不管一切是不是关于trade-off，但因为我有神经病，所以我只能对自己好一点。
Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success
这个改变了我择业观模糊了我人生观的演讲。
视频地址：
废话说在先
这可以算作我喜欢的十大Ted
talk之一，不仅是因为很多观点我都赞同，而是因为他真的让我开始思考，自己看待自己和他人的方式有何不妥。演讲者是一位英国作家，毕业于剑桥，2011年被选为英国皇家学会（Royal
Society of Literature）会员，演讲是09年的（看之前我完全没听说过这个人）。
周一晚上，寝室辩论到凌晨两点，从哲学和现实的角度探讨发展的多样性问题。周三上午的理论课，看了Economist的special
report, 这一期刚好讲income distribution和social mobility，让我想起了公正课的一些内容。
这篇演讲也让我想起了一些自己认识的，但却往往被视为“loser”的朋友。找工作季已经来了，所以我觉得有必要将这篇演讲贴出来，不求touch
a few hearts，但求能对得起自己的心，毕竟做人不应该对自己太狠。
进入主题（英文是演讲文本，括号里是我的胡言乱语）
For me they normally happen, these career crises, often,
actually, on a Sunday evening, just as the sun is starting to set,
and the gap between my hopes for myself, and the reality of my
life, start to diverge so painfully that I normally end up weeping
into a pillow. I'm mentioning all this, I'm mentioning all this
because I think this is not merely a personal problem. You may
think I'm wrong in this, but I think that we live in an age when our lives are
regularly punctuated by career crises, by moments when what we
thought we knew, about our lives, about our careers, comes into
contact with a threatening sort of reality.
（我们自以为了解的事情，其实事实全然不是这样，怎能不沮丧？都说找工作关键要了解两个问题，一个是自己想做什么，一个自己能做什么。What
you want to do and what you can do. 但似乎了解这两个问题却也不容易。如果我问你，what do
you want?你可能很快就给我一个答案。但如果我再问are you sure?
你会不会犹豫一下呢。我对很多东西都很不确定，我也很害怕对很多东西都很确定的人，也不知是好是坏。
即使工作后，可能这种career crisis应该也是一种常态。就像emotional
crisis一样。这方面我很有发言权，因为我总是时不时的就遭遇一次。
马克思貌似说过，一切危机都是事物内部矛盾运动的结果。如果他说的对， 那么emotional crisis应该就是内部emotional
conflicts的结果，那每一次冲突完，应该会有emotional progress才对。
回想每一次，的确是有进步，但是这不能阻止继续有别的冲突。回头来看，才发现之前的冲突是多么的可笑。但是还是会无法自制地将很多时间浪费在“可笑的冲突”上，然后weeping
softy into a pillow.
我承认总是很容易受到各种影响，even a tiny little thing can get to
me，然后就开始想，一想就想出了各种crisis，好像《盗梦空间》一样。但我发现周围很多人貌似没有crisis，在我沮丧，weeping
softly into a
pillow的时候，他们还一如既往地做一如既往在做的事。我想或许他们也有crisis，只是没有weeping而已，所以你看不出来他们的crisis。又或者他们真的没crisis，那只能说明他们没内部冲突，他们不会进步。
你看，我就是这样一个愿意与他人比较的人，总是千方百计的说服自己，我的difference不是anormaly，哪怕会做出不正确的判断，哪怕只是自欺欺人。）
It's perhaps easier
now than ever before to make a good living. It's perhaps harder
than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
I want to look now, if I may, at some of the reasons why we might
be feeling anxiety about our careers. Why we might be victims of
these career crises, as we're weeping softly into our pillows. One
of the reasons why we might be suffering is that we are surrounded
（人们的生活水平提高了，但人们不一定就更快乐。辩论夜的时候稍提到了朝鲜，朝鲜人民觉得自己是世界上最幸福的人，虽然他们吃不饱穿不暖。甚至有些中朝边境的人看到中国的发展，就不情愿的承认，好吧，中国是世界第一，但我们是世界第二。不谈政治问题，他们之所以感到幸福是因为他们不知道外界的情况。也就是说，如果他们知道世界上很多人是可以吃饱穿暖的，他们就会生出想要吃饱穿暖的愿望，而这个愿望得不到满足，他们可能就不会感觉那么幸福了。
如果这个推导是正确的话，幸福感和欲望的满足程度相关，而欲望多大时候又和比较相关，那么幸福感是不是和比较有点关系呢？赞同也不是说，你就必须同意要用知识换取幸福，而是说大部分的不快乐都是比较造成的。
我不记得在哪里看过，说一个华尔街的金融家，他不仅物质条件比你好，他可能真的幸福感也比你高，但他不一定有他想要的那么幸福。所以真正应该比较的，不是他的幸福度和你的幸福度，而是幸福比例。比如幸福感是从0到10，他有8，而你只有6，但是他想要的幸福是10，而你想要的仅仅是6，那么其实他应该没有你幸福，因为他只有80%的幸福感，而你是100%。
