En dag i 1819, 4.800 kilometer fra Chiles kyst, i en af de mest øde dele af Stillehavet, så 20 amerikanske sejlere deres skib fyldes af havvand. En kaskelothval havde lavet et katastrofalt hul i skibets skrog. Mens skibet sank i havet, pressede mændene sig sammen i tre små hvalbåde. De var 16.000 kilometer hjemmefra, mere end 1.600 kilometer fra land. I deres små både medbragte de kun basalt navigationsudstyr og en begrænset mængde mad og vand. Det var mændene fra hvalfangeren Essex, som inspirerede dele af "Moby Dick".
One day in 1819, 3,000 miles off the coast of Chile, in one of the most remote regions of the Pacific Ocean, 20 American sailors watched their ship flood with seawater. They'd been struck by a sperm whale, which had ripped a catastrophic hole in the ship's hull. As their ship began to sink beneath the swells, the men huddled together in three small whaleboats. These men were 10,000 miles from home, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest scrap of land. In their small boats, they carried only rudimentary navigational equipment and limited supplies of food and water. These were the men of the whaleship Essex, whose story would later inspire parts of "Moby Dick."
Selv i dag ville det være en skrækkelig situation, men overvej, hvor slemt det var dengang. Ingen på land vidste, at der var gået noget galt. Ingen ville komme og lede efter disse mænd. De fleste af os har aldrig oplevet noget så skræmmende som disse sømænd, men vi kender alle til at være bange. Vi ved, hvordan frygt føles, men jeg tror ikke, vi tænker nok over, hvad vores frygt betyder.
Even in today's world, their situation would be really dire, but think about how much worse it would have been then. No one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong. No search party was coming to look for these men. So most of us have never experienced a situation as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves, but we all know what it's like to be afraid. We know how fear feels, but I'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean.
Som børn opdrages vi til at opfatte frygt som en svaghed, vi skal lægge fra os ligesom mælketænder eller rulleskøjter. Og det er ikke tilfældigt, vi tænker sådan. Neuroforskere har vist, at mennesker er biologisk bestemt til at være optimister. Måske er det derfor, vi nogle gange opfatter frygt som farligt i sig selv. "Bare rolig," siger vi. "Lad være med at gå i panik." På engelsk er frygt noget, vi overvinder. Noget vi kæmper imod. Noget vi besejrer. Men hvad hvis vi så på frygt med andre øjne? Hvad hvis vi tænkte på frygt som udslag for en utrolig fantasi, noget der kan være lige så dybt og indsigtsfuldt som historiefortælling?
As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates. And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists. So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "Don't worry," we like to say to one another. "Don't panic." In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we fight. It's something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself?
Det er lettest at se båndet mellem frygt og fantasi i små børn, som tit er bange for vilde ting. Som barn boede jeg i Californien, der er et rigtigt dejligt sted at bo, men for mig kunne Californien også være skræmmende. Jeg husker, hvor uhyggeligt det var at se lysekronen over vores bord svinge frem og tilbage under hvert lille jordskælv. Nogle gange kunne jeg ikke sove om natten af frygt for et stort jordskælv. Og hvad siger vi om børn, der er bange for den slags? De har en livlig fantasi. Men de fleste af os lærer med tiden at glemme de forestillinger og vokse op. Vi lærer, at der ikke er nogen monstre under sengen, og ikke alle jordskælv river bygninger ned. Men måske er det ikke tilfældigt, at de mest kreative hjerner ikke lægger deres frygt fra sig som voksne. De samme fantasier, som skabte "Arternes oprindelse", "Jane Eyre" og "På sporet af den tabte tid" gav også intense bekymringer gennem hele livet for Charles Darwin, Charlotte Brontë og Marcel Proust. Spørgsmålet er, hvad vi kan lære om frygt fra genier og små børn?
It's easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination in young children, whose fears are often extraordinarily vivid. When I was a child, I lived in California, which is, you know, mostly a very nice place to live, but for me as a child, California could also be a little scary. I remember how frightening it was to see the chandelier that hung above our dining table swing back and forth during every minor earthquake, and I sometimes couldn't sleep at night, terrified that the Big One might strike while we were sleeping. And what we say about kids who have fears like that is that they have a vivid imagination. But at a certain point, most of us learn to leave these kinds of visions behind and grow up. We learn that there are no monsters hiding under the bed, and not every earthquake brings buildings down. But maybe it's no coincidence that some of our most creative minds fail to leave these kinds of fears behind as adults. The same incredible imaginations that produced "The Origin of Species," "Jane Eyre" and "The Remembrance of Things Past," also generated intense worries that haunted the adult lives of Charles Darwin, Charlotte BrontĂŤ and Marcel Proust. So the question is, what can the rest of us learn about fear from visionaries and young children?
