特别申明：这里只是记录Jordan Peterson的12 rules for life 内容，机器翻译，无意侵犯版权。

R UL E 11

DONOT BOTHER CHILDREN WHEN THEY ARE

SKATEBOARDING

法则11：孩子们玩滑板时，不要打扰他们

DANGER AND MASTERY

危险和掌握

There was a time when kids skateboarded onthe west side of Sidney Smith Hall, at the University of Toronto, where I work.Sometimes I stood there and watched them. There are rough, wide, shallowconcrete steps there, leading up from the street to the front entrance,accompanied by tubular iron handrails, about two and a half inches in diameterand twenty feet long. The crazy kids, almost always boys, would pull back aboutfifteen yards from the top of the steps. Then they would place a foot on theirboards, and skate like mad to get up some speed. Just before they collided withthe handrail, they would reach down, grab their board with a single hand andjump onto the top of the rail, boardsliding their way down its length,propelling themselves off and landing— sometimes, gracefully, still atop theirboards, sometimes, painfully, off them. Either way, they were soon back at it.

曾经有一段时间，我工作的多伦多大学西德尼·史密斯大厅(Sidney Smith Hall)西侧的孩子们在玩滑板。有时我站在那里看着他们。那里有粗糙的、宽阔的、浅的混凝土台阶，从街上通到正门，有管道式的铁扶手，直径约2.5英寸，长20英尺。那些疯狂的孩子们，几乎都是男孩，会从台阶顶端往后退15码。然后他们会把一只脚放在木板上，拼命地滑，以加快速度。就在他们撞上扶手之前，他们会把手伸下去，用一只手抓住木板，跳到栏杆顶上，木板顺着栏杆的长度滑下来，然后自己撑着离开并着陆——有时，优雅地，仍然站在木板上，有时，痛苦地，从上面掉下来。不管怎样，他们很快又开始了。

Some might call that stupid. Maybe it was.But it was brave, too. I thought those kids were amazing. I thought theydeserved a pat on the back and some honest admiration. Of course it wasdangerous. Danger was the point. They wanted to triumph over danger. They wouldhave been safer in protective equipment, but that would have ruined it. Theyweren’t trying to be safe. They were trying to become competent—and it’scompetence that makes people as safe as they can truly be.

有些人可能会说这很愚蠢。也许是。但它也很勇敢。我觉得那些孩子很棒。我认为他们值得表扬和一些真诚的赞赏。当然很危险。危险是关键。他们想战胜危险。他们穿着防护装备会更安全，但那会毁了它。他们不想要安全。他们试图成为有竞争力的人——而正是这种能力让人们尽可能的安全。

I wouldn’t dare do what those kids weredoing. Not only that, I couldn’t. I certainly couldn’t climb a constructioncrane, like a certain type of modern daredevil, evident on YouTube (and, ofcourse, people who work on construction cranes). I don’t like heights, althoughthe twenty-five thousand feet to which airliners ascend is so high that itdoesn’t bother me. I have flown several times in a carbon fibre stuntplane—even doing a hammerhead roll—and that was OK, although it’s veryphysically and mentally demanding. (To perform a hammerhead roll, you pilot theplane straight up vertically, until the force of gravity makes it stall. Thenit falls backwards, corkscrewing, until eventually it flips and noses straightdown, after which you pull out of the dive. Or you don’t do another hammerheadroll.) But I can’t skateboard—especially down handrails—and I can’t climbcranes.

我不敢做那些孩子们在做的事。不仅如此，我不能。我当然不会爬建筑起重机，就像某种现代的不怕死的人，这在YouTube上很明显(当然，也包括从事建筑起重机工作的人)。我不喜欢高，尽管飞机要飞到两万五千英尺的高空，这并不会让我感到烦恼。我曾经坐过几次碳纤维特技飞机——甚至做过锤头翻滚——这没什么大不了的，尽管这对我的身体和精神要求都很高。(要做锤头滚转，你要让飞机垂直向上，直到重力使它失速。然后，它向后坠落，拧开瓶塞，直到最后它翻转过来，鼻子垂直向下，然后你就退出了俯冲。或者你不做另一个锤头滚。)但我不会滑板，尤其是不会滑下扶手，也不会爬起重机。

Sidney Smith Hall faces another street onthe east side. Along that street, named St. George—ironically enough—theuniversity installed a series of rough, hard-edged, concrete plant boxes,sloping down to the roadway. The kids used to go out there, too, and boardslidealong the box edges, as they did along the concrete surround of a sculptureadjacent to the building. That didn’t last very long. Little steel bracketsknown as “skatestoppers” soon appeared, every two or three feet, along thoseedges. When I first saw them, I remembered something that happened in Torontoseveral years previously. Two weeks before elementary school classes started,throughout the city, all the playground equipment disappeared. The legislationgoverning such things had changed, and there was a panic about insurability.The playgrounds were hastily removed, even though they were sufficiently safe,grandfathered re their insurability, and often paid for (and quite recently) byparents. This meant no playgrounds at all for more than a year. During thistime, I often saw bored but admirable kids charging around on the roof of ourlocal school. It was that or scrounge about in the dirt with the cats and theless adventurous children.

西德尼·史密斯大厅在东侧面对另一条街。颇具讽刺意味的是，沿着这条名为圣乔治的街道，大学安装了一系列粗糙的、边缘坚硬的混凝土厂房，倾斜到路面上。孩子们过去也经常去那里，沿着盒子的边缘滑木板，就像他们沿着建筑旁边的一座雕塑的混凝土边缘滑一样。这并没有持续很长时间。不久，每隔两到三英尺，就会有一个叫做“溜冰板”的小钢支架沿着这些边缘出现。当我第一次看到他们时，我想起几年前在多伦多发生的一件事。小学开学前两周，全市所有的操场设备都不见了。管理这类事情的立法已经改变，人们对保险的可保性产生了恐慌。尽管操场足够安全，但还是被匆忙拆除了。这些操场的保险责任由祖父辈承担，而且经常由父母支付(最近才支付)费用。这意味着一年多来根本没有操场。在这段时间里，我经常看到无聊但令人钦佩的孩子们在我们当地学校的屋顶上跑来跑去。或者和猫以及不那么爱冒险的孩子们在泥土里到处找。

I say “sufficiently safe” about thedemolished playgrounds because when playgrounds are made too safe, kids eitherstop playing in them or start playing in unintended ways. Kids need playgroundsdangerous enough to remain challenging. People, including children (who arepeople too, after all) don’t seek to minimize risk. They seek to optimize it.They drive and walk and love and play so that they achieve what they desire,but they push themselves a bit at the same time, too, so they continue todevelop. Thus, if things are made too safe, people (including children) startto figure out ways to make them dangerous again.

