Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby(particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone.

　　There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women have 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today―everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes.

　　For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the past 100,000 years—even the past 100 years—our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: “they look at an organic being as average looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension.” No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.

　　全文翻译

　　做男人从来都充满危险，新生儿男女比例大约是105:100，但到了成年，这一比例基本持平，而在70岁的老人中女性是男性的两倍，但是男性死亡率高这种普遍情况正在改变，现在男婴存活率同女婴的基本一样高。这就意味着男孩到了寻找伴侣的关键年龄将出现男孩过剩。更重要的是，又一次自然选择的机会消失了。50年前，婴儿，尤其是男婴，存活的机会取决于体重，过轻一公斤或过重一公斤几乎意味着必死无疑。今日体重几乎没有什么区别。由于大部分差异是由基因引起的，又一个进化的因素消失了。

　　进化意义上的自杀还有一种方法：存活，但少生孩子。现在几乎没有人像过去那样多育。除了在一些宗教社区，几乎没有几名妇女会生15个孩子。当今出生的数量同死亡年龄一样变得平均化，我们大多数人的子女数量大致相当。再一次，人与人之间的差异和利用差异进行自然选择的机会降低了。印度证明了这种情况。这个国家给大城市里的少数人提供财富，而给其余的各部落居民造成了贫困。今天这种每个人的生存机会和子女数量都相同的极其显著的平均化意味着与部落相比，自然选择在印度社会中、上层中已经失去了80%的效力。

　　对我们来说，这意味着进化已经结束；生物学上的乌托邦已经形成。奇怪的是，这一过程几乎丝毫没有造成身体上的改变，而且没有其他物种充斥着自然中如此多的空间。但在过去的10万年——甚至过去的100年中，我们的生活发生了变化，但我们的身体却没变。我们没有进化。因为机器和社会替我们办了这一切。达尔文有一句话描述那些对进化一无所知的人，他们“看有机的生命如同野人看船，好像看某种完全不能理解的东西”。毫无疑问，我们将记住20世纪的生活方式，尽管对其丑陋之处不得其解，但是，不管我们的子孙后代对我们离乌托邦的理想境界还差多远，感到有多么惊讶，他们的样子会同我们差不了多少。

(本文由新航道集团整理发布   责编：王彦兮)