洞察人性最深的文章之二[特有的罗素式的幽默和深刻]

ncu晨风

于2010-12-24 12:00:42翻译 | 已有2333人浏览

罗素在推动20世纪的西方走向自由化、多元化的历史进程中，功勋卓著。被誉于20世纪最伟大的哲学家、社会学家，本文是他在1950年被授予诺贝尔文学奖时的演讲，看看这位自由主义BOSS级人物对人类社会中的喜怒哀乐、七情六欲会有着什么样的独特见解。

More seriously, pains should be taken to provide constructive outlets for the love of excitement. Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought.

腰酸背痛确实是一种积极的发泄方式——对于渴望寻求刺激的人来说。这个世界上没有什么比突然之间发现了一个新事物或者发明了一个新东西更让人兴奋了，很多人都有过这种激动的时刻——有过这种体验的人，比大家所认为的要多得多。6

Interwoven with many other political motives are two closely related passions to which human beings are regrettably prone: I mean fear and hate. It is normal to hate what we fear, and it happens frequently, though not always, that we fear what we hate. I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar. They have their own herd, originally a very small one. And within one herd, all are friends, unless there is some special ground of enmity. Other herds are potential or actual enemies; a single member of one of them who strays by accident will be killed. An alien herd as a whole will be avoided or fought according to circumstances. It is this primitive mechanism which still controls our instinctive reaction to foreign nations. The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards a member of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if his herd is to prosper, it must, to some degree, become amalgamated with other herds. If you are English and someone says to you, ?The French are your brothers?, your first instinctive feeling will be, ?Nonsense. They shrug their shoulders, and talk French. And I am even told that they eat frogs.? If he explains to you that we may have to fight the Russians, that, if so, it will be desirable to defend the line of the Rhine, and that, if the line of the Rhine is to be defended, the help of the French is essential, you will begin to see what he means when he says that the French are your brothers. But if some fellow-traveller were to go on to say that the Russians also are your brothers, he would be unable to persuade you, unless he could show that we are in danger from the Martians. We love those who hate our enemies, and if we had no enemies there would be very few people whom we should love.

很遗憾人们非常容易拥有另外两种激情，它们紧密相连，与很多其他的政治上的动机交织在一起。我指的是：恐惧和厌恶。我们很容易厌恶我们所恐惧的事物，同样很常见但并非一定的是，我们恐惧我们所厌恶的事物。我想在原始人群中，人们通常会既恐惧又厌恶任何他不熟悉的事物。他们有自己的群落，一开始可能很小。其他群落则是潜在的或实际上的敌人；群落里单个成员意外迷路了，就会被杀死。一般来说，他们会视情形而定，选择避开其他群落，或是与之交战。在对待其他外族的问题上，这种原始的机制仍然控制着现代人的本能反应。那些完全没外出旅行过的人会视所有外族为野蛮人。但是那些去外面旅行过的，或是学习过国际政治的人，会发现要使自己的民族强盛，在某种程度上，必须与其他民族联合。如果你是一个英国人，有一个人对你说：法国人是你的兄弟。你第一反应肯定是：胡说，他们耸肩，还说法语。甚至别人还说他们会吃蛤蟆。如果那个人跟你解释：我们要对抗俄国人。必须要守住莱茵河，如果要守住莱茵河，法国人的帮助是必不可少的，你可能会开始明白，他说的法国人是我们的兄弟是什么意思。但是如果有个人要继续说：俄国人也是你的兄弟，他将说服不了你，除非他能证明火星人要入侵我们。敌人的敌人，就是我们的盟友，如果我们没有敌人，那我们就不会要那么多盟友。2

All this, however, is only true so long as we are concerned solely with attitudes towards other human beings. You might regard the soil as your enemy because it yields reluctantly a niggardly subsistence. You might regard Mother Nature in general as your enemy, and envisage human life as a struggle to get the better of Mother Nature. If men viewed life in this way, cooperation of the whole human race would become easy. And men could easily be brought to view life in this way if schools, newspapers, and politicians devoted themselves to this end. But schools are out to teach patriotism; newspapers are out to stir up excitement; and politicians are out to get re-elected. None of the three, therefore, can do anything towards saving the human race from reciprocal suicide.

