到哪里寻找失落的理想？——追溯“犯罪”的本质

摘自《个人与群体事件的本质》
第9章 理想、个人、宗教、科学与法律

每个人天生受善意驱使，不管那善意会被扭曲成什么样子，也不管用来实现那善意的手段会被扭曲成什么样子。

正如身体渴望长大一样，人格的所有能力也渴望成长和发展。每个人都有自己的理想，而正是冲动引导着理想自然而然地进入其特定的发展道路，以同时满足个人和社会的需求。冲动提供了细节、方法、意义和定义。冲动指出了明确的表达途径——这些途径将为个人提供一种自我实现感和自然的力量感，而且将自动提供反馈，这样，这个人就会知道他对外界造成了好的影响。

如果跟随那些自然的冲动，政治、社会组织会被自动建构起来，这些组织又自然成为个人和社会发展的工具。那么，从个人行动到社会大事，冲动将以一种平顺的方式轻松相随。当你被教导去阻塞冲动、不去信任它时，那么你们的组织也被阻塞了。比如说，你只剩下一种理想化的、想要改善世界的模糊感觉，却失去了冲动带来的个人力量——你的冲动本可以借由个人能力的发展而为你的理想主义引路。你只剩下一种挥之不去甚至令人痛苦的、想要行善和改变事件的模糊愿望，却没有任何可用的方法去实现它。这导致了持续的挫败感，而如果你的理想很强大，这种情形可能会令你相当绝望。

你也许开始夸大这种广义理想和残酷现实之间的鸿沟——在现实中，周遭似乎存在着显而易见的人性 “贪婪腐败”的明证。你也许开始专注于自己的缺陷，而在日益增长的不满里，你眼中的大多数人似乎都被一种恶意所驱使。

你也许变得义愤填膺——或者更糟，满满的自以为是，于是你开始攻击所有与你意见不合的人，因为你不知道除此之外还能怎样回应自己的理想或善意。

努力让世界变得更美好——这仿佛是件不可能的事，因为你看起来没有力量，而任何你个人能行的小小善举，与这广义的理想比起来似乎如此微不足道，以至于你冷笑着否定它们，因而不去尝试建设性地使用自己的力量。你没有从自己的生活、自己的工作或自己的同事开始做起。看在上帝的份上，如果你成为一个更好的推销员、水电工、办事员或汽车推销商，那能对世界造成什么影响呢？一个人又能做什么呢？

但那正是你首先要开始努力的地方。那里，在你的工作与人际关系中，才是你与这世界的交会之处。在那些关系里，你的冲动直接影响着这个世界。

很多人确信自己是不重要的——而当每个人都有这样的感觉时，你们的行动就好像对世界没有影响。你会故意坚持理想的广义性，这样就不必在一条朝你开放的道路上践行你的理想——通过信任自己、信任冲动，并以你自己全然的正当性去影响日常生活中遇到的人。

大部分罪犯出于一种绝望感而去犯罪。他们多数有崇高的理想，却不相信它们或付诸行动。他们觉得无能为力，因此许多人怀着自以为是的愤怒或报复心，去攻击一个在他们看来自私、贪婪、病态的世界。他们眼中“人现在的样子”与理想中“人应该是的样子”似乎相距甚远，而他们一直把注意力放在差距上。

一方面，他们相信自己是邪恶的，而另一方面又确信自己不应如此。他们反应过度，常常把社会看作与善为“敌”。许多罪犯——但并非全部——与你们所认为的英雄拥有同样的特质，但不同的是，英雄有表达理想主义的手段和具体途径，而许多罪犯却发现这种途径被完全切断了。

我并不想把罪犯浪漫化，也不想合理化他们的行为。我真正想指出的是，很少有人为了实现“邪恶”的目的而去犯罪，却只是因理想未能实现而作出了扭曲的反应。

Each individual is innately driven by a good intent, however distorted that intent may become, or however twisted the means that may be taken to achieve it.

As the body wants to grow from childhood on, so all of the personality's abilities want to grow and develop. Each person has his own ideals, and impulses direct those ideals naturally into their own specific avenues of development ? avenues meant to fulfill both the individual and his society. Impulses provide specifications, methods, meanings, definitions. They point toward definite avenues of expression, avenues that will provide the individual with a sense of actualization, natural power, and that will automatically provide feedback, so that the person knows he is impressing his environment for the better.

Those natural impulses, followed, will automatically lead to political and social organizations that become both tools for individual development and implements for the fulfillment of the society. Impulses then would follow easily, in a smooth motion, from private action to social import. When you are taught to block your impulses, and to distrust them, then your organizations become clogged. You are left with vague idealized feelings of wanting to change the world for the better, for example ? but you are denied the personal power of your own impulses that would otherwise help direct that idealism by developing your personal abilities. You are left with an undefined, persisting, even tormenting desire to do good, to change events, but without having any means at your disposal to do so. This leads to lingering frustration, and if your ideals are strong the situation can cause you to feel quite desperate.

You may begin to exaggerate the gulf between this generalized ideal and the specific evidences of man's "greed and corruption" that you see so obviously about you. You may begin to concentrate upon your own lacks, and in your growing sense of dissatisfaction it may seem to you that most men are driven by a complete lack of good intent.

You may become outraged, scandalized ? or worse, filled with self-righteousness, so that you being to attack all those with whom you do not agree, because you do not know how else to respond to your own ideals, or to your own good intent.

The job of trying to make the world better seems impossible, for it appears that you have no power, and any small private beneficial actions that you can take seem so puny in contrast to this generalized ideal that you dismiss them sardonically, and so you do not try to use your power constructively. You do not begin with your own life, with your own job, or with your own associates. What difference can it make to the world if you are a better salesperson, or plumber, or office worker, or car salesman, for Christ's sake? What can one person do?

Yet that is precisely where first of all you must begin to exert yourselves. There, on your jobs and in your associations, are the places where you intersect with the world. Your impulses directly affect the world in those relationships.

Many of you are convinced that you are not important ? and while each of you feels that way it will seem that your actions have no effect upon the world. You will purposefully keep your ideals generalized, thus saving yourself from the necessity of acting upon them in the one way open to you: by trusting yourself and your impulses, and impressing those that you meet in daily life with the full validity that is your own.

Most criminals act out of a sense of despair. Many have high ideals, but ideals that have never been trusted or acted upon. They feel powerless, so that many strike out in self-righteous anger or vengeance against a world that they see as cynical, greedy, perverted. They have concentrated upon the great gaps that seem to exist between their ideals of what man should be, and their ideas of what man is.

On the one hand, they believe that the self is evil, and on the other they are convinced that the self should not be so. They react extravagantly. They often see society as the "enemy" of good. Many ? not all, now ? criminals possess the same characteristics you ascribe to heroes, except that the heroes have a means toward the expression of idealism, and specific avenues for that expression. And many criminals find such avenues cut off completely.

I do not want to romanticize criminals, or justify their actions. I do want to point out that few crimes are committed for "evil's sake," but in a distorted response to the failure of the actualization of a sensed ideal.

编译： Laujenny婷/     美编：周周

《赛斯说●第133期》

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