经济学人1843 || 圣诞老人不会再来了:是否应该呵护童真?

原文:http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU1MDQwNTgzMg==&mid=2247491602&idx=1&sn=488cc971cb95d23ab31fe1522f903d33&chksm=fba3b3b5ccd43aa37644794a84a5a7d88b7a12b6ab1e8dc308a89689d459f795e1b4efd59650#rd

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导读

感谢思维导图作者
Jennie,女,MTI低才生,社会学爱好者


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听力|精读|翻译|词组

Childish things

孩童那点事儿

英文部分选自经济学人《1843》

Childish things

孩童那点事儿


Santa Claus ain’t coming to town: is childhood innocence worth preserving?

圣诞老人不会再来了:是否应该呵护童真?


Our new parenting columnist’s anxious struggle to protect his son

新育儿专栏作家关于保护童真的焦虑与挣扎


One of my earliest childhood memories: I am maybe six or seven, and it is Easter Sunday morning. I wake up early and skip down the hall to my parents’ bedroom to rouse them from sleep so that we can get straight down to the egg hunt. My dad is still in bed dozing; my mum is nowhere to be seen. After prodding my dad for a bit, I go over to the windows overlooking the garden. I draw back the curtain to see if I can scope out any chocolate eggs that may be visible, perhaps even the Easter Bunny himself going about his work. Instead I see my mother in her dressing gown with a little basket of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs in one hand, crouching to place them here and there among planters and flower beds. What I am witnessing makes no sense at all. It flies in the face of everything I know to be true. Yet here it is, unfolding right in front of me, as unthinkable as it is irrefutable. Traumatised by my own expanding comprehension of what is happening, I turn to my drowsy father. “Mummy is the Easter Bunny!” I say, and burst into tears.


我记得儿时曾发生过这样一件事:我大概六七岁,那天是复活节,我醒得很早,三步并两步下楼,经过客厅来到爸妈的卧室。我想叫醒他们,和我一起找彩蛋。爸爸还在打盹,妈妈已经不见踪影。我戳了戳爸爸,走到窗户前,掀开窗帘朝院子看,满怀期待地想找巧克力彩蛋,还有忙碌的复活节兔子。但是,我看到的竟然是我的妈妈,她穿着睡衣,提着装满吉百利奶油蛋的小篮子,蹲下来把彩蛋藏到花坛边和花架下。眼前的情景让我摸不着头脑,我甚至开始怀疑人生。然而事实就是这样,摆在我眼前,匪夷所思,却不可辩驳。这件事让我难以理解,对我的幼小的心灵造成了伤害。我找到睡眼朦胧的爸爸,大声哭喊复活节兔子竟然是妈妈假扮的!


As losses of innocence go, this is enviably mild stuff. But in retrospect, what upset me most about this incident, this Revelation in the Garden, was my inchoate understanding that a part of my childhood had just subsided into the void. I knew, on some level, that this was the beginning of a long unravelling: the Easter Bunny was just the canary in the coalmine.


当我慢慢变得不再天真,这件事也逐渐淡忘。但是回想起来,那次花园启示录事件最令我沮丧的地方在于,就是从那时我才意识到,我的童年已经一去不复返了。从某种程度上,这是我此后漫长残酷人生的开始:复活节兔子是给我上的第一课。


“Mummy is the Easter Bunny!”

妈妈就是复活节兔子!


I say, and burst into tears As a child I was subject to anxieties about my own innocence. I knew that there were things I didn’t know, and that I would sooner or later know them. And I knew that there were beliefs I currently held that I would eventually come to relinquish, a knowledge that caused me to hold them all the tighter. By the age of 11 or 12, the question of my own innocence had become a central concern of my childhood. I was so aware of the finitude of childhood itself, of the existential threat of encroaching adolescence, that I was barely able to enjoy the innocence I supposedly prized so highly in the first place.


我哭喊着。小时候,我会为自己的幼稚而感到焦虑。我知道有些事情我还不懂,但迟早会明白。我也知道,我现在所坚信的以后可能改变,明白这个道理后,我对当时的信念更加执着。到了十一二岁,童年和童真成了我关注的焦点。我很清楚短暂的童年即将结束,青春期马上到来,我再也不能像从前一样天真无邪了。


My son is now about the age I was when I had that terrible awakening on Easter Sunday. And given the sort of child I was, it is not surprising that I have wound up being the sort of parent I am. I can’t help conceiving of the work of parenthood in terms of threat and protection. And not within the frame of masculinity as classically understood, I should clarify, but more in a sort of fretful and harried sense. The word “innocent” derives from the Latin word innocens, meaning “harmless”: the notion of the world’s multifarious harmfulness lies at the heart of the concept of innocence. In trying to preserve a child’s innocence, you are engaged in the necessary futility of protecting them from all possible tribulations.