Lad os vende tilbage til år 1819 og mandskabet på hvalfangeren Essex. Lad os se, hvilke rædsler deres fantasi skabte, mens de drev rundt midt på Stillehavet. Der var gået 24 timer, siden skibet kæntrede. Det var på tide at lægge en plan, men de havde meget få muligheder. I sin fascinerende beretning om katastrofen skrev Nathaniel Philbrick, at disse mænd var omtrent så langt fra land, som det er muligt at være på jorden. De vidste, at de nærmeste øer var Marquesas-øerne, 1.900 kilometer væk. Men de havde hørt skræmmende rygter. De havde hørt, at disse øer og flere andre i nærheden var beboet af kannibaler. Så mændene frygtede at gå i land for så at blive myrdet og spist til middag. En anden mulig destination var Hawaii, men kaptajnen var bange for, at de ville blive ramt af alvorligt stormvejr. Den sidste mulighed var den længste og sværeste, at sejle 2.400 kilometer stik syd for at nå en bestemt luftstrøm, der kunne blæse dem mod Sydamerikas kyst. Men de vidste, at længden af den rejse ville tømme deres forsyning af mad og vand. At blive spist af kannibaler, knust af stormvejr, sulte ihjel på åbent hav. Det var, hvad disse stakler frygtede, og den frygt de valgte at lytte til ville afgøre, om de levede eller døde.
Well let's return to the year 1819 for a moment, to the situation facing the crew of the whaleship Essex. Let's take a look at the fears that their imaginations were generating as they drifted in the middle of the Pacific. Twenty-four hours had now passed since the capsizing of the ship. The time had come for the men to make a plan, but they had very few options. In his fascinating account of the disaster, Nathaniel Philbrick wrote that these men were just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on Earth. The men knew that the nearest islands they could reach were the Marquesas Islands, 1,200 miles away. But they'd heard some frightening rumors. They'd been told that these islands, and several others nearby, were populated by cannibals. So the men pictured coming ashore only to be murdered and eaten for dinner. Another possible destination was Hawaii, but given the season, the captain was afraid they'd be struck by severe storms. Now the last option was the longest, and the most difficult: to sail 1,500 miles due south in hopes of reaching a certain band of winds that could eventually push them toward the coast of South America. But they knew that the sheer length of this journey would stretch their supplies of food and water. To be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms, to starve to death before reaching land. These were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men, and as it turned out, the fear they chose to listen to would govern whether they lived or died.
Vi kunne også kalde denne frygt noget andet. Hvad om vi i stedet for at kalde det frygt kaldte det historier? For det er, hvad frygt i virkeligheden er. En form for ufrivillig historiefortælling, som vi alle kan lige fra fødslen. Og frygt og historiefortælling har de samme elementer. De har samme struktur. Ligesom historier har frygt karakterer. I vores frygt er karakterne os selv. Frygt har også et plot med begyndelse, midte og slutning. Du stiger på flyet. Flyet letter. Motoren sætter ud. Vores frygt maler også billeder, der er lige så fantasifulde som i en roman. Forestil dig en kannibal, mennesketænder der bider i menneskehud menneskehud, der steger over et bål. Frygt indeholder også spænding. Hvis jeg har været en god historiefortæller, burde I spekulere over, hvad der blev af mandskabet. Vores frygt skaber en lignende form for spænding. Ligesom alle gode historier får frygten os til at fokusere på et spørgsmål, der er lige vigtigt i livet og i litteraturen. Hvad sker der nu? Vores frygt får os altså til at tænke på fremtiden. Og mennesker er de eneste skabninger, som kan tænke på fremtiden, se os selv længere fremme i tiden, og den mentale tidsrejse er endnu en ting, frygt har til fælles med historiefortælling.
