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《针对人类的阴谋：恐怖的诡计》谁在那里（来者何人）？
[ 经典 ]

作者：托马斯·利戈蒂（Thomas Ligotti）
译者：0suffering（注：译自英语原著The Conspiracy Against The Human Race: A Contrivance Of Horror）

Who Goes There?

谁在那里？/ 来者何人？

本章小节

Uncanniness I（诡异 I） | Uncanniness II（诡异 II） | Actors（演员） | Impersonation（扮演） | Nonentities（无足轻重的存在） | Unpersons（虚无之人）

Uncanniness I

诡异 I

点击展开/折叠英语原文 No philosopher has ever satisfactorily answered the following question: "Why should there be something rather than nothing?" It seems a fair enough question on its face. But that it should even be asked may seem to some of us as inexplicable, even preposterous. What the question suggests is our uneasiness with Something. Alternatively, there is nothing troubling about Nothing, because we cannot give it consideration. Something allows or necessitates our experience of the uncanny. Whether we are speaking of something that evolved naturally or was made by the digits and opposing thumbs of humanity, whether it is animate or inanimate, that something may become uncanny to us, a contravention of what we think should or should not be.

没有哪位哲学家曾令人满意地回答过这样一个问题：“为什么存在者在，而无却不在？”这个问题本身看起来相当合理。但对我们当中的某些人来说，这个问题竟会被提出，本身就似乎难以理解，甚至荒谬可笑。这个问题所暗示的，是我们对“某物”的不安。相比之下，“虚无”则毫无令人困扰之处，因为我们无法对其进行思考。有了“某物”，我们便有了体验“诡异”的可能或必然。无论我们所说的是自然演化而来的事物，还是由人类的手指与拇指所造之物，无论它是有生命的还是无生命的，这个“某物”都有可能变得令我们感到诡异，成为对我们所认为的“应当”或“不应当”的一种违逆。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In the same way that most of us share a general pattern of feeling about what is right or wrong in a moral sense, we also share a general pattern of feeling about what is right or wrong with respect to the world and ourselves—an internal authority that judges entities and events as within or outside of customs of reality. In experiencing the uncanny, there is a feeling of wrongness. A violation has transpired that alarms our internal authority regarding how something is supposed to happen or exist or behave. An offense against our world-conception or self-conception has been committed. Of course, our internal authority may itself be in the wrong, perhaps because it is a fabrication of consciousness based on a body of laws that are written only within us and not a detector of what is right or wrong in any real sense, since nothing really is right or wrong in any real sense. That we might be wrong about something being wrong would in itself be wrong according to our internal authority, which would then send out a signal of the uncanny concerning its own wrongness that would be returned to it for another round of signaling on the principle that everything it knows is wrong, which is to say that Something is always wrong. For the welfare of our functioning, however, we are insured against the adverse effects of an ever-cycling signal of uncanny wrongness by our inability to recognize it, although it might be going on all the time, thus accounting for our uneasiness about Something. But we may still perceive other phenomena to be on the wrong side of right and wrong—things that should not happen or exist or behave in the way we feel they should.

就像我们大多数人在道德意义上对“对”与“错”有一种普遍的感觉模式一样，我们对世界以及自我何为“正确”或“错误”也有一种普遍的感觉模式——一种内部的权威，会判断某些存在或事件是否符合现实的习俗。当我们体验到“诡异”时，伴随而来的是一种“错误感”。某种违规行为发生了，它惊动了我们内在的权威，让我们觉得某事的发生、存在或行为方式“不该如此”。这是一种对我们世界观或自我观念的冒犯。当然，我们的内在权威本身也可能是错的，或许它只是意识编造出的体系，基于某套仅存在于我们自身内部的法则，而不是某种能真实侦测对错的机制，因为在真实意义上，并没有什么真正的是“对”或“错”。然而，若我们对于某件事“是错的”这一判断本身就是错的，那在我们的内在权威看来，这也是一种错误，从而引发一种“关于自身错误的诡异感”信号，再将这信号回传给它自己，如此循环往复，依据的原则是：它所知的一切都是错的，也就是说，总有什么地方是错的。为了保障我们的正常运作，我们免于遭受这种诡异错误信号的不断循环所带来的不良后果，是因为我们无法察觉它的存在，尽管它也许一直都在发生，这或许能解释我们对“某种不对劲的东西”的持续不安。然而，我们依然可以察觉某些现象落在对与错的界限之外——那些在我们感觉中本不该如此发生、存在或表现的事物。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Even the most unexceptional things may impress us in this way. In no time at all they may cease to be seen the way we usually see them and come to be seen as something else, something we may not be able to name. This unsteadiness of quality and meaning in something—a puppet doll, for instance—repels our lasting inspection of it, for the longer this inspection goes on the more we become lost in a paradoxical state of knowing and not knowing what was once known and familiar. And it is then that the question "Why should there be something rather than nothing?" may become lost in the inexplicable, even preposterous, ambition to resolve it without losing our minds to the uncanny.

即便是最平凡无奇的事物，也可能以这种方式令我们感到震撼。它们可能在极短的时间内脱离我们习以为常的视角，不再以原有的面貌呈现，而变成某种别的东西——一种我们也许无法命名的东西。这种在事物中出现的不稳定的性质与意义——比如一个木偶娃娃——会使我们无法长时间注视它，因为凝视得越久，我们就越会陷入一种矛盾的状态：既知道又不知道那个曾经熟悉且明了的东西。而也正是在这种时刻，“为什么存在者在，而无却不在？”这一问题，可能会在我们试图解答它的过程中迷失于某种无法言明、甚至近乎荒诞的企图之中——一个不想在面对诡异之物时失去理智的企图。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Everyday objects seem curiously liable to being perceived as uncanny, because we see them every day and "know" how they should be and should not be. One day those shoes on the floor of your clothes closet may attract your eye in a way they never have before. Somehow they have become abstracted from your world, appearances you cannot place, lumps of matter without a fixed quality and meaning. You feel confused as you stare at them. What are they? What is their nature? Why should there be something rather than nothing? But before your consciousness can ask any more questions, you dial it back so that your footwear seems familiar again and not uncanny in its being. You select a pair of shoes to wear that day and sit down to put them on. It is then that you notice the pair of stockings you are wearing and think of the feet they conceal . . . and the rest of the body to which those concealed feet are connected . . . and the universe in which that body is roving about with so many other uncanny shapes. "What now?" a voice from the other side of being seems to say. And what if you should look at yourself—the most everyday object there is—and feel at a loss to attach a quality and a meaning to what is being seen or what is seeing it. What now indeed.

日常物品似乎格外容易被感知为诡异之物，正因为我们每天都在看见它们，“知道”它们该是什么样，不该是什么样。某天，你衣橱地板上的那双鞋忽然吸引了你的目光——它们以前从未这样引起你的注意。它们仿佛已被从你的世界中抽离出来，变成了无法归类的外观、没有固定性质和意义的物块。你盯着它们看，感到困惑：它们是什么？它们的本质是什么？为什么会有某物存在，而不是虚无？但还没等你的意识提出更多问题，你就已经下意识地将这种状态调回正常，使那双鞋再次变得熟悉，不再在存在层面上令人感到诡异。你选了一双鞋准备穿上，坐下身来，这时你注意到自己正在穿着的袜子，又联想到那被袜子遮蔽的双脚……以及这双脚所连着的身体……还有这个身体所游荡其中的宇宙，那里也充满了许多同样诡异的形体。“现在怎么办？”一个来自存在彼岸的声音似乎这样问道。而如果你看向自己——这个最日常的“物品”——却又无从为所见之物或所见之“者”附着上任何性质或意义，那又该怎么办呢？确实，现在该怎么办呢。

Uncanniness II

诡异 II

点击展开/折叠英语原文 A sense of the uncanny can be activated in the average mortal under various conditions. Principal among these conditions are those which cause us to feel that we are not what we think we are, which was touched on at the close of the previous section. In his groundbreaking essay "On the Psychology of the Uncanny" (1906), the German physician and psychologist Ernst Jentsch analyzes this feeling and its origins. Among the examples of uncanny experience Jentsch proffers in his essay is one where individuals cease to appear integrated in their identity and take on the aspect of mechanisms, things of parts that are made as they are made and are all clockwork processes rather than immutable beings unchanging at their heart. As Jentsch explains:

在多种情况下，普通人都有可能产生一种怪异感。这些情况中最主要的是那些让我们感到我们并非我们自认为的那种情况，这在上一节结尾已经提到。在德国医生和心理学家恩斯特·延奇（Ernst Jentsch）于1906年发表的开创性文章《论怪异心理学》（On the Psychology of the Uncanny）中，他分析了这种感觉及其起源。延奇在他的文章中列举的怪异体验的例子中，有一个是关于个体不再显得身份统一，而是呈现出机械的方面，成为由部件构成的物件，它们像钟表一样运作，而不是内心不变的永恒存在。正如延奇解释的那样：

[A] confirmation of the fact that the emotion being discussed [the uncanny] is caused in particular by a doubt as to the animate or inanimate nature of things—or, expressed more precisely, as to their animatedness as understood by man’s traditional view—lies in the way in which the lay public is generally affected by the sight of articulations of most mental and many nervous diseases. Several patients afflicted with such troubles make a quite decidedly uncanny impression on most people.

关于所讨论的这种情感——即“诡异感”——是由对事物究竟是有生命还是无生命的性质产生怀疑所引起的这一事实，有一个证据，或者更准确地说，是对“生命状态”（animatedness）这一概念在人类传统观念中的理解产生怀疑。这一证据体现在：普通人在看到某些精神疾病或多种神经疾病的表现时，往往会感到不安甚至毛骨悚然。许多患有这类疾病的病人，确实会给大多数人留下一种明显诡异的印象。

What we can always assume from our fellow men’s experience of ordinary life is the relative psychical harmony in which their mental functions generally stand in relation to each other, even if moderate deviations from this equilibrium make their appearance occasionally in almost all of us: this behavior … constitutes man’s individuality and provides the foundation for our judgment of it. Most people do not show strong psychical peculiarities. At most, such peculiarities become apparent when strong affects make themselves felt, whereby it can suddenly become evident that not everything in the human psyche is of transcendental origin, and that much that is elementary is still present within it even for our direct perception. It is of course often in just such cases that much at present is generally accounted for quite well in terms of normal psychology.

我们总可以从他人日常生活的经验中假定：他们的各种心理机能之间通常处于一种相对的心理和谐状态——即使几乎所有人偶尔也会出现对这一平衡的轻微偏离。这种行为模式构成了人的个体性，并成为我们判断个体性基础的一部分。大多数人并不会表现出强烈的心理特异性；充其量，这些特异性只会在强烈情绪显现时才变得明显，从而突然使人意识到：并非人类心灵中的一切都具有先验的、超验的来源，实际上，其中仍然存在大量原始的、基本的成分，甚至可以直接被我们感知。当然，恰恰是在这类情况下，如今许多现象通常都能够通过正常心理学很好地加以解释。

But if this relative psychical harmony happens markedly to be disturbed in the spectator, and if the situation does not seem trivial or comic, the consequence of an unimportant incident, or if it is not quite familiar (like an alcohol intoxication, for example), then the dark knowledge dawns on the unschooled observer that mechanical processes are taking place in that which he was previously used to regarding as a unified psyche. It is not unjustly that epilepsy is therefore spoken of as the morbus sacer [“sacred disease”], as an illness not deriving from the human world but from foreign and enigmatic spheres, for the epileptic attack of spasms reveals the human body to the viewer—the body that under normal conditions is so meaningful, expedient, and unitary, functioning according to the directions of his consciousness—as an immensely complicated and delicate mechanism. This is an important cause of the epileptic fit’s ability to produce such a demonic effect on those who see it. (Translation by Roy Sellars)

但如果这种相对的心理和谐在观察者自身身上明显地遭到破坏，而所处情境又既非琐碎可笑、也非某个无关紧要事件的结果，或并非某种人们已然熟悉的状态（例如酒精中毒），那么，对于那些未经训练的旁观者来说，一种阴暗的领悟便会悄然浮现——他原本习惯视为统一整体的“心灵”，其实正发生着某些机械性的过程。因此，人们将癫痫称作“圣病”（morbus sacer）并非毫无道理：这是一种不源自人类世界，而是来自陌生而神秘领域的疾病。癫痫发作时的痉挛状态，会将人类身体呈现给观看者——这个在正常状态下显得富有意义、目的明确、协调统一、听从意识指挥的身体——暴露为一个极其复杂而精密的机制。这正是癫痫发作之所以能在目击者心中引发强烈“魔性”印象的一个重要原因。


点击展开/折叠英语原文 The brilliance of Jentsch's example is that it explicates the uncanny not as an objective quality of something in the outside world, but as a subjective experience of a perceiver of the outside world. This is how it is in real life: The uncanny is an effectof our minds—and nothing else. And yet, at least for the average onlooker in this case, the uncanny effectively originates in an objective stimulus, something that seems to have about it a power of its own. In the example given, the objective stimulus is an animate individual observed as behaving against "animatedness as understood by man's traditional view," the offender here being an epileptic exhibiting unusual bodily motions in the midst of a seizure. The subjective reaction to the seemingly objective stimulus of the uncanny is the gaining of "dark knowledge" about the workings of individuals, including the onlooker of the epileptic in the midst of a seizure. More expansively stated, not only is the epileptic perceived as uncanny by the onlooker (unless the onlooker is a physician who understands epileptic seizures by the lights of modern medicine and not according to a "traditional view") but the onlooker also perceives himself as uncanny because he has been made conscious of the mechanical nature of all human bodies and, by extrapolation, of the fact that "mechanical processes are taking place in that which he was previously used to regarding as a unified psyche." Neuroscientists are now familiar with some of these mechanical processes, as was Zapffe, who wrote in "The Last Messiah": "All things chain together in causes and effects, and everything [man] wants to grasp dissolves before the testing thought. Soon he sees mechanics even in the so-far whole and dear, in the smile of his beloved." The knowledge that we are not the idealized beings we thought, integral and undivided, does frighten some people, including physicians and neuroscientists. Yet even though we are not as we usually perceive ourselves to be, we can still continue in our accustomed ways if only we can quash the sense of being uncanny mechanisms in a world of things that may be transformed anytime and anywhere. Such quashing is not often a problem in the so-called real world. But it must be a problem in the world of supernatural horror.

