The Life And Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe

On summer vacation, I read an English book called the life and adventures of Robinson Crusoe, I was attracted by the details of book and the quality of the hero.

Robinson Crusoe is a youth of about eighteen years old who resides in Hull, England. Although his father wishes him to become a lawyer, Crusoe dreams of going on sea voyages. He disregards the fact that his two older brothers are gone because of their need for adventure. His father cautions that a

middle-class existence is the most stable. Robinson ignores him. When his parents refuse to let him take at least one journey, he runs away with a friend and secures free passage to London. Misfortune begins immediately, in the form of rough weather. The ship is forced to land at Yarmouth. When Crusoe's friend learns the circumstances under which he left his family, he becomes angry and tells him that he should have never come to the sea. They part, and Crusoe makes his way to London via land. He thinks briefly about going home, but cannot stand to be humiliated. He manages to find another voyage headed to Guiana. Once there, he wants to become a trader. On the way, the ship is attacked by Turkish pirates, who bring the crew and

passengers into the Moorish port of Sallee. Robinson is made

a slave. For two years he plans an escape. An opportunity is presented when he is sent out with two Moorish youths to go fishing. Crusoe throws one overboard, and tells the other one, called Xury, that he may stay if he is faithful. They anchor on what appears to be uninhabited land. Soon they see that black people live there. These natives are very friendly to Crusoe and Xury. At one point, the two see a Portuguese ship in the distance. They manage to paddle after it and get the attention of those on board. The captain is kind and says he will take them aboard for free and bring them to Brazil.

I think it was lucky that Crusoe can made friend with Friday when Crusoe didn’t express love for his parents, brothers, sisters, or even his wife. “When he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of a humble, thankful disposition, making many antic gestures to show it?to let me know how he would serve me as long as he lived.” This was what Friday did after Crusoe had rescued him from the two savages chasing him. It was easy for me to see why Crusoe had loved Friday. After sometime, Crusoe and Friday were to rescue Friday’s father. When Friday reunited with his father, the scene was easy to move anyone: “It would have moved anyone to tears to have seen how

Friday kissed him, embraced him, hugged him, cried, laughed, halloed, jumped about, danced, sung; and then sung and jumped about again, like a distracted creature.

The book teaches us only insist to victory, only work can let us out of trouble, work is more important than belief,I always imagine if I went to an island and live for a few days? One day? Two days? What can I do? Chopping wood? Hunting for cooking? I don't even wash his clothes are all thumbs! Then again, no one to talk, how lonely! I will suppress dead! How much visible Robinson optimistic! I think people should learn from him the does not fear the difficulty, optimistic spirit, no matter when and where to have strong to survive, even if only for a ray of hope, never give up! We should like Robinson, there is ambition, perseverance and love of labor, with their own hands to create wealth.

第二篇：独自打保龄球 英文读书笔记

Bowling alone

Robert D. Putnam 2000.

Chapter 3 Civic Participation

Putnam在《Bowling Alone》这本书中，力图从民情出发来考察和评价美国民主制度的运转。他认为民主质量的好坏或民主制度的绩效，可以从公民社会的状况得到解释。如果一个社会的民主运转出现了问题，从根本上说，那一定是公民社会发生了变化——如社区生活走向了衰落。Putnam在对美国公民参与热情降低，投票率下降的研究当中，敏锐的感到，当初托克维尔描述的美国社区生活正在逐渐衰落——那种喜好结社喜欢过有组织的公民生活/关注公共话题，热心公益事业的美国人不见了，今天的美国人似乎不愿意把闲暇时间用在于邻居一起喝咖啡聊天，一起走进俱乐部去从事集体行动，而是宁愿一个人在家看电视或者独自去打保龄球。在他看来，独自去打保龄球意味着美国社会资本的流失，造成这种现象的原因可能是复杂而不易确定的，但后果却是明确的，那就是公民参与的衰落。

《Bowling Alone》全书分为五个部分，第一部分讲美国公民参与的状况和社会资本之间的关系，在“思考美国社会变化”的主题之下，指出20世纪后半期是美国公民参与和社会资本逐步衰减的时期。所谓“社会资本”，是指社会上个人之间的相互联系——社会关系网络和有其产生的互惠互利和互相信赖的规范。他认为，作为社会关系的社会资本与公民美德，互惠信任，社会合作，集体归属感和集体行动有着密切联系：社会关系对个人和群体的生产力也会产生影响；社会资本的性质决定了社会信任的范围，社会合作的质量，公民参与的可能性，进而影响民主制度的绩效。社会资本具有不同的类型：连接性社会资本，粘合性社会资本，兼容性社会资本，排他性社会资本。

