive and miserable, but also they shouldn't be romanticized as happy and peaceful. When we learn of tribal practices, some of them will horrify us, but there are other tribal practices which, when we hear about them, we may admire and envy and wonder whether we could adopt those practices ourselves.
Most old people in the U.S. end up living separately from their children and from most of their friends of their earlier years, and often they live in separate retirements homes for the elderly, whereas in traditional societies, older people instead live out their lives among their children, their other relatives, and their lifelong friends. Nevertheless, the treatment of the elderly varies enormously among traditional societies, from much worse to much better than in our modern societies.
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最糟的情況是,許多傳統社會棄養老年人,以四種越來越直接的手段:對老年人漠不關心、不餵他們吃飯或不幫他們清洗,直到他們死去。或在群體遷徙過程中拋棄他們,或勸老年人自行結束生命,或殺害老年人。部落社會裡的孩子真的會棄養或殺害雙親嗎?這主要發生於兩種情況下。其一是,在經常需要遷徙的游牧、狩獵採集社會中,事實上沒有餘力顧及行動不便的老年人,當身強體健的年輕人必須帶上孩子及所有財產時。另一種情況是,生活在不毛之地或經常變動的環境下,例如北極或沙漠地帶,存在週期性食物短缺現象,有時根本無法獲得足以養活每一個人的糧食,可獲得的糧食都必須留給健康的成年人和孩童食用。對我們美國人來說這簡直駭人聽聞:考慮棄養或殺害自己生病的妻子、丈夫或年邁的父母。但傳統社會能採取何種不同的做法?他們面臨沒有選擇的殘酷情況。老年人也曾經必須這麼對待他們的父母,老年人知道現在自己將面臨的遭遇。
對待老年人的另一種極端方式,「極佳」的情況是新幾內亞農業社會的做法。過去50年我一直在當地進行實地調查,並研究世上其他固有的傳統社會。在那些社會中,老年人得到妥善照顧;他們衣食無缺,他們仍有生存價值。他們仍住在原有的房子中,或住在孩子、親戚及終身好友附近。
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At the worst extreme, many traditional societies get rid of their elderly in one of four increasingly direct ways: by neglecting their elderly and not feeding or cleaning them until they die, or by abandoning them when the group moves, or by encouraging older people to commit suicide, or by killing older people. In which tribal societies do children abandon or kill their parents? It happens mainly under two conditions. One is in nomadic, hunter-gather societies that often shift camp and that are physically incapable of transporting old people who can't walk when the able-bodied younger people already have to carry their young children and all their physical possessions. The other condition is in societies living in marginal or fluctuating environments, such as the Arctic or deserts, where there are periodic food shortages, and occasionally there just isn't enough food to keep everyone alive. Whatever food is available has to be reserved for able-bodied adults and for children. To us Americans, it sounds horrible to think of abandoning or killing your own sick wife or husband or elderly mother or father, but what could those traditional societies do differently? They face a cruel situation of no choice. Their old people had to do it to their own parents, and the old people know what now is going to happen to them.
At the opposite extreme in treatment of the elderly, the happy extreme, are the New Guinea farming societies where I've been doing my fieldwork for the past 50 years, and most other sedentary traditional societies around the world. In those societies, older people are cared for. They are fed. They remain valuable. And they continue to live in the same hut or else in a nearby hut near their children, relatives and lifelong friends.
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社會中存在各種對待老年人的方式,主要有兩項原因,其中差異主要取決於老年人的利用價值及社會價值觀。
首先,以利用價值來說,老年人持續提供有用的貢獻。傳統社會中,老年人的作用之一就是:他們通常對食物的生產仍有一定影響力。另一個老年人的傳統作用在於照料孫輩,使他們長大成人的兒女,即他們孫子女的父母無後顧之憂,以便進行狩獵或為孩子採集食物。老年人還有另一項傳統價值,即製造工具、武器、籃子、鍋具、紡織品等,事實上他們通常是最擅長此道的人。老年人通常扮演傳統社會的領導者,也是對政治、醫學、宗教、歌謠、舞蹈最瞭解的人。
最後,傳統社會的老年人具有十分重要的意義,生活於現代文明社會的我們絕對想像不到。我們的資訊來源是書籍和網際網路,相較之下,在沒有文字的傳統社會裡,老年人就是一座資訊寶庫。他們的知識拼湊出整個社會對生死觀念的差異,在罕見事件導致危機的時期,只有存活至今的老年人有此經歷,這些就是老年人在傳統社會中展現其作用的方式。他們的作用及貢獻改變了社會對待老年人的方式。
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There are two main sets of reasons for this variation among societies in their treatment of old people. The variation depends especially on the usefulness of old people and on the society's values.
