演講標題：The lies our culture tells us about what matters — and a better way to live
講者：David Brooks
So, we all have bad seasons in life. And I had one in 2013. My marriage had just ended, and I was humiliated by that failed commitment. My kids had left home for college or were leaving. I grew up mostly in the conservative movement, but conservatism had changed, so I lost a lot of those friends, too.
人生總會經歷枯季。我的枯季在2013年。我的婚姻破裂了，我失敗的婚姻讓我感到羞辱。我的孩子們離開家去上大學了。我在保守派運動中成長，但如今，保守主義變了，因此我失去了不少老朋友。
And so what I did is, I lived alone in an apartment, and I just worked. If you opened the kitchen drawers where there should have been utensils, there were Post-it notes. If you opened the other drawers where there should have been plates, I had envelopes. I had work friends, weekday friends, but I didn't have weekend friends.
我能做的僅是獨居於公寓中，埋頭工作。若你在我家拉開廚具抽屜，你看到會是各種便利貼。你若拉開盤具抽屜，那兒將充滿信封。我有同事朋友，工作日的友人，但到週末，我又是孤身一人。
And so my weekends were these long, howling silences. And I was lonely. And loneliness, unexpectedly, came to me in the form of -- it felt like fear, a burning in my stomach. And it felt a little like drunkenness, just making bad decisions, just fluidity, lack of solidity.
我的週末是漫長的寂靜。我很孤獨。寂寞以意想不到的方式擊垮了我，它像是一種恐懼，一種胃中的焦灼感。有時又像是醉酒的感覺，我無法作出正確的選擇，一切都隨波逐流，毫無立足點。
And the painful part of that moment was the awareness that the emptiness in my apartment was just reflective of the emptiness in myself, and that I had fallen for some of the lies that our culture tells us.
最讓我痛苦的是，我意識到空空蕩蕩的公寓只是我內心空虛的一種外在映射，我被我們的文化中的謊言欺騙。
The first lie is that career success is fulfilling. I've had a fair bit of career success, and I've found that it helps me avoid the shame I would feel if I felt myself a failure, but it hasn't given me any positive good.
第一條謊言是，事業成功會讓你感到滿足。我在事業上是小有成就，它幫助我避免那種覺得自己是個廢物的挫敗感，但它也給不了我任何的正能量。
The second lie is I can make myself happy, that if I just win one more victory, lose 15 pounds, do a little more yoga, I'll get happy. And that's the lie of self-sufficiency. But as anybody on their deathbed will tell you, the things that make people happy is the deep relationships of life, the losing of self-sufficiency.
第二個謊言是，若我可以再勝利一次，我可以讓自己變快樂。像是減肥15磅，做一下瑜伽，我就會變得開心起來。這是“自給自足”的謊言。任何即將離世的人都會跟你說，人生中最愉悅的莫過於各種深厚的交情，忘記自給自足的概念。
The third lie is the lie of the meritocracy. The message of the meritocracy is you are what you accomplish. The myth of the meritocracy is you can earn dignity by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love, you can "earn" your way to love.
第三個是關於精英主義的謊言。這個主義傳遞著一個信息：你的成就造就了你。精英主義告訴人們，他們可以通過穿戴名牌贏得自尊。精英主義是有條件的愛，你可以努力“掙”到愛。
The anthropology of the meritocracy is you're not a soul to be purified, you're a set of skills to be maximized. And the evil of the meritocracy is that people who've achieved a little more than others are actually worth a little more than others. And so the wages of sin are sin. And my sins were the sins of omission-- not reaching out, failing to show up for my friends, evasion, avoiding conflict.
精英主義不會把你看作一個需要被救贖的靈魂，而是技能被最大化利用的技能套裝。它最邪惡之處是，比別人取得多一點成就的人會被看作更有價值。罪的代價還是罪惡。而我的罪在於我的疏忽，沒有主動去社交，沒有和友人保持聯繫，迴避、繞開衝突。
And the weird thing was that as I was falling into the valley -- it was a valley of disconnection -- a lot of other people were doing that, too. And that's sort of the secret to my career; a lot of the things that happen to me are always happening to a lot of other people. I'm a very average person with above average communication skills.
