So, we all have bad seasons in life. And I had one in 2013. My marriage had just ended, and I was humiliated by that failed commitment. My kids had left home for college or were leaving. I grew up mostly in the conservative movement, but conservatism had changed, so I lost a lot of those friends, too.
人生中總會有些不好的時期。 我在 2013 年就有一段。 我的婚姻破裂了, 沒能履行承諾,讓我感到羞恥。 我的孩子不是離家去讀大學 就是快要離家了。 我主要是在保守運動中成長, 但保守主義已經改變了, 所以我也失去了很多那邊的朋友。
And so what I did is, I lived alone in an apartment, and I just worked. If you opened the kitchen drawers where there should have been utensils, there were Post-it notes. If you opened the other drawers where there should have been plates, I had envelopes. I had work friends, weekday friends, but I didn't have weekend friends. And so my weekends were these long, howling silences. And I was lonely. And loneliness, unexpectedly, came to me in the form of -- it felt like fear, a burning in my stomach. And it felt a little like drunkenness, just making bad decisions, just fluidity, lack of solidity. And the painful part of that moment was the awareness that the emptiness in my apartment was just reflective of the emptiness in myself, and that I had fallen for some of the lies that our culture tells us.
所以,我獨居在公寓中, 埋頭工作。 如果打開該是放餐具的廚房抽屜, 看到的是便利貼; 如果打開其他應該放盤子的抽屜, 看到的是我放的信封。 我有工作上的朋友,平日的朋友, 但我沒有週末的朋友。 所以,我的週末都是 漫長的荒涼沉默。 我很寂寞。 寂寞出忽意料地找上門, 以一種—— 感覺像是恐懼,胃部有灼燒感; 感覺也有點像喝醉, 就像做了很爛的決定, 只是在流動著, 沒有穩定性。 那時痛苦的是 意識到我空空蕩蕩的公寓 其實反映了我內在的空虛, 和我迷上了一些 我們文化所教的謊言。
The first lie is that career success is fulfilling. I've had a fair bit of career success, and I've found that it helps me avoid the shame I would feel if I felt myself a failure, but it hasn't given me any positive good.
第一個謊言是職涯成功令人滿足。 我的職涯算得上是小有成就, 我發現成功協助我避免 覺得自己是魯蛇的羞恥感, 但它並沒有給我任何正面的好處。
The second lie is I can make myself happy, that if I just win one more victory, lose 15 pounds, do a little more yoga, I'll get happy. And that's the lie of self-sufficiency. But as anybody on their deathbed will tell you, the things that make people happy is the deep relationships of life, the losing of self-sufficiency.
第二個謊言是我能讓自己快樂, 只要我能再贏得一次勝利, 再減十五磅,做多一點瑜伽, 我就會快樂。 那是個我們可自給自足的謊言。 但,任何臨終的人都會告訴你, 能讓人快樂的, 是人生中的深厚情感關係, 不是自給自足。
The third lie is the lie of the meritocracy. The message of the meritocracy is you are what you accomplish. The myth of the meritocracy is you can earn dignity by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love, you can "earn" your way to love. The anthropology of the meritocracy is you're not a soul to be purified, you're a set of skills to be maximized. And the evil of the meritocracy is that people who've achieved a little more than others are actually worth a little more than others. And so the wages of sin are sin. And my sins were the sins of omission-- not reaching out, failing to show up for my friends, evasion, avoiding conflict.
第三個謊言是精英領導。 精英領導的訊息是你的成就代表你。 精英主義的迷思是 將自己和有聲望的品牌 綁在一起,就能掙得尊嚴。 精英領導的情緒是有條件的愛, 你可以「掙得」愛。 精英領導的人類學就是 你並不是要被救贖的靈魂, 你是要被最大化的一組技能。 而精英領導的邪惡 則是成就比別人高一點點的人 價值也比其他人多一點點。 所以罪過的報償就是罪過。 我的罪過是疏忽的罪過—— 沒有向外伸出援手, 沒有為了朋友而露面, 遁辭,避免衝突。
And the weird thing was that as I was falling into the valley -- it was a valley of disconnection -- a lot of other people were doing that, too. And that's sort of the secret to my career; a lot of the things that happen to me are always happening to a lot of other people. I'm a very average person with above average communication skills.
