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1、 and congratulations to Kenyons graduating class of 2005. （如果你感觉热的汗都要下来了，我建议你就让汗水尽情流淌吧，反正我打算这么干了。实际上，我要 喃喃着撩起学士服，掏出手绢 。 欢迎 *各位家长们*？，并且祝贺 Kenyon 05 界毕业生们。There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boy

2、s. Hows the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”有两条年轻的鱼迎面遇到一条老鱼。老鱼点头打招呼道 “早上好呀，孩子们。这水怎么样？“ 两条年轻的鱼继续游了一会儿，终于其中一条忍不住看看另一条说道 ”什么他妈的是水呀？“This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the

3、 deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story “thing” turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if youre worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please dont be. I am not th

4、e wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, b

5、anal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning. 美国大学毕业典礼演讲标准的开场通常是一个富于教育意义的小故事。这种故事比起毕业典礼上常见的说教，算是不那么扯淡的。但是请不要以为我视自己为这条老而智慧的鱼，来向你们这些小鱼儿传道什么是水。这个故事只是想说：最明显、最重要的现实往往最不易被察觉或讨论的。当然，这么说出来也只是老生常谈。但是事实是，成年人日复一日的生活中，老生常谈确是关乎生死。这就是我想在这个爽快美好的

6、早晨于你们分享的一点想法。Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that Im supposed to talk about your liberal arts educations meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. 当然这类演讲的主要目的在于我应该给你们讲讲博雅教育（译者：即 liberal arts ed

7、ucation） 的意义，给你们解释，为何你们-+马上要拿到的学位有着实在的人本价值，而非仅仅物质上的回报。So lets talk about the single most pervasive clich in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think.所以我们来聊聊毕业典礼模式中最常见的陈词滥调，即

8、是人文教育不应该是填充知识，而是所谓的教你如何思考。If youre like me as a student, youve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to

9、think. 如果你像当年的我，你听这个就烦了，你觉得让别人来教你如何思考的实在是有点耻辱。因为你已经进入到了这么好的大学，它似乎证明了你已经懂得如何思考。 But Im going to posit to you that the liberal arts clich turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that were supposed to get in a place like this isnt really about the capa

10、city to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, Id ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally

11、obvious. 但是我想要预设，博雅教育（译者注：liberal arts education, 也称文理教育、通识教育）的陈词滥调丝毫不具有侮辱性，因为我们应该在这样一个地方（译者：指大学）所获得的真正关于思考的重要的教育，并非关于思考的能力，而是关于思考内容的选择。如果你觉得你自己显而易见有完全的自有去选择思考什么，以致于讨论它就是浪费时间，我会想要让你琢磨一下鱼和水的故事，并且在接下来几分钟时间里，先搁置你对于浪费时间讨论这么明显事情的质疑。Heres another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting tog

12、ether in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, its not like I dont have actual reasons for not

13、believing in God. Its not like I havent ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldnt see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cr

14、ied out Oh, God, if there is a God, Im lost in this blizzard, and Im gonna die if you dont help me.” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”再讲个小寓言故事。两个男人在遥远的阿拉斯加的荒野酒吧喝酒。一个是很虔诚的信教者,另一个是无神论者,俩人在讨论上帝的存在。酒过三巡，讨论气氛开始紧张。无神论者说:听着，我不是无缘无故不信神。而是我没经历过上帝啊祈祷之类的事。上个月我被一场暴风雪困住,我完全迷路了,看不见任何东西。温度低于五十五（译者：指华氏）, 所以我试着跪下祈祷说,上帝,如果你真的存在,帮帮我,不然我就要死了。然后那个教徒迷惑的看着无神论