TED英文演讲：打破短视思维，规划长远未来！
今天为大家带来一篇关于长期规划的演讲，未来学家Ari Wallach说，现今很多人都会受到“短视主义”的影响，只看到短期利益，没有考虑长远的结果。但这是一种令未来变得不确定和不安全的处事方式，我们需要建立“长路径”思维。
如何做呢？Wallach分享了三种超越当下思考的策略，学习使用这些策略，尝试去超越过往的生活，将会帮助你做出以前力所不能及的事情。
https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?width=500&height=375&auto=0&vid=m0891xgvji0
So I've been "futuring," which is a term I made up --
我一直在“未来”着，好吧，这词是我编的。
about three seconds ago. I've been futuring for about 20 years, and when I first started, I would sit down with people, and say, "Hey, let's talk 10, 20 years out." And they'd say, "Great."
3秒钟前刚编的。我畅想未来已经有20年了，最开始的时候，我会坐在别人身旁，说，“嗨，我们来聊聊 10年、20年后吧。”他们说，“好呀。”
And I've been seeing that time horizon get shorter and shorter and shorter, so much so that I met with a CEO two months ago and I said -- we started our initial conversation. He goes, "I love what you do. I want to talk about the next six months."
后来我们聊的时间跨度越来越短，越来越短，就这样，2个月前我遇到一位CEO，我还是说了之前的那套开场白。他说，“我喜欢你做的事情。但我就想聊聊未来6个月的事情。”
We have a lot of problems that we are facing. These are civilizational-scale problems. The issue though is, we can't solve them using the mental models that we use right now to try and solve these problems.
我们常常面临着许多位于人类文明的尺度上的问题。关键在于，我们无法解决它们，仅仅依靠我们现有的思维方式是无法解决的。
Yes, a lot of great technical work is being done, but there is a problem that we need to solve for a priori, before, if we want to really move the needle on those big problems. "Short-termism." Right? There's no marches. There's no bracelets. There's no petitions that you can sign to be against short-termism. I tried to put one up, and no one signed. It was weird.
没错，许多技术性的工作正在进行中，但如果我们真的想前进，最先需要解决的问题是“短视主义”。对吧？你不能游行，也没有（标志性的）手环。不是说你签个请愿书，就可以对抗短视主义。我曾起草过一个，然而并没有人签。挺奇怪的。
But it prevents us from doing so much. Short-termism, for many reasons, has pervaded every nook and cranny of our reality. I just want you to take a second and just think about an issue that you're thinking, working on. It could be personal, it could be at work or it could be move-the-needle world stuff, and think about how far out you tend to think about the solution set for that.
但它会阻碍我们做很多事。短视主义，出于种种原因，遍布在我们周围的各个角落。我想请你们花几秒钟时间，想想你正在思考的问题，正在从事的事情。可以是私人事物，可以是工作，也可以是世界性的大事情，思考一下，你可以把解决方案考虑到多长远。CEO出于短视可能不愿意购买非常昂贵的安全设备。大问题就来了，例如“深水地平线号”这样的事故。老师们出于短视而不愿意花时间在一对一教学上。
Because short-termism prevents the CEO from buying really expensive safety equipment. It'll hurt the bottom line. So we get the Deepwater Horizon. Short-termism prevents teachers from spending quality one-on-one time with their students. So right now in America, a high school student drops out every 26 seconds. Short-termism prevents Congress -- sorry if there's anyone in here from Congress --
因此目前在美国，每26秒就有一个高中生退学。因为短视，国会——如果有谁是在国会工作的，我先说句抱歉——
or not really that sorry --
其实我也没那么抱歉——
from putting money into a real infrastructure bill. So what we get is the I-35W bridge collapse over the Mississippi a few years ago, 13 killed. It wasn't always like this. We did the Panama Canal. We pretty much have eradicated global polio. We did the transcontinental railroad, the Marshall Plan.
