Thisiswater豆瓣翻译Word文件下载.docx

1、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, boys. 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

2、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 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

3、 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 the 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 abo

4、ut. 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, banal 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

5、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 expla

6、in 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 education） 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

7、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

8、 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 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

9、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 capacity 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 was

10、te 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 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

11、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 together 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 Go

12、d 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 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 te

13、rrible 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 cried 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

14、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

15、。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者说,那你应该已经确信了啊。你现在好端端坐在这呢。靠！最后全靠一群爱斯基摩人凑巧在闲逛发现了我然后帮我指明了路。Its easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experie

16、nce can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those peoples two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one

17、guys interpretation is true and the other guys is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a persons most basic orientation toward the world, and the me

18、aning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. 用博雅教育的传统来分析这个故事并不难：对不同的人来说，完全相同的经历会有截然不同的体验，前提是这两人在两种不同的信仰模式下，会用两种不同的方式构建经验。我们鼓励信仰之间的包容和信仰的多样性，所以在分析中我们并不是想说其中一人的理解是对的，而另一个的是错的或是不好的。这很好地方。仿佛我们认为一个人面对世界最基本的认知，他对

19、他的人生经验的看法，某种程度，但是我们就没机会探究这些人们的思考模式和信仰的根本来源。也就是说，这来自两个人心里的上的潜移默化,就像他的身高和脚码、是与生俱来的；或者，像是语言的学习一样来自周围文化。As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, theres the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of th

20、e possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. Theyre probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists problem

21、is exactly the same as the storys unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesnt even know hes locked up.好比我们怎样构建意义不是个人的、刻意的选择。而是，这还有关狂妄。那个无神论者是如此确信爱斯基摩人的出现和他的祈祷毫无关系。当然，很多信教的人也很狂妄，对自己的认识坚信不疑。他们可能比无神论者更让人讨厌。但是宗教卫道士们的问题跟这个故事中的无神论者是一样的：

22、盲目自信，封闭的思想，其等同于一个彻底的监狱以至于被监禁之人都不知道自己在监狱之中。The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff t

23、hat I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.我就是想说，这就是所谓的教会我如何思考。少一点目中无人的狂妄。多一点有关自己和自己信念的批判性的自我意识。因为很多我不假思索就确信的事情，最终是彻底错误的。学会这一点的过程并不容易,我相信对于你们也是如此。Here is just one example of the total w

24、rongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness be

25、cause its so socially repulsive. But its pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind

26、YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other peoples thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.有个例子可以证明我不假思索就确认的东西是大错特错的：我从经验判断，我是宇宙的绝对中心，我是现存最真实，最鲜明的人。我们很少会花时间思考这种自我为中心的念头，因为这太过令人讨厌。但另一方面我们所有人都是这样的。这是我

27、们的默认设置，一出生就接入了我们体内。想想吧：你所经历过的一切体验中，你都是其绝对中心。你所接触的世界是“你”面前的，身后的，在“你”左右的。它在“你”的电视上或显示器里等等。别人的思维和感受都与你沟通，而你自己才是最直接，最紧急，最真实的。Please dont worry that Im getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. Its a matter of my choo

28、sing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being

29、 “well-adjusted”, which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.请不要担心，我不准备向你布道什么是同情、什么是他人导向或者什么是所谓的美德。这不关美德什么事儿。这关系到我怎样以某种方式改变或者得到自我天性的解放，自身有种硬性的默认的设置让自己潜意识的以自我为中心，并以自己的视界去解读每个东西。那些能够调整自己这种本能的认知方式的人会被看做“良好调整的”，我要说明的是，这并不是个随随便便就命名的术语。Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question

30、is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education least in my own case is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.根据权威的学术见解，问题是显而易见的，即如何去调整自身的认识包括根据实际的情况和或者自己的理解。这个问题非常棘手。也许最危险的就是学术教育本身。至少我是这样的。学术教育可以把我培养成一个出色的脑袋，使我沉溺于抽象理论的世界，而并非简单