我说被拆除的操场“足够安全”，是因为当操场变得太安全时，孩子们要么停止在里面玩耍，要么开始以意想不到的方式玩耍。孩子们需要足够危险的游乐场来保持挑战性。人们，包括儿童(毕竟他们也是人)并不寻求将风险最小化。他们试图优化它。他们开车、散步、恋爱、玩耍，这样他们就能实现自己的愿望，但同时他们也在推动自己，这样他们就能继续发展。因此，如果事情变得过于安全，人们(包括孩子)就会开始想办法让它们再次变得危险。

When untrammeled—and encouraged—we preferto live on the edge. There, we can still be both confident in our experienceand confronting the chaos that helps us develop. We’re hard-wired, for thatreason, to enjoy risk (some of us more than others). We feel invigorated andexcited when we work to optimize our future performance, while playing in thepresent. Otherwise we lumber around, sloth-like, unconscious, unformed and careless.Overprotected, we will fail when something dangerous, unexpected and full ofopportunity suddenly makes its appearance, as it inevitably will.

当我们不受约束——受到鼓励——我们更愿意生活在边缘。在那里，我们仍然可以对我们的经验充满信心，并面对帮助我们发展的混乱。出于这个原因，我们天生就喜欢冒险(有些人比其他人更喜欢)。当我们努力优化自己未来的表现时，我们会感到精力充沛和兴奋，同时也会享受当下。否则，我们就会像树懒一样东倒西歪、毫无知觉、毫无章法、漫不经心。过度保护，当一些危险的、意想不到的、充满机遇的东西突然出现时，我们就会失败，这是不可避免的。

The skatestoppers are unattractive. Thesurround of the nearby sculpture would have to have been badly damaged bydiligent boardsliders before it would look as mean as it does now, studded withmetal like a pit bull’s collar. The large plant boxes have metal guards placedat irregular intervals across their tops, and this, in addition to the wearcaused by the skateboarders, produces a dismal impression of poor design,resentment and badly executed afterthoughts. It gives the area, which wassupposed to be beautified by the sculpture and vegetation, a genericindustrial/prison/mental institution/work-camp look of the kind that appearswhen builders and public officials do not like or trust the people they serve.

溜冰鞋没有吸引力。附近雕塑的周围一定是被勤奋的木板滑块严重损坏了，才会像现在这么难看，上面镶着像斗牛犬项圈一样的金属。大型植物箱的顶部有不规则间隔的金属护罩，这除了滑板运动员造成的磨损外，还会给人留下糟糕的设计、怨恨和事后糟糕执行的印象。它赋予了本应被雕塑和植被美化的区域一种普通的工业/监狱/精神病院/劳改营的外观，就像建筑工人和政府官员不喜欢或不信任他们所服务的人民那样。

The sheer harsh ugliness of the solutionmakes a lie of the reasons for its implementation.

该解决方案的极端丑陋使得其实施的理由成为谎言。

Successand Resentment

成功和怨恨

If you read the depth psychologists—Freudand Jung, for example, as well as their precursor, Friedrich Nietzsche—youlearn that there is a dark side to everything. Freud delved deeply into thelatent, implicit content of dreams, which were often aimed, in his opinion, atthe expression of some improper wish. Jung believed that every act of socialpropriety was accompanied by its evil twin, its unconscious shadow. Nietzscheinvestigated the role played by what he termed ressentiment in motivating whatwere ostensibly selfless actions —and, often, exhibited all too publicly.

如果你深入阅读心理学家——例如弗洛伊德和荣格，以及他们的先驱弗里德里希•尼采——你就会发现，任何事物都有其阴暗面。弗洛伊德深入研究了梦的潜在的、隐含的内容，在他看来，梦常常是为了表达某种不恰当的愿望。荣格认为，每一个社会礼仪的行为都伴随着它的邪恶孪生兄弟——无意识的影子。尼采研究了他所谓的怨恨在激励那些表面上无私的行为中所扮演的角色，而这些行为经常被公开地表现出来。

For that man be deliveredfrom revenge—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow afterlong storms. The tarantulas, of course, would have it otherwise. “What justicemeans to us is precisely that the world be filled with the storms of ourrevenge”—thus they speak to each other. “We shall wreak vengeange and abuse onall whose equals we are not”— thus do the tarantula-hearts vow. “And ‘will toequality’ shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that haspower we want to raise our clamor!” You preachers of equality, the tyrant-maniaof impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitionsto be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue.

对我来说，那是通往最高希望的桥梁，是历经风雨后的彩虹。当然，狼蛛也会有不同的反应。“正义对我们的意义恰恰在于，这个世界充满了我们复仇的风暴”——他们就是这样彼此交谈的。狼蛛之心誓言:“我们将对所有与我们不平等的人进行报复和虐待。”“从今以后，‘平等的意志’将成为美德的名称;我们要大声疾呼，反对一切有力量的东西!“你们这些平等的传道者，无能为力的暴虐狂就这样从你们身上大声疾呼要求平等:你们最隐秘的野心就是要成为暴君，就这样用美德的语言把自己掩盖起来。

The incomparable English essayist GeorgeOrwell knew this sort of thing well. In 1937, he wrote The Road to Wigan Pier,which was in part a scathing attack on upper-class British socialists (this,despite being inclined towards socialism himself). In the first half of thisbook, Orwell portrays the appalling conditions faced by UK miners in the 1930s。

无与伦比的英国散文家乔治·奥威尔对这类事情了如指掌。1937年，他写了《通往维甘码头的路》(The Road to Wigan Pier)，这在一定程度上是对英国上层she。hui主义者的严厉抨击(尽管他本人也倾向于she。hui主义)。在这本书的前半部分，奥威尔描绘了上世纪30年代英国矿工所面临的可怕状况。

Several dentists have told methat in industrial districts a person over thirty with any of his or her ownteeth is coming to be an abnormality. In Wigan various people gave me theiropinion that it is best to get shut of your teeth as early in life as possible.‘Teeth is just a misery,’ one woman said to me.

