英文自修143：先入之见与世界和平
本系列内容英文原文取自BBC Thought for the Day节目网站，朋友们也可以下载节目录音收听。
转载、翻译：武太白
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Thought for the Day 20141003 John Bell
原文
I could only have an hour with Salaam Hannah last week. He's a Christian clergyman from Syria whose church has been destroyed, and half the population of his town has moved elsewhere to escape the violence.
Only an hour, so I asked him the question I often ask of people coming from places affected by war. 'What do we in the West need to know about your nation?' And he made the same reply as I heard in the past when I asked the same question of Avner Gvoryahu from Israel and Shehade Shehade from Palestine and Anna Zaki from Egypt. He said 'Things are much more complicated than you imagine.'
And then he went on, not so much to give his analysis of the tragedy of Syria as to comment on Western attitudes. And it was not easy to listen to...
He said that from his perspective the West seems to think that democracy is the answer, but democracy has to grow up from the ground, not be enforced from outside.
He asked whether nations which were major arms producers should expect to be welcomed as peacemakers and honest brokers in countries where their weapons are being used to kill.
He suggested that, for the West, overseas engagement seemed so often to be based on economic expediency to the benefit of the benefactor, but seldom was cultural or ethical expediency part of the process.
And he asked whether we ever thought of the consequences of our actions – as when you support the overthrow of a dictator, only to discover that he was sitting on a hornet's nest, and that deposing such a kingpin does not guarantee peace.
Salaam spoke with no rancor, but with sadness as he questioned some of the suppositions which many of us hold true.
Later, I remembered the moment in Jesus' ministry when he met a Syrian, a woman who asked him if he would heal her daughter. He demurred and referred to her race as 'dogs.' She questioned his language and then something in their conversation – her plain speaking from a context he knew little about – changed him. He felt for her pain and rather than dismiss her, he agreed to help her.
Having met people from both sides involved in the troubles in Northern Ireland and apartheid in South Africa, I am convinced that it is only when we drop our unquestioned presumptions and feel for the pain of the one we despise that we begin to move towards peace. It will not be fully secured by military hardware or economic master-plans but by the less exotic arts of listening, thinking outside the box and empathy, however hard it is to imagine doing this right now.
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译文
上周我只能与萨拉姆·哈那聊一个小时。他是叙利亚的一名牧师，他的教堂遭到摧毁，镇上一半的人口到别处逃难去了。
只能聊一小时，所以我也问了他经常用来问从战乱地区来的人的问题。“关于你的国家，我们西方人需要知道些什么？”他的回答也和过去我听到以色列的阿夫纳·格波利亚胡、巴勒斯坦的谢哈德·谢哈德、埃及的安娜·扎姬的回答一样。他说：“情况要比你们想象得复杂得多。”
然后他继续，与其说是分析叙利亚的悲剧，不如说是评价西方的态度。他的话可不太中听……
他说，从他的角度来看，西方似乎认为答案是民主，但民主需要从本国的土壤上生长出来，而不是从外部强加。
他问，该不该欢迎那些军火大国去进行维和的努力，在他们的武器被用来杀戮的国家，他们能诚心诚意止息战争吗？
他似乎是说，对于西方来说，干涉别国事务经常是基于施恩者的利益考虑的经济便利，在这些过程中文化或种族利益几乎很少得到考量。
他又问，我们有没有考虑到我们行动的后果——比如，你支持推翻独裁者，却发现此后的局势如同马蜂窝一般不可收拾，把这样的轴心人物拉下马并不能保证和平。
萨拉姆所言并无怨恨，却流露出一种悲哀。他对我们许多人深信不疑的观点提出了质疑。
后来我想到了耶稣救世期间的一个情景，当时他遇到了一个叙利亚人，是一位妇女，她要耶稣救救她的女儿。耶稣意下踌躇，说她的种族是“狗”。妇女对耶稣的语言表示质疑，然后对话中的什么——这妇女在耶稣几乎不了解的情境下仍能平静言说——令耶稣改变了主意。他感觉到了妇女的痛苦，没有斥退她。耶稣同意帮助她。
我遇到过北爱尔兰和南非种族隔离冲突双方的人，我相信只有在我们放下绝不怀疑的先入之见，并能去感受我们此前鄙视之人的苦痛之时，我们才真正向和平迈进。和平无法用军事装备确保，也无法用宏大的经济计划获得，只有看似平常的用心倾听、另辟蹊径、感同身受，不管这几样如今是何等难以做到。