奇怪的是,當我落入深谷中時—— 那是失去連結的深谷—— 其他很多人也一樣。 那是我職涯的秘密; 發生在我身上的許多事 也都會發生在很多人身上。 我是一個非常普通的人, 有著較優秀的溝通技能。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And so I was detached. And at the same time, a lot of other people were detached and isolated and fragmented from each other. Thirty-five percent of Americans over 45 are chronically lonely. Only eight percent of Americans report having meaningful conversation with their neighbors. Only 32 percent of Americans say they trust their neighbors, and only 18 percent of millennials. The fastest-growing political party is unaffiliated. The fastest-growing religious movement is unaffiliated. Depression rates are rising, mental health problems are rising. The suicide rate has risen 30 percent since 1999. For teen suicides over the last several years, the suicide rate has risen by 70 percent. Forty-five thousand Americans kill themselves every year; 72,000 die from opioid addictions; life expectancy is falling, not rising.
所以我疏離了。 同時其他許多人也疏離了, 彼此斷開,孤立起來。 四十五歲以上的美國人, 有 35% 長期感到寂寞。 只有 8% 的美國人回報說他們 和鄰居進行有意義的交談。 只有 32% 的美國人說, 他們信任他們的鄰居, 千禧世代則只有 18%。 成長最快速的政黨是無黨派。 成長最快速的宗教運動是無宗教。 憂鬱症的比率在升高, 心理健康問題越來越多。 從 1999 年起, 自殺率就提升了 30%。 至於過去幾年的青少年自殺狀況, 自殺率提升了 70%。 每年有四萬五千名美國人自殺; 七萬兩千人死於類鴉片藥物成癮; 平均壽命在下降,不是上升。
So what I mean to tell you, I flew out here to say that we have an economic crisis, we have environmental crisis, we have a political crisis. We also have a social and relational crisis; we're in the valley. We're fragmented from each other, we've got cascades of lies coming out of Washington ... We're in the valley.
所以,我想要告訴各位, 我飛到這裡來是要說, 我們有經濟危機,有環境危機, 有政治危機。 我們也有社交和關係危機; 我們在深谷中。 我們和彼此斷開了, 我們有一連串的謊言 從華盛頓湧出來…… 我們在深谷中。
And so I've spent the last five years -- how do you get out of a valley? The Greeks used to say, "You suffer your way to wisdom." And from that dark period where I started, I've had a few realizations. The first is, freedom sucks. Economic freedom is OK, political freedom is great, social freedom sucks. The unrooted man is the adrift man. The unrooted man is the unremembered man, because he's uncommitted to things. Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in, it's a river you want to get across, so you can commit and plant yourself on the other side.
我花了過去五年的時間—— 要如何離開深谷? 以前,希臘人說: 「通往智慧的路上全是苦難。」 我從那段黑暗時期有了些頓悟。 第一,自由糟透了。 經濟自由還可以,政治自由很棒, 社會自由糟透了。 沒有根的人就是漂流的人。 沒有根的人是不被記得的人, 因為他無法做出承諾。 自由並不是個你想要游進去的海洋, 它是條你要渡過的河流, 這樣你才能在對岸做出承諾、紮根。
The second thing I learned is that when you have one of those bad moments in life, you can either be broken, or you can be broken open. And we all know people who are broken. They've endured some pain or grief, they get smaller, they get angrier, resentful, they lash out. As the saying is, "Pain that is not transformed gets transmitted." But other people are broken open. Suffering's great power is that it's an interruption of life. It reminds you you're not the person you thought you were. The theologian Paul Tillich said what suffering does is it carves through what you thought was the floor of the basement of your soul, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below. You realize there are depths of yourself you never anticipated, and only spiritual and relational food will fill those depths. And when you get down there, you get out of the head of the ego and you get into the heart, the desiring heart. The idea that what we really yearn for is longing and love for another, the kind of thing that Louis de Bernières described in his book, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin." He had an old guy talking to his daughter about his relationship with his late wife, and the old guy says, "Love itself is whatever is leftover when being in love is burned away. And this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it. We had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we discovered that we are one tree and not two." That's what the heart yearns for.
