Part of why it is so hard to understand ourselves is that people are constantly doing things to us that defy the common-sense of view of how human beings might plausibly behave around people they claim to care about.
我们很难理解自己的部分原因是,人们不断地对我们做一些违反常识的事情,常识是指人类在他们声称关心的人周围表现出貌似合理的行为。
We expect that those who might carry the title of mum or dad or husband or wife would, unless they had very clear reasons to do otherwise, show us kindness.
我们希望那些拥有父母或丈夫或妻子头衔的人,除非他们有非常明确的理由,否则得对我们表示善意。
And yet the brutal reality (which we must take on board for our own sanity) is that
然而,残酷的现实(为了我们自己的理智,我们必须接受这个现实)是,
humans are frequently beset by feelings that are so intolerable and difficult, they develop urges to pass them on to others in a version of emotional pass the parcel.
人类经常被难以忍受和困难的感觉所困扰,他们产生了将这些感觉传递给他人的冲动,以一种情感传递的方式。
Put another way, humans can end up being cruel, not for money or territory, but in the hope of alleviating their own sufferings by making someone near them suffer in their stead.
换句话说,人类可能最终变得残忍,不是为了金钱或领土,而是希望通过让身边的人代替自己受苦来减轻自己的痛苦。
Cruelty is at heart an attempt to make ourselves feel better by doing to someone else a version of what was done to us.
从本质上说,残忍是一种试图通过对别人做自己曾经做过的事来让自己感觉更好。
Amidst the seeming normality of family life, people will hence inject someone else (a spouse, a child) with a poison - an ill will, a contempt, a hostility
在看似正常的家庭生活中,人们因此会给其他人(配偶、孩子)注入毒药——恶意、轻蔑、敌意---
- which they then deny ever having put into their bloodstream and which the victim themselves can’t clearly detect, so invested are they in thinking well of those around them.
然后他们否认自己曾将其注入血液,而受害者自己也无法清楚地察觉到,所以他们会为周围的人着想。
A mother might, for example, inject her daughter with a poison that ‘says’: ‘Don’t ever succeed in your life; it would make me feel too bad about myself.’
例如,一位母亲可能会给她的女儿注入一种恶毒的言辞,会说:“在你的一生中永远不要成功; 这会让我对自己感到很难过的。”
Or a father will inject his son with poison whose meaning is: ‘I want you to fail in your career to alleviate my sense of disappointment.’
或者父亲会给儿子注入一种恶毒的言辞,其意思是:“我希望你在事业上失败,以减轻我的失望感。”
Or a spouse will inject their partner with a poison that carries the meaning: ‘I will constantly but very subtly disrespect your intelligence and your sexuality to lessen the feelings of rage and powerlessness I experienced when I was little.’
或者,配偶会给他们的伴侣注入一种恶毒的言辞,这种言辞的意思是:“我会经常但非常巧妙地不尊重你的智慧和性取向,以减轻我小时候经历的愤怒和无力感。”
Such injections wouldn’t work if they were noticed, so enormous energy goes into the cover-up.
这样的注入如果被注意到就不会起作用,所以巨大的精力被用于掩盖事实。
It’s debatable how much the injector even understands what they are up to;
被注射的人到底能理解多少他们的目的是有争议的;
they are more ‘driven’ to act than cleanly aware of how or why they are doing so.
他们更多的是“被驱使”去行动,而不是清楚地意识到他们是如何或为什么这么做的。
A big part of self-knowledge means realising that those we love and have trusted may have put some hugely damaging ideas inside us that need to be identified and corrected to help us to attain the freedom and light-heartedness we crave and deserve.
很大程度上,自我认知意味着认识到,我们所爱和信任的人可能在我们内心植入了一些非常有害的想法,这些想法需要被识别和纠正,以帮助我们获得我们渴望和应得的自由和轻松。