Thursday, August 4, 2011

交叉的轨迹


我相信命运。当然,不是宿命。人的命运是由人的性格决定的。

我最感兴趣的是人的命运的交叉轨迹。

1968年,希拉里还在Wellesley College时,认识了一个叫Saul Alinsky的人。

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left."[1] He is often noted for his book Rules for Radicals.


这是一个有意思的人。芝加哥出生的俄国犹太移民后裔,在芝大念考古学。后来就开始做社会工作,主要是帮助贫民区的人提高生活质量。后来,他把注意力放在帮助黑人贫民窟上。

但是,他又是一个非常独立的人,不参与任何党派,团体。他说:

Not at any time. I've never joined any organization—not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.


希拉里大学最后一年,开始对他感兴趣。本来想大学毕业后为他工作,可是,最终决定去耶鲁念法学院。

16年后,奥巴马大学毕业后,从纽约来到芝加哥,成为一个芝加哥南部的community organizer,这恰恰是当年希拉里想做却又没做的工作。

再后来的事,就不用说了。

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