延奇这个例子的高明之处在于，它阐明了“恐怖感”（the uncanny）并非外部世界中某种客观事物所固有的属性，而是一种感知者面对外部世界时主观产生的体验。现实中正是如此：“恐怖感”完全是我们头脑中的一种效应——除此之外别无其他。尽管如此，至少对这个案例中一般的旁观者来说，这种恐怖感似乎确实起源于某种客观刺激，即某种似乎自身就带有某种力量的东西。在延奇给出的例子中，这个客观刺激是一位表现出“违背人类传统观念中对‘有生命状态’的理解”的行为的活人；这里的“犯规者”是一个癫痫患者，在发作时表现出异常的身体动作。对这种表面上是“客观刺激”的“恐怖感”的主观反应，体现为对个体（包括作为癫痫发作目击者的旁观者本身）运作机制的“黑暗知识”的获得。更广义地说，癫痫患者不仅被旁观者视为“恐怖”的存在（除非这个旁观者是一位能够以现代医学的眼光理解癫痫发作的医生，而不是依据“传统观念”来判断的人），而且这个旁观者也会将自己视为“恐怖”的存在，因为他被迫意识到人类身体的机械本质，并由此推演出一个事实：即“在他曾习惯于视为统一心理的存在之中，也正在发生机械过程”。神经科学家如今对这些机械过程已较为熟悉，扎普夫对此也有所了解。他在《最后的弥赛亚》中写道：“万物皆因果相连，一切[人类]想要掌握的东西在经过思维检验后都会化为泡影。很快，他甚至在那些曾经完整而亲切的事物中看到了机制的影子，比如他所爱之人的微笑。”我们并非自己以为的那种理想化的、有机的、不可分割的存在，这一知识的确令一些人感到恐惧，包括医生和神经科学家在内。然而，尽管我们并不是我们通常所感知的那样，我们仍然可以继续以习惯的方式生活，只要我们能压抑对自身是“世界中的不安机制之一”的感觉。这种压抑在所谓现实世界中通常并不成问题。但在超自然恐怖的世界里，它却必定是个问题。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Artistic invocations of horror are most successful when the phenomena they depict call up the uncanny, which, unlike Jentsch's example of seeing someone having an epileptic seizure, are genuinely threatening both from the outside and from within. This species of horror can only be provoked when the supernatural is conjoined with the uncanny, because not even physicians and neuroscientists can be comfortable with supernaturalism, either by the lights of modern medicine or by any other lights. Bloodthirsty vampires and ravenous zombies are prime examples in this context, because their intrinsic supernaturalism as the undead makes them objectively uncanny things that generate subjectively uncanny sensations. They are uncanny in themselves because they once were human but have undergone a terrible rebirth and become mechanisms with a single function—to survive for survival's sake. Necessarily, they also inspire a subjective sense of the uncanny in those who perceive them because they divulge the "dark knowledge" that human beings are also things made as they are made and maybe remade because they are only clockwork processes, mechanisms, rather than immutable beings unchanging at their heart. As uncanny mechanisms, vampires and zombies usually perform the mechanical act of reproduction with no weighty deliberation, or none at all—the replication their kind being epiphenomena! to the controlling urge that drives them. This second consequence completes the requirements of a supernatural horror story to present a phenomenon that poses an uncanny threat from both outside and from within, which is the ultimate threat to ordinary folk who only want to live in a world and in a way that is natural and familiar to them and their families, even though they are darkly aware that this familiarity is a fabrication that may be invalidated.

艺术性的恐怖召唤之所以最为成功，是因为它们所描绘的现象唤起了“诡异感”。与延奇举的“看到某人癫痫发作”这样的例子不同，诡异之物从外部和内部都构成了真正的威胁。只有当超自然与诡异结合时，这种恐怖才能被激发，因为即使是医生和神经科学家，也无法在现代医学或任何其他立场上对超自然主义感到安心。嗜血的吸血鬼与贪婪的僵尸正是在这种语境下的典型例子，因为它们作为“不死者”本身具有超自然性，使它们在客观上成为诡异的存在，同时在主观上引发人们的诡异感受。它们本身之所以诡异，是因为它们曾经是人类，却经历了一次可怕的再生，变成了只有单一功能的机制——为生存而生存。必然地，它们也在感知者心中激起了诡异感，因为它们揭示出那种“黑暗的知识”：人类同样是被制造的东西，可以如其被制造般地再造，只不过是钟表般运作的过程与机制，而非内在恒定、不变的存在。作为诡异的机制，吸血鬼与僵尸通常只会机械性地执行繁殖这一行为，而不进行任何重大的深思，甚至全无思考——它们同类的复制只是附带现象，背后真正的驱动力则是不可遏止的冲动。这第二重后果，正好完成了超自然恐怖故事的要求：呈现出一种现象，它既从外部又从内部构成诡异的威胁。这正是对普通人最极致的威胁，因为他们只想活在一个对他们及其家庭而言自然而熟悉的世界和方式中，尽管他们在内心深处也隐约意识到，这种熟悉感只是一种虚构，随时可能被推翻。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Both requirements of the uncanny are recognizable in such horror films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956; remakes 1978 and 2007) and John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), which belong only negligibly to the genre of science fiction and solidly to that of supernatural horror as cognate with the uncanny. In the former classic of cinema, human beings are replaced by physical doubles of themselves by an alien power—something pernicious, in Jentsch's analysis of the lay person's perception of epilepsy, "not deriving from the human world but from foreign and enigmatic spheres." What business does this alien power have on our planet? It has come to protract the survival of its kind by recreating itself in our image. And that says all we need to know about its mechanics and intentions: They are the same as ours, only they threaten to replace the survival and reproduction of our species with the survival and reproduction of theirs. The methodology of this alien power is to make duplicates of us after we fall asleep, so that we will never again awaken as ourselves but will be transformed into another sort of being altogether. Due to these transformations, everyone who has not been taken by the Body Snatchers suffers from two appalling uncertainties. One is that any other person may not be what they seem to be—human. The other is that they themselves will also be transformed once they go to sleep. But unlike becoming a vampire or a zombie, neither being a desirable state of being, our transformation into Body Snatchers, which, despite the pluralization in the film title, seem to be parts of a hive rather than uniquely individuated entities, does not look too bad, objectively speaking. Once absorbed by the alien power, the converted lose all the qualities they had as humans except for one—that of contentment, or happiness if you like. They become quietists in their existence, which in the film appears the last thing that human beings want, preferring the agitations of the life they know. This reaction is understandable. No one wants to be other than they are, or think they are. That is a fate worse than death: the transformation in which you stop being you. And better to die than to live in an assimilated condition, even one that is permanently collected and reassuring rather than vulnerable to the startling and dreadful. Our sense of the uncanny is too ingrained in us as beings that may not be what we think we are, but who will hold on for dear life to survive and reproduce as our own species and not that of some alien power.

在诸如《天外魔花》（Invasion of the Body Snatchers1，1956 年；1978 年和 2007 年有翻拍版）以及约翰·卡朋特的《怪形》（The Thing，1982 年）等恐怖电影中，我们可以清晰辨认出诡异的两大要素。这些电影几乎不算科幻片，而是扎实地属于与“诡异”密切相关的超自然恐怖片。在前者这部经典之作中，人类被某种外来力量制造出的肉体替身所取代——这种力量，正如延奇在对普通人观看癫痫时的感知分析中所说的那样，“并非源于人类世界，而是来自陌生而神秘的领域”。这种外来力量在我们的星球上有什么企图？它的到来是为了延续自身种族的存续，通过以我们的形象复制自己来实现。而这正足以揭示它的运作机制与意图：与我们的并无二致，只是它们威胁要用自身的生存与繁殖取代我们物种的生存与繁殖。

这种外来力量的方法论是：在我们入睡后制造出我们的复制体，使我们永远不会再以自己本来的身份醒来，而是彻底变成另一种存在。由于这些转化，尚未被“天外魔花”夺取的人类要忍受两种骇人的不确定性。其一，任何其他人可能并非表面上所呈现的“人类”；其二，他们自己一旦入睡，也将被转化。然而，与变成吸血鬼或僵尸不同——这两种状态都无可取悦——变成“天外魔花”的一员，在客观上看来，并不算太糟。尽管电影标题用了复数，但这些“魔花”似乎更像蜂巢中的部分，而不是独立的个体。一旦被外来力量同化，转化者就会失去作为人的一切特质，唯独保留一种——满足感，或者说幸福感吧。他们在存在中成为了“静观主义者”，而在影片中，这恰恰是人类最不想要的，他们宁愿选择熟悉生活中的不安与骚动。这种反应完全可以理解。没有人愿意成为与自己不同的存在，或者与自己以为的身份不同的存在。这是一种比死亡更糟的命运：你不再是“你”。与其在被同化的状态中生存下去——哪怕那状态是稳定、安抚、无惧突如其来的惊骇——倒不如死去。因为我们内心对“诡异”的感知早已根深蒂固：我们可能并不是我们自以为的那样，但我们仍会拼命坚守，只为以我们自己的物种身份去生存和繁殖，而不是屈从于某种外来力量。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 John Carpenter's The Thing is quite similar in its ontological scheme to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The motivations of the Thing are the same as those of the Body Snatchers—to survive and reproduce. Only its method is different, which results in a somewhat greater degree of uncanniness in this film than in the earlier one. Because the title creature has the ability to remake itself as any and all life forms without their knowledge, the characters in the film cannot be sure who is a "thing" and who is not, since those who are transmuted retain their former appearance, memories, and behaviors even after they have become, in their essence, uncanny monstrosities from another world This situation leaves the members of an Antarctic research station—in the vicinity of which the Thing's spacecraft crash-landed long ago—doubtful about which of them is a thing and which are still the individuals they seem to be. Naturally, those at the Antarctic station are invested in repressing any consciousness that they are things, just as those who witness someone in the midst of an epileptic seizure are invested in thinking they are not things of parts that are made as they are made and are all clockwork processes rather than immutable beings unchanging at their heart. By isolation (putting this possibility out of their minds), the latter can maintain their sense of being idealized beings, integral and undivided, and not mechanisms—human puppets who do not know themselves as such. They can also distract themselves from any petrifying news about human beings by watching films in which all of the characters suffer an uncanny doom that could not possibly have relevance to real life, since it is represented as an invasion from "foreign and enigmatic spheres" they believe have no lace in our world, where we know who we are and who everyone else is—members of a species that exists to survive and reproduce, ordinary folk who have nothing to do with supernaturalism and the uncanny and who are resistant to the pessimism of fictions like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing, whose principals all suffer death or deformation in their fight to hang on to their lives and their humanity.

约翰·卡朋特的《怪形》在本体论结构上与《天外魔花》颇为相似。怪形的动机与魔花完全一致——生存与繁殖。只是它的方法不同，而这使得《怪形》比《天外魔花》更具几分诡异。由于这种生物能够在任何生物不知情的情况下重塑为它们的形态，影片中的人物无法确定谁是“怪形”，谁仍是他们所见的那个人——因为那些被转化者，即便本质上已成为异界的可怖怪物，却依旧保留着原本的外貌、记忆和行为。于是，驻扎在南极某研究站的人们——怪形的飞船早年就在附近坠落——对彼此的身份产生了怀疑：究竟谁已是怪形，谁仍是真正的个人？自然地，这些人会竭力压抑“自己可能已是怪形”的念头，就像旁观者在目睹癫痫发作的人时，也努力坚信他们并非由某些零部件拼合而成、全凭齿轮运作的机械，而是内在不变、整体统一的理想存在。通过这种隔离（把这种可能性排除在心智之外），他们得以维持自身作为完整不分裂的存在感，而非如傀儡般的机制，却对自身毫无所知。他们还可以通过观影来转移注意力，忽视任何关于“人类只是机制”的骇人消息——在这些影片中，角色们全都遭遇一种不祥的命运，而观众则自我安慰，这些情节与现实毫无关系，因为它们被描绘成来自“陌生而神秘领域”的入侵。我们自以为知道自己是谁、别人是谁，认为我们不过是为了生存和繁殖而存在的普通人，跟超自然与诡异无关，也不会被那些虚构作品的悲观主义动摇。在这些作品中，无论是《天外魔花》还是《怪形》，主人公们在拼命守住生命与人性时，结局无非是死亡或变形。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In protest to the mentality of ordinary folk, let us again call on the incorrigibly pixilated Professor Nobody. In his "Pessimism and Supernatural Horror—Lecture One," he accommodates us with a rejoinder to the average, optimistic mortal and helps us recall some of the main themes of the present work.

