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What are some practical habits of hope?
希望的一些实际习惯是什么?
Everyone has to find their own way. It could be participating in politics or joining a protest movement or practicing religion. Certainly, in Chicago, where I live, black churches are a center of hope for the community. My synagogue is social justice–oriented—the idea being that each person can do something for the community; we have gardens and produce fresh produce for the poor.
每个人都必须找到自己的方式。可以是参与政治、参加抗议运动或宗教活动。当然，在我居住的芝加哥，黑人教堂是社区的希望中心。我的犹太教堂以社会公正为导向，理念是每个人都能为社区做事情；我们有花园，为穷人生产新鲜农产品。
A big constant is the arts, which are tremendous schools of hope. Whatever the work is, even if it’s really grim, artists get us to examine the insides of people in a way that isn’t filled with disgust, that leads us to a deeper understanding.
一个很大的定数是艺术，这是极好的希望学校。无论作品是什么，即使真的很残酷，艺术家也让我们审视人内心的方式不充满厌恶，引导我们理解得更深。
I’m about to teach a course on Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. It’s a terrifying play about America and the destruction of the American dream, but it opens up something in our own community and in people that we might not have understood. Artists have a vision of humans as capacious; they don’t view people as tools, and that attitude promotes habits of hope.
我将教授阿瑟·米勒的戏剧《推销员之死》。这是一部关于美国和美国梦破灭的恐怖剧，但它在我们自己的社区和人群中打开了一些我们之前可能不理解的东西。艺术家们认为人类是广阔的；他们不把人看作工具，这种态度促进了希望的习惯。
But so does philosophy. The liberal arts education is such a great school of citizenship because it has the imaginative part, as well as the Socratic part. Socratic philosophy gets you to a model of rational, respectful debate. If you’re in a philosophy class, you’re not going to be yelling at somebody; you’re going to be dissecting their argument and trying to figure out what the premises are, whether the premises lead to the conclusion and, if not, what went wrong. You get into the habit of rational, respectful deliberations, and that is an important practice of hope.
而哲学也是如此。博雅教育之所以是一所伟大的公民学校，是因为它既包含苏格拉底式的教育，也有想象力的教育。苏格拉底哲学把你带到一个理性的，尊重的辩论模式。如果你在上哲学课，你不会对别人大喊大叫；你要剖析他们的论点，试图找出前提是什么，前提是否能引出结论，如果不能，错在哪里。你会养成理性、尊重他人的思考习惯，这是希望的重要实践。
You talk of rational debate. How do we get back to that?
你谈到了理性辩论。我们再谈谈这一点吧?
I am currently developing a new course, Conflicting Theories of Justice and Law, for students who are polarized. I want to give them a safe space to argue together. They’ll be presented with conservative, libertarian, liberal and more radical theories, and then they can ask themselves where they fit into the debate. That is one of the most hopeful things of all—a classroom where people who differ greatly can talk with friendship and civility across tremendous divides.
我目前正在为两极分化的学生开设一门新课程，《正义与法律的冲突理论》。我想给他们一个安全的空间一起辩论。他们将面对保守主义、自由主义、自由主义和更激进的理论，然后他们可以扪心自问，自己在这场辩论中处于什么位置。这是最让人充满希望的事情之一——在一个教室里，不同的人可以跨越巨大的鸿沟，以友谊和礼貌进行交谈。
I will be co-teaching it with conservative colleagues, and that’s important because it might get students to choose a course they wouldn’t think of taking. They often vote with their feet, and they polarize themselves. Our law school is unique among the major law schools because we have the largest proportion of very conservative religious students. If you are Mormon or evangelical Christian, you will not be marginalized or vilified the way you might be at Harvard or Yale.
我将和保守的同事们共同教授这门课，这很重要，因为这可能会让学生们选择他们想不到的课程。他们经常用脚投票，使自己两极化。我们的法学院在各大法学院中独树一帜，因为我们非常保守的宗教学生比例最大。如果你是摩门教徒或福音派基督徒，那么你不会像在哈佛或耶鲁那样被边缘化或受到诋毁。
Any last thoughts on overcoming cynicism or apathy during these difficult times?
在这艰难的时代，最后再谈谈克服愤世嫉俗或冷漠的想法吧？
I think we should honor people, like Cicero, who take risks, who are willing to get involved and who are not overly self-protective. Politics is difficult and painful, and the people who get in there and do it with good grace and joy—it’s one of the most important things anyone can do.
我认为我们应该尊重西塞罗这样的人，他们敢于冒险，愿意参与其中，而且不会过度自我保护。政治是困难和痛苦的，而那些进入政治并以优雅和快乐的态度去做它的人——做了任何人都能做的最重要的事情之一。
To me, the cynical response is totally unappealing. The ancient Cynics are very different from what’s meant by cynicism today, which is thinking everything is worthless. If you think, as I do, that this is the only life you’ve got—well, if that’s not worthwhile, what is? The world has so much in it that is wonderful and beautiful—people, nature, animals. I hope that young people, in particular, do what they can to preserve the planet. It needs a lot of work if we’re going to hang on.
对我来说，这种愤世嫉俗的反应完全没有吸引力。古代的犬儒主义者与今天的犬儒主义者大不相同，他们认为一切都是毫无价值的。如果你像我一样，认为这是你唯一的生活——好吧，如果这不值得，那又有什么意义呢? 世界上有那么多美好和美丽的东西——人、自然、动物。我尤其希望年轻人尽其所能保护地球。如果我们要坚持下去，还有很长的路要走。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