我學到的第二件事, 就是當你的人生不順時, 你可以被擊碎, 也可以被擊醒。 我們都認識被擊碎的人。 忍受某些痛苦或哀傷 使他們變得渺小, 變得更憤怒、怨恨, 他們會猛烈斥責。 有句話說: 「痛苦不是被轉化, 而是被傳送出去。」 但也有其他人被擊醒了。 苦難的強大力量在於它中斷人生, 提醒你不是自以為的那個人。 神學家保羅田立克說過: 苦難的功能在於會切開那個 你以為是你靈魂地下室的地板, 切開它,露出下面的空間, 苦難會切開它,露出下面的空間。 你會發現自己的深度其實超出預期, 只能被靈糧和關係之糧充滿。 當你下去到那裡時, 就能脫離腦袋裡的自我, 進入到心裡, 渴望的心。 我們所盼求的想法, 是對另一個人的愛和渴望, 和路易斯·迪柏尼爾斯 在《戰地情人》書中所描述的很像。 書中有個老人跟他的女兒 談到他和已故妻子之間的關係, 老人說: 「熱戀期結束後,剩下的才是愛。 愛既是藝術,也是幸運的意外。 你母親和我曾經擁有它。 我們在地下的根朝向彼此生長, 當枝上所有的美麗花朵都掉落時, 發現我們是一棵樹,不是兩棵。」 那就是心之所嚮。
The second thing you discover is your soul. Now, I don't ask you to believe in God or not believe in God, but I do ask you to believe that there's a piece of you that has no shape, size, color or weight, but that gives you infinite dignity and value. Rich and successful people don't have more of this than less successful people. Slavery is wrong because it's an obliteration of another soul. Rape is not just an attack on a bunch of physical molecules, it's an attempt to insult another person's soul. And what the soul does is it yearns for righteousness. The heart yearns for fusion with another, the soul yearns for righteousness. And that led to my third realization, which I borrowed from Einstein: "The problem you have is not going to be solved at the level of consciousness on which you created it. You have to expand to a different level of consciousness."
你發現的第二樣是你的靈魂。 我不是在請你信神或不信神, 我是要請你相信,有一部分的你 沒有形體、尺寸、顏色、重量, 但那部分卻能給你 無限的尊嚴和價值。 富裕且成功的人並不會 比沒那麼成功的人擁有更多靈魂。 奴役制度錯在抹滅另一個靈魂。 強暴不只是攻擊一堆實體的分子, 而是試圖侮辱另一個人的靈魂。 靈魂盼望公正。 心盼望與他人融合,靈魂盼望公正。 那就要談到我的第三項頓悟, 讓我借用愛因斯坦的話: 「在意識層級創造的問題 無法在意識層級被解決。 得要擴張到不同的意識層級。」
So what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is you throw yourself on your friends and you have deeper conversations that you ever had before. But the second thing you do, you have to go out alone into the wilderness. You go out into that place where there's nobody there to perform, and the ego has nothing to do, and it crumbles, and only then are you capable of being loved. I have a friend who said that when her daughter was born, she realized that she loved her more than evolution required.
所以,該怎麼做呢? 首先,你要奔向朋友, 進行比以前更深刻的對談。 但第二是 得要獨自一人進到荒野中。 那裡沒有人,你不用做任何表演, 自我沒事幹,它就會消失, 那時候,你才有被愛的能力。 一位朋友說,當她的女兒出生時, 她發現她對女兒的愛 超越了演化的需求。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And I've always loved that.