Now we might just as easily call these fears by a different name. What if instead of calling them fears, we called them stories? Because that's really what fear is, if you think about it. It's a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do. And fears and storytelling have the same components. They have the same architecture. Like all stories, fears have characters. In our fears, the characters are us. Fears also have plots. They have beginnings and middles and ends. You board the plane. The plane takes off. The engine fails. Our fears also tend to contain imagery that can be every bit as vivid as what you might find in the pages of a novel. Picture a cannibal, human teeth sinking into human skin, human flesh roasting over a fire. Fears also have suspense. If I've done my job as a storyteller today, you should be wondering what happened to the men of the whaleship Essex. Our fears provoke in us a very similar form of suspense. Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next? In other words, our fears make us think about the future. And humans, by the way, are the only creatures capable of thinking about the future in this way, of projecting ourselves forward in time, and this mental time travel is just one more thing that fears have in common with storytelling.
Som forfatter ved jeg, at en stor del af at skrive er at forudsige, hvordan en hændelse påvirker alt andet. Frygt fungerer på samme måde. Ligesom i fiktionen fører en ting den næste med sig. Da jeg skrev min første roman, "Miraklernes tid", tænkte jeg i månedsvis over, hvad der ville ske, hvis Jordens rotation pludselig gik langsommere. Hvad ville der ske med dagene? Med afgrøderne? Hvad ville der ske med vores sind? Først senere gik det op for mig, hvor meget de spørgsmål lignede dem, jeg stillede mig selv som et lille barn. Hvis der kommer jordskælv i nat, hvad vil der så ske med vores hus? Med min familie? Og svarene tog altid form af en historie. Så hvis vi tænker på vores frygt som mere end frygt, som historier, så bør vi tænke på os selv som forfatterne til de historier. Men vi skal også tænke på os selv som læserne af vores frygt, og måden, vi læser vores frygt på, kan påvirke vores liv enormt.
As a writer, I can tell you that a big part of writing fiction is learning to predict how one event in a story will affect all the other events, and fear works in that same way. In fear, just like in fiction, one thing always leads to another. When I was writing my first novel, "The Age Of Miracles," I spent months trying to figure out what would happen if the rotation of the Earth suddenly began to slow down. What would happen to our days? What would happen to our crops? What would happen to our minds? And then it was only later that I realized how very similar these questions were to the ones I used to ask myself as a child frightened in the night. If an earthquake strikes tonight, I used to worry, what will happen to our house? What will happen to my family? And the answer to those questions always took the form of a story. So if we think of our fears as more than just fears but as stories, we should think of ourselves as the authors of those stories. But just as importantly, we need to think of ourselves as the readers of our fears, and how we choose to read our fears can have a profound effect on our lives.
Nogle nærlæser selvfølgelig deres frygt mere end andre. I et studie om succesfulde iværksættere opdagede forskeren, at de havde noget til fælles, "produktiv paranoia," som betød, at de i stedet for at affærdige deres frygt, nærlæste de dem, studerede dem og bearbejdede den frygt til forberedelse og handling. Så hvis deres værste frygt blev til virkelighed, var de klar.
Now, some of us naturally read our fears more closely than others. I read about a study recently of successful entrepreneurs, and the author found that these people shared a habit that he called "productive paranoia," which meant that these people, instead of dismissing their fears, these people read them closely, they studied them, and then they translated that fear into preparation and action. So that way, if their worst fears came true, their businesses were ready.
Og nogle gange bliver vores værste frygt til virkelighed. Det er det særlige ved frygt. Engang imellem kan vores frygt forudsige fremtiden. Men vi kan ikke forberede os på alt, hvad vi frygter. Så hvordan skelner vi mellem den frygt, der er værd at lytte til, og alt det andet? Slutningen på historien om hvalfangerskibet giver et oplysende, men tragisk eksempel. Langt om længe traf mændene en beslutning. Af frygt for kannibalerne på de nærmeste øer, valgte de den længere og langt farligere rute til Sydamerika. Efter mere end to måneder løb de tør for mad, som de havde forudset, og de var stadig langt fra land. Da de overlevende endelig blev samlet op af to skibe, var mindre end halvdelen af mændene i live og nogle af dem havde selv tyet til kannibalisme. Herman Melville brugte historien som research til "Moby Dick". Han skrev senere inde fra land: "Alle det stakkels mandskabs pinsler, kunne med al sandsynlighed være undgået, hvis de straks efter katastrofen havde sat kurs mod Tahiti. "Men," som Melville skrev, "de var bange for kannibalerne." Men hvorfor frygtede disse mænd kannibalerne så meget mere end den store sandsynlighed for at sulte ihjel? Hvorfor blev de overbevist af en historie og ikke en anden? Set i det lys bliver det en historie om fortolkning. Forfatteren Vladimir Nabokov sagde, at den bedste læser har en kombination af to forskellige sind, det kunstneriske og det videnskabelige. En god læser har en kunstners lidenskab, en villighed til at lade sig opsluge, men læseren har også brug for videnskabsmandens kølige overblik, der dæmper og nuancerer læserens intuitive reaktion på historien. Som vi har set, havde sejlerne let ved den kunstneriske del. De forestillede sig mange skrækscenarier Problemet var, at de lyttede til den forkerte historie. Af alle de fortællinger, deres fantasi skrev reagerede de på den mest makabre, den livligste, den de havde lettest ved at forestille sig: kannibaler. Men hvis de havde kunnet læse deres frygt mere som en videnskabsmand, med køligt overblik, ville de have lyttet til den mindre voldelige men mere sandsynlige historie om sultedød og sat kurs mod Tahiti, som Melville bemærkede.
