合作共赢的生命奥义

?此段摘自《个人与群体事件的本质》第868节

本书的大多数读者都可能以这样或那样的方式，被自己或他人视为理想主义者。不过当然，在这些书页里，我们呈现了好几幅远非理想的社会与政治的现实画面。我们试图为你们勾勒出诸多信念——它们破坏了你们作为个体的私人健全性，而且导致了目前群体世界里非常明确的问题。

再说一次，很少有人真的从一个邪恶的出发点去做事。在医学、科学或宗教领域里任何不幸的情况，并非起因于任何想要破坏“理想”的坚定努力，却是因为人们往往相信，在追求理想时可以不择手段。

在你们的社会里，当科学仿佛背叛了你时，那是因为它的手段配不上它的意图——如此的不相配，如此地违背了科学的主要目的，以至于那些手段本身几乎构成了一种无法识别的、暗中为害的反科学态度。当然，这也同样适用于医学，在拯救生命的高尚目的之下，医学手段常常导致相当卑鄙的实验，以至于为了拯救更多的生命而去毁灭生命（注：赛斯是指将小白鼠等动物用于科学实验的做法）。从表面上看，有时这种手段虽令人遗憾但确有必要，但其更深层的影响远远超过了任何短期利益，因为这种手段让人看不到生命的神圣，并开始轻蔑地对待生命。

你们常常会姑息应大加谴责的行为——如果你们认为那样做是为了更大的善。你们有一种倾向，去寻找彻头彻尾的邪恶，以“善恶力量”的角度去思考。而且我相当肯定，我的许多读者都确信邪恶力量的存在。恶并不以那种方式存在。而这就是为什么如此多看似理想主义的人会参与应大加谴责的行为，同时却告诉自己这种行为是合理的，因为它们是达到一个善良目的的手段。

这就是为什么狂热分子会觉得他们的行为是合理的。当你沉迷于非黑即白的思维时，你就对不起你的理想。每一个不符合理想的行为都在从核心处开始瓦解那个理想。我说过好几次，如果你感到无价值或无力去行动，而你又是心怀理想的，那么你也许会开始觉得那理想存在于如此遥远的未来，以至于必须采取你可能本不会采取的步骤去实现它。当发生这种情况时，理想总是被侵蚀。如果你要做一个真正的脚踏实地的理想主义者，那么，你沿途所采取的每一步都必须配得上你的目标。

在你们的国家，自由企业制度陷在奇怪的起源里。它建立在每个人都有权追求平等且有价值的生活这一民主信念上。但是，这个信念也渐渐与达尔文适者生存的理念结合在一起，接着与这样的信念连接起来：每个人必须以牺牲他人为代价来谋求自己的利益。它捆绑了这样一个相当错误的概念：任一物种的所有成员都在彼此竞争，进一步说，每个物种又在与其他物种竞争。

供求“定理”是个错误的概念，它基于一个相当贬抑的信念——人的基本天性是贪婪的。过去，你们处理国家的土地，就好像人类是“最适于生存的”，有权以牺牲其他所有物种、牺牲这片土地为代价来生存。这个国家的理想在过去与现在都很好：每个人都有权利有尊严地追求平等而有价值的存在。不过，你们采取的手段却腐蚀了那个理想，对达尔文原则的公开诠释很不幸地转移到了经济领域，转移到作为政治动物的人类形象上。

宗教与科学都同样否认其他物种有任何真正的意识。当人谈到生命的神圣性时——在心情好的情况下——他讲的只是人类的生命。你们与其他物种并没有竞争，与自己的同类也没有任何天然的竞争。自然世界也完全不是各物种之间竞争的结果。如果是那样的话，你们根本就不会有什么世界了。

作为一个人，你以肉身存在，是因为人类与其他物种之间在生物层面存在着无与伦比的合作，而在更深的层面，则是因为所有物种的细胞之间存在着细胞联盟。价值完成是一种存在于每个意识单位之内的心理及生理倾向，这一倾向将意识单位推向它自己最大的圆满，由此，个体的圆满也增进了这种意识单位彼此之间可能存在的最好发展。这种倾向在物质的框架下和框架内运作，也在物质框架之上运作，但我在这儿讲的是合作的本质，价值完成将这一本质赋予了你们物质世界之内的所有意识单位。

当你们相信竞争时，竞争变得不仅是一个现实，而且成为一个理想。儿童被教导彼此竞争。儿童自然地与自己“竞争”， 渴望以新的表现超越旧的表现。可是，在所有的活动层面，竞争都被提升为一种理想。这就像是你必须看着别人，才知道自己做得如何——当你被教导不要相信自己的能力时，你当然会过分需要别人的意见了。显然，我说的并不是任何游戏性的竞争，却是一种决然的、激烈的、拼命的，有时几乎致命的竞争，在这种竞争中，一个人的价值是由他除掉了多少人来决定的。

这也被带到经济、政治、医学、科学乃至宗教里。因此，我想再强调这样一个事实——生命的确是一种合作性的冒险，而朝着理想迈出的每一步，其本身也必须是促进生命的。

Most readers of this book can be considered idealists in one way or another by themselves or others. Yet certainly in these pages we have presented several pictures of social and political realities that are far from ideal. We have tried to outline for you many beliefs that undermine your private integrity as individuals, and contribute to the very definite troubles current in the mass world.

