TED | 如果改变不了环境，就先改变自己吧

演讲简介

你有试过因为达不到标准，而被定义为“差生”吗？也许很多人会跟你说，这种情况下如果改变不了环境，那就改变自己？那万一我们是对的呢？本期TED演讲，蓝人乐队创始人 Matt Goldman 用他的经历跟我们分享了一个更为广阔的世界观。

 

 

 

 

 

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

 

So it's 1969, New York City, third grade music class, and our teacher brings us into a room with nothing but a piano and chairs. And one by one, he calls us up, and he plays middle C, and he asks us to sing it.(Singing)

1969年，纽约市，三年级的音乐课上，老师带我们走进一个只有一架钢琴和几把椅子的房间。他一个个地点名，弹奏了中央C音，要求我们跟着唱。（唱歌）

 

And you're either instructed to go to the right of the room or the left side of the room.

接着你根据指示要么走到房间右边，要么走到左边。

 

And when all 35 kids are done, the leftside of the room, which I was a part of, was told to stand up and go back to home room.

当35个孩子都结束跟唱时，房间左边的孩子们，我也是其中之一，被要求起立，回到年级教室。

 

And none of us ever received another music class again in elementary school. An in club and an out club wasest ablished, and I didn't even know what the gating test was in the moment.

从那以后一直到小学毕业，我们再也没有上过音乐课。入选阵营和淘汰阵营就这样建立了，而当时我甚至不知道什么是入门测试。

 

A few years later, English class ...first paper of a new semester, and I get the paper back, and it's C+, with the comment, "Good as can be expected."

几年之后，英语课……新学期的第一篇作文批改后下发了，我拿回来一看，成绩是C+，还有一条评语，“意料之中的良好”。

 

Now, honestly, I didn't mind a C+. I was just happy it wasn't a C- or a D. But the "good as can be expected"comment ... even at that young age, it didn't seem right. It seemed somehow limiting.

其实坦白说，我并不介意得了C+。反而我还庆幸不是C-或D。但是“意料之中的良好”这个评语……即便是在童年时期，也让我觉得不太舒服。似乎像是一种限定性评语。

 

Now, how many people here have had an experience similar to that, either at school or the workplace? We're not alone.

那么，在座的有多少人在学校或者工作场所有过相似的经历？看来并不是只有我们。

 

So I guess it might be ironic that my lifepath would lead me to a career of making music and writing for Blue Man Group and starting a school.

我觉得这可能有点讽刺，我的人生道路引导我成为了蓝人乐队的音乐制作人和编剧，

并且创办了一所学校。

 

But school was torture for me. As someonewho didn't have a natural proclivity for academics, and my teachers never seemed to understand me, I didn't know how to navigate schools and schools didn't know what to do with me. So I started to ask the question, even back then, if these environments didn't know what to do with people who didn't fit a standard mold, why weren't we reshaping the environments to take advantage of people's strengths? What I've come to believe is that we need to cultivate safe and conducive conditions for new and innovative ideas to evolve and thrive.

但学校对我来说是一种折磨。作为一名对学术天生就没有太多兴趣的学生，我的老师们似乎从来都不理解我，我不知道怎么过好校园生活，学校也不知道该拿我怎么办。所以我开始问这个问题，甚至年少时就有了这个想法，如果这些环境不知道如何包容那些不适应标准模式的人，为什么我们不重新塑造这些环境来充分利用人们各自的优势？我逐渐开始相信，为了使创新的思想发展和繁荣，我们需要创造安全有利的环境。

 

We know that humans are innately innovative, because if we weren't, we'd all be using the same arrow heads that we were using 10,000 years ago. So one of the things that I started to questionis, are there ways to make innovation easier and happen more frequently? Is there a way to take those aha moments, those breakthroughs that seem to happen randomly and occasionally, and have them happen intentionally and frequently?

我们知道人类天生具有创造力，因为如果没有的话，我们可能都还在使用一万年以前的箭头石器。所以，在这之中我想问的是，有没有什么方法可以使创新变得更容易，更频繁？有没有一种方法可以使那些看似随机、偶然发生的顿悟时刻和突破，刻意地、频繁地发生？

 

When we started Blue Man Group in 1988, we had never done an off-Broadway show before. We'd actually done almost no theater. But we knew what we were passionate about, and it was a whole series of things that we had never seen on stage before, things like art and popculture and technology and sociology and anthropology and percussion and comedy and following your bliss. 

当1988年创立蓝人乐队之前，我们从未做过外百老汇戏剧表演。实际上，我们几乎没有做过戏剧表演。但是我们知道我们对什么充满激情，这些是我们之前在舞台上从未见到过的，像是艺术、流行文化、技术、社会学、人类学、打击乐器、喜剧以及随性而为。

 

We established a rule that nothing made it on stage if we had seen it before, and we wanted to inspire creativity and connectedness in ourselves and our audiences; we wanted to do a little bit of social good, and we wanted to have fun doing it. And in the office, we wanted to create an environment where people treated each other just a little bit better, just a little bit more respect and consideration than in the outside world. And we continued to iterate and collaborate and find solutions to create things that hadn't been seen.

我们定了一条原则，舞台上不会出现我们之前见过的东西，我们想激发自己和观众的创造力和连通性；我们想为社会公益尽点绵薄之力，也想充分地享受这个过程。在办公室，我们想创造一种环境，相比外界而言，在这种环境下人与人之间更加善待彼此，更加尊重和关心彼此。我们不断重复、协作、寻找方法来创造之前从未见过的事物。