A Wigan Pier coal miner had to walk—crawl would be a better word, giventhe height of the mine shafts—up to three miles, underground, in the dark,banging his head and scraping his back, just to get to hisseven-and-a-half-hour shift of backbreaking work. After that, he crawled back.“It is comparable, perhaps, to climbing a smallish mountain before and afteryour day’s work,” stated Orwell. None of the time spent crawling was paid.

维冈码头(Wigan Pier)的一名煤矿工人不得不徒步爬行。鉴于矿井的高度高达3英里(约合1.6公里)，而且是在地下，在黑暗中，他不停地敲打着头，刮着背，只为完成7个半小时的倒班工作。之后，他爬了回来。奥威尔说:“这就好比在一天的工作之前和之后爬一座小山。”花在爬行上的时间都没有得到报酬。

Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier for the Left Book Club, a socialistpublishing group that released a select volume every month. After reading thefirst half of his book, which deals directly with the miners’ personalcircumstances, it is impossible not to feel sympathy for the working poor. Onlya monster could keep his heart hardened through the accounts of the livesOrwell describes:

奥威尔为左翼书友会(Left Book Club)撰写了《通往维甘码头的路》(The Road toWigan Pier)。在读完他的书的前半部分(该书直接涉及矿工的个人情况)后，你不可能不同情那些正在工作的穷人。只有怪物才能在看过奥威尔描述的生活后心还是冷酷的:

It is not long since conditionsin the mines were worse than they are now. There are still living a few veryold women who in their youth have worked underground, crawling on all fours anddragging tubs of coal. They used to go on doing this even when they werepregnant.

不久以前，矿井的情况比现在更糟。现在仍然有一些年纪很大的妇女，她们年轻时在地下工作，四肢爬行，拖着煤桶。他们过去甚至在怀孕的时候也经常这样做。

In book’s second half, however, Orwell turned his gaze to a differentproblem: the comparative unpopularity of socialism in the UK at the time,despite the clear and painful inequity observable everywhere. He concluded thatthe tweedwearing, armchair-philosophizing, victim-identifying,pity-and-contemptdispensing social-reformer types frequently did not like thepoor, as they claimed. Instead, they just hated the rich. They disguised theirresentment and jealousy with piety, sanctimony and self-righteousness. Thingsin the unconscious—or on the social justice–dispensing leftist front—haven’tchanged much, today. It is because of of Freud, Jung, Nietzsche—and Orwell—thatI always wonder, “What, then, do you stand against?” whenever I hear someonesay, too loudly, “I stand for this!” The question seems particularly relevantif the same someone is complaining, criticizing, or trying to change someoneelse’s behaviour.

然而，在书的后半部分，奥威尔将目光转向了一个不同的问题:社会主义在当时的英国相对不受欢迎，尽管到处可见明显而痛苦的不平等。他的结论是，那些穿花呢衣服、坐在扶手椅上进行哲学思考、认同受害者、同情和蔑视社会改革家的人往往不像他们声称的那样喜欢穷人。相反，他们只是讨厌富人。他们用虔诚、圣洁和自以为是来掩饰他们的怨恨和嫉妒。在无意识的情况下，或者在社会正义方面，左派在分配权力方面，今天并没有太大的改变。正是因为弗洛伊德、荣格、尼采——还有奥威尔——我总是在想，“那么，你反对什么?”每当我听到有人大声说:“我支持这个!”如果同一个人还在抱怨、批评或试图改变他人的行为，这个问题就显得尤为重要。

I believe it was Jung who developed the most surgically wicked ofpsychoanalytic dicta: if you cannot understand why someone did something, lookat the consequences—and infer the motivation. This is a psychological scalpel.It’s not always a suitable instrument. It can cut too deeply, or in the wrongplaces. It is, perhaps, a last-resort option. Nonetheless, there are times whenits application proves enlightening.

我相信，荣格发展出了精神分析领域最邪恶的格言:如果你不能理解某人为什么做某事，看看结果——并推断动机。这是心理手术刀。它并不总是一个合适的乐器。它可能切得太深，或者切错了地方。这或许是最后的选择。尽管如此，有时它的应用还是具有启发性的。

If the consequences of placing skatestoppers on plant-boxes and sculpturebases, for example, is unhappy adolescent males and brutalist aestheticdisregard of beauty then, perhaps, that was the aim. When someone claims to beacting from the highest principles, for the good of others, there is no reasonto assume that the person’s motives are genuine. People motivated to makethings better usually aren’t concerned with changing other people—or, if theyare, they take responsibility for making the same changes to themselves (andfirst). Beneath the production of rules stopping the skateboarders from doinghighly skilled, courageous and dangerous things I see the operation of aninsidious and profoundly anti-human spirit.

例如，如果把溜冰鞋放在植物箱和雕塑底座上的后果是不快乐的青春期男性和野兽派美学对美的漠视，那么，也许这就是我们的目标。当有人声称自己的行为是出于最高原则，是为了他人的利益，那么就没有理由认为这个人的动机是真实的。有动力把事情做得更好的人通常不关心改变别人，或者，如果他们关心，他们也会对自己做出同样的改变负责(首先)。在阻止滑板运动员做高技能、勇敢和危险的事情的规则下，我看到了一种潜在的、深刻的反人类精神的运作。

More about Chris

更多关于克里斯

My friend Chris, whom I wrote about earlier, was possessed by such aspirit—to the serious detriment of his mental health. Part of what plagued himwas guilt. He attended elementary and junior high school in a number of towns,up in the frigid expanses of the northernmost Alberta prairie, prior to endingup in the Fairview I wrote about earlier. Fights with Native kids were atoo-common part of his experience, during those moves. It’s no overstatement topoint out that such kids were, on average, rougher than the white kids, or thatthey were touchier (and they had their reasons). I knew this well from my ownexperience.

