【TED演讲】我们能从恐惧中学到什么(7/7)
想象一下你是在浩瀚的太平洋上遇到了海难的水手。你有三种选择来拯救自己和难友——但是每个选择都可能有可怕的后果。你如何抉择？通过讲述捕鲸船ESSEX号的故事，小说家卡伦·汤普森·沃克给我们展示了恐惧如何推动我们的想象，如何迫使我们想象将来的可能性以及如何应对他们。Karen Thompson Walker
Fiction writer Karen Thompson Walker explores the connection between fear and the imagination.
注：视频与音频不一致，以音频为主。
【全文听写】
【HINTS】
Vladimir Nabokov
Tahiti
Melville
http://t1.g.hjfile.cn/listen/201302/201302201201336555470.mp3The novelist Vladimir Nabokov said that the best reader has a combination of two very different temperaments, the artistic and the scientific. A good reader has an artist's passion, a willingness to get caught up in the story, but just as importantly, the reader also needs the coolness of judgment of a scientist, which acts to temper and complicate the reader's intuitive reactions to the story. As we've seen, the men of the Essex had no trouble with the artistic part. They dreamed up a variety of horrifying scenarios. The problem was that they listened to the wrong story. Of all the narratives their fears wrote, they responded only to the most lurid, the most vivid, the one that was easiest for their imaginations to picture: cannibals. But perhaps if they'd been able to read their fears more like a scientist, with more coolness of judgment, they would have listened instead to the less violent but the more likely tale, the story of starvation, and headed for Tahiti, just as Melville's sad commentary suggests.
And maybe if we all tried to read our fears, we too would be less often swayed by the most salacious among them. Maybe then we'd spend less time worrying about serial killers and plane crashes, and more time concerned with the subtler and slower disasters we face: the silent buildup of plaque in our arteries, the gradual changes in our climate. Just as the most nuanced stories in literature are often the richest, so too might our subtlest fears be the truest. Read in the right way, our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out. Properly read, our fears can offer us something as precious as our favorite works of literature: a little wisdom, a bit of insight and a version of that most elusive thing -- the truth.小说家弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫（Vladimir Nabokov）说最好的读者能把两种截然不同的性格结合起来，一个是艺术气质，一个是科学精神。好的读者有艺术家的热情，愿意融入故事当中，但是同样重要的是，这些读者还要有科学家的冷静判断，这能帮助他们稳定情绪并分析其对故事的直觉反应。我们可以看出来，ESSEX上的人在艺术部分一点问题都没有。他们梦想到一系列恐怖的场景。问题在于他们听从了一个错误的故事。所有他们恐惧中他们只对其中最耸人听闻，最生动的故事，也是他们想象中最早出现的场景：食人族。也许，如果他们能像科学家那样稍微冷静一点解读这个故事，如果他们能听从不太惊悚但是更可能发生的半路饿死的故事，他们可能就会直奔塔西提群岛，如梅尔维尔充满惋惜的评论所建议的那样。
也许如果我们都试着解读自己的恐惧，我们就能少被其中的一些幻象所迷惑。我们也就能少花一点时间在为系列杀手或者飞机失事方面的担忧，而是更多的关心那些悄然而至的灾难：动脉血小板的逐渐堆积，气候的逐渐变迁。如同文学中最精妙的故事通常是最丰富的故事，我们最细微的恐惧才是最真实的恐惧。用正确的方法的解读，我们的恐惧就是我们想象力赐给我们的礼物，借此一双慧眼，让我们能管窥未来甚至影响未来。如果能得到正确的解读，我们的恐惧能和我们最喜欢的文学作品一样给我们珍贵的东西：一点点智慧，一点点洞悉以及对最玄妙东西——真相的诠释。
——翻译来源：TED官网
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