原文

Fear of Dearth

Carll Tucker

[1] I hate jogging. Every dawn, as I thud around New York City’s Central Park reservoir, I am reminded of how much I hate it. It’s so tedious. Some claim jogging is thought conducive; others insist the scenery relieves the monotony. For me, the pace is wrong for contemplation of either ideas or vistas. While jogging, all I can think about is jogging—or nothing. One advantage of jogging around a reservoir is that there’s no dry-shortcut home.

[2] From the listless looks of some fellow trotters, I gather I am not alone in my unenthusiasm: Bill-paying, it seems, would be about as diverting. Nonetheless, we continue to jog; more, we continue to choose to jog. From a practically infinite array of opportunities, we select one that we don’t enjoy and can’t wait to have done with. Why?

[3] For any trend, there are as many reasons as there are participants. This person runs to lower his blood pressure. That person runs to escape the telephone or a cranky spouse or a filthy household. Another person runs to avoid doing anything else, to dodge a decision about how to lead his life or a realization that his life is leading nowhere. Each of us has his carrot and stick. In my case, the stick is my slackening physical condition, which keeps me from beating opponents at tennis whom I overwhelmed two years ago. My carrot is to win.

[4] Beyond these disparate reasons, however, lies a deeper cause. It is no accident that now, in the last third of the 20^th century, personal fitness and health have suddenly become a popular obsession. True, modern man likes to feel good, but that hardly distinguishes him from his predecessors.

[5] With zany myopia, economists like to claim that the deeper cause of every thing is economic. Delightfully, there seems no marketplace explanation for jogging. True, jogging is cheap, but then not jogging is cheaper. And the scant and skimpy equipment which jogging demands must make it a marketer’s least favored form of recreation.

[6] Some scout-masterish philosophers argue that the appeal of jogging and other body-maintenance programs is the discipline they afford. We live in a world in which individuals have fewer and fewer obligations. The workweek has shrunk. Weekend worship is less compulsory. Technology gives us more free time. Satisfactorily filling free time requires imagination and effort. Freedom is a wide and risky river, it can drown the person who does not know how to swim across it. The more obligations one takes on, the more time one occupies, the less threat freedom poses. Jogging can become an instant obligation. For a portion of his day, the jogging is not his own man(free from interferences), he is obedient to a regimen he accepted.

[7] Theologists may take the argument one step farther. It is our modern irreligion, our lack of confidence in any hereafter, that makes us anxious to stretch our mortal stay as long as possible. We run, as the saying goes, for our lives, hounded by the suspicion that these are the only lives we are likely to enjoy.

[8] All of these theorists seem to me more or less right. As the growth of culresurgence of enthusiasm for the military draft suggest, we do crave commitment. And who can doubt, watching so many middle-aged and older persons torturing themselves in the name of fitness, that we are unreconciled to death, more so perhaps than any generation in modern memory?

[9] But I have a hunch there’s a further explanation of our obsession with exercise. I suspect that what motivates us even more than a fear of death is a fear of dearth. Our era is the first to anticipate the eventual depletion of all natural resources. We see wilderness shrinking, rivers losing their capacity to sustain life; the air, even the stratosphere, being loaded with potentially deadly junk. We see the irreplaceable being squandered, and in the depths of our consciousness we are fearful that we are creating an uninhabitable world. We feel more or less helpless and yet, at the same time, desirous to protect what resources we can. We recycle soda bottles and restore old buildings and protect our nearest natural resource—our physical health—in the almost superstitious hope that such small gestures will help save an earth that we are blighting. Jogging becomes a sort of penance for our sins of gluttony, greed, and waste. Like a hairshirt or a bed of nails, the more one hates it, the more virtuous it makes one feel.