但问题是，人们往往不追求获得自己的100%，而是去追求比别人实际幸福度高。或者就像刚刚的比较，哪怕只是比例，也希望自己的比别人高，为什么一定要比别人好呢？为什么在考虑只和自己有关的事情时还要考虑别人？后面我再讲。）
In a way, I've got some bad news, particularly to anybody who's
come to Oxford from abroad. There is a real problem with snobbery.
Because sometimes people from outside the U.K. imagine that
snobbery is a distinctively U.K. phenomenon fixated on country
houses and titles. The bad news is that's not true. Snobbery is a global
phenomenon. We are a global organization. This is a global
phenomenon .It exists. What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small
part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you
are. That is snobbery.
（其实这里的who you are本身就是一个很难理解的概念。之前我一度找不到人生的意义，跟这个who you are
或者说what defines
you有很大关系。当时看完安妮宝贝的《春宴》，里面说你的教育、职业、收入和社会地位，这些都不是你作为人的本质属性。然后我就慌了，因为好像人这一辈子都是在为这些非本质的东西奋斗。
之后听周姐的话才有点启发。要成为更好的人，然后为周围的人带去一点美、一点欢笑、一点感动。这个跟Lady Antebellum
的I was here里的I wanna try to touch a few hearts in this
life有点异曲同工。）
The dominant kind of snobbery that exists nowadays is
job snobbery. You
encounter it within minutes at a party, when you get asked that
famous iconic question of the early 21st century, "What do you
do?"And according to how you answer that question, people are
either incredibly delighted to see you, or look at their watch and
make their excuses. (Laughter)
Now, the opposite of a
snob is your mother. (Laughter)Not necessarily your mother,
or indeed mine, but, as it were, the ideal mother, somebody who doesn't care about your
achievements. But unfortunately, most people are not our mothers.
Most people make a strict correlation between how much time, and if
you like, love -- not romantic love, though that may be something
--but love in general, respect, they are willing to accord us, that
will be strictly defined by our position in the social
hierarchy.
（这里真的戳中我，觉得好尴尬，因为在我不喜欢别人judge我的时候，我也在不自知的judge其他人，虽然不自知不能作为借口。这里说的还不只是judge，而是based
on that judgment, you decide how you treat
them。所以我觉得停止不自知的judge或许不容易，但是可以停止主动的decide，对待所有人都一样，不管你对他们的impression是什么。
Impression就比judgment更好，因为用impression，你承认你只是在评价你所看的一部分，而不是一个人本身。）
And that's a lot of the reason why we care so much about our
careers and indeed start caring so much about material goods. You
know, we're often told that we live in very materialistic times,
that we're all greedy people. I don't think we are particularly
materialistic. I think we live in a society which has simply pegged
certain emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods.
It's not the material goods we want. It's the rewards we
want. And that's a new way of looking at luxury goods. The
next time you see somebody driving a Ferrari don't think, "This is
somebody who is greedy."Think, "This is somebody who is incredibly
vulnerable and in need of love."In other words -- (Laughter)feel
sympathy, rather than contempt.
