TED | 生死自知：你什么时候意识到自己会死亡？

 

演讲简介

2013 | 哲学家史蒂芬·凯夫以一个黑暗但又引人注目的问题作为开头：你在什么时候第一次意识到自己会死亡的？更有意思的是：为什么人们总是在抗拒死亡的必然性？在这个精彩的演说中，凯夫探索了4种横跨各个文明之间的人们追求永生的故事，为的是能处理我们对死亡的恐惧。

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏：

I have a question: Who here remembers when they first realized they were going to die?

我要问大家一件事：在座的各位谁还记得当自己第一次意识到，自己有一天会死去时那一刻的感受？

I do. I was a young boy, and my grandfather had just died, and I remember a few days later lying in bed at night trying to make sense of what had happened. What did it mean that he was dead? Where had he gone? It was like a hole in reality had opened up and swallowed him. But then the really shocking question occurred to me: If he could die, could it happen to me too?

我还记得，那时我还是个小男孩，我的祖父刚刚过世了，记得几天后的一个夜晚，我躺在床上，试着回想之前所发生的一切，去世到底意味着什么？他去哪了？有点像现实中有个洞打开，把他吞了。但那时对我而言，有个震撼的问题是：如果他会死去，同样的事也会发生在我身上吗？

Could that hole in reality open up and swallow me? Would it open up beneath my bed and swallow me as I slept? Well, at some point, all children become aware of death. It can happen in different ways, of course, and usually comes in stages. Our idea of death develops as we grow older.

现实中真有个洞打开并把我吞下吗？它会在我的床底下打开，并在我睡着的时候把我吞下吗？嗯，某种程度而言，所有的孩子开始意识到死亡。当然，它会以不同的方式发生，并且通常会在某个阶段到来。随着我们年龄的增长，我们对死亡的观念逐渐形成。

 

And if you reach back into the dark corners of your memory, you might remember something like what I felt when my grandfather died and when I realized it could happen to me too, that sense that behind all of this the void is waiting.

并且如果你回想起，你记忆中的最黑暗的角落时，你或许会想起和我感受相同的的一些事情，在我祖父去世的时侯我意识到，同样事情也会发生在我身上，背后所有这一切的感受，是空虚的等待。

And this development in childhood reflects the development of our species. Just as there was a point in your development as a child when your sense of self and of time became sophisticated enough for you to realize you were mortal, so at some point in the evolution of our species, some early human's sense of self and of time became sophisticated enough for them to become the first human to realize, "I'm going to die."

在童年时代的这种发展，反映了人类的发展。就像你生命中的某一时刻，还是小孩的时候，对自我和时间的认知，变得十分复杂，你意识到你难逃一死，所以在人类进化的某个时刻，前人对自我和时间的认知，开始变得复杂，然后成为第一批意识到，“我终将会死去”的人们。

This is, if you like, our curse. It's the price we pay for being so damn clever. We have to live in the knowledge that the worst thing that can possibly happen one day surely will, the end of all our projects, our hopes, our dreams, of our individual world. We each live in the shadow of a personal apocalypse.

如果你能接受，这是我们的诅咒。那是我们对料知死亡所付出的代价。我们不得不生活在，最坏的的事情将会发生的状态下，这一天当然会来，终结我们所有的计划，我们的希望、梦想，也会带走我们的一片天。我们每个人生活在自己的末日阴影下。

And that's frightening. It's terrifying. And so we look for a way out. And in my case, as I was about five years old, this meant asking my mum. Now when I first started asking what happens when we die, the grown-ups around me at the time answered with a typical English mix of awkwardness and half-hearted Christianity,and the phrase I heard most often was that granddad was now "up there looking down on us," and if I should die too, which wouldn't happen of course, then I too would go up there, which made death sound a lot like an existential elevator.

那时很吓人，很恐怖的。所以我们试图寻找一个出路。以我为例，在我5岁左右的时候，我去问我的妈妈。现在当我开始问到，我们死亡时会发生什么，我周围的大人们那个时候，会带着尴尬地用基督教的经典语句来回答我，我最常听到的词是，祖父现在，“在天上看着我们”，并且如果我也死去，当然现在不会发生，那时我也会到天上去，让死亡听起来像，一部存在的升降电梯。

 

Now this didn't sound very plausible. I used to watch a children's news program at the time, and this was the era of space exploration. There were always rockets going up into the sky, up into space, going up there. But none of the astronauts when they came back ever mentioned having met my granddad or any other dead people. But I was scared, and the idea of taking the existential elevator to see my granddad sounded a lot better than being swallowed by the void while I slept. And so I believed it anyway, even though it didn't make much sense.

现在听起来不再是那么的真实可信。那时候我通常会看儿童的新闻节目，那时是个太空探索的时代。经常会有火箭冲向蓝天，进入太空。但是没有一个从太空归来的航天员，提及过见到了我的祖父，或其它死去的人。但那时我很害怕，乘坐可能存在的升降电梯，去见我的祖父，相比在我睡梦中巨大的空间吞噬，的想法更容易接受。所以我就相信了，尽管它没有任何意义。

And this thought process that I went through as a child, and have been through many times since, including as a grown-up, is a product of what psychologists call a bias.

Now a bias is a way in which we systematically get things wrong, ways in which we miscalculate, misjudge, distort reality, or see what we want to see, and the bias I'm talking about works like this: Confront someone with the fact that they are going to die and they will believe just about any story that tells them it isn't true and they can, instead, live forever, even if it means taking the existential elevator.

我小时候就有这种思考模式，从那时候起发生过很多次，长大后也是，这被心理学家称之为“偏误”（偏见与误解）。偏误有自己的流程，让我们按照错误的方式思考事物、计算错误、判断错误、扭曲现实，或者只看到了我们想看到的东西。我这里说的偏误，是这么回事：某些人面对“他们终将会死去”的现实时，如果告诉他们这不会是真的，而且他们可以永久的活着，他们都会选择相信。即便这个故事可能是要你去乘坐可能存在的升降电梯。