我的朋友克里斯，就是我之前写过的那个人，就被这种精神所附——这对他的精神健康造成了严重的损害。使他苦恼的部分原因是内疚。在我之前写过的美景镇，他在阿尔伯塔省最北部寒冷广阔的大草原上读小学和初中。在他搬家的过程中，与当地孩子打架是他经历中太常见的一部分。要指出的是，平均而言，这些孩子比白人孩子更粗暴，或者他们更敏感(他们有自己的理由)，这一点并不夸张。从我自己的经历中，我很清楚这一点。

I had a rocky friendship with a Métis kid, Rene Heck, fn1 when I was inelementary school. It was rocky because the situation was complex. There was alarge cultural divide between Rene and me. His clothes were dirtier. He wasrougher in speech and attitude. I had skipped a grade in school, and was, inaddition, small for my age. Rene was a big, smart, good-looking kid, and he wastough. We were in grade six together, in a class taught by my father. Rene wascaught chewing gum. “Rene,” said my father, “spit that gum out. You look like acow.” “Ha, ha,” I laughed, under my breath. “Rene the cow.” Rene might havebeen a cow, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing. “Peterson,” he said,“after school—you’re dead.”

在我上小学的时候，我和一个叫雷内·赫克(Rene Heck)的梅蒂斯小孩的友谊并不好。情况很复杂，所以很不稳定。雷内和我之间有很大的文化差异。他的衣服更脏。他说话和态度都比较粗鲁。我在学校跳过了一年级，而且，就我的年龄来说，我还很小。雷内是个高大、聪明、漂亮的孩子，他很坚强。我们一起上六年级，在我父亲教的一个班。雷内被发现嚼口香糖。“雷内，”父亲说，“把口香糖吐出来。你看起来像一头牛。“哈，哈，”我低声笑了。“Rene牛。雷内可能是一头牛，但他的听力没有问题。“彼得森，”他说，“放学后你就死了。

Earlier in the morning, Rene and I had arranged to see a movie thatnight at the local movie theatre, the Gem. It looked like that was off. In anycase, the rest of the day passed, quickly and unpleasantly, as it does whenthreat and pain lurk. Rene was more than capable of giving me a good pounding.After school, I took off for the bike stands outside the school as fast as Icould, but Rene beat me there. We circled around the bikes, him on one side, meon the other. We were characters in a “Keystone Cops” short. As long as I keptcircling, he couldn’t catch me, but my strategy couldn’t work forever. I yelledout that I was sorry, but he wasn’t mollified. His pride was hurt, and hewanted me to pay.

那天早上早些时候，雷内和我约好在当地的“宝石”电影院看一场电影。不管怎么说，这一天剩下的时间过得又快又不愉快，就像潜伏着威胁和痛苦一样。雷内完全有能力把我狠狠地揍一顿。放学后，我以最快的速度跑到学校外面的自行车摊上去，但是雷内跑在了我前面。我们围着自行车转，他在一边，我在另一边。我们是《拱顶石警察》里的角色。只要我不停地转圈，他就抓不住我，但我的策略不可能永远奏效。我大声说我很抱歉，但他并没有平静下来。他的自尊心受到了伤害，他要我付出代价。

I crouched down and hid behind some bikes, keeping an eye on Rene.“Rene,” I yelled, “I’m sorry I called you a cow. Let’s quit fighting.” Hestarted to approach me again. I said, “Rene, I am sorry I said that. Really.And I still want to go to the movie with you.” This wasn’t just a tactic. Imeant it. Otherwise what happened next would not have happened. Rene stoppedcircling. Then he stared at me. Then he broke into tears. Then he ran off. Thatwas Native-white relationships in a nutshell, in our hard little town. We neverdid go to a movie together.

我蹲下身子，躲在几辆自行车后面，盯着雷内。“雷内，”我喊道，“对不起，我叫你牛。让我们放弃战斗。他又开始接近我。我说:“雷内，我很抱歉我说了那些话。真的。我还是想和你一起去看电影。“这不仅仅是一种策略。我的意思是它。否则接下来发生的事就不会发生了。Rene停止盘旋。然后他盯着我。然后他哭了起来。然后他就跑掉了。在我们这个艰苦的小镇上，简而言之，那是一种土生土长的白人关系。我们从来没有一起去看电影。

When my friend Chris got into it with Native kids, he wouldn’t fightback. He didn’t feel that his self-defence was morally justified, so he tookhis beatings. “We took their land,” he later wrote. “That was wrong. No wonderthey’re angry.” Over time, step by step, Chris withdrew from the world. It waspartly his guilt. He developed a deep hatred for masculinity and masculineactivity. He saw going to school or working or finding a girlfriend as part ofthe same process that had led to the colonization of North America, thehorrible nuclear stalemate of the cold war, and the despoiling of the planet.He had read some books about Buddhism, and felt that negation of his own Beingwas ethically required, in the light of the current world situation. He came tobelieve that the same applied to others.

当我的朋友克里斯和当地的孩子们在一起时，他没有反抗。他不认为自己的自卫在道义上是正当的，所以他接受了殴打。“我们夺走了他们的土地，”他后来写道。“这是错误的。难怪他们生气。随着时间的推移，克里斯逐渐退出了这个世界。这在一定程度上是他的过错。他对男子气概和男子气概的活动产生了深深的仇恨。他把上学、工作或找女朋友视为导致北美殖民、冷战时期可怕的核僵局和地球毁灭的同一进程的一部分。他读过一些关于佛教的书，觉得在当前的世界形势下，在道德上有必要否定自己的存在。他开始相信同样的道理也适用于其他人。

When I was an undergraduate, Chris was, for a while, one of myroommates. One late night we went to a local bar. We walked home, afterward. Hestarted to snap the side-view mirrors off parked cars, one after the other. Isaid, “Quit that, Chris. What possible good is it going to do to make thepeople who own these cars miserable?” He told me that they were all part of thefrenetic human activity that was ruining everything, and that they deservedwhatever they got. I said that taking revenge on people who were just livingnormal lives was not going to help anything.

