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TED英语演讲：我们不该放弃对成功的想象
著名作家Alain检视我们对成功 和失败的看法，质疑它们所代表
的意义。成功都是配得的吗?失败呢?听他机智地解答我们对成功的迷< br>思，帮助我们摆脱势利，重新寻回对工作的热情。下面是小编为大家
收集关于TED英语演讲：我 们不该放弃对成功的想象，欢迎借鉴参考。
演说题目：我们不该放弃对成功的想象!
演讲者：Alain de Botton
中英文翻译：
For me they normally happen, these career crises, often,
actually, on a Sunday evening, just as the sun is starting to
set,
我经常对事业感到恐慌，周日下午，晚霞洒满天空，
and the gap between my hopes for myself and the reality of
my life starts to diverge so painfully that I normally end up
weeping into a pillow.
我的理想和现实的差距却是这样残酷，令我沮丧的只想抱头痛哭。
I'm mentioning all this -- I'm mentioning all this because
I think this is not merely a personal problem; you may think
I'm wrong in this, but I think we live in an age when our lives
are regularly punctuated by career crises,
我提出这件事是因为，我认为不只有我这么感觉。你可能不这么

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认为，但我感觉我们活在一个充满事业恐慌的时代，
by moments when what we thought we knew -- about our lives,
about our careers -- comes into contact with a threatening sort
of reality.
就在我们认为我们已经理解我们的人生和事业时，真实便来恐吓
我们。
It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good
living. It's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to
be free of career anxiety. I want to look now, if I may, at some
of the reasons why we might be feeling anxiety about our careers.
现在或许比以前更容易过上好生活，但却比以前更难保持冷静，
或不为 事业感到焦虑。今天我想要检视，我们对事业感到焦虑的一些
原因，
Why we might be victims of these career crises, as we're
weeping softly into our pillows. One of the reasons why we might
be suffering is that we are surrounded by snobs.
为何我们会变成事业焦虑的囚徒。不时抱头痛哭，折磨人的因素
之一是，我们身边的那些势利鬼。
In a way, I've got some bad news, particularly to anybody
who's come to Oxford from abroad. There's a real problem with
snobbery, because sometimes people from outside the U.K.
imagine that snobbery is a distinctively U.K. phenomenon,

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fixated on country houses and titles.
对那些来访牛津大学的外国友人，我有一个坏消息，这里的人都
很势利。有时候，英国以外 的人会想象，势利是英国人特有的个性，
来自那些乡间别墅和头衔爵位。
The bad news is that's not true. Snobbery is a global
phenomenon; we area global organization, this is a global
phenomenon. What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small
part of you, and uses that to come to a complete vision of who
you are. That is snobbery.
坏消息是，并不只是这样，势 利是一个全球性的问题，我们是个
全球性的组织，这是个全球性的问题，它确实存在。势利是什么?，< br>势利是以一小部分的你，来判别你的全部价值，那就是势利。
The dominant kind of snobbery that exists nowadays is job
snobbery. You encounter it within minutes at a party, when you
get asked that famous iconic question of the early 21st century,

今日最主 要的势利，就是对职业的势利。你在派对中不用一分钟
就能体会到，当你被问到这个21世纪初，最有代 表性的问题：你是
做什么的?
According to how you answer that question, people are
either incredibly delighted to see you, or look at their watch
and make their excuses.

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你的答案将会决定对方接下来的反应，对方可能对你在场感到荣
幸，或是开始看表，然后想个借口离开。
Now, the opposite of a snob is your necessarily
your mother, or indeed mine, but, as it were, the ideal mother,
somebody who doesn't care about your achievements.
势利鬼的另一 个极端，是你的母亲。不一定是你我的母亲，而是
一个理想母亲的想象，一个永远义无反顾的爱你，不在 乎你是否功成
名就的人。
Unfortunately, most people are not our mothers. Most people
make a strict correlation between how much time, and if you like,
love -- not romantic love, though that may be something -- but
love in general, respect --they are willing to accord us, that
will be strictly defined by our position in the social hierarchy.
不幸地，大部分世人都不怀有这种母爱，大部分世 人决定要花费
多少时间，给于多少爱，不一定是浪漫的那种爱，虽然那也包括在内，
世人所愿意 给我们的关爱、尊重，取决于我们的社会地位。
And that's a lot of the reason why we care so much about
our careers and indeed start caring so much about material goods.
You know, we're often told that we live in very materialistic
times, that we're all greedy people. I don't think we are
particularly materialistic.
这就是为什么我们如此在乎事业和成就，以及看重金钱和物质的

