Name: 【TED】韋德-戴維斯：世界最邊緣的文化。 (【TED】Wade Davis: Cultures at the far edge of the world)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:59:55.000Z
Duration: 22 min 47 s

You know, one of the intense pleasures of travel

and one of the delights of ethnographic research

那些沒有忘記傳統的族群的生活

或是嘗著苦葉的味道 你都能感受到他們的歷史

Just to know that Jaguar shamans still journey beyond the Milky Way,

聽著黑豹巫師(Jaguar shamans)依然在銀河外旅行的故事

or the myths of the Inuit elders still resonate with meaning,

紐特(Inuit)老人的神話仍然引起後人的共鳴

the Buddhists still pursue the breath of the Dharma,

is to really remember the central revelation of anthropology,

這讓我們想起人類學的核心揭示

and that is the idea that the world in which we live

the consequence of one particular set of adaptive choices

它是一連串適應性的選擇的結果

that our lineage made, albeit successfully, many generations ago.

許多世代前 人類祖先成功地做了選擇

And of course, we all share the same adaptive imperatives.

當然 我們都遵守著相同的適應性規則

We're all born. We all bring our children into the world.

我們都生於母腹 也這樣生兒育女

We have to deal with the inexorable separation of death,

so it shouldn't surprise us that we all sing, we all dance,

But what's interesting is the unique cadence of the song,

但有趣的是 每種文化的歌曲韻律

the rhythm of the dance in every culture.

和舞蹈節奏都有獨一無二的特色

And whether it is the Penan in the forests of Borneo,

無論是生活在婆羅(Borneo)叢林的伯南(Penan)人

or the warriors in the Kaisut desert of Northern Kenya,

抑或是北肯亞(Kenya)凱蘇特(Kaisut)沙漠的武士

the Curandero in the mountains of the Andes,

安迪斯(Andes)山區的巫醫(Curandero)

or a caravanserai in the middle of the Sahara --

this is incidentally the fellow that I traveled into the desert with

我碰巧與一位犛牛牧養人結伴進沙漠

or indeed a yak herder in the slopes of Qomolangma,

Everest, the goddess mother of the world.

All of these peoples teach us that there are other ways of being,

這些族群展示了不同的生存方式和

other ways of orienting yourself in the Earth.

And this is an idea, if you think about it,

Now, together the myriad cultures of the world

make up a web of spiritual life and cultural life

猶如一張由精神生活和文化生活交織而成的網

and is as important to the well-being of the planet

as indeed is the biological web of life that you know as a biosphere.

And you might think of this cultural web of life

as being the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths,

ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being

by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.

The ethnosphere is humanity's great legacy.

and all that we can be as an astonishingly inquisitive species.

也是我們人類天性格物致知的證明

And just as the biosphere has been severely eroded,

如同生物圈受到嚴重的侵蝕一樣

種族文化圈也面臨著同樣的厄運

-- and, if anything, at a far greater rate.

No biologists, for example, would dare suggest

that 50 percent of all species or more have been or are

on the brink of extinction because it simply is not true,

或者頻臨絕種 這本來就不是真的

and yet that -- the most apocalyptic scenario

scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic scenario

還遠優於我們對 文化多樣性 的

And the great indicator of that, of course, is language loss.

而其中最明顯的 就是語言的失傳

there were 6,000 languages spoken on the planet.

Now, a language is not just a body of vocabulary

A language is a flash of the human spirit.

It's a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture

Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind,

每種語言都是一座古老的思想森林

a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.

也是一種意識和生命可能性的生態系

And of those 6,000 languages, as we sit here today in Monterey,

6000 種語言 這和今天的觀眾一樣多

fully half are no longer being whispered into the ears of children.

其中一半已經不再向孩子們傳授

They're no longer being taught to babies,

which means, effectively, unless something changes,

What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence,

to be the last of your people to speak your language,

或者 你成了最後一個會說這語言的人

to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the ancestors

or anticipate the promise of the children?

And yet, that dreadful fate is indeed the plight of somebody

somewhere on Earth roughly every two weeks,

and carries with him into the grave the last syllables

And I know there's some of you who say, "Well, wouldn't it be better,

if we all just spoke one language?" And I say, "Great,

那不是更好嗎？」 我會說「好,

let's make that language Yoruba. Let's make it Cantonese.

就讓約魯巴語(Yoruba) 或者是粵語(Cantonese)

或者是科基語(Kogi) 成為那唯一的語言。」

And you'll suddenly discover what it would be like

And so, what I'd like to do with you today

is sort of take you on a journey through the ethnosphere,

就是帶你們去看看這個種族文化圈

to try to begin to give you a sense of what in fact is being lost.

Now, there are many of us who sort of forget

that when I say "different ways of being,"

我在前面說過“不同的生存方式”