（物质是基础，这个是辩论夜最后得出的结论之一，我也赞同。但辩论夜的关注点是物质匮乏、物质富足、精神富足，而我想说的是物质富足和物质过盛。比如你吃不饱饭，你想吃饱饭，这没有任何不妥；但如果你已经吃的饱，也还不差，比如已经达到俏江南的水平（I’ve
no idea why I think of
it），但你却想吃钓鱼台国宴，这样不算问题，毕竟你有权利去追求你想追求的东西，只有你不伤害其他人。
但问题是整个社会都吃饱吃好了，却都想吃钓鱼台国宴，这就好像所有人都只想要同一款爱马仕的包包，都只想要士多啤梨不要梨，都只想要发展A，而不是发展BCDEFG一样。问题不在于你想吃国宴，问题是所有人都想吃国宴，一点多样性都木有，我认为缺乏多样性本身就是问题。后面AD会讲为什么木有多样性。
虽然物质的确可以带来rewards， 但是其边际效益是递减的。就像第一块牛排和第十快牛排。）
There are other reasons why it's perhaps harder now to feel calm
than ever before. One of these, and it's paradoxical because it's
linked to something that's rather nice, is the hope we all have for our
careers. Never before have expectations been so high about
what human beings can achieve with their lifespan. We're told, from many sources, that
anyone can achieve anything. We've done away with the caste system.
We are now in a system where anyone can rise to any position they
please. And it's a beautiful idea. Along with that is a kind
of spirit of equality. We're all basically equal. There are no
strictly defined kind of hierarchies.
（这个就是social mobility的问题了。至于什么是social mobility
见http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility）
There is one really big problem with this, and that problem is
envy. Envy, it's a real taboo to mention envy, but if there is one dominant emotion in
modern society, that is envy. And it's linked to the spirit
of equality. Let me explain. I think it would be very unusual for
anyone here, or anyone watching, to be envious of the Queen of
England. Even though she is much richer than any of you are. And
she's got a very large house. The reason why we don't envy her is
because she's too weird. She's simply too strange. We can't relate
to her. She speaks in a funny way. She comes from an odd place. So
we can't relate to her. And when you can't relate to somebody, you
don't envy them.
The closer two people
are, in age, in background, in the process of identification, the
more there is a danger of envy --which is incidentally why none of
you should ever go to a school reunion --because there is no
stronger reference point than people one was at school with.
But the problem, generally, of modern society, is that it turns the
whole world into a school. Everybody is wearing jeans, everybody is
the same. And yet, they're not. So there is a spirit of equality,
combined with deep inequalities. Which makes for a very --
can make for a very stressful situation.
（现在我想起了刚刚那个华尔街的问题，好像是谁在采访同为哈佛商学院毕业的同学。所以说嫉妒和比较，哪个先哪个后？还是二者紧密相连，相互促进，不可分割？
我记得小学时候，我妈问过我，你是不是嫉妒你们班班长比你学习好？然后她的后半句就成了self-fulfilling
prophecy，导致日后所有的班长都比我学习好。前半句我忘了是怎么回答的，不外乎就是否定学习好的重要性，说我比她会玩，I am a
happier child than she is。
所以，比较的惯性是早在童年时期就被家长灌输到脑海里的。最典型的就是“你看谁谁谁”，每次这种时候，我都想很不屑的说“爱谁谁”。还有老师，成绩排名是最典型的一个。所以我一直质疑为什么“三好学生”中“学习好”占了这么大一块，是因为目前只发明了比较学习好坏的有效工——成绩排名，而没有比较身体和道德的方法吗？
所以回到我妈的问题，你是不是嫉妒你们班班长比你学习好？战胜嫉妒的最好方法似乎就是证明你是比别人好的，既然我比你好，我有什么理由嫉妒你呢？或者说虽然这方面我不如你，但其他方面我比你好。但这种回应的最大问题就是还没有离开比较。
真不懂每个人都不一样，为毛要比较。因为人口多，底子薄，竞争激烈？社会比较理论，，
解释说这样是为了自我评估，分为upward比较和downward比较，也支持相同点很多的人更容易互相比较。）
It's probably as unlikely that you would nowadays become as rich
and famous as Bill Gates, as it was unlikely in the 17th century
that you would accede to the ranks of the French aristocracy. But
the point is, it doesn't feel that way. It's made to feel, by
magazines and other media outlets, that if you've got energy, a few
bright ideas about technology, a garage, you too could start a
major thing. (Laughter)And the consequences of this problem make
themselves felt in bookshops. When you go to a large bookshop and
look at the self-help sections, as I sometimes do, if you analyze
self-help books that are produced in the world today, there are
basically two kinds. The first kind tells you, "You can do it! You
can make it! Anything is possible!"And the other kind tells you how
to cope with what we politely call "low self-esteem," or impolitely
call "feeling very bad about yourself."