我读本科的时候，有段时间，克里斯是我的室友之一。一天深夜，我们去了当地的一家酒吧。之后，我们步行回家。他开始把停在路边的汽车的侧视镜一个接一个地拍下来。我说:“克里斯，别闹了。这对拥有这些汽车的人有什么好处呢?“他告诉我，他们都是疯狂的人类活动的一部分，这种活动正在毁灭一切，他们罪有应得。我说，对那些过着正常生活的人进行报复不会有任何帮助。

Years later, when I was in graduate school in Montreal, Chris showedup, for what was supposed to be a visit. He was aimless, however, and lost. Heasked if I could help. He ended up moving in. I was married by then, livingwith my wife, Tammy, and our year-old daughter, Mikhaila. Chris had also beenfriends with Tammy back in Fairview (and held out hopes of more thanfriendship). That complicated the situation even more—but not precisely in themanner you might think. Chris started by hating men, but he ended by hatingwomen. He wanted them, but he had rejected education, and career, and desire.He smoked heavily, and was unemployed. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he was not ofmuch interest to women. That made him bitter. I tried to convince him that thepath he had chosen was only going to lead to further ruin. He needed to developsome humility. He needed to get a life.

几年后，当我在蒙特利尔读研究生的时候，克里斯出现了，本来是来参观的。然而，他漫无目的，迷了路。他问我是否能帮忙。他最终搬进来了。那时我已经结婚了，和我的妻子塔米(Tammy)以及我们一岁的女儿米哈伊拉(Mikhaila)住在一起。克里斯在费尔维尤也和塔米是朋友(他希望的不仅仅是友谊)。这使情况更加复杂，但并不完全是你所想的那样。克里斯开始讨厌男人，但最后讨厌女人。他想要，但他拒绝了教育、事业和欲望。他烟瘾很大，没有工作。因此，他对女性不感兴趣也就不足为奇了。这让他很痛苦。我试图说服他，他选择的道路只会导致进一步的毁灭。他需要培养一些谦逊。他需要生活。

One evening, it was Chris’s turn to make dinner. When my wife camehome, the apartment was filled with smoke. Hamburgers were burning furiously inthe frying pan. Chris was on his hands and knees, attempting to repairsomething that had come loose on the legs of the stove. My wife knew histricks. She knew he was burning dinner on purpose. He resented having to makeit. He resented the feminine role (even though the household duties were splitin a reasonable manner; even though he knew that perfectly well). He was fixingthe stove to provide a plausible, even creditable excuse for burning the food.When she pointed out what he was doing, he played the victim, but he was deeplyand dangerously furious. Part of him, and not the good part, was convinced thathe was smarter than anyone else. It was a blow to his pride that she could seethrough his tricks. It was an ugly situation.

一天晚上，轮到克里斯做晚饭了。当我妻子回家时，公寓里充满了烟雾。汉堡包在煎锅里烧得很旺。克里斯跪在地上，试图修理炉子腿上松动的东西。我妻子知道他的把戏。她知道他是故意烧晚饭的。他很不愿意去。他憎恨女性的角色(尽管家务是合理分配的;尽管他非常清楚这一点)。他正在修理炉子，以便为烧食物提供一个合理、甚至可信的借口。当她指出他在做什么时，他扮演了受害者的角色，但他非常愤怒，这是非常危险的。他的一部分，而不是好的部分，相信自己比任何人都聪明。她识破了他的诡计，这对他的自尊心是一个打击。这是一个丑陋的局面。

Tammy and I took a walk up towards a local park the next day. We neededto get away from the apartment, although it was thirty-five below—bitterly,frigidly cold, humid and foggy. It was windy. It was hostile to life. Livingwith Chris was too much, Tammy said. We entered the park. The trees forkedtheir bare branches upward through the damp grey air. A black squirrel, tailhairless from mange, gripped a leafless branch, shivered violently, strugglingto hold on against the wind. What was it doing out there in the cold? Squirrelsare partial hibernators. They only come out in the winter when it’s warm. Thenwe saw another, and another, and another, and another, and another. There weresquirrels all around us in the park, all partially hairless, tails and bodiesalike, all windblown on their branches, all shaking and freezing in the deathlycold. No one else was around. It was impossible. It was inexplicable. It wasexactly appropriate. We were on the stage of an absurdist play. It was directedby God. Tammy left soon after with our daughter for a few days elsewhere.

第二天，我和塔米向当地的一个公园走去。我们需要离开公寓，尽管它比地面低35度，寒冷刺骨，潮湿多雾。它是多风的。它对生活怀有敌意。塔米说，和克里斯住在一起太多了。我们进入公园。树木光秃秃的树枝在潮湿的灰色空气中向上分叉。一只没有毛的黑松鼠抓住了一根没有叶子的树枝，猛烈地颤抖着，挣扎着要抓住风。它在外面这么冷干什么?松鼠是部分冬眠动物。它们只在冬天暖和的时候才出来。然后我们看到了另一个，又一个，又一个，又一个，又一个。公园里到处都是松鼠，部分没有毛，尾巴和身体都一样，都被风吹在树枝上，都在极度的寒冷中颤抖着，冻僵了。周围没有其他人。这是不可能的。这是令人费解的。这是非常恰当的。我们在一个荒诞派戏剧的舞台上。这是上帝的旨意。塔米不久就带着我们的女儿离开了，到别处去住了几天。

Near Christmas time, that same year, my younger brother and his newwife came out to visit from western Canada. My brother also knew Chris. Theyall put on their winter clothes in preparation for a walk around downtownMontreal. Chris put on a long dark winter coat. He pulled a black toque, abrimless knitted cap, far down over his head. His coat was black, as were hispants and boots. He was very tall, and thin, and somewhat stooped. “Chris,” Ijoked. “You look like a serial killer.” Ha bloody ha. The three came back fromtheir walk. Chris was out of sorts. There were strangers in his territory. Anotherhappy couple. It was salt in his wounds.