为了抗议凡夫俗子的心态，就让我们再次请出那位无可救药、古怪离奇的无名教授吧。在他的《悲观主义与超自然恐怖——第一讲》中，他为我们准备了一番对普通乐观凡人的回应，并帮助我们回想起本书的一些主要主题。

Madness, chaos, bone-deep mayhem, devastation of innumerable souls—while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page. Fiction, unable to compete with the world for vividness of pain and lasting effects of fear, compensates in its own way. How? By inventing more bizarre means to outrageous ends.Among these means, of course, is the supernatural. In transforming natural ordeals into supernatural ones, we find the strength to affirm and deny their horror simultaneously, to savor and suffer them at the same time.

疯狂、混乱、深入骨髓的浩劫、无数灵魂的毁灭——当我们在尖叫与毁灭中挣扎时，历史却只是舔了舔手指，翻过一页。虚构无法与现实在痛苦的鲜明程度与恐惧的持久效果上相抗衡，只能以自己的方式作出补偿。如何补偿？就是通过发明更离奇的手段以达到骇人的结局。而在这些手段之中，超自然现象自然名列其间。把自然的苦难转化为超自然的，我们便能同时肯定与否认其恐怖，既能品味，又能承受。

So it is that supernatural horror is a possession of a profoundly divided species of being. It is not a property held by even our closest relations in the wholly natural world. We came into it, as part of our gloomy inheritance, when we became what we are.Once awareness of the human predicament was achieved, weimmediately took off in two directions, splitting ourselves down the middle. One half became dedicated to apologetics, even celebration, of our new toy of consciousness. The other half condemned and occasionally launched direct assaults on this “gift.”

因此，超自然恐怖乃是一种深度分裂的存在者才会拥有的特质。在纯粹的自然世界里，即便是与我们最为接近的亲缘，也未曾拥有它。我们之所以染上它，是在成为如今的自己时，作为阴郁遗产的一部分而继承下来的。一旦对人类困境有所自觉，我们立刻朝两个方向分裂，径直将自身劈开为二：一半致力于为这件新的“意识玩具”辩护，甚至加以颂扬；另一半则予以谴责，并时而对这份所谓的“礼物”发起直接的攻击。

Supernatural horror was one of the ways we found that would allow us to live with our double selves. By its employ, we discovered how to take all the things that victimize us in our natural lives and turn them into the very stuff of demonic delight in our fantasy lives. In story and song, we could entertain ourselves with the worst we could think of, overwriting real pains with ones that were unreal and harmless to our species. We can also do this trick without trespassing on the real estate of supernatural horror, but then we risk running into miseries too close to home. While horror may make us squirm or quake, it will not make us cry at the pity of things. The vampire may symbolize our horror of both life and death, but none of us has ever been uprooted by a symbol. The zombie may conceptualize our sickness of the flesh and its appetites, but no one has ever been sickened to death by a concept. By means of supernatural horror we may pull our own strings of fate without collapsing—natural-born puppets whose lips are painted with our own blood.

超自然恐怖是我们找到的一种方式，使我们得以与分裂的自我共存。借助它，我们学会了如何把在自然生命中加害于我们的种种事物，转化为幻想生命中魔性欢愉的素材。在故事与歌谣里，我们能够以所能想象的最糟糕事物来娱乐自己，用虚幻而对人类无害的痛苦覆盖现实的痛苦。 当然，我们也可以在不触及超自然恐怖领域的情况下施展这种把戏，但那样便冒着触碰过于贴近自身的不幸的风险。恐怖或许会令我们不安、颤抖，却不会让我们因怜悯世事而哭泣。吸血鬼可以象征我们对生与死的恐惧，但没有人会被一个象征彻底连根拔起。僵尸可以观念化为我们对肉体及其欲望的厌恶，但没有人会被一个观念病死。借助超自然恐怖，我们得以操纵自己命运的线而不至于崩溃——天生的傀儡，唇上涂抹着我们自己的鲜血。


Actors

演员

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Within the strictures of commonsense reality and personal ability, we can choose to do anything we like in this world . . . with one exception: We cannot choose what any of our choices will be. To do that, we would have to be capable of making ourselves into self-made individuals who can choose what they choose as opposed to being individuals who simply make choices. For instance, we may want to become bodybuilders and choose to do so. But if we do not want to become bodybuilders we cannot make ourselves into someone who does want to be a bodybuilder. For that to happen, there would have to be another self inside us who made us choose to want to become bodybuilders. And inside that self, there would have to be still another self who made that self want to choose to choose to make us want to become bodybuilders. This sequence of choosing, being interminable, would result in the paradox of an infinite number of selves beyond which there is a self making all the choices. The foregoing position is based in astrain of philosophical thought called determinism and is here stated in one of its strongest forms. British philosopher Galen Strawson describes this position, which is his own as a determinist, as pessimistic. ("Luck Swallows Everything," Times Literary Supplement, June 28, 1998.) It is pessimist because it turns the human image into a puppet image. And a puppet image of humanity is one of the hallmarks of pessimism.

在常识性的现实与个人能力的限制之内，我们可以在这个世界上选择去做任何我们想做的事……只有一个例外：我们不能为自己的选择做出选择。要做到这一点，我们必须能够把自己变成那种“能够选择自己选择”的自我创造者，而不是仅仅作为“单纯做出选择的人”。

举例来说，我们可能想成为健美运动员，并选择去做。但如果我们并不想成为健美运动员，我们就无法让自己变成一个“想要成为健美运动员的人”。要让这种情况发生，我们体内就必须存在另一个“自我”，是它让我们选择去想成为健美运动员。而在那个自我之中，还必须有再一个自我，让那个自我想去选择去让我们想成为健美运动员。如此选择的连锁既然无穷无尽，最终就会导向一个悖论：存在一个无限层叠的自我，而在这一切“之上”，还有一个自我在做所有的选择。

上述立场源自一种被称为“决定论”的哲学思潮，这里以其最强硬的形态表述出来。英国哲学家盖伦·斯特劳森（Galen Strawson）作为一个决定论者，将这种立场描述为悲观主义（〈幸运吞没一切〉，《泰晤士文学增刊》，1998年6月28日）。它之所以是悲观的，是因为它把人类的形象变成了木偶的形象。而“人类作为木偶”的形象，正是悲观主义的标志之一。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Those who most vehemently oppose the pessimistic form of determinism are libertarian indeterminists. They hold that we have absolute free will and can make ourselves into individuals who can choose to want to make a certain choice and not some other. They hold that we are what Michelstaedter despaired we could ever become: individuals who are invulnerably self-possessed and not the products of an indeterminable series of events and conditions that result in our being able to make only one choice and not any number of choices, because factors beyond our control have already taken care of who we are as individuals and what choices we will finally make.

那些最激烈反对决定论悲观形态的人，是自由意志论的非决定论者。他们主张我们拥有绝对的自由意志，能够把自己塑造成那种“可以选择去想要某个选择而不是另一个选择”的个体。

在他们看来，我们正是米可斯泰特（Michelstaedter）曾经绝望地认为我们永远无法成为的那类人：那些牢不可破地掌握自我、而非一连串无法界定的事件与条件之产物的人。因为在决定论的视角中，这些事件与条件早已预先决定了我们作为个体的样貌，以及我们最终会做出的选择，使我们只能作出唯一的选择，而无法在众多可能性中自由抉择。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In the history of philosophical lucubration, arguments for determinism are traditionally the most argued against. Why is this so, aside from the fact that it turns the human image into a puppet image? It is so because arguments for determinism step on the sacrosanct belief in moral responsibility. Even the average atheist draws the line whenever someone says that we do not have any degree of freedom and that moral responsibility is not a reality. As die-hard unbelievers, they may reject the position that moral laws descend from a higher plane unperceived by our senses; as tax-paying citizens, however, they still need to live by sublunary standards of civility. And this can be done only if free will and moral realism are the law of the land.

在哲学沉思的历史中，支持决定论的论证历来是最容易遭到反驳的。那么，为什么会如此呢？除了它把人的形象变成木偶之外，更重要的原因在于，支持决定论的论证触犯了神圣不可侵犯的“道德责任”信念。即便是普通的无神论者，也会在有人说“我们没有任何自由意志，道德责任并非现实存在”时划清界限。作为坚定的不信者，他们可能会否认道德法则源自我们感官无法感知的更高层面；然而，作为纳税公民，他们仍然需要遵守世俗的文明准则。而做到这一点，唯有以自由意志和道德现实主义作为“国家法则”才可能实现。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Of course, there are rare cases when a wrongdoer's malfeasance is determined to be the result of determining forces. Then free will and moral responsibility are waived, and the defendant is either sent to a psychiatric hospital rather than a prison or gets off scot-free because a certain judge and jury in a certain society temporarily became strong determinists without a sense of moral realism, thereby turning the human image of a defendant into a puppet image. But this is highly irregular. In the normal course of events, both determinists and indeterminists are one in promoting some kind of operative morality. As guardians of our morale, they feel moral realism to be a necessary truth, whether it is objectively real, as it is to indeterminists, or subjectively "real," as it is to determinists. Without this truth, or "truth," we could not go on living as we always have and believe that being alive is all right.

当然，也有极少数情况，某个作恶者的恶行被认定是由决定性的力量所导致的。在这种情况下，自由意志和道德责任被免除，被告要么被送往精神病院而非监狱，要么因为某个社会中某位法官和陪审团一时变成了强决定论者且缺乏道德现实感，而逍遥法外，从而把被告的人性形象变成了木偶形象。但这种情况极为不常见。在正常情况下，无论是决定论者还是非决定论者，都一致主张某种可行的道德规范。作为我们道德意识的守护者，他们都认为道德现实主义是一种必要的真理——对于非决定论者而言，这是真实存在的；对于决定论者而言，这是主观上“真实”的。没有这一真理，或者说“真理”，我们就无法像一直以来那样生活，也无法相信活着本身是合理的。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 It does not seem wildly improbable that determinations have been made in our psyches that make some people determinists and others indeterminists. If we could only know how these determinations work, we would be able to answer the only interesting question in the debate pitting free will against determinism: Why argue for one side or the other? The answer to this question would abort all rivalry in this matter, since it would bring to light the reason why any philosopher would engage in a conflict more vain than most in his discipline. But should we ever get an answer to this question, the repercussions would far override matters of moral realism or "realism." Really, there would only be one repercussion: to reduce all philosophical proclivities to the psychology of the individuals who exhibit them. In his Metaphilosophy and Free Will (1996), Richard Double speaks of analytic philosophers whose writing is protective of free will.

这似乎并非难以想象：在我们的心灵中，已经有某些决定性的因素，使得一些人成为决定论者，而另一些人成为非决定论者。若我们能知晓这些决定性因素的运作方式，就能回答在自由意志与决定论之争中唯一有趣的问题：为什么要为其中一方辩护？

对此问题的回答将会终结这场争论，因为它会揭示出任何哲学家为什么会投入到这一比其学科中大多数争论更为虚妄的冲突之中的缘由。

但如果我们真的得到了这个问题的答案，其影响将远远超越道德“实在论”或“实在论”本身的范畴。实际上，只有一个影响：把一切哲学倾向还原为展现这些倾向的个体心理。

在其著作《元哲学与自由意志》（Metaphilosophy and Free Will, 1996）中，理查德·达布尔（Richard Double）谈到了某些在写作中维护自由意志的分析哲学家。

Although this type of free will writing pays dividends in terms of precision, it has its disadvantages. First, we may lose sight of the philosophical forest for the technical trees. Second, and following from the first, we may collect psychological consolation at the expense of candor. By submerging ourselves in the nuances of theories, we may avert our attention from the big, scary questions. An attention to detail can be an exercise in bad faith when it uses up our time and energies so that we do not bother to question whether what we are trying to do is possible. Meticulous precision can enable us to remain happy and engaged at the expense of averting our eyes from the disturbing big picture.

尽管这种关于自由意志的写作在精确性方面颇有裨益，但它也有其弊端。首先，我们可能会因专注于技术性的细枝末节而忽视了整个哲学的森林。其次，由此带来的结果是，我们或许会以牺牲坦诚为代价来获取心理上的安慰。通过将自己沉浸在各种理论的细微差别中，我们可能会转移注意力，从而逃避那些庞大而可怖的问题。对细节的关注可能是一种自欺的表现，因为它耗费了我们的时间与精力，使我们根本无暇去追问：我们试图去做的事情究竟是否可能。过分严谨的精确，能够让我们保持愉快与投入，但代价却是转移了视线，使我们不去直面那幅令人不安的整体图景。
点击展开/折叠英语原文 Perhaps one day cognitive psychologists will settle once and for all why an individual would argue for either free will or determinism. Studies might also be conducted on those who cling to one side or the other of any philosophical question. This may not advance any philosophical questions, although it might make them disappear once the argumentative motives behind them have been determined.