There is a real
correlationship, a real correlation between a society that tells
people that they can do anything and the existence of low
self-esteem. So that's another way in which something that
is quite positive can have a nasty kickback. There is another
reason why we might be feeling more anxious, about our careers,
about our status in the world today, than ever before. And it is,
again, linked to something nice, and that nice thing is called
meritocracy.
Everybody, all politicians on Left and Right, agree that
meritocracy is a great thing, and we should all be trying to make
our societies really, really meritocratic. In other words, what is
a meritocratic society? A
meritocratic society is one in which if you've got talent and
energy and skill, you will get to the top. Nothing should hold you
back. It's a beautiful idea. The problem is if you really
believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get
to the top, you'll also, by implication, and in a far more nasty
way, believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the
bottom also get to the bottom and stay there. In other words,
your position in life
comes to seem not accidental, but merited and deserved. And that
makes failure seem much more crushing.
（我想到了美国梦，as long as you work hard enough, you can get rich from
scratches.
之前我还认为这挺好的，因为这意味着社会公正，机会平等，我还希望中国社会有一天也可以这样。但有这样一个目标并不代表实际情况就是这样，后面再讲。）
You know, in the Middle Ages, in England, when you met a very
poor person, that person would be described as an "unfortunate"
--literally, somebody who had not been blessed by fortune, an
unfortunate. Nowadays, particularly in the United States, if you
meet someone at the bottom of society, they may unkindly be
described as a "loser."There is a real difference between an
unfortunate and a loser, and that shows 400 years of evolution in
society and our belief in who is responsible for our lives.
It's no longer the gods, it's us. We're in the driving seat.
（这里就想讲一下不平等问题。读special report，里面频率最高的词就是income
inequality，于是我就不禁想问why is income so important? Why is income
inequality such a big deal? 可参考 Ted talk: 。
之前公正课里讲了Libertarianism的观点，其中一个重要观点就是no redistribution of income
from rich to poor.
因为他们相信，只有过程是平等的，那么结果不平等也是合理的，因为不同的人有不同的天赋才能，最后结果不同是很正常的。
（他们还认为税收等于奴役，因为taxation=taking of earnings=taking of fruits of my
labor=claim a portion of my labor=forced labor=slavery.
当然这个观点很好反驳。）
至于机会平等问题，他们说因此the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve
to be poor.
我觉得这和meritocracy也差不多，你poor就是因为你merit不够，或者你不够努力，因此你deserve it.
课上有位同学的反驳我很赞同，即wealth depends on luck, so it's undeserved. Michael
Lewis 的演讲"Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie" 大概也是这样意思。
如果不信可以再读，Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb。卡内基的The
Gospel of Wealth观点也类似，就是说富人应该从事慈善事业。
但如果你相信“你poor就是因为你merit不够，或者你不够努力，因此你deserve it”的话，你就会很郁闷的。）
That's exhilarating if you're doing well, and very crushing if
you're not. It leads, in the worst cases, in the analysis of a
sociologist like Emil Durkheim, it leads to increased rates of
suicide. There are more suicides in developed individualistic
countries than in any other part of the world. And some of the
reason for that is that people take what happens to them
extremely personally. They own their success. But they also own
their failure.
