Texts for written translation

I. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING: TRUTH AND POLITICS (by Hannen Arendt)

The subject of these reflections is commonplace. No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues. Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician's but also of the statesman's trade. Why is that so?

The story of the conflict between truth and politics is an old and complicated one, and nothing would be gained by simplification or moral denunciation. Throughout history, the truth-seekers and truthtellers have been aware of the risks of their business; as long as they did not interfere with the course of the world, they were covered with ridicule.

Although the politically most relevant truths are factu­al, the conflict between truth and politics was first dis­covered and articulated with respect to rational truth. The opposite of a rationally true statement is either error or ignorance, as in the sciences, or illusion and opinion, as in philosophy.

Truth, though powerless and always defeated in a head-on clash with the powers that be, possesses a strength of its own: whatever those in power may contrive, they are unable to discover or invent a viable substitute for it. Persuasion and violence can destroy truth, but they cannot replace it.

And this applies to rational or religious truth as it applies, more obviously, to factual truth.

To look upon politics from the perspective of truth means to take one's stand outside the political realm. This stand­point is the standpoint of the truthteller if he tries to interfere directly in human affairs and to speak the language of persuasion or of violence. It is to this position and its significance for the political realm that we must now turn our attention.

The standpoint outside the political realm - outside the community to which we belong and the company of our peers - is clearly characterized as one of the various modes of being alone. Outstanding among the existential modes of truthtelling are the solitude of the philosopher, the isola­tion of the scientist and the artist, the impartiality of the historian and the judge, and the independence of the fact-finder, the witness, and the reporter.

These modes of being alone differ in many respects, but they have in common that as long as any one of them lasts, no political commitment, no adherence to a cause, is possible. They are, of course, common to all men; they are modes of human existence as such. Only when one of them is adopted as a way of life it is likely to conflict with the demands of the political.

The political realm recognized that it needed an institu­tion outside the power struggle in addition to the imparti­ality required in the administration of justice; for whether these places of higher learning are in private or in public hands is of no great importance; not only their integrity but their very existence depends upon the good will of the government anyway.

Very unwelcome truths have emerged from the univer­sities, and very unwelcome judgments have been handed down from the bench time and again; and these institu­tions, like other refuges of truth, have remained exposed to all the dangers arising from social and political power.

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Yet the chances for truth to prevail in public are, of course, greatly improved by the mere existence of such places and by the organization of independent, supposedly disin­terested scholars associated with them. And it can hardly be denied that, at least in constitutionally ruled countries, the political realm has recognized, even in the event of conflict, that it has a stake in the existence of men and institutions over which it has no power.

II. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING: THE THEORY OF MASS SOCIETY (by Edward Shils)

The term «mass society» points generally and unsteadi­ly at something genuinely novel in the history of human society. It refers to a new order of society which acquired visibility between the two World Wars, and actually came noisily and ponderously into our presence after the end of the Second. In the United States above all, but also in Great Britain, France, Germany, Northern Italy, the Low and Northern European Countries, Australia, and Japan, this new society has become tangibly established. Less evenly and more partially, some of its features have begun to ap­pear in Eastern and Central Europe and they have here and there begun to show incipient and premonitory signs of existence in Asian and African countries.

The novelty of the «mass society» lies in the relation­ship of the mass of the population to the center of the society. The relationship is a closer integration into the central institutional and value systems of the society.

An aggregate of individual human beings living over a territory constitutes a society by virtue of their integration into a system in which the parts are interdependent. The types of societies with which we are concerned here are those in which the integration occurs, not through kinship, but through the exercise and acceptance of authority in the ma­jor subsystems of the society, in the polity, the economy,

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and the status and cultural orders, i.e., in educational and religious institutions and their associated norms and beliefs.

When we turn our attention to advanced modern socie­ties, the situation is quite otherwise. Government is more continuously and effectively in contact with much of the population through the variety and comprehensiveness of its legislation, through the continuity and intensity of ad­ministration, through nearly universal public education until well into adolescence.

