TED演讲 | Find the real you 寻找真实的自己
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Is there a real you? This might seem to you like a very odd question. Because, you might ask, how do we find the real you, how do you know what the real you is? And so forth.
真实的你存在吗？ 也许对你来说这是一个奇怪的问题。 因为你可能会问， 我们怎么寻找真实的自己， 而你又如何知道什么才是真实的自己呢？ 诸如此类。
But the idea that there must be a real you, surely that's obvious. If there's anything real in the world, it's you. Well, I'm not quite sure. At least we have to understand a bit better what that means.
不过一定存在一个真实的你， 这个想法显然是成立的。如果这个世界存在什么真实的事物，那就是你。不过，我其实没那么确定。 至少我们要对这个问题 理解的深入一些。
Now certainly, I think there are lots of things in our culture around us which sort of reinforce the idea that for each one of us, we have a kind of a core, an essence. There is something about what it means to be you which defines you, and it's kind of permanent and unchanging. The most kind of crude way in which we have it, are things like horoscopes.
当然，我认为我们周围的文化中有很多东西或多或少都强化了这样一种想法，那就是我们当中的每一个人都具备一个核心，一种本质。存在一些能够定义你的东西，使你成为你自己，它是永恒不变的。其中有一些很不精确的方式，比如星座，等等。
You know, people are very wedded to these, actually. People put them on their Facebook profile as though they are meaningul, you even know your Chinese horoscope as well. There are also more scientific versions of this, all sorts of ways of profiling personality type, such as the Myers-Briggs tests, for example. I don't know if you've done those. A lot of companies use these for recruitment. You answer a lot of questions, and this is supposed to reveal something about your core personality.
事实上人们对这些相当痴迷。把它们放在脸书资料里，就好像这些东西很有意义似的，你甚至还知道自己的生肖属相。还有更多具有科学性的版本，各种各样定义人格类型的方法，比如像麦尔斯-布里格斯性格分类测试。不知道你们有没有做过这个。很多公司把这种测试用在招聘中。你要回答很多问题，以此来揭示你的某些核心人格。
And of course, the popular fascination with this is enormous. In magazines like this, you'll see, in the bottom left corner, they'll advertise in virtually every issue some kind of personality thing. And if you pick up one of those magazines, it's hard to resist, isn't it? Doing the test to find what is your learning style, what is your loving style, or what is your working style? Are you this kind of person or that?
当然，这些测试是相当流行的。在这类的杂志中，你可以看到几乎在每一刊的左下角，都有这类性格测试的广告。一旦你拿起这种杂志，就很难抗拒，不是么？用这些测试来找出你的学习模式，你的恋爱模式，还有你的工作模式。比如你是哪种类型的人？
So I think that we have a common-sense idea that there is a kind of core or essence of ourselves to be discovered. And that this is kind of a permanent truth about ourselves, something that's the same throughout life. Well, that's the idea I want to challenge.
我想我们有一个共识，就是都认为自己有一种有待发掘的核心特质。有一种关乎我们自身的永恒真相，一生都不会改变。然而这正是我要挑战的认知。
And I have to say now, I'll say it a bit later, but I'm not challenging this just because I'm weird, the challenge actually has a very, very long and distinguished history. Here's the common-sense idea. There is you. You are the individuals you are, and you have this kind of core. Now in your life, what happens is that you, of course, accumulate different experiences and so forth.
我现在就得说，一会还会再讲，我要挑战这种认知并不是因为我这人很怪，事实上这个挑战已经有一段悠久显赫的历史了。最普遍的想法是，这是你。你是你这个个体，并且有这类的核心特征。而在你的一生中，当然你会积累不同的经历等等。
So you have memories, and these memories help to create what you are. You have desires, maybe for a cookie, maybe for something that we don't want to talk about at 11 o'clock in the morning in a school. You will have beliefs. This is a number plate from someone in America. I don't know whether this number plate, which says "messiah 1," indicates that the driver believes in the messiah, or that they are the messiah. Either way, they have beliefs about messiahs.
于是你有了记忆，这些记忆帮助你塑造了自己。你有欲望，也许只是想要一块饼干，也许是一些早晨十一点在学校我们不想去讨论的东西你还会有信仰，这是一个美国人的车牌。我不知道这个车牌显示的“弥赛亚1”是否表示这个司机相信救世主，或者他们自己就是救世主。不管怎样，他们信仰弥赛亚。
We have knowledge. We have sensations and experiences as well. It's not just intellectual things. So this is kind of the common-sense model, I think, of what a person is. There is a person who has all the things that make up our life experiences.
