The question my title poses, of course, is the one that is classically aimed at humanities majors. What practical valu e could there possibly be in studying literature or art or philosophy? So you must be wondering why I'm bothering to r aise it here, at Stanford, this renowned citadel of science and technology. What doubt can there be that the world wil l offer you many opportunities to use your degree?
（学习文学、艺术或哲学能有什么用呢？所以你肯定纳闷，我为什么在在以科技堡垒而闻名的斯坦福提出这个问题呢？在大学学位给人带来众多机会的问题上还有什么可怀疑的吗？）
But that's not the question I'm asking. By "do" I don't mean a job, and by "that" I don't mean your major. We are more than our jobs, and education is more than a major. Edu cation is more than college, more even than the totality of your formal schooling, from kindergarten through graduate school. By "What are you going to do," I mean, what kind of life are you going to lead? And by "that," I mean everythi ng in your training, formal and informal, that has brought you to be sitting here today, and everything you're going t o be doing for the rest of the time that you're in school.
（但那不是我提出的问题。这里的“做”并不是指工作，“那”并不是指你的专业。我们不仅仅是要个工作，教育不仅仅是学一门专业。教育也不仅仅是上大学，甚至也不仅是从幼儿园到研究生院的正规学校教育。我说的“你要做什么”的意思是你要过什么样的生活？我所说的“那”指的是你得到的正规或非正规的任何训练，那些把你送到这里来的东西，你在学校的剩余时间里将要做的任何事。）We should start by talking about how you did, in fact, get here. You got here by getting very good at a certain se t of skills. Your parents pushed you to excel from the time you were very young. They sent you to good schools, where the encouragement of your teachers and the example of your peers helped push you even harder. Your natural aptitudes w ere nurtured so that, in addition to excelling in all your subjects, you developed a number of specific interests that you cultivated with particular vigor. You did extracurricu lar activities, went to afterschool programs, took private lessons. You spent summers doing advanced courses at a loca l college or attending skill-specific camps and workshops. You worked hard, you paid attention, and you tried your ver y best. And so you got very good at math, or piano, or lacr osse, or, indeed, several things at once.
（我们不妨先来讨论你是如何考入斯坦福的吧。你能进入这所大学说明你在某些技能上非常出色。你的父母在你很小的时候就鼓励你追求卓越。他们送你到好学校，老师的鼓励和同伴的榜样激励你更努力地学习。除了在所有课程上都出类拔萃之外，你还注重修养的提高，充满热情地培养了一些特殊兴趣。你用几个暑假在本地大学里预习大学课程，或参加专门技能的夏令营或训练营。你学习刻苦、精力集中、全力以赴。所以，你在数学、钢琴、曲棍球等众多方面都很出色。）
Now there's nothing wrong with mastering skills, with w anting to do your best and to be the best. What's wrong is what the system leaves out: which is to say, everything els e. I don't mean that by choosing to excel in math, say, you are failing to develop your verbal abilities to their full est extent, or that in addition to focusing on geology, you should also focus on political science, or that while you' re learning the piano, you should also be working on the fl ute. It is the nature of specialization, after all, to be s pecialized. No, the problem with specialization is that it narrows your attention to the point where all you know abou t and all you want to know about, and, indeed, all you can know about, is your specialty.
（掌握这些技能当然没有错，全力以赴成为最优秀的人也没有错。错误之处在于这个体系遗漏的地方：即任何别的东西。我并不是说因为选择钻研数学，你在充分发展话语表达能力的潜力方面就失败了；也不是说除了集中精力学习地质学之外，你还应该研究政治学；也不是说你在学习钢琴时还应该学吹笛子。毕竟，专业化的本质就是要专业性。可是，专业化的问题在于它把你的注意力限制在一个点上，即你已经知道和想知道的东西。其实，你能知道的一切就是你的专业。）
The problem with specialization is that it makes you in to a specialist. It cuts you off, not only from everything else in the world, but also from everything else in yoursel f. And of course, as college freshmen, your specialization is only just beginning. In the journey toward the success t hat you all hope to achieve, you have completed, by getting into Stanford, only the first of many legs. Three more yea rs of college, three or four or five years of law school or medical school or a Ph.D. program, then residencies or pos tdocs or years as a junior associate. In short, an ever-nar rowing funnel of specialization. You go from being a politi cal-science major to being a lawyer to being a corporate at torney focusing on taxation issues in the consumer-products industry. You go from being a biochemistry major to being
a doctor to being a cardiologist to being a cardiac surgeon who performs heart-valve replacements.
