关于冲动的误区

此段摘自《个人与群体事件的本质》第8章“
人、分子、力量与自由意志”第857节

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跟随冲动，从心而行

人类对冲动的本质有诸多误解，所以我们将在此颇为透彻地讨论它。只有那些信赖自身自发性的存在，信赖冲动利他性的人，才具足自觉的智慧，由恒河沙数的可能未来中选择最有利的事件——因为冲动不但把人的最大利益纳入考量，而且也照顾到所有其他的物种。

为了能让一般大众理解，我用了“冲动”这个词，这样一来，可以说分子和质子都有冲动。不存在只对刺激做出反应的意识，每一种意识都有成长与价值完成的冲动。对你们许多人而言，冲动似乎是捉摸不定、自相矛盾、毫无道理的，是人体的化学物质任意混合的结果；冲动似乎必须被压制下去，就像有些人用杀虫剂喷蚊子一样，要以同样的致命意图将之消灭。

杀虫剂杀死的往往不只是蚊子，其效果可以影响深远，而且可能有灾难性的后果。然而，把冲动看作是混乱、无意义的——或者更糟，认为它不利于有序的生活——这的确代表了一种非常危险的态度；它导致了你们许多其他的问题，常常扭曲了冲动的本质。每个人都燃烧着去行动的欲望，去采取有益而利他的行动，去切实地在这个世界上留下自己的印记。当这种去行动的自然冲动在一段时间内不断被否定，当冲动不被信任，当一个人感觉在与自己的冲动作战，从而关掉了所有可能的行动之门时，那么，那种张力就会爆炸，并冲向任何仍开放的逃生之路。

我并不是在说像“压抑”那样的事，一如它被心理学家所使用的那样，而是在谈一个深远得多的问题。这个问题是：你们如此不信赖自己，以至于任何一种自然冲动都变得不可信了。你们试图给自己打预防针来预防自己——当然，这是一种几乎不可能的情况。你们料想自己的动机是自私的，因为你们一直被如此教导，而当你们捉到自己怀有不友善的动机时，甚至颇感欣慰，因为你们心想，至少自己是正常的。

当你们发现自己心怀善良的动机时，你们不信任它们，而会想：“当然，在这表面的利他主义之下，必然有逃过我注意的某些邪恶的、或至少是自私的动机。”而作为一个族类，你们永远在检视自己的冲动，却绝少检视你们的智力成果。

There is much misunderstanding concerning the nature of impulses, so we will discuss them rather thoroughly. Only people who trust their spontaneous beings and the altruistic nature of their impulses can be consciously wise enough to choose from a myriad of probable futures the most promising events — for again, impulses take not only people's best interest into consideration, but those of all other species.

I am using the term "impulses" for the understanding of the general public, and in those terms molecules and protons have impulses. No consciousness simply reacts to stimuli, but has its own impulse toward growth and value fulfillment. It seems to many of you that impulses are unpredictable, contradictory, without reason, the result of erratic mixtures of body chemicals, and that they must be squashed with as much deadly intent as some of you might when you spray a mosquito with insecticide.

Often the insecticide kills more than the mosquito, and its effects can be far-reaching, and possibly have disastrous consequences. However, to consider impulses as chaotic, meaningless — or worse, detrimental to an ordered life — represents a very dangerous attitude indeed; an attempt that causes many of your other problems, an attempt that does often distort the nature of impulses. Each person is fired by the desire to act, and to act beneficially, altruistically, to practically put his stamp, or her stamp, upon the world. When such natural impulses toward action are constantly denied over a period of time, when they are distrusted, when an individual feels in battle with his or her own impulses and shuts down the doors toward probable actions, then that intensity can explode into whatever avenue of escape is still left open.

I am not speaking of anything like "repression," as it is used by psychologists, but a far deeper issue: one in which the very self is so distrusted that natural impulses of any kind become suspect. You try to inoculate yourselves against yourselves — a nearly impossible situation, of course. You expect your motives to be selfish because you have been told that they are, and so when you catch yourselves with unkind motives you are almost comforted, because you think that at least you are behaving normally.

When you find yourself with good motives, you distrust them. "Surely,"you think, "beneath this seeming altruism, there must indeed be some nefarious, or at best selfish, motives that escape me." As a people you are always examining your impulses, and yet you rarely examine the fruits of your intellects.

编译：Laujenny婷/   美编：周周

《赛斯说●第124期》

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