紐約時報：什麼是道德英雄

友導讀

在生活中，有這麼一些人，他們對世俗的成功或個人的幸福不太感興趣，卻能不知疲倦地為窮人服務、照顧那些生病的人，或者冒著生命危險去爭取民主。他們這麼做的時候不猶豫、不糾結、全然投入，眼裡沒有懷疑和恐懼，心裡充滿「一切都會好起來的」的信心。

我們把他們稱作具備公益人格的人、古老的佛教把他們叫做菩薩，而紐約時報這篇文章的作者則將他們稱為道德英雄。什麼樣的人可以稱作道德英雄？ 作者在觀察了不少道德英雄之後，總結出了他們共同具備的一些特質。

（ 來源：紐約時報 ）

本文大約有英文單詞886個、中文1507字，閱讀全文大概需要8分鐘

原標題：What Moral Heroes Are Made Of

作者：David Brooks

日期：2018年5月21日

翻譯、審校：友成基金會

Recently, I have been lucky enough to be around a lot of peoplewho I would regard asmoral heroes.They spend their lives fighting poverty,caring for the young or the sick, or single-mindedly dedicated to some cause. Ihave been wondering what traits such people tend to have in common.

最近，我很幸運地在身邊發現很多我認為是道德英雄的人。他們用畢生精力與貧窮鬥爭，關懷青年人或患病者，或是一心一意地獻身於某項事業。我一直好奇，這樣的人有什麼共同點。

The first is thatthey did not overthink their decision beforechoosing to live this way.They did not weigh the costs and benefits or wageany internal battle with themselves. As Anne Colby and William Damon write in Some Do Care, a book that has organised mythinking on this subject: 「We saw an unhesitating will to act, a disavowal offear and doubt, and a simplicity of moral response. Risks were ignored andconsequences went unweighed.」

首先，他們在選擇這種生活方式之前，並沒有過多糾結自己的決定。他們沒有去做成本和收益的權衡考量，也沒有進行內心的掙扎與鬥爭。正如Anne Colby和William Damon在《有些人確實在乎》(Some Do Care)一書中所寫的，也正是這本書幫我捋清了對這次主題的思考：「我們看到了一種採取行動毫不猶豫的信念，一種對恐懼和懷疑的否認，以及一種道德反應的簡單純粹。風險和結果都無足輕重。」

At some point in their lives, somebody planted an ideal，somebodyset a high example of what a good life looks like, and the person who went onto become a moral hero just assumed that, of course, that is what one shoulddo.

這些將成為道德英雄的人，在他們生命中的某個時刻，播種了理想，或者描繪了美好生活的模樣，然後就自然地認為那是他應該做的事。

GIF

They tend to have a 「This is what I do」 mentality. They don』t havea lofty sense of themselves. They don』t have a sense that they are doinganything extraordinary.「What I do is as simple and common as the laughter of achild.」 Mother Teresa once said.

他們往往有一種「這就是我該做的」的想法。他們並沒有認為自己有多高尚，沒有意識到自己正在做一些不尋常的事情。特蕾莎修女曾經說：「我所做的事情就像孩子的笑聲一樣簡單而平常。」

They have a weird obliviousness to inferior pleasures. They arenot tempted by worldly success because they are not interested in worldlysuccess. They don』t talk much about personal happiness, because they』re notparticularly interested in themselves, period.

他們對低層次的愉悅無動於衷。他們不受世俗成功的誘惑，因為他們對世俗的成功不感興趣。他們很少談論個人幸福，因為他們對自己也並不特別感興趣。

That is because, as Colby and Damon argue, their self-identity isfused with a moral ideal. Their identity is not based on being a lawyer or apianist. Their identity is defined by a certain moral action. They feel at homein the world when they are performing that moral action and feel out of sortswhen they are not.

這是因為，正如Colby和Damon所說，他們的自我認同與道德理想緊密結合。他們的身份不是以律師或鋼琴家這樣的具體職業為基礎，而是由某種道德行為定義的。當他們按照道德要求而行事的時候，會感到十分自在；而當他們不這樣做的時候，就會不舒服。

We see them tirelessly serving the poor or risking their lives fordemocracy and think they are performing great acts of self-sacrifice, but itdoes not feel that way to them. It feels likethe activation of their ownnature.Doing that work seems to them as ordinary as doing the dishes.Something needed to be done, so they did it.

我們看到他們不知疲倦地為窮人服務，或者冒著生命危險去爭取民主。我們會認為他們正在進行偉大的自我犧牲，但他們自己並沒有這種感覺，反而更像是天性釋放。在他們看來，做這些工作和洗盤子一樣平常。需要有人去做些什麼，他們就去做了。

Another quality you see is constant goal expansion. Some believethat a person』s character is set in childhood — that after age 18, people don』tchange all that much. That is not how it is with these people. They are tomoral life what lifelong learners are to intellectual life.