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原因。我们时常被告知我们处在一个物质挂帅的时代，我们都是贪婪
的人。
I think we live in a society which has simply pegged certain
emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods. It's
not the material goods we want;
我并不认为我们特别看重物质，而是活在一个物质能带来大量情
感反馈的时代。
It's the rewards we want. It's a new way of looking at luxury
goods. The next time you see somebody driving a Ferrari, don't
think,
我们想要的不是物 质，而是背后的情感反馈，这赋予奢侈品一个
崭新的意义。下次你看到那些开着法拉利跑车的人，你不要 想“这个
人很贪婪”，
Think,
in need of love.
而是“这是一个无比脆弱、急需爱的人”，也就是说，同情他们，
不要鄙视他们。
There are other reasons --There are other reasons why it's
perhaps harder now to feel calm than ever before. One of these,
and it's paradoxical, because it's linked to something that's
rather nice, is the hope we all have for our careers.
还有一些其他的理由，使得我们更难获得平静。这有些矛盾，因

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为拥有自己的事业，是一件不错的事，
Never before have expectations been so high about what
human beings can achieve with their life 're told, from
many sources, that any onecan achieve anything.
但同时，人们也从未对自己的短暂一生有过这么高的期待。 这个
世界用许多方法告诉我们，我们无所不能。
We've done away with the caste system, we are now in a system
where anyone can rise to any position they please. And it's a
beautiful idea. Along with that is a kind of spirit of equality;
我们不再受限 于阶级，而是只要靠着努力就能攀上我们想到的高
度。这是个美丽的理想，出于一种生而平等的精神，
we're all basically equal. There are no strictly defined
hierarchies. There is one really big problem with this, and that
problem is envy.
我们基本上是平等的，没有任何明显的阶级存在。这造成了一个
严重的问题，这个问题是嫉妒。
Envy, it's a real taboo to mention envy, but if there's one
dominant emotion in modern society, that is envy. And it's
linked to the spirit of equality.
嫉妒在今日是一种禁忌话题，但这个社会上最普遍的感受，便是
嫉妒。嫉妒来自生而平等的精神。
Let me explain. I think it would be very unusual for anyone

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here, or anyone watching, to be envious of the Queen of England.
Even though she is much richer than any of you are, and she's
got a very large house, the reason why we don't envy her is
because she's too weird.
这么说吧，我想在场的各位，或是 观看这个影片的众位，很少有
人会嫉妒英国女皇。虽然她比我们都更加富有，住在一个巨大的房子
里，我们不会嫉妒她的原因是她太怪异了。
She's simply too strange. We can't relate to her, she speaks
in a funny way, she comes from an odd place. So we can't relate
to her, and when you can't relate to somebody, you don't envy
them.
她太怪了，我 们无法想象自己与她扯上关系，她的语调令人发噱，
来自一个奇怪的地方，我们与她毫无关联。当你认为 你与这个人毫无
关联时，你便不会嫉妒。
The closer two people are -- in age, in background, in the
process of identification -- the more there's a danger of envy,
which is incidentally why none of you should ever go to a school
reunion, because there is no stronger reference point than
people one was at school with.
越是两个年龄、背景 相近的人，越容易陷入嫉妒的苦海，所以千
万避免去参加同学会。因为没有比同学，更强烈的参照点了。
The problem of modern society is it turns the whole world

