You know, I'm struck by how one of the implicit themes of TED is compassion, these very moving demonstrations we've just seen: HIV in Africa, President Clinton last night. And I'd like to do a little collateral thinking, if you will, about compassion and bring it from the global level to the personal. I'm a psychologist, but rest assured, I will not bring it to the scrotal.
你們知道,同情心這個含蓄的議題在TED大會上 我們已經聽了兩場震撼有力的短講 : HIV在非洲的現況,克林頓總統昨晚的演講。 容我在此繼續作個橫向思考, 將同情心從全球性的角度帶到個人層次。 我是心理學家,請放心, 我不會離題去講陰囊炎。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
There was a very important study done a while ago at Princeton Theological Seminary that speaks to why it is that when all of us have so many opportunities to help, we do sometimes, and we don't other times. A group of divinity students at the Princeton Theological Seminary were told that they were going to give a practice sermon and they were each given a sermon topic. Half of those students were given, as a topic, the parable of the Good Samaritan: the man who stopped the stranger in -- to help the stranger in need by the side of the road. Half were given random Bible topics. Then one by one, they were told they had to go to another building and give their sermon. As they went from the first building to the second, each of them passed a man who was bent over and moaning, clearly in need. The question is: Did they stop to help?
前陣子有個非常重要的研究 是在普林斯頓神學院進行的,探索到為什麼 每個人都有那麼多機會允許我們伸出援手, 但為何幫助有時,不幫助有時? 在普林斯頓神學院裡有一組神學生 被告知要準備一篇實習佈道的講章 每個人都分配了一個佈道講題。 半數的人得到的講題是, 耶穌說過的「好撒瑪利亞人」的比喻, 是關於一個仁慈善心人在旅途中, 為倒在路旁的陌生人擔擱旅程,慷慨給予陌生人一切的幫助。 另一半的神學生拿到的是其他聖經相關的講題。 他們被一一個別告知,需去到另一大樓 去講道。 當他們走向另一棟大樓時, 每個人都經過了一個人,正屈身呻吟, 很明顯的,這個人需要幫助。問題是:神學生們停下來幫助他了嗎?
The more interesting question is: Did it matter they were contemplating the parable of the Good Samaritan? Answer: No, not at all. What turned out to determine whether someone would stop and help a stranger in need was how much of a hurry they thought they were in -- were they feeling they were late, or were they absorbed in what they were going to talk about. And this is, I think, the predicament of our lives: that we don't take every opportunity to help because our focus is in the wrong direction.
更有趣的問題是: 頭腦深深思考了寓言的意涵,會影響行為嗎? 從「好撒瑪利亞人」比喻而來的意義影響?答案是:完全沒有。 決定了一個人是否停下來幫助 有需要的陌生人 結果呢,是依他們認為自己有多麼趕時間的程度而定, 一方面以為自己可能遲到,另一方面 預備講章過程中汲取的意義也有作用。 我認為這也是我們每天生活的困境寫照, 為什麼我們不能總是把握住每次幫助他人的機會, 是因為,焦點有所偏差
There's a new field in brain science, social neuroscience. This studies the circuitry in two people's brains that activates while they interact. And the new thinking about compassion from social neuroscience is that our default wiring is to help. That is to say, if we attend to the other person, we automatically empathize, we automatically feel with them. There are these newly identified neurons, mirror neurons, that act like a neuro Wi-Fi, activating in our brain exactly the areas activated in theirs. We feel "with" automatically. And if that person is in need, if that person is suffering, we're automatically prepared to help. At least that's the argument.