更奇怪的是，當我漸漸跌入低谷中時，就與外界失聯了，很多人也正經歷著這些。這也算是我事業的秘密吧，我的人生中發生的事，通常也會發生在其他人身上。我是個平凡的人，雖然我的溝通能力還行。
And so I was detached. And at the same time, a lot of other people were detached and isolated and fragmented from each other. Thirty-five percent of Americans over 45 are chronically lonely. Only eight percent of Americans report having meaningful conversation with their neighbors. Only 32 percent of Americans say they trust their neighbors, and only 18 percent of millennials.
我產生被孤立感的同時，很多人也有同感，感到自己是座孤島，與別人被拆分開。百分之三十五45歲以上的美國人長期感到孤獨。只有百分之八的美國人與他們的鄰居之間有過深度交談。只有百分之三十二的美國人，以及百分之十八的千禧一代說他們信任他們的鄰居。
The fastest-growing political party is unaffiliated. The fastest-growing religious movement is unaffiliated. Depression rates are rising, mental health problems are rising. The suicide rate has risen 30 percent since 1999.
發展最快的政治黨派是獨立的。擴張得最快的宗教運動也是與別的宗教無關聯的。抑鬱症比例在上升，心理疾病變得更普遍。自殺率自1999年上升了百分之三十。
For teen suicides over the last several years, the suicide rate has risen by 70 percent. Forty-five thousand Americans kill themselves every year; 72,000 die from opioid addictions; life expectancy is falling, not rising.
近幾年青少年自殺率上升了百分之七十。每年四萬五千美國人死於自殺，七萬兩千死於鴉片類藥品上癮；平均壽命在變短而不是變長。
So what I mean to tell you, I flew out here to say that we have an economic crisis, we have environmental crisis, we have a political crisis. We also have a social and relational crisis; we're in the valley. We're fragmented from each other, we've got cascades of lies coming out of Washington ... We're in the valley.
所以我今天來到這裡想說的是，如今人類面臨著經濟、環境危機還有政治危機。我們還經歷著社交與人際關係危機。我們正處於那個低谷。人際關係支離破碎，而政界也是謊話連篇...我們困在了這個低谷。
And so I've spent the last five years -- how do you get out of a valley? The Greeks used to say, "You suffer your way to wisdom." And from that dark period where I started, I've had a few realizations. The first is, freedom sucks. Economic freedom is OK, political freedom is great, social freedom sucks.
在過去的這五年中，我一直在思考如何走出這個低谷。古希臘人常說說，“必經磨難，終得智慧”。在我人生那段黑暗時光中，我有了些許認識。第一，自由糟透了。經濟自由還可以，政治自由非常好，社交自由是件壞事。
The unrooted man is the adrift man. The unrooted man is the unremembered man, because he's uncommitted to things. Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in, it's a river you want to get across, so you can commit and plant yourself on the other side.
無根之人註定要漂泊。無根之人註定會被遺忘，因為他從不會做出承諾。自由不是你可暢遊的海洋，而是你需跨越的一條河流，這樣你才可以紮根於河對岸。
The second thing I learned is that when you have one of those bad moments in life, you can either be broken, or you can be broken open. And we all know people who are broken. They've endured some pain or grief, they get smaller, they get angrier, resentful, they lash out. As the saying is, "Pain that is not transformed gets transmitted."
我學到的第二件事是，當壞事發生在你身上時，你不是被打擊，就是思維被打開。我們都認識受過打擊的人。他們忍受著痛苦與悲傷，愈加變小，愈發憤世嫉俗，抨擊時事。俗話說，“不被轉化的痛苦會被傳播”。
But other people are broken open. Suffering's great power is that it's an interruption of life. It reminds you you're not the person you thought you were. The theologian Paul Tillich said what suffering does is it carves through what you thought was the floor of the basement of your soul, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below.