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into a school. Everybody's wearing jeans, everybody's the same.
And yet, they're not. So there's a spirit of equality combined
with deep inequality, which can make for a very stressful
situation.
今日社会的问题是，它把全世界变成了一个学校，每个人都穿着< br>牛仔裤，每个人都一样。但并非如此，当生而平等的概念遇上现实中
悬殊的不平等，巨大的压力就 出现了。
It's probably as unlikely that you would nowadays become
as rich and famous as Bill Gates, as it was unlikely in the17th
century that you would accede to the ranks of the French
aristocracy.
今日你变得像比尔- 盖茨一样，有钱又出名的机会，大概就跟你
在十七世纪，成为法国贵族一样困难。
But the point is, it doesn't feel that way. It's made to
feel, by magazines and other media outlets, that if you've got
energy, a few bright ideas about technology, a garage -- you,
too, could start a major thing.
但重点是，感觉却差别很大。今日的杂志和其它媒体 让我们感觉，
只要你有冲劲、对科技有一些新颖的想法，再加上一个车库，你就可
以踏上比尔的 道路。
The consequences of this problem make themselves felt in
bookshops. When you go to a large bookshop and look at the

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self-help sections, as I sometimes do -- if you analyze
self-help book sproduced in the world today, there are
basically two kinds.
我们可以从书店中感受到这些问题所造成的后果，当你像我一样
到大型书店 里的，自我帮助书籍类。如果你分析现在出版的这些自我
帮助类书籍，它们基本上分成两种，
The first kind tells you,
Anything's possible!The other kind tells you how to cope with
what we politely call

第一种告诉你“你做得到!你能 成功!没有不可能!”另外一种则
教导你如何处理，我们婉转地称呼为“缺乏自信”，或是直接了当地< br>称为“自我感觉极差”。
There's a real correlation between a society that tells
people that they can do anything, and the existence of low
self-esteem. So that's another way in which something quite
positive can have a nasty kickback.
这两者中间有着绝对的关联，一个告诉人们他们无所不能的社会，
和 缺乏自信有着绝对的关联。另一件好事也会带来坏影响的例子，
There is another reason why we might be feeling more anxious
--about our careers, about our status in the world today, than
ever before. And it's, again, linked to something nice. And that

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nice thing is called meritocracy.
还有一些其它原因造成我们对事业，对我们在世上的地位感到前
所未有的焦虑，再一次地，它也和好的概念有关，这个好概念叫做“功
绩主义”。
Everybody, all politicians on Left and Right, agree that
meritocracy is a great thing, and we should all be trying to
make our societies really, really meritocratic. In other words
-- what is a meritocratic society?
现在，无论是左倾还是右倾 的政治人物，都同意“功绩主义”是
个好事。我们应该尽力让我们的社会崇尚“功绩主义”，换句话说，
一个崇尚“功绩主义”的社会是什么样的呢?
A meritocratic society is one in which, if you've got talent
and energy and skill, you will get to the top, nothing should
hold you back. It's a beautiful idea.
一个崇尚功绩主义的社会相信，如果你有才能、精力和技术，你
就会飞黄腾达 ，没有什么能阻止你，这是个美好的想法。
The problem is, if you really believe in a society where
those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you'll also,
by implication, and in a far more nasty way, believe in a society
where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the
bottom and stay there.
问题是，如果你打从心里相信，那些在社会顶层的人都是精英，

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同时你也暗示着，以一种残忍的方法，相信那些在社会底层的人，天
生就该在社会底层，
I nother words, your position in life comes to seem not
accidental, but merited and deserved. And that makes failure
seem much more crushing.
换句话说，你在社会的地位不是偶然，而都是你配得的，这种想
法让失败变得更残忍。
You know, in the Middle Ages, in England, when you met a
very poor person, that person would be described as an

by fortune, an unfortunate.
你知道，在中世纪的英国，但你遇见一个非常穷苦的人，你会认
为他“不走运”，直接地说，那些不被幸运之神眷顾的人。
Nowadays, particularly in the United States, if you meet
someone at the bottom of society, they may unkindly be described
as a There's a real difference between an unfortunate
and a loser,
不幸的人，尤其在美国，如果人们遇见一些社会底层的人，他们
被刻薄地形容成“失败者” ，“不走运”和“失败者”中间有很大的差
别，
and that shows 400 years of evolution in society and our
belief in who is responsible for our lives. It's no longer the

