其他
讲堂｜什么样的工作有成就感？
(Credit: therightreflection.com)
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在每个工作日的早上，你会不会有不想起床上班的想法呢？你也许在想如果不是为了赚钱，我才不会工作。那么你有没有想过我们为什么要工作？工作的意义是什么？什么样的工作才会让人有成就感？看完著名心理学家巴瑞·施瓦茨（Barry Schwartz）的演讲，也许会得出答案。
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Why We Work
我们为什么工作
Today I’m going to talk about work. And the question I want to ask and answer is this: “Why do we work?” Why do we drag ourselves out of bed every morning instead of living our lives just filled with bouncing from one TED-like adventure to another?今天我演讲的主题是工作。我想跟大家讨论的是：“我们为什么要工作？”为什么每天早上我们都要挣扎着起床去上班，而不是让生活充满诸如TED演讲这样的奇妙冒险呢？
You may be asking yourselves that very question. Now, I know of course, we have to make a living, but nobody in this room thinks that that’s the answer to the question “Why do we work?” For folks in this room, the work we do is challenging. It’s engaging. It’s stimulating. It’s meaningful. And if we’re lucky, it might even be important.大家可能都这样问过自己。现在，我当然知道，我们得靠工作谋生，但是大家并不认为这是“我们为什么要工作?”的最佳答案，对你们中的一部分人来说，工作充满挑战、富有魅力、催人向上、意义非凡。当然，如果幸运的话，我们的工作还可能至关重要。
So, we wouldn’t work if we didn’t get paid, but that’s not why we do what we do. And in general, I think we think that material rewards are a pretty bad reason for doing the work that we do. When we say of somebody that he’s “in it for the money,” we are not just being descriptive.也就是说，没有薪酬，我们不会工作，但这并不是工作的意义。总之，我认为大家并不觉得获得物质回报是工作的好理由，当我们说一个人“工作只是为了钱”的时候，表达的不仅仅是字面意思。
Now, I think this is totally obvious, but the very obviousness of it raises what is for me an incredibly profound question. Why, if this is so obvious, why is it that for the overwhelming majority of people on the planet, the work they do has none of the characteristics that get us up and out of bed and off to the office every morning? How is it that we allow the majority of people on the planet to do work that is monotonous, meaningless and soul-deadening?现在，我认为这显而易见，这种显而易见让我想到一个发人深省的问题，那就是：既然答案这么明显，为什么世界上大部分人的工作都没有将我们唤醒、让我们起床上班的魅力呢？我们怎么能让那么多人做着索然无味、毫无意义、麻木无聊的工作呢？
Why is it that as capitalism developed, it created a mode of production, of goods and services, in which all the nonmaterial satisfactions that might come from work were eliminated? Workers who do this kind of work, whether they do it in factories, in call centers, or in fulfillment warehouses, do it for pay. There is certainly no other earthly reason to do what they do except for pay.为什么随着资本主义的发展、商品和服务及生产模式的诞生，我们工作中所有的成就感都荡然无存了呢？人们工作只是为了薪酬，无论工作地点在工厂、课服中心还是仓库，都无所谓，除了赚钱，再没有任何理由。
（视频截图）
So the question is, “Why?” And here’s the answer: the answer is technology. Now, I know, I know—yeah, yeah, yeah, technology, automation screws people, blah, blah—that’s not what I mean. I’m not talking about the kind of technology that has enveloped our lives, and that people come to TED to hear about. I’m not talking about the technology of things, profound though that is. I’m talking about another technology. I’m talking about the technology of ideas. I call it, “idea technology” —how clever of me.那么，问题来了，为什么会这样？答案是：因为技术。我明白，技术和自动化压迫人们诸如此类什么的。但我想说的不是这个，不是伴随着我们的生活、人们来TED大会听的那种物技术，当然物技术也很重要，但我想讨论的是另外一种技术，一种抽象的技术，我称之为“思维技术”，机智如我。
In addition to creating things, science creates ideas. Science creates ways of understanding. And in the social sciences, the ways of understanding that get created are ways of understanding ourselves. And they have an enormous influence on how we think, what we aspire to, and how we act.除了创造事物，科学还创造了思维，创造了理解方式。社会科学中创造的理解方式也正是我们理解自身的方式，对我们的思维、渴望和行动有着深刻的影响。
If you think your poverty is God’s will, you pray. If you think your poverty is the result of your own inadequacy, you shrink into despair. And if you think your poverty is the result of oppression and domination, then you rise up in revolt. Whether your response to poverty is resignation or revolution, depends on how you understand the sources of your poverty. This is the role that ideas play in shaping us as human beings, and this is why idea technology may be the most profoundly important technology that science gives us.如果认为贫穷是命中注定，你就会祈求上苍；如果认为贫穷是因为自己能力不足，你就会陷入绝望；如果认为贫穷源于压迫和统治，你就会奋起反抗。面对贫穷，无论你的选择是随波逐流还是打破现状，都取决于你对贫穷成因的理解，这就是思维在塑造我们人格过程中起的作用，也说明了思维技术或许是科学带给我们的最意义深远的技术。