另一些人的思維會被磨難打開。磨難的破壞力在於它會擾亂正常生活。它會提醒你，你與想象中的自己不一樣。神學家保羅·提利時說，磨難會穿透你以為是你的靈魂最深的地方，露出一個蛀洞，然後再往深處挖掘，露出又一個蛀洞。
You realize there are depths of yourself you never anticipated, and only spiritual and relational food will fill those depths. And when you get down there, you get out of the head of the ego and you get into the heart, the desiring heart. The idea that what we really yearn for is longing and love for another, the kind of thing that Louis de Bernières described in his book, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin."
你觸及到深度是你從未預料到的，而能填補那深層空虛的只有精神糧食和人際關係。當你到達那深處，你會忘記自我，觸及心靈，充滿渴求的心靈。我們真正想要的是對他人的愛與思念，路易·德博尼爾在他的書中寫過有關的感受。在《柯萊利上尉的曼陀林》中。
He had an old guy talking to his daughter about his relationship with his late wife, and the old guy says, "Love itself is whatever is leftover when being in love is burned away. And this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
他寫了一個老人和他女兒訴說他與去世的妻子的故事，老人說到，“愛的本質是熱愛之火燒盡時剩下的一切。這既是一種藝術，也是幸運的巧合。
Your mother and I had it. We had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we discovered that we are one tree and not two." That's what the heart yearns for.
你媽媽和我有幸擁有它。我們的根在地底深深纏繞，當那些美麗的花瓣從樹枝上凋落時，我們發現，我們早已融為一棵大樹。”這是我們心之所求。
The second thing you discover is your soul. Now, I don't ask you to believe in God or not believe in God, but I do ask you to believe that there's a piece of you that has no shape, size, color or weight, but that gives you infinite dignity and value. Rich and successful people don't have more of this than less successful people.
第二件事是，你會認識自己的靈魂。我並非要傳教，讓你去相信上帝，但我希望你可以相信你的一部分是無形，無色，無量的，但它能給予你無限的自尊和價值。富有、成功人士並不會比那些尚未成功之人多一絲的靈魂。
Slavery is wrong because it's an obliteration of another soul. Rape is not just an attack on a bunch of physical molecules, it's an attempt to insult another person's soul. And what the soul does is it yearns for righteousness.
奴隸制之所以是錯的，是因為它試圖抹殺一個靈魂。強姦不僅是對肉體的折磨，更是對一個靈魂的褻瀆。靈魂渴求的是正義。
The heart yearns for fusion with another, the soul yearns for righteousness. And that led to my third realization, which I borrowed from Einstein: "The problem you have is not going to be solved at the level of consciousness on which you created it. You have to expand to a different level of consciousness."
心之所求是與另一顆心的融合，而靈魂之所求則是正義。這也讓我意識到第三件事，這裡我借用愛因斯坦的話：“用產生問題的思維解決問題是行不通的。你要拓展思維至新的層次”。
So what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is you throw yourself on your friends and you have deeper conversations that you ever had before. But the second thing you do, you have to go out alone into the wilderness.
那麼我們應該怎麼辦呢? 第一件事是，讓自己全身投入於朋友之間，與他們進行從未有過的深層交談。第二件事有些不同，你需要獨自融入大自然。
You go out into that place where there's nobody there to perform, and the ego has nothing to do, and it crumbles, and only then are you capable of being loved. I have a friend who said that when her daughter was born, she realized that she loved her more than evolution required.
你需要去到一個地方，在那兒沒有任何人會是你的觀眾，在這裡你的自尊心毫無用處並逐漸粉碎，只有那時，你才可以被愛。我有一個朋友告訴我，當她女兒出生時，她意識到，她愛女兒多過於進化所需。
And I've always loved that.