没有通过一个基础设施议案，从而导致数年前密西西比河上 I-35W桥梁的坍塌，造成了13人死亡。但也有例外情况。我们建造了巴拿马运河。我们基本在世界范围内消灭了小儿麻痹症。我们修建了横贯大陆的铁路，实施了马歇尔计划。
And it's not just big, physical infrastructure problems and issues. Women's suffrage, the right to vote. But in our short-termist time, where everything seems to happen right now and we can only think out past the next tweet or timeline post, we get hyper-reactionary.
然而这样的计划并不限于大型的实体基础设施问题。还有女性的选举权、投票权等。但在我们短视的时代，一切事情都感觉发生在当下，我们想到的只有下一条推特或者时间线上的帖子，我们的反应过于迅速。
So what do we do? We take people who are fleeing their war-torn country, and we go after them. We take low-level drug offenders, and we put them away for life. And then we build McMansions without even thinking about how people are going to get between them and their job. It's a quick buck.
我们都做了什么？对于躲避战乱的人，我们追捕他们。我们抓捕小毒贩，把他们终身监禁。我们不假思索地盖起独栋别墅，却没有考虑人们将如何从那里出发去上班。都想赚点快钱。
Now, the reality is, for a lot of these problems, there are some technical fixes, a lot of them. I call these technical fixes sandbag strategies. So you know there's a storm coming, the levee is broken, no one's put any money into it, you surround your home with sandbags.
如今的现实是，对于许多类似的问题都有技术层面的解决方案，真的很多。而我将它们称为“沙袋策略”。想象一下，风雨将至，由于没有经费进行维护，防洪堤即将崩溃，你只能用沙袋把家围起来
And guess what? It works. Storm goes away, the water level goes down, you get rid of the sandbags, and you do this storm after storm after storm. And here's the insidious thing. A sandbag strategy can get you reelected. A sandbag strategy can help you make your quarterly numbers.
你猜怎么着？它们还挺管用。等到暴风雨过去，水位下降，你再把沙袋挪走，每当暴风雨来临你都这么干。而危及也正潜藏于此。沙袋策略能让你继续当选。沙袋策略可以让你的季度报表很漂亮。
Now, if we want to move forward into a different future than the one we have right now, because I don't think we've hit -- 2016 is not peak civilization.
接下来，如果我们想要迈入一个更美好的未来，毕竟我并不觉得我们达到了—— 2016年远不是人类文明的顶峰。
There's some more we can do. But my argument is that unless we shift our mental models and our mental maps on how we think about the short, it's not going to happen.
我们还有很多事情可以做。但我的观点是，只有当我们摆脱在我们思维模型和思维地图上的短视时，我们才可能见证美好的来临。
So what I've developed is something called "longpath," and it's a practice. And longpath isn't a kind of one-and-done exercise. I'm sure everyone here at some point has done an off-site with a lot of Post-It notes and whiteboards, and you do -- no offense to the consultants in here who do that -- and you do a long-term plan, and then two weeks later, everyone forgets about it.
因此我创立了名为“长路径”的理论，这也是一种实践。注意“长路径”并不是一个一劳永逸的做法。我相信在座的各位都曾经用即时贴和白板做过许多计划，你们制定出——并不是针对你们中间做咨询服务的啊——你们也制定出长期计划，然后两周之后就把它抛到九霄云外。
Right? Or a week later. If you're lucky, three months. It's a practice because it's not necessarily a thing that you do. It's a process where you have to revisit different ways of thinking for every major decision that you're working on. So I want to go through those three ways of thinking.
是吧？或者干脆一周就忘，幸运的话持续三个月。这些小事情，并不是非做不可，但同时这也是一个你针对每一个重大决定不断重温不同的思维方式的过程。我想总结以下3种思考方式。
So the first: transgenerational thinking. I love the philosophers: Plato, Socrates, Habermas, Heidegger. I was raised on them. But they all did one thing that didn't actually seem like a big deal until I really started kind of looking into this. And they all took, as a unit of measure for their entire reality of what it meant to be virtuous and good, the single lifespan, from birth to death.
