(单词翻译:单击)
What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction?
在巴别塔被摧毁后的日子里，住在那里会是什么样子？
In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar.
在《创世纪》中，我们听说挪亚的后裔在示拿的土地上建造了一座伟大的城市。
They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves.
他们建造了一座“通往天堂”的塔来“扬名立万”。
God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:
上帝被人类的狂妄自大激怒了，他说：
Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
看，他们来自一个民族，他们都使用一种语言；这只是他们将要做的事情的开始；他们打算做的事情对他们来说没有什么是不可能的。
Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.
来吧，我们下去，混淆他们那里的言语，使他们听不懂彼此的语言。
The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.
经文并没有说上帝摧毁了这座塔，但在许多流行的故事译文中，他确实摧毁了这座塔，所以让我们把这个戏剧性的画面留在脑海中:人们在废墟中游荡，无法交流，不得不接受彼此无法理解的困境。
The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit.
巴别塔的故事是我找到的最好的比喻，可以用来说明美国在2010年代发生的事情，以及我们现在所居住的这个分裂的国家。
Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly.
事情出了很大的问题，非常突然。
We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth.
我们迷失了方向，无法说同样的语言，也无法认识到相同的真理。
We are cut off from one another and from the past.
我们彼此隔绝，与过去隔绝。
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history.
很明显，红色阵营的美国和蓝色阵营的美国正在变得像两个不同的国家，这两个阵营拥有同一块领土，却拥有两个不同版本的宪法、经济和美国历史。
But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything.
但巴别塔不是一个关于部落主义的故事；它是一个关于一切的破碎的故事。
It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community.
它是关于一切看似稳固的东西破碎，曾经是一个社区的人们分离的故事。
It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.
这不仅是红色阵营和蓝色阵营之间正在发生的事情的隐喻，也是左翼和右翼内部以及大学、公司、专业协会、博物馆甚至家庭内部正在发生的事情的隐喻。
Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people.
巴别塔是某种形式的社交媒体对几乎所有的团体和机构所做的事情的一个隐喻，这些团体和机构对国家的未来乃至我们整个民族都至关重要。
How did this happen? And what does it portend for American life?
这是怎么发生的? 这对美国人的生活意味着什么?
The Rise of the Modern Tower
摩登塔楼的崛起
There is a direction to history and it is toward cooperation at larger scales.
历史是有方向的，是朝着更大范围的合作方向发展的。
We see this trend in biological evolution, in the series of “major transitions” through which multicellular organisms first appeared and then developed new symbiotic relationships.
我们在生物进化中看到了这一趋势，在多细胞生物首次出现然后发展出新的共生关系的一系列“重大转变”中看到了这一趋势。
