佚名/Anonymous
Last night I was driving from Harrisburg to Lewisburg, Pa, a dis-tance of about eighty miles. It was late. I was late and if anyone asked me how fast I was driving, I'd have to plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. Several times I got stuck behind a slow— moving truck on a narrow road with a solid white line on my left, and I was clinching my fists with impatience.
At one point along an open highway, I came to a crossroads with a traffic light, I was alone on the road by now, but as I approached the light, it turned red and I braked to a halt. I looked left, tight and behind me. Nothing. Not a ear, no suggestion of headlights, but there I sat, waiting for the light to change, the only human being for at least a mile in any direction.
I started wondering why I refused to run the light. I was not afraid of being arrested, because there was obviously no cop around, and there certainly would have been no danger in going through it.
Much later that night, after I'd met with a group in Lewisburg and had climbed into bed near midnight, the question of why I'd stopped for that light came back to me. I think I stopped because it's part of a contract we all have with each other. It's not only the law, but it's an arrangement we have, and we trust each other to honor it: we don't go through red lights. Like most of us, I'm more apt to be restrained from doing something bad by the social convention that disapproves of it than by any law against it.
It's amazing that we ever trust each other to do the right thing, isn't it? And we do, too. Trust is our first inclination. We have to make a deliberate decision to mistrust someone or to be suspicious or skeptical. Those attitudes don't come naturally to us.
昨晚我從哈裏斯堡驅車前往賓夕法尼亞州的劉易斯堡，全程約80英裏。天很晚了，我遲到了，若有人問我車速如何，我得求助於美國憲法的第五條修正案。很多次，我都被一輛緩慢行駛的卡車擋住了前行的路——路麵很窄，而我的左側是不可逾越的白線。於是，我急躁起來，不由得捏緊了拳頭。