在過激的世界中堅守禮儀

As someone instilled with the British habit of automatic apology, I have often wished to be freed from the tyranny of good manners. The mildest kerfuffle tends to trigger in me an outburst of contrition, as uncontrollable as a sneezing fit. I find myself apologising in a forced high voice to the oaf who blunders into me in the street (“Sorry!”). Strangers are addressed with extravagant levels of courtesy: “Excuse me, I’m so sorry to interrupt, I wonder if you could possibly tell me the way to . . .”

作為一個被灌輸了英式自動道歉習(xí)慣的人，我常?？释用撨@種“禮儀”的暴政。最溫和的摩擦也往往會促使我不由自主地表達(dá)一長串愧意，就像打噴嚏一樣無法控制。我發(fā)現(xiàn)自己用強(qiáng)迫發(fā)出的高聲向那個在街口魯莽撞上我的傻瓜道歉(“對不起!”)。我對陌生人開口說話的禮貌達(dá)到極其夸張的程度：“不好意思，我非常抱歉地打擾您，我在揣測你有沒有可能告訴我去……的路?”

If hypocrisy is the English vice, then manners are its public face. The polite patter of pleases and thank-yous with which we embroider our speech is a ritual show of courtesy, an unthinking way of advertising solicitude for the feelings of someone doing something for one. The relentless gratitude that I display in such settings — thanking shop assistants as though they have saved my life with the Heimlich manoeuvre, not simply handed me a chip-and-pin reader — is a salve for a guilty conscience.

如果說偽善是英國人的惡習(xí)，那么禮儀就是它的公開面孔。我們用“請”和“謝謝”這些嘮嘮叨叨的禮貌用語來點綴我們的言辭，這是一種儀式性的“禮貌”展示，一種對某人為我們做了什么事而表達(dá)好意的不假思索的方式。我在這類情景下所表現(xiàn)的無盡感激之情——感謝店員就如同他/她用哈姆立克急救法(Heimlich Maneuver)救了我一命，而不僅僅是遞給了我一部刷卡機(jī)——是對內(nèi)疚良心的撫慰。

The same is true of the contrition. There is much in British history for which to be sorry — especially from those of us who are its beneficiaries — such as the slave trade and colonising large swaths of the world. For all the reasons to be patriotic — real ale, cricket, Shakespeare, Led Zeppelin — the debit side of the ledger carries some serious bad karma.

對于道歉也是一樣。在不列顛歷史上有那么多可道歉的——尤其是我們這些受益者——例如奴隸貿(mào)易和對世界大片領(lǐng)土的殖民。盡管我們有大把理由愛國——real ale啤酒、板球、莎士比亞、齊柏林飛船樂隊(Led Zeppelin)——但賬簿的借方帶有嚴(yán)重的壞“業(yè)力”(Karma)。

It is my belief that, with every “sorry” a Briton utters when he or she is bumped into, a larger sorrow goes unaddressed. To paraphrase the bard, we doth apologise too much.

我相信，英國人每一次因為被路人撞到而說“對不起”的背后，都有一個更大的悲哀沒有得到撫慰。借用莎士比亞的話，我們道歉得太多了。

Or do we? I hope you, dear reader, will permit me to explain how my attitude towards manners has undergone a shift. Having children is one reason. Barking rudely at my poor progeny in public to say “please” and “thank you” — behaving like precisely the brusque monster I am supposedly warning them off becoming — has brought home to me the need to live up to the sentiments being phrased.

難道不是嗎?親愛的讀者，我希望您能允許我向您解釋我對待禮貌的態(tài)度是如何發(fā)生轉(zhuǎn)變的。一個原因是有了孩子。在公共場合粗聲敦促我的孩子們說“請”和“謝謝”——這行為恰恰就像我理應(yīng)警告他們不要成為的那種無禮怪物——讓我明白了情緒需要被如實表達(dá)。

So did a recent encounter on the London Underground. I waved an older woman to go on the stairs ahead of me with an unctuous gesture. An onlooker thanked me so profusely, as though I were Sir Walter Raleigh flinging his cloak over the puddle for Elizabeth I to tread upon, that I was forced to interrogate the meaning of my trivial act. The woman I had waved ahead wore a hijab: she was evidently Muslim. My very minor display of goodwill took place in a much larger context of ill will and intolerance, and had been noted as such.

另一個類似的原因是我最近在倫敦地鐵上的一次遭遇。我用圓滑的手勢向一名老婦揮了揮手，示意她在我之前上樓梯。結(jié)果一名旁觀者一個勁地向我表達(dá)感激，就好像我是沃爾特•羅利爵士(Sir Walter Raleigh)，把自己的斗篷脫下來蓋在水坑上讓伊麗莎白一世踩過去，以至于我不得不檢討自己這一瑣碎行為的意義。我揮手讓她先過的那名婦女包著頭巾，顯然是穆斯林。我展現(xiàn)的非常微小的善意發(fā)生在一個充滿惡意和不寬容的大背景下，也在這個背景下被人注意到。

The public realm is full of spite and bile these days. Debate descends into shouting matches, with neither side prepared to concede an inch. The opening up of forums for voices to be heard on social media and the internet has had the consequence of making everyone think they are cleverer than everyone else, an illogical state of affairs.

如今公共領(lǐng)域充滿怨恨和敵意。辯論降格為對罵，雙方都不愿意退讓一寸。社交媒體和互聯(lián)網(wǎng)開啟了讓人們的聲音被聽到的論壇，其后果是讓每個人都認(rèn)為自己比別人更聰明，這是一種不合邏輯的狀態(tài)。

“One’s own ego seems so incomparably more sensitive, more perceptive, wiser and more profound than other people’s,” the philosopher Bertrand Russell noted. “Yet there must be very few of whom this is true, and it is not likely that oneself is one of those few. There is nothing like viewing oneself statistically as a means both to good manners and to good morals.”

“人的自我似乎無可比擬地比別人更加敏感、更加敏銳、更加睿智和更加深刻。”哲學(xué)家伯特蘭•羅素(Bertrand Russell)曾指出，“然而這一點必然只適用于極少數(shù)人，一般人不太可能是這少數(shù)人之一。要同時達(dá)到良好的禮儀和道德境界，沒有什么比從統(tǒng)計學(xué)視角觀察自己更有效的手段了。”

Properly deployed, politeness is a kind of activism. It insists that we should treat each other kindly, a word derived from “kin”. Leonard Cohen’s death last week brought this home to me. In concerts, he serenaded his audience on bended knee and told self-deprecating jokes. Each one of the thousands observing him felt as though they were individually valued. In him, good manners and good morals were as one.

若能正確使用，禮貌是一種能動性。它堅持要求我們友善地對待彼此，這是一個由“親人”延伸而來的詞。萊昂納德•科恩(Leonard Cohen，見上圖)最近去世提醒了我這一點。在音樂會上，他曾彎下雙膝為觀眾吟唱，還開了些自嘲的玩笑。在成千上萬的觀眾中，每一個人都感到自己得到個別的珍視。在他身上，良好的禮儀和道德渾然天成。

I shall do my best to follow his example. It is time to reclaim politeness from hypocrisy in order to wield it against rudeness.

我會盡力以他為榜樣。是時候?qū)⒍Y貌從偽善中解放，以便用其對抗粗魯。