也许有一天，认知心理学家会最终厘清：为什么一个人会为自由意志或决定论辩护。针对那些在任何哲学问题上执着于某一方的人，也可能会有研究展开。这样的研究或许无法推动任何哲学问题的进展，但一旦这些问题背后的争论动机被揭示出来，它们本身可能就会随之消失。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In the everyday world, no such thing as an out-and-out determinist ever existed, since none can shake off a sense of having free will. The best we can do is to reason that we are determined based on observing the common law of causality among things in the world and applying this law to ourselves. But we cannot feel ourselves as determined. (One philosopher has said, and possibly more have thought to themselves: "Can one really believe in determinism without going insane?") Being determined in thought and deed is not experientially noticeable, only abstractly deducible. It would be impossible for someone to say "I am nothing but a human puppet." The only exception would be an individual with a psychological disease that had induced in him the sense of being controlled by an alien force. Should this individual say "I am nothing but a human puppet," he would forthwith be marched to the nearest psychiatric hospital, conceivably overtaken by the horror of feeling he was a human puppet controlled by an alien force working outside him or within him or both.

在日常世界里，从未存在过一个彻头彻尾的决定论者，因为没有人能够彻底摆脱对自由意志的感受。我们所能做到的最好情况，是通过推理来认为自己是被决定的：即观察到世间事物的普遍因果律，然后将这条规律应用到自身。但我们却无法在感受上把自己当作被决定的存在。（有一位哲学家说过——或许还有更多人暗自思忖过：“一个人能真正相信决定论而不发疯吗？”） 在思想和行为上被决定，并不是一种能够直接体验到的东西，而只能通过抽象的推论得出。没人可能会说：“我不过是个被操纵的人偶罢了。”唯一的例外，或许是某个因心理疾病而产生了被异类力量操控感的人。如果这样的人真的说出“我不过是个被操纵的人偶”，那么他很可能会被立刻送往最近的精神病院，因为他已经被一种可怖的感受所攫住——觉得自己是个被外在或内在，甚至二者同时作用的异类力量所操纵的人偶。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 The extent to which any of us is determined in thought and deed may be logically argued but cannot be known by first-hand experience. Determinists are only too aware that if free will is illusory on paper, it is insuperable in our lives. To hate our illusions or hold them dear only lashes us to them more tautly. We cannot stand up to them without our world falling apart, for those who care. And those who really care cannot be anything but believers in some form of moral realism or "realism," which buttresses the optimistic reality that most people call home and braces up everything you need in order to be you—your country, your loved ones, your job or vocation, your golf clubs, and, in an all around sense, your "way of life."

我们在思想与行为上究竟在多大程度上是被决定的，可以通过逻辑来论证，但却无法通过第一手经验来得知。决定论者十分清楚：即便自由意志在纸面上是虚幻的，它在我们的生活中依然不可克服。无论我们是憎恨这种幻觉，还是将其珍视，只会让我们与之捆绑得更加紧密。我们无法与它们正面相抗，而不让自己的世界土崩瓦解——至少对于那些在乎的人而言是如此。 而那些真正关切此事的人，必然只能成为某种形式的道德“实在论”或“实在论”的信奉者。正是这种立场支撑起了大多数人所谓的乐观现实，也支撑起了你成为“你”所需要的一切——你的国家、你的亲人、你的工作或使命、你的高尔夫球杆，以及一种更广义上的“生活方式”。

Impersonation

扮演

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In the free will debate, the reality, or "reality," of free will is something of an irrelevancy, since it is a parasite of the feeling we each have of being or possessing a self (often capitalized). This self is an intangible entity that is spoken of as if it were an extra internal organ, yet to every one of us it seems more than the sum of our anatomical parts. Everything comes back to the self and must come back to the self, for it is the utmost issue in our deciding whether we are something or nothing, people or puppets. Without the sense of being or possessing a self, there would be no use disputing whether or not we are free, deter mined, or somewhere in between. Why we have a sense of self has been variously explained. (For one explanation, see the next section in this chapter.) Having this sense is what brings the free-will-versus-determinism debate to the table. Even further, it is what brings everything to the table, or at least to the table of human existence, because nothing else that exists has a sense of being a self that can do or not do anything at will.

在自由意志的争论中，自由意志的真实，或“真实”，其实并非核心问题，因为它不过是寄生在我们每个人所具有的“自我感”之上的东西（常常还要首字母大写）。这个“自我”是一种无形的实体，人们谈论它时仿佛它是某种额外的内在器官，但对我们每个人来说，它似乎超越了我们解剖学上各部分的总和。一切都要回到“自我”，并且必然回到“自我”，因为这正是决定我们是某种存在还是虚无，是“人”还是“木偶”的终极问题。

如果没有这种“存在自我”或“拥有自我”的感受，那么去争论我们究竟是自由的、被决定的，还是介于两者之间，便毫无意义。关于我们为何会拥有这种自我感，已有多种解释。（其中一种解释见本章下一节。）正是这种自我感，把自由意志与决定论的争论推上了台面。进一步说，它也是一切问题被摆上台面的前提——至少在人的存在之桌上是如此——因为在其他任何存在物当中，都没有那种“作为自我”的感受，也就没有那种能随意去做或不做某事的感受。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 You can reason that you do not have a self and that your behavior is determined, but if you feel that you are or possess a self, then you will probably have a time of it denying responsibility for every thought that passes through your brain or the slightest movement of your little toe. Yet there is a problem with the feeling of responsibility, because sometimes you feel responsible for something that you cannot, by any logic or physical law, be held responsible for. When someone dies of an undiagnosed case of liver cancer not long after he punches you in the stomach, you cannot say, "That's what he gets for messing with me." Yet people do say such things in such circumstances. Nevertheless, they can usually be brought to their senses about feeling somehow responsible for the death by unrelated causes of someone who has punched them in the stomach.

你可以通过推理得出结论：你并没有一个“自我”，你的行为是被决定的。 但如果你在感受上觉得自己是一个自我，或者拥有一个自我，那么你大概很难否认：你要为自己大脑中闪过的每一个念头，甚至为你小脚趾的一丝动作，负有责任。

然而，“责任感”本身却存在问题，因为有时你会对一些事产生责任感，而根据任何逻辑或物理规律，你都不可能真的对此负有责任。 比如说：如果某人因为未被诊断出的肝癌而死去，而恰好在不久前他打了你肚子一拳，你不能说：“这就是他惹我的下场。” 然而，人们在这种情境下确实会说出这样的话。 不过，通常情况下，他们还是能够被拉回理性，意识到：因某个与此无关的原因而死亡的人，并不能算是因打了他们一拳而“自找的”。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 More often, though, an individual cannot be brought to his senses when he feels responsible for something that he cannot, by any logic or physical law, be held responsible for. For example, you call up a friend or a relative to help you fix your toilet, and while driving over to your place to do this he is hit by an eighteen-wheel truck and dies. It would not be out of the ordinary if you felt responsible for your friend or relative's death for the reason that if you had not called him up to help fix your toilet he would not have been on the road at that time and gotten killed in a collision with an eighteen-wheel truck. Under these circumstances, your friends and relatives who are still alive may find it difficult to convince you of your non-responsibility in the death of your friend or relative who died in a vehicular misadventure. There may be any number of factors involved in that fatal collision, but you could still feel that the only factor worth consideration was your calling up your friend or relative to drive over to your place when he would otherwise have been doing something you had nothing to do with. You would be mistaken to feel this way, of course, but just because you can reason that you are mistaken would not in itself make you feel any less responsible for what happened. And you may mistakenly take that feeling of terrible responsibility to your grave, because you were the self who called another self to come to your place to help fix your toilet. You might just as well blame your toilet for going out of order when it did, or blame any number of causes back to the beginning of time as much as blame yourself. The thing is this: If you can be mistaken in attributing to yourself responsibility, or anything more than a bare trace of causal responsibility, you can also be mistaken about other things, such as being a self with free will. But if you feel that you are or possess a self, then you will probably have a time of it denying responsibility for every thought that passes through your brain or the slightest movement of your little toe.

然而，更常见的情况是，当一个人对某件事产生责任感时，即便从任何逻辑或物理法则上看，他都不可能对此负有责任，他也往往无法被劝回理性。

举例来说：你打电话请一位朋友或亲戚来帮你修厕所，而他在驱车前往你家的路上，被一辆十八轮卡车撞上而丧命。若你因此觉得自己要为朋友或亲戚的死负责，这并不算反常——因为你可能会想：如果不是我打电话叫他来修厕所，他就不会在那个时间出现在路上，更不会遭遇这场车祸。

在这种情况下，你尚在人世的朋友或亲戚们可能很难说服你：你其实不必为死者的意外死亡负责。那场致命车祸里可能牵涉无数因素，但你却可能执拗地认为，唯一值得考虑的因素就是你打了那个电话，叫他开车过来，而他本来会在做与你毫无关系的别的事情。

当然，你这样感受是错误的。但即便你能通过理性推断出这是错误的，这本身也未必会让你减少哪怕一丝一毫的责任感。你或许会带着这种沉重的、错误的责任感走进坟墓——只因为你是那个“自我”，打电话叫另一个“自我”来帮你修厕所的人。

其实，你大可以去责怪厕所，责怪它偏偏在那个时候坏掉；或者去责怪无数其他原因，甚至一直追溯到时间的起点，这些都和责怪你自己同样合理。

关键在于：如果你会在归责问题上出错，或者在除了一点点因果关系之外的责任归属上出错，那么你也可能在别的事情上出错，比如相信自己是一个拥有自由意志的“自我”。 但如果你在感受上确实认为自己就是一个自我，或者拥有一个自我，那么你大概很难否认：你要为大脑中闪过的每一个念头，乃至你小脚趾的最细微动作，负有责任。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Other people may try to console you for your friend or relative' s death by saying that this atrocious event was not your fault. They may also surreptitiously blame you for it, as people sometimes blame those who have had a heart attack for being lax in following the unhealthy injunction to watch your health. But it is quite possible you will disbelieve anyone who says you are not to blame for your friend or relative's death in a vehicular misadventure, perhaps because you can tell that they surreptitiously blame you for it. But that is inconsequential. As someone who feels he is a self, you will likely as not feel responsible for things you could not by any logic or physical law take responsibility for, or no more than a bare trace of causal responsibility. This is not even to consider circumstances in which you may feel morally responsible for something that happens when by rights you should not feel this way. And here is where the feeling of being a self with free will really comes in.

别人可能会试图安慰你，让你不要为朋友或亲戚的死自责，说这起惨剧并非你的过错。他们也可能暗中把责任归到你身上——就像人们有时会责怪那些因未注意健康而心脏病发作的人一样。然而，你很可能不会相信任何说你不该为朋友或亲戚的交通意外死亡负责的人，或许是因为你能察觉到他们暗中在责怪你。但这并不重要。

作为一个在感受上认为自己是自我的人，你很可能会对那些按照任何逻辑或物理法则，你都无法负责任的事情，产生责任感，或者至少感受到一丝因果上的微弱责任。这甚至还没有涉及到某些情况下，你本不应当感到道德责任，但却仍然感到道德责任的情况。

而这，正是“作为拥有自由意志的自我”的感觉真正发挥作用的地方。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Say you asked your friend or relative to help fix your toilet not because you needed help fixing your toilet but because you wanted to get back at him for asking you to help him move into his new house the week before when he could have called a moving company, as you did when you moved into your new house, and saved you from having your little toe broken when a heavy piece of furniture fell on it during the move. Morally, inconveniencing your friend or relative just to get back at him for the reasons stated in the previous sentence was not the right thing to do, or so you feel after your friend or relative's car crashed when it collided with an eighteen-wheel truck in an explosive vehicular misadventure. You did not mean for that to happen. You were just looking for some petty form of payback, some kind of reprisal for the pain of your broken toe—and not even a proportionate reprisal, nor anything illegal or particularly immoral, as these things go. Good luck, though, if you try to feel you were not responsible in an intensely moral sense for your friend or relative's vehicular misadventure. You could reason that your part in this misfortune was causally determined and not your fault. But if you feel that you are or possess a self then you will probably have a time of it denying responsibility for what happened. If you did not feel this way, what kind of person would that make you, assuming you still felt yourself a person and not some monstrous thing?

假设你请朋友或亲戚来帮你修厕所，并不是因为你真的需要帮助，而是因为你想报复他——上周他搬新家的时候曾让你帮忙，而他本可以像你搬新家时那样叫搬家公司，这样你就不用在搬运重家具时被砸伤小脚趾。

从道德上讲，仅仅为了这种原因而给朋友或亲戚带来麻烦，并不是正确的做法——或者说，当朋友或亲戚在与一辆十八轮卡车相撞的爆炸性交通意外中丧生后，你会有这种感觉。你并不想让那件事发生。你只是寻求一种小小的报复，为了你受伤的小脚趾寻求某种形式的回击——甚至连比例上的回击都算不上，也没有违法或特别不道德。

但如果你试图在强烈的道德意义上觉得自己不该为朋友或亲戚的交通意外负责，那就祝你好运吧。你可以理性地推断：这场不幸中你的部分是因果决定的，并非你的过错。但如果你在感受上认为自己是一个自我，或者拥有一个自我，那么你大概很难否认自己对所发生的事情负有责任。

如果你不这样感受，假设你仍然觉得自己是一个人，而不是某种怪物，那你会成为什么样的人呢？

点击展开/折叠英语原文 What is most uncanny about the self is that no one has yet been able to present the least evidence of it. Like the soul, that figure of speech which has long since been snickered out of existence, the self may be felt but never be found. It is a spectral tapeworm that takes its reality from a host organism and grows along with the physical matter in which it is encased. It may even grow beyond its material confines. Some believe that a Big Self enfolds all our little selves. Far fewer, or none, believe that little selves can have littler selves or play host to a number of self-contained selves. Do infants have selves? Fetuses? When do we get a self and can we lose it or have it taken away from us? Putting nonsense aside, some of us are surer than others of our selves. And how many of us want nothing so badly as to be a self-made somebody?