同年圣诞节前后，我弟弟和他的新婚妻子从加拿大西部来探望我。我哥哥也认识克里斯。他们都穿上冬衣，准备在蒙特利尔市中心散步。克里斯穿上一件长长的深色冬衣。他拉了一件黑色的短上衣，一顶无边的针织帽，一直垂到他的头上。他的外套是黑色的，裤子和靴子也是黑色的。他又高又瘦，有点驼背。“克里斯,”我开玩笑说。“你看起来像个连环杀手。“哈哈哈。三个人走完路回来了。克里斯心情不好。在他的地盘上有陌生人。另一个快乐的夫妇。这是他伤口里的盐。

We had dinner, pleasantly enough. We talked, and ended the evening. ButI couldn’t sleep. Something wasn’t right. It was in the air. At four in themorning, I had had enough. I crawled out of bed. I knocked quietly on Chris’sdoor and went without waiting for an answer into his room. He was awake on thebed, staring at the ceiling, as I knew he would be. I sat down beside him. Iknew him very well. I talked him down from his murderous rage. Then I went backto bed, and slept. The next morning my brother pulled me aside. He wanted tospeak with me. We sat down. He said, “What the hell was going on last night? Icouldn’t sleep at all. Was something wrong?” I told my brother that Chriswasn’t doing so well. I didn’t tell him that he was lucky to be alive—that weall were. The spirit of Cain had visited our house, but we were left unscathed.

我们吃了晚饭，很愉快。我们谈了谈，结束了这个晚上。但是我睡不着。不正确的东西。它在空中。早上四点，我受够了。我从床上爬了起来。我轻轻地敲了敲克里斯的门，不等他回答就进了他的房间。他醒着躺在床上，眼睛盯着天花板，就像我知道的那样。我坐在他旁边。我很了解他。我劝他别再大发雷霆了。然后我回到床上，睡着了。第二天早上，我哥哥把我拉到一边。他想和我谈谈。我们坐了下来。他说:“昨晚到底发生了什么事?我根本无法入睡。是错了吗?“我告诉我哥哥克里斯做得不太好。我没有告诉他，他能活下来是幸运的——我们都是幸运的。该隐的灵进入我们的家，我们却没有受伤。

Maybe I picked up some change in scent that night, when death hung inthe air. Chris had a very bitter odour. He showered frequently, but the towelsand the sheets picked up the smell. It was impossible to get them clean. It wasthe product of a psyche and a body that did not operate harmoniously. A socialworker I knew, who also knew Chris, told me of her familiarity with that odour.Everyone at her workplace knew of it, although they only discussed it in hushedtones. They called it the smell of the unemployable.

也许那天晚上，当死亡笼罩在空气中时，我闻到了一些气味的变化。克里斯身上有一股很苦的气味。他经常洗澡，但毛巾和床单都有臭味。要把它们弄干净是不可能的。它是心灵和身体不和谐运作的产物。我认识的一个社会工作者，她也认识克里斯，告诉我她很熟悉这种气味。在她工作的地方，每个人都知道这件事，尽管他们只是小声讨论。他们称之为“失业者的气味”

Soon after this I finished my post-doctoral studies. Tammy and I movedaway from Montreal to Boston. We had our second baby. Now and then, Chris and Italked on the phone. He came to visit once. It went well. He had found a job atan auto-parts place. He was trying to make things better. He was OK at thatpoint. But it didn’t last. I didn’t see him in Boston again. Almost ten yearslater —the night before Chris’s fortieth birthday, as it happened—he called meagain. By this time, I had moved my family to Toronto. He had some news. Astory he had written was going to be published in a collection put together bya small but legitimate press. He wanted to tell me that. He wrote good shortstories. I had read them all. We had discussed them at length. He was a goodphotographer, too. He had a good, creative eye. The next day, Chris drove hisold pickup—the same battered beast from Fairview—into the bush. He ran a hosefrom the exhaust pipe into the front cab. I can see him there, looking throughthe cracked windshield, smoking, waiting. They found his body a few weekslater. I called his dad. “My beautiful boy,” he sobbed.

不久，我就完成了我的博士后研究。塔米和我从蒙特利尔搬到了波士顿。我们有了第二个孩子。克里斯和我不时地通电话。他来过一次,还比较顺利。他在一家汽车零部件公司找到了一份工作。他想把事情做得更好。那时他还好。但这并没有持续多久。我在波士顿再也没见过他。差不多十年之后，也就是克里斯四十岁生日的前一天晚上，他又给我打了个电话。那时，我已经举家迁往多伦多。他有一些消息。他写的一篇故事将由一家规模虽小但合法的出版社以合集的形式出版。他想告诉我。他写的短篇小说很好。我都读过了。我们已经详细地讨论过了。他也是一个很好的摄影师。他有一双善于创造的眼睛。第二天，克里斯开着他的那辆老皮卡车——同样是那只被撞坏了的野兽——从费尔维厄撞进了灌木丛。他把一根水管从排气管插进前驾驶室。我看见他在那儿，透过破碎的挡风玻璃，抽烟，等待着。几周后他们发现了他的尸体。我给他爸爸打了电话。“我美丽的孩子，”他抽泣着说。

Recently, I was invited to give a TEDx talk at a nearby university.Another professor talked first. He had been invited to speak because of hiswork—his genuinely fascinating, technical work—with computationally intelligentsurfaces (like computer touchscreens, but capable of being placed everywhere).He spoke instead about the threat human beings posed to the survival of theplanet. Like Chris—like far too many people—he had become anti-human, to thecore. He had not walked as far down that road as my friend, but the same dreadspirit animated them both.