腦科學現在有了一個新的領域,「社會神經學」。 研究兩個人的腦神經迴路 在兩人互動時腦部發生的活動。 從社會神經學的角度來看同情心,新思維發現到 幫助他人是腦神經系統的原始預設值。 也就是說,如果我們去關心一個人 我們就會自動的有同情心,自動感受到他們的感受。 研究者發現一些新類型的神經元,鏡像神經元 在大腦中就像Wi-Fi無線網路一樣的會發射訊號 訊號瞄準對應到另一個人大腦中的同一個部位。以至於「同感」自動發生。 倘若另一個人有所需要,正在受煎熬 人總是自動預備好是要給予幫助的。至少目前的論據是如此主張。
But then the question is: Why don't we? And I think this speaks to a spectrum that goes from complete self-absorption, to noticing, to empathy and to compassion. And the simple fact is, if we are focused on ourselves, if we're preoccupied, as we so often are throughout the day, we don't really fully notice the other. And this difference between the self and the other focus can be very subtle.
但下一個問題來了:為何有時我們卻不幫助呢? 我認為這像個光譜 一頭是完全的以自我中心, 然後是注意他人,同理心,以至於另一端的同情心。 事實上,如果我們太專注於自我 而到了心不在焉的程度 - 我們時常整天都處於這樣的狀況, 則我們也不會真正注意到別人發生了什麼事。 在自我和他人之間,這兩種焦點之間的差異 可能非常微小。
I was doing my taxes the other day, and I got to the point where I was listing all of the donations I gave, and I had an epiphany, it was -- I came to my check to the Seva Foundation and I noticed that I thought, boy, my friend Larry Brilliant would really be happy that I gave money to Seva. Then I realized that what I was getting from giving was a narcissistic hit -- that I felt good about myself. Then I started to think about the people in the Himalayas whose cataracts would be helped, and I realized that I went from this kind of narcissistic self-focus to altruistic joy, to feeling good for the people that were being helped. I think that's a motivator.
比方說,有一天我在整理報稅資料,發現 當列出所有捐款明細時 突然來了個頓悟- 看到曾開給Seva基金會的支票時,我注意到我是這麼想, 哇,我朋友Larry Brilliant真的會很高興 我有捐錢給Seva。 然後我意識到從給予而來的收穫 一陣自戀的快感衝上來 - 自我感覺真好。 然後我才開始想到喜馬拉雅山上的人 他們白內障的疾病問題可以得到幫助,並且我意識到 我從自戀的自我焦點 來到利他的喜樂,感覺到 為我們所幫助的人感到快樂。我認為利他是個驅動力。
But this distinction between focusing on ourselves and focusing on others is one that I encourage us all to pay attention to. You can see it at a gross level in the world of dating. I was at a sushi restaurant a while back and I overheard two women talking about the brother of one woman, who was in the singles scene. And this woman says, "My brother is having trouble getting dates, so he's trying speed dating." I don't know if you know speed dating? Women sit at tables and men go from table to table, and there's a clock and a bell, and at five minutes, bingo, the conversation ends and the woman can decide whether to give her card or her email address to the man for follow up. And this woman says, "My brother's never gotten a card, and I know exactly why. The moment he sits down, he starts talking non-stop about himself; he never asks about the woman."
但以自我或他人為中心 的差異 我呼籲各位要多加予以重視。 尤其在約會場合這現象更表露無遺。 有一天我在壽司餐廳 聽見兩位女士在談論其中一位女士的哥哥 這位哥哥仍然單身的女士說 「我老哥很難約的到女孩子, 所以他參加了快速約會俱樂部」你們聽說過快速約會嗎? 女士們固定坐著,男士們則輪流轉檯, 現場有時鐘和響鈴,5分鐘一到,時間到, 聊天結束,女士可以決定 要不要將聯絡資料或電子郵件給這位男士 以決定兩人是否後續保持聯絡。這位女士說 「我老哥從來不曾有女生留給他聯絡資料。我完全明白為甚麼。 他一坐下來就開始不停的談論他自己, 從來不問關於女士這一方的任何事」
And I was doing some research in the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times, looking at the back stories of marriages -- because they're very interesting -- and I came to the marriage of Alice Charney Epstein. And she said that when she was in the dating scene, she had a simple test she put people to. The test was: from the moment they got together, how long it would take the guy to ask her a question with the word "you" in it. And apparently Epstein aced the test, therefore the article.
