That being said, I made time to read 猴子的旅程. My main interest was driven by the fact that macroevolution and biogeography aren’t scientific questions which I’ve focused much on lately. But, ultimately the book totally convinced me that 戒备 doesn’t explain much in terms of geographic patterning of biological variation.
To make it more concrete: the flora and fauna of New Zealand are not relics of Gondwanaland, but 相对 recent arrivals due to dispersal. This is in my opinion rather less romantic than the popular view, but the argument and evidence offered in the book are pretty convincing.
我知道 1984 is a commentary on Stalin’s purges. And it also prefigures what happened in China later on. But it’s general commentary on human psychology was prescient. I was recently talking to a friend who is a pretty conventional liberal American (Sander’s supporter, but OK with supporting Clinton in the general). We were talking about Donald Trump’s appeal to many people. On the specific issue about banning Muslims I think he has tapped into a broad vein of American opinion which observes rightly that Muslim majority nations are very illiberal. In response to this, my friend looked behind her (we were in my living room, and I don’t have a roommate), and whispered under her breath “Well, Muhammed was a pretty bad guy, so what do you expect?” My point is that it’s as if there are Telescreens monitoring people, even though they aren’t.
Many people have “taboo” thoughts all the time, but are aware that we live in a social environment where we can’t express them (to be fair, this is a pretty universal human norm). There are a laundry list of things that are “not OK” for American liberals to believe, but they believe them often anyway. Similarly, there was a laundry list of positions which were supposed to be held by 所有 conservatives by the conservative elites (e.g., extreme pro-Israel support without any qualification or moderation). Donald Trump has violated these norms, and lived to tell the tale. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future a Bernie Sanders type figure emerges who is able to overturn the power of the Democratic establishment. Social norms are strong and hard to change…until you change them. Things can happen fast.