The capital of a country and its major urban centers are no longer centers only to the notabilities of the society, but for the ordinary people as well. The economy of a mass society is much more integrated both horizontally and ver­tically than has ever been the case in past epochs of history and outside the advanced industrial societies. Whether by a nation-wide market economy, dominated by large nation­wide corporations and by central governmental regulation, or by a socialistically planned economy, scarcely any part of the economic order of the society lives in isolation from its rulers or competitors.

The higher level of educational attainment, the higher degree of literacy, and the greater availability of cultural pro­ducts like books, periodicals, television, and wireless programs spread the culture which was once confined to a narrow circle at the center over a far greater radius. These, and the much greater «politicization» of the population, bring about a his­torically unique measure of community of culture.

The intensity of vertical integration differs among societies. Federations are less intensely integrated verti­cally than unitary regimes; regimes with strong local govern­ment are less integrated vertically than regimes like France, where local government is largely in the hands of a central­ly appointed official; regimes which allow private or paro­chial schools are less integrated than those which require that everyone receive his education at a state educational institution. The fundamental distinction among societies

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with a fairly high degree of integration is that between pluralistic and totalitarian regimes. The latter are much more completely integrated vertically.

Their intense vertical integration is reinforced, further­more, by their almost equally intense horizontal integra­tion. Their horizontal integration is expressed in the uni­tary structure of their elites. Their elites are, in their func­tions, differentiated. Only a very small and very simple society could have an elite in which the same persons per­formed practically all elite tasks. Differentiation of roles and specialization to the roles of the persons who fill them are an unavoidable and monumental fact of any advanced civilization, however much overlap there is among roles and however much passage there might be among them.

III. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING AND EN­TITLE IT:

When we say that a new order of mass society is a con­sensual society, this does not mean, however, that it is com­pletely consensual, a fabric of seamless harmony. The com­petition and conflict of corporate bodies resting on diverse class, ethnic, professional, and regional identifications and attachments are vigorous and outspoken in this new order of society. So are the organized antagonisms of individuals and families of these diverse class, ethnic, professional, and re­gional sectors. Inequalities exist in mass society and they call forth at least as much resentment, if not more, as they ever did. Indeed, there is perhaps more awareness of the diversity of situation and the conflict of sectional aspira­tions in this society than in most societies of the past.

What is specific to this modern «mass society», with all its conflicts, is the establishment of consensually legitimate institutions within which much of this conflict takes place and which impose limits on the conflict. Parliaments, the system of representation of interests through pressure groups, systems of negotiation between employers and employees,

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are the novel way of permitting and confining the conflict of interests and ideals characteristic of modern mass societies.

These institutions, the very constitution of the mass society, can exist because a widespread consensus, particu­larly a consensus of the most active members of the society, legitimates them, and, more fundamentally, because a more general and more amorphous consensus of the less active imposes restraint on the more active when they might other­wise infringe on the constitution. This consensus grows in part from an attachment to the center, to the central insti­tutional system and value order of the society. It is also a product of a newly emergent — at least on such a vast scale — feeling of unity with one's fellow men, particularly within the territorial boundaries of the modern societies.

Hence, despite all internal conflicts bridging and con­fining them, there are, within the mass society, more of a sense of attachment to the society as a whole, more sense of affinity with one's fellows, more openness to understand­ing, and more reaching out of understanding among men than in any earlier society of our Western history or in any of the great Oriental societies of the past. The mass society is not the most consensual.

The maintenance of public peace through apathy and coercion in a structure of extremely discontinuous interac­tion is a rather different thing from its maintenance through consensus in a structure of a more continuous interaction between center and periphery and among various peripher­al sectors. The greater activity of the periphery of the society, both in conflict and in consensus - especially in the latter - is what makes this a mass society.

The historical uniqueness of the modern society, notably in its latter-day phases, is the incorporation of the mass into the moral order of its society. The mass of the popula­tion is no longer merely an object which the elite takes into account as a reservoir of military and labor power or as a possible or actual source of public disorder. Nor does it any

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longer consist of a set of relatively discrete local societies occasionally in contact with the center under the impulsion of coercion and interest.