[10] That is why we jog. Why I jog is to win at tennis.  (769)

译文：

从慢跑说到资源危机

我讨厌跑步。每天清晨当我沿着纽约中央公园的人工湖慢跑时，我总是不由自主地想起我其实有多么讨厌这项运动。它太乏味了。有些人宣称跑步有助于思考，另一些人则坚信沿途的风光缓解了跑步的单调。而对我来说，慢跑既不能使我想出好创意也无法给我提供美妙的憧憬。慢跑时我的脑子里除了跑就再想不起别的念头。绕着人工湖跑步的唯一好处在于水路是唯一的捷径，而你没法走捷径回家而不把脚弄湿。

从那些跑步者无精打采的表情看来，我并不是唯一对跑步提不起兴致来的人。简直连付账都比跑步有趣些。不过我们还是接着跑，或者不如说我们接着选择跑。在一大堆数不尽的活动中，我们偏偏选了一个我们并不喜欢甚至等不及想了结的项目，这是为什么？

每股潮流都有其流行的原因，原因之多可以媲美从者之众。有人跑步是为了降血压；也有人跑步是为了躲开电话，避开一位怪癖的妻子或逃脱肮脏琐碎的家务；还有人跑步就是为了什么也不干，既下不了决心好好规划自己的生活又不敢承认自己碌碌无为最终将一事无成。总之每个人都能找出跑步的好处和不跑的坏处来。对于我来说，不跑的后果就是肌肉松弛，被两年前的手下败将打倒在网球场上；坚持跑步的话我就能继续赢他。

然而，在迥异的原因背后藏着更深刻的动机。在20世纪最后的三四十年里，个人健康突然变成人们普遍的困扰，这并不是偶然的。不可否认，现代人喜欢健康，但光凭喜欢并不足以使他们同他们的祖先产生那么大的区别。

滑稽的是，那些缺乏远见的经济学家总喜欢宣称任何现象都根源于经济。好在他们没法为慢跑找到合理的市场解释。慢跑固然便宜，但不跑岂不更便宜？慢跑仅需要简单凑合的装备，商家们从中无利可图，必然对它毫无热情。

一些侦查哲学家则认为是他们的倡导使慢跑和其它的健身运动成为了人们的生活规律。当代社会，个人的责任和义务越来越少。随着工作日缩短，周末也不再显得那么珍贵。科技给了我们更多自由的时间。要令人满意地（充实地）度过这些闲暇时光，不仅要有想象力还要费些心思。自由是一条宽广而危险的河，能把不会游泳的人淹死。担负的责任越多，工作的时间也就越多，自由导致的威胁就越少。慢跑就是一件可以随时揽上肩的责任。作为一天规划中的一部分，慢跑不再是随意的，而成了人们遵守的养生法则神学家们则是从更深刻的角度对这一现象作出论断的。他们认为当今社会缺乏宗教信仰，人们不相信轮回转世，所以才千方百计地想延长寿命。俗话说生命在于运动，而可供我们享受的生命之有一次（，于是只好不断运动，希望能增长生命的轨迹）。

以上这些理论家似乎多多少少有点道理。宗教异端的发展，灵恩教派的兴起，军国主义的复新···这些都表明我们确实迫切需要信仰。看着这么多中老年人以健身的名义折磨自己，谁还能怀疑我们对于死亡的反抗比过去任何年代的人更甚呢？但我有种预感，对于健身的困惑应该还有一种更为透彻的解释。我认为，比起对死亡的畏惧，对资源枯竭的恐惧才是我们进行健身运动的根本原因。我们的时代首先预见了自然资源的最终枯竭。我们看着原生态环境日渐缩减；河流在污染下成为死水毒水万物不生；大气，甚至同温层，充斥着潜在的致命的垃圾。我们看着不可再生的资源被压榨殆尽，而意识深处则在担忧着这个世界将最终变得无法让人类生存。我们不知所措，同时我们又渴望力所能及地保护自然资源。我们回收苏打汽水瓶，重修旧建筑，保护我们离我们最近的自然资源——我们的身体健康。我们近乎迷信地希望这些小动作能够拯救这个被我们摧残的地球。慢跑成了我们对自己的暴殄，贪婪，以及浪费的赎罪。就像布满钉子的床和刺人的毛线衣一样，人们越是讨厌它，它给人带来的道德感却越强。这就是为什么我们要慢跑。而我慢跑只是为了打赢网球而已。