耙耳朵的幸福生活抽烟:《生猛的快感心理学》第八章：快感为何如此重要

第八章、为什么快感很重要

For most of the history of our species, there was no television or internet orbooks. Our ancestral environment had no McDonald’s, birth control pills, Viagra, plastic surgery, nuclear weapons, alarm clocks, florescent lighting, paternity tests, or written codes of law. There were not billions of people.

　　纵观历史，我们“人”这个物种在很长一段时期里，不仅没有电视、互联网，甚至连书都没有。我们祖先生活的环境里没有麦当劳，没有避孕药，没有伟哥、整容手术、核武器、闹钟、荧光灯、亲子鉴定、法律条文……更没有数以十亿计的人口。

Our minds are not modern, and many of our woes have to do with this mismatch between our Stone-age psychologies and the world in which we now live. Obesity is a simple example of this. Food was hard to get for most people for most of human history. Even a few hundred years ago, the average European family  spent over half of its budget on food, and it wouldn’t get much for the money—the daily  caloric  intake of  an eighteenth  century  Frenchman was equivalent that of a contemporary citizen of a malnourished African nation.362  In a world in which food is scarce, it is smart for an animal to eat when it can and store up the  fat, and suicidal to pass up the chance for sweet fruit or fresh meat. But many humans now live in environments in which food is cheap, plentiful, and cleverly manufactured to be maximally flavorful. It is  difficult—impossible for many of us—to resist the Darwinian imperative to gobble it all up.363

　　时代摩登了，可我们的思维并未随之进化。我们的心智还停留在石器时代，然而我们所生活的世界却早已今非昔比，于是心理与现实的失衡就带来了种种烦恼。

　　随便举个例子，比如说肥胖。历史上绝大部分的时间里，对绝大部分人而言，如何填饱肚子是个老大难问题。甚至就在近几百年前，普通欧洲家庭还要将一半的预算开支留给食物采购；即便如此，一个18世纪的法国人每天那点可怜的卡路里摄取量，其实也就跟如今一个营养不良的非洲难民差不了多少。【362】生活在食物匮乏的世界里，动物想活命，就必须做到能吃就吃、储存脂肪；想找死，那就大可弃难得的水果、鲜肉于不顾。可就眼下很多人的生活而言，食物不仅价格低廉、品种丰富，而且还经过了精心调味，以最大限度满足味蕾的需要。想要克制住所谓“达尔文式的原始冲动”真的很难——对很多人来讲那简直就是不可能：看到好吃的，人的本能就是想要吃光光。【363】

As another example, it would be smart to treat the insults and provocations of strangers—rude behavior on the highway, nasty remarkson the internet—as irrelevant. There’s no payoff to getting mad. But our minds are not evolved to think about strangers, and we obsess,needlessly, about what people think of us andhowthese insults will diminish us in the eyes of others. This is why we have roadrage and blog wars.

　　再举个例子吧：面对高速路上野蛮司机的粗暴行径，或是网络上的恶毒言论——面对种种陌生人的侮辱和挑衅，我们人要是聪明的话，其实就都不该往心里去。你怒了，对你有半点儿好处吗？没有。可我们的大脑还没进化到这个地步；我们根本就不认识那些陌生人，可我们在气头上时就顾不了那么多了。所以我们才会如此庸人自扰，既担心三人成虎、无中生有，又害怕长了他人志气、灭了自己威风。也正因为如此，开车时我们特别容易被激怒，而网上那些博客口水战也是同样的道理。

Finally, we have evolved in a world of lions and tigers and bears; of plants and birds and rocks and things. We get pleasure and fulfillment from the natural world.364   Many  modern humans  miss  out on  this,  as we  spend our  days inconstructed  environments.  The biologist E.O. Wilson has  argued that  thisestrangement from nature is bad for the soul: “[we] descend farther from heaven’s air if we forget how much the natural world means to us.”365  Several studies now show that even a limited dose of the natural, such as a chance to look at the outsideworld  through  a  window, is  good  for  one’s  health. Hospitalized patients  heal quicker; prisoners get sick less often; spending time with a pet enhances the lives of everyone fromautistic children toAlzheimer patients.366

　　最后还有一点：我们一路进化而来，离不开这个世界，而这个世界则既离不了豺狼虎豹，也离不了花鸟石虫；换言之，是大自然的种种一切赋予了我们快感与满足感。【364】生活在钢筋水泥改造过的环境中，很多现代人恰恰就忽略了这一点。生物学家伊·奥·威尔森（E.O. Wilson）曾指出：疏离大自然不利于人类心灵健康。他说：“如果我们将自然的世界抛在脑后，那么自然的天堂就会将我们抛得更远。”【365】近来亦有一些研究表明，即便是与大自然的小小接触——比如向窗外眺望几眼——对人的健康也大有益处；例如住院病人可以更快康复，狱中囚犯的患病率也会降低。任何人，不管是自闭症儿童，还是老年痴呆症患者，只要身边常有宠物相伴，生活质量必定有所改善。

These mismatches are interesting and important, and they are the focus of much research and theorizing in evolutionary psychology. What scholars sometimes miss, though, is that we are not innocent bystanders. We are not like rats dropped into a psychologist’s maze or elephants thrust into a circus. We made this unnatural world. We invented the Big Mac and the Twinkie; the freeway and theinternet andtheskyscraper; government andreligion andlaw.

　　上述如此种种失衡，不但有意思，而且还具有重要的意义，是进化心理学大量理论与研究的焦点。不过，专家学者们有时会忽略一点：我们人类并非漠不相关的围观群众。我们既不是被心理学家扔进迷宫里做实验的老鼠，也不是被抓进马戏团里表演的大象；我们大自然的创造者，我们在大自然中创造出了眼下这个不自然的世界。我们发明了巨无霸汉堡和奶油夹心蛋糕，发明了高速公路、互联网和摩天大楼，也发明了政府、宗教，还有法律。

This book so far has been about what we like and why we like it. In this brief final chapter, I turn to some implications of the essent

　　本书到现在为止讨论的，是我们喜欢什么，以及我们为什么喜欢这些东西。而在这最后一章中，我们换个话题，我想要谈谈……