———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Henry H Wilfred
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2018 15:36:37 +0100
Hi Pema
As a supporting fact on the side, the Financial Times ran an article
last weekend about the boom of the storage industry in the UK:
此話之旁論續證：上週末的金融時報一篇文章談暴發的英國迷你倉生意—
https://www.ft.com/content/e404415c-8f96-11e8-b639-7680cedcc421
“The industry has an annual turnover of about £750m, and the amount of
storage space has almost doubled in a decade⋯ equivalent to 0.7 sq ft
for every person in the country.. That’s more than anywhere else in
Europe, though it’s still far behind the US, where the figure is an
astonishing 7 sq ft per person."
「迷你倉業每年營運額估計值七十五億英鎊，過去十年間倉庫面積幾近翻了一倍⋯，等同全民人均面積零點七平方英尺，已比歐陸任何地方都多，卻遠低於美國的，那邊是叫人訝然的人均七平方英尺。」
The thing is, people already live in larger houses in the US than in
the UK/Europe – how can they still run out of space to store all of
their stuff? It baffles me. Anyway, I think it is worth taking a
deeper look why people want to “buy" a better version of themselves,
especially in the US. I would attribute it to two things. The first is
from David Priestland’s book “Merchant, Soldier, Sage":
問題是，美國人住屋已比英國/歐洲大陸的大啦，怎會有家放不下雜物這等事？真令人費解。人們都渴求用錢買個更美好的自己，此事- 尤其在美的情況-頗值得深思，我看來有兩點，其一是大衛·普斯特蘭（David Priestland）所著的《Merchant, Soldier, Sage》(未有中譯出版，暫譯：商、兵、賢)中提出的：
“Underpinning it was an unstated contract: in return for swallowing
the harsh discipline of the production line and ditching socialism and
costly artisanship, the worker would be paid enough to buy himself the
status lost at work. And if his wages weren’t quite enough, the newly
important banks and consumer credit industry would cover the deficit."
「這一切［消費主義］有條暗含的交換條件：工人們硬撐生產線上的刻板，又棄守［保護工人福利的］社會主義及保障高收入的手作工藝承傳，換來的是謹夠買回失掉工作尊嚴的購物力；倘若工資不夠的話，新興的金融私貸業會助上一臂之力填充個夠。
“The solution to the great riddle was Ford’s mass consumerism.
Employees would, employers hoped, lose interest in questions of class
and differences between managers and labour, because they could at
least aspire to have a similar lifestyle to their bosses – even if
they would never achieve it."
「就是福特汽車推動的大眾消費慾望一錘定了音：員工就如雇主計算中那樣，夢想可有朝一日，過著與老闆們差不多的生活方式–
儘管是遙不可及地永難實現– ，而不去質疑管理層與生產層之間的鴻溝。
“Anybody (apart from African-Americans) could gain social acceptance
and climb the status ladder by buying the right kind of consumer goods
. They were not held back by aristocratic heredity or sagely cultural
achievements which took at least a couple of generations to acquire."
「在美國，除了非裔人仕，任誰都可以藉由購買認可的消費品，爬上身份台階而獲得社交認同，不再因出身、人文素養等，定須幾代人努力的因素而受阻。」
The second is, of course, the perennial competiton for sexual partners…
其二是永不止息的性的競逐⋯
（待續）
畢媽 · 專頁 