（专业化的问题是它让你成为专家，切断你与世界上其他任何东西的联系，不仅如此，还切断你与自身其他潜能的联系。当然，作为大一新生，你的专业才刚刚开始。在你走向所渴望的成功之路的过程中，进入斯坦福是你踏上的众多阶梯中的一个。再读三年大学，三五年法学院或医学院或博士，然后再干若干年住院实习生或博士后或助理教授。总而言之，进入越来越狭窄的专业化轨道。你可能从政治学专业的学生变成了律师或者公司代理人，再变成专门研究消费品领域的税收问题的公司代理人。你从生物化学专业的学生变成了博士，再变成心脏病学家，再变成专门做心脏瓣膜移植的心脏病医生。）
Again, there's nothing wrong with being those things. I t's just that, as you get deeper and deeper into the funnel, into the tunnel, it becomes increasingly difficult to reme mber who you once were. You start to wonder what happened t o that person who played piano and lacrosse and sat around with her friends having intense conversations about life an d politics and all the things she was learning in her class es. The 19-year-old who could do so many things, and was in terested in so many things, has become a 40-year-old who th
inks about only one thing. That's why older people are so b oring. "Hey, my dad's a smart guy, but all he talks about i s money and livers."
（再次，做这些事没有任何错。只不过，在你越来越深入地进入这个轨道后，再记得你最初的样子就变得越来越困难了。你开始怀念那个曾经谈钢琴和打曲棍球的人，思考那个曾经和朋友热烈讨论人生和政治以及在课堂内容的人在做什么。那个活泼能干的19岁年轻人已经变成了只想一件事的40岁中年人。难怪年长的人这么乏味无趣。“哎，我爸爸曾经是非常聪明的人，但他现在除了谈论钱和肝脏外再无其他。”）
And there's another problem. Maybe you never really wan ted to be a cardiac surgeon in the first place. It just kin d of happened. It's easy, the way the system works, to simp ly go with the flow. I don't mean the work is easy, but the choices are easy. Or rather, the choices sort of make them selves. You go to a place like Stanford because that's what smart kids do. You go to medical school because it's prest igious. You specialize in cardiology because it's lucrative. You do the things that reap the rewards, that make your pa rents proud, and your teachers pleased, and your friends im pressed. From the time you started high school and maybe ev
en junior high, your whole goal was to get into the best co llege you could, and so now you naturally think about your life in terms of "getting into" whatever's next. "Getting i nto" is validation; "getting into" is victory. Stanford, th en Johns Hopkins medical school, then a residency at the Un iversity of San Francisco, and so forth. Or Michigan Law Sc hool, or Goldman Sachs, or Mc Kinsey, or whatever. You take it one step at a time, and the next step always seems to b e inevitable.