我们有知识。也有直觉和经历。并不只有智力方面的东西。我想这就是一个有关“你是什么”的常识性模型。你是这么一个人，拥有这些构成你人生经历的事物。
But the suggestion I want to put to you today is that there's something fundamentally wrong with this model. And I can show you what's wrong with one click. Which is there isn't actually a "you" at the heart of all these experiences.
但今天我想提出的观点却是，这个模型具有根本性的错误。我可以很简洁的给你们展示问题在哪里。所有这些经历的中心其实并不存在那个真实的“你”。
Strange thought? Well, maybe not. What is there, then? Well, clearly there are memories, desires, intentions, sensations, and so forth. But what happens is these things exist, and they're kind of all integrated, they're overlapped, they're connected in various different ways.
这个想法很奇怪吗？不尽然。那这些经历中究竟有些什么呢？显然，有记忆、欲望、意愿、直觉，等等诸如此类。但事实上这些事物是存在的，而且整合在一起，他们以各种各样的方式相互交错，彼此连接。
They're connecting partly, and perhaps even mainly, because they all belong to one body and one brain. But there's also a narrative, a story we tell about ourselves, the experiences we have when we remember past things. We do things because of other things. So what we desire is partly a result of what we believe, and what we remember is also informing us what we know.
他们之间有部分连接，也许甚至是大部分连接，因为他们属于同一个身体，同一个大脑。不过还有这样一种叙述，关于自己的故事，那些在我们回忆过去时所获得的经历。我们所做的事情都有其缘由。我们的欲望部分源于我们的信仰，我们的记忆也决定了我们的认知。
And so really, there are all these things, like beliefs, desires, sensations, experiences, they're all related to each other, and that just is you. In some ways, it's a small difference from the common-sense understanding. In some ways, it's a massive one.
的确，所有这些东西比如信仰，欲望，直觉和经历，他们都相互关联，这就构成了“你”。某种意义上，这与我们的基本认知只有些微的不同。而某种意义上，这种偏差却是巨大的。
It's the shift between thinking of yourself as a thing which has all the experiences of life, and thinking of yourself as simply that collection of all experiences in life. You are the sum of your parts. Now those parts are also physical parts, of course, brains, bodies and legs and things, but they aren't so important, actually.
这是在把你自己当做拥有所有这些人生经历的事物，以及把你自己当做所有这些人生经历的合集之间的一种转换。你是所有部分的集合。当然，这些也可以是身体的部分，比如大脑，躯干，肢体等等，但事实上这些都不那么重要。
If you have a heart transplant, you're still the same person. If you have a memory transplant, are you the same person? If you have a belief transplant, would you be the same person? Now this idea, that what we are, the way to understand ourselves, is as not of some permanent being, which has experiences, but is kind of a collection of experiences, might strike you as kind of weird.
假设你做了心脏移植，你还是那个你。但如果你做了记忆移植，你还是那个你吗？如果是信仰移植呢，你还是原来的你吗？所以，这个关于我们是什么以及如何认识自身的想法，它认为我们不是什么拥有经历的永恒个体，而是这些经历的集合，这种想法可能会让你觉得有点儿奇怪。
But actually, I don't think it should be weird. In a way, it's common sense. Because I just invite you to think about, by comparison, think about pretty much anything else in the universe, maybe apart from the very most fundamental forces or powers.
但事实上，我觉得一点都不。某种程度上，这也是常识。我请大家通过比较，想想宇宙中其它的诸多事物，不用考虑那些最基本的力或者功。
Let's take something like water. Now my science isn't very good. We might say something like water has two parts hydrogen and one parts oxygen, right? We all know that. I hope no one in this room thinks that what that means is there is a thing called water, and attached to it are hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and that's what water is.
举个例子吧。我的科学素养很一般。我们可以说水含有两份氢和一份氧，对吧？这个我们都知道。希望这个屋子里没有人会理解为有一种叫做水的东西，附着氢原子和氧原子，认为这就是水。
Of course we don't. We understand, very easily, very straightforwardly, that water is nothing more than the hydrogen and oxygen molecules suitably arranged. Everything else in the universe is the same. There's no mystery about my watch, for example.
我们当然不会这么想。我们都能轻易而直接的理解，水不过是氢和氧以恰当的形式排列而成的。宇宙中的其他任何事物也一样。比如，我的手表也没有什么神秘的。
We say the watch has a face, and hands, and a mechanism and a battery, But what we really mean is, we don't think there is a thing called the watch to which we then attach all these bits. We understand very clearly that you get the parts of the watch, you put them together, and you create a watch. Now if everything else in the universe is like this, why are we different?