我儿子现在和我经历可怕的复活节启示录时的年龄相仿。当年的我曾是那样在乎自己的童真,现在我也想要极力保护他的,这不足为奇。我忍不住开始思考,在孩子的童真受到威胁时,应该如何保护。澄清一下,(我所说的威胁和保护)并非仅针对传统意义上的男性气概,更多是(孩子经历的)焦虑和不安。 “innocent”一词源自拉丁语“innocens”,意为无害:童真概念的核心在于免受世上五花八门的伤害。为了保护孩子的纯真,需要做一些看起来无意义的事,保护他们免受磨难。


Recently I was driving our car, listening to my son and a friend of his as they chatted in the back seat. Though it was the middle of summer, the conversation had turned towards Christmas and the various toys they were hoping to acquire. My son’s friend, it emerged, had started to harbour some serious suspicions about whether Santa Claus was real. She was convinced, in fact, that the whole thing – Santa, elves, reindeer, the North Pole itself – was an elaborate hoax, and her parents were behind the beneficence. She seemed to have quite an array of evidence to hand, evidence pertaining to wrapping paper, handwriting analysis, and, if I understood correctly, a cousin who had found her presents in a cupboard some weeks before Christmas last year.


最近有次开车的时候,我听到我儿子和他的朋友在后座交谈。时间还是仲夏,他们就已经在说圣诞节期待收到的玩具。他的朋友似乎已经开始怀疑圣诞老人的存在。实际上,她觉得故事中的圣诞老人、精灵、驯鹿以及北极本身,都是精心设计的骗局,背后是父母善意的欺骗。她似乎已经发现很多线索,比如包装纸和笔迹。如果我没听错,她说她表姐在去年圣诞节前几周,就已经在橱柜中看到了她圣诞礼物。


I’m a little hazy on the details, frankly, because as soon as the topic was raised I went into panic mode. I had the immediate instinct to hit the brakes and order everyone out of the car. If at that point I could have pressed a button on the dashboard and released tear gas into the back seat, I probably would have gone for it.


说实话我不记得他们谈话的细节,因为我一听到他们聊这个话题,就立马陷入了恐慌。我想马上停车,让所有人下车。如果那时我可以按一下仪表板上的按钮,向后座释放催泪瓦斯,我可能都会这样做。


My son’s friend, it emerged, had started to harbour some serious suspicions about whether Santa Claus was real


我儿子的朋友已经开始怀疑圣诞老人的存在


The biblical reference, joke though it was, clearly revealed something about the subconscious structure of my idea of innocence. The story of the Fall has always seemed to be most comprehensible as an allegory about the passage out of childhood innocence into a realm of adult disenchantment, in which adulthood itself is a state of expulsion from which there can be no return.


圣经里的一个故事,虽然是开玩笑,但清楚地解释了我关于纯真(innocence)观念的潜在理解。(亚当和夏娃)堕落的故事是一则易于理解的寓言,暗示了从童年纯真的状态过渡到成年幻想破灭的状态,而成年本身就意味着一种驱逐,孩童时代一去不复返。


My two-year-old daughter, for instance, has no interest in clothes. In any situation in which she can get by without them – and in many situations where, strictly speaking, she cannot – she will opt to go entirely naked. That state of being looks fairly Edenic. She sashays about the place utterly and shamelessly naked, all of her needs provided for without fuss, knowing nothing of the reality of death. An ideal situation, in many respects. But it’s the ephemerality of that state that makes it so touching. Once you’re out of your teens, it’s basically all eating thy bread from the sweat of thy brow from there on out, until thou returnest unto the ground thou wast taken from. I know that this attitude of sentimentalising childhood is a relatively recent cultural condition, but that awareness doesn’t make it any less strongly felt.


举例来说,我两岁的女儿对衣服没兴趣。凡是在不穿衣服就可以应付的场合,或者严格来说应该穿衣服的场合,她都选择光着身子。这种状态就像在伊甸园一般,浑身上下一丝不挂,毫不羞耻地到处走动,一切需要都可以及时得到满足,对于死亡一无所知。从多个角度来看,这都是一种理想的状态。然而,正是因为这种状态很短暂,所以才显得如此珍贵。到了十几岁,生活基本上就完全是你必汗流满面才得糊口,直到你归了土,因为你是从土而出的(此处依中文版《圣经》而来,创319。我清楚,这种带着感情色彩描述童年时光的态度是较近才兴起的文化现象,但它给我带来的触动依然不减分毫。


扩展阅读:创319的多语版翻译https://www.qeto.com/mip/article_158824


And here we come to the cold heart of the matter: the world is in many ways a harsh and terrible place that you would not wish on your worst enemy, let alone your children. Those children, if they’re very lucky, get a scant few years in which to wander around in the nude eating fruit, giving names to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, before they suddenly become aware of their own nakedness, and of the reality of the world, with its literal plagues and wars and famines.