我一直很喜歡那句話。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
Because it talks about the peace that's at the deep of ourself, our inexplicable care for one another. And when you touch that spot, you're ready to be rescued. The hard thing about when you're in the valley is that you can't climb out; somebody has to reach in and pull you out. It happened to me. I got, luckily, invited over to a house by a couple named Kathy and David, and they were -- They had a kid in the DC public school, his name's Santi. Santi had a friend who needed a place to stay because his mom had some health issues. And then that kid had a friend and that kid had a friend. When I went to their house six years ago, I walk in the door, there's like 25 around the kitchen table, a whole bunch sleeping downstairs in the basement. I reach out to introduce myself to a kid, and he says, "We don't really shake hands here. We just hug here." And I'm not the huggiest guy on the face of the earth, but I've been going back to that home every Thursday night when I'm in town, and just hugging all those kids. They demand intimacy. They demand that you behave in a way where you're showing all the way up. And they teach you a new way to live, which is the cure for all the ills of our culture which is a way of direct -- really putting relationship first, not just as a word, but as a reality.
說的是我們內心深處的平靜, 一種無法解釋,對他人的在乎。 接觸到那個點,就可被拯救了。 身陷深谷難在爬不出來; 必須要有人伸手拉你出來。 我就遇到了。 我很幸運,被一對夫妻 凱西和大衛邀請到他們家, 他們—— 他們的孩子山提在讀 華盛頓特區的公立學校。 山提有個朋友需要有個地方待, 因為他的父母有些健康問題。 那孩子有個朋友,朋友有個朋友, 朋友又有個朋友。 六年前,我到他們家時, 我走進門,大概有 二十五個人圍著餐桌坐, 還有一堆人睡在地下室。 我主動向一個孩子自我介紹, 他說:「在這裡我們不握手。 我們只擁抱。」 我不是地球表面上最愛擁抱的人, 但只要我在那個鎮上,每個星期四 晚上我都會再回到他們家, 去擁抱那些孩子。 他們在尋求親密感。 他們希望你能完全放開自我。 他們教導你一種新的生活方式, 那是我們文化中所有疾病的解藥, 這種方式就是真正直接 把關係放在第一, 不只是口頭上,是真的去做。
And the beautiful thing is, these communities are everywhere. I started something at the Aspen Institute called "Weave: The Social Fabric." This is our logo here. And we plop into a place and we find weavers anywhere, everywhere. We find people like Asiaha Butler, who grew up in -- who lived in Chicago, in Englewood, in a tough neighborhood. And she was about to move because it was so dangerous, and she looked across the street and she saw two little girls playing in an empty lot with broken bottles, and she turned to her husband and she said, "We're not leaving. We're not going to be just another family that abandon that." And she Googled "volunteer in Englewood," and now she runs R.A.G.E., the big community organization there.
美好的是,這種團體到處都有。 我在阿斯彭研究所發起了 「編織:社會之網 (Weave: The Social Fabric)」。 這是我們的標誌。 我們每到一個地方, 就會發現編織者無所不在。 我們發現像艾西哈·巴特勒 這樣的人,她成長在—— 她住在芝加哥,恩格爾伍德, 很不好生存的鄰里。 她正打算搬走, 因為那裡太危險了, 她看向對街,看到兩個小女孩, 在空地上玩碎掉的瓶子, 她向丈夫說:「我們不要搬走。 我們不要成為另一個 丟下這些而搬走的家庭。 她搜尋了「恩格爾伍德志工」, 現在她在經營 R.A.G.E, 那裡的一個大型社區組織。
Some of these people have had tough valleys. I met a woman named Sarah in Ohio who came home from an antiquing trip and found that her husband had killed himself and their two kids. She now runs a free pharmacy, she volunteers in the community, she helps women cope with violence, she teaches. She told me, "I grew from this experience because I was angry. I was going to fight back against what he tried to do to me by making a difference in the world. See, he didn't kill me. My response to him is, 'Whatever you meant to do to me, screw you, you're not going to do it.'"
有些人的深谷很艱苦。 我遇過一名女子,俄亥俄州的 莎菈,她出門買古董之後返家, 發現她的丈夫帶著兩個孩子自殺。 現在她在經營免費的藥局, 在社區當志工, 她協助女性處理暴力,她也教書。 她告訴我:「這段經歷讓我成長, 因為我那時很憤怒。 他對我做出這種事,我的反擊方式 就是在世界上造成不同。 要知道,他沒有殺了我。 我對他的回應是: 『不論你本來打算對我做什麼, 去你的,你做不到的。』」
These weavers are not living an individualistic life, they're living a relationist life, they have a different set of values. They have moral motivations. They have vocational certitude, they have planted themselves down. I met a guy in Youngstown, Ohio, who just held up a sign in the town square, "Defend Youngstown." They have radical mutuality, and they are geniuses at relationship.