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gods, it's us. We're in the driving seat.
这表现了四百年的社会演变，我们对谁 该为人生负责看法的改变，
神不再掌握我们的命运，我们掌握自己的人生。
That's exhilarating if you're doing well, and very crushing
if you're not. It leads, in the worst cases -- in the analysis
of a sociologist like Emil Durkheim -- it leads to increased
rates of suicide.
如果你做的很好，这是件令人愉快的事。相反的情况，就很令人
沮丧。社会学家Emil，Durkheim分析发现，这提高了自杀率，
There are more suicides in developed, individualistic
countries than in any other part of the world. And some of the
reason for that is that people take what happens to them
extremely personally -- they own their success, but they also
own their failure.
追求个人主义的发达国家的自杀率，高过于世界上其它地方，原< br>因是人们把发生在自己身上的事情，全当作自己的责任，人们拥有成
功，也拥有失败。
Is there any relief from some of thesepressures that I've
been outlining? I think there is. I just want to turn to afew
of them. Let's take meritocracy. This idea that everybody
deserves to getwhere they get to, I think it's a crazy idea,
completely crazy.

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有什么方法可以解决刚才提到的这些焦虑呢?是有的。我想提出
几项，先说 “功绩主义”，也就是相信每个人的地位忠实呈现他的能
力，我认为这种想法太疯狂了，
I will support any politician of Left and Right, with any
halfway-decent meritocratic idea; I am a meritocrat in that
sense. But I think it's insane to believe that we will ever make
a society that is genuinely meritocratic; it's an impossible
dream.
我可以支持所有相信这个想法的，无论是左 倾还是右倾的政治家，
我同样相信功绩主义，但我认为一个完全彻底以能力取决地位的社会，
是 个不可能的梦想。
The idea that we will make a society where literally
everybody is graded, the good at the top, bad at the bottom,
exactly done as it should be, is impossible. There are simply
too many random factors:
这种我们能创造一个每个人的能力都忠实地被分级，好的就到顶
端，坏的就到底部，而且保证过程毫无差 错，这是不可能的。这世上
有太多偶然的契机，
accidents, accidents of birth, accidents of things
dropping on people's heads, illnesses, etc. We will never get
to grade them, never get to grade people as they should.
不同的机运，出身，疾病，从天而降的意外等等，我们却无法将

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这些因素分级，无法完全忠实的将人分级。
I'm drawn to a lovely quote by St. Augustine in
of God,where he says, a sin to judge any man by his post.
In modern English that would mean it's a sinto come to any view
of who you should talk to, dependent on their business card.
It's not the post that should count.
我很喜欢圣奥古斯丁在“上帝之城” 里的一句话，他说“以社会
地位评价人是一种罪”。用现在的口吻说，看一个人的名片来决定你
是否要和他交谈是罪。
According to St. Augustine, only God can really put
everybody in their place; he's going to do that on the Day of
Judgment, with angels and trumpets, and the skies will open.
Insane idea, if you're a secularist person, like me.
对圣奥古斯丁来说，人的价值不在他的社会地位，只有神可以决
定一个 人的价值，他将在天使围绕、小号奏鸣，天空破开的世界末日
给于最后审判，如果你是像我一样的世俗论 者，这想法太疯狂了，
But something very valuable in that idea,
other words, hold your horses when you're coming to judge people.
You don't necessarily know what someone's truevalue is.
但这想法有它的价值。换句话说，最好在你开口评论他人之前悬
崖勒马，你很有可能不知道他人的真正价 值，这是不可测的。
That is an unknown part of them, and we shouldn't behave