你在他們身上看到的另一種品質是持續的目標擴展。有些人認為，人的性格是在童年時養成的，18歲以後，人就不會再有大的變化。而這些人並非如此，就像終身學習者持續追求精神生活一樣，他們也在持續追求道德生活。

Some series of problems get presented to them — say, in the formof a parentless child landing on their doorstep or a new social wrong in theircommunity. They see needs and respond with an instinctive and sometimesreckless series of 「yeses」 — and later on figure out how they are going toaddress them.「Never look down to test the ground before taking the next step,」 Dag Hammarskjold once advised. 「Only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.」

諸多問題呈現在他們面前，比如一個孤兒出現在家門口，或是社區產生了新的問題。他們看到了需求，並以一種本能的、有時是不計後果的「是」來回應，然後才去考慮要怎麼解決這些問題。正如Dag Hammarskjold所建議的：「在走下一步之前，千萬不要低頭看地面。只有眼睛盯著遠處地平線的人才能找到正確的道路。」

You often see such people expanding their ambitions in the face ofhardship. Andrei Sakharov was a Soviet scientist who became so concerned withthe radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests that in 1961 he wrote toPremier Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev dismissed him, portending decades ofgovernment intimidation and eventually internal exile. But every time theSoviets punished him, he expanded his activism and widened his critique.

你經常看到這些人在困難面前擴展雄心。安德烈·薩哈羅夫是一位蘇聯科學家，他非常關注核武器試驗產生的放射性塵埃問題，並於1961年寫信給赫魯曉夫。而赫魯曉夫將薩哈羅夫免職，等待他的還有接下來幾十年的政府恐嚇和最終的流放。但每次蘇聯懲罰薩拉羅夫，他都更加激進地採取行動並擴展批判範圍。

Often, they have another strong back.There is usually a team ofpeers around them sharing core tasks and carrying them when they can』t carrythemselves.Great moral leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King may get thebulk of attention, but they usually emerge from trusted small groups.

通常情況下，他們會有另一個堅強的後盾。他們身邊有一個團隊，既可以分享核心任務，也可以給予他們有力支撐。像甘地和馬丁·路德·金這樣偉大的道德領袖可能會受到很大的關注，但他們通常是從值得信任的小團隊中出現的。

People who lead these lives tend to possessan insane level ofoptimism, a certainty that history does change for the better and thatachieving justice is only a matter of time.They remain undaunted even in theface of severe hardship and assume that every wrong is temporary.

這些人往往擁有一種近乎瘋狂的樂觀情緒，確信歷史會變得更好，實現正義也只是時間問題。即使面對嚴峻的困難，他們仍然毫不氣餒，認為所有問題都是暫時的。

Finally, the direction of their lives moves almost invariably fromfragmentation to integration. The fragments of their character have becomeintegrated around one single-minded moral cause.

最後，他們的生活幾乎總是從碎片往整合的方向移動。他們的性格碎片圍繞著堅定的道德原因聚合起來。

They tend to be hedgehogs, not foxes.Their efforts are generallybuilt around healing some rupture in society, reconciling differences, bringingthe unlike together, a move from fragmentation to wholeness.Howevercontentious the world may look, they have a mindset thatat our deepest levelwe are all connected in a single fabric.

他們往往是刺蝟，而不是狐狸。他們的努力通常圍繞著彌合社會裂痕、調和分歧、彙集不同事物、將破碎拼成整體。不管世界看起來有多少爭議，他們都有一種想法：在最深的層面上，我們彼此相連。

Some of these moral heroes even seem to sense thatno matter howdiverse their fields of work are, they are all somehow part of the same bigstruggle.

這些道德英雄中的一些人甚至認為，不管工作領域多麼不同，在某種程度上他們都是同一場大奮鬥中的一部分。

As one anti-poverty activist put it to Colby and Damon: 「I also know that I am part of a struggle. I am not the struggle. I am not leading any struggle. I am there. And I have been there for a long time, and I am going to be there for the rest of my life. So, I have no unrealistic expectations. Therefore, I am not going to get fatigued.」

正如一位反貧困活動家對Colby和Damon所說：「我知道我是這場奮鬥的一部分。我不是奮鬥本身，我沒有領導任何奮鬥。我在那裡。我在那裡待了很長時間，我也將在那裡度過我的餘生。我沒有任何不切實際的期望，因此也我不會感到疲勞。」

（全文完）

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/opinion/moral-heroes-improve-society.html

執行主編 | 張羽漫

總編輯 | 汪亦兵

顧問 | 葛繼延

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