這些編織者並沒有 過著個人主義的生活, 他們過著關係主義的生活, 他們有不同的價值觀。 他們有道德上的動機。 他們有職業上的確定, 他們已經讓自己紮根。 我在俄亥俄的揚斯敦見到一個人, 他在鎮上廣場上舉著標語: 「守衛揚斯敦」。 他們有很根本的相互關係, 且他們是關係方面的天才。
There's a woman named Mary Gordon who runs something called Roots of Empathy. And what they do is they take a bunch of kids, an eighth grade class, they put a mom and an infant, and then the students have to guess what the infant is thinking, to teach empathy. There was one kid in a class who was bigger than the rest because he'd been held back, been through the foster care system, seen his mom get killed. And he wanted to hold the baby. And the mom was nervous because he looked big and scary. But she let this kid, Darren, hold the baby. He held it, and he was great with it. He gave the baby back and started asking questions about parenthood. And his final question was, "If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you can be a good father?" And so what Roots of Empathy does is they reach down and they grab people out of the valley. And that's what weavers are doing.
有名女子叫做瑪莉·戈登, 她在經營「同理心之根」。 他們做的事情是,他們找了 一個母親和一個嬰兒, 讓他們到一個八年級的班上, 學生得要猜測嬰兒在想什麼, 用這種方式教導同理心。 班上有個孩子年紀特別大, 因為他很壓抑,他進過寄養體制, 他看見他的母親被殺。 他想要抱抱那個嬰兒。 母親很緊張, 因為這個孩子看起來高大嚇人。 但她讓這個孩子, 德倫,抱了她的嬰兒。 他抱著嬰兒,他做得很好。 他把孩子還給母親, 開始問關於當父母的問題。 他的最後一個問題是: 「如果沒有人愛過你, 你有可能成為一個好父親嗎?」 「同理心之根」做的是 他們向下伸手, 把深谷中的人拉出來。 那就是編織者做的事。
Some of them switch jobs. Some of them stay in their same jobs. But one thing is, they have an intensity to them. I read this -- E.O. Wilson wrote a great book called "Naturalist," about his childhood. When he was seven, his parents were divorcing. And they sent him to Paradise Beach in North Florida. And he'd never seen the ocean before. And he'd never seen a jellyfish before. He wrote, "The creature was astonishing. It existed beyond my imagination." He was sitting on the dock one day and he saw a stingray float beneath his feet. And at that moment, a naturalist was born in the awe and wonder. And he makes this observation: that when you're a child, you see animals at twice the size as you do as an adult. And that has always impressed me, because what we want as kids is that moral intensity, to be totally given ourselves over to something and to find that level of vocation. And when you are around these weavers, they see other people at twice the size as normal people. They see deeper into them. And what they see is joy.
有些人換工作。 有些人留在同樣的工作。 但他們都有著同樣的熱枕。 我讀過—— E·O·威爾森寫的關於他的童年的 一本書叫《自然主義者》。 當他 7 嵗時,他的父母要離婚, 於是他們把他送到了 北佛羅里達的天堂海灘。 此前他從未見過大海, 也沒見過水母。 他寫道:「這種生物令人驚嘆, 遠遠超出我的想像。」 有天,他坐在碼頭邊, 看到一條刺魟從他脚下游過, 那一刻在敬畏和驚嘆中, 一個自然主義者誕生了。 他發現, 當你還是個孩子時, 你會把動物看成 大人眼中的兩倍之大。 這打動了我, 因爲我們所需的正是 孩子眼中的熱切道德感, 讓我們完全臣服于某物, 找到那種使命感。 倘若身邊圍繞著這些「編織者」, 就也會將別人看作兩倍大, 更深入看人, 看到喜悅。
On the first mountain of our life, when we're shooting for our career, we shoot for happiness. And happiness is good, it's the expansion of self. You win a victory, you get a promotion, your team wins the Super Bowl, you're happy. Joy is not the expansion of self, it's the dissolving of self. It's the moment when the skin barrier disappears between a mother and her child, it's the moment when a naturalist feels just free in nature. It's the moment where you're so lost in your work or a cause, you have totally self-forgotten. And joy is a better thing to aim for than happiness.