我當時正在為Sunday Styles進行一些研究 這是紐約時報的一個版面,看一些婚姻中的趣事 非常有趣 - 我有一次 接觸到艾莉絲愛普斯頓。她說 她約會的話 會和對方玩一個簡單測驗。 計算從兩人碰面開始 要花多久時間讓男士向她提出第一個問題 問句當中且必須帶有「妳」字。 測驗的結果當然是艾普斯頓得到壓倒性的勝利,所以才有那篇訪談。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Now this is a -- it's a little test I encourage you to try out at a party. Here at TED there are great opportunities. The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called "The Human Moment," about how to make real contact with a person at work. And they said, well, the fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, close your laptop, end your daydream and pay full attention to the person. There is a newly coined word in the English language for the moment when the person we're with whips out their BlackBerry or answers that cell phone, and all of a sudden we don't exist. The word is "pizzled": it's a combination of puzzled and pissed off.
像這樣的小小測驗 或許在任何宴會場合都可以玩玩看。 現場在TED大會中就是個絕佳的機會。 哈佛商業評論最近有一篇文章 「人性時刻」,講到關於如何與人發生真情流露的交流 特別是同事。雜誌裡說到 最基本的,你必須先關掉黑苺機 關掉手提電腦,不做白日夢 注意力完全在這個人身上。 英文現在有一個新字 就是當你和一個人共處的時候,對方突然亮出黑苺機 或接聽個手機來電,突然瞬間你就變成一個不存在的人了。 這個新詞叫做"pizzled",也就是「發傻」+「不爽」,兩個字的結合。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I think it's quite apt. It's our empathy, it's our tuning in which separates us from Machiavellians or sociopaths. I have a brother-in-law who's an expert on horror and terror -- he wrote the Annotated Dracula, the Essential Frankenstein -- he was trained as a Chaucer scholar, but he was born in Transylvania and I think it affected him a little bit. At any rate, at one point my brother-in-law, Leonard, decided to write a book about a serial killer. This is a man who terrorized the very vicinity we're in many years ago. He was known as the Santa Cruz strangler. And before he was arrested, he had murdered his grandparents, his mother and five co-eds at UC Santa Cruz.
很精準的敘述。人是因為能和其他人有共鳴,能關注其他人 才和「權謀政客」或「反社會者」有所區別的。 我的小叔是一位驚憟專家 他的著作包括「吸血鬼注釋」和「科學怪人要錄」 他本是研究喬叟的學者 但他的出生地是川索凡尼亞 (譯註:該地因吸血鬼出沒而聞名) 可能對他有些潛移默化影響。 無論如何,我的小叔,李奧納多 有一天決定要寫一本關於連續殺人犯的書。 這人在我們居住鄰近之地曾造成極大恐懼 那是幾年前的事。他的外號是聖塔克魯茲勒人魔。 被逮捕之前,他殺了親生祖父母, 親生母親以及五位聖塔克魯茲大學女學生,
So my brother-in-law goes to interview this killer and he realizes when he meets him that this guy is absolutely terrifying. For one thing, he's almost seven feet tall. But that's not the most terrifying thing about him. The scariest thing is that his IQ is 160: a certified genius. But there is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy, feeling with the other person. They're controlled by different parts of the brain.
我小叔去訪問了這個人 當他們會面的時候他意識到 這位仁兄真是恐怖 包括他的身高,將近7呎。 但這還不是最駭人的部份 最恐怖的是,他的智商高達160:絕對達到了天才的標準。 但,IQ和情緒上的共感力,二者關聯性是零, 所以他對別人的感覺是毫無感知力 這兩件事是由大腦的兩個不同部分所控制。
So at one point, my brother-in-law gets up the courage to ask the one question he really wants to know the answer to, and that is: how could you have done it? Didn't you feel any pity for your victims? These were very intimate murders -- he strangled his victims. And the strangler says very matter-of-factly, "Oh no. If I'd felt the distress, I could not have done it. I had to turn that part of me off. I had to turn that part of me off."