我太喜歡這句話了。
Because it talks about the peace that's at the deep of ourself, our inexplicable care for one another. And when you touch that spot, you're ready to be rescued. The hard thing about when you're in the valley is that you can't climb out; somebody has to reach in and pull you out. It happened to me. I got, luckily, invited over to a house by a couple named Kathy and David, and they were --
因為它講述的是我們內心深處的平靜，我們對彼此難以言述的關心。當你觸及那個層次，你就可以被救贖了。當你處在低谷中時，最難的事莫過於無法獨自爬出這個低窪；有人需要伸出援手，將你拉出。這也發生在了我身上。我有幸被凱茜和大衛夫婦邀請去他們家。
They had a kid in the DC public school, his name's Santi. Santi had a friend who needed a place to stay because his mom had some health issues. And then that kid had a friend and that kid had a friend. When I went to their house six years ago, I walk in the door, there's like 25 around the kitchen table, a whole bunch sleeping downstairs in the basement.
他們的孩子桑提在華盛頓的公立學校讀書。桑提的一個朋友需要找個地方住，因為他的媽媽有些健康問題。而那個朋友也認識個需要幫助的朋友，以此類推。當我去到他們家做客時，我走進門，餐桌旁坐著二十五個人，還有一些正在地下室睡著。
I reach out to introduce myself to a kid, and he says, "We don't really shake hands here. We just hug here." And I'm not the huggiest guy on the face of the earth, but I've been going back to that home every Thursday night when I'm in town, and just hugging all those kids. They demand intimacy.
我正要向一個孩子做自我介紹，他說道，“我們這兒可不流行握手，抱一個吧。“ 我雖不是地球上最喜歡擁抱的人，但有著什麼一直吸引著我，在每週四去到他們家時，與這些孩子一個個擁抱問好。他們想與你親密無間。
They demand that you behave in a way where you're showing all the way up. And they teach you a new way to live, which is the cure for all the ills of our culture which is a way of direct -- really putting relationship first, not just as a word, but as a reality.
他們需要你完全放開自我。他們教會你一種全新的生活方式，可以治癒所有文化之殤，這其實很簡單，就是將人際關係放在第一位，並非空談，而要實踐。
And the beautiful thing is, these communities are everywhere. I started something at the Aspen Institute called "Weave: The Social Fabric." This is our logo here. And we plop into a place and we find weavers anywhere, everywhere. We find people like Asiaha Butler, who grew up in -- who lived in Chicago, in Englewood, in a tough neighborhood.
而最美好之處就是，這種團體無處不在。我在阿斯彭研究所建立了“織：社會之網”。這是我們的標誌。我們發現身邊有很多織網者。像是艾依莎·巴特勒 -- 她居住在芝加哥的英格伍德，那是一個危險的街區。
And she was about to move because it was so dangerous, and she looked across the street and she saw two little girls playing in an empty lot with broken bottles, and she turned to her husband and she said, "We're not leaving. We're not going to be just another family that abandon that." And she Googled "volunteer in Englewood," and now she runs R.A.G.E., the big community organization there.
因為身處危險地段，她正想要搬家，但她看到路對邊，有兩個小女孩在空停車場裡玩碎瓶子。她轉頭和她丈夫說，“我們不搬了。我們不能像其他家庭那樣一走了之，丟下這裡不管。”她馬上搜索了“英格伍德志願者”，現在她管理著“R.A.G.E”，那裡最大的社區組織。
Some of these people have had tough valleys. I met a woman named Sarah in Ohio who came home from an antiquing trip and found that her husband had killed himself and their two kids.
很多人都經歷過人生的低谷。我遇見一個叫莎拉的女士，她在一段古董之旅結束回家後，發現她丈夫殺了她的兩個孩子後自殺了。
She now runs a free pharmacy, she volunteers in the community, she helps women cope with violence, she teaches. She told me, "I grew from this experience because I was angry. I was going to fight back against what he tried to do to me by making a difference in the world. See, he didn't kill me. My response to him is, 'Whatever you meant to do to me, screw you, you're not going to do it.'"
她現在管理一所免費藥房，在社區裡積極做志願工作，幫助並教其他女性處理暴力事件，“我能從這段經歷裡成長，是因為我很憤怒”，她說，“我要反擊並通過改變這個世界來向他宣戰。他沒能殺了我。我想對他說，‘無論你怎樣試圖傷害我，去你的，你就是不行。' "
These weavers are not living an individualistic life, they're living a relationist life, they have a different set of values. They have moral motivations. They have vocational certitude, they have planted themselves down. I met a guy in Youngstown, Ohio, who just held up a sign in the town square, "Defend Youngstown." They have radical mutuality, and they are geniuses at relationship.