First, as regards usefulness, older people continue to perform useful services. One use of older people in traditional societies is that they often are still effective at producing food. Another traditional usefulness of older people is that they are capable of babysitting their grandchildren, thereby freeing up their own adult children, the parents of those grandchildren, to go hunting and gathering food for the grandchildren. Still another traditional value of older people is in making tools, weapons, baskets, pots and textiles. In fact, they're usually the people who are best at it. Older people usually are the leaders of traditional societies, and the people most knowledgeable about politics, medicine, religion, songs and dances.
Finally, older people in traditional societies have a huge significance that would never occur to us in our modern, literate societies, where our sources of information are books and the Internet. In contrast, in traditional societies without writing, older people are the repositories of information. It's their knowledge that spells the difference between survival and death for their whole society in a time of crisis caused by rare events for which only the oldest people alive have had experience. Those, then, are the ways in which older people are useful in traditional societies. Their usefulness varies and contributes to variation in the society's treatment of the elderly.
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另一項造成對待老年人方式有所差異的原因是社會的文化價值。例如在東亞文化中,特別強調對老年人的尊敬,這與儒家思想中的孝道有關,意味著服從、尊敬、扶持長輩。這種強調尊重長輩的文化價值,與美國老年人的不受重視形成對比。美國老年人在求職方面居於劣勢,醫院對他們也十分不友善。我們的醫院有一項明確的政策,叫做「根據年齡分配醫療資源」。這種不友善的說法意味著,如果醫療資源有限,例如如果只有一顆捐贈的心臟能進行移植,或如果一位外科醫生在有限時間內只能為一定數量的病人動手術,美國醫院有一項明確的政策:給予年輕病患優先權,而非年長病患。因為他們認為年輕病患對社會來說比較有價值,因為他們往後的人生較為漫長,儘管年輕病患擁有的寶貴人生經驗不及老年人。美國老年人不受重視的原因有幾項,其中之一是對工作高度重視的「新教倫理觀」,因此無法工作的老年人得不到尊敬。另一個原因是美國人強調自力更生、自食其力的美德,因此我們直覺地藐視無法自力更生、自食其力的老年人。第三個原因是美國人崇拜青春能量,甚至表現在廣告當中。可口可樂和啤酒廣告總是呈現笑容燦爛的年輕人,即使不論老少都會購買及飲用可口可樂和啤酒。試想你曾在哪支可樂或啤酒廣告中見過笑容燦爛的85歲老人?從來不曾。唯一出現白髮老人的美國廣告只有安養院和退休金規畫廣告。
好,是什麼改變了現今老年人的狀態,相較於他們在傳統社會中的狀態?少部份變得較佳,大部份則每況愈下。往好的方向發展的大幅改變,包括現今我們享有較長的壽命、年老時較佳的健康情況以及較佳的娛樂休閒選擇。另一項好的改變是,現在我們擁有專門的養老設施和照料老年人的計劃。不好的改變始於殘酷的現實。目前老年人口遠勝於青年人口,相較於以往任何時期。這意味著老年人對年輕人來說是更沉重的負擔,也意味著每位老年人的個人價值逐漸減少。老年狀態另一項不好的大改變是,隨著年齡增長逐漸斷開社會聯繫。因為年長者,他們的子女和朋友一生中往往歷經多次遷徙、散居各地。美國人平均五年搬一次家,因此老年人最後往往居住在與孩子及年輕時的朋友相隔甚遠之處。另一項關於老年人狀態的不好改變是正式從職場退休,伴隨失去同事情誼和工作方面的自我抱負。也許最糟的改變是,事實上現代老年人比傳統社會的老年人更缺乏利用價值,知識的普及意味著他們不再像知識寶庫般有用。當我們需要某些資訊時,我們會查閱書籍或上Google查詢,而不是請教老年人。傳統社會中,科技進步的緩慢腳步,意味著年幼時所學的知識到老依然適用。但現今科技迅速發展的腳步,意味著我們年幼時所學的知識,六十年後已不再適用。此外,老年人對生存於現代社會所需的科技無法運用自如。例如我十五歲時,大家都認為我的乘法很強,因為我背了乘法表,而且我知道如何使用對數,我可以熟練地操作計算尺。但現今這些技能已毫無作用,因為任何一個白痴都能藉由攜帶型計算機,正確而迅速地算出八位數相乘的答案。相反地,現年七十五歲的我,甚至連日常生活所需的技能都無法運用自如。我家於1948年買的第一台電視只有三個按鈕,我很快就操作自如:一個開/關鈕、一個音量控制鈕、一個頻道選擇鈕。如今,不過是使用家中的電視觀看節目,我就得操作擁有41個按鍵的電視遙控器,令我備感挫折。我得打電話給25歲的兒子,請他們替我詳細解說,當我試著搞定那41個討厭的按鍵時。
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The other set of reasons for variation in the treatment of the elderly is the society's cultural values. For example, there's particular emphasis on respect for the elderly in East Asia, associated with Confucius' doctrine of filial piety, which means obedience, respect and support for elderly parents. Cultural values that emphasize respect for older people contrast with the low status of the elderly in the U.S. Older Americans are at a big disadvantage in job applications. They're at a big disadvantage in hospitals. Our hospitals have an explicit policy called age-based allocation of healthcare resources. That sinister expression means that if hospital resources are limited, for example if only one donor heart becomes available for transplant, or if a surgeon has time to operate on only a certain number of patients, American hospitals have an explicit policy of giving preference to younger patients over older patients on the grounds that younger patients are considered more