外刊精读：在变幻莫测的世界中如何茁壮成长

本期跟着机构老师一起精读外刊：在变幻莫测的世界中如何茁壮成长。

机构全科老师-黄外刊原文：《How to Thrive in an Uncertain World》

题目解析：

Thrive （v） 可不是只能用在经济和社会当中的繁荣，还可以用于各种表”发展良好”的语境中。

例：Some people thrive on strife and stress, while others prefer total tedium.

面对生活种种不确定性和繁杂的社会，作者抛出了一个令人深思的问题和并附上了一幅模糊的画像。

01.

A close friend’s daughter was getting married in the pandemic summer of 2021. “We can’t invite friends to the wedding,” in order to keep it small and safe, my pal told me. But she did invite friends, I learned from a Facebook post. Just not me. Feeling humiliated, I initially kept quiet. But being together grew awkward and I sensed a growing distance. And when I tried to discuss the widening rift, she called a “pause” in our relations by text and stopped reaching out for a year.

【译文】

一位好朋友的女儿正准备在2021年疫情的夏天结婚。“我们不能邀请朋友来婚礼”为了让它保持小且为了安全起见，我伙计告诉我。但是她却还是邀请了朋友，我从一则facebook动态得知，只是这个人不是我。我感到羞耻，起初我保持沉默。但是呆在一起的时候开始变得尴尬并且我也感觉到了彼此的距离变得越来越远。而当我正尝试着去讨论这个日益变宽的间隔时，她在我们的关系上按了个暂停键，并且在一年之内停止联系了。

Vocab：

post n邮政/邮寄 在互联网和此处意思为 社交媒体的帖子；例如：朋友圈的帖子—— Wechat’ post

⭐常见的还有：商广——sponsor post/promoted post.

#Vocabulary

Rift / division / gap / breach / split

e.g. Efforts to heal the riftbetween the two countries failed.

Socio-economic divisions in this city are pronounced.

The government is trying to close the gapbetween the rich and the poor.

They escaped through a breach in the wire fence.

Their splitforced him to move out of his house.

※Summary：

这些都是有关于缝隙/裂痕的表达，可以通过例句发现

①division and gap 二词用在社会层面更多；

②rift和 split适用于个体之间的隔阂；

③breach适用于各种场合

02.

My first thought was to consider the friendship ended. Something in her tone felt so final, like a breakup, case closed. But after a time I asked myself if I really knew what had happened and what she had meant by excluding me. Perhaps there was more to the story. Despite my hurt, I tried to keep the problem and my own mind open. I discovered what Rebecca Solnit calls the “spaciousness of uncertainty,” a realm of possibility. When at last my friend broke her silence with a text, I was ready to reconnect and move forward, even if I couldn’t get answers to all my questions. Meeting her rejection with unsureness gave me perspective and the courage not to shun her in turn.

【译文】

我的第一想法是认为友谊结束了。她的语调里听起来这个是如此的无法挽回，像是一种分手，已经没有挽留的余地了。但是过了一段时间我问了问自己我是否真的知道发生了什么，她排除我是为了什么。可能还有更多的原因。尽管我心已伤，我尝试着让总计保持开放的态度。我发现Rebecca Solnit提出的概念“不确定性空间感”，这意味着一种可能性的余地。当最后我的朋友通过一段文字打破了沉默，我已经准备去重新和她建立起联系并且让我们的关系继续发展下去，即使我得不到那些问题的答案。带着一种不确定的心态迎接她过去拒绝我的态度给了我更开朗的心态，视野和勇气不去回避她了。

Vocab：

① case closed 常见固定搭配—— 案件结束了

② shun V. 回避

③ realm n. 领域/地带

④ perspective—— let’s put it into perspective 做类比（以便于能够正确看待）

Translation practice： 我们可能面临着一些挑战，但是让我们正确的看待它。我们有更好的领导，伟大的团队，一个坚实的计划。有这些决心和努力，我们就能克服任何障碍，实现我们的目标。

We may face some challenges， but let ’s put it into perspective。We have better leader， greater team， and a solid plan. With determinations and efforts， we can overcome any obstacles and achieve our goals.

03.

Humans naturally need answers and so typically find uncertainty aversive. With a presidential election, war erupting in multiple zones, rising climate volatility and myriad (=？) other types of flux, it’s easy to feel overwhelming angst (=？) for the future and see certainty as a beacon (=signal) in a darkening time

【译文】

人类生来就需要肯定的答案，因此对自然地就对不确认定性感到厌恶。伴随着总统大选，不同地区爆发的战争，愈发严重的气候不稳定性和许多其他事物的变化，我们很容易能察觉到一种对于未来非常严重的焦虑，并且把确定性看作是黑暗时期的一座灯塔。

aversive[adj] =unfavorable

例如：

Iamdisgustedbyhisemotionallyaversivephotos.