（还有另外一个问题。或许你从来没有想过当心脏病医生，只是碰巧发生了而已。随大流最容易，这就是体制的力量。我不是说这个工作容易，而是说做出这种选择很容易。或者，这些根本就不是自己做出的选择。你来到斯坦福这样的名牌大学是因为聪明的孩子都这样。你考入医学院是因为它的地位高，人人都羡慕。你选择心脏
病学是因为当心脏病医生的待遇很好。你做那些事能给你带来好处，让你的父母感到骄傲，令你的老师感到高兴，也让朋友们羡慕。从你上高中开始，甚至初中开始，你的唯一目标就是进入最好的大学，所以现在你会很自然地从“进入下个阶段”的角度看待人生。“进入”就是能力的证明，“进入”就是胜利。先进入斯坦福，然后是约翰霍普金斯医学院，再进入旧金山大学做实习医生等。或者进入密歇根法学院，或高盛集团（Goldman Sachs）或麦肯锡公司（McKinsey）或别的什么地方。你迈出了这一步，下一步似乎就必然在等着你。）
Or maybe you did always want to be a cardiac surgeon. Y ou dreamed about it from the time you were 10 years old, ev en though you had no idea what it really meant, and you sta yed on course for the entire time you were in school. You r efused to be enticed from your path by that great experienc e you had in AP history, or that trip you took to Costa Ric a the summer after your junior year in college, or that ter rific feeling you got taking care of kids when you did your rotation in pediatrics during your fourth year in medical school.
（也许你确实想当心脏病学家。十岁时就梦想成为医生，即使你根本不知道医生意味着什么。你在上学期间全身心都在朝着这个目标前进。你拒绝了上大学预修历史课时的美妙体验的诱惑，也无视你在医学院第四年的儿科学轮流值班时照看孩子的可怕感受。）
But either way, either because you went with the flow or because you set your course very early, you wake up one day, maybe 20 years later, and you wonder what happened: how yo u got there, what it all means. Not what it means in the "b ig picture," whatever that is, but what it means to you. Wh y you're doing it, what it's all for. It sounds like a clic
hé, this "waking up one day," but it's called having a midl ife crisis, and it happens to people all the time.
（但不管是什么，要么因为你随大流要么因为你早就选定了道路，20年后某天醒来，你或许会纳闷到底发生了什么：你怎么变成现在这个样子，这一切意味着什么。不是它是什么，不在于它是否“大画面”而是它对你意味着什么。你为什么做它，到底为了什么。这听起来像老生常谈，但这个被称为中年危机的“有一天醒来”一直就发生在每个人身上。）
There is an alternative, however, and it may be one tha t hasn't occurred to you. Let me try to explain it by telli ng you a story about one of your peers, and the alternative that hadn't occurred to her. A couple of years ago, I part icipated in a panel discussion at Harvard that dealt with s ome of these same matters, and afterward I was contacted by one of the students who had come to the event, a young wom an who was writing her senior thesis about Harvard itself, how it instills in its students what she called self-effica cy, the sense that you can do anything you want. Self-effic acy, or, in more familiar terms, self-esteem. There are som e kids, she said, who get an A on a test and say, "I got it because it was easy." And there are other kids, the kind w
ith self-efficacy or self-esteem, who get an A on a test an d say, "I got it because I'm smart."
（不过，还有另外一种情况，或许中年危机并不会发生在你身上。让我通过告诉你们一个同伴的故事来解释我的意思吧，即她没有遭遇的情况。几年前，我在哈佛参加了一次小组讨论会，谈到这些问题。后来参加这次讨论的一个学生给我联系，这个哈佛学生正在写有关哈佛的毕业论文，讨论哈佛是如何给学生灌输她所说的“自我效能”（self-efficacy），一种相信自己能做一切的意识。自我效能或
更熟悉的说法‘自我尊重’。她说在考试中得了优秀的有些学生会说“我得优秀是因为试题很简单。”）
Again, there's nothing wrong with thinking that you got an A because you're smart. But what that Harvard student d idn't realize—and it was really quite a shock to her when I suggested it—is that there is a third alternative. True self-esteem, I proposed, means not caring whether you get a n A in the first place. True self-esteem means recognizing, despite everything that your upbringing has trained you to believe about yourself, that the grades you get—and the a wards, and the test scores, and the trophies, and the accep tance letters—are not what defines who you are.
