评论
打印
Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's places.
与这个星球上任何其他的动物不同，人类可以学习和理解未曾经历过的事情。他们可以换位思考，能够设身处地去体会他人的感受。
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.
当然，这种能力就像我在小说里虚构的魔法一样，没有邪恶之分。有人可能会利用这种能力去操纵或控制别人，也有人选择用它去了解和同情他人。
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
而很多人不愿去运用他们的想象力。他们选择舒适地生活在自己经验所及的范围内，从来不愿费心去想想如果生在别处会怎样。他们会拒绝去听别人的尖叫，不愿看一眼囚禁的笼子；对于与自身无关的苦难，他们会封闭自己的内心；他们会拒绝了解这一切。
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terror. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
我可能会受到诱惑，去嫉妒那样生活的人。但我不认为他们做的噩梦会比我更少。选择生活在狭窄的空间会导致不敢面对开阔的视野，那种生活同样会有恐惧。我认为不愿展开想象的人会看到更多的怪兽，他们往往更会感到害怕。而且，那些没有同情心的人会激活真正的怪兽。因为尽管他们自身没有作恶，但他们对于罪恶无动于衷，这已足以使他们成为作恶者的共谋。
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
18岁时，为了追寻我当时还无法解释的东西，我踏上了学习古典文学的征途并汲取了许多知识，其中一点便是希腊作家普鲁塔克所说：我们的内在修养将会改变外在的现实。