（所以说我们成功失败，都不是我们可以决定的。这里我又会想到一句老话叫No pains, no
gains。译成“不劳无获”还好，译成“一分耕耘，一分收获”就不对了，虽然我们也常这么说。因为事实上并不是一分耕耘就会有一分收获，有时候会是三分，有时候是零分。
不记得在哪看到说 Pains, no gains. 偶尔也要有这种态度才行。而且有的时候是Pains, other gains.
虽然结果不是你最初想要的，但也会有收获。）
Is there any relief from some of these pressures that I've just
been outlining? I think there is. I just want to turn to a few of
them. Let's take meritocracy. This idea that everybody deserves to
get where they get to, I think it's a crazy idea, completely crazy.
I will support any politician of Left and Right, with any halfway
decent meritocratic idea. I am a meritocrat in that sense.
But I think it's insane
to believe that we will ever make a society that is genuinely
meritocratic. It's an impossible dream.
The idea that we will make a society where literally everybody
is graded, the good at the top, and the bad at the bottom, and it's
exactly done as it should be, is impossible. There are simply too many random
factors: accidents, accidents of birth, accidents of things
dropping on people's heads, illnesses, etc. We will never get to
grade them, never get to grade people as they should.
（当然这并不意味着你就可以不努力，不do your best。而是说，在你do your
best之后，还没好结果，那么就真的不是你的错。
偶尔会变身控制狂的我又会想问，how much control then do you have over your life?
但这个似乎是个没有答案的问题。
想到很多以前的同学，很多考不上好大学，就只能找到工资很低的工作。我之前常常会想是因为我在认真写作业、认真上课的时候，他们在玩，所以他们才会学习不好。所以他们现在活得很艰难是因为自己不够努力。
但是现在我忽然会想一想what-ifs， what if他们已经进了最大努力？ What if
他们是因为学不会才不学，而不是不学才不会？what if 还有其他我不知道的因素？
有的朋友一个月也就两千快的工资。两千多，也就是我们随便翻个两万字，随便讲个几小时，当然如果峰哥的话，也就随便讲两小时的钱。
周姐邮件里说，客户给你钱不是看你付出了多少努力，而是看你给出的成果。也就是同样的一天八小时的工作，有人给出的成果还不到我的几十分之一么？是否有点心酸呢。）
I'm drawn to a lovely quote by St. Augustine in "The City of
God," where he says, "It's a sin to judge any man by his post."In
modern English that would mean it's a sin to come to any view of
who you should talk to dependent on their business card. It's not
the post that should count. According to St. Augustine, it's only
God who can really put everybody in their place. And he's going to
do that on the Day of Judgment with angels and trumpets, and the
skies will open. Insane idea, if you're a secularist person, like
me. But something very valuable in that idea, nevertheless.
In other words, hold
your horses when you're coming to judge people. You don't
necessarily know what someone's true value is. That is an unknown
part of them. And we shouldn't behave as though it is known.