And sometimes, of course, our worst fears do come true. That's one of the things that is so extraordinary about fear. Once in a while, our fears can predict the future. But we can't possibly prepare for all of the fears that our imaginations concoct. So how can we tell the difference between the fears worth listening to and all the others? I think the end of the story of the whaleship Essex offers an illuminating, if tragic, example. After much deliberation, the men finally made a decision. Terrified of cannibals, they decided to forgo the closest islands and instead embarked on the longer and much more difficult route to South America. After more than two months at sea, the men ran out of food as they knew they might, and they were still quite far from land. When the last of the survivors were finally picked up by two passing ships, less than half of the men were left alive, and some of them had resorted to their own form of cannibalism. Herman Melville, who used this story as research for "Moby Dick," wrote years later, and from dry land, quote, "All the sufferings of these miserable men of the Essex might in all human probability have been avoided had they, immediately after leaving the wreck, steered straight for Tahiti. But," as Melville put it, "they dreaded cannibals." So the question is, why did these men dread cannibals so much more than the extreme likelihood of starvation? Why were they swayed by one story so much more than the other? Looked at from this angle, theirs becomes a story about reading. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov said that the best reader has a combination of two very different temperaments, the artistic and the scientific. A good reader has an artist's passion, a willingness to get caught up in the story, but just as importantly, the readers also needs the coolness of judgment of a scientist, which acts to temper and complicate the reader's intuitive reactions to the story. As we've seen, the men of the Essex had no trouble with the artistic part. They dreamed up a variety of horrifying scenarios. The problem was that they listened to the wrong story. Of all the narratives their fears wrote, they responded only to the most lurid, the most vivid, the one that was easiest for their imaginations to picture: cannibals. But perhaps if they'd been able to read their fears more like a scientist, with more coolness of judgment, they would have listened instead to the less violent but the more likely tale, the story of starvation, and headed for Tahiti, just as Melville's sad commentary suggests.
Hvis vi alle forsøgte at læse vores frygt, ville vi måske ikke blive overbevist af de mest slibrige. Så ville vi ikke tænke så meget på seriemordere og flystyrt, og mere på de umærkelige og langsomme katastrofer. Forkalkningen af vores blodårer, den gradvise forandring af klimaet. Ligesom de mest nuancerede historier tit er de bedste, er den umærkelige frygt måske den vigtigste. Fortolket rigtigt er vores frygt en fantastisk gave, en form for hverdagsclairvoyance, en måde at se ind i fremtiden på, mens vi stadig har tid til at påvirke den. Fortolket rigtigt kan vores frygt give os noget så dyrebart som vores yndlingsbøger: en smule visdom, et gran indsigt og en version af det, som er allermest flygtigt. Sandheden. Tak. (Klapsalver)
And maybe if we all tried to read our fears, we too would be less often swayed by the most salacious among them. Maybe then we'd spend less time worrying about serial killers and plane crashes, and more time concerned with the subtler and slower disasters we face: the silent buildup of plaque in our arteries, the gradual changes in our climate. Just as the most nuanced stories in literature are often the richest, so too might our subtlest fears be the truest. Read in the right way, our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out. Properly read, our fears can offer us something as precious as our favorite works of literature: a little wisdom, a bit of insight and a version of that most elusive thing -- the truth. Thank you. (Applause)