然而，这一切仅仅在我们单考虑人们互相之间的态度时才成立。如果你视土地为敌人，因为它吝啬小气，仅能饱腹。如果你设想一下人类正在同大自然搏斗，以求得更好生存时，你可以视大自然为敌人。如果人们都能这样想，全人类的合作将会很容易。如果学校、报纸、政客都致力于此，那么人们将很容易形成这种观点。但是学校正忙着灌输爱国主义，报纸忙着挑起人们的兴奋神经，政客忙于再次当选。因此，这三者中没有一个在做任何一点事，把人类从自相残杀中拯救出来。

There are two ways of coping with fear: one is to diminish the external danger, and the other is to cultivate Stoic endurance. The latter can be reinforced, except where immediate action is necessary, by turning our thoughts away from the cause of fear. The conquest of fear is of very great importance. Fear is in itself degrading; it easily becomes an obsession; it produces hate of that which is feared, and it leads headlong to excesses of cruelty. Nothing has so beneficent an effect on human beings as security. If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world. The atom bomb and the bacterial bomb, wielded by the wicked communist or the wicked capitalist as the case may be, make Washington and the Kremlin tremble, and drive men further along the road toward the abyss. If matters are to improve, the first and essential step is to find a way of diminishing fear. The world at present is obsessed by the conflict of rival ideologies, and one of the apparent causes of conflict is the desire for the victory of our own ideology and the defeat of the other. I do not think that the fundamental motive here has much to do with ideologies. I think the ideologies are merely a way of grouping people, and that the passions involved are merely those which always arise between rival groups. There are, of course, various reasons for hating communists. First and foremost, we believe that they wish to take away our property. But so do burglars, and although we disapprove of burglars our attitude towards them is very different indeed from our attitude towards communists - chiefly because they do not inspire the same degree of fear. Secondly, we hate the communists because they are irreligious. But the Chinese have been irreligious since the eleventh century, and we only began to hate them when they turned out Chiang Kai-shek. Thirdly, we hate the communists because they do not believe in democracy, but we consider this no reason for hating Franco. Fourthly, we hate them because they do not allow liberty; this we feel so strongly that we have decided to imitate them. It is obvious that none of these is the real ground for our hatred. We hate them because we fear them and they threaten us. If the Russians still adhered to the Greek Orthodox religion, if they had instituted parliamentary government, and if they had a completely free press which daily vituperated us, then - provided they still had armed forces as powerful as they have now - we should still hate them if they gave us ground for thinking them hostile. There is, of course, the odium theologicum, and it can be a cause of enmity. But I think that this is an offshoot of herd feeling: the man who has a different theology feels strange, and whatever is strange must be dangerous. Ideologies, in fact, are one of the methods by which herds are created, and the psychology is much the same however the herd may have been generated.

有两种办法克服恐惧：一种是消除外在的危险，另一种是培养苦行僧式的承受力。后者可以反复强化我们无所畏惧的信念。克服恐惧是一件非常重要的事。恐惧是可耻的；它很容易变成困扰；它让我们对恐惧的东西产生厌恶；并导致如失控一般的过于残忍。让人们有安全感是最行之有效的方式。如果一个能消除战争恐惧的国际性机构得以成立，那么对于普通人的日常生活心态会立即有一个巨大的提升。当前，恐惧的阴影笼罩着全球。邪恶的共产主义者和邪恶的资本主义者所把持的原子弹和生化炸弹让华盛顿和克里姆林宫坐立不安，这又进一步刺激人们滑向战争的深渊。如果要想局势改观，当务之急就是找出一条消除恐惧的方案。当今的世界被敌对的意识形态所困扰，其中造成冲突的一个明显的原因就是对各自的意识形态获胜的渴望。我不认为这里的根本动机和意识形态有太多关系。我认为意识形态仅仅是划分阵营的一种方式，这种敌对情绪是对立双方中经常会出现的。当然，我们有各种各样的理由厌恶共产主义者。首先也是最重要的是，我们相信他们要剥夺我们的财产。但是窃贼也同样会这样做，尽管我们一样反对窃贼，但我们对窃贼和共产主义者的态度有很大的实质上的差别——主要因为窃贼不会激起同样程度的恐惧。其次，我们厌恶共产主义者，因为他们是无信仰的。但是中国人从11世纪以来就一直没有信仰，我们也只是从蒋介石之后才厌恶他们。第三，我们厌恶共产主义者，因为他们不信任民主制度，然而弗朗哥不在此列，而我们还是同样厌恶他。第四，我们厌恶他们，因为我们害怕他们，以及他们威胁我们。如果说俄国人依然秉奉东正教，如果他们坚持议会制政府，如果他们每天谩骂我们的新闻媒体有着完全的言论自由，那么——假设他们依然有现在一样强大的武装力量——我们依然会厌恶他们，只要他们有我们视之为敌人的理由。当然，信仰上的互相厌恶是确实存在的，这也是敌意产生的一个原因。但是我认为那都是原始群落感受的细枝末节：有着不同信仰的人感觉到陌生，而任何陌生的东西都是危险的。意识形态，实际上是一种创造群落的一种方式，尽管群落不同，而各自心理却是一样的。（待续）1