我们说它有表面指针，还有机械装置以及电池。不过我们的真正意思并不是认为一种叫做表的东西，上面附着上所有这些元件。我们很清楚当你把所有这些元件组合起来，就可以得到一个手表。如果宇宙中所有事物都是这样，我们又有什么特殊的呢？
Why think of ourselves as somehow not just being a collection of all our parts, but somehow being a separate, permanent entity which has those parts? Now this view is not particularly new, actually. It has quite a long lineage.
为什么我们不把自己认为是所有部件的组合，而是一个拥有那些部件的某种独立而永恒的存在？这种看法其实并不新鲜。它已经有着一段很长的传承。
You find it in Buddhism, you find it in 17th, 18th-century philosophy going through to the current day, people like Locke and Hume. But interestingly, it's also a view increasingly being heard reinforced by neuroscience.
在佛教里有，十七，十八世纪的哲学里有直至现在，以洛克（译注：17世纪英国哲学家）和休谟（译注：18世纪苏格兰哲学家）为代表的思想。但有趣的是，这也是一种越来越经常听到的被神经科学不断加强的想法。
This is Paul Broks, he's a clinical neuropsychologist, and he says this: "We have a deep intuition that there is a core, an essence there, and it's hard to shake off, probably impossible to shake off, I suspect. But it's true that neuroscience shows that there is no centre in the brain where things do all come together."
这是保罗·布洛克斯，一位临床神经心理学家，他是这样说的：“我们有一种根深蒂固的直觉：就是存在一种核心特质，很难摆脱，我甚至怀疑也许是根本无法摆脱的。但神经科学的确显示，我们的大脑中没有什么让所有东西都集合在一起的中心区域。”
So when you look at the brain, and you look at how the brain makes possible a sense of self, you find that there isn't a central control spot in the brain. There is no kind of center where everything happens. There are lots of different processes in the brain, all of which operate, in a way, quite independently.
那么当你观察大脑，观察大脑如何形成自我意识，你会发现根本不存在什么中心控制点。不存在所有事件集中发生的区域。大脑中有大量不同的进程，各自以相当独立的方式运行着。
But it's because of the way that they relate that we get this sense of self. The term I use in the book, I call it the ego trick. It's like a mechanical trick. It's not that we don't exist, it's just that the trick is to make us feel that inside of us is something more unified than is really there.
但是，他们之间相互关联的方式使得我们有了自我的意识。我在书里把它叫做自我迷局。就像机械迷局一样。这不是说我们不存在，而是这个迷局使得我们感觉在我们内部有一种更为统一的存在。
Now you might think this is a worrying idea. You might think that if it's true, that for each one of us there is no abiding core of self, no permanent essence, does that mean that really, the self is an illusion? Does it mean that we really don't exist? There is no real you. Well, a lot of people actually do use this talk of illusion and so forth.
也许你会觉得这个想法让人感到沮丧。你也许会想，如果这是真的，我们每个人都没有持久的核心自我，没有永恒的实质，这是否意味着自我是一种假象呢?是否意味着我们并不存在？没有什么真正的你。的确有很多人接纳了这种假象之类的说法。
These are three psychologists, Thomas Metzinger, Bruce Hood, Susan Blackmore, a lot of these people do talk the language of illusion, the self is an illusion, it's a fiction. But I don't think this is a very helpful way of looking at it. Go back to the watch. The watch isn't an illusion, because there is nothing to the watch other than a collection of its parts.
比如有三位心理学家，托马斯·梅辛革，布鲁斯·胡德以及苏珊·布莱克默，这些人都支持这种假象学说，认为自我是一种假象，是虚构的。不过我不觉得这种理解方式在这个问题上有任何的帮助。我们回到手表的例子。手表不是假象，因为除了部件的组合没有其它东西了。
In the same way, we're not illusions either. The fact that we are, in some ways, just this very, very complex collection, ordered collection of things, does not mean we're not real. I can give you a very sort of rough metaphor for this. Let's take something like a waterfall.
同样的，我们也不是假象。事实上，从某种角度来说，我们只是一个极其复杂的有序集合，并不意味着我们不是真实存在的。我可以给你们一个非常粗浅的比喻。就拿瀑布来说吧。
These are the Iguazu Falls, in Argentina. Now if you take something like this, you can appreciate the fact that in lots of ways, there's nothing permanent about this. For one thing, it's always changing.
