[by:英语听力网|http://yingyu.chazidian.com||查字典英语网] [00:00.00]喜欢chazidian.com，就把chazidian.com复制到QQ个人资料中！Lesson 45 Of men and galaxies [00:06.30]First listen and then answer the following question. [00:11.05]What is the most influential factor in any human society? [00:16.98]In man's early days,competition with other creatures must have been critical. [00:24.56]But this phase of our development is now finished. [00:29.52]Indeed, [00:32.16]we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. [00:39.11]I am sure that,without modern weapons, [00:43.86]I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, [00:50.70]and in this I do not think that I stand alone. [00:55.98]The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. [01:01.44]But even the mosquito [01:04.68]has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays [01:11.16]Competition between ourselves,person against person, [01:16.62]community against community,still persists,however; [01:22.36]and it is as fierce as it ever was. [01:26.83]But the competition of man against man is not the simple process [01:32.68]envisioned in biology. [01:36.16]It is not a simple competition for a [01:40.83] fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, [01:46.40]because the environment that determines ourevolution [01:51.05]is no longer essentially physical. [01:55.49]Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. [02:01.23]Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, [02:07.79]both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, [02:13.85]and probably with rather similar natural resources. [02:19.13]Yet their present development is wholly different, [02:23.88]not so much because of different people even, [02:28.14]but because of the different thoughts that exist in the minds of their inhabitants. [02:34.59]This is the point I wish to emphasize. [02:39.66]The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds [02:46.61]It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, [02:53.58]the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. [03:01.03]Ideas are dangerous. [03:04.69]The Holy Office knew this full well [03:09.23]when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by [03:14.38]Indeed,the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society [03:21.53]because when you are inside a community, [03:26.18]you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such adegree [03:32.95]that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. [03:38.70]It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. [03:46.56]I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world [03:53.93]that would utterly destroy us. [03:57.58]I would like to give you an example,but fortunately I cannot do so. [04:04.35]Perhaps it will suffice to mention the nuclear bomb. [04:09.78]Imagine the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, [04:16.31]one that still does not possess the bomb,of making it aware of the possibility, [04:23.39]of supplying suffcient details to enable the thing to be constructed [04:30.16]20 or 30 pages of information [04:35.33]handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925, [04:42.59]would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. [04:47.92]It is a strange thought,but I believe a correct one, [04:52.88]that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information [04:58.21]would be capable of turning the present day world upside down, [05:04.14]or even destroying it. [05:07.80]I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, [05:13.97]but of course I cannot do so [05:18.01]because I am a prisoner of the present-day world,just as all of you are. [05:25.28]We cannot think outside the particular patterns [05:30.45]that our brains are conditioned to [05:34.50]or,to be more accurate we can think only a very little way outside [05:41.66]and then only if we are very original. [05:46.62]Lesson 46 Hobbies