Flux[n] = change

例句：

The political landscape has been in a state of flux since the election.

赏析：第三段运用了大量的例子去具象化uncertainty这个抽象概念，达成共识感。在写作中，抛出一个概念是不够的哦 要多运用不同的例子以及其他写作手法加以阐述~。

第四段小练习：

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate preposition(without checking the dictionary)

04.

But a wave of new scientific discoveries reveals that learning tolean(1) ______ uncertainty in times of rapid change is a promisingantidote(2) ______ mental distress, not a royal road (3) ______ angst, as many of us assume.A growing body (4) ______ evidence and a range of new interventions suggest that skillfully managing uncertainty (5) ______ the face of what’s murky, new or unexpected is an effective treatment (6) ______ anxiety, a likely path(7) ______ building resilience and a mark of astute problem-solving ability.

✳第四段有很多好的短语搭配值得学习，尤其是介词的搭配

1点击空白处查看答案

1.Into2. To3. To4.Of5. In6.For7. To

译文：但是新的一波科学研究揭露了，在这个迅速改变当中学会去接纳不确定性是对精神疾病有利的解药，而不是像我们认为的那样是通向焦虑的道路。一大批证据和一系列新的干预措施暗示了在面对不清楚，全新或者是不确定的东西时，巧妙的管理不确定性是一项有效的方法去应对焦虑，也是一种建立适应性和精明的解决问题的方法。

05.

Learning to contend with uncertainty won’t completely fix the problems of our day. But at the start of a new year [此处省略了？] rife with (=filled with sth bad) high-stakes unknowns, we should rethink our outdated notions of not knowing as weakness, and instead discover this mindset as a strength. The implications for taming=control today’s epidemic distress, divisions and stalemates are vast.

【译文】

学着和不确定性竞争并不会完全解决我们今日的问题。但是在充满高风险位置的新年伊始，我们应该重新思考自己“茫然不解就是弱点”的想法，而应该把这种思想看作是强项。

这个意味对控制如今四处可见的焦虑，分裂和僵局是非常深远的。

文学手段赏析：distress， divisions二词运用了

alliteration（压头韵），即两个或者多个单词开头的辅音发音相同

例：wax and wane；progressive proponents ….

运用练习

Translation the following sentence to give it a literarytouch.（alliteration）

我不畏惧风暴，因为我在学习御船之术。

1点击空白处查看答案

I fear not storms on the sea, for I am learning to steer my ship.

06.

Studies of the pandemic era offer a starting illustration of the links between uncertainty and flourishing. Ohio State researchers have found that adults who scored high on a measure of “intolerance of uncertainty” were more likely to struggle with stress and anxiety during the pandemic. Akin to (=Similar to) personality tests, uncertainty intolerance assessments gauge 【注意gauge发音/ɡeɪdʒ/】(=measure) people’s tendency to see unknowns as a threat rather than a challenge. Individuals who eschew (=shun/avoid) not knowing tend to yearn for predictability and engage in binary thinking. During the pandemic, higher levels of uncertainty intolerance were associated with more maladaptive（不良的） coping responses, such as being in denial, disengaging from life and abusing substances, a British study found. In contrast, those who struggle less with uncertainty were more likely to accept the realities of the situation.

【译文】

疫情时代的研究提供了不确定性和发展之间的许多连接。俄亥俄州洲的研究者们发现在一帮无法忍受不确定性的成年人们更容易在疫情期间遭受压力和焦虑。类似于人格测试，不确定性耐受度评估评测了人们倾向将未知事物看作威胁而不是一种挑战。避免懵懂的人渴望可预知性，而不是专注于二元化思想。在疫情期间，英国研究表明，对不确定性更高的无法忍受程度与不良的对应措施，例如被消极否定，或者是产生生活产生脱离感和酒精以及毒品的滥用。相比之下，那些更能对付不确定性的人更容易去接受现实情况。

✳这段当中出现了我们经常所说的二元化思想，我们先来不妨学习并讨论一下binary thinking，首先我们来看看二元化思想的定义：

Binary thinking ：tendency to see things absolute；either right or wrong.

最后在一道令人深思且老生常谈的口语练习题目结束今天的阅读吧。

#Speaking：

In what context binary thinking is convenient and effective？And when should we avoid binary thinking？