模拟人生3花样年华房屋:“死亡：生命最好的发明”

温迪·L·亚当梅克

作者著有《禅宗与无信仰宗教》等书

本文发表于2011年10月19日

Like everyone else, I listened to Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement address and was moved and awed. The stories of his spectacular inventions and reinventions from scratch, combined with his willingness to do battle with his own failures, death and even Microsoft -- this is a paradigmatic image of a meaningful life in our times. Like everyone else, I came away with the phrase "Death is very likely the single best invention of life" echoing in my ears. 

我听过乔布斯2005年在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲，和别人一样，我为之感动。他在演讲中讲了三个故事，关于他白手起家时的发明以及他与失败、死亡的战斗，他甚至还提到了微软——这是一幅我们这个时代有关意义人生的生动图景啊。没错，我也和大家一样，他那句“死亡，正是生命给我们的最好发明”久久在耳边回响。

Yet there was something about it that bothered me. Not the mortality part, really, though I do hope I can manage a reasonably dignified exit. Rather, it was the idea that "living with the results of other people's thinking" is "dogma." So, what about living with the results of Steve Jobs' thinking? 

然而还是有些部分让我感到困扰，但真的不是有关“人生必将面对死亡”的部分，尽管我真心希望我能够找到一个合理的有尊严的离世方式。乔布斯说：“不要盲从信条，那只能让你活在别人的思考里。”那么，活在别人的思考中，是某种信条吗？活在乔布斯的思考里又会如何呢？

Notoriously, we Americans love the idea of individuals starting from scratch, not being indebted to hidebound traditions, sweeping away the past and continually reinventing themselves. We hear all the time that it's the ideal upon which our country was founded. Thanks to the inventions of Hollywood, it's now part of global culture.

众所周知，我们美国人热爱白手起家的传奇故事：从一无所有到成功得不可一世，不被顽固死板的传统所束缚，扫清一切陈规陋习，不断地自我更新。我们历来只是听着这样的故事，并认定这就是这个国家的建国根本。而且我们还创造了好莱坞这个样本，它从无到有，现在已经是全球文化中的一个部分了。

I'm not going to venture into the thorny thickets of revisionist history to explore the authenticity of this image. But the unquestionable truth-force of Steve's words also inspires me to come to a quiet defense of not starting from scratch. His stories also illustrate the inestimable value of debts to the past and to others. He talks about the connection between laboriously learning the classic art of calligraphy and his ground-breaking approach to typography in the early Macs. And as I am sure he would have been the first to acknowledge, countless people over the years helped him to do the work he loved, work that has shaped the way we live now.

我无意于站在修正主义历史观的立场上来辛苦探究这幅图景的真相。但乔布斯那勿庸置疑的话语也激发了我要默默护卫这样一个观点：我们的一切并非必需从零开始。乔布斯的故事展示了历史及他人之不可估量的价值。他讲到他曾经刻苦学习书法课及后来在Mac时他由此设计了独特版式电脑两者之间的关联。可我也确信他可能是第一个承认这些年来正是有无数人的帮助，他才做了这项既是他喜爱的，又改变了我们的生活方式的工作。

My mom sent me this clip of the living bridges of Meghalaya, asking if I'd seen them in my travels in India. I hadn't, but now I'll never forget them. I hesitate to weight these tangled, slender living traditions with further words; the images and faces speak for themselves. What I see in this video is work that is loved, work that beneficially shapes the way people live, and work that depends on both individual initiative and "other people's thinking."

我母亲发给我一段视频，它取景自印度梅加拉亚邦的生活桥。她问我，在印度旅行时是否曾见过生活桥和那些人民。我过去没有见过他们，但自此我不会再忘却他们。我犹疑不定，因为没有更多的词汇来描述这混乱的、窘困的生活方式，那里的景像和一张张人们的面孔已经说明了一切。然而，我在这视频中看到的依然是被人们热爱的工作，这工作帮当地人建立了他们的生活方式，这工作也同样同时依赖于个人的主观能动和“别人的思考”。

I would like to put into words a fear that I think many of us entertain -- at least those of us who recognize that our era of unprecedented connectivity and complexity is entangled with destructive practices. Let's be as unflinching as Steve Jobs. Even as we buy or want to buy the best possible means of access, the infosphere is flickering with messages telling us that the real price isn't the price tag. It's the carbon-energy footprint, destructive mining, diminishing supplies of clean water and exploitative labor practices -- all of which are now threatening Meghalaya, by the way. Our ways to connect, communicate and exchange goods and ideas diversifies exponentially, and Steve Jobs will be remembered as having helped launch that diversification. Yet, the diversity of everything else is shrinking.