valuable to society because they have more years of life ahead of them, even though the younger patients have fewer years of valuable life experience behind them. There are several reasons for this low status of the elderly in the U.S. One is our Protestant work ethic which places high value on work, so older people who are no longer working aren't respected. Another reason is our American emphasis on the virtues of self-reliance and independence, so we instinctively look down on older people who are no longer self-reliant and independent. Still a third reason is our American cult of youth, which shows up even in our advertisements. Ads for Coca-Cola and beer always depict smiling young people, even though old as well as young people buy and drink Coca-Cola and beer. Just think, what's the last time you saw a Coke or beer ad depicting smiling people 85 years old? Never. Instead, the only American ads featuring white-haired old people are ads for retirement homes and pension planning.
Well, what has changed in the status of the elderly today compared to their status in traditional societies? There have been a few changes for the better and more changes for the worse. Big changes for the better include the fact that today we enjoy much longer lives, much better health in our old age, and much better recreational opportunities. Another change for the better is that we now have specialized retirement facilities and programs to take care of old people. Changes for the worse begin with the cruel reality that we now have more old people and fewer young people than at any time in the past. That means that all those old people are more of a burden on the few young people, and that each old person has less individual value. Another big change for the worse in the status of the elderly is the breaking of social ties with age, because older people, their children, and their friends, all move and scatter independently of each other many times during their lives. We Americans move on the average every five years. Hence our older people are likely to end up living distant from their children and the friends of their youth. Yet another change for the worse in the status of the elderly is formal retirement from the workforce, carrying with it a loss of work friendships and a loss of the self-esteem associated with work. Perhaps the biggest change for the worse is that our elderly are objectively less useful than in traditional societies. Widespread literacy means that they are no longer useful as repositories of knowledge. When we want some information, we look it up in a book or we Google it instead of finding some old person to ask. The slow pace of technological change in traditional societies means that what someone learns there as a child is still useful when that person is old, but the rapid pace of technological change today means that what we learn as children is no longer useful 60 years later. And conversely, we older people are not fluent in the technologies essential for surviving in modern society. For example, as a 15-year-old, I was considered outstandingly good at multiplying numbers because I had memorized the multiplication tables and I know how to use logarithms and I'm quick at manipulating a slide rule. Today, though, those skills are utterly useless because any idiot can now multiply eight-digit numbers accurately and instantly with a pocket calculator. Conversely, I at age 75 am incompetent at skills essential for everyday life. My family's first TV set in 1948 had only three knobs that I quickly mastered: an on-off switch, a volume knob, and a channel selector knob. Today, just to watch a program on the TV set in my own house, I have to operate a 41-button TV remote that utterly defeats me. I have to telephone my 25-year-old sons and ask them to talk me through it while I try to push those wretched 41 buttons.