There is another source of solace and comfort for all this. When we
think about failing in life, when we think about failure,
one of the reasons why we
fear failing is not just a loss of income, a loss of status. What
we fear is the judgment and ridicule of others. And it
（即使是很亲密的人或许也只是了解我们的部分比其他人多了一点而已，很可能都没了解我们的全部。
Income和social status之间到底有什么联系。
Income大家都懂就不说了。根据wikipedia的解释，social status is the honor or
prestige attached to one's position in society (one's social
position)，分为achieved status 和 ascribed
status。前者是通过你的知识、技能和后天努力获得的成就决定的，后者是由你的出身决定的，包括你的性别，年龄，种族和家庭背景。
常常认为收入越高，社会地位就越高；而收入越低，社会地位就越低。但其实不全对。比如通过贩毒等不正当手段致富的人，虽然很有钱，但一样不会被认为很高地位。再比如老师的地位通常不低，但是收入却不高。举了这两个例子忽然就发现，收入和社会地位是有关联的，并且正常情况下应该是正相关的。
如果说收入代表的是一个人在社会中的价值，那么收入低就说明这个人创造的价值低，但是创造的价值低就等于不重要，等于dispensable吗？也许是的，比如保洁阿姨，随便一个阿姨都可以取得她，但是你能说她对于这个社会不重要吗？不会。那既然不会，如果让你去作保洁阿姨，你会去吗？为什么不呢？因为你怕丢脸，会觉得humiliated。为什么会因为去从事一个重要的，indispensable的职业而感到丢脸呢？不考虑收入，是因为其他人会嘲笑你，ridicule啊。而为什么其他人会嘲笑你呢？
说是投入和回报比的问题，其实归根结底还是snobbery。读完大学再去做保洁，投入远远高出了回报。或者更准确的说，你本可以创造更大的价值，却选择不去做，实际上等同于人力资源的浪费。所以如果我真的做了清洁工，估计很多人都会感叹不解加嘲讽地说：你白念了这么多年书了，到头来竟做了清洁工。
可自主权去了哪里？对个人选择的尊重去了哪里？可能我就是读了大学才知道我最适合做清洁工呢？可能我就是读了大学才知道我最想做清洁工呢？或许还有别的原因呢？人们啊，却又开始judge了。我不是在指责谁，或许我是在指责谁，或许只有通过指责才能告诫自己不做一个snob，就算我身边有位同学真的选择做清洁工，我不会以异样的眼光去看，哪怕只是一丝的疑惑和不解。
这又让我想到了freedom的问题，其实很多时候不自由，是因为选择的单一，而之所以不能选其他是因为选了之后会带来的后果。比如裸奔，你说can
you run naked? Yes, you can. But there will be consequences.
比如你可能被抓起来，because of indecent exposure。这样其实你就没有裸奔的自由了。）
You know, the number one organ of ridicule nowadays, is the
newspaper. And if
you open the newspaper any day of the week, it's full of people
who've messed up their lives. They've slept with the wrong person.
They've taken the wrong substance. They've passed the wrong piece
of legislation. Whatever it is. And then are fit for ridicule. In
other words, they have failed. And they are described as
"losers."Now is there any alternative to this? I think the Western
tradition shows us one glorious alternative, and that is
（ridicule害人不浅，但人却总是忍不住去嘲笑别人。比如谁认错人，比如谁进错厕所，比如看娱乐八卦的津津有味。我觉得可以以乐观的态度看待很囧的事，因为it
happens to everyone，因为it’s not a big deal。但如果把别人的true
tragedy当做笑料就不太对了。不仅是娱乐杂志，当今的媒体就有很大一块是献给八卦的，有需求才有供应，源头还在普通大众。The
Newsroom里， Will教育一个八卦作家，说what you do is really a bad form of
pollution that makes us dumber and meaner and is destroying
civilization.
但我发现“看别人的不幸自己会觉得幸福”这个现象是真的。韩寒哪本书里说，要相信，此刻世界上一定有比你还郁闷的人。我发现如果你仔细去找，真的会找到。比如看一个讲残障人士身残志坚的视频，通常会很感动，一方面是敬佩他们的不屈不挠，一方面是深感自己的健康完整是多么幸运。这也说明潜意识里，人们还是相信运气的。不然你要如何解释你的健康完整？因为you
deserve to be sound and healthy and they don’t?）
Tragic art, as it developed in the theaters of ancient Greece,
in the fifth century B.C., was essentially an art form devoted to
tracing how people fail, and also according them a level of
sympathy, which ordinary life would not necessarily accord them. I
remember a few years ago, I was thinking about all this, and I went
to see "The Sunday Sport," a tabloid newspaper that I don't
recommend you to start reading if you're not familiar with it
already. I went to talk to them about certain of the great
tragedies of Western art. I wanted to see how they would seize the
bare bones of certain stories if they came in as a news item at the
news desk on a Saturday afternoon.