关于“自我”，最令人毛骨悚然之处在于：至今没有人能提供哪怕一点其存在的证据。就像“灵魂”这个早已被讥笑得不复存在的比喻一样，“自我”可以被感受到，却永远无法被找到。它像一种幽灵般的绦虫，从宿主生物中汲取其存在感，并随着包裹它的物质一起生长。它甚至可能超出其物质的界限而成长。

有人相信，一个“大自我”包容了我们所有的小自我。更少数人，甚至可能没有人，相信小自我还能拥有更小的自我，或者承载若干独立完整的自我。

婴儿有自我吗？胎儿有自我吗？我们何时获得自我，又能失去它，或者被夺去它吗？撇开这些荒谬的问题不谈，有些人比其他人对自己的自我更为确信。而我们之中，有多少人最渴望的，不就是成为一个自我造就的某个人吗？

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Without a relentless sense of the self, the person, we could not live as we have all these years. Were a personal god to be excluded from everyone's universe, persons would still retain their status. Sensory perceptions, memories, aches, ecstasies: Because these phenomena occur inside the same sack of skin, we suppose that we are enduring, continuous entities, things that serve as the infrastructure for war, romance, athletic competition, and every other genre of human activity. We do not just have experiences—we own them. That is what it means to be a person. No quibbling, everyone who is anyone holds this article of faith, even those who, like the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, have done a good job of logically dismantling the reality of selves. But logic cannot exorcise that "I" (ego) which stares back at you in the mirror, just as logic cannot remove the illusion of free will. When someone says she has not been feeling her old self, our thoughts turn to psychology, not metaphysics. To reason or to hold as an article of faith that the self is an illusion may help us to step around the worst pitfalls of the ego, but mitigation is light-years from liberation.

如果没有那种对自我——对“人”的——无情感知，我们无法像这些年来一样生活下去。即便一个个人神被排除在每个人的宇宙之外，人依然会保有其身份。感官知觉、记忆、疼痛、狂喜：正因为这些现象都发生在同一个皮囊之内，我们才假设自己是持久、连续的存在，是战争、爱情、体育竞技以及人类所有其他活动的基础结构。我们不仅仅是经历着这些事情——我们拥有它们。这就是成为一个人的意义。

毫无争议，每一个“有身份的人”都持有这一信条，即便像十八世纪的苏格兰哲学家大卫·休谟那样，已经在逻辑上很好地拆解了“自我”的现实性。但逻辑无法驱逐镜中回望你的那个“我”（自我），就如逻辑无法消除自由意志的幻象一样。当有人说她感觉不到过去的自己时，我们会转而思考心理学，而非形而上学。

理性地推论或作为信条认为自我是幻觉，或许能帮助我们规避自我带来的最严重陷阱，但这种缓解距离真正的解放还相距遥远。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 To all human beings, or almost all (see the section Ego-Death in this chapter), we seem to be the most real thing going. No one can say with assurance what the world outside of us is like, but inside us we feel self-assured. How does this occur? So far, no one knows. Cognitive psychologists, philosophers of mind, and neuroscientists have their theories, of course, among them those that argue for temporary selves and selves over time, psychophysical selves, neurological selves, objective selves, subjective selves, social selves, transcendent selves, the self as a process and not a "thing," the simultaneous existence and nonexistence of the self. But these and many other self-concepts leave the self as we have always known and experienced it, intact and unharmed. We will all, or almost all, still feel that we are or possess an old-fashioned self. Thus, cognitive psychologists, philosophers of mind, and neuroscientists who extend theories that the self does not exist as we have always believed are not saying that the self does not exist; they are only spreading complex self-constructions that save the self from anyone's questioning its existence. And those who try to prove that selves do not look out at the world from behind our eyeballs might as well be telling us that we have been snatched by the Body Snatchers or coalesced into the Thing.

对于所有人类，或者几乎所有人（参见本章“自我死亡”一节），我们似乎都是最真实的存在。没有人能确定地说我们之外的世界是什么样子，但在我们内心，我们感到自信满满。这是如何发生的呢？到目前为止，还无人知晓。

当然，认知心理学家、心灵哲学家和神经科学家都有他们的理论，其中包括：主张暂时性的自我与跨时间的自我、心理—生理自我、神经学自我、客观自我、主观自我、社会自我、超越自我、将自我视为过程而非“物体”、自我同时存在与不存在等理论。但这些以及许多其他关于自我的概念，并未破坏我们一贯认知和体验的自我。我们所有人，或者几乎所有人，仍然会觉得自己拥有一个传统意义上的自我。

因此，那些提出自我并非如我们长期相信的那样存在的认知心理学家、心灵哲学家和神经科学家，并不是在说自我不存在；他们仅仅在传播一些复杂的自我构想，从而保护自我不被质疑其存在。

而那些试图证明自我并非从我们的眼睛背后望向世界的人，还不如在告诉我们：我们已被《天外魔花》的外星入侵者抓走，或者已融合成《The Thing》中的那个怪物。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Within the hierarchy of fabrications that compose our lives—families, countries, gods—the self incontestably ranks highest. Just below the self is the family, which has proven itself more durable than national or ethnic affiliations, with these in turn outranking god-figures for their staying power. So any progress toward the salvation of humankind will probably begin from the bottom—when our gods have been devalued to the status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments. Following the death rattle of deities, it would appear that nations or ethnic communities are next in line for the boneyard. Only after fealty to countries, gods, and families has been shucked off can we even think about coming to grips with the least endangered of fabrications—the self. However, this hierarchy may change in time as science makes inroads regarding the question of selfhood, which, if the findings are negative, could reverse the progression, with the extinction of the self foretelling that of families, national and ethnic affiliations, and gods. After all, the quintessential sequence by which we free ourselves from our selves and our institutions is still that depicted in the Buddha legend. Born a prince, so the story goes, the nascent Enlightened One, Siddhartha Gautama, embarked on a quest to neutralize his ego by first leaving behind his family, gods, and sociopolitical station—all in one stroke. But Buddha's way requires a near inhuman dedication, and few of us have that kind of stamina. This being so, a speedy and efficient breakdown of fabrications having a worldwide ambit seems remote without the intercession of science, which could at some future date provide a vaccination against the development of "selves" after models already in use to wipe out certain diseases.

在构成我们生活的各种虚构体系——家庭、国家、神明——的等级中，自我无疑位居最高。紧随其后的是家庭，它被证明比民族或国家归属更加持久，而民族或国家归属又比神明的存在更具持久力。因此，人类得救的任何进程，很可能都将从底层开始——当我们的神明被贬值为冰箱贴或庭院装饰之后。在神明发出最后的死亡哀鸣之后，看起来下一步轮到国家或民族社区进入“坟场”。只有在对国家、神明和家庭的忠诚被剥离之后，我们才能开始思考如何面对最不易消亡的虚构——自我。

然而，随着科学在自我问题上的进展，这一等级可能会随着时间改变。如果研究结果是否定的，这一进程甚至可能倒转——自我的消亡预示着家庭、国家与民族归属以及神明的灭绝。毕竟，我们从自我及制度中解脱出来的典型顺序，仍然是佛陀传说所描绘的。据传说，初生为王子的初生觉者——悉达多·乔达摩——踏上了净化自我（ego）的旅程，首先舍弃了家庭、神明以及社会政治地位——一次性完成。

但佛陀之道需要近乎非人的专注与毅力，而我们很少有人能具备这样的耐力。因此，如果没有科学的介入，要想在全球范围内迅速且高效地瓦解这些虚构体系，似乎是不现实的。科学或许在未来某一天能够像对抗某些疾病那样，提供一种针对“自我”生成的“疫苗”。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Perhaps the only matter of interest about the self is this: Whatever makes us think that we are what we think we are lies in the fact that we have consciousness, which gives us a sense of being somebody, specifically a human somebody, whatever that may be, since we do not have a definition of "human" on which there is universal agreement. But we do agree that, if only in practice, we are all real-live selves, since we are all self-conscious. And once we have passed through every door that qualifies our selves in some way-be it by name, nationality, occupation, gender, or shoe size—we then stand before the door of consciousness—parent of all horrors. And that is all there is to our existence.

或许关于自我，唯一值得关注的就是这一点：让我们认为自己是我们所认为的样子，根本原因在于我们拥有意识——它赋予了我们“是某个人”的感觉，具体来说，是“一个人类的某个人”的感觉，尽管我们对“人类”的定义并没有普遍认同的标准。但我们确实一致认为，至少在实践中，我们都是活生生的自我，因为我们都有自我意识。

一旦我们走过了每一扇以某种方式定义自我的门——无论是通过名字、国籍、职业、性别，还是鞋码——我们就站在了意识之门前——这一切恐怖的根源。而这，也就是我们存在的全部。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 No creature caged in a zoo even knows what it is to exist, nor does it crow about being superior to another kind of thing, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. As for us humans, we reek of our sense of being special. Those hailed as the most conscious among us—the ones needful of a refined type of brainwashing—have made investigations into what it means to be human. Their divergent ramblings on this subject keep our brains buzzing while our bodies go the way of surviving and reproducing—being alive that is, since we do not especially consider the alternative. That being human might mean something very strange and awful, something quite uncanny, is not given a passing thought. If it were, who knows what would happen to us? We could disappear in a puff of smoke or fall through a mirror that has nothing on the other side. Naturally, such possibilities do not lift our spirits the way we need them to be lifted if we are to continue to live as we have all these years.

被囚禁在动物园里的任何生物，都不懂得“存在”意味着什么，也不会自鸣得意地认为自己比另一种生物——无论是动物、植物还是矿物——更优越。而我们人类则充满了自以为特殊的气息。那些被认为最有意识的人——也就是最需要某种精细“洗脑”的人——对“成为人类意味着什么”进行了探究。他们在这个问题上的各自纷繁的胡思乱想，让我们的脑子嗡嗡作响，而我们的身体却沿着生存和繁殖的道路前行——也就是活着，因为我们并不特别考虑另一种可能。

“成为人类”可能意味着某种非常奇怪且可怕、相当诡异的东西，这一点甚至没有引起我们的片刻思考。如果我们真的去思考，谁知道会发生什么呢？我们可能会化为一缕烟消失，或者从一面没有另一侧的镜子里掉下去。自然地，如果要继续像这些年来一样生活下去，这种可能性显然无法像我们需要的那样提升我们的精神。

Nonentities

无足轻重的存在

点击展开/折叠英语原文 At the forefront of current studies in selfism and egology, the field of neuroscience has made unmistakable headway. In Being No One (2004), for example, the German neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger provides a theory of how the brain manufactures the subjective sense of our existence as discrete "selves," even though, as Metzinger explains, we would be more rigorously categorized as information-processing systems for which it is expedient in an existential sense to create the illusion of "being someone." In Metzinger's schema, a human being is not a "person" but a mechanistically functioning "phenomenal self-model" that simulates a person. The reason we cannot detect these models is that we see through them, and so cannot see the processes of the models themselves. If we could, we would know there is nothing to us but these models. This might be called "Metzinger's Paradox": You cannot know what you really are because then you would know there is nothing to know and nothing to know it. (What now?) So rather than be know-nothings, we exist in a condition of what Metzinger describes as "naÏve realism," with things not being knowable as they really are in themselves, something every scientist and philosopher knows.

在当今关于自我主义与自我学的研究前沿，神经科学领域已经取得了不可否认的进展。比如在《不存在的我》（Being No One, 2004）一书中，德国神经哲学家托马斯·梅青格（Thomas Metzinger）提出了一个理论：大脑如何制造出我们作为离散“自我”而存在的主观感受。尽管如此，梅青格解释说，从更严格的角度看，我们应被归类为信息处理系统，只是出于存在论上的便利，才制造出一种“某个人在这里”的幻觉。

在梅青格的理论框架中，人类并不是一个“人”，而是一个机械式运作的“现象自我模型”，它模拟出一个人。我们之所以无法觉察这些模型，是因为我们通过它们来看世界，因此无法看到模型本身的运作过程。如果我们能看到，我们就会明白，除了这些模型，我们一无所有。

这可以被称作“梅青格悖论”：你无法知道自己究竟是什么，因为一旦你知道了，就会明白没有什么可知的，也没有谁去知道。 （那么现在怎么办？）因此，为了避免成为无知者，我们只得处于梅青格所描述的“天真实在论”的状态之中：事物本身并不能如其所是地被认知，而这一点每一位科学家与哲学家都心知肚明。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 The above sketch of Metzinger's central thesis is transparently inadequate, although necessarily so in the present context. By his reasoning and intuitions concerning the nature and workings of consciousness, Metzinger has no equal in his field and impresses one as a thinker whose speculative investigations will someday prove to be the way of reality. By argument and analysis, he has taken consciousness studies as far as possible by the resources available in the early twenty-first century. The project Metzinger has taken upon himself is precisely of the kind whose import is not restricted to the halls of science but is pursued for the far-reaching implications it may have with regard to the life of the average mortal. That said, the following discussion of Metzinger has an ulterior purpose having little to do with the value of his theories.

