空洞的意义

The Problem With Meaning

空洞的意义

Not long ago, a friend sent me a speech that the great civic leader John Gardner gave to the Stanford Alumni Association 61 years after he graduated from that college. The speech is chock-full of practical wisdom. I especially liked this passage:

不久前，一位朋友给我发来伟大的民权领袖约翰·加德纳(John Gardner)从斯坦福毕业61年后给校友会所做的演讲。这份讲稿的字里行间充满了实用的智慧。我尤其喜欢这一段：

“The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on character.

“你成熟时学到的东西，并非获取信息和技能这样的易事。你学会不做那些自我毁灭的事情，学会不在焦虑中浪费精力;你发现如何控制自己紧绷的神经;你知道了自怨自艾、怨天尤人是最有害的东西;你发现才华虽被仰慕但性格好的人才会得好报。”

“You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you; they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”

“你开始明白，多数人既不喜欢你，也不讨厌你;他们想的是自己。你知道了，不管多么努力地去取悦人，世界上就是有些人不爱你。得知这一点，一开始会让人不安，最后却能感到如释重负。”

Gardner goes on in this wise way. And then, at the end, he goes into a peroration about leading a meaningful life. “Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you. ... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.”

加德纳妙语连珠。到了最后，他的结语讨论的是过有意义的生活。“意义是你赋予自己生命的。这种赋予来源于你自己的过去、你的喜好和热忱，以及人类世世代代流传下来的经验……只有你，才能把它们融合成一种独特的体验，而这种体验就是你的生命。”

Gardner puts “meaning” at the apogee of human existence. His speech reminded me how often we’ve heard that word over the past decades. As my Times colleague April Lawson puts it, “meaning” has become the stand-in concept for everything the soul yearns for and seeks. It is one of the few phrases acceptable in modern parlance to describe a fundamentally spiritual need.

加德纳认为“意义”是人类存在的最高宗旨。他的演讲让我想起来，我们在过去几十年经常听到这个字眼。就像我在《纽约时报》的同事阿普里尔·劳森 (April Lawson)说的那样，“意义”已经成为灵魂所渴望、寻找的一切事物的替代概念。这是现代用语可以接受的形容基本精神需求的少数词语之一。

Yet what do we mean when we use the word meaning?

当我们使用意义这个词时，我们指的是什么呢?

The first thing we mean is that life should be about more than material success. The person leading a meaningful life has found some way of serving others that leads to a feeling of significance.

首先指的是生活应该不仅仅局限于物质上的成功。过着有意义的生活的人已经找到了服务于他人的方式，这让他们感受到了自身的重要性。

Second, a meaningful life is more satisfying than a merely happy life. Happiness is about enjoying the present; meaning is about dedicating oneself to the future. Happiness is about receiving; meaningfulness is about giving. Happiness is about upbeat moods and nice experiences. People leading meaningful lives experience a deeper sense of satisfaction.

其次，有意义的生活要比快乐的生活更令人满足。快乐是享受当下;意义在于投身未来。快乐是得到;意义在于给予。快乐是愉悦向上的情绪，美好的体验。过着有意义的生活的人能体会到更大的满足感。

In this way, meaning is an uplifting state of consciousness. It’s what you feel when you’re serving things beyond self.

从这个方面来看，意义是一种令人振奋的意识状态。就是你超越自己，服务于其他事物时的那种感觉。

Yet it has to be said, as commonly used today, the word is flabby and vacuous, the product of a culture that has grown inarticulate about inner life.

但不得不说，这个词如今被广泛使用，已经变得无力、空洞，这是对内心生活日益不善表达的文化造成的结果。

Let me put it this way: If we look at the people in history who achieved great things — like Nelson Mandela or Albert Schweitzer or Abraham Lincoln — it wasn’t because they wanted to bathe luxuriously in their own sense of meaningfulness. They had objective and eternally true standards of justice and injustice. They were indignant when those eternal standards were violated. They subscribed to moral systems — whether secular or religious — that recommended specific ways of being, and had specific structures of what is right and wrong, and had specific disciplines about how you might get better over time.

这么说吧：看看历史上取得伟大成就的人物——比如纳尔逊·曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)、阿尔伯特·史怀哲(Albert Schweitzer)或亚伯拉罕·林肯(Abraham Lincoln)，他们之所以伟大，并不是因为他们希望舒适地沉浸在他们自己对意义的感知中。他们对于公正与否有着客观且永恒不朽的评判标准。当这些永恒的标准被打破时，他们义愤填膺。他们认同的道德体系——无论是世俗的还是宗教的，推崇特定的存在之道，拥有界定对与错的特定体系，以及有关如何逐渐变得更好的特定原则。

Meaningfulness tries to replace structures, standards and disciplines with self-regarding emotion. The ultimate authority of meaningful is the warm tingling we get when we feel significant and meaningful. Meaningfulness tries to replace moral systems with the emotional corona that surrounds acts of charity.

意义试图以专注于自身的情感来取代体系、标准和原则。意义的终极表象，就是在我们觉得自身重要而有意义时，那种温暖的刺痛。意义试图以伴随慈善之举的那种情感来取代道德体系。

It’s a paltry substitute. Because meaningfulness is built solely on an emotion, it is contentless and irreducible. Because it is built solely on emotion, it’s subjective and relativistic. You get meaning one way. I get meaning another way. Who is any of us to judge another’s emotion?

它是一种微不足道的替代品。因为意义完全建立在一种情感之上，它空泛而且不能简化。由于它完全建立在情感之上，所以它具有主观性和相对性。你能以某种方式获得意义。我又会以另一种方式获得意义。我们当中有谁能去评判别人的情感?

Because it’s based solely on sentiment, it is useless. There are no criteria to determine what kind of meaningfulness is higher. There’s no practical manual that would help guide each of us as we move from shallower forms of service to deeper ones. There is no hierarchy of values that would help us select, from among all the things we might do, that activity which is highest and best to do.

由于它完全建立在情感之上，所以毫无用处。没有标准可以确定什么样的意义层次更高。也没有实用手册，能在我们从比较肤浅的服务形式向比较深刻的形式转变时，对我们加以引导。也没有什么价值体系，能帮我们从我们可能从事的所有事情中挑选出层次最高的、最好的活动。

Because it’s based solely on emotion, it’s fleeting. When the sensations of meaningful go away then the cause that once aroused them gets dropped, too. Ennui floods in. Personal crisis follows. There’s no reliable ground.

由于它完全建立在情感之上，所以会转瞬即逝。一旦有意义的感觉消失，曾经激发这种感觉的事情也会变得黯淡无光。倦怠袭来，个人危机也会随之而来。找不到任何可靠的立足之地。