第一种是：跨代际的思考。我热爱哲学家们：柏拉图，苏格拉底，哈贝马斯，海德格尔。我从小就很喜欢他们。但他们都做了一件在我真正开始思考它之前看起来很不起眼的事。他们都在寻找某种评价准则，来判断什么叫品德高尚，究其一生，直至死亡。
But here's a problem with these issues: they stack up on top of us, because the only way we know how to do something good in the world is if we do it between our birth and our death. That's what we're programmed to do. If you go to the self-help section in any bookstore, it's all about you. Which is great, unless you're dealing with some of these major issues.
然而这些看似合乎情理的话题存在一个问题，那就是，我们只有在有生之年做出好事，才能悟到如何做一件好事。我们生来便被如此设定。当你来到任何一家自助书店，一切可以自己决定。这非常好，除非你需要解决这样的大问题
And so with transgenerational thinking, which is really kind of transgenerational ethics, you're able to expand how you think about these problems, what is your role in helping to solve them.
拥有了跨代际的思维方式，或者说实际上是跨代际的伦理与准则，你将能够扩展你对这些问题的看法，明确你在解决它们的过程中扮演的角色。这并不是只能在联合国安理会的会议厅里解决的事情。
Now, this isn't something that just has to be done at the Security Council chamber. It's something that you can do in a very kind of personal way. So every once in a while, if I'm lucky, my wife and I like to go out to dinner, and we have three children under the age of seven. So you can imagine it's a very peaceful, quiet meal.
你完全可以用个人的方式处理它。幸运的话，每隔一段时间我都会和妻子出去吃一顿饭，我们有三个不到七岁的孩子。所以你能想得到那将是一顿非常和平，安静的晚饭。
So we sit down and literally all I want to do is just eat and chill, and my kids have a completely and totally different idea of what we're going to be doing. And so my first idea is my sandbag strategy, right?
我们坐下来准备点餐，我一心只想着能安静地吃东西，然而对于我们的计划，孩子们却有着完全不同的想法。因此，我想到的第一个办法就是“沙袋策略”，对吧？
It's to go into my pocket and take out the iPhone and give them "Frozen" or some other bestselling game thing. And then I stop and I have to kind of put on this transgenerational thinking cap. I don't do this in the restaurant, because it would be bizarre, but I have to -- I did it once, and that's how I learned it was bizarre.
其实就是从口袋里掏出iPhone，让他们看《冰雪奇缘》，或是给他们玩畅销游戏。然后我打住了，接下来不得不在某种程度上进入跨代际的思考状态。我知道在餐馆里这样做很诡异，然而我身不由己——我试了一次，对，我就是这样发现了它有多么诡异的。
And you have to kind of think, "OK, I can do this." But what is this teaching them? So what does it mean if I actually bring some paper or engage with them in conversation? It's hard. It's not easy, and I'm making this very personal.
然后你得告诉自己，“我能做到”。可是这能教会他们什么呢？所以如果我真的带上纸笔，或是与他们交谈，会发生什么呢？这很困难，况且我在把它搞得个人化
It's actually more traumatic than some of the big issues that I work on in the world -- entertaining my kids at dinner. But what it does is it connects them here in the present with me, but it also -- and this is the crux of transgenerational thinking ethics -- it sets them up to how they're going to interact with their kids and their kids and their kids.
比起我在从事的世界上的大问题，让孩子们在晚餐时娱乐可能带来更大的负面后果。但它的功用是，在此时此刻将我和孩子们连结为一体，而且——这正是代际伦理思想的关键——帮助他们认识到如何与孩子互动，子子孙孙，始终如此。
Second, futures thinking. When we think about the future, 10, 15 years out, give me a vision of what the future is. You don't have to give it to me, but think in your head. And what you're probably going to see is the dominant cultural lens that dominates our thinking about the future right now: technology.