（但另外一些学生，那种具有自我效能感或自我尊重的学生在考试中得了优秀后会说“我得优秀是因为我聪明。”再次，认为得了优秀是因为自己聪明的想法并没有任何错，不过，哈佛学生没有认识到的是他们没有第三种选择。当我指出这一点时，她十分震惊。我指出，真正的自尊意味着最初根本就不在乎成绩是否优秀。真正的自尊意味着承认你取得的成绩，虽然你在成长过程中的一切都在训练你相信自己，但奖励、成绩、奖品、录取通知书等所有这一切都不能来定义你是谁。）
She also claimed, this young woman, that Harvard studen ts take their sense of self-efficacy out into the world and become, as she put it, "innovative." But when I asked her what she meant by innovative, the only example she could co me up with was "being CEO of a Fortune 500." That's not inn ovative, I told her, that's just successful, and successful according to a very narrow definition of success. True inn ovation means using your imagination, exercising the capaci ty to envision new possibilities.
（她还说，这个年轻的女孩子说哈佛学生把他们的自我效能带到了世界上，如她所说的“创新”（innovative）。但当我问她“创新”意味着什么时，她能够想到的唯一例子不过是“世界大公司五百强的首席执行官。”我告诉她这不是创新，这只是成功，而且是根据
非常狭隘的成功定义而认定的成功而已。真正的创新意味着使用你的想象力，发挥你的潜力，创造新的可能性。）
But I'm not here to talk about technological innovation, I'm here to talk about a different kind. It's not about in venting a new machine or a new drug. It's about inventing y our own life. Not following a path, but making your own pat h. The kind of imagination I'm talking about is moral imagi nation. "Moral" meaning not right or wrong, but having to d o with making choices. Moral imagination means the capacity to envision new ways to live your life.
（但这里我并不是在谈论技术创新，不是发明新机器或者制造一种新药，我谈论的是另外一种创新，是创造你自己的生活。不是走现成的道路而是创造一条属于自己的道路。我谈论的想象力是道德想象力。“道德”在这里不是对与错，而是与选择有关。道德想象力意味着创造自己新生的能力。）
It means not just going with the flow. It means not jus t "getting into" whatever school or program comes next. It means figuring out what you want for yourself, not what you r parents want, or your peers want, or your school wants, o r your society wants. Originating your own values. Thinking your way toward your own definition of success. Not simply
accepting the life that you've been handed. Not simply acc epting the choices you've been handed. When you walk into S tarbucks, you're offered a choice among a latte and a macch iato and an espresso and a few other things, but you can al so make another choice. You can turn around and walk out. W hen you walk into college, you are offered a choice among l aw and medicine and investment banking and consulting and a few other things, but again, you can also do something els e, something that no one has thought of before.
（它意味着不随波逐流，不是下一步要“进入”什么名牌大学或研究生院。而是要弄清楚自己到底想要什么，而不是父母、同伴、学校、或社会想要什么。即确认你自己的价值观，思考迈向自己所定义的成功的道路，而不仅仅是接受别人给你的生活，不仅仅是接受别人给你的选择。当今走进星巴克咖啡馆，服务员可能让你在牛奶咖啡（latte）、加糖咖啡（macchiato）、特制咖啡（espresso）等几样东西之间做出选择。但你可以做出另外的选择，你可以转身走出去。当你进入大学，人家给你众多选择，或法律或医学或投资银行和咨询以及其他，但你同样也可以做其他事，做从前根本没有人想过的事。）
Let me give you another counterexample. I wrote an essa y a couple of years ago that touched on some of these same
points. I said, among other things, that kids at places lik e Yale or Stanford tend to play it safe and go for the conv entional rewards. And one of the most common criticisms I g ot went like this: What about Teach for America? Lots of ki ds from elite colleges go and do TFA after they graduate, s o therefore I was wrong. TFA, TFA—I heard that over and ov er again. And Teach for America is undoubtedly a very good thing. But to cite TFA in response to my argument is precis ely to miss the point, and to miss it in a way that actuall y confirms what I'm saying. The problem with TFA—or rather, the problem with the way that TFA has become incorporated into the system—is that it's just become another thing to get into.