对梅青格核心论点的上述勾勒显然是不充分的，尽管在当下语境中这是不得不如此的。就他对意识的本质与运作方式的推理与直觉而言，梅青格在其领域中无人可比，他给人的印象是那种推测性研究终将被证明符合现实之道的思想家。凭借论证与分析，他已经利用二十一世纪初可用的资源，把意识研究推进到了可能达到的极限。梅青格所承担的这一项目，其意义绝不仅限于科学的殿堂，还在于它可能对普通凡人的生活产生深远的影响。话虽如此，接下来对梅青格的讨论却另有所图，与其理论本身的价值并没有太大关系。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In his essay "The Shadow of a Puppet Dance: Metzinger, Ligotti and the Illusion of Selfhood" (Collapse IV, May 2008), James Trafford breaks down Metzinger's Paradox as follows: "The object 'man' consists of tightly packed layers of simulation, for which naïve realism becomes a necessary prophylactic in order to ward off the terror concomitant with the destruction of our intuitions regarding ourselves and our status in the world: 'Conscious subjectivity is the case in which a single organism has learned to enslave itself.'" The closing quote from Metzinger's Being No One might be seen as an extension of Zapffe's Paradox, by dint of which we repress from our consciousness all that is startling and dreadful in our lives. For Metzinger, this repression takes the form of the aforesaid naïve realism, which masks the single most startling and dreadful revelation for human beings: that we are not what we think we are. Assuaging our qualms about such a deplorable enlightenment, Metzinger avers that it is "practically impossible" for us to attain realization of our unreality due to inbuilt manacles of human perception that keep our minds in a dream state.

在他的文章《傀儡之舞的阴影：梅青格、利戈蒂与自我幻觉》（Collapse IV, 2008年5月）中，詹姆斯·特拉福德将“梅青格悖论”拆解如下：“‘人’这一对象由紧密叠加的模拟层构成，而天真实在论则成为一种必要的预防机制，用以抵御那种伴随着我们对自身及其在世界中的地位的直觉被摧毁而产生的恐惧：‘有意识的主观性就是这样一种情况——一个有机体学会了奴役自己。’”

梅青格在《不存在的我》中的这段结语可以被看作是“扎普夫悖论”的一种延伸——按照这一悖论，我们会将生命中一切惊悚与恐怖的事实压抑在意识之外。对梅青格而言，这种压抑的形式正是前述的天真实在论，它掩盖了对人类来说最为惊悚和恐怖的启示：我们并不是我们以为的那个样子。为了缓解人们对这种可悲觉醒的担忧，梅青格坚持认为，由于人类感知内置的枷锁使得我们的心灵保持在梦境状态，我们“几乎不可能”真正领悟到自身的虚幻性。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 An interesting fact that seems relevant to Metzinger's study of the illusion of selves is the following: Metzinger is a lucid dreamer. His treatise Being No One contains an entire chapter on the knack of being able to "wake up" in one's dreams and recognize that one's consciousness is operating within an illusory zone created by the brain. In that aspect of our lives where we have no say in what happens and are free to choose nothing, the lucid dreamer is no one's fool, or at least not his own. He has peeked behind the curtain of what his consciousness has made and seen through its tricks and traps. This faculty might very well explain Metzinger's inquisitiveness about the nature of waking perception and the possibility that, as Poe wrote: "All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream." These lines sum up the argument of Being No One—that we sleep in the self and cannot awake. Yet at the close of this 699-page work, following hard upon an examination of how and why human beings evolved in such a way that we believe we are someone while actually being no one, there seems to be some hedging. "At least in principle," Metzinger writes, "one can wake up from one's biological history. One can grow up, define one's own goals, and become autonomous." So imponderably nebulous, the meaning of these sentences can only be guessed at, since Metzinger leaves them hanging in the air. One is unreservedly stymied as to how this transformation could occur in terms of Metzinger's theory and research. Did he wrap up his treatise prematurely? Does he know something he is not telling us? Or did he just want to end a disillusioning book on an up note?

有一个有趣的事实似乎与梅青格对自我幻觉的研究相关：梅青格是一个清醒梦者。在他的论著《不存在的我》中，专门有一章讨论如何在梦中“醒来”，并意识到自己的意识正在一个由大脑创造的虚幻领域中运作。在我们生命中那一部分——在那里我们无法对发生的事情有所选择，也无法自由选择任何事——清醒梦者却不是任人摆布的傻子，至少不会是自己欺骗自己的傻子。他窥见了意识所制造的幕后景象，看穿了其中的诡计与陷阱。这种能力或许正好解释了梅青格对清醒感知之本质的好奇心，以及对那种可能性的兴趣：正如坡所写的——“我们所见或所似 / 皆不过是梦中之梦。”这两行诗总结了《不存在的我》的论点——我们沉睡在自我之中，无法醒来。

然而，在这本长达699页的著作结尾处，在对人类为何以及如何演化出“自以为是某个人，实则并非如此”的现象进行详尽考察之后，却似乎出现了一点闪烁其辞。梅青格写道：“至少在原则上，人是可以从自身的生物学历史中醒来的。人可以成长，可以界定自己的目标，可以变得自主。” 这些句子的意义飘忽不定，几乎只能靠揣测，因为梅青格让它们悬而未解。若从他的理论与研究出发，我们完全摸不着头脑，不知这种转变究竟如何可能。他是不是过早地结束了他的论著？是不是知道些什么却没有告诉我们？抑或他只是想给这本令人幻灭的书留一个稍显积极的收尾？

点击展开/折叠英语原文 The same year that he published Being No One, Metzinger further clouded the issue. In a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, he referred to our captivity in the illusion of a self—even though "there is no one" to have this illusion—as "the tragedy of the ego." This phrase fits like a glove into Zapffe' s theory of consciousness as a tragic blunder. Disappointingly, Metzinger goes on to say that "the tragedy of the ego dissolves because nobody is ever born and nobody ever dies." This statement is borrowed from Zen Buddhism (the Heart Sutra) and loses something when translated from a monastery to a university lecture hall. In traditions of enlightenment, the only redress for our fear of death is to wake up to our brain's manufactured sense of self and thus eliminate what we mistakenly think we are before it is too late. But Metzinger's mission as a scientist-philosopher has been to shed light on the neurological mechanisms that make this goal unfeasible. Why, then, does Metzinger speak to his auditors about the "tragedy of the ego," which in all probability none of them thought to be a tragedy before coming to his lecture, and how it "dissolves because nobody is ever born and nobody ever dies"? He seems to be trying to alleviate any fears they might have about their death at the same time he is telling them that they do not exist in the first place. Either way, something is lost that everyone cannot help wanting to hold on to, tragic as that may be. Metzinger's whole routine seems to be based in the same kind of paradoxical double-talk that the world already lives by so as to deny the suffering it must endure and to continue to believe that consciousness is not a problem and that being alive is all right.

在出版《不存在的我》的同一年，梅青格让这个问题变得更加扑朔迷离。在加州大学伯克利分校的一次演讲中，他把我们被囚禁于自我幻觉之中——尽管“根本没有任何人”去拥有这种幻觉——称为“自我的悲剧”。这个说法与扎普夫关于意识是一个悲剧性错误的理论可谓不谋而合。令人失望的是，梅青格接着说：“自我的悲剧会消解，因为从来没有人出生，也从来没有人死亡。”这一说法借自禅宗佛教（《心经》），但当它从寺院语境被搬到大学讲堂时，却失去了原有的意味。

在启蒙传统中，唯一能补偿我们对死亡恐惧的方式，就是从大脑制造的自我感中觉醒，从而在为时未晚之前消解我们错误地以为自己是什么的观念。但梅青格作为科学家—哲学家的使命，却恰恰是阐明使这种目标无法实现的神经机制。那么，为什么梅青格要对听众谈论“自我的悲剧”——一种在听他演讲之前，大概没有人认为是悲剧的东西——以及它如何“消解，因为从来没有人出生，也从来没有人死亡”呢？他似乎一方面在告诉听众他们根本不存在，另一方面又在试图安抚他们对死亡的恐惧。无论哪种情况，人们都会失去一些无法不去抓紧的东西——即便它是悲剧性的。

梅青格的整套说辞似乎正是建立在那种悖论式的双重话语之上，而整个世界早已习惯依靠这种话语来否认它必须承受的苦难，并继续相信意识不是一个问题，活着本身没什么不对。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 But let us not jump to conclusions. In an online forum in which some of the most prestigious figures in consciousness studies responded to Nicolas Humphrey's "A Self Worth Having," where, as quoted earlier, Humphrey says that consciousness is a "wonderfully good thing in its own right," Metzinger sums up his own position on this subject. Here he tolls the same bell as Zapffe when he writes:

但我们先不要急于下结论。在一个线上论坛中，几位意识研究领域最具声望的人物对尼古拉斯·汉弗莱的《值得拥有的自我》一文作出了回应。此前我们引用过，汉弗莱在那篇文章中称意识本身就是“一件极其美好的事”。在回应这一话题时，梅青格总结了他自己的立场。他在此的论调与扎普夫如出一辙，他写道：

It is not at all clear if the biological form of consciousness, as so far brought about by evolution on our planet, is a desirable form of experience, an actual good in itself. . . .

目前尚不清楚，在我们这个星球上由进化所产生的这种生物学形式的意识，是否是一种值得追求的体验形式，是否真的是一种本身就好的东西……

The theoretical blind spot of current philosophy of mind is the issue of conscious suffering: Thousands of pages are being written about color qualia or the contents of thought, but almost no theoretical work is devoted to ubiquitous phenomenal states like human suffering or simple everyday sadness ("subclinical depression"), or to the phenomenal content associated with panic, despair and melancholy—let alone to the conscious experience of mortality or of losing one's dignity . . . .

当代心灵哲学的理论盲点在于对有意识的痛苦这一问题的忽视：成千上万页的论著都在探讨颜色感质或思维内容，但几乎没有理论工作专门研究那些无处不在的现象状态，比如人类的痛苦，或日常生活中简单的悲伤（“亚临床抑郁”），或者与恐慌、绝望与忧郁相关的现象内容——更不用说对死亡的有意识体验，或是对失去尊严的体验……

The ethical-normative issue is of greater relevance. If one dares to take a closer look at the actual phenomenology of biological systems on our planet, the many different kinds of conscious suffering are at least as dominant a feature as are color vision or conscious thought, both of which appeared only very recently. Evolution is not something to be glorified. One way—out of countless others—to look at biological evolution on our planet is as a process that has created an expanding ocean of suffering and confusion where there previously was none. As not only the simple number of individual conscious subjects, but also the dimensionality of their phenomenal state-spaces is continuously increasing, this ocean is also deepening. For me, this is also a strong argument against creating artificial consciousness: We shouldn't add to this terrible mess before we have truly understood what actually is going on here. (Metzinger's emphasis)

伦理—规范层面的问题则更具现实意义。如果我们敢于更仔细地审视这个星球上生物系统的真实现象学，那么各种不同形式的有意识痛苦至少同彩色视觉或有意识思维一样显著——而后两者还是在进化中极其近期才出现的。进化并非值得颂扬的事。看待地球上生物进化的一种方式——在无数种可能的方式之中——就是：它是一个过程，在原本没有痛苦与混乱的地方，创造出了一个不断扩张的苦难与困惑之洋。而且，随着个体有意识主体的数量不断增加，以及它们现象状态空间的维度不断拓展，这片苦难之洋也在不断加深。对我而言，这也是一个强有力的反对创造人工意识的理由：在我们真正弄清楚这里究竟发生了什么之前，我们不应该再往这片可怕的泥潭里增添新的东西。（梅青格着重强调）

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Why the disparity in both the tone and substance between Metzinger's conclusion of his book and Berkeley lecture and his online exchange with his colleagues? One could speculate that he felt more comfortable expressing his misgivings about the evolution of human consciousness in a cyber-convocation of his peers than in his high-profile opus and public appearances. In the former outlet, he pulls no punches when he says, "[T]here are aspects of the scientific world-view which may be damaging to our mental well-being, and that is what everybody intuitively feels" (Metzinger's emphasis; quoted in Trafford). This is a breathtaking statement for a well-credentialed philosopher to make (as was his inquiry quoted earlier about whether someone could really believe in determinism without going insane). What else could Metzinger mean by this utterance other than that well-used caveat of horror fiction that we are in danger of knowing things we were not meant to know? And the worst possible thing we could know—worse than knowing of our descent from a mass of microorganisms-is that we are nobodies not somebodies, puppets not people.

