About 1,600 years ago, St. Augustine wrote "The Confessions," which was the story of his youthful descent into sin and his later conversion to Christianity. And book two of “The Confessions” has a great beginning: "I propose now to set down my past wickedness and a carnal corruption of my soul." So you expect sex.
大约 1600 年以前, 奥古斯丁(St. Augustine) 写下了《忏悔录》, 讲述了他年轻时 自甘堕落、纵情声色, 后来皈依基督教的故事。 《忏悔录》第二卷的开头掷地有声: “我在此忏悔,是因为我想 放下我过往的罪行 和我灵魂的肉体堕落。” 你可能会以为他指的是性行为。
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But to the disappointment of readers over the centuries, the sin that Augustine talks about... isn’t carnal at all. It has to do with pears. He and his friends break into an orchard and they steal some pears. And that was it. They didn’t have anything against the person who owned the orchard. They weren’t hungry; they threw the pears to pigs.
但是令过去几百年里的读者失望的是 奥古斯丁口中的“罪行” 根本就不是性欲, 而是和梨子有关。 他和他的朋友闯入果园, 偷了几个梨子。 没了。 他们和果园园主无冤无仇。 甚至都不饿,把梨子喂给了猪吃。
What stunned Augustine and disturbed him was that he seemed to be motivated by a desire just to do wrong. He writes, "If any part of one of those pears passed my lips, it was the sin that gave it flavor. I had no motivation for wickedness except wickedness itself. I was foul and I loved it."
让奥古斯丁大为震撼、惴惴不安的是 他似乎就是出于 为了干坏事而干坏事的欲望。 他写道:“如果我尝了一小块梨子, 尝到的就是罪恶留下的味道。 我没有什么作恶的目的, 只是享受干坏事的过程。 我太恶劣了,但是太爽了。”
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Now I'm a psychologist and I was interested in real-life stories of perverse actions, so I started The Perversity Project where I invited people to send me stories about perverse things that they did. I defined these acts as "when you choose to do something you know is wrong, morally or otherwise, at least, in part, because it's wrong."
我是一名心理学家, 对现实生活中的叛逆行为很感兴趣, 所以我启动了“叛逆计划” (The Perversity Project), 邀请人们把他们的叛逆行为发给我。 我将这种行为定义为: 明知道是错的,你还是决定要做, 可能是道义或者其他层面上的, 但这个行为至少 在某种程度上是不对的。
So one of the first stories I got was, "Flirted with a woman's boyfriend knowing fully well he liked me. I knew I could steal him if I wanted, but I didn't want to do that. I just wanted her to feel uncomfortable whenever the three of us were in the same room."
我收到的前几个故事是这样: “和一位女士的男朋友调情, 因为我十分有把握这个男的喜欢我。 如果我想的话,我可以把他抢走, 但是我不想。 我只是想让她在我们三个 共处一室的时候坐立难安。”
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"Causing people pain is wrong, but that's exactly why I did it." And in fact, this is the plot of the Dolly Parton song "Jolene."
“给别人带来痛苦是不对的, 但这就是我这么干的理由。” 这也是多莉·帕顿(Dolly Parton)的 歌曲《Jolene》里的情节。
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Sometimes it's self destructive. A young man wrote to me, "Ice skating on a pond, dark unfrozen spot 30 yards out, instead of avoiding it, I skate towards it, knowing but wondering, knowing but wondering... and splash!"
有时这是一种自我毁灭。 一位年轻人写信给我,说道: “在湖面上溜冰, 距离一个没冻住的黑洞 只有 30 码了, 我没有躲开,而是径直滑了过去, 明知却好奇, 明知却好奇,然后…… 噗通!”
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Now psychologists have long been interested in these sort of violent, disruptive, perverse acts and the kinds of people who do them. An example people often give is the Joker from the “Batman” comics. In Christopher Nolan's film "The Dark Knight," Alfred, Batman’s butler, describes the Joker by saying, "Some men can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn." And psychologists have thought up a "need for chaos" scale that gives you a bunch of statements and how much you agree with them will tell you how much you want to watch the world burn.
心理学家一直对这种 暴力的、破坏性的、任性的行为 和这类肇事者很感兴趣。 常见的例子有 《蝙蝠侠》漫画中的小丑。 在克里斯托弗·诺兰的电影 《黑暗骑士》中, 蝙蝠侠的管家阿尔弗雷德 是这么评价小丑的: “有些人就是无法被收买, 无法被恐吓,不讲道理,无法交流的。 有些人就是想见证世界毁灭。” 心理学家想出了一个 “混乱需求”评分表, 包括了一些陈述 和你对其的赞同程度, 借此可以测出你有多想 见证世界毁灭。
So do this quietly in your head. "I need chaos around me. It's too boring if nothing is going on." "Sometimes I just like destroying beautiful things."