然后,我们看到问题残酷的一面:在很多方面,我们的世界是残酷和可怕的,你甚至不希望最坏的敌人面对这些残酷,更何况是你的孩子。如果孩子们够幸运,在为数不多的几年尽情裸着身子、啃着水果、四处闲逛,给田间的野兽和天上的飞鸟起名字。随后他们会忽然意识到自己竟赤身裸体,明白世界的真相,看到世界上发生的瘟疫、战争和饥荒。


I joked to my wife that I knew how God had felt about the tree-of-knowledge situation. “Right! Everybody out! I’m shutting the whole operation down!”


我和妻子开玩笑说,我知道上帝为何要种智慧树。好啦!大家都出去!我要终止这一整个行动!


This topic is knotted with contradictions and hypocrisies. The other day, for instance, my son was talking about how he wanted to be a spy when he grew up and asked how he might go about becoming one. Before I knew it, I was explaining the cold war to him. The cold war! Not only that, but, as I sketched a basic outline of the quarrel between capitalism and socialism, I also found myself shamelessly editorialising from my own perspective.


这个话题本身充满矛盾和伪善。比如有一天,我儿子跟我说他长大了想当一名间谍,问我要怎么做才能实现。于是我开始下意识地跟他讲述冷战。那可是冷战啊!不仅如此,我发现自己在一边概述资本主义和社会主义如何互相斗争,一边还在厚颜无耻地给自己的观点添油加醋。 


扩展:tree-of-knowledge : the tree in the Garden of Eden bearing the forbidden fruit which Adam and Eve disobdiently ate 伊甸园智慧树。

https://www.jianshu.com/p/0b017d54e690伊甸园、智慧树和原罪的象征


I freely admit that no child should be exposed to garbled explanations of the domino theory of geopolitics, or Marx’s theory of alienation, before they learn that the Easter Bunny is actually their mum. Which is to say that, when it comes to my own angst about the erosion of childhood innocence, I am hardly innocent myself. As much as I want to preserve my son’s innocence, there is a point when doing so comes at the cost of maintaining his ignorance.


我可以坦言,在明白复活节兔子其实是妈妈假扮的之前,孩子们不应就过早接触对某些概念含混不清的解读,如地缘政治学中的多米诺理论或马克思异化理论等。这也意味着,当我对于童真的逝去义愤填膺,其实我自己也难辞其咎。尽管我希望儿子能一直保持纯真,但这么做的代价是让他继续懵懂无知。


注:
1. 地缘政治学:以地理因素为基础,分析其上的经济、社会、军事、外交、历史、政治等

2. 多米諾骨牌理論:19501960年代的政治用語,指如果一個國家成為共產主義國家,其周圍國家也更易成為共產主義國家


I don’t want the world to encroach on his childhood, but I also want him to understand the world and to be curious about its complexities, even its darkness. Because after a certain point, the preservation of innocence becomes a kind of totalitarianism (tyrants propagate myths as ardently as some parents). Perhaps my son has good reasons for wanting to be a spy when he grows up. There are the cool hats and sunglasses and the nifty gadgets, certainly, but there’s also the appeal of hidden information. Maybe he was already looking beyond childhood. Maybe he wanted out already.


我不希望这个世界侵蚀他的美好童年,但我希望他能了解这个世界,对这个世界保持好奇心,并乐于探索世界的复杂性和黑暗面。因为过了一定的年纪,保护纯真变成了一种极权主义(暴君和一些家长一样热衷于宣传神话)。或许,我儿子有很好的理由希望长大后成为间谍。可能是因为间谍能戴酷酷的帽子、墨镜和饰品,也可能是因为秘密信息的吸引力。他可能早已构想长大之后的人生,也早已想成为大人了。


There may be another way of thinking about innocence, as something more than just the preserve of childhood. In “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, Annie Dillard, a writer who herself seems to me to embody a kind of worldly innocence, put it like this: “Innocence is not the prerogative of infants and puppies…What I call innocence is the spirit’s un-self-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration.” Seen in this way, innocence is not a state of protection from the world, but an openness to it that has been freed of adult inhibitions and wariness. And it doesn’t have to end in inevitable loss. Innocence, in this view, cannot merely be preserved. It can be cultivated.