（让我再举一个反面的例子。几年前我写过一篇涉及同类问题的文章。我说，那些在耶鲁和斯坦福这类名校的孩子往往比较谨慎，去追求一些稳妥的奖励。我得到的最常见的批评是：教育项目“为美国而教”（Teach for America）如何？从名校出来的很多学生毕业后很多参与这个教育项目，因此我的观点是错误的。我一再听到TFA 这个术语。“为美国而教”当然是好东西，但引用这个项目来反驳我的观点恰恰是不得要领，实际上正好证明了我想说的东西。“为美国而教”的问题或者“为美国而教”已经成为体系一部分的问题是它已经成为另外一个需要“进入”的门槛。）
In terms of its content, Teach for America is completel y different from Goldman Sachs or McKinsey or Harvard Medic al School or Berkeley Law, but in terms of its place within the structure of elite expectations, of elite choices, it is exactly the same. It's prestigious, it's hard to get int o, it's something that you and your parents can brag about, it looks good on your résumé, and most important, it repre sents a clearly marked path. You don't have to make it up y ourself, you don't have to do anything but apply and do the work —just like college or law school or McKinsey or what ever. It's the Stanford or Harvard of social engagement. It 's another hurdle, another badge. It requires aptitude and diligence, but it does not require a single ounce of moral imagination.
（从其内容来看，“为美国而教”完全不同于高盛或者麦肯锡公司或哈佛医学院或者伯克利法学院，但从它在精英期待的体系中的地位来说，完全是一样的。它享有盛名，很难进入，是值得你和父母夸耀的东西，如果写在简历上会很光彩，最重要的是，它代表了清晰标记的道路。你根本不用自己创造，什么都不用做，只需申请然后按要求做就行了，就像上大学或法学院或麦肯锡公司或别的什么。它是社会参与方面的斯坦福或哈佛，是另一个栅栏，另一枚奖章。该项目需要能力和勤奋，但不需要一丁点儿的道德想象力。）
Moral imagination is hard, and it's hard in a completely di fferent way than the hard things you're used to doing. And not only that, it's not enough. If you're going to invent y our own life, if you're going to be truly autonomous, you a lso need courage: moral courage. The courage to act on your values in the face of what everyone's going to say and do to try to make you change your mind. Because they're not go ing to like it. Morally courageous individuals tend to make the people around them very uncomfortable. They don't fit in with everybody else's ideas about the way the world is s upposed to work, and still worse, they make them feel insec ure about the choices that they themselves have made—or fa iled to make. People don't mind being in prison as long as no one else is free. But stage a jailbreak, and everybody e lse freaks out.
（道德想象力是困难的，这种困难与你已经习惯的困难完全不同。不仅如此，光有道德想象力还不够。如果你要创造自己的生活，如果你想成为真正的独立思想者，你还需要勇气：道德勇气。不管别人说什么，有按自己的价值观行动的勇气，不会因为别人不喜欢而试图改变自己的想法。具有道德勇气的个人往往让周围的人感到不舒服。他们和其他人对世界的看法格格不入，更糟糕的是，让别人对自己已经做出的选择感到不安全或无法做出选择。只要别人也不享受
自由，人们就不在乎自己被关进监狱。可一旦有人越狱，其他人都会跟着跑出去。）
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus famously say, about growing up in Irel and in the late 19th century, "When the soul of a man is bo rn in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it ba ck from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, re ligion. I shall try to fly by those nets."
（在《青年艺术家的肖像》中，詹姆斯?乔伊斯（James Joyc e）让主人公斯蒂芬?迪达勒斯（Stephen Dedalus）就19世纪末期的爱尔兰的成长环境说出了如下名言“当一个人的灵魂诞生在这个国家时，有一张大网把它罩住，防止它飞翔。你会给我谈论民族性、语言和宗教。我想冲出这些牢笼。”）
Today there are other nets. One of those nets is a term that I've heard again and again as I've talked with studen ts about these things. That term is "self-indulgent." "Isn' t it self-indulgent to try to live the life of the mind whe n there are so many other things I could be doing with my d egree?" "Wouldn't it be self-indulgent to pursue painting a fter I graduate instead of getting a real job?"
