David Foster Wallace 谈教育的意义

有句话说「教育就是忘记了在学校所学的一切之后剩下的东西」。¹

除了用它来安慰自己之外，应该如何理解？

一种理解是，教育的意义在于教人如何思考。但美国作家大卫·福斯特·华莱士（David Foster Wallace）在他字字珠玑的「This is Water」毕业演讲中，说他不认同这种陈词滥调。

他认为教育的真正意义在于教给你一种选择——你选择你怎么想。

我们容易低估自己大脑的威力。我们默认事实决定想法，要是不如意的事情发生，我们更容易抱怨。但对于同一件事情，你完全可以产生两种不同的解释，而你怎么解释决定了你之后做什么和想什么。

他举了一个有神论者和无神论者谈话的例子：

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”

另一个例子是，人们常说「You only live once」，所以你要去冒险。但这句话也可以从反面理解——你只能活一次，所以你要避免出局。

我有这样的倾向，认为凡事要讲科学，而神和科学是相对的，所以相信神的人都缺乏科学认知。但这是一种想当然的行为，因为我并不知道相信神的人到底是怎么想的。

教育的一部分意义在于，认识到自己什么都不懂，从而少一些傲慢，多一些开放。

[…] this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

说白了这是一种怀疑精神。对别人说的产生怀疑相对容易，但对自己的想法保持怀疑很难。²

我们都会产生「默认想法」——来自别人灌输、社会文化影响、过往经验、甚至基因——但如果我们受默认想法的摆布，我们并没有行使选择思考什么的自由。

而选择思考什么，意味着我们选择把注意力放在哪里。

一个错误的地方，是过度思考——浸淫在自己的头脑里，而没有注意到现实真正的样子。这往往是教育的误区。

Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education–least in my own case–is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

自以为受到良好教育的人可能嘲笑那些崇拜神灵者，他们会举出很多所谓的科学事实——例如达尔文的进化论、宇宙大爆炸学说——但事实上，我们都在崇拜。每个人都是崇拜者。问题的关键是，你选择崇拜的对象是什么？换句话说，你相信的是什么？

从某种意义上讲，相比神灵或者精神追求，崇拜金钱、美貌、权利甚至知识都要来得危险得多得多。

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

因为崇拜那些，我们永远都不满足。

当然，你我都知道这些道理，但关键在于，时刻提醒自己，把这个真相你的意识里，放在你的注意力中。

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

你可以在这里阅读全文或收听演讲录音。