我想用文字来表达一种恐惧，我想很多人接受——至少我们中间意识到我们这个时代充满了不可预测的联结性和复杂性的那些人——这个时代正在被各种破坏性行为缠成一团乱麻。让我们像乔布斯一样坚定吧。就像我们购买或是想买最好的专用通道时，信息空间闪烁不停，告诉我们这样的信息：真正的价格不是价签。顺便说一下，是碳足迹、破坏性的矿产开采，清洁水供给的减少以及劳工剥削行径——是这一切在威胁着梅加拉亚。我们互相联结、交流、交换货物和思想的方法，其多样性呈几何级增长，乔布斯将会因有助于实践了这种多样性而被铭记。可是，除此之外，其它的一切都在衰退。

On our computers, we watch, enchanted, as a man in Meghalaya teaches his niece how to care for a living bridge, coaxing a tree root across a seasonally swollen stream. Yet few of us really want to be that little girl. We are entranced because we both idealize and fear that kind of responsibility for the future. "Our culture," however we identify it, fetishizes the fastest to come up with something new. Yet true adaptation to changing conditions is held hostage by the inordinately powerful 1% that is heavily invested in non-renewables.

我们趴在电脑上，像被施了魔法一样着迷地看着梅加拉亚的一个男人教他的小侄女如何照顾一座生活桥，他教她如何在季节性涨水的小溪中慢慢地侍弄好一棵树的树根。可是，我们中间并没有人真想做那个小女孩。我们着迷，是因为我们理想化但又害怕承担未来的责任。“我们的文化”，不管我们如何来称谓它，让我们盲目地追求新事物。然而真正让人们适应改变的人，是那些能力大得不同寻常的人，他们在人群中只占1%，可他们在那些不可再生的事情上使劲地投资。1

The 1% are unquestionably the directors of corporations and financial institutions who have steadily pursued deregulatory aims over the last 30 years. But it is also the 1% or more in all of us, the part that sees the means of connectivity and "feeling alive" as the latest new product, not as something cultivated through many generations.

这1%的人无疑是那些大公司和金融机构的头头们，他们在过去的30年间他们不懈地追求着那些不断被撤消的目标。但也正是这1%，或更我们中间更多一些的人，人们只能凭借出现的最新产品，才能看得到与世界的联结，才能感受得到我们还活着。人们不再去看那些历经世世代代传承而沉淀下来的东西。

My mother in Hawai'i sends me a video about Meghalaya, my friend in Iowa sends me a link to Steve Jobs' talk, I sit on a couch in Sydney writing this on an Apple laptop and then I post it online, weaving it into the flickering bridges of HuffPo. As Steve encouraged those 2005 Stanford graduates to do, I've made sacrifices to keep doing work that I love and haven't "settled." However, it is no longer possible to look away from the fact that the options and mobility available to my generation -- Steve's generation -- came at an unacceptable cost to other beings, human and non-human. 

在夏威夷的母亲传给我关于梅加拉亚的视频，在爱荷华的朋友发给我乔布斯演讲的地址链接，而我坐在悉尼的沙发里，用一台苹果电脑写下这篇文章并把它发表在网络上，将它裹挟进赫芬顿邮报闪烁着的信息流里。当乔布斯2005年在斯坦福鼓励毕业生时，我还没有为坚持做自己喜爱的事情而做出牺牲，也还没有安顿下来。然而，我们不再可能无视我们这一代人面对的无限选择和机会——这是史蒂夫的一代——这些机会和选择来自其它生命体付出的无法想像的代价，无论是人类还是非人类。

As Steve said, death is the "change agent." I'm just praying that we don't have to start from scratch. Do we still have the option of reviving the long human tradition of skillful adaptation? I honestly don't know -- do you? But I'll try for a dignified exit with a final quote from Steve: "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."

史蒂夫说，死亡是“变革推动者”。而我只祈求我不必一切从零开始。在人类漫长历史中，人们对待变化获得了富于技巧的适应能力，难道我们仍有别的选择吗？说实话，我不知道——那么你知道吗？不过我仍然试图引述史蒂夫的一句话来寻找到一种体面的结束之语：“望向未来时，你永远不知道曾经那些点点滴滴是如何联结到一起的，可你回头去看历史时，那种关联就非常清楚了。”