（今天，我们面临的是其他的网。其中之一是我在就这些问题与学生交流时经常听到的一个术语“自我放任”。“在攻读学位过程中有这么多事要做的时候，试图按照自己的感觉生活难道不是自我放任吗？”“毕业后不去找个真正的工作而去画画难道不是自我放任吗？”）
These are the kinds of questions that young people find themselves being asked today if they even think about doin g something a little bit different. Even worse, the kinds o f questions they are made to feel compelled to ask themselv es. Many students have spoken to me, as they navigated thei r senior years, about the pressure they felt from their pee rs—from their peers—to justify a creative or intellectual life. You're made to feel like you're crazy: crazy to fors ake the sure thing, crazy to think it could work, crazy to imagine that you even have a right to try.
（这些是年轻人只要思考一下稍稍出格的事就不由自主地质问自己的问题。更糟糕的是，他们觉得提出这些问题是理所应当的。许多学生在毕业前夕的未来探索中跟我说，他们感受到来自同伴那里的压力，需要为创造性的生活或思想生活辩护。好像自己已经走火入魔了似的：抛弃确定无疑的东西是疯了，认为思想生活可行是疯了，想象你有权尝试是疯了。）
Think of what we've come to. It is one of the great te staments to the intellectual—and moral, and spiritual—po verty of American society that it makes its most intellige nt young people feel like they're being self-indulgent if they pursue their curiosity. You are all told that you're supposed to go to college, but you're also told that you'r e being "self-indulgent" if you actually want to get an ed ucation. Or even worse, give yourself one. As opposed to w hat? Going into consulting isn't self-indulgent? Going int o finance isn't self-indulgent? Going into law, like most of the people who do, in order to make yourself rich, isn' t self-indulgent? It's not OK to play music, or write essa ys, because what good does that really do anyone, but it i s OK to work for a hedge fund. It's selfish to pursue your passion, unless it's also going to make you a lot of mone y, in which case it's not selfish at all.
（想象我们现在面临的局面。这是美国社会的贫困---思想、道德和精神贫困的最明显症状，美国最聪明的年轻人竟然认为听从自己的好奇心行动就是自我放任。你们得到的教导是应该上大学，但你们同时也被告知如果真的想得到教育，那就是“自我放任”。如果你自我教育的话，更糟糕。这是什么道理？进入证券咨询业是不是自我放任？进入金融业是不是自我放任？像许多人那样进入律师界
发财是不是自我放任？搞音乐，写文章就不行，因为它不能给人带
来利益。但为风险投资公司工作就可以。追求自己的理想和激情是自私的，除非它能让你赚很多钱。那样的话，就一点儿也不自私了。）Do you see how absurd this is? But these are the nets t hat are flung at you, and this is what I mean by the need f or courage. And it's a never-ending proc ess. At that Harva rd event two years ago, one person said, about my assertion that college students needed to keep rethinking the decisi ons they've made about their lives, "We already made our de cisions, back in middle school, when we decided to be the k ind of high achievers who get into Harvard." And I thought, who wants to live with the decisions that they made when t hey were 12? Let me put that another way. Who wants to let a 12-year-old decide what they're going to do for the rest of their lives? Or a 19-year-old, for that matter?
（你看到这些观点是多么荒谬了吗？这就是罩在你们身上的网，就是我说的需要勇气的意思。这是永不停息的过程。在两年前的哈佛事件中，有个学生谈到我说的大学生需要重新思考人生决定的观点，他说“我们已经做出了决定，我们早在中学时就已经决定成为能够进入哈佛的高材生。”我在想，谁会打算按照他在12岁时做出的决定生活呢？