Very few people really act, again, from an evil intent. Any unfortunate situations in the fields of medicine, science, or religion result not from any determined effort to sabotage the "idea," but instead happen because men often believe that any means is justified in the pursuit of the ideal.

When science seems to betray you, in your society, it does so because its methods are unworthy of its intent — so unworthy and so out of line with science's prime purpose that the methods themselves almost amount to an insidious antiscientific attitude that goes all unrecognized. The same applies to medicine, of course, when in its worthy purpose to save life, its methods often lead to quite unworthy experimentation, so that life is destroyed for the sake of saving, say, a greater number of lives. On the surface level, such methods appear sometimes regrettable but necessary, but the deeper implications far outdo any temporary benefits, for through such methods men lose sight of life's sacredness, and begin to treat it contemptuously.

You will often condone quite reprehensible acts if you think they were committed for the sake of a greater good. You have a tendency to look for outright evil, to think in terms of "the powers of good and evil," and I am quite sure that many of my readers are convinced of evil's force. Evil does not exist in those terms, and that is why so many seemingly idealistic people can be partners in quite reprehensible actions, while telling themselves that such acts are justified, since they are methods toward a good end.

That is why fanatics feel justified in their actions. When you indulge in such black-and-white thinking, you treat your ideals shabbily. Each act that is not in keeping with that ideal begins to unravel the ideal at its very core. As I have stated several times, if you feel unworthy, or powerless to act, and if you are idealistic, you may begin to feel that the ideal exists so far in the future that it is necessary to take steps you might not otherwise take to achieve it. And when this happens, the ideal is always eroded. If you want to be a true practicing idealist, then each step that you take along the way must be worthy of your goal.

In your country, the free enterprise system is immersed in strange origins. It is based upon the democratic belief in each individual's right to pursue a worthy and equitable life. But that also became bound up with Darwinian ideas of the survival of the fittest, and with the belief, then, that each individual must seek his or her own good at the expense of others, and by the quite erroneous conception that all of the members of a given species are in competition with each other, and that each species is in further competition with each other species.

The "laws" of supply and demand are misconceptions based upon a quite uncomplimentary belief in man's basic greedy nature. In the past you treated the land in your country as if your species, being the "fittest," had the right to survive at the expense of all other species, and at the expense of the land itself. The ideal of the country was and is an excellent one: the right of each individual to pursue an equitable, worthy existence, with dignity. The means, however, have helped erode that ideal, and the public interpretation of Darwin's principles was, quite unfortunately, transferred to the economic area, and to the image of man as a political animal.

Religion and science alike denied other species any real consciousness. When man spoke of the sacredness of life — in his more expansive moods — he referred to human life alone. You are not in competition with other species, nor are you in any natural competition with yourselves. Nor is the natural world in any way the result of competitiveness among species. If that were the case you would have no world at all.

Individually, you exist physically because of the unsurpassed cooperation that exists just biologically between your species and all others, and on deeper levels because of the cellular affiliations that exist among the cells of all species. Value fulfillment is a psychological and physical propensity that exists in each unit of consciousness, propelling it toward its own greatest fulfillment in such a way that its individual fulfillment also adds to the best possible development on the part of each other such unit of consciousness. This propensity operates below and within the framework of matter. It operates above as well, but I am here concerned with the cooperative nature with which value fulfillment endows all units of consciousness within your physical world.

While you believed in competition, then competition became not only a reality but an ideal. Children are taught to compete against each other. The child naturally "competes" against herself or himself in an urge to outdo old performance with new. Competition, however, has been promoted as the ideal at all levels of activity. It is as if you must look at others to see how you are doing — and when you are taught not to trust your own abilities, then of course you need the opinions of others overmuch. I am not speaking of any playful competition, obviously, but of a determined, rigorous, desperate, sometimes almost deadly competition, in which a person's value is determined according to the number of individuals he or she has shunted aside.

This is carried through in economics, politics, medicine, the sciences, and even the religions. So I would like to reinforce the fact that life is indeed a cooperative venture, and that all the steps taken toward the ideal must of themselves be life-promoting.