這些織網者都不以個人主義的方式生活，他們重視人際關係，有一套不同的價值觀。他們充滿道德積極性。他們願意發聲，他們平易近人。我曾在俄亥俄州的揚斯敦遇見一個人，他當時在鎮中心舉著一塊牌子，上面寫著：“捍衛揚斯敦”。他們有著超前的集體感，他們是人際關係方面天才。
There's a woman named Mary Gordon who runs something called Roots of Empathy. And what they do is they take a bunch of kids, an eighth grade class, they put a mom and an infant, and then the students have to guess what the infant is thinking, to teach empathy.
有一位叫瑪麗·戈登的女士運營著“同理心種子計劃”。他們聚集一群八年級的孩子，找到一對母嬰，並讓這些學生猜嬰兒在想些什麼，由此來培養他們的同理心。
There was one kid in a class who was bigger than the rest because he'd been held back, been through the foster care system, seen his mom get killed. And he wanted to hold the baby. And the mom was nervous because he looked big and scary.
課上有一個孩子，看起來比其他人都要大，他留了幾級並且一直住在寄養家庭，他親眼目睹了他母親被殺。他想要抱抱這個嬰兒。那個媽媽有些緊張，因為男孩人高馬大，有些嚇人。
But she let this kid, Darren, hold the baby. He held it, and he was great with it. He gave the baby back and started asking questions about parenthood. And his final question was, "If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you can be a good father?" And so what Roots of Empathy does is they reach down and they grab people out of the valley. And that's what weavers are doing.
但她仍讓這個名叫達倫的男孩抱了嬰兒。他抱著小孩，做得特別棒。他把孩子遞還給了媽媽， 開始問有關當父母的問題。他最後的問題是，“若從沒有人愛過你，你還可能成為一個好父親嗎？”這就是“同理心種子計劃”的力量，他們伸出援手，將人拉出低谷。這也是織網者所做的。
Some of them switch jobs. Some of them stay in their same jobs. But one thing is, they have an intensity to them. I read this -- E.O. Wilson wrote a great book called "Naturalist," about his childhood. When he was seven, his parents were divorcing. And they sent him to Paradise Beach in North Florida. And he'd never seen the ocean before. And he'd never seen a jellyfish before.
他們中的一些人換了工作。另一些會待在同一個崗位上。但他們都有著同樣的熱情。我正在讀 -- E·O·威爾森寫的一本關於他童年的書，叫《自然主義者》。他七歲時，他的父母要離婚。他們把他送到北佛羅里達的天堂灘。他從未見過海洋。沒見過水母。
He wrote, "The creature was astonishing. It existed beyond my imagination." He was sitting on the dock one day and he saw a stingray float beneath his feet. And at that moment, a naturalist was born in the awe and wonder. And he makes this observation: that when you're a child, you see animals at twice the size as you do as an adult.
他寫道：“這種生物太驚奇了。它存在於我想象力之外”。有天，他坐在碼頭上，看到一條魟魚在他腳下游過。那一刻，在敬畏和驚奇中，一個自然主義者誕生了。他發現，當你是個孩子時，會把動物看作大人眼中兩倍大。
And that has always impressed me, because what we want as kids is that moral intensity, to be totally given ourselves over to something and to find that level of vocation. And when you are around these weavers, they see other people at twice the size as normal people. They see deeper into them. And what they see is joy.
這打動了我，因為我們所需的正是孩子所有的強烈道德感，讓我們完全臣服於某物，找到那種使命感。當你身邊圍繞著這些織網者時，他們會將別人看作兩倍大，他們看人更深，他們看到樂趣。
On the first mountain of our life, when we're shooting for our career, we shoot for happiness. And happiness is good, it's the expansion of self. You win a victory, you get a promotion, your team wins the Super Bowl, you're happy. Joy is not the expansion of self, it's the dissolving of self.