最後我小叔終於鼓起勇氣 問了一個他真的很想知道答案的問題。 他問的是:你怎麼能辦到這樣的事? 難道對受害者沒有絲毫憐憫的感覺嗎? 他親手勒死這些受害人 - 勒死某人是非常親密的一種殺人方式。 勒人魔的回答是基於事實的,他說 「喔,完全不會的。如果我感受得到他們的痛苦悲哀,一定下不了手。 我得將自己那個部份關掉才行。必須先將自己的那個部份關起來。」
And I think that that is very troubling, and in a sense, I've been reflecting on turning that part of us off. When we focus on ourselves in any activity, we do turn that part of ourselves off if there's another person. Think about going shopping and think about the possibilities of a compassionate consumerism. Right now, as Bill McDonough has pointed out, the objects that we buy and use have hidden consequences. We're all unwitting victims of a collective blind spot. We don't notice and don't notice that we don't notice the toxic molecules emitted by a carpet or by the fabric on the seats. Or we don't know if that fabric is a technological or manufacturing nutrient; it can be reused or does it just end up at landfill? In other words, we're oblivious to the ecological and public health and social and economic justice consequences of the things we buy and use. In a sense, the room itself is the elephant in the room, but we don't see it. And we've become victims of a system that points us elsewhere. Consider this.
我想,那就是麻煩的所在了 我一直在思考這件我們會將自己的那部份關起來的事實。 當我們專注於自己的某項工作或活動時, 如果有他人在場,我們真是會把那部份的自己關掉的。 想想看有沒有可能購物逛街 是以具同情心的道德性消費來進行的。 就像比爾 麥當諾所指出的 我們所買所用的物品,背後都有著看不見的後續效應。 我們都在集體盲點中不知不覺受成為受害者。 我們沒注意,並且也沒想到過我們根本不曾注意 無論從地毯或是座椅上的纖維所釋放出來的有毒粒子。 我們無從得知那纖維是科技合成的 或怎樣的生產過程;能被回收使用嗎 或者最後只能當作填土使用?換句話說 我們是忽略了環保及公眾健康那個部份的事實 以及社會經濟公平正義等等的後續結果 在我們日常所買和所使用的物品上。 可以說,我們是避而不談,自欺欺人, 但是我們又不知道。結果自己仍然成為受害者 只是受害場景轉移到其他體系而已。試想。
There's a wonderful book called Stuff: The Hidden Life of Everyday Objects. And it talks about the back story of something like a t-shirt. And it talks about where the cotton was grown and the fertilizers that were used and the consequences for soil of that fertilizer. And it mentions, for instance, that cotton is very resistant to textile dye; about 60 percent washes off into wastewater. And it's well known by epidemiologists that kids who live near textile works tend to have high rates of leukemia. There's a company, Bennett and Company, that supplies Polo.com, Victoria's Secret -- they, because of their CEO, who's aware of this, in China formed a joint venture with their dye works to make sure that the wastewater would be properly taken care of before it returned to the groundwater. Right now, we don't have the option to choose the virtuous t-shirt over the non-virtuous one. So what would it take to do that?
有一本好書: 東西:生活雜物中你所看不見的旅程故事 談到關於許多產品的背後故事,譬如說,一件T恤 T恤的棉花產地 種植棉花所使用的肥料以及 使用那種肥料對土壤的後果。書中提到, 布品染料事實上非常難對棉花起作用; 大約有60%的染料最後是被洗掉成為廢水。 流行病學家都清楚知道 住在紡織原料廠附近的孩子,患白血病的比例特別高。 有一家班尼特公司,是Polo.com 及"維多利亞的秘密" (註:知名內衣褲品牌) 的上游供應商,因為他們的CEO注意到染料危害, 在中國和他們的染料廠創立了一個合資企業 確保他們工廠的廢水排放 在成為天然地下水前是經過合宜的處理。 目前,我們還沒有辦法按消費道德的標準選購T恤 我們該怎麼做才能有這種選擇自由呢?