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as though it is known. There is another source of solace and
comfort for all this. When we think about failing in life, when
we think about failure, one of the reasons why we fear failing
is not just a loss of income, a loss of status.
于是，我们不该为人下定论，还有另一种慰藉，当我们想象人生
中的失败 ，我们恐惧的原因并不只是失去收入，失去地位，
What we fear is the judgment and ridicule of others. And
it number one organ of ridicule, nowadays, is the
newspaper. If you open the newspaper any day of the week,
我们害怕的是他人的评论和嘲笑，它的确存在。今日世界上最会
嘲笑人的便是报纸。每天我们打开报纸，
it's full of people who've messed up their lives. They've
slept with the wrong person, taken the wrong substance, passed
the wrong piece of legislation -- whatever it is, and then are
fit for ridicule. In other words, they have failed.
都能看到那些把生活搞砸的人，他们与错误对象共枕，使用错误
药物，通过错误法案种种，让人在茶余饭后拿来挖苦的新闻，这些人
失败了，
And they are described as
alternative to this? I think the Western tradition shows us one
glorious alternative, which is tragedy.
我们称他们为“失败者”，还有其它做法吗?西方传统给了我们一

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个光荣的选择，就是“悲剧”。
Tragic art, as it developed in the theaters of ancient
Greece, in the fifth century B.C., was essentially an art form
devoted to tracing how people fail, and also according them a
level of sympathy, which ordinary life would not necessarily
accord them.
悲剧的艺术来自古希腊。西元前五世纪，这是一个专属于描绘人
类失败过程的 艺术，同时也加入某种程度的同情。在现代生活并不常
给于同情时。
A few years ago, I was thinking about this, and I went to

start reading if you're not familiar with it already.
几年前我思考着这件事，我去见“周日运动期刊”，如果你还不
认识这个小报，我建议你也别去读。
And I went to talk to them about certain of the great
tragedies of Western art. I wanted to see how they would seize
the bare bones of certain stories, if they came in as a news
item at the news desk on a Saturday afternoon.
我去找他们聊聊，西方艺术中最伟大的几个悲剧故事，我想知道
他们会如何露骨地以新闻的 方式，在周日下午的新闻台上，呈现这些
经典悲剧故事。
I mentioned Othello; they'd not heard of it but were

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fascinated.I asked them to write a headline for the story. They
came up with Immigrant Kills Senator's Daughter.
Splashed across the headline.
我谈到他们从未耳闻的《奥赛罗》，他们啧啧称奇。 我要求他们
以奥赛罗的故事写一句头条，他们写道“移民因爱生恨，刺杀参议员
之女”大头条。
I gave them the plotline of Madame Bovary. Again, a book
they were enchanted to discover. And they wrote
Adulteress Swallows Arsenic After Credit Fraud.
我告诉他们《包法利夫人》的故事，他们再一次感到惊异 万分，
写道“不伦购物狂信用欺诈，出墙妇女吞砒霜”。
And then my favorite -- they really do have a kind of genius
of their own, these guys -- my favorite is Sophocles' Oedipus
the King:
我最喜欢的是，这些记者 真的很有才，我最喜欢的是索福克勒斯
的《俄狄浦斯王》，“与母亲的盲目性爱”。(掌声)
In a way, if you like, at one end of the spectrum of sympathy,
you've got the tabloid newspaper. At the other end of the
spectrum, you've got tragedy and tragic art.
如果同情心的一个极端，是这些八卦小报。另一个极端便是悲剧
和悲剧艺术，
And I suppose I'm arguing that we should learn a little bit

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about what's happening in tragic art. It would be insane to call
Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost.
我想说的是或许我们该从悲剧艺术中学习，你不会说汉姆雷特是
个失 败者，虽然他失败了，他却不是一个失败者。
And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why
it's so very, very important, I think.
我想这就是悲剧所要告诉我们的，也是我认为非常重要的一点。
The other thing about modern society and why it causes this
anxiety, is that we have nothing at its center that is non-human.
We are the first society to be living in a world where we don't
worship anything other than ourselves.
现代社会让我们焦虑的另一个 缘故是，我们除了人类以外没有其
它重心。我们是从古至今的第一个无神社会，除了我们自己以外，
We think very highly of ourselves, and so we should; we've
put people on the Moon, done all sorts of extraordinary things.
And so we tend to worship ourselves.
我们不膜拜任何事物，我们对自己评价极高，为什 么不呢，我们
把人送上月球，达成了许多不可思议的事，我们习惯崇拜自己。
Our heroes are human heroes. That's a very new situation.
Most other societies have had, right at their center, the
worship of something transcendent: a god, a spirit, a natural
force, the universe, whatever it is --

