大学英语综合教程 第四册 Unit4A

[05:03.88]Eighty-one languages,few of them European,are spoken in the elementary school system of the city of Los Angeles.
[05:12.42]This transformation of American culture anticipates the general trend in the composition of mandind.
[05:20.37]Ninety percent of the immigrants to this city are from the Third World.At the beginning of the twenty-first century
[05:29.33]90percent of the world's population will be dark-skinned;
[05:34.42]the white race will be no more than 11percent of all human beings living on our planet.
[05:40.98]Something that can only be seen in America:In the landscaped,
[05:46.46]ultraclean high-technology parks of northern Orange County there is a personal computer company
[05:54.35]that seven years ago did not exist.There were only strawberry fields wheere the plantis.
[06:02.03]Now,there is a $500million company with factories in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well.
[06:09.79]The company was founded by three young immigrants -a Pakistani Muslim and two Chinese from Hong Kong
[06:18.20]They only became citizens in1984.Each individual is now probably worth $30 million
[06:26.30]Walking through this company we see only young,dark faces-Vietnamese,Cambodians,Laotians,Mexicans
[06:36.02]-and the most advanced technology.The culture of the work force
[06:42.21]is a mix of Hispanic-Catholic family values and Asian-Confucian group loyalty.Employment notices are never posted
[06:53.62]hiring is done through the network of families that live in southern California.Not infrequently,
[07:01.41]employees ask to work an extra twenty hours a week to earn enough money
[07:07.28]to help members of their extended family buy their first home.
[07:12.38]In LosAngeles,traditional Third World cultures are, for the first time,fusing with the most modern mentalities and technologies
[07:22.20]Usually,the contact between developed and underdeveloped worlds has the character of exploitation
[07:29.85]-just takingpeople's labor and resources and giving them nothing.And the border between races
[07:38.08]has usually been a border of tension,of crists.Here we see a revolution that is constructive.
[07:46.76]This Pacific Rim civilization being created is a new reolationship between development and underdevelopment
[07:54.96]Here,there is openness.There is hope.And a future.There is a multicultural crowd.
[08:03.03]But it is not fighting.It is cooperating,peacefully competing,building.
[08:10.14]For the first time in four hundred years of relations between the nonwhite Western world
[08:16.69]and white Westernworld,the general character of the relationship is cooperationand construction,notexploitation not destruction
[08:27.17]Unlike any other place on the planet,Los Angeles shows us the potential of development once the Third World mentality
[08:36.49]merges with an open sense of possibility,a culture of organization,a Western conception of time.
[08:45.04]For the destructive,paralyzed world where I have spent most of my life,it is importants,simply,
[08:52.87]that such a possibilty as Los Angeles exists.
[08:57.36]To adjust the concept of time is the most difficult thing.It is a key revolution of development.
[09:05.65]Western culture is a culture of arithmetical time.Time is organized by the clock.In non-Western culture
[09:16.07]time is a measure between events.We arrange a meeting at nine o'clock but the man doesn't show up
[09:23.83]We become anxious,offended.He doesn't unerstand our anxiety because for him,
[09:31.27]the moment he arrives is the measure of time.He is on time when he arrives.
[09:37.91]In 1924,the Mexican philosopher Jose Vasconcelos wrote a book dreaming of the possibility that,
[09:48.02]in the future,all races on the planet would merge into one type of man.
[09:54.52]This type of man is being borne in Los Angeles,in the culturalsense if not the anthropological sense
[10:03.06]A vast mosaic of different races,cutures,religions,and moral habits are working toward one common aim.
[10:11.32]From the perspective of a world submerged in religious,ethnic,and racial conflict,
[10:18.45]this harmonious cooperation is something unbelieveable.It istruly striking.
[10:25.48]What is the common aim tht harmonizes competing cultures in one place?
[10:31.35]It is not only the better living standardWhat attracts immigrants toAmerica is the essential characteristic ofAmerican culture
[10:41.62]the chance to try.There is a combination of two things that are important:culture and space.
[10:50.61]The culture allows you to try to be somebody-to find yourself,your place,yourstatus.
[10:58.36]And there is space not only in a geographical sense,but in the sense of opportunity,of social mobility
[11:06.62]In societies that are in crisis and in societies which are stagnant-or even in those
[11:13.91]which are stable-there is no chance to try.You are defined in advance.Destiny has already sentenced you.
[11:23.34]This is what unites the diverse races and cultures in America.If the immigrant to America at first fails,
[11:31.28]he always thinks, "I will try again."If he had failed in the old society,
[11:38.72]he would be discouraged and pessimistec,accepting the place that was given to him.In America,he's thinking
[11:47.50]I will have another chance,I will try again."That keeps him going.He's full of hope.