为什么梅青格在其著作的结论、伯克利演讲以及与同僚的线上交流之间，在语气和内容上会存在如此差异？一种推测是，他在网络聚会中与同行交流时，比起在高调的代表作和公开演讲中，更自在地表达了自己对人类意识进化的疑虑。在前者的平台上，他毫不掩饰地说道：“科学世界观中有些方面可能会损害我们的心理健康，而这正是每个人在直觉上都能感受到的。”（梅青格强调，特拉福德引述）对于一位资历深厚的哲学家来说，这无疑是惊人的表态（正如他早前提出的那个问题一样：是否真有人能相信决定论而不发疯？）。梅青格此言，除了那句恐怖小说中常见的警示——我们有可能会知道一些本不该知道的事——还能意味着什么呢？而我们可能知道的最可怕之事，甚至比得知我们源自一团微生物还要糟糕的，就是：我们并非“某个人”，而是“无名者”；我们不是人，而是傀儡。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In a later book, The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self (2009), Metzinger confronts the problems involved with breaking the news to the average mortal that he or she is actually an average phenomenal self-model and not a person. He wants to assure people that this is not a secret too terrible to know but a truth that will set us free to be bet ter human beings—once we settle on "What is a human being?" (since to Metzinger we are not what we think we are) and once we decide "what should a human become?" which is a knotty issue in light of how this decision should be made and who should make it. One of Metzinger's fears is that some people will sink into what he contemns as vulgar materialism" and will conclude there is nothing for them in this life but survival, reproduction, and death, with the wise guys of the world saying to themselves in Metzinger's imagined soliloquy: "I don't understand what all these neuroexperts and consciousness philosophers are talking about, but the upshot seems pretty clear to me. The cat is out of the bag: We are gene-copying bio-robots, living out here on a lonely planet in a cold and empty physical universe . . . . I get the message, and you had better believe I will adjust my behavior to it." This strategy seems to be that of "heroic pessimists" like Miguel de Unamuno (see above), Joshua Foa Dienstag (see above), William Brashear (see above), Friedrich Nietzsche (see below), and any number of others who are already in the know. It is surely the strategy that Zapffe observed everyone to be following, the strategy that we must follow if we are to go on living as paradoxical beings who know the score but tamp down their consciousness to keep from knowing it too well. And it works well enough to keep us living as we have all these years. But could the vulgar materialist actually say that he or she is aware of being no one as a fact and still go on to pretend that he or she is someone? Would this not be another version of Metzinger's asking "Can one really believe in determinism without going insane?" Would such a mental state not only be "practically impossible" but totally impossible, just as it would be impossible for someone to say "I am nothing but a human puppet" and continue to live as he or she had lived before? It does not seem likely that you could ever see yourself as what you are per Metzinger. You would then know the horror and know that you know it: that you are nothing but a human puppet would not be impossible to believe. What now? Answer: Now you go insane. Now our species goes extinct in great epidemics of madness, because now we know that behind the scenes of life there is something pernicious that makes a nightmare of our world. Now we know that we are uncanny paradoxes. We know that nature has veered into the supernatural by fabricating a creature that cannot and should not exist by natural law, and yet does.

在他后来的著作《自我隧道：心智科学与自我神话》（The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self, 2009）中，梅青格面对一个问题：如何向普通凡人揭示一个事实——他或她实际上只是一个普通的现象自我模型，而不是一个“人”。他希望向人们保证，这并不是一个令人无法承受的秘密，而是一个能够解放我们的真理，让我们成为更好的人的真理——前提是我们先解决“什么是人？”这个问题（因为在梅青格看来，我们并不是我们以为的自己），并且决定“人应该成为什么？”这个问题——而这又是一个棘手的问题，因为涉及如何做出这个决定，以及谁来做决定。

梅青格担心，有些人会陷入他所蔑称的“庸俗唯物主义”，从而得出结论：他们在这一生中无非是生存、繁殖与死亡而已，而世上的聪明人则会在梅青格想象的独白中对自己说：“我不明白这些神经学专家和意识哲学家在说什么，但大意似乎很清楚。真相已经暴露：我们是复制基因的生物机器人，生活在这个孤独的星球上，在一个冰冷空旷的物理宇宙里……我明白了信息，你最好相信我会据此调整自己的行为。”

这种策略似乎就是“英雄式悲观主义者”的做法，比如米格尔·德·乌纳穆诺（Miguel de Unamuno）、约书亚·福阿·迪恩斯塔格（Joshua Foa Dienstag）、威廉·布拉舍尔（William Brashear）、弗里德里希·尼采（Friedrich Nietzsche）以及其他许多已经知情的人。这无疑也是扎普夫观察到的，每个人都在遵循的策略——如果我们想继续以一个既知道实情又压抑意识以免过于明了的矛盾存在继续生存，就必须遵循这种策略。而这种策略确实足够有效，让我们能够像过去这些年一样活下去。

但是，庸俗唯物主义者真的能以事实意识到自己是“无名者”，同时还假装自己是“某个人”吗？这难道不是梅青格所问的另一个版本：“人真的能在不发疯的情况下相信决定论吗？”这样的心理状态不仅是“几乎不可能”，而是完全不可能，就像一个人如果说“我只是一个人类傀儡”，却仍然按照以往的生活方式继续生活，这也是不可能的。

似乎你永远不可能按照梅青格的视角真正看到自己是什么。因为一旦看清，你就会明白恐怖，也会明白你已经明白了：知道自己不过是一个人类傀儡，并不是不可能相信的事实。那么接下来会发生什么？答案是：你会发疯。我们的物种将因为这种疯狂的巨大流行而灭绝，因为现在我们知道，生命的幕后存在某种险恶，使我们的世界变成一场噩梦。现在我们知道自己是不可思议的悖论。我们知道，自然已经偏向了超自然——它创造了一个按自然法则不可能存在却确实存在的生物。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Metzinger's derision of vulgar materialism seems to rest on his optimistic belief that a future technology of consciousness will take us places where the "biological form of consciousness, as so far brought about by evolution on our planet" has not taken us. Beautiful and wonderful places, in Metzinger's admittedly well-informed and extraordinarily humane opinion. If we do not yet know what it is to be human, we have a ballpark idea of what it is to be humane. And Metzinger's preoccupation with the suffering of sentient beings matches that of any pessimist. The only difference is in his opinion of how we may eliminate or greatly ameliorate this suffering. In any event, while Metzinger has been audacious enough to state that "there are aspects of the scientific world-view which may be damaging to our mental well-being, and that is what everybody intuitively feels," he himself feels that everybody may not always feel that way and that the risk-benefit calculation will add up in our favor. What else could a neurophilosopher believe—that we should give up on ourselves and go extinct? Metzinger must have faith that once the rest of humanity has seen through the game, we will—in all sincerity and not as pretenders—play through to a world in which day by day, in every way, we are getting better and better. But that will take time—lots of it.

梅青格对庸俗唯物主义的嘲讽，似乎建立在他一种乐观的信念之上：未来的意识技术将带领我们去往“生物学形式的意识——迄今由地球上的进化所带来的——尚未到达的地方”。在梅青格本人公认的、信息充分且极具人文关怀的观点里，这些地方是美丽而奇妙的。如果我们尚不完全明白什么是“人类”，至少我们对“有仁慈之心的人”有一个大致概念。而梅青格对有感知生物的痛苦的关注，与任何悲观主义者无异。唯一的不同，在于他对于如何消除或大幅减轻这种痛苦的看法。

无论如何，尽管梅青格大胆地指出：“科学世界观中有些方面可能会损害我们的心理健康，而这正是每个人在直觉上都能感受到的”，他本人认为并非每个人总是会这样感觉，并且风险—收益的计算最终会对我们有利。一个神经哲学家还能相信什么呢——要我们放弃自己，让人类灭绝吗？梅青格必须坚信，一旦人类其余成员看穿了这场游戏，我们就会——以真诚而非伪装——走向一个这样的世界：在这里，每一天、以各种方式，我们都在变得越来越好。但这一切需要时间——大量的时间。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Even in the twenty-first century there are people who are incapable of abiding Darwin's theory unless they can reconcile it with their Creator and His design. Losing hold of these shielding eidolons would make them honor-bound to become unhinged, so they might say, because the world as they knew it would molder away in their palsied arms. Unprepared to receive the evidence, they run from it as any dreamer runs from a horror at his heels. They think that when this horror closes in on them they will die of madness to see its shape and know the touch of what they believe should not be. No doubt they would survive the experience, as so many have done before them. We have already weathered torrents of knowledge we were not meant to know yet were doomed to know. But how much more can we take? How will the human race feel about knowing that there is no human race—that there is no one? Would this be the end of the greatest horror tale ever told? Or might it be the reinstatement of the way things had been before we had lives of our own? For now, those who cannot abide even Darwin's theory without the Creator beside them seem to be safe. To quote Lovecraft on the subject of forbidden knowledge, "The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little." But perhaps they will one day. Then the time may come to engage Zapffe's solution for saving the future from the curse of consciousness.

即使在二十一世纪，仍有人无法接受达尔文的理论，除非他们能够将其与造物主及其设计相调和。失去这些保护性的偶像，会迫使他们因信念所系而失去理智——他们可能会这样说——因为他们所熟知的世界将在他们麻痹的手中腐朽。未能做好接受证据的准备，他们就像梦中人面对身后恐怖般逃避。他们认为，当这份恐怖逼近，他们会因看见其形态并触及那本不该存在之物而发狂而死。毫无疑问，他们最终会幸存，就像之前无数人一样。我们已经经历了大量原本不该知道却注定要知道的知识的冲击。但我们还能承受多少？当人类知道“根本没有人类——根本没有任何人”时，人类会作何感想？这会是有史以来最恐怖故事的终结吗？还是会重新恢复到我们拥有自己生命之前的状态？

目前，那些连达尔文理论都无法接受而不借助造物主的人，似乎还算安全。引用洛夫克拉夫特关于禁忌知识的话：“各门科学各自努力探索，迄今对我们伤害不大。”但也许有一天，它们会带来伤害。届时，或许就该考虑采纳扎普夫的方案，以拯救未来免于意识的诅咒。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 While we wait breathlessly for the test results of neuroscientists, people will still be knocking on your door to hawk some gimmick that will get you into their heaven. Naturally, these salesmen of the sacred do not have a clue regarding what things are like in heaven. Are there levels of heaven? Could someone be in heaven and not know it? And how often have we heard that many who are alive today will not "taste death" but instead will proceed directly to paradise when the rapture is upon us? This means that billions have already dropped dead with the unfulfilled hope of not having to suffer the throes of the unsaved. What disillusionment must have incommoded them as they lay in extremis. Death would not be so bad if we could just disappear into it without any irksome preliminaries. But even those who expect the doors of heaven will open for them would prefer not to make their entrance after the physical trials of fighting for the life that God gave them. For the rest of us, the carousel of consciousness spins round and round, enlightening us only to the bloodcurdling probability that the worst will likely be saved for last. And even those who experience being alive as quite all right will have to live through such tacked-on endings as dying in a vehicular misadventure or lying abed sucking tubes.

在我们屏息等待神经科学家的检测结果时，仍然会有人敲开你的门，兜售某种花招，好让你进入他们的天堂。很自然，这些神圣的推销员对天堂里的情形一无所知。天堂有等级之分吗？有人身处天堂却不自知吗？而我们又多少次听说过，许多当今尚在人世的人将不会“尝到死亡”，而是在“被提”之际直接进入乐园？这意味着，数十亿人已经抱着免于经历未得救者苦痛的落空希望而死去。在临终之际，这种幻灭感必定折磨着他们。

若是能毫无烦人的前奏，径直消逝于死亡之中，那死亡倒也不算太糟。但即便是那些指望天堂之门为自己敞开的人，也宁愿不要在拼命对抗上帝赐予的生命的肉体折磨后才得以进入。至于我们其余的人，意识的旋转木马不断转动，只不过照亮了一个令人毛骨悚然的概率：最糟糕的结局极可能被留到最后。即便是那些觉得活着“还挺不错”的人，也难免要面对诸如车祸惨死，或卧病榻上靠管子维持的附赠结局。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Life is like a story that is spoiled by an unsatisfactory resolution of preceding events. There are no retroactive fix-ups for the corpses we shall become. "All's well that ends well" is well enough in the short-run. "In the long run," as British economist John Maynard Keynes reportedly stated, "we are all dead." This does not sit well with us by way of an ending. But it is not as if we can choose how things will end for us, or for those yet unborn.

人生就像一个故事，被先前事件不令人满意的收尾所毁掉。等我们化为尸体时，就再没有任何追溯性的修补可言。“结果好，一切都好”在短期内听起来或许够用了。可“从长远来看，”正如英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯据说所言，“我们都将死去。” 这样的结局却难以让人接受。可问题在于，我们既不能选择自己故事的结尾，也不能替那些尚未出生之人决定他们的结局。

Unpersons

虚无之人

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In his novel translated as Moment of Freedom, which was published ten years before his suicide in 1976, the Norwegian author and cultural critic Jens Bjørneboe wrote that "he who hasn't experienced a full depression alone and over a long period of time—he is a child." Aside from being indemonstrable in its validity, Bjørneboe's bilious discharge is also too restrictive in esteeming his personal class of suffering as the sole rite of passage to maturity as a conscious individual. Depression is only one of the psychopathologies that could be selected to make the bombastic claim that those who have not been affected by it in full and over a long period of time belong on a playground or in a playpen. But it is serviceable as an example of a psychological disease with which most people have had some experience in one or more of its varieties.