So I told them about Othello. They had not heard of it but were
fascinated by it.(Laughter)And I asked them to write the headline
for the story of Othello. They came up with "Love-Crazed Immigrant
Kills Senator's Daughter" splashed across the headline. I gave them
the plotline of Madame Bovary. Again, a book they were enchanted to
discover. And they wrote "Shopaholic Adulteress Swallows Arsenic
After Credit Fraud."(Laughter) And then my favorite. They really do
have a kind of genius all of their own, these guys. My favorite is
Sophocles' Oedipus the King:"Sex With Mum Was
Blinding"(Laughter)(Applause)
In a way, if you like, at one end of the spectrum of sympathy,
you've got the tabloid newspaper. At the other end of the spectrum
you've got tragedy and tragic art, and I suppose I'm arguing that
we should learn a little bit about what's happening in tragic art.
It would be insane to
call Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost.
And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why it's so
very, very important, I think.
（Don’t blame yourself, baby.
你只是不幸失败了，你并非一个失败者。这是多么comforting的话啊！）
The other thing about modern society and why it causes this
anxiety is that we have
nothing at its center that is non-human. We are the first
society to be living in a world where we don't worship anything
other than ourselves. We think very highly of ourselves, and so we
should. We've put people on the moon. We've done all sorts of
extraordinary things. And so we tend to worship ourselves.
Our heroes are human heroes. That's a very new situation. Most
other societies have had, right at their center, the worship of
something transcendent: a god, a spirit, a natural force, the
universe, whatever it is, something else that is being worshiped.
We've slightly lost the habit of doing that, which is, I think,
why we're particularly
drawn to nature. Not for the sake of our health, though it's often
presented that way, but because it's an escape from the human
anthill. It's an escape from our own competition, and our
own dramas. And that's why we enjoy looking at glaciers and oceans,
and contemplating the Earth from outside its perimeters, etc.
We like to feel in
contact with something that is non-human, and that is so deeply
important to us.
（所以现在旅行这么热门也是这个原因吗？要逃离的不是城市，而是有人的地方。所以信仰是多么重要， 就算不信神，至少也要信the
randomness of individual life，这个跟宿命论还不太一样。
辩论夜谈到目前的发展道路，如果说目前的发展是A，那为什么不能是BCDEFG呢，但问题是目前只有一种发展，就算我们选择的是B，在我们眼中也会当作A，而选择了哪种其实是很随机的。
人类总以为自己很特别，但很可能像《普罗米修斯》里演的一样，造物主创造我们，it’s simply because they
can. 甚至可能我们只是一个accident的结果，他们在想方设法消灭我们也说不定。跑题了。）
What I think I've been talking about really is success and
failure. And one of the
interesting things about success is that we think we know what it
means. If I said to you that there is somebody behind the
screen who is very very successful, certain ideas would immediately
come to mind. You would think that person might have made a lot of
money, achieved renown in some field. My own theory of success --
and I'm somebody who is very interested in success. I really want
to be successful. I'm always thinking, "How could I be more
successful?"But as I get older, I'm also very nuanced about what
that word "success" might mean.
（这里不多说了，关键是你可以想要众人眼中的成功，只有that happens to be what you really
really want.
人毕竟是环境的产物，不可能不受外界影响，或许在你小时候看《大头儿子小头爸爸》，再大点看《还珠格格》，再大点看《老友记》的时候，你的三观就不知不觉的形成了。）
Here's an insight that I've had about success. You can't be successful at
everything. We hear a lot of talk about work-life balance.
Nonsense. You can't have
it all. You can't. So any vision of success has to admit
what it's losing out on, where the element of loss is. I think any wise life will accept, as
I say, that there is going to be an element where we are not
succeeding.
（常说上帝是公平的，或许就是这个道理。常说很漂亮的女生都会很没脑子的，后来发现很多很漂亮的女生也很有脑子的。但是一定会有一个element是她们失败的，是你看不到的。倒不是多想看到别人失败，只是在自己沮丧的时候自我安慰一下说：it’s
ok, you can’t be successful at everything.
为了这句话成立，一个条件是you have to be successful at something.
但这个条件很好满足，因为everybody is successful at something.
