现代大学英语精读(第2版)第六册

前言

全书链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/album/49468954

本册是整个系列的最后一册了，完结撒花🎉

Paper Tigers

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/414998175

探讨了 Asian American 的教育经历与社会成就不符的现象。

摘录如下： Let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Damn filial piety. Damn grade grubbing. Damn Ivy League mania.
Damn deference to authority. Damn humility and hard work. Damn harmonious relations. Damn sacrificing for the future.
Damn earnest, striving middle-class servility.

Maybe a traditionally Asian upbringing is the problem. In order to be a leader, you must have followers. Associates are
initially judged on how well they do the work they are assigned. But being a leader requires different skill sets. “The
traits that got you to where you are won't necessarily take you to the next level," says the diversity consultant Jane
Hyun, who wrote a book called Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling.

At Yale, Chua made the connection between her upbringing and her adult dissatisfaction. “My parents didn't sit around
talking about politics and philosophy at the dinner table," she told the students. Even after she had escaped from
corporate law and made it onto a law faculty,“I was kind of lost. I just didn't feel the passion."

Chua's Chinese education had gotten her through an elite schooling, but it left her unprepared for the real world.

注：Chua
也就是《虎妈战歌》的作者：https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%94%A1%E7%BE%8E%E5%84%BF/3424632#7

What Is News

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/414999846

提示我们如何看待新闻，与前面的如何看待历史可谓是姐妹篇。

摘录如下： The news is made rather than gather.

We see what we expect to see. We focus on what we are paid to see. And those who pay us to see usually expect us to
accept their notions.

“What is news?" News,we might say, may be history in its first and best form, or the stuff of literature, or a record of
the condition of a society, or the expression of things, but in its worst form it can also be mainly a “filler,” a
“come-on" to keep the viewer's attention until the commercials come.

All of which leads us to reiterate, first, that there are no simple answers to the question “What is news?"
And, second, that it is not our purpose to tell you what you ought to believe about the question. The purpose of this
chapter is to arouse your interest in thinking about the question. Your answers are to be found by knowing what you feel
is significant and how your sense of the significant conforms with or departs from that of others. Answers are to be
found in your ideas about the purpose of public communication, and in your judgment of the kind of society you live in
and wish to live in. We cannot provide answers to these questions. But you also need to know something about the
problems, limitations, traditions, motivations, and, yes, even the delusions of the television news industry.

At War with the Planet

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415001340

本文为了我们科普了人类社会与自然环境的特征，提供了一个新颖而深刻的视角来看待人与自然的关系，启发我们在采取人与自然和谐相处的措施时，不要走极端。

How to Get the Poor off Our Conscience

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415004615

本文讨论了面对一直存在的贫富差距现象，社会思想、政府措施在历史上经历了怎样的变化。

Housewifely Arts

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415006607

本文主要表达的是对母亲的回忆，其实属于可看可不看类型，之所以还放上来，原因有二：

1. 冷幽默，毕竟有几处地方让我笑了
2. 引以为戒，千万别学女主

The One Against The Many

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415007539

本文主要是讲美国文明的，没有一个地方出现China，但几乎处处都能看到China的影子。绝对不容错过的好文，可以说是反洗脑的基础。

精彩摘录： It is important here to insist on the distinction between ideals and ideology. Ideals refer to the long-run goals
of a nation and the spirit in which these goals are pursued. Ideology is something different, more systematic, more
detailed, more comprehensive, more dogmatic.

An ideology, in other words, is an abstraction from reality. There is nothing wrong with abstractions or models. In
fact, we could not conduct discourse without them. The ideological fallacy is to forget that ideology is an abstraction
from reality and to regard it as reality itself. The besetting sin of the ideologist, in short, is to confuse his own
tidy models with the vast, turbulent, unpredictable, and untidy reality which is the stuff of human experience.

Consider for a moment the ideologist's view of history. The ideologist contends that the mysteries of history can be
understood in terms of a clear-cut, absolute, social creed which explains the past and forecasts the future. Ideology
thus presupposes a closed universe whose history is determined, whose principles are fixed, whose values and objectives
are deducible from a central body of social dogma and often whose central dogma is confided to the custody of an
infallible priesthood.

The American tradition has found this view of human history repugnant and false, against the belief in the
all-encompassing power of a single explanation, against the commitment to the absolutism of ideology, against the notion
that all answers to political and social problems can be found in the back of some sacred book, against the
deterministic interpretation of history.

Ideologists are afraid of the free flow of ideas, even of deviant ideas within their own ideology. They are convinced
they have a monopoly on the Truth. Therefore they always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter
the heretics. Their objective remains that of making the world over in the image of their dogmatic ideology. The goal is
a monolithic world, organized on the principle of infallibility-but the only certainty in an absolute system is the
certainty of absolute abuse.

The goal of free men is quite different. Free men know many truths, but they doubt whether any mortal man knows the
Truth. Their religious and their intellectual heritage join in leading them to suspect fellow men who lay claim to
infallibility. They believe that there is no greater delusion than for man to mistake himself for God. They accept the
limitations of the human intellect and the infirmity of the human spirit.

Notes on the English Character

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415017440

本文对英格兰人的性格特征进行了简单的探讨。

The Death of a Pig

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415019607

本文主人公本计划养一只猪来吃，却养死了。为何把这篇文章收录进来呢，可能是因为里面细节写得好吧，把主人公的病急乱投医的场景写得较为生动。

Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415020743

Princeton学长回校演讲，核心观点是：你以为你的成功全靠实力，然而其中隐含着运气。

The Accidental Universe

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415022329

本文是物理相关的说明文，讲了多重宇宙假设，提出一种观点：我们所在的宇宙是出于偶然。

Rowling's Speech at Harvard

原文链接：https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/415018537

罗琳的英音很好听，而且本次演讲也很幽默，建议边看边听。