This is water(豆瓣翻译).doc

David Foster Wallace - Commencement Speech at Kenyon CollegeTranscription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005David Foster Wallace - Kenyon College 毕业典礼致辞（2005年5月21日）(If anybody feels like perspiring, Id advise you to go ahead, because Im sure going to. In fact Im gonna mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket.) Greetings “parents”? and congratulations to Kenyons graduating class of 2005. （如果你感觉热的汗都要下来了，我建议你就让汗水尽情流淌吧，反正我打算这么干了。实际上，我要 喃喃着撩起学士服，掏出手绢 。 欢迎 *各位家长们*？，并且祝贺 Kenyon 05 界毕业生们。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 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 about. 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 explain 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 cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that 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 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 cliché turns out not to 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 waste 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 God 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 terrible 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 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。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。无神论者说: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 experience 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 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 meaning 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 the 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 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：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 that 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 wrongness 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 because 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 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 choosing 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 “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 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，而并非简单的关注前方，往何处走，关注自己的内心。As Im sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.我想你们这现在已经意识到，保持警惕和集中注意力是非常困难的，我们很容易就会被大脑中不断进行着的自我思考给催眠了（也许你现在就在这样做）。在我大学毕业后的20年以来，我渐渐了解到尽管“教会你如何思考”这个概念已经被讨论博雅教育的人们说滥了，但是当你意识到接下来的这个更深一层的解读后，你会发现人们其实低估了这个概念的重要性：“学会如何思考”的真正意义是学会如何控制你每时每刻在思考什么、以及如何思考，这意味着你要能够保持清醒的意识，去选择将思考的注意力放在什么上，并从自己经历的事中获取意义。因为作为一个成年人，如果你不能这样控制你自己的思维，你就完了。还记得那句老话吗大脑可以成为一个出色的仆人，但同时也可以成为糟糕的的主宰。This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.就像许多陈词滥调一般，这个表面上看起来表意不明，平平无奇的事情其实表明了一个伟大而可怕的事实。用枪支自杀的成人瞄准的总是自己的头，这并不是一个巧合。他们把自身可怖的主宰给射杀了。而真相其实是在他们早在扣动扳机之前就已经“死”了。And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Lets get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what Im talking about.我承认，你所接受的博雅教育其真实而非扯淡的价值就在于此：如何防止你度过舒适、顺遂、体面的成人生活时死气沉沉、无知无觉、仆从于你的大脑以及被默认设置为日复一日地独特、彻底、帝王般地独行。 这或许听像夸大其词，或者抽象的废话。我们来说点实在的。简单的事实就是，你们这些毕业生对“日复一日”真正意味着什么还一点门没摸着。美国成人生活里整整巨大的部分在大学毕业演讲中从没被提起。其中一个部分跟无聊、柴米油盐和无厘头的沮丧有关。在场的家长们和年长的人都太清楚我在讲些什么。By way of example, lets say its an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day youre tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember theres no food at home. You havent had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. Its the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, th e supermarket is very crowded, because of course its the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and its pretty much the last place you want to be but you cant just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit stores confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there arent enough check-out lanes open even though its the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you cant take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.举个例子，就说这是个成人平常的一天。你早早起床，去到充满挑战的应届生白领工作，努力工作了8到10个小时。一天结束后你累了，压力有点大，于是你只想回家吃碗热汤饭，有时间的话放松1小时，然后早早上床。因为你第二天又得早起，度过相同的一天。但是之后你想起家里没吃的了。因为工作繁忙你这周还没来得及买菜，于是下班后现在你还得开车去超市。工作日结束了（是下班高峰），堵车自然是：一塌糊涂。你花了比平常长得多的时间去超市，当你好不容易到了，超市非常拥挤，因为别的上班族当然也在一天中的这个时候挤点时间买菜。But anyway, you finally get to the checkout lines front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the w