最近，我受邀在附近的一所大学做TEDx演讲。另一位教授先发言。他被邀请来演讲，是因为他的工作——他真正迷人的、技术性的工作——与计算智能表面(像电脑触摸屏，但可以放在任何地方)。相反，他谈到了人类对地球生存的威胁。像克里斯一样——像太多的人一样——他从本质上变成了反人类的。他在那条路上走的路没有我的朋友走得远，但是同样的恐惧精神激励着他们两人。

He stood in front of a screen displaying an endless slow pan of ablocks-long Chinese high-tech factory. Hundreds of white-suited workers stoodlike sterile, inhuman robots behind their assembly lines, soundlessly insertingpiece A into slot B. He told the audience—filled with bright young people—ofthe decision he and his wife had made to limit their number of children to one.He told them it was something they should all consider, if they wanted toregard themselves as ethical people. I felt that such a decision was properlyconsidered—but only in his particular case (where less than one might have beeneven better). The many Chinese students in attendance sat stolidly through hismoralizing. They thought, perhaps, of their parents’ escape from the horrors ofM’s Cultural Revolution and its one-child policy. They thought, perhaps, of thevast improvement in living standard and freedom provided by the very samefactories. A couple of them said as much in the question period that followed.

Would have the professor reconsidered his opinions, if he knew wheresuch ideas can lead? I would like to say yes, but I don’t believe it. I thinkhe could have known, but refused to. Worse, perhaps: he knew, but didn’tcare—or knew, and was headed there, voluntarily, in any case.

他站在一个屏幕前，屏幕上显示的是一家长达几个街区的中国高科技工厂无休止的慢镜头。数百名身穿白色制服的工人像无菌、不人道的机器人一样站在装配线后面，无声无息地将A片插入b口。他告诉他们，如果他们想把自己视为有道德的人，他们都应该考虑这件事。我觉得这样的决定是经过深思熟虑的，但只是在他的特殊情况下(少于一个可能更好)。在场的许多中国学生对他的说教无动于衷。也许，他们想到的是他们的父母从Cultural 。Revolution的恐惧中逃离。他们想到的也许正是这些工厂在生活水平和自由方面所提供的巨大改善。他们中的一些人在接下来的提问时间里说了同样多的话。

如果教授知道这些想法会导致什么后果，他会重新考虑他的观点吗?我想说是的，但我不相信。我想他本可以知道的，但他拒绝了。更糟的是，也许:他知道，但并不在乎——或者知道，也是自愿持有这样的想法。

Self-Appointed Judges of theHuman Race

自封为人类的法官

It has not been long since the Earth seemed infinitely larger than thepeople who inhabited it. It was only in the late 1800s that the brilliantbiologist Thomas Huxley (1825-95)—staunch defender of Darwin and AldousHuxley’s grandfather—told the British Parliament that it was literallyimpossible for mankind to exhaust the oceans. Their power of generation wassimply too great, as far as he could determine, compared to even the mostassiduous human predations. It’s been an even shorter fifty years since RachelCarson’s Silent Spring ignited the environmental movement. Fifty years! That’snothing! That’s not even yesterday.

不久以前，地球似乎比居住在地球上的人要大得多。直到19世纪末，杰出的生物学家托马斯·赫胥黎(1825-1995)——达尔文和奥尔德斯·赫胥黎祖父的坚定捍卫者——才告诉英国议会，人类几乎不可能耗尽海洋。在他看来，与人类最孜孜不倦的掠夺相比，它们的繁殖能力实在是太强大了。自蕾切尔·卡森的《寂静的春天》点燃环保运动以来，50年已经过去了。五十年!那是什么!那还不是历史。

We’ve only just developed the conceptual tools and technologies thatallow us to understand the web of life, however imperfectly. We deserve a bitof sympathy, in consequence, for the hypothetical outrage of our destructivebehaviour. Sometimes we don’t know any better. Sometimes we do know better, buthaven’t yet formulated any practical alternatives. It’s not as if life is easyfor human beings, after all, even now—and it’s only a few decades ago that themajority of human beings were starving, diseased and illiterate.169 Wealthy aswe are (increasingly, everywhere) we still only live decades that can becounted on our fingers. Even at present, it is the rare and fortunate familythat does not contain at least one member with a serious illness—and all willface that problem eventually. We do what we can to make the best of things, inour vulnerability and fragility, and the planet is harder on us than we are onit. We could cut ourselves some slack.

我们刚刚开发出概念工具和技术，这些工具和技术使我们能够理解生命之网，尽管这并不完美。因此，假设我们的破坏性行为令人愤慨，我们理应得到一些同情。有时候我们不知道，有时我们确实知道自己的破坏行为，但还没有制定出任何切实可行的替代方案。毕竟，即使是现在，人类的生活也不容易——仅仅几十年前，大多数人还在挨饿、患病和文盲。尽管我们很富有(在世界各地都越来越富有)，但我们的寿命仍然只有屈指可数的几十年。即使在目前，也只有少数幸运的家庭没有至少一名成员患有严重的疾病，而且所有人最终都会面临这个问题。我们尽我们所能，在我们的脆弱和脆弱中做到最好，而地球对我们的考验比我们对它的考验更大。我们可以放自己一马。

Human beings are, after all, seriously remarkable creatures. We have nopeers, and it’s not clear that we have any real limits. Things happen now thatappeared humanly impossible even at the same time in the recent past when webegan to wake up to our planet-sized responsibilities. A few weeks beforewriting this I happened across two videos juxtaposed on YouTube. One showed theOlympic gold medal vault from 1956; the other, the Olympic silver medal vaultfrom 2012. It didn’t even look like the same sport—or the same animal. WhatMcKayla Maroney did in 2012 would have been considered superhuman in thefifties. Parkour, a sport derived from French military obstacle coursetraining, is amazing, as is free running. I watch compilations of suchperformances with unabashed admiration. Some of the kids jump off three-storeybuildings without injury. It’s dangerous—and amazing. Crane climbers are sobrave it rattles the mind. The same goes for extreme mountain bikers, freestylesnowboarders, surfers of fifty-foot waves, and skateboarders.