第二：面向未来思考。当我们以10年，15年的尺度，去思考未来时，我们将得到一个未来的愿景。不必说出来，但你可以想一想。你将有可能透过它们观察世界，并任之引领我们的想象的是：科学技术。
So when we think about the problems, we always put it through a technological lens, a tech-centric, a techno-utopia, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's something that we have to really think deeply about if we're going to move on these major issues, because it wasn't always like this. Right? The ancients had their way of thinking about what the future was.
当我们考虑问题时，我们总是从科技的角度出发，以科技为核心，实现科技乌托邦，这些并没有什么问题，但如果我们要确实地解决这些大问题，就需要三思而行，毕竟没有万全之策，对吧？古人自有他们自己思考未来的方式。
The Church definitely had their idea of what the future could be, and you could actually pay your way into that future. Right? And luckily for humanity, we got the scientific revolution. From there, we got the technology, but what has happened -- And by the way, this is not a critique. I love technology. Everything in my house talks back to me, from my children to my speakers to everything.
教会一定也有它们对于未来的看法，实际上你完全可以自己构想一下未来的样子，对么？对于人类而言，幸运的是，我们迎来了科学革命。由此我们获得了科学技术，但发生的事情是——顺便澄清一下，我无意批判。我爱科技。我家的所有东西，从孩子到扬声器，都可以跟我对话。
But we've abdicated the future from the high priests in Rome to the high priests of Silicon Valley. So when we think, well, how are we going to deal with climate or with poverty or homelessness, our first reaction is to think about it through a technology lens.
然而我们只是把未来的掌控权从罗马教皇转移到了“硅谷教皇”。因此，当我们思考如何应对气候变化或是贫困和无家可归问题，我们的第一反应是以科技为武器。
And look, I'm not advocating that we go to this guy. I love Joel, don't get me wrong, but I'm not saying we go to Joel. What I'm saying is we have to rethink our base assumption about only looking at the future in one way, only looking at it through the dominant lens. Because our problems are so big and so vast that we need to open ourselves up.
请注意，我并不是在鼓动大家去投靠他。我爱Joel，但别误会，这并不代表我们都要投靠Joel。我的意思是，我们需要质疑以单一视角看未来的大前提，和被主流看法所左右的现状。我们面临的问题很大，覆盖范围非常广，因而我们需要开放的视角。
So that's why I do everything in my power not to talk about the future. I talk about futures. It opens the conversation again. So when you're sitting and thinking about how do we move forward on this major issue -- it could be at home, it could be at work, it could be again on the global stage -- don't cut yourself off from thinking about something beyond technology as a fix because we're more concerned about technological evolution right now than we are about moral evolution. And unless we fix for that, we're not going to be able to get out of short-termism and get to where we want to be.
这就是为什么，我尽力不讨论单一的未来，而是未来的无限可能。这样可以再度放开我们的对话。因此，你完全可以在家在上班的时候，以至在国际舞台上，安静专注地思考我们该如何解决这个问题，发散你的思维，尝试科技以外的事物吧，因为相较于道德的发展，我们当今更容易关注的是科技的发展。当我们局限在科技视角时，我们将无法摆脱短视的把控以到达我们期待的目的地。
The final, telos thinking. This comes from the Greek root. Ultimate aim and ultimate purpose. And it's really asking one question: to what end? When was the last time you asked yourself: To what end? And when you asked yourself that, how far out did you go? Because long isn't long enough anymore. Three, five years doesn't cut it. It's 30, 40, 50, 100 years.
第三种，则是目的论思维，它起源于希腊。旨在寻求终极的目的。它实际上就在不断提出问题：最后怎么样？最近一次你问自己“最后怎么样”是什么时候了？你又在何时问过自己你已经走了多远？因为曾经的漫长，如今已不再漫长。区区三五年已经远远不够了，而是要放眼30，40，50，甚至100年。
In Homer's epic, "The Odyssey," Odysseus had the answer to his "what end." It was Ithaca. It was this bold vision of what he wanted -- to return to Penelope. And I can tell you, because of the work that I'm doing, but also you know it intuitively -- we have lost our Ithaca. We have lost our "to what end," so we stay on this hamster wheel.