悄悄在脑海里试一试。 “我的身边必须要有混乱。 如果天下太平,就太无聊了。” “有些时候我就是想 毁掉漂亮的东西。”
But not all the stories I got had that kind of nature. Some were a little bit more benign. Here's one of my favorites. "On one occasion in my early 20s, I was out with a friend. He decided to get himself an ice cream and before he had a chance to try it, I stuck my finger in it."
但我收到的故事不全是 出于这样的心态。 有些故事还是比较善良的。 说一个我最喜欢的故事。 “在我二十出头的某一天, 我和朋友出去玩。 他打算吃个冰淇淋, 但是在他尝之前, 我把手指插了进去。”
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"I tried to play it off as a joke, but really I had the sudden thought, ’Man, it would be -- messed up if I just jammed my finger in his ice cream.'"
“我本来打算口头开个玩笑, 但我突发奇想: ‘如果我把手指插进他的冰淇淋, 就会一塌糊涂了。’” 有人写了这个故事: “我在一个专业合唱团工作时,
Someone else wrote me, "When I was in a professional choir, at every concert, I felt the desire to sing a few notes very incorrectly on purpose. To this day, I don't completely understand why." Someone else wrote me, and this is kind of the sweetest, saddest little example of modest perversity: “Sometimes I walk on the grass instead of the path just because I know it's wrong."
每一场音乐会, 我都有故意唱错几个音符的冲动。 时至今日,我依旧 无法完全理解这是为什么。” 有人写了这么一个 最可爱的、最悲伤的 一种小小叛逆的例子: “有时我就是要走在草地上, 不走在路上, 就是因为我知道这是不对的。”
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Now a lot of perversity makes the world worse. I wouldn't want an Uber driver who scores high on a "need for chaos" scale. And I don't want a friend or a colleague either.
很多叛逆行为会让世界更糟糕。 我可不想我的优步司机 在“混乱需求”评分表上得了个高分。 我也不想我的朋友或者同事得高分。
But sometimes, I'll suggest to you, perversity can be clever, creative, beautiful. And there are some examples from art.
但有些时候,我可以告诉你, 叛逆可以是聪明的、 有创意的、美丽的。 可以看看艺术界的例子。
There was an illustrious art exhibition in New York City in 1917, and they said, "You could send in anything you want, we'll accept everything." So Marcel Duchamp sent in a urinal, described [as] a fountain, and they rejected it. They said, "No, no, we just accept artwork." But Duchamp insisted it was artwork and the resulting controversy turned out to be one of the pivotal moments in the history of modern art.
1917 年纽约举办了一场 优秀艺术作品展,举办方说: “你可以发来任何你想提交的作品, 我们会接受所有作品。” 马塞尔·杜尚(Marcel Duchamp) 提交了一座小便池,起名为《泉》, 然后遭到了拒绝。 举办方说:“不行,不行, 我们只接受艺术品。” 但杜尚坚称它就是一件艺术品, 由此引发的争议成为了 现代艺术史上最关键的时刻。
Or take Banksy. A few years ago, Banksy sold a painting “Girl with Balloon” at Sotheby’s, at auction, and he set up the frame so that the moment the painting was sold, the moment the gavel went "boom," a machine in the frame shredded the painting halfway through, horrifying the audience. But... getting on the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Later on, describing it, Banksy quotes a Russian anarchist who says, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."
也可以举班克西(Banksy)的例子。 几年以前, 班克西在苏富比拍卖行售出了 一幅绘画《女孩与气球》, 他对画框动了手脚, 在作品成交的瞬间, 在落槌瞬间, 画框内的一台机器 切碎了半幅画, 观众惊恐万分。 但它登上了世界各地的新闻头条。 后来,谈及此事时,班克西引用了 一名俄罗斯无政府主义者的话: “破坏的欲望也是一种创造欲。”
Or take comedy. Perversity is part and parcel of comedy. So much of what's funny is when people do things that are irrational or immoral. In the right hands, perversity is such a source of joy.
举个喜剧的例子。 叛逆行为是喜剧的一部分, 也是它的内核。 搞笑的就是 人们做了一些不符合逻辑 或者不道德的事。 只要运用得当,叛逆行为 就是快乐源泉。
Perversity can also be powerful. Rory Sutherland wrote, "Irrational people are much more powerful than rational people." He gave two reasons why this is so. The first is, their threats are so much more convincing.