在那本被译作《自由的瞬间》的小说里，挪威作家兼文化批评家延斯·比约恩博（Jens Bjørneboe）在他于 1976 年自杀前十年出版的作品中写道：“一个人如果没有独自并且长时间地经历过彻底的抑郁——那他还是个孩子。”

撇开其论断是否能得到证明不谈，比约恩博这番满含怨气的发泄也显得过于狭隘，因为它把他个人所经历的那类痛苦视作成熟为一个有意识的个体的唯一通行仪式。抑郁症只是可以被挑出来用来撑起这种夸张说法的精神病理之一。按照这种说法，那些未曾在彻底而漫长的抑郁中受过折磨的人，都应该被归入游乐场或婴儿围栏的范畴。尽管如此，它依然可以作为一个例子，来说明一种大多数人或多或少都在某些变体里有所体验过的心理疾病。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 The statistically prevailing form of this disease is "atypical depression." Less common and more deadly is "melancholic depression." But whatever family name a given case of depression goes by, it has the same effect: sabotaging the network of emotions that make it seem as if you and your world mean some thing in some meaningful way. It is then you discover that your "old self' is not the inviolable thing you thought it was, nor is the rest of your "old reality." Both are as frail as our bodies and may be perforated as readily, deflating all that we thought meaningful about ourselves and our world.

这种疾病在统计学上最普遍的形式是“非典型抑郁症”。较为少见且更致命的则是“忧郁型抑郁症”。但无论某一病例被归入哪一类抑郁，它们的效果都是一样的：破坏那张让你觉得“你与世界在某种意义上具有某种意义”的情感网络。就在那时，你会发现，你的“旧自我”并不是你以为的那种不可侵犯的东西，你的“旧现实”也不是。它们都和我们的肉体一样脆弱，可以轻而易举地被刺穿，从而使我们曾经以为关于自己和世界的一切意义统统泄气。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 What meaning our lives may seem to have is the work of a relatively well-constituted emotional system. As consciousness gives us the sense of being persons, our psychophysiology is responsible for making us into personalities who believe the existential game to be worth playing. We may have memories that are unlike those of anyone else, but without the proper emotions to liven those memories they might as well reside in a computer file as disconnected bits of data that never unite into a tailor-made individual for whom things seem to mean something. You can conceptualize that your life has meaning, but if you do not feel that meaning then your conceptualization is meaningless and you are nobody. The only matters of weight in our lives are colored by rainbows or auroras of regulated emotion which give one a sense of that "old self." But a major depression causes your emotions to evaporate, reducing you to a shell of a person standing alone in a drab landscape. Emotions are the substrate for the illusion of being a somebody among somebodies as well as for the substance we see, or think we see, in the world. Not knowing this ground-level truth of human existence is the equivalent of knowing nothing at all.

我们生命中看似存在的意义，其实是一个相对健全的情感系统的产物。正如意识赋予我们“作为一个人”的感觉，我们的心理生理机制则让我们成为相信“存在这场游戏值得玩下去”的人格体。我们可能拥有独一无二的记忆，但如果缺乏恰当的情感为这些记忆注入活力，它们就和电脑文件里那些彼此割裂的数据没什么两样，永远无法整合成一个“量身定做”的个体，让一切看似有意义。你可以在观念上认为自己的生活有意义，但如果你感觉不到这种意义，那么这种观念本身就毫无意义，你也就不再是“某个人”。我们生命中唯一真正重要的东西，都被某种“调谐好的”情感之虹光或极光所染色，赋予人那种“旧自我”的感觉。然而，一次重度抑郁会让你的情感蒸发，把你化为一个站在灰暗景色中的空壳之人。情感既是“在芸芸众生中做一个某某”的幻觉的底质，也是我们在世界中看到或以为看到之实质的基石。不知晓这一人类存在的底层真相，就等同于一无所知。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Although varying in intensity and nature, our emotions must seem ever-stable in their concatenation, just as a mixed drink must be made with specific ingredients in the same relative amounts so that they may blend into a vodka martini or a piña colada. United, our emotions ostensibly form a master self to which anomalous secondary selves may be compared for quality. Even as they are ever trading places or running together within us, clearly cut or amorphous, the experience of these biological twitterings makes it nearly impossible to doubt that they will stay with us as far as we can see into the future. Ask any couple who cannot imagine being without each other, a vital fiction without which, besides the fact that it often leads to procreation, no society could exist. It would have no reason to do so, because reason is merely the mouthpiece of emotion. Hume, who specialized in detaining his readers with obvious but unspoken realities, wrote in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) that "reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions." To free reason from this slavery would mean our becoming rationalists without a cause, paralytics crippled by mentation.

虽然情感的强度与性质各不相同，但它们在连结中的表现必须显得始终稳定，就像一杯混合饮品必须以特定原料、按相对固定的比例调制，才能调出一杯伏特加马提尼或凤梨可乐达。结合在一起时，我们的情感表面上塑造出一个“主我”，以便将其中那些异常的“次我”拿来作质量上的比较。即使这些情感不断在我们体内更换位置、彼此交融，有时界限分明，有时模糊不清，但这种生物性的低语体验，让人几乎不可能怀疑它们会陪伴我们，直至未来尽头。问任何一对无法想象没有彼此的伴侣便可得知——这是一个关键的虚构，若没有它，不仅社会无法延续（因为它常常导致生殖繁衍），也根本没有存在的理由。毕竟理性仅仅是情感的代言。休谟——他擅长用显而易见却未被直言的事实拖住读者——在《人性论》（1739–1740）中写道：“理性是激情的奴隶，而且理性理应只是激情的奴隶。” 若要将理性从这种奴役中解放出来，就意味着我们将变成毫无缘由的理性主义者，成了被思维麻痹的瘫痪者。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 In speaking of depression and its defining effect of driving its victim to the point of caring nothing for anything, the American talk-show host Dick Cavett once remarked that "when you're downed by this affliction, if there were a curative magic wand on the table eight feet away, it would be too much trouble to go over and pick it up." No better elucidation has ever been proffered vis-à-vis the uselessness of reason in the absence of emotion. In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is no where to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without meaning-charged emotions keeping your brain on the straight and narrow, you would lose your balance and fall into an abyss of lucidity. And for a conscious being, lucidity is a cocktail without ingredients, a crystal clear concoction that will leave you hung over with reality. In perfect knowledge there is only perfect nothingness, which is perfectly painful if what you want is meaning in your life.

在谈及抑郁症及其决定性影响——将受害者逼到对任何事都不再关心的地步时，美国脱口秀主持人迪克·卡维特曾说过：“当你被这种病痛击倒时，即便桌子上、仅仅八英尺远的地方放着一根能治愈的魔杖，你也会觉得走过去拿起来太麻烦了。”关于在缺乏情感的情况下理性的无用性，再没有比这更好的阐释了。

在抑郁的卧倒状态中，你的信息收集系统会整合情报，并向你汇报如下事实： (1) 没有什么可做的； (2) 没有什么地方可去； (3) 没有什么可成为的； (4) 没有什么人可认识的。

如果没有被意义赋值的情感把大脑维系在正确的轨道上，你就会失去平衡，坠入清醒的深渊。对一个有意识的存在来说，清醒是一杯没有原料的鸡尾酒——一种晶莹剔透的混合物，却只会让你在现实中宿醉。在完美的知识中，存在的只是完美的虚无，而如果你所追求的是生命的意义，那么这种虚无便是彻彻底底的痛苦。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 William S. Burroughs said it rightly in his journals. Using his streetwise voice, he wrote: "Love? What is it? The most natural painkiller what there is." You may become curious, though, about what happened to that painkiller should depression take hold and expose your love—whatever its object—as just one of the many intoxicants that muddled your consciousness of the human tragedy. You may also want to take a second look at whatever struck you as a person, place, or thing of "beauty," a quality that lives only in the neurotransmitters of the beholder. (Aesthetics? What is it? A matter for those not depressed enough to care nothing about anything, that is, those who determine almost everything that is supposed to matter to us. Protest as you like, neither art nor an aesthetic view of life are distractions granted to everyone.) In depression, all that once seemed beautiful, or even startling and dreadful, is nothing to you. The image of a cloud-crossed moon is not in itself a purveyor of anything mysterious or mystical; it is only an ensemble of objects represented to us by our optical apparatus and perhaps processed as a memory.

威廉·S·伯罗斯在他的日记中说得很对。他用街头般的口吻写道：“爱情？那是什么？这是最天然的止痛剂。”

然而，你可能会好奇，如果抑郁症降临，将你的爱情——无论对象为何——暴露为众多麻痹你对人类悲剧认知的迷醉剂之一，这种“止痛剂”会发生什么。你也可能想再仔细看看那些曾让你觉得“美丽”的人、地点或事物——这种美感只存在于欣赏者的神经递质之中。（美学？那是什么？是那些没有深陷抑郁、不会对任何事漠不关心的人才关心的事情，也就是那些决定几乎所有对我们应当重要之事的人。你尽可抗议，但艺术或人生的美学观并非每个人都有的消遣。）

在抑郁中，曾经看起来美丽的，甚至令人震撼或恐惧的事物，对你来说都毫无意义。一轮被云遮掩的月亮，本身并不传递任何神秘或神奇之感；它只是通过我们的视觉系统呈现给我们的对象集合，也许再经过记忆的加工。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really "out there" cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it.

这是抑郁者所学到的伟大教训：世上没有任何事物本身具有强制力。无论外界究竟存在什么，都无法自发地成为一种情感体验。这一切不过是空洞的事务，仅仅带有化学上的声望。没有什么是好或坏，是可取或不可取，抑或具有其他任何属性的——一切之所以如此，都是因为我们体内的“实验室”产生了我们赖以生存的情感。而依赖情感而生存，就是以任意、失真的方式生活——赋予那些本无意义的事物以意义。然而，还有其他生活方式吗？没有源源不断运转的情感机制，一切都将停滞不前。没有什么可做的，没有什么地方可去，没有什么可成为的，也没有什么人可认识。

选择是清晰的：要么虚假地活着，成为情感的棋子；要么如实地活着，成为抑郁者，或成为那些了解抑郁者所知的人。幸运的是，我们并不被强迫做出选择，因为两者都不是理想之选。仅凭观察人类存在，就足以证明我们的物种不会从情感主义的束缚中解脱出来，这种束缚将我们钉在幻觉之上。这或许不是理想的生活方式，但选择抑郁，就等于选择退出我们以意识所知的存在。

点击展开/折叠英语原文 Of course, individuals may recover from depression. But in that event they had better keep their consciousness of what they went through at heel. Otherwise they might start thinking that being alive is not as all right as they once thought it was when they were being shuttled about by a relatively well-constituted emotional system. The same applies to bodily systems of any kind, such as the immune system. Because when one of your systems goes haywire, you cannot function as you think you should. You may not even be able to think about anything except how much vomit, nasal mucus, phlegm, and watery stool you are discharging from your body when your immune system cannot withstand an onslaught from a viral or bacterial infection. If that is the way you were all the time, you could not go on as a well-constituted being, which means you could not go on as your old self, whatever that might have been. But chances are you will get better after one or more of your systems has gone haywire, and as a newly well-constituted being you will probably think, 'Tm back to being the real me." However, you might as truthfully think that the real you is the one who was sick, not the one with well-constituted systems working together so cooperatively that you do not even notice them. You cannot go around thinking that the sick you is the real you, though, or you would turn into someone who suffers from chronic anxiety about all the ways your systems can go haywire. And that would become the real you.

当然，个体是可能从抑郁中恢复过来的。但在这种情况下，他们最好随时保持对自己所经历过的一切的意识。否则，他们可能会开始觉得，活着并不像以前那样“没问题”，不像当初在一个相对健全的情感系统牵引下时所认为的那样。同样的道理也适用于身体的任何系统，例如免疫系统。因为当你的某一个系统失常时，你就无法按自己认为应该的方式运作。你甚至可能无法思考其他任何事情，只能关注当你的免疫系统无法抵御病毒或细菌入侵时，你的身体正在排出多少呕吐物、鼻涕、痰液和稀便。如果你一直都是那样，你就无法作为一个健全的存在继续生活，也就无法作为你的“旧自我”继续存在，无论那个旧自我曾是什么样子。

但大多数情况下，当你的一个或多个系统失常之后，你会好起来，作为一个新恢复的健全存在，你很可能会想：“我又回到真正的自己了。”然而，你也可以同样诚实地认为，真正的你是那个生病的你，而不是那些系统协同运作得如此良好，以至于你根本察觉不到的健康你。不过，你不能总想着“生病的我才是真正的我”，否则你就会变成一个因所有系统可能失常而长期焦虑的人。而那种焦虑状态，才会成为真正的你。

译者注：

  1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 被译为《天外魔花》主要是中文译名为了强调视觉冲击和恐怖感，同时迎合当时的宣传和观众心理，而不是直译。Body Snatchers 字面意思为抢夺身体的人（或寄生生物）。魔花：这里的“花”是比喻手法，把外星生物或寄生物比作“花”，即外观平常但危险异常，带有恐怖与诡异感。 ↩