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.
大約一千六百年前, 聖奧古斯丁寫了《懺悔錄》, 故事內容是他年輕時 墮落犯下的原罪, 以及後來皈依基督教的過程。 《懺悔錄》的第二冊 有著很棒的開頭: 「我提議現在放下我過去的罪惡 以及我靈魂的肉體墮落。」 所以你會預期「性」。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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,讓數世紀以來的讀者失望的是, 奧古斯丁所談的罪惡 和肉體完全無關。 而是和梨子有關。 他和他的朋友闖入一個果園, 他們偷了一些梨。就這樣。 他們和果園的主人無冤無仇, 他們也不餓,他們把梨子丟給了豬。
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."
讓奧古斯丁感到很震驚且很困擾的 是他的動機似乎就只是想作惡。 他寫道:「如果那些梨子有 任何一部分通過我的嘴脣, 那就是罪惡賦予了它滋味。 我沒有任何要作惡的動機, 除了就是想作惡本身。 我很惡劣,而我樂在其中。」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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."
我是心理學家, 我對反骨行為的真實 人生故事很感興趣, 所以我創立了「反骨計畫」。 我透過這個計畫邀請大家 提供他們的反骨故事給我。 我這樣定義反骨行為: 「當你選擇去做你明知—— 在道德或其他方面——錯的事, 至少有部分原因是出於它是錯的。」
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."
我收到的第一個故事是 「完全知道一名女子的男友 喜歡我,還故意挑逗他。 我知道我若想要一定能夠 搶走他,但我不想那麼做。 單純只是當我們三人共處 一室時我就想讓她不舒服。」 (笑聲)
(Laughter)
「讓別人痛苦是不對的,
"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."
但那正是我去做的原因。」 事實上,這是桃莉‧巴頓的 歌曲《喬琳》的情節。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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!"
有時這種行為是自我傷害式的。 一名年輕人寫給我: 「在池塘上溜冰, 三十碼外有個黑暗未結冰的坑, 我沒避開,反而溜向那裡, 知道,但納悶,知道,但納悶…… 然後撲通!」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
長久以來心理學家一直很好奇 這類暴力的、搗亂的、 反骨的行為,及什麼樣的人會去做。 常舉的例子就是 《蝙蝠俠》漫畫中的小丑。 在克里斯多夫諾蘭的 電影《黑暗騎士》中, 蝙蝠俠的管家阿福這樣描述小丑: 「有些人就是無法被收買、 霸凌、講理,或協商的。 有些人就只想看世界變成煉獄。」 心理學家想出了「需要混亂」量表, 表上有一大堆陳述, 問你同意的程度如何, 就能判斷你有多想看世界變成煉獄。 請大家安靜地在腦中作答。
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."
「我的周圍必須要有混亂。 什麼都沒發生就太無聊了。」 「有時我就只想摧毀美麗的東西。」
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,並非全部 在本質上都屬於這類。 有些比較和善一點點。 以下是我最愛的一則: 「我二十初頭時,有一次 我和一位朋友出去。 他決定去買冰淇淋來吃, 在他有機會品嚐之前,我就 把我的手指插進去了。」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
"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.'"
「我試著把它當玩笑來輕鬆看待, 但我突然有個念頭:『哇,那一定會 很慘烈, 如果我把我的手指塞到 他的冰淇淋裡的話。」
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."
另外一個人寫給我: 「當我在職業合唱團裡時, 在每場音樂會上我都會很想 故意把幾個音唱到大錯。 至今我仍然不明白為什麼。」 另一個人寫給我的,是最甜蜜 又最悲傷的有節制反骨範例。 「有時,我會踩草皮而不走步道, 只因為我知道那樣不對。」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
很多反骨會讓世界變得更糟, 我不會希望我的優步司機 在「需要混亂」量表上取得高分。 我也不希望有這樣的朋友或同事。
But sometimes, I'll suggest to you, perversity can be clever, creative, beautiful. And there are some examples from art.
但,我會建議各位,有時, 反骨也可以很機智、有創意、美好。 有一些藝術方面的例子。
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.
紐約市有一場耀煌藝術展, 那是 1917 年,他們說: 「什麼都可以寄來, 我們什麼都收。」 馬賽爾‧杜尚寄了個小便斗過去, 稱之為噴泉,他們卻拒收。 他們說:「不,不, 我們只收藝術作品。」 但杜尚堅持這是藝術作品, 因此事產生的爭議, 結果竟是現代藝術史上的 關鍵轉折時刻之一。
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."
或是班克西的例子。 幾年前, 班克西在蘇富比拍賣上賣掉了 他的畫作《氣球女孩》, 他在畫框動了手腳, 畫作被賣出的那一刻, 槌子敲下去的那一刻, 畫框裡的機器 把畫作碎掉了一半, 嚇壞了觀眾。 但上了世界各地的報紙頭版。 後來,班克西引用了一位 俄羅斯建築師的話來描述此事: 「想要摧毀的衝動 也是創意的衝動。」
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.
或以喜劇為例。 反骨是喜劇的基本要件。 笑料有很大一部分 來自於有人做出 不合理或不道德的事。 若被對的人使用,反骨 真的可說是喜悅的來源。
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.