关于童真,也许还有另一种思考方式,不局限于保护童年。在我眼中,安妮迪拉德处于尘世,却保有纯真。她在《丁克溪的朝圣者》(“Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”)一书中写道,纯真并非小孩子和小动物的特权,我所指的纯真意为在任何时候,都自然而然地对任何事物都保持虔诚,即善于接纳新事物,做事全神贯注。这样看来,纯真并非不问俗尘,而是处于尘世,却摒除成年人的拘谨和戒心。纯真不必消弭,依这种观点来看,纯真不仅仅只能被保护,还能够被培养。


翻译组:

Lee ,爱骑行的妇女之友,Timberland
Chao,爱读书思考的DPhil candidateTE爱好者 
Nikolai,爱想象的小双鱼,蒙特雷候补生,AKB49

Piggy,爱吃鱼,爱跳舞,爱睡回笼觉的小能猫,NUS食品系。


校对组:

Rachel,学理工科,爱跳芭蕾,热爱文艺的非典型翻译

Anne,女,爱读书爱Borges的小翻译,热爱文艺,经济学人爱好者

Helen,女,坐标武汉,职业翻译,翻硕已毕业英语二笔二口,爱好陶笛洞箫古诗词




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观点|评论|思考


本次感想

VeRy,男,电气民工,经济学人资浅爱好者

记得很久以前写过一篇感想,当时我向女儿指出所有童话故事和那些西游记、封神榜里的一切都是人们假想出来的,小编批评我说我对孩儿太残酷了,我却不得不摇了摇头说,穷人家的女儿不配拥有一个公主梦。

我相信每个女孩子都想要做公主,女儿小时候就经常自己过家家,扮演公主,让我演那个老国王。稍微懂事点后,我就问了她一个问题,我说你是公主,我是国王,那谁来演佣人呢?要么你也兼演一下吧,她便开始有些不高兴了,我便同她讲,这世界上总要有人来做佣人的,不是你便是别的小朋友,你愿意自己还是别人做呢?她回答是别人,那我就紧接着跟了一句,这取决于你如何努力了,因为爸爸并不能给你一个天生的公主身份,这虽然有些心酸,但却是不争的事实。

我想大部分反对我做法的人主要的理由便是这会撕碎孩子美好的童年,但是我并不这么觉得。环顾四周,那些阴险狡诈的背后可能也有着美好的童年,但是这些美好的童年却没能给他们带来善良,他们无法保持自己的初心和童真。所以我觉得如何让小孩子长大后仍然拥有善良之心,童真之悯,仍然不忘自己的理想,为了这份理想奋力向前,这才是童年的意义所在,如果仅仅是为了留住童年的记忆,那我觉得大可不必如此胆小甚微,因为记忆似乎是一种很神奇的东西,它能过滤掉大部分的不快乐,只留下极端的东西:美好和仇恨,所以即便我拆穿了所有童话的谎言,孩子们依然可以在多年以后保留着属于自己的童年美好。

    孩子早点走出虚幻的世界也是一种善意的痛苦,因为明白自己所处的位置,这虽然很残酷,但却很有必要,且越早越好,终日沉浸在虚幻的自我中心里,与这世界格格不入,也无法看清现实,这对于一个人来说是一件好事还是坏事呢?除非家境优越到可以一辈子沉浸于此,否则认清现状,努力创造属于自己的幸福,这才是我们所向往和提倡的,也是让自己更进一步的唯一正道。

孩子上一年级了,我之前做了很多准备,希望她能够走最少的弯路,去实现自己的理想和愿望,但这些努力在别的家长看来却成了一种罪恶,似乎我们在抢跑,在不公平的竞争,要知道不同种类的人在同一条起跑线上本身就是一种最直接的不公平。所以我觉得除非家庭优越,可以呵护孩子享受一辈子的童真,否则不如早点点醒他,让他在面对现实社会的同时更加清楚和理性地看待童话故事里的人和事,其实童话故事要告诉我们的,几乎全部都是现实社会的投影,所以始终开心、没有曲折的童话故事是无人问津的,孩子们就是在这种类现实构造出来的环境中慢慢去体会理解现实世界,我想从这个角度而言,与我的做法殊途同归。

      讲了太多关于养育孩子的话了,可能看大部分的看官老爷-学生-很难明白这份心意,我只能说面对自己作为父母时的无能为力,唯一的愿望就是让孩子有一技之长,有足够的能力来抚育她的后代,不留类似我们的愧疚感。


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