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我们的英雄是人类，这是一个崭新的情况。历史中大部分的社会重心都是敬拜一位人类以外的灵体，神，自然力、宇宙，总之是人类
以外的什么。
something else that is being worshiped. We've slightly lost
the habit of doing that, which is, I think, why we're
particularly drawn to nature.
我们逐渐失去了这种习惯，我想这也是我们越来越被大自然吸引
的原因。
Not for the sake of our health, though it's often presented
that way, but because it's an escape from the human anthill.
It's an escape from our own competition, and our own dramas.
虽然我们时常显示是为了健康，但我不这么认为，我认为是为了
逃避人群的蚁丘，逃避人们的疯狂竞争， 我们的戏剧化，
And that's why ween joy looking at glaciers and oceans, and
contemplating the Earth from outside its perimeters, etc. We
like to feel in contact with something that is non-human, and
that is so deeply important to us.
这便是为什么我们如此喜欢看海、观赏冰山，从外太空观赏地球
等等，我们希望重 新和那些“非人类”的事物有所连接，那对我们来
说很重要。
What I think I've been talking about really is success and
failure. And one of the interesting things about success is that

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we think we know what it means. If I said that there's somebody
behind the screen who's very successful, certain ideas would
immediately come to mind.
我一直在谈论成功和失败。成功的有趣之处是，我们时常以为我们知道成功是什么，如果我现在说，这个屏幕后面站着一个非常成功
的人，你心里马上就会产生一些 想法。
You'd think that person might have made a lot of money,
achieved renown in some field. My own theory of success -- I'm
somebody who's very interested in success, I really want to be
successful, always thinking, how can I be more successful?
你会想，这个人可能很有钱，在某些领域赫赫有名，我对成功的
理解是。首先，我是一个对成功非常有兴趣的人，我想要成功，我总
是想着“要怎样我才能更成功?”，
But as I get older, I'm also very nuanced about what that
word might 's an insight that I've had about
success: You can't be successful at everything.
但当我渐渐长大，我越来越疑惑，究竟什 么是“成功”的真正意
义。我对成功有一些观察，你不可能在所有事情上成功。
We hear a lot of talk about work-life balance. Nonsense.
You can't have it all. You can't. So any vision of success has
to admit what it's losing out on, where the element of loss is.
我们常听到有关工作和休闲的平衡，鬼话。你不可能全部拥有。

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你就是不能。所有对成功的想象，必须承认他们同时也失去了一些东
西，放弃了一些东西。
And I think any wise life will accept, as I say, that there
is going to be an element where we're not succeeding.
我想一个智者能接受，如我所说，总是有什么是我们得不到的。
And the thing about a successful life is that a lot of the
time, our ideas of what it would mean to live successfully are
not our own. They're sucked in from other people; chiefly, if
you're a man, your father,
常常，我们对一个成功人生的想象，不是来自我们自己，而 是来
自他人。如果你是个男人，你会以父亲做榜样，
and if you're a woman, your mother. Psychoanalysis has been
drumming home this message for about 80 years. No one's quite
listening hard enough, but I very much believe it's true.
如果你是个女人，你会以母亲做榜 样，精神分析已经重复说了
80年，但很少有人真正听进去。但我的确相信这件事。
And we also suck in messages from everything from the
television, to advertising, to marketing, etc. These are hugely
powerful forces that define what we want and how we view
ourselves.
我们也会从电视、广告，各样的市场宣传中得到我们对成功的想
象。这些东西影响了我们， 对我们自己的看法、我们想要什么。