And there’s something special about idea technology, that makes it different from the technology of things. With things, if the technology sucks, it just vanishes, right? Bad technology disappears. With ideas—false ideas about human beings will not go away if people believe that they’re true. Because if people believe that they’re true, they create ways of living and institutions that are consistent with these very false ideas.还有一点让思维技术与物技术有所不同。对于物技术来说，如果它很差劲，那么就会消失，对吗？差劲的技术会被淘汰。但是对思维来说，只要有人相信，即使这种思维是错误的，它也不会消失，因为人们相信它是真的，他们会创造出跟这些错误思维相统一的生活方式和制度。
And that’s how the industrial revolution created a factory system in which there was really nothing you could possibly get out of your day’s work, except for the pay at the end of the day. Because the father—one of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith—was convinced that human beings were by their very natures lazy, and wouldn’t do anything unless you made it worth their while, and the way you made it worth their while was by incentivizing, by giving them rewards. 工业革命时期的工厂制度就是这样创造的，在这种制度下，除了每天工作结束时的薪酬，你一无所获，因为工业革命之父的其中一位——亚当·斯密——坚信人类的本性是懒惰的，如果不值得些什么，他们什么都不会做，而让工作变得有价值的方式就是物质激励，给他们薪酬回报。
That was the only reason anyone ever did anything. So we created a factory system consistent with that false view of human nature. But once that system of production was in place, there was really no other way for people to operate, except in a way that was consistent with Adam Smith’s vision. So the work example is merely an example of how false ideas can create a circumstance that ends up making them true.这是所有人做任何事的唯一动机，基于这种对人类本性的错误理解，我们创造了工厂制度。可一旦这种生产制度开始实行，除了采取与亚当·斯密观点一致的工作方式，人们别无选择。错误的思维能创造与之相符的环境，最终把它变成现实，我之前提到的工作的例子也正是如此。
（视频截图）
It is not true that you “just can’t get good help anymore.” It is true that you “can’t get good help anymore” when you give people work to do that is demeaning and soulless. And, interestingly enough, Adam Smith—the same guy who gave us this incredible invention of mass production, and division of labor—understood this. He said, of people who worked in assembly lines, of men who worked in assembly lines, he says: “He generally becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human being to become.” 我们并不是“走投无路了”，只有人们被迫从事这种有损人格、枯燥乏味的工作时，才是真正的“走投无路了”。更有趣的是，那个发明了大规模生产和劳动分工的家伙，还是亚当·斯密，他理解这一点。他是这样评价在流水线工作的人的，他说：“他最终会变得愚蠢至极。”
Now, notice the word here is “become.” “He generally becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human being to become.” Whether he intended it or not, what Adam Smith was telling us there, is that the very shape of the institution within which people work creates people who are fitted to the demands of that institution and deprives people of the opportunity to derive the kinds of satisfactions from their work that we take for granted.现在，请注意这个词“变得”，“他会变得愚蠢至极”。无论他是不是故意这么说的，亚当·斯密想告诉我们的是，这种工作制度的形成，创造出了符合这个制度需要的人，剥夺了人们本应从工作中获得成就感的机会。
The thing about science—natural science—is that we can spin fantastic theories about the cosmos, and have complete confidence that the cosmos is completely indifferent to our theories. It’s going to work the same damn way no matter what theories we have about the cosmos. But we do have to worry about the theories we have of human nature, because human nature will be changed by the theories we have that are designed to explain and help us understand human beings.至于自然科学，我们能提出关于宇宙的绝妙理论，也拥有足够的自信认为宇宙不会受我们理论的影响，无论我们总结出了什么与之相关的理论，它还是会以不变的方式一直运行下去。但是，我们必须得关注那些关于人性的理论，因为人性会随着这些用来解释和帮助理解人类的理论而改变。
The distinguished anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, said, years ago, that human beings are the “unfinished animals.” And what he meant by that was that it is only human nature, to have a human nature that is very much the product of the society in which people live. That human nature, that is to say our human nature, is much more created than it is discovered. We design human nature by designing the institutions within which people live and work.著名人类学家，克利弗德·纪尔兹多年前曾说过，人类是“未发展完全的动物”，他想表达的含义是，只有人性才是人们所生存社会的产物，这种人性，也就是我们的人性，其实是被创造出来的，而不是被发现的，我们通过设计人们生活和工作的制度设计人性。
And so you people—pretty much the closest I ever get to being with masters of the universe—you people should be asking yourself a question, as you go back home to run your organizations. Just what kind of human nature do you want to help design?所以，你们大家（或许是我接触到的世界上最厉害的人了）应该问问自己：当你回去管理自己的公司时，你想设计出怎样的人性呢？
来源：TED官网
大连外国语大学高级翻译学院实习生
穆楠 整理
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