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我們該如何改善美國老年人的生活、善用他們的價值?這是個大問題。在剩下的四分鐘演講中,我會提出幾項建議。老年人的價值之一是,他們能逐漸展現身為祖父母的價值,藉由為孫輩提供優質的照料,如果他們願意這麼做。隨著越來越多年輕女性進入職場,越來越少年輕家長能在家中全天候照料孩子。相較於常見的替代方案,例如花錢請保母或將孩子送到托兒所,祖父母能提供優質、積極、熟練的照料方式。他們已從養育自己孩子的過程中獲得經驗,他們通常深愛自己的孫子女,渴望陪伴在他們身旁。不像其他照料者,祖父母不會因為找到另一份更高薪的看護工作而辭職。矛盾的是,老年人的第二項價值與他們失去的價值有關,這是世界情勢變化及科技日新月異的結果。同時,現今老年人的價值與日俱增,因為他們擁有因社會快速變遷而顯得罕見的特殊生活體驗,但這些情況可能再次發生。例如目前只有70歲以上的美國人記得大蕭條時期的生活體驗、世界大戰時的生活體驗及痛苦經歷,無論投下原子彈的後果是否比不曾投下原子彈更恐怖。現今大多數選民和政治人物都不曾擁有上述個人體驗,但數百萬美國老年人擁有這些體驗。不幸的是,這所有的糟糕情況都可能捲土重來。即使不會再次發生,我們也必須藉由老年人過去的經驗預作準備。老年人擁有那樣的經驗,年輕人卻沒有。
我將提到的老年人其餘價值包括意識到,雖然許多事老年人已無法辦到,但有些事他們做得比年輕人更好。社會的挑戰在於善加利用老年人擅長的領域。當然,有些能力將隨著年紀而遞減,包括需要體力、耐力、雄心的技能,以及在特定情況下所需的特殊推論能力。例如解開DNA結構,最好留給30歲以下的科學家進行。相反地,某些隨著年紀增長而累積的珍貴特質,包括經驗、對人性的理解、人際關係、幫助他人的能力、不因自我意識而受影響,及跨領域的大範圍思考模式,例如經濟學和比較歷史,最好留給60歲以上的學者研究。因此老年人比年輕人更擅長監督、管理、建議、謀略、教導、整合及制定長期計畫。我見識過這種老年人的價值,在許多60、70、80、90多歲的朋友身上。他們仍活躍於各個領域,擔任投資經理人、農夫、律師和醫生。簡言之,許多傳統社會有效運用老年人的能力,給予老年人更令人滿意的生活,勝於現今大型社會的情況。
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What can we do to improve the lives of the elderly in the U.S., and to make better use of their value? That's a huge problem. In my remaining four minutes today, I can offer just a few suggestions. One value of older people is that they are increasingly useful as grandparents for offering high-quality childcare to their grandchildren, if they choose to do it, as more young women enter the workforce and as fewer young parents of either gender stay home as full-time caretakers of their children. Compared to the usual alternatives of paid babysitters and day care centers, grandparents offer superior, motivated, experienced child care. They've already gained experience from raising their own children. They usually love their grandchildren, and are eager to spend time with them. Unlike other caregivers, grandparents don't quit their job because they found another job with higher pay looking after another baby. A second value of older people is paradoxically related to their loss of value as a result of changing world conditions and technology. At the same time, older people have gained in value today precisely because of their unique experience of living conditions that have now become rare because of rapid change, but that could come back. For example, only Americans now in their 70s or older today can remember the experience of living through a great depression, the experience of living through a world war, and agonizing whether or not dropping atomic bombs would be more horrible than the likely consequences of not dropping atomic bombs. Most of our current voters and politicians have no personal experience of any of those things, but millions of older Americans do. Unfortunately, all of those terrible situations could come back. Even if they don't come back, we have to be able to plan for them on the basis of the experience of what they were like. Older people have that experience. Younger people don't.