IV. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING:

The mass society is a large-scale society. It involves popu­lations running into the millions and hundreds of millions and it covers large territories. It is therefore inevitably a differentiated society, differentiated in function, outlook, and attachments. The complete homogeneity which the cri­tics of mass society perceive is an impossibility. There is, of course, perhaps a greater homogeneity than in the much less loosely integrated societies of the past — this is given in the fact of the great consensuality, the greater sense of unity, the speaking of a common language. There are, however, real although probably undeterminable limits to the homo­geneity which any large-scale society can sustain. Similar limits are imposed on the consensuality of the society, even if it had not inherited such a variety of cultural traditions of class-orientations and religious beliefs.

The picture which I have given here will immediately strike any moderately informed person as widely at vari­ance with the image of the mass society which has been set going by the creators and the patrons of that term. They have stressed alienation, belieflessness, atomization, amo-rality, conformity, rootless homogeneity, moral emptiness, facelessness, egotism, and the utter evaporation of any kind of loyalty (except occasionally the passionately zealous at­tachment to an ideological movement).

They point to the indiscipline of youth and the neglect of the aged; they allege a frivolous hedonism and a joyless vulgarity. There is a little truth in these assertions but not very much. All of the phenomena referred to do exist in modern mass societies, but a great deal more exists.

Some of the features to which the critics of «mass society» point are closely connected with these others which

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I have emphasized. The alienation so often mentioned is an extreme form of the disenchantment of authority; the un­checked egotism and frivolous hedonism are associated with the growth of individual sensibility; and the indiscipline of youth is a product of the lightening of the force of the primordial and the diminished pressure of hierarchy.

The narrowing of the scope of local autonomy is con­nected with the formation of a more integral society. The apathy, which so many notice, is brought to the forefront of attention as a result of the greatly extended opportunity for judgment and sharing in the exercise of decision which mass society offers. The vulgarity is one of the manifesta­tions of the expansion of sensibility; it is an unrefined and unappealing expression of sensibility which replaces the long prevailing torpor of much of the race.

The consensuality of mass society, the closer approxima­tion of center and periphery, the greater moral equality of the various strata and sectors, the growth of sensibility and individuality are all imperfect. Their imperfection comes from the inherent impossibility for any society to attain perfec­tion in any category. The imperfection of mass society is in part a result of the distribution of moral qualities in human beings. In part they come from the nature of mass society as such and its inheritance from the past of mankind.

V. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING: ELEMENTS OF WORLD SYSTEM

In The Modern World System, Wallerstein elaborated on the view that the modernization of the West was paid for its less fortunate neighbors. That is, the causes of the Industrial revolution are to be found not within individual nations but rather in the relations among nations that unite them into a single social system. He therefore set out to examine in detail the world system existing in the sixteenth century, during which Europe began to develop capitalism and to industrialize.

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In Wallerstein's judgment, the crucial development in the sixteenth century was the growth of an international economy that was not politically united. Through this eco­nomy, some nations extracted wealth from other nations without having to resort to military force. Wallerstein ar­gued that this interaction differed from all previous forms of international relations. In the past, nations had extract­ed wealth from other nations by plunder or by forcing them to submit to political control as part of an empire. Thus, for a long period Rome and before it Egypt dominated huge empires in which the threat (and often the use) of coercion extracted taxes and tributes.

Such empires were inefficient. Their command econo­mies incurred such great military and administrative costs that they probably lowered the standard of living of all but the ruling elite. Any border troubles or internal rebellions raised the costs of maintaining the empire and strained available resources. When these costs could no longer be met, the empire became unstable and eventually collapsed. What was unique about developments in Europe, ac­cording to Wallerstein, was that economic relations develo­ped among nations whereby some could exploit others with­out paying the huge costs of running an empire. Thus, a few nations in western Europe were able to finance their rapid industrial development by extracting wealth from their neighbors without the need to plunder or dominate them through military force. Wallerstein called this internation­al economy in sixteenth-century Europe the «modern world system,» even though it was far from worldwide in scope. His term emphasized that this was an international social

system.

