雙語·當呼吸化為空氣 她掃完地 我們就到里面去了

她掃完地，我們就到里面去了。艾比蓋爾走到收銀機那兒，拿起一本她放在那兒的平裝書。“拿著，”她朝我扔過來，“這本書你該看看的。你一直在讀那些特別有文化的破書，怎么就不可以看看低級趣味的東西？”那是一本五百頁的小說，《撒旦：不幸的卡斯勒醫(yī)生的心理療法與治愈》，作者杰里米·萊文。我把書拿回家，一天就看完了。這書沒什么內(nèi)涵，本應該很有趣的，但真的沒什么意思。不過里面倒是漫不經(jīng)心地提出了一個假設：思想不過就是大腦運轉(zhuǎn)的產(chǎn)物。我被這個想法震撼了，甚至動搖了我對這個世界幼稚的理解。當然這個假說一定是正確的，否則要我們的大腦干什么用呢？盡管我們擁有自由的意志，但仍然是有機生物體，大腦是我們的器官，也遵循一切物理定律！文學是人類的一大財富和意義，而通過某種方式實現(xiàn)文學價值的，就是大腦這個機器。這真是神奇的魔法。那天晚上，在自己房間里，我打開已經(jīng)翻來覆去看過好幾十遍的紅色斯坦福課程總目錄，手里拿著一支熒光筆。之前我已經(jīng)標記了很多文學課程。現(xiàn)在，我開始尋找生物和神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)科學的相關課程了。
The floors swept, we went inside. Abigail walked to the cash register and picked up a paperback she’d stashed there. “Here,” she said, tossing it at me. “You should read this. You’re always reading such high-culture crap— why don’t you try something lowbrow for once?”It was a five-hundred-page novel called Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S., by Jeremy Leven. I took it home and read it in a day. It wasn’t high culture. It should have been funny, but it wasn’t. However, it did make the throwaway assumption that the mind was simply the operation of the brain, an idea that struck me with force; it startled my naive understanding of the world. Of course, it must be true—what were our brains doing, otherwise? Though we had free will, we were also biological organisms—the brain was an organ, subject to all the laws of physics, too! Literature provided a rich account of human meaning; the brain, then, was the machinery that somehow enabled it. It seemed like magic. That night, in my room, I opened up my red Stanford course catalog, which I had read through dozens of times, and grabbed a highlighter. In addition to all the literature classes I had marked, I began looking in biology and neuroscience as well.

幾年后，我仍然沒怎么去想工作和事業(yè)，但已經(jīng)快要拿到英語文學和人體生物學的學位了。我學習的最大動力，不是成就感，而是一種求知欲，我非常認真地想要探究，是什么讓人類的生命充滿意義？我仍然認為，文學是精神生活的最高境界，而神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)科學則探索大腦最為優(yōu)雅的規(guī)律?！耙饬x”這個概念，很是讓人捉摸不定，但也難以和人與人之間的關系以及道德價值觀割裂開來。T.S.艾略特的《荒原》中就有令人難忘的詩句，深刻地表明了孤獨隔絕的生活沒有意義，以及對人情紐帶的強烈渴望。艾略特那些比喻也滲透進我自己的寫作語言。其他作家也讓我產(chǎn)生共鳴。比如納博科夫，他清醒地意識到，自己遭遇世事變遷之后，會對別人的遭遇麻木無情。康拉德，他堅定地認為人與人之間錯誤的交流溝通會對他們的生活產(chǎn)生深刻的影響。在我眼里，文學不僅描寫了別人的生活，還為我們提供了道德反思最豐富的資料。我?guī)状卧噲D涉足分析哲學，但非?？菰铮瑳]有那種亂糟糟的興奮感，也沒有真實生活的分量。
A few years later, I hadn’t thought much more about a career but had nearly completed degrees in English literature and human biology. I was driven less by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain. Meaning, while a slippery concept, seemed inextricable from human relationships and moral values. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land resonated profoundly, relating meaning-lessness and isolation, and the desperate quest for human connection. I found Eliot’s metaphors leaking into my own language. Other authors resonated as well. Nabokov, for his awareness of how our suffering can make us callous to the obvious suffering of another. Conrad, for his hypertuned sense of how miscommunication between people can so profoundly impact their lives. Literature not only illuminated another’s experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection. My brief forays into the formal ethics of analytic philosophy felt dry as a bone, missing the messiness and weight of real human life.

大學生涯中，我對人生意義進行的研究，一直非常學術，如同僧侶修道。而形成這種意義的，恰恰是人與人之間的關系，我想要去建立和加強這種關系，就和我的研究方式發(fā)生了沖突。如果說沒有自省的人生不值得過，那么沒有真正活過的人生還值得自省嗎？大二的暑假快到了，我申請了兩份工作：一個是在科學氛圍濃厚的亞特蘭大國家靈長類研究中心做實習研究員；一個是在塞拉高山營廚房打下手。塞拉高山營是一個斯坦福校友的家庭度假營地，在原始高山湖落葉湖的岸邊，緊臨埃爾多拉多國家森林公園的荒蕪原野保護區(qū)，可以飽覽荒涼空曠之美。關于這個營地，有很多文學描寫，看上去我會度過一生中最棒的暑假。說實話，申請成功的時候，我真是受寵若驚。不過，我又了解到，獼猴已經(jīng)有了初級的文化形式，這讓我十分想去靈長類研究中心一探生命意義的自然起源。換句話說，我要么去研究生命的意義，要么就去親自經(jīng)歷和體驗生命的意義。
Throughout college, my monastic, scholarly study of human meaning would conflict with my urge to forge and strengthen the human relationships that formed that meaning. If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining? Heading into my sophomore summer, I applied for two jobs: as an intern at the highly scientific Yerkes Primate Research Center, in Atlanta, and as a prep chef at Sierra Camp, a family vacation spot for Stanford alumni on the pristine shores of Fallen Leaf Lake, abutting the stark beauty of Desolation Wilderness in Eldorado National Forest. The camp’s literature promised, simply, the best summer of your life. I was surprised and flattered to be accepted. Yet I had just learned that macaques had a rudimentary form of culture, and I was eager to go to Yerkes and see what could be the natural origin of meaning itself. In other words, I could either study meaning or I could experience it.