第二部分是讲公民参与和社会资本的变化趋势。Putnam讨论了美国社会网络和联系在20世纪晚期出现的衰减，描绘了美国人政治参与，公民参与，宗教参与，工作联系，社会联系，志愿活动和慈善活动，社会信任出现的变化趋势。同时也考察了“小团体活动，社会运动与网络”这样的新兴的社会组织形式。他认为“在20世纪的前三分之二，一股强大的力量促使美国人更加深入的参与到社区活动里，不过就在几十年前，一股静悄悄的潮流毫无预警的逆转了这个浪头。在没有收到任何统治的情况下，我们在这个世纪的后三分之一渐渐疏离了亲友和社区生活。”第三部分是在对第二部分所揭示的社会资本衰减趋势的可能解释。第四部分是公民参与和社会资本衰减会导致怎样的后果。第五部分是Putnam针对公民参与和社会资本衰减这一问题提出的政策建议。

我选取了第二部分中的“公民参与”进行阅读。

Americans of all ages,all stations in life,and all types of disposition are forever forming associations……Nothing, in my view, is deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America.

——Tocqueville

The significant feature of Americans’ is that they are more likely to be involved in voluntary associations than are citizens of most other nations; and they have great creativity in establishing organizations——they create amounts of organizations from nation to local,from serious to interesting,and so on. As Tocqueville said,the organizations have infiltrated the Americans’ life every aspect.Generally speaking,this same array of organizational affiliations has characterized Americans since at least 1905s.

One . In the first glance

Official membership in formal organizations is only one facet of social capital,but it is usually regarded as a useful barometer of community involvement. So what can we learn from organizational records and social surveys about Americans’ participation in the organized life of their communities?

美国人自发的社团总共有三种：一是基于社区的社团，而是基于教会的社团，三是基于职业的社团。在第三章的“公民参与”一节，主要讲的是在“基于社区的社团”中，美国人的社团参与有何变化。

Because of the impressive increase in the sheer number of voluntary associations, even taking account of the increase in population during this period, the number of national organizations per capital has increased by nearly two-thirds over the last three decades,excited by this fact, some observers speak that perhaps too hastily of a participation revolution in American politics and society. And more groups speaking on behalf of ever more categories of citizens.

Two . In fact——1960~1990

? Organizations that don’t involve their members directly in community-based activity:

1. over the quarter century the number of voluntary associations roughly tripled, but the average

membership seems to be roughly one-tenth as large——more groups, but most of them much smaller.the organizational eruption between the 1960s and the 1990s represented a proliferation of letterheads, not a boom of grassroots participation.

2. And revealing is the increasing geographic concentration of national headquartersare headquartered near important concentrations of their members;——the political concentration.

The proliferating new organizations are professionally staffed advocacy organizations,not member-centered,locally based associations.The newer groups focus on expressing policy views in the national political debate, not on providing regular connection among individual members at the grass roots.

The newer groups mostly belong to the mailing list organizations,which means moving a pen,not making a meeting.And these new mass-membership organizations are plainly of growing political importance while they demands little of its members’ energies and contributes little to their social capital.For example,the AARP.The national administrators of such organizations are among the most feared lobbyists in Washington, in large part because of their massive mailing list.Ironically, group involvement with government has exploded at the same time that citizen involvement with both government and groups has diminished.

The vigor of the new organizations,though they are large, proliferating,and powerful(会员数量等), is an unreliable guide to the vitality of social connectedness and civic engagement in American communities.

? Several illustrations may clarify:

1) Encyclopedia of associations

Explosive growth of organizations claiming to speak on behalf of veterans coincided with declining involvement by veterans.

2) Environment organizations

Environment Defense Fund(EDF)——mail-order membership

Trends in numbers of voluntary associations nationwide are not a reliable guide to trends in social capital,especially for associations that lack a structure of local chapters in which members can actually participate.

对于全国范围的自愿社团来说，其会员数量的趋势并不是反映社会资本发展趋势的一个可靠指标，尤其是那些缺乏地方分部体制以至于会员并不能真正参与的组织。

So what evidence can we learn from organizations that do involve their members directly in community-based activity?

? Organizations that do involve their members directly in community-based activity:

For most of the twenties century growing numbers of Americans were involved in such chapter-based associations.

1930s, this period of history underlines the effects of acute economic distress on civic engagement.

1940s, after the World War II,the massive outpouring of patriotism and collective solidarity were redirected into community life.the two decades following 1945 witnessed one of the most vital periods of community involvement in American history.

By the late 1950s, the burst of community involvement began to tail off,even though absolute membership continued to rise for a while.

By the late 1960s and 1970s, membership growth began to fall further behind population growth.

On average,across all these organizations, membership rates peaked in the early 1960s,and began the period of sustained decline by 1969. But these average conceal some important

differences among the experience of the various organizations,such as the effects of the Great Depression varied from organization to organization. These organizational peculiarities remind us that behind each of these membership declines are scores of individual tales of leadership success and failure, organizational tenacity and strategic blunders, and the vicissitudes of social life and politics.

For example,the Parent-Teacher Association(PTA).

Membership declined from 1960s to 1990s in families with children under eighteen. But some part of the decline in rates of membership in PTA is an optical illusion. Parental involvement in local school service organizations(not all of which are affiliated with the national Parent-Teacher Associations) did not fall as rapidly as membership in PTA-affiliated groups.