Within this world system, Wallerstein argued, stratifi­cation exists among nations. A few nations form an upper class, some a lower class, and a few a middle class. A na­tion's class position is determined by its place in a geo­graphic division of labor.

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Wallerstein called the dominant, or upper class, nations in a world system core nations.They have highly diversi­fied economies and are the most modern and industrialized. Core nations also have the strongest internal political struc­tures marked by stable governments and little internal class conflict. Wallerstein argued that core nations are stable because they can provide a very high standard of living for their workers and thus, in effect, buy their cooperation. Core nations also have a large middle class and permit con­siderable political freedom and individual liberty.

At the bottom of world systems are nations that Waller­stein identified as peripheral nations.Many are located far from core nations. Typically, they have weak internal politi­cal structures and a low standard of living for workers. Be­cause of their high potential for political instability and class conflict, they are ruled by repressive governments. Periphe­ral nations have highly specialized economies, typically re­lying on the sale of a narrow range of raw materials (such as food, ore, fiber, petroleum, or timber) to core nations.

A few nations in a world system may display features of both core and peripheral nations. Their economies are more diversified than those of peripheral nations but are more specialized than those of core nations. Wallerstein called these semiperipheral nations.

VI. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING:

Postmodern TV (by Steven Connor)

The sheer bulk of representations, in film, TV and adver­tising, and the exponential expansion of information not only threaten the integrity of the private world, they actually abolish the very distinction between the private and the pub­lic. Just as the private worlds of actual individuals are re­lentlessly pillaged by TV, with the multiplication of inti­mate explorations of private lives and fly-on-the-wall docu­mentaries, so the private world comes to enfold or be inhabited

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by the public world of historical events, which are made available instantly in every living-room by the agency of TV. The public possesses the private, the private encompasses the public. What typifies this situation above all is an explo­sion of visibility to a point that may be called «obscenity». Obscenity begins precisely when there is no more spec­tacle, no more scene, when all becomes transparence and immediate visibility, when everything is exposed to the harsh and inexorable light of information and communication. In this situation, it hardly even seems possible to speak of being alienated by or from the mass media — for this would require the reinstatement of a whole structure of thought, including the clear distinction between authentic individu­al existence and inauthentic false consciousness, which this explosion of visibility makes impossible. You cannot be misrepresented, or misconceive yourself, in a situation in which there are no longer any positives or negatives, but only ever the feverish production of more signs, more mean­ings, «ecstasy of communication».

This world of communicational saturation is, in fact, emotionally empty, or «cool», and its representative psy­chic state is not hysteria, a condition in which the body and its symptoms are made of internal feelings and desires, but schizophrenia.

On the one hand, TV is dismissed in toto as an instru­ment of oppression and intellectual deprivation; it trans­forms actual individuals into passive, though perfectly func­tioning, media machines, by «implanting a simulated, elec­tronically monitored, and technocratically controlled identity in the flesh»; it degrades socially cohesive groups into the amorphousness of audiences held hostage to the big trend line of crisis moods induced by media elites for an audience which does not exist in any social form, but only in the form of digital blips on overnight rating simulations.

Postmodern TV represents neither the subversive disso­lution of cultural and aesthetic norms, nor the progressive

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rewriting of the classic-realist Hollywood text, but rather the last moment before our culture vanishes into the abso­lute and total dominion of the image. This moment is si­multaneously one of «ecstasy» and «decay», because it in­volves a feverish intensification of differences and intensi­ties, in an attempt to compensate for the slipping away of the real, which nevertheless always ends up consolidating the power of the spectacle.

VII. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING: THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF TERRORISM

The most characteristic feature of terrorists is that they act with a collective spirit. Within this spirit, individual ideas and personal choice are disregarded as everyone is di­rected toward one single goal. Those who act within this collective spirit may do things they would never do in their right mind and commit acts without using their own will and consciousness. In many countries of the world, terror groups composed of a few unintelligent and uneducated people get caught up in the emotional hysteria of mass meetings, slogans, and without even knowing what they are doing and why, they get involved in committing mass atrocities.