这是阿根廷的伊瓜苏瀑布。如果仔细想想，你就会领会到，从很多方面来看，它都不是永恒的。首先，它永远在变化中。
The waters are always carving new channels. with changes and tides and the weather, some things dry up, new things are created. Of course the water that flows through the waterfall is different every single instance. But it doesn't mean that the Iguazu Falls are an illusion.
这些水总在冲蚀出新的路径，随着潮汐和天气的变化，有的干涸了，有的则刚刚形成。当然，瀑布中流淌着的水每一刻都是不同的。但这并不是说伊瓜苏瀑布就是假象。
It doesn't mean it's not real. What it means is we have to understand what it is as something which has a history, has certain things that keep it together, but it's a process, it's fluid, it's forever changing.
并不是说它就是非真实的了。这意味着，我们需要将它理解为是一种拥有过往的事物，是某些东西的集合，不过它是一个过程，流动着的，始终变化着的。
Now that, I think, is a model for understanding ourselves, and I think it's a liberating model. Because if you think that you have this fixed, permanent essence, which is always the same, throughout your life, no matter what, in a sense you're kind of trapped.
我觉得这就是一个可以用来认识我们自己的模型，一个释放性的模型。因为如果你认为自己有什么固定的永恒的特质，无论怎样都终其一生而存在，那么在某种意义上你已经被套住了。
You're born with an essence, that's what you are until you die, if you believe in an afterlife, maybe you continue. But if you think of yourself as being, in a way, not a thing as such, but a kind of a process, something that is changing, then I think that's quite liberating.
你生而具备某种特质，而它就会定义你，直到死亡，如果你相信有来生，也许还会继续。但如果你换种方式，认为自己不是这样一种事物，而是一个过程，一个处于变化中的过程，我觉得这就是一种解放。
Because unlike the waterfalls, we actually have the capacity to channel the direction of our development for ourselves to a certain degree. Now we've got to be careful here, right? If you watch the X-Factor too much, you might buy into this idea that we can all be whatever we want to be. That's not true.
因为与瀑布不同，我们其实在一定程度上具备为自己的发展规划方向的能力。现在我们要小心了，对吧？如果你看了太多“X音素”（译注：英国真人选秀节目），你可能会深信我们可能成为任何想成为的人。但事实并非如此。
I've heard some fantastic musicians this morning, and I am very confident that I could in no way be as good as them. I could practice hard and maybe be good, but I don't have that really natural ability.
今早我听到一些非常棒的音乐家的演奏，我非常确信我没法达到他们的水平。我可以刻苦练习，也许会做的不错，但我并不具备这个天赋。
There are limits to what we can achieve. There are limits to what we can make of ourselves. But nevertheless, we do have this capacity to, in a sense, shape ourselves. The true self, as it were then, is not something that is just there for you to discover, you don't sort of look into your soul and find your true self, What you are partly doing, at least, is actually creating your true self.
我们可以实现的总是有限的。在造就自我方面我们能力有限，但无论如何，我们至少具备在一定程度上塑造自己的能力。真实的自己，并不是等着你去发现的什么东西，你不是在灵魂中寻找那个真实的自己。你或多或少正在做的，其实是在创造真实的自己。
And this, I think, is very, very significant, particularly at this stage of life you're at. You'll be aware of the fact how much of you changed over recent years. If you have any videos of yourself, three or four years ago, you probably feel embarrassed because you don't recognize yourself.
这一点我觉得非常重要，尤其对于你所在的人生阶段。你会意识到这些年自己变化了多少。如果你有自己三四年前的视频，你也许会感到很尴尬，因为你都快认不出自己了。
So I want to get that message over, that what we need to do is think about ourselves as things that we can shape, and channel and change. This is the Buddha, again: "Well-makers lead the water, fletchers bend the arrow, carpenters bend a log of wood, wise people fashion themselves."
我希望能传递这样的信息，我们需要做的就是认为我们自己是可以塑造，规划，并不断改变的事物。佛说：“水人调船，弓匠调角，巧匠调木，智者调身。”
And that's the idea I want to leave you with, that your true self is not something that you will have to go searching for, as a mystery, and maybe never ever find. To the extent you have a true self, it's something that you in part discover, but in part create. and that, I think, is a liberating and exciting prospect. Thank you very much.
这正是我要传达给你们的理念，你无须寻找真实的自己，也许这是个永远无法解开的谜。即便存在真实的自己，你也需要一边发掘，一边创造。这是一种自由释放性的，非常的令人振奋的观点。谢谢大家。
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