The remaining value of older people that I'll mention involves recognizing that while there are many things that older people can no longer do, there are other things that they can do better than younger people. A challenge for society is to make use of those things that older people are better at doing. Some abilities, of course, decrease with age. Those include abilities at tasks requiring physical strength and stamina, ambition, and the power of novel reasoning in a circumscribed situation, such as figuring out the structure of DNA, best left to scientists under the age of 30. Conversely, valuable attributes that increase with age include experience, understanding of people and human relationships, ability to help other people without your own ego getting in the way, and interdisciplinary thinking about large databases, such as economics and comparative history, best left to scholars over the age of 60. Hence older people are much better than younger people at supervising, administering, advising, strategizing, teaching, synthesizing, and devising long-term plans. I've seen this value of older people with so many of my friends in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, who are still active as investment managers, farmers, lawyers and doctors. In short, many traditional societies make better use of their elderly and give their elderly more satisfying lives than we do in modern, big societies.
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矛盾的是,目前老年人口勝於以往任何時期,健康品質及醫療照護亦優於以往;以某些方面來說,老年人的處境卻比以往更糟。大家普遍認為老年生活彷彿現代美國社會的災區,藉由仿效傳統社會的老年生活,我們肯定能做得更好。但適用於傳統社會的老年生活型態也適用於其他各式的傳統社會。當然,我並非鼓吹大家放棄農業和金屬工具,回歸狩獵採集的生活型態。許多方面顯示,我們目前的生活遠比小型傳統社會更加幸福。舉幾個例子說明:相較於生活在傳統社會的人,我們的壽命延長、物質生活更加富裕、較少遭遇暴力事件。但生活在傳統社會的人也有一些令人稱羨的事,也許我們能向他們借鏡。他們的社交生活通常比我們更豐富,儘管物質生活稍顯匱乏。他們的孩子比我們的孩子更有自信、更獨立、更有社交技巧;他們對危險的概念比我們更加實際;他們幾乎不曾因罹患糖尿病、心臟病、中風或其他非傳染性疾病而死亡;這些疾病對我們來說幾乎是主要死因。現代生活型態的特性導致我們較容易罹患這些疾病,但傳統生活型態的特性可保護我們遠離這些疾病。
這只是我們能向傳統社會借鏡的幾個例子。我希望你們發現,瞭解傳統社會十分有趣,如同我從這些社會中獲得的體驗。
謝謝。
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Paradoxically nowadays, when we have more elderly people than ever before, living healthier lives and with better medical care than ever before, old age is in some respects more miserable than ever before. The lives of the elderly are widely recognized as constituting a disaster area of modern American society. We can surely do better by learning from the lives of the elderly in traditional societies. But what's true of the lives of the elderly in traditional societies is true of many other features of traditional societies as well. Of course, I'm not advocating that we all give up agriculture and metal tools and return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. There are many obvious respects in which our lives today are far happier than those in small, traditional societies. To mention just a few examples, our lives are longer, materially much richer, and less plagued by violence than are the lives of people in traditional societies. But there are also things to be admired about people in traditional societies, and perhaps to be learned from them. Their lives are usually socially much richer than our lives, although materially poorer. Their children are more self-confident, more independent, and more socially skilled than are our children. They think more realistically about dangers than we do. They almost never die of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and the other noncommunicable diseases that will be the causes of death of almost all of us in this room today. Features of the modern lifestyle predispose us to those diseases, and features of the traditional lifestyle protect us against them.
Those are just some examples of what we can learn from traditional societies. I hope that you will find it as fascinating to read about traditional societies as I found it to live in those societies.
Thank you.