在人生的一座大山上, 也就是我們事業剛起步時, 我們追求幸福感, 幸福感很好,是一種自我的擴張。 你贏得了勝利, 你被晉升,支持的隊伍贏了超級盃, 你歡呼雀躍。 但喜悅並非自我的擴張, 而是自我的溶解。 喜悅存於母親與孩子間, 再無肌膚之隔。 喜悅存在於自然主義者 在大自然中放飛自我的瞬間。 全心投入工作或某事時, 喜悅會在忘我時出現, 而追逐喜悅遠比追求幸福要好。
I collect passages of joy, of people when they lose it. One of my favorite is from Zadie Smith. In 1999, she was in a London nightclub, looking for her friends, wondering where her handbag was. And suddenly, as she writes, "... a rail-thin man with enormous eyes reached across a sea of bodies for my hand. He kept asking me the same thing over and over, 'Are you feeling it?' My ridiculous heels were killing me, I was terrified that I might die, yet I felt simultaneously overwhelmed with delight that 'Can I Kick It?' should happen to be playing on this precise moment in the history of the world on the sound system, and it was now morphing into 'Teen Spirit.' I took the man's hand, the top of my head blew away, we danced, we danced, we gave ourselves up to joy."
其中我最喜歡的是瑞迪·史密斯 寫的一段話。 在 1999 年,她在倫敦的一家夜店, 一邊找她的朋友, 一邊想她把手提包放哪了。 她寫道,突然間, 「……一個有著大眼睛的 精瘦的男人穿過人海 向我伸出手。 他一遍一遍的問我, 『你感受到了嗎?』 那一刻我正受著高跟鞋的折磨, 以及擔心著我的人身安全, 但同時我的内心充滿喜悅, 因為正好播放著 《Can I Kick it》這首歌, 在世界歷史中的這一刻, 在這家夜店的音響裡, 而後又切到了《Teen Spirit》這首歌。 我握住了那個男人的手, 完全被音樂所震懾, 我們一起跳舞,跳著,無比快樂。」
And so what I'm trying to describe is two different life mindsets. The first mountain mindset, which is about individual happiness and career success. And it's a good mindset, I have nothing against it. But we're in a national valley, because we don't have the other mindset to balance it. We no longer feel good about ourselves as a people, we've lost our defining faith in our future, we don't see each other deeply, we don't treat each other as well. And we need a lot of changes. We need an economic change and environmental change. But we also need a cultural and relational revolution. We need to name the language of a recovered society. And to me, the weavers have found that language.
我嘗試描述兩種不同的心態。 第一種是登山心態, 關於個人的幸福和事業的成功。 我不反對這種好心態。 但我們的國家正處於低谷, 正因爲我們缺失了 另一種心態來平衡它, 我們不再為自己感到高興, 我們失去了對未來的信念, 我們不彼此深交,不再善待彼此。 我們需要諸多改變。 我們需要經濟改革和環境整治, 但同時也需要文化和關係上的革命, 我們需要修復這個社會的語言。 對於我來説「編織者」找到這語言。
My theory of social change is that society changes when a small group of people find a better way to live, and the rest of us copy them. And these weavers have found a better way to live. And you don't have to theorize about it. They are out there as community builders all around the country. We just have to shift our lives a little, so we can say, "I'm a weaver, we're a weaver." And if we do that, the hole inside ourselves gets filled, but more important, the social unity gets repaired.
我對社會改變的理論是 社會改變肇因於 一小群人找到更好的生活方式, 而其餘的人效仿。 編織者找到更好的生活方式。 你無需把它理論化。 這些編織者已經無處不在, 貢獻於我們的社區。 只需稍微改變我們的生活, 我們就可以説: 「我是編織者,我們都是編織者。」 這樣做將會填滿我們內心的空虛, 更重要的是社會將得以修補變好。 非常謝謝。
Thank you very much.
(掌聲)
(Applause)