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When we're told that banking is a very respectable
profession, a lot of us want to go into banking. When banking
is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We
are highly open to suggestion.
当我们听说银行业是 个受人尊敬的行业，许多人便加入银行业，
当银行业不再受人尊敬，我们便对银行业失去兴趣，我们很能 接受建
议。
So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up
on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are
our own. We should focus in on our ideas, and make sure that
we own them; that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions.
我想说的是，我们不该 放弃，我们对成功的想象，但必须确定那
些都是我们自己想要的，我们应该专注于我们自己的目标，确定 这目
标是我们真正想要的，确定这个梦想蓝图出自自己笔下。
Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's
even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out,
at the end of the journey, that it isn't, in fact, what you
wanted all along.
因为得不到自己想要的已经够糟糕了，更糟糕的是，在人生旅程
的终点，发 觉你所追求的从来就不是你真正想要的。
So, I'm going to end it there. But what I really want to
stress is: by all means, success, yes. But let's accept the

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strangeness of some of our ideas.
我必须在这里做个总结，但我真正想说的是，成功是必要的，但
请接受自己怪异的想法，
Let's probe away at our notions of success. Let's make sure
our ideas of success are truly our you very much.
朝着自己对成功的定义出发，确定我们对成功的定义都是出于自
己的真心。非常感谢各位。
Chris Anderson: That was fascinating. But how do you
reconcile this idea of it being bad to think of someone as a

control of your life, and that a society that encourages that,
perhaps has to have some winners and losers?
主持人：说的真好。你要如何与自己和解，把一个人称为失败者
是糟糕的，但许多人都想掌 握自己的生活，一个追求这些的社会难免
要有赢家和输家。
Alain De Botton: Yes, I think it's merely the randomness
of the winning and losing process that I want to stress, because
the emphasis nowadays is so much on the justice of everything,
and politicians always talk about justice. Now I'm a firm
believer in justice, I just think that it's impossible.
阿兰?德波顿：是的，我只是想提出，在输赢的过程中有太多 偶
然，今日我们太讲求所有事情的正义和公平，政治人物总是在谈论正

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义，我非常支持正义，我只是觉得那不可能，
So we should do everything we can to pursue it, but we should
always remember that whoever is facing us, whatever has
happened in their lives, there will be a strong element of the
haphazard.
我们应该尽力，尽力去追求正义，但我们也应该记得，我们所面
对的，无论在他们人生中发 生过什么，偶然总是一个强烈的因素，
That's what I'm trying to leave room for; otherwise, it can
get quite claustrophobic.
我希望大家留一点空间这么想，不然真令人有一种幽闭恐怖症的
感觉。
CA: I mean, do you believe that you can combine your kind
of kinder, gentler philosophy of work with a successful economy?
主持人：我是说，你是否相信，在这种温和的哲学下，可以产生
一个发达的经济?
Or do you think that you can't, but it doesn't matter that
much that we're putting too much emphasis on that?
还是你认为那不可行?还是我们这样反复提醒人们也不甚重要?
AB: The nightmare thought is that frightening people is the
best way to get work out of them, and that somehow the crueler
the environment, the more people will rise to the challenge.
阿兰?德波顿：梦魇是相信恐吓人们是刺激他们发奋的最好办法，

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或是环境越残酷，就会有越多人接受挑战。
You want to think, who would you like as your ideal dad?
And your ideal dad is somebody who is tough but gentle. And it's
a very hard line to make. We need fathers, as it were, the
exemplary father figures in society, avoiding the two extremes,
which is the authoritarian disciplinarian on the one hand, and
on the other, the lax, no-rules option.
你必须想，你的理想父亲 是怎样的?你的理想父亲往往是严厉又
温和的，虽然这界限很难画定，我们社会需要的模范性人物是像一 个
理想父亲，不要走极端，不要完全集权、纯粹纪律，也不要模糊马虎，
乱无规章。
CA: Alain De Botton.
AB: Thank you very much.
非常感谢.

---来源网络整理，仅供参考

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