温和的成功哲学

题目：A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

演讲者：Alain de Botton

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 starts to diverge so painfully that I normally end up weeping into a pillow.

对我来说，这些职业危机通常会发生，实际上，常常是在一个周日的傍晚，就在太阳开始西沉的时候。此时，我对自己的期望与现实生活之间的差距开始以一种令人痛苦的方式逐渐拉大，以至于最后我常常会趴在枕头上哭泣。

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 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.

我之所以提及这一切 —— 我提及这一切，是因为我认为这不仅仅是个人问题；你可能觉得我这样想是错的，但我认为我们生活在这样一个时代，在这个时代里，我们的生活常常被职业危机打断，被这样的时刻打断：我们原本以为自己所了解的 —— 关于我们的生活，关于我们的职业 —— 遭遇了一种具有威胁性的现实。

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.

现在或许比以前更容易过上好生活 但却比以前更难保持冷静 或不为事业感到焦虑 今天我想要检视 我们对事业感到焦虑 的一些原因

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 by snobs.

为何我们会变成事业焦虑的囚徒 不时抱头痛哭 折磨人的因素之一是 我们身边的那些势利鬼

In a way, I've got some bad news, particularly to anybody who's come to Oxford from abroad. There's 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. 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.

对那些来访牛津大学的外国友人 我有一个坏消息 这里的人都很势利 有时候英国以外的人会想象 势利是英国人特有的个性 来自那些乡间别墅和头衔爵位 坏消息是，并不只是这样 势利是一个全球性的问题 我们是个全球性的组织，这是个全球性的问题 它确实存在。势利是什么？ 势利是以一小部分的你 来判别你的全部价值 那就是势利。

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?" According to how you answer that question, people are either incredibly delighted to see you, or look at their watch and make their excuses.

今日最主要的势利 就是对职业的势利 你在派对中不用一分钟就能体会到 当你被问到这个21世纪初 最有代表性的问题：你是做什么的？ 你的答案将会决定对方接下来的反应 对方可能对你在场感到荣幸 或是开始看表然后想个借口离开 （笑声）

Now, the opposite of a snob is your mother.Not necessarily your mother, or indeed mine, but, as it were, the ideal mother, somebody who doesn't care about your achievements.

势利鬼的相反，是你的母亲。不一定是你我的母亲 而是一个理想母亲的想象 一个永远义无反顾的爱你，不在乎你是否功成名就的人

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.

不幸地，大部分世人都不怀有这种母爱 大部分世人决定要花费多少时间 给于多少爱，不一定是浪漫的那种爱 虽然那也包括在内 世人所愿意给我们的关爱、尊重 取决于 我们的社会地位

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. It'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's greedy." Think, "This is somebody who is incredibly vulnerable and in need of love."Feel sympathy, rather than contempt.

这就是为什么我们如此在乎事业和成就 以及看重金钱和物质的原因 我们时常被告知我们处在一个物质挂帅的时代 我们都是贪婪的人 我并不认为我们特别看重物质 而是活在一个 物质能带来大量情感反馈 的时代 我们想要的不是物质，而是背后的情感反馈 这赋予奢侈品一个崭新的意义 下次你看到那些开着法拉利跑车的人 你不要想“这个人很贪婪” 而是“这是一个无比脆弱、急需爱的人” 也就是说 － （笑声） 同情他们，不要鄙视他们

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.

还有一些其他的 （笑声） 还有一些其他理由，让我们比过去 更难获得平静 这有些矛盾因为拥有自己的事业 是一件不错的事