叛逆行为也可以很强大。 罗里·萨瑟兰 (Rory Sutherland)写道: “不理智的人要比理智的人强大得多。” 他给了两个原因。 第一,不理智的人 造成的威胁更实实在在。
Suppose I'm in a confrontation with you and you threaten me and you’re a rational, reasonable... person. So I know your threats ...
假如我和你起了冲突, 你恐吓了我, 但你是个理智的、讲道理的人。 那我就知道你的威胁……
Woman: Ehh.
女性观众:哈哈哈哈。
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PB: Well, I know your threats are going to be normal, proportional and reasonable. But, if as somebody is hinting here, you’re a perverse agent, I have no idea what you're capable of and you're far more frightening to me.
保罗·布鲁姆(Paul Bloom): 我就知道你的威胁 会很正常、公道、合理。 但如果有人暗示你是个 不按常理出牌的人, 我不知道你敢做出什么事, 那你在我眼中就更可怕了。
Second reason is, if you're wholly predictable, people learn to hack you. So again, if you're rational and I have to outsmart you, figure out what you're going to do next, I figure you’ll do the rational thing. If you're perverse, you're harder to predict. And so harder to hack.
第二个原因是, 如果你的行为完全是可预见的, 那别人就会见招拆招。 同样地,如果你是个理智的人, 我得智取你, 预判你接下来会做些什么, 我会假设你的行为会是理智的。 但如果你是个乱来的人, 就不太容易预判你的行为了, 也不太容易破解。
Edgar Allan Poe, describing perversity, described, talked about imps, little magical demons in our heads that cause us to do terrible things. But like I said, I'm a psychologist, I don't believe in imps. I think what we do has reasons, has motivations. And I think for perverse actions there is a range of them.
埃德加·爱伦·坡(Edgar Allan Poe) 将叛逆行为比喻成小恶魔, 在我们脑海里让我们做坏事的小恶魔。 但如我所说,我是一名心理学家, 我不相信小恶魔。 我相信这是有原因的、有动机的。 我认为叛逆行为背后 有多种原因和动机。
One of them was mentioned by Augustine. So later on, after describing the incident with the pears, he writes, "I would not have done it by myself. My satisfaction did not lie in the pears, it lay in the crime itself, committed in league with a gang of sinners." The social force drove him.
奥古斯丁已经提到了其中一个。 后来,他在讲完偷梨事件后写道: “我自己一个人是不会这么做的。 我的满足感不是来自梨子, 而是来自干坏事本身, 和一帮罪人狼狈为奸。” 社会影响力鼓动着他,
And there are other things, too. One force that really interests me goes under many names: self-governance, freedom, liberty, agency. Call it autonomy. Call it a desire to be free to do what you want, free of the constraints of other people and free also of the constraints of rationality and morality.
还有别的因素。 有一个我很感兴趣的因素, 它有好几个名字: 自我管理、内在自由、 外在自由、自主控制权。 就叫它“自主权”吧。 可以把它看成对为所欲为的渴望, 完全不受他人的限制, 完全不受理智和道德的限制。
And Jonah Berger gives a nice example of this. He talks about the Tide Pod challenge of a few years ago, where many teenagers, instead of using these as detergent products, bit into them and sometimes consumed them. Now, as you might imagine, Procter and Gamble, who own the products, were incredibly unhappy about this and they set up an extremely expensive ad campaign designed to stop people from consuming these products. And one of their campaigns involved a ... popular football player known as Gronk.
乔纳·伯杰(Jonah Berger) 给出了一个不错的例子。 他谈到了多年前的 “汰渍洗衣球挑战”, 很多青少年, 没有把洗衣球当作洗涤剂使用, 而是把它咬开,可能还会吃进去。 你可以想象, 该产品所有者宝洁公司 对此极为不悦, 斥巨资举办了广告宣传活动, 阻止人们食用这类产品。 其中一场活动请了一位 当红橄榄球运动员 Gronk(罗布·格隆考斯基, Rob Gronkowski)。
So the ad would begin, "Hey, Gronk, is eating the pods ever a good idea?" And Gronk responds, "No, no, no." Berger points out, when this ad came up, consumption of the pots shot up.
广告的开头是这样的: “嗨,Gronk, 吃洗衣球是个好主意吗?” 然后 Gronk 回答:“不,不,不。” 伯杰指出,这个广告一经播放, 吃洗衣球的现象立即飙升。
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Not down. "Nobody's going to tell me what to do. Who is this Gronk telling me what to do? I want to be an autonomous, free being."
