Thus I suspect (though confessedly without knowing) that the vast majority of the honest folk of Westmoreland county, and especially the 100% Americans among them, actually admire the houses they live in, and are proud of them. For the same money they could get vastly better ones, but they prefer what they have got. Certainly there was no pressure upon the Veterans of Foreign Wars to choose the dreadful edifice that bears their banner, for there are plenty of vacant buildings along the trackside, and some of them are appreciably better. They might, in- deed, have built a better one of their own. But they chose that clapboarded horror with their eyes open, and having chosen it, they let it mellow into its present shocking depravity. They like it as it is: beside it, the Parthenon would no doubt offend them. In precisely the same way the authors of the rat-trap stadium that I have mentioned made a deliberate choice: After painfully designing and erecting it, they made it perfect in their own sight by putting a completely impossible penthouse painted a staring yellow, on top of it. The effect is that of a fat woman with a black eye. It is that of a Presbyterian grinning. But they like it.
因此，我相信(尽管坦白地说，我不敢绝对肯定)，威斯特摩兰县绝大多数正直诚实的人，尤其是其中的那些百分之百的美国人，确实很欣赏他们居住的房屋并为之感到自豪。虽然他们可以用同样多的建筑成本造出好得多的房屋，他们却宁愿要他们现有的那种丑陋不堪的房屋。可以肯定地说，海外战争退伍军人组织总部将自己的旗帜插在那样一幢丑陋的大楼上绝对不是出于无奈，因为铁路沿线多的是闲置未用的建筑，而且许多建筑都比他们那幢大楼要好得多。他们如果愿意的话，也完全可以自己建造一幢像样一些的大楼。然而，他们却眼睁睁地选择了那幢用护墙板造起来的丑陋的大楼，而且选定之后，还要让它发展演变成现在这副破烂相。他们喜欢的就是这种丑怪样子，如果有人在那附近竖起一座像希腊巴特农神殿那样的漂亮建筑，他们一定会感到恼火。前面提到的那个形如捕鼠器的钢架运动场的设计建造者们也是这样有意地作了一个深思熟虑的选择。在费尽心血，辛辛苦苦地设计并建成那个运动场之后，又想进一步美化完善它，于是便在建筑平项上加造一间极不协调的小棚屋，并涂上鲜艳夺目的黄色油漆。这样造成的效果是使该建筑看起来就像一个肥胖的女人面上带着一只被打肿发青的眼圈，也可以说像一位长老会牧师面上突然露出勉强的笑容的模样。但他们喜欢的就是这种模样。
Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth. The etiology of this madness deserves a great deal more study than it has got. There must be causes behind it; it arises and flourishes in obedience to biological laws, and not as a mere act of God. What, precisely, are the terms of those laws? And why do they run stronger in America than elsewhere? Let some honest Privat Dozent in pathological sociology apply himself to the problem.
这里涉及到一个心理学家迄今未加重视的问题，即为了丑本身的价值而爱丑(非因其他利益驱动而爱丑)，急欲将世界打扮得丑不可耐的变态心理。这种心理的孳生地就是美国。从美国这个大熔炉中产生出了一个新的种族，他们像仇视真理一样地仇视美。这种变态心理的产生根源值得进行更多的研究，它的背后一定隐藏着某些原因，其产生和发展肯定受到某些生物学规律的制约，而不能简单地看成是出于上帝的安排。那么，这些规律的具体内容究竟是什么呢?为什么它们在美国比在其他任何地方更为盛行?这个问题还是让某位像德国大学的无薪教师那样正直的社会病理学 家去研究吧。
(from Reading for Rhetoric by Caroline Shrodes,Clifford A, Josephson, James R. Wilson )
(摘自卡罗琳什罗迪斯，克里福德A约瑟夫逊，詹姆斯R威尔逊编《修辞读物》)
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