在人生第一座大山上，我們的事業剛剛起步時，我們追逐的是幸福感。幸福感是不錯，它是自我的膨脹。你贏了一場戰役，你升職了，你的隊伍贏得了超級碗，你很開心。但樂趣不是自我膨脹，而是自我溶解。
It's the moment when the skin barrier disappears between a mother and her child, it's the moment when a naturalist feels just free in nature. It's the moment where you're so lost in your work or a cause, you have totally self-forgotten. And joy is a better thing to aim for than happiness.
樂趣存在於母親和她孩子之間再無肌膚之隔時，樂趣會在一個自然主義者在大自然中放飛自我時出現。當你完全沉浸在工作和事業中，樂趣會在你忘乎自我時找到你。尋找樂趣比追逐幸福更好。
I collect passages of joy, of people when they lose it. One of my favorite is from Zadie Smith. In 1999, she was in a London nightclub, looking for her friends, wondering where her handbag was. And suddenly, as she writes, "... a rail-thin man with enormous eyes reached across a sea of bodies for my hand.
我一直在收集人們描寫樂趣的文字。其中我最喜歡的是扎迪·史密斯寫的一段。1999年，她在倫敦的一家夜店，她一邊尋找她的的朋友，一邊在找自己的手袋。她寫道，“突然間，一個有著大眼睛的精瘦男人越過人海，向我伸出手。
He kept asking me the same thing over and over, 'Are you feeling it?' My ridiculous heels were killing me, I was terrified that I might die, yet I felt simultaneously overwhelmed with delight that 'Can I Kick It?' should happen to be playing on this precise moment in the history of the world on the sound system, and it was now morphing into 'Teen Spirit.' I took the man's hand, the top of my head blew away, we danced, we danced, we gave ourselves up to joy."
他一遍遍地問我同一個問題，‘你感受到了嗎？’我正受著高跟鞋的折磨，擔心著我的人身安全，但同時，我心中充滿了喜悅，因為‘Can I Kick It?’這首歌正好在人類歷史的這個特定時刻在這家夜店的音響中播出，現在，正慢慢漸進到‘Teen Spirit’ 這首歌。我握住了那個男人的手，我完全被震住了，我們不停地跳著舞，無比快樂”。
And so what I'm trying to describe is two different life mindsets. The first mountain mindset, which is about individual happiness and career success. And it's a good mindset, I have nothing against it. But we're in a national valley, because we don't have the other mindset to balance it.
所以說，我嘗試描述的是兩種生活方式。第一種“登山模式”有關個人幸福和事業成功。我不反對這種價值觀，因為它沒什麼問題。但我們的國家正處在低谷中，正因為我們缺少另一種生活方式來維持平衡。
We no longer feel good about ourselves as a people, we've lost our defining faith in our future, we don't see each other deeply, we don't treat each other as well. And we need a lot of changes. We need an economic change and environmental change.
我們不再為自己感到高興，我們已失去了對未來的信念，我們不再與人交往頗深， 我們不再友善地對待他人。我們急需改變。我們需要經濟和環境的改變。
But we also need a cultural and relational revolution. We need to name the language of a recovered society. And to me, the weavers have found that language.
但我們同時也需要文化和社會關係上的革命。我們需要一種語言來描述這個正在恢復的社會。對我來說，織網者找到了這一語言。
My theory of social change is that society changes when a small group of people find a better way to live, and the rest of us copy them. And these weavers have found a better way to live. And you don't have to theorize about it.
我認為，社會改變在於一些人找到更好的生活方式，而其他人效仿。這些織網者已經找到了一個更好的生活方式。你無須將它理論化。
They are out there as community builders all around the country. We just have to shift our lives a little, so we can say, "I'm a weaver, we're a weaver." And if we do that, the hole inside ourselves gets filled, but more important, the social unity gets repaired.
他們作為團體的建造者遍佈在這個國家的每個角落。我們只需稍微改變一下自己的生活，這樣我們就能說，“我是一個織網者，我們都是織網者。”當我們都這樣做時，我們內心的空虛將被填補，更重要的是，整個社會將被修復。
Thank you very much.
謝謝。