Well, I've been thinking. For one thing, there's a new electronic tagging technology that allows any store to know the entire history of any item on the shelves in that store. You can track it back to the factory. Once you can track it back to the factory, you can look at the manufacturing processes that were used to make it, and if it's virtuous, you can label it that way. Or if it's not so virtuous, you can go into -- today, go into any store, put your scanner on a palm onto a barcode, which will take you to a website. They have it for people with allergies to peanuts. That website could tell you things about that object. In other words, at point of purchase, we might be able to make a compassionate choice.
我在想 有一種新的電子標籤技術,是能夠從每一個店家 追蹤到店裡架上每一樣產品的生產歷史的。 能一路追蹤到工廠, 追蹤到工廠之後,你還能看到生產流程 製造時用到了哪些原料,如果是符合消費道德的 就貼上一個認證標籤。如果他是不符合消費道德的 你也能走進任何一家商店 用手持式條碼機一掃描而得知結果 然後進入一個網站。 網站上提供一些有用的資料,譬如有人對花生過敏。 它會提供一些和花生過敏主題相關的產品資訊。 換句話說,在採買點現場, 我們或許當下就可以運用較多同情心來進行採購。
There's a saying in the world of information science: ultimately everybody will know everything. And the question is: will it make a difference? Some time ago when I was working for The New York Times, it was in the '80s, I did an article on what was then a new problem in New York -- it was homeless people on the streets. And I spent a couple of weeks going around with a social work agency that ministered to the homeless. And I realized seeing the homeless through their eyes that almost all of them were psychiatric patients that had nowhere to go. They had a diagnosis. It made me -- what it did was to shake me out of the urban trance where, when we see, when we're passing someone who's homeless in the periphery of our vision, it stays on the periphery. We don't notice and therefore we don't act.
在資訊科學裡有一句話說: 最後,所有的人都成了萬事通。 重點是:萬事通之後,你會做什麼來改變萬事呢? 我曾經為紐約時報工作過一段時間 那是80年代,我寫了一篇文章 關於當時紐約市的一個新問題 也就是露宿街頭的街友族群。 我和一個關懷街友的社工團體,一起花了幾個星期的時間 訪談這些街友們,了解他們,也從他們眼神中看出來 他們幾乎每個人都是精神病患 並且無處可收容。這就是診斷結果。這也讓我- 從一個都市人的昏睡症中清醒過來 當我們看見了,經過了這些無家可歸者 他們只出現在視野邊緣,也只停留在那邊緣上。 我們既未曾加以注意,所以也不採取行動。
One day soon after that -- it was a Friday -- at the end of the day, I went down -- I was going down to the subway. It was rush hour and thousands of people were streaming down the stairs. And all of a sudden as I was going down the stairs I noticed that there was a man slumped to the side, shirtless, not moving, and people were just stepping over him -- hundreds and hundreds of people. And because my urban trance had been somehow weakened, I found myself stopping to find out what was wrong. The moment I stopped, half a dozen other people immediately ringed the same guy. And we found out that he was Hispanic, he didn't speak any English, he had no money, he'd been wandering the streets for days, starving, and he'd fainted from hunger. Immediately someone went to get orange juice, someone brought a hotdog, someone brought a subway cop. This guy was back on his feet immediately. But all it took was that simple act of noticing, and so I'm optimistic.
之後沒多久,有一天,一個週五的下班時間 我正走下地鐵站,人潮擁擠 下樓梯的人數以千計 突然在我走下樓梯的時候, 我注意到遠處有一個人是倒在一邊的, 沒有穿上衣,沒有動靜,人們只是繞過,跨過他 幾百個人,都是如此。 因為我的都市人昏睡症狀此時已經較為輕微, 我自然的停了下來,想弄清楚發生了什麼事。 當我這麼停了一下,其他6,7位也停下 立刻有人去搖醒他。 原來他是來自西班牙語系的人,英語不通, 身上沒錢,已經在街頭流浪好多天,非常餓 餓到昏倒了。 很快有人給他柳橙汁喝 有人買了熱狗和麵包,有人找來了地鐵警察。 很快的,這個人就能站起來走路了。 唯一需要的就是有人首先跨出這注意到他人的第一步。 因此我仍然樂觀。
Thank you very much.
謝謝大家
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