在荷马史诗《奥德赛》中，奥德修斯对于“最后怎么样”有自己的答案，是来到伊萨卡岛，来到美丽的帕尼罗珀身边这样大胆的设想。然而经由我的工作经历，实际上你也可以直观地感受到我们的”伊萨卡岛“已经沦陷。我们不再追问“最后怎么样”，因而就好像被困在在的仓鼠轮上。
And yes, we're trying to solve these problems, but what comes after we solve the problem? And unless you define what comes after, people aren't going to move. The businesses -- this isn't just about business -- but the businesses that do consistently, who break out of short-termism not surprisingly are family-run businesses.
确实，我们正在尝试解决这些问题，但是当它们被解决后，又会发生什么呢？如果你不为下一步作出定义，人们是不会行动的。就商业活动而言——（而又不限于商业）那些能够避免短视而长久维系的企业毫不意外的都是家族企业。
They're transgenerational. They're telos. They think about the futures. And this is an ad for Patek Philippe. They're 175 years old, and what's amazing is that they literally embody this kind of longpathian sense in their brand, because, by the way, you never actually own a Patek Philippe, and I definitely won't --
它们有跨时代的理念，追根究底，并思考未来。这是瑞士百达翡丽手表的广告，它已经有175年历史了，但最令人惊异的是，他们实际上在品牌中熔铸了这种“长路径’的意识，因为，你实际上并不会真正地拥有一块百达翡丽表，而我更是肯定不会有——
unless somebody wants to just throw 25,000 dollars on the stage. You merely look after it for the next generation.
除非有人就想砸25000美金给我。在下一代当中没准你能找到。所以大家要记住的是，我们总认为“未来”是一个名词。
So it's important that we remember, the future, we treat it like a noun. It's not. It's a verb. It requires action. It requires us to push into it. It's not this thing that washes over us. It's something that we actually have total control over. But in a short-term society, we end up feeling like we don't. We feel like we're trapped. We can push through that.
然而并非如此，它是一个动词。它需要我们付出行动，需要我们的推动力。它并不会如海浪般冲刷我们。相反，它是可以被我们完全掌控的。但是身处一个短视的社会，我们开始怀疑自己把握未来的能力。我们感到自己受到缚束。
Now I'm getting more comfortable in the fact that at some point in the inevitable future, I will die. But because of these new ways of thinking and doing, both in the outside world and also with my family at home, and what I'm leaving my kids, I get more comfortable in that fact.
实际上，我们可以实现超越。现在我已经能够逐渐接受在未来的某个时候不可避免地，我会死掉。但正是由于这些思考和行动的新方法，无论是在家里还是外面的世界，以及传授给孩子们的时候，我实际上能收获更多的愉悦。
And it's something that a lot of us are really uncomfortable with, but I'm telling you, think it through. Apply this type of thinking and you can push yourself past what's inevitably very, very uncomfortable.
它是我们许多人并不喜欢的，但我还是想劝告各位，再来考虑一下。应用这种思维方式，并从中使自己获得超越的过程，存在着不可避免的不适感。
And it all begins really with yourself asking this question: What is your long path? But I ask you, when you ask yourself that now or tonight or behind a steering wheel or in the boardroom or the situation room: push past the long path, quick, oh, what's my long path the next three years or five years? Try and push past your own life if you can because it makes you do things a little bit bigger than you thought were possible.
但你可以从质问自己“长期目标是什么”来迈出第一步。我希望你做到的是。无论是在此刻或是今晚。或者是在你开车的时候。在会议室，还是在指挥室：用前面所述的“长路径”思维，确定你在接下来三到五年的规划。尝试去超越自己过往的生活，因为这样将会帮助你做出以前力所不能及的事情。
Yes, we have huge, huge problems out there. With this process, with this thinking, I think we can make a difference. I think you can make a difference, and I believe in you guys.
是的，我们需要面对大得可怕的问题。但经历了这样的思维过程，我认为我们能够做出改变。我相信你也可以，我相信你们。
Thank you.
谢谢。
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