有人会觉得自己一无是处，一点优点都没有。我认为那是不可能的，你只是还没发现而已，或许你已经发现了，只是没意识到那是成功。比如想法很奇怪，想法很多，谁说这不能是成功呢？it
shows that you are very successful at thinking, right?）
The thing about a
successful life is, a lot of the time, our ideas of what it would
mean to live successfully are not our own. They are sucked
in from other people: chiefly, if you're a man, your father, and if
you're a woman, your mother. Psychoanalysis has been drumming home
this message for about 80 years. No one is quite listening hard
enough, but I very much believe that that's true.
And we also suck in
messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to
marketing, etc. These are hugely powerful forces that define
what we want and how we view ourselves. When we're told that
banking is a very respectable profession a lot of us want to go
into banking. When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose
interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.
（辩论夜我就在想为什么大家都只要一种发展，都只要一款包包，都只要士多啤梨不要梨。看来是媒体的作用，媒体一直在说士多啤梨好啊士多啤梨好，于是搞得好多人都去追求士多啤梨。如果你真的了解士多啤梨，确定那就是你需要的、想要的，没问题，。可很多时候，只是因为觉得媒体说它好，媒体说它是时尚和地位的象征啊，然后你就觉得这“梨”很好了，其实根本不是那么回事，其实你连这“梨”的祖先后代，来龙去脉都没搞清，甚至你可能都不知道它根本不是“梨”。
所以说到底，你想要的是宣告世人你的地位，你想要的是他人眼中的虚假模样。当然，这本身也不算问题吧，毕竟这样没伤害任何人。但如果一个社会的大多数人都想要他人眼中的虚假模样，是不是就感觉不太对呢？
当然，想要的虚假模样和媒体上的大肆宣传，谁先谁后又是说不清。
缺乏多样性，是媒体单方面宣传的结果，士多啤梨可以是很多东西，但其背后的理念是一样的，那就是“更高的社会地位”，哪怕不是真正的获得。于是我就想为什么人就想要获得更高的社会地位？根据special
report，更高的社会地位意味着更多的机会和影响力或者权利，从而带来更多的机会。而社会地位低下的人，往往得不到应有的尊重。
而社会分层social
stratification本身就是一个问题，但无阶级的社会似乎又像一个遥远的无法实现的梦。或者这也是为什么人们更加关注social
mobility，更关注机会平等。因为机会平等，不论你ascribed
status是如何，你都可以改，所以你就后天放手去奋斗吧。但即使是机会真的平等的社会，也不一定奋斗就一定能move up the
social ladder。所以说啊，放手奋斗可以，move up 不up就看你的造化了。这才应该是美国梦，否则不就是一个false
promise嘛。）
So what I want to
argue for is not that we should give upon our ideas of success, but
we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus
in on our ideas. And make sure that we own them, that we are truly
the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough, not getting
what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is
you want and find out at the end of a journey, that it isn't, in
fact, what you wanted all along.
So I'm going to end it there. But what I really want to stress
is by all means, success, yes. But let's accept the strangeness of
some of our ideas. Let's probe away at our notions of
success. Let's make sure our ideas of success are truly our own.
Thank you very much. (Applause)
（所以既然对于成功的定义是自己的，追求的也是自己眼中的成功，那么最后评判是否成功的人也只能是我们自己。不应该让任何人说，you
are unsuccessful。也不要认为任何人是loser。 因为成功只和自己有关。
我记得哪届耶鲁新生欢迎会上，校长问说：你们在大学要找到这些问题的答案：What constitutes a good life?
What kind of life do you want to lead? What values do you hope to
live by? What kind of community or society do you want to live in?
And how should you reconcile the claims of family and community
with your individual desire?
最后一个问题其实很关键，因为有时候我们知道自己想要什么，却不知道如何在不同的目标中达到和解。
最后，就想引用乔布斯的一段话，好应景的说。Your time is limited, so don't waste it
living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma --- which is
living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the
noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most
important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything
else is secondary.）
PS：这个真的快把我整理吐血了。哎，谁让我无所事事。
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