不是骤降。 “没人可以教我做事。 Gronk 是哪位啊?还教我做事。 我要当一个独立自主、 无拘无束的人。”
And psychologists call this reactance. This means it's "an unpleasant feeling that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors." And there's a wealth of laboratory studies looking at reactance. So they test the idea that what you try to do is reestablish the threatened freedom.
心理学家称之为 “逆反心理”(reactance)。 指的是“一种不爽的感觉, 出现于人们的自由行为面临威胁, 或丧失自由行动权之时”。 针对逆反心理已经进行了 大量实验室研究。 他们测试了这样一个想法: 你想做的就是重建 受到威胁的自由。
And so one of the studies, for instance, looks at binge-drinking ads and finds that when binge drinking ads are particularly heavy-handed, people often respond by drinking more. ... "I'm going to reestablish my freedom." "I'm going to do what I want."
比如,有一个研究分析了酗酒广告, 发现酗酒广告特别冷冰冰, 人们常见的反应就是喝得更狠…… “我要夺回我的自由。” “我偏要为所欲为。”
Or take threats of reprisal. There's a lovely study by a team of political scientists which asked you, asked the subjects, to imagine that they’re an ambassador to a country and they're deciding whether or not to have sanctions towards that country. In one condition, the dictator says "If you do sanctions towards our country, that's OK, I won't do anything." In the second condition, the dictator says, "If you do sanctions towards our country, I will unleash terrorist attacks against you."
还有报复心理作祟。 一群政治科学家做了 这么一个有趣的研究, 他们会要求你,要求受试者, 想象他们是驻某个国家的大使, 让他们决定要不要制裁这个国家。 一种情况是统治者说: “如果你要制裁我国, 没关系,我不会干预。” 还有一种情况是统治者说: “如果你要制裁我国, 我就会派出恐怖分子袭击你。”
What's the stunning finding from this is that in the second condition, not the first, they were more likely to do it. A lot of our perverse actions are in response to people telling us not to do what we want to do, and it makes us want all the more to do that thing.
惊人的是听到第二个回应之后, 不是第一个, 受试者更有可能会采取措施。 有很多叛逆行为都是为了回应有人 让我们不要做自己想做的事, 这会让我们更想做这事。
I think there are two lessons from the study of perversity. One is to appreciate its role in everyday life. It's really worth knowing that there are people out there who really do want to watch the world burn. And I think it's also worth knowing that each and every one of us, at some point in our life, wants to watch the world burn at least a little bit.
我认为对叛逆行为的研究 让我学到了两点。 第一,是正视它在 日常生活中扮演的角色。 你得知道就是有人 很想看到世界毁灭。 我们也得知道,我们每个人, 在人生的某个节点, 都至少会有那么一丝 想看到世界毁灭的念头。
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I think it's worth knowing, at least for consequential decisions like choosing who to vote for, that people aren't just motivated by material self-interest or by an affiliation to social and political group. Sometimes people want to be autonomous beings, they want to be free. And telling these people, "What you're doing is stupid," "what you're doing is irrational," "what you're doing is immoral," can have the paradoxical effect of motivating them to do exactly what you don't want them to do.
我觉得我们该知道, 至少在把票投给谁 这样的重大决定上, 人们不止是由物质上的 个人利益驱动的, 或是因为与某个社会 或政治团体有瓜葛。 有时人们想当个自主的人, 当个自由的人。 和这些人说: “你的所作所为是愚蠢的”、 “你的所作所为是不理智的”、 “你的所作所为是不道德的”, 可能会产生相反的效果, 激发他们去做 你不想让他们做的事。
The second lesson of perversity has to do with our everyday lives. A lot of perversity is awful. I think the world would be better off without it. But I think we've seen a little bit that perversity could be funny. It could be clever. I think it can make the world a better place. And so I guess I'd suggest that a life with a little bit of perversity in it, a life where sometimes you put your finger into your friend's ice cream, is a life that's a lot more interesting.
从叛逆行为中学到的第二点 和我们的日常生活有关。 有很多叛逆行为很糟糕。 我觉得要是世界上没有 这些叛逆行为肯定要好得多。 但我认为有一点点 叛逆行为会很好玩。 可以是聪明的小把戏。 我认为这些叛逆行为 可以让世界更美好。 所以我想说, 带点小叛逆的生活, 有时把手指插进朋友的 冰淇淋里的生活, 会有趣得多。
Thank you.
谢谢。
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