毕竟，人类是非常了不起的生物。我们没有同伴，也不清楚我们是否有任何真正的限制。现在发生的事情在人类看来是不可能的，即使在最近的过去，当我们开始意识到我们的星球大小的责任。在写这篇文章的几周前，我碰巧在YouTube上看到了两个并列的视频。其中一张展示的是1956年奥运会跳马金牌;另一个是2012年奥运会跳马银牌。它看起来甚至不像同一种运动——或者同一种动物。麦凯拉·马罗尼在2012年的所作所为在50年代被认为是超人。跑酷是一项源于法国军事障碍训练的运动，和自由奔跑一样令人惊叹。我带着毫不掩饰的钦佩之情观看这些表演的汇编。一些孩子从三层楼高的建筑物上跳下来，没有受伤。这是危险和不可思议。起重机攀登者是如此的勇敢，以至于让人心惊胆战。极限山地自行车运动员、自由式滑雪板运动员、五十英尺浪的冲浪者和滑板运动员也是如此。

The boys who shot up Columbine High School, whom we discussed earlier,had appointed themselves judges of the human race—like the TEDx professor,although much more extreme; like Chris, my doomed friend. For Eric Harris, themore literate of the two killers, human beings were a failed and corruptspecies. Once a presupposition such as that is accepted, its inner logic willinevitably manifest itself. If something is a plague, as David Attenborough hasit,170 or a cancer, as the Club of Rome claimed, the person who eradicates itis a hero— a veritable planetary saviour, in this case. A real messiah mightfollow through with his rigorous moral logic, and eliminate himself, as well.This is what mass murderers, driven by near-infinite resentment, typically do.Even their own Being does not justify the existence of humanity. In fact, theykill themselves precisely to demonstrate the purity of their commitment toannihilation. No one in the modern world may without objection express theopinion that existence would be bettered by the absence of Jews, blacks,Muslims, or Englishmen. Why, then, is it virtuous to propose that the planetmight be better off, if there were fewer people on it? I can’t help but see askeletal, grinning face, gleeful at the possibility of the apocalypse, hidingnot so very far behind such statements. And why does it so often seem to be thevery people standing so visibly against prejudice who so often appear to feelobligated to denounce humanity itself?

我们之前讨论过的枪击科伦拜高中的男孩们，他们任命自己为人类种族的法官，就像TEDx教授一样，尽管要极端得多;就像克里斯，我命中注定的朋友。对埃里克·哈里斯(Eric Harris)来说，这两个杀手中受教育程度更高的那个，人类是一个失败而腐败的物种。这种预设一旦被接受，它的内在逻辑就不可避免地会显现出来。如果某样东西是瘟疫，就像大卫·艾登堡(David Attenborough)所患的那样，或者是癌症，就像罗马俱乐部(Club of Rome)所宣称的那样，根除它的人就是英雄——在这个例子中，他是名副其实的星球救世主。真正的弥赛亚可能会坚持他严格的道德逻辑，并消灭自己。这就是大屠杀的凶手，在近乎无限的仇恨驱使下，通常会做的事情。即使是他们自己的存在也不能证明人类的存在。事实上，他们自杀恰恰是为了表明他们消灭敌人的决心是纯洁的。在现代社会，没有人会毫无异议地认为，如果没有犹太人、黑人、穆斯林或英国人，生活将会变得更好。那么，如果地球上的人口更少，那么提出地球可能会变得更好的观点，为什么是有道德的呢?我不禁看到一张骨瘦如柴、笑嘻嘻的脸，对世界末日的可能性幸灾乐祸，躲在这些话后面不远的地方。为什么常常是那些明显反对偏见的人，却常常觉得有义务谴责人类自身?

I have seen university students, particularly those in the humanities,suffer genuine declines in their mental health from being philosophicallyberated by such defenders of the planet for their existence as members of thehuman species. It’s worse, I think, for young men. As privileged beneficiariesof the patriarchy, their accomplishments are considered unearned. As possibleadherents of rape culture, they’re sexually suspect. Their ambitions make themplunderers of the planet. They’re not welcome. At the junior high, high schooland university level, they’re falling behind educationally. When my son wasfourteen, we discussed his grades. He was doing very well, he said,matter-offactly, for a boy. I inquired further. Everyone knew, he said, thatgirls do better in school than boys. His intonation indicated surprise at myignorance of something so self-evident. While writing this, I received thelatest edition of The Economist. The cover story? “The Weaker Sex”—meaningmales. In modern universities women now make up more than 50 percent of thestudents in more than two-thirds of all disciplines.

我看到，大学生，尤其是人文学科的大学生，由于作为人类的一员而被这些地球的捍卫者哲学地痛斥，他们的心理健康确实在下降。我认为，对年轻人来说，情况更糟。作为父权制的特权受益人，他们的成就被认为是不劳而获的。作为强奸文化的可能追随者，他们在性方面受到怀疑。他们的野心使他们成为这个星球的掠夺者。他们是不受欢迎的。在初中、高中和大学阶段，他们在教育上落后了。我儿子十四岁时，我们讨论了他的成绩。对于一个男孩来说，他做得很好。我进一步问道。他说，每个人都知道，女孩在学校的表现比男孩好。他的语调显示出我对如此不言而喻的事情的无知感到惊讶。写这篇文章时，我收到了最新一期的《经济学人》。封面故事吗?“较弱的性别”——指男性。在现代大学里，在所有学科的三分之二以上，女性占学生总数的50%以上。

Boys are suffering, in the modern world. They are more disobedient—negatively—or more independent—positively—than girls, and they suffer for this,throughout their pre-university educational career. They are less agreeable(agreeableness being a personality trait associated with compassion, empathyand avoidance of conflict) and less susceptible to anxiety and depression, atleast after both sexes hit puberty. Boys’ interests tilt towards things; girls’interests tilt towards people. Strikingly, these differences, stronglyinfluenced by biological factors, are most pronounced in the Scandinaviansocieties where gender-equality has been pushed hardest: this is the oppositeof what would be expected b

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