In one moment, such people can turn into killers with blood on their hands, and even terrorists who are able to commit inhumane acts. A person may seem quiet and calm when he is alone, but when he becomes a part of a terrorist group, he may become capable of committing acts of arson and assault for no apparent reason.

Such spells are cast over individuals that they are even willing to be killed for their cause. The majority of those who take part in acts of terror often have weak wills and consciences, and they become like a flock of sheep under the influence of mass psychology. Good sense and judgment are substituted by excessive and extravagant emotionalism and a tendency toward violence and aggression. Such people are easily provoked, into­lerant and know no limitation set by any law.

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One of the most important characteristics of terrorism is that it selects its targets indiscriminately. The fact that it determines these targets without discrimination is one of the most important reasons for the spread of fear, because no one can feel secure. If people know that they are possible targets for no reasons, no one will feel safe from the terrorists.

There is nothing a potential target can do to protect themselves, since terrorists act according to their own rules, in a time and place of their own choosing. Thus acts of terror in society are arbitrary and unpredictable.

Terrorist organizations attack their targets indiscrimi­nately which means that innocent and defenseless individu­als are killed or wounded.

Terrorists regard acts of violence as propaganda for their organizations. For them, killing innocent people, robbing banks, assassinating people, kidnapping and planting bombs all act as propaganda for their struggle. To the terrorist who is bent on wreaking chaos, what publicity a single act of violence can generate in one day is much more publicity than what millions of brochures could do.

This idea is totally foreign to every kind of human feeling of compassion, mercy, concord and tolerance; it is alien to the moral teaching and can gain only in societies with no moral at all. For this reason, the only possible solution that can save humanity from this danger is the joint actions of those who are striving for the happiness and peace of their children.

VIII. TRANSLATE THE TEXT IN WRITING: RELIGION

The large majority of those practicing a religion in America are Christians. And, although the government does not officially lend its power and authority to the Christian viewpoint, the fact is that Christian traditions and holi­days enjoy special standing in the society. Non-Christians sometimes complain that their traditions and viewpoints get inadequate recognition and respect.

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Many Americans are not affiliated with any religion and do not attend any church. Such people may be atheists, that is, people who have decided they do not believe any supreme being exists. They may be people who consider themselves Christians but who do not subscribe to any of the denomina­tions that comprise what is called «organized religion». Or they may be people who are not interested in religious matters and do not consider religion important to them.

Adherents of the various religions practiced in the United States are not distributed randomly in the population. There are groupings by geographic area, ethnic heritage, and so­cial class. For example, Lutherans dominate in much of the state of Minnesota, where most early white settlers were from the Lutheran countries of Scandinavia. Eastern urban areas have concentrations of Catholics and Jews. The south­ern and south-western parts of the United States are some­times called the «Bible belt» in recognition of the fact that fundamentalist Protestants are especially prominent there, and the state of Utah is largely Mormon.

Americans of Irish, Italian, and Latin American descent are likely to be Catholics, if they subscribe to any religion. Most lower and lower-middle class black people who are affiliated with a church are Baptists. Episcopalians are usu­ally from the wealthiest stratum of the society, and highly-educated people predominate among Unitarians.

Relationships among various religious groups in the United States are normally peaceful and are sometimes even quite harmonious.

A religious or quasi-religious phenomenon that has re­cently gained public notice in the United States is that of «cults». Cults are defined or described in various ways. In general they seek the total involvement and commitment of their members, who are expected to give up most of their material possessions and join with fellow believers in a life devoted to worship, contemplation, and the search for additional adherents. Some cults have a fundamentalist

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Christian outlook, others are based on Indian or Oriental religions or philosophies. Many Americans consider cults dangerous because they appear to rob members of their indi­viduality and freedom of choice. Branches of cults may be found in large cities, on large university campuses, and in rural areas.

While it may be instructive for foreigners to know some­thing about the doctrine of separation of church and state, the number and variety of religions practiced in the United States, the numbers of people who subscribe to each denomi­nation, and the nature of the relationships among various religious groups, it is probably more helpful to understand the role religion plays in the daily lives of individual Ameri­cans. After all, it is individual Americans that foreigners encounter, not doctrines or religions or churches.