反骨也可能很強大。 羅里‧薩特蘭寫過: 「不理性的人比 理性的人強大許多。」 他用兩個理由說明原因。 第一:他們的威脅更有說服力許多。
Suppose I'm in a confrontation with you and you threaten me and you’re a rational, reasonable... person. So I know your threats ...
假設我和你發生衝突, 你是個理性講理的人, 你威脅我,我知道你的威脅…… 女子:啊~~。
Woman: Ehh.
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
講者:我知道你的威脅會是 正常、相稱,且理性的。 但,如果如剛才的暗示, 你是個反骨的人, 我不知道你能做出什麼事, 我就會覺得你更可怕許多。
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.
理由二:若你完全可預料, 大家就會學會怎麼對付你。 所以,同樣的,若你很理性, 我得智取,猜出你的下一步, 我會認為你會做合理的事。 若你很反骨,你就更難預測。 就更難對付。
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.
愛倫‧坡這樣描述反骨: 他談到了惡魔, 我們腦中的魔法小惡魔 促使我們做出可怕的事。 但,我說過我是心理學家, 我不相信有小魔鬼。 我認為我們的行為 是有理由、有動機的。 我認為,反骨行為背後 有好幾種不同的理由動機。
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.
奧古斯丁提過其中一種。 在描述完梨子事件之後,他寫道: 「若只有我自己一人我就不會做了。 我的滿足感不是在梨子, 而是在和一群罪人 一起犯罪的快感。」 他被社群的力量驅使。
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.
還有其他的。 我很感興趣的一種力量 有許多名稱, 自理、自由、自主、自由裁量權。 可稱它為自主權。 可稱它為希望能夠 想做什麼就做什麼的慾望, 不受他人的限制, 也不受理性和道德的限制。
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.
喬納‧貝加提供了很好的例子。 幾年前他談到汰漬洗衣膠囊大挑戰, 也就是許多青少年不把它 當作洗潔用品來使用, 而是咬破它,甚至吃下它。 各位可以想像, 這個產品所屬的寶僑公司 對此非常不爽, 他們砸大錢做廣告宣傳, 目的是要讓大家停止吃這個產品。 其中一個廣告和知名的 足球員格隆科斯基有關。
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.
廣告這樣開頭: 「嘿,格隆科斯基, 吃洗衣膠囊是個好點子嗎?」 格隆科斯基回應:「不,不,不。」 貝加指出,這個廣告推出後, 食用洗衣膠囊的人數大增。 (笑聲)
(Laughter)
不是下降。
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."
「沒人能告訴我要做什麼, 格隆科斯基算老幾? 我要當有自主權的自由人。」 心理學家稱之為抗拒。
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.
這意味著, 它是種「不悅的感覺,出現在 人的自由行為受到威脅 或喪失它的時候。」 關於抗拒,有一大堆 相關的實驗室研究。 他們測試了這個想法: 你試圖想做的事情 是重建被威脅的自由。
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,有一項研究 探討的是狂飲廣告, 結果發現當狂飲廣告 走特別強硬的路線時, 大家的反應通常是喝更多…… 「我要重建我的自由。」 「我愛怎樣就怎樣。」
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."
或以報復威脅為例。 有個政治科學家團隊 做了一項很讚的研究, 研究受試者被要求要想像 他們是駐某國家的大使, 他們要決定是否要制裁該國家。 其中一個情況是,獨裁者說: 「如果你制裁我們的國家, 沒關係,我什麼都不會做。」 第二個情況是,獨裁者說: 「如果你制裁我們的國家, 我會對你們發動恐怖攻擊。」
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.
讓人驚訝的發現是, 在第二個情況中, 不是第一個情況, 他們更可能決定要制裁。 我們有很多反骨行為都是在回應別人 不准我們做我們想要做的事, 那會讓我們更想去做那件事。
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.
我認為關於反骨的研究 教了我們兩件事。 第一,要察知它在 日常生活中扮演的角色。 真的值得知道, 的確有些人 就是想看世界變成煉獄。 我認為還有件事也值得知道: 我們每一個人 在人生中的某個時點, 都會想看世界變成煉獄,
(Laughter)
至少有一點點啦。
(笑聲)
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.
我認為值得知道, 至少,針對有重要影響的決策,比如 要投票給誰, 人的動機並不只有實質的自我利益, 或者屬於哪個社會或政治團體。 有時,人想要有自主權,想要自由。 告訴這些人 「你在做的事情很蠢」、 「你在做的事很不理性」、 「你在做的事很不道德」, 可能會產生矛盾的效應, 反而促使他們去做 你不希望他們做的事。
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.
反骨教我們的第二件事 和我們的日常生活有關。 反骨通常都很糟糕。 我認為沒有這種反骨的世界會更好。 但,我想,我們剛才也 略談到反骨可能很有趣, 可能很機智。 我認為它可以讓世界變得更好。 所以,我想我要說的是, 含有一點點反骨的人生, 有時你會把手指插進 朋友的冰淇淋裡的人生, 是更有趣味的人生。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)