The drop of the membership in PTA may not have marked the withdrawal of southern parents from the organizational life of local schools.

The common feature across the very diverse organizations——rapid growth to the 1960s, abruptly halted, followed by rapid decline——is a significant piece in the mosaic of evidence on changing civic involvement in American communities.

In two important respects, however, membership figures for individual organizations are an uncertain guide to trends in Americans’ involvement in voluntary associations.

会员数并不能作为美国人自愿参加社团趋势的一个准确指标。理由有以下两点：

First , the popularity of specific groups may wax and wane quite independently of the general level of community engagement.

Second,formal “card-carrying”membership may not accurately reflect actual involvement in community activities. What really matters from the point of view of social capital and civic engagement is not merely nominal membership, but active and involved membership.

? 一些人引用50年代初到70年代初所进行的全国性调查数据，发现这一时期全国所有组

织的会员都稳定增长，但是一些学者却质疑：调查中措辞运用的改变可能影响调查结论。即：

Subtle shifts in the lens of our social time-lapse camera may have sufficiently blurred the successive images that we cannot be sure about the trends during the 1950s and 1960s. 在Michigan-NIMH的研究中，他们也发现“美国成年人融入社会趋于下降”。

One of the Michigan-NIMH study’s central findings was a “reduced integration of American adults into the social structure.” No matter with friends and relatives,organizational memberships ,or church attendance,they all declined. The best available survey evidence is consistent with the organizational record that membership in voluntary associations among ordinary Americans declined modestly between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s.

For the years after the mid-1970s, the survey evidence becomes substantially richer:

The General Social Survey(GSS),the Roper Social and Political Trends archive, and the DDB Needham Life Style archive.

(1) Organizational Record

The GSS provides the most comprehensive measure of trends in Americans’ formal membership in many different types of groups. According the data, the net decline in formal organizational membership is modest at best.However, this ambiguous conclusion is drastically altered when we examine evidence on more active forms of participation than mere card-carrying membership. Because of the active members in most voluntary associations are cajoled into playing some leadership role in the organization.,we can use the active members’ participation to evaluate the civic participation. From the Figure 10,we get that active involvement in community organizations in this country fell by 45 percent. By this measure,at least,nearly half of America’s civic infrastructure was obliterated in barely a decade.

(2)Survey Reports

In DDB Needham Life Style surveys, they questioned the mass that “How many times in the last year did you attend a club meeting? ”,and gained that the figure of civic engagement has dwindled over the years. “By comparison with other countries, we may still seem a nation of joiners, but by comparison with our own recent past,we are not —at least if joining means more than nominal affiliation.”

These two different survey archives suggest that active involvement in local clubs and organizations of all sorts fell by more than half in the last several decades of the twenties century. And this estimate is same as the survey of “time diaries”.

(3)Time Diaries

The “time diaries”show clearly that the time we devote to community organizations has fallen

steadily over this period. From 1965 to 1995,the average American’s investment in organizations has fell from 3.7 hours per month to 2.3 hours. Further analysis of the time diary evidence suggests that virtually all of this decline is attributable to generational replacement:members of any given generation are investing as much time in organizational activity as they ever were,but each successive generation is investing less. If we take into account the rapid growth in educational levels over this period, all these slumps in associational involvement are even more dramatic. However, the gross decline in community involvement has been masked to some degree by the fact that more and more Americans have the skills and social resources that traditionally encouraged participation in community affairs.

(4)Consumer Expenditures

Another “hard” indicator of the priority Americans attribute to organizational involvement is the fraction of our leisure dollar that we spend on dues.

在此所讨论的社区衰退的问题，源自四种完全不同的证据——不同的抽样技术，不同的调查组织，不同的问题，但是每一个都是建立在许多独立调查对成千上万受访者的访谈之上的，并覆盖所有类型的社团组织。它们都显示在20世纪过去的几十年里，地方社团的积极参与下滑超过一半。

Three . Summery

Organizational records suggest that:

For the first two-thirds of the twenties century Americans’ involvement in the civic associations of all sorts rose steadily, except for the parenthesis of the Great Depression.

In the last third of the century, by contrast,only mailing list membership has continued to

expand,with the creation of an entirely new species of “tertiary” association whose members never actually meet.

At the same time, active involvement in face-to-face organizations has plummeted,whether we consider organizational records, survey reports,time diaries,or consumer expenditures.

But the broad picture is one of declining membership in community organizations. During the last third of the century formal membership in organizations in general has edged downward by perhaps 10-20 percent. More important, active involvement in clubs and other voluntary

associations has collapsed at an astonishing rate, more than halving most indexes of participation within barely a few decades.

Many Americans continue to claim that we are “members ” of various organizations,but most Americans no longer spend much time in community organizations. In short ,Americans have been dropping out in droves, not merely from political life,but from organized community life more generally.