刘柏川在TED演讲：为何普通民众需要懂得权力？

时间：2020-12-27 11:57:55 演讲我要投稿

　　导语：权力是把双刃剑的问题恐怕我们很多人都听说过了，下面看刘柏川谈谈为何普通民众需要懂得权力？

　　I'm a teacher and a practitioner of civics in America. Now, I will kindly ask those of you who have just fallen asleep to please wake up. (Laughter) Why is it that the very word "civics" has such a soporific, even a narcoleptic effect on us?

刘柏川在TED演讲：为何普通民众需要懂得权力？

　　我在美国进行公民教育，也是公民教育的践行者。现在，请那些刚才睡着的人打起精神。(笑声) 为什么人们一听到“公民教育”这个词就昏昏欲睡，甚至如患了发作性睡病一般?

　　I think it's because the very word signifies something exceedingly virtuous, exceedingly important, and exceedingly boring. Well, I think it's the responsibility of people like us, people who show up for gatherings like this in person or online, in any way we can, to make civics sexy again, as sexy as it was during the American Revolution, as sexy as it was during the Civil Rights Movement.

　　我想是因为这个词蕴含崇高的道德，具有重要的意义，却那么的无聊。我认为，我们，聚在这里的，以及在网上观看的人，有责任以力所能及的任何方式，让公民教育再度焕发生机，正如美国革命或美国民权运动时期那样生机勃勃。

　　And I believe the way we make civics sexy again is to make explicitly about the teaching of power. The way we do that, I believe, is at the level of the city.

　　而且，我相信让公民教育再度焕发生机的途径是阐清权力的教育。要实现它，我认为，关键是从城市这一层面入手。

　　This is what I want to talk about today, and I want to start by defining some terms and then I want to describe the scale of the problem I think we face and then suggest the ways that I believe cities can be the seat of the solution. So let me start with some definitions.

　　这就是今天我想跟大家谈论的主题。我想从解释一些概念开始，然后我会阐述我们目前面临的问题，进而给出解决办法，即城市是解决问题的根本。

　　By civics, I simply mean the art of being a pro-social, problem-solving contributor in a self-governing community. Civics is the art of citizenship, what Bill Gates Sr. calls simply showing up for life, and it encompasses three things: a foundation of values, an understanding of the systems that make the world go round, and a set of skills that allow you to pursue goals and to have others join in that pursuit.

　　那么，由一些定义开始吧。所谓公民教育，是一种艺术，是在一个自主管辖的社区，身为一名关爱社会、为解决问题做贡献的公民的艺术。公民教育是身为一个公民的艺术，这正是比尔•盖茨之父所谓的 “展现生命”，它包含三个方面内容：价值观的基础、对于让世界正常运转的体系的理解、以及一套让你追寻目标并让他人跟随你的愿景的技能。

　　And that brings me to my definition of power, which is simply this: the capacity to make others do what you would have them do. It sounds menacing, doesn't it?

　　这就引到了我对权力的定义，一个简单的定义如下：让他人按照你的意愿去做事情的能力。这听起来有些邪恶，不是吗?

　　We don't like to talk about power. We find it scary. We find it somehow evil. We feel uncomfortable naming it. In the culture and mythology of democracy, power resides with the people. Period. End of story.

　　我们从来都不喜欢谈论权力，我们觉得这个词可怕，而且有些邪恶。试图去定义它会让我们感觉不自在。在民主的文化背景下，权力掌握在人的手里。句号。到此为止。

　　Any further inquiry not necessary and not really that welcome. Power has a negative moral valence. It sounds Machiavellian inherently. It seems inherently evil. But in fact power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is. And power governs how any form of government operates, whether a democracy or a dictatorship.

　　没有必要进一步探讨权力，因为它不那么受欢迎。权力违背道德价值观，而且它本质上就有些权谋术的味道，似乎本质上就是邪恶的。但是，事实上，权力在本质上不分好坏对错，就像自然界的火、物理原理那样，权力只是权力，仅此而已。权力支配着任何政府的运作，或民主的政府，或独裁的政府。

　　And the problem we face today, here in America in particular, but all around the world, is that far too many people are profoundly illiterate in power — what it is, who has it, how it operates, how it flows, what part of it is visible, what part of it is not, why some people have it, why that's compounded. And as a result of this illiteracy, those few who do understand how power operates in civic life, those who understand how a bill becomes a law, yes, but also how a friendship becomes a subsidy, or how a bias becomes a policy, or how a slogan becomes a movement, the people who understand those things wield disproportionate influence, and they're perfectly happy to fill the vacuum created by the ignorance of the great majority.

　　我们今天面临的问题，在美国尤甚，但是个全球性的问题，即太多太多的人对权力一无所知—— 权力是什么，谁拥有权力，它如何运作，如何流转，权力的哪部分为人所知，哪部分鲜为人知，为何有些人拥有权力，为何权力总是交错繁杂。这种一无所知的结果就是，那些极少数了解权力是如何在公民生活中运作的人，那些了解如何让一个法案变成一个法律条文，如何将友谊转化为财富，如何让一个偏见变成一项政策，或如何让一个口号发展成一场运动的人，正是了解这些事情的人对广大民众施加不同程度的影响力，而且他们及其乐于填补民众的无知造成的空洞。

　　This is why it is so fundamental for us right now to grab hold of this idea of power and to democratize it.

　　这就是为什么以这种方式来理解权力并将其大众化对当下的我们这么重要。

　　One of the things that is so profoundly exciting and challenging about this moment is that as a result of this power illiteracy that is so pervasive, there is a concentration of knowledge, of understanding, of clout.

　　现在，有一件令人极度振奋又极具挑战性的事情。那就是广大民众对权力的一无所知形成了知识、理解和影响力的聚集。

　　I mean, think about it: How does a friendship become a subsidy? Seamlessly, when a senior government official decides to leave government and become a lobbyist for a private interest and convert his or her relationships into capital for their new masters.

　　我的意思是，考虑一下：如何将友谊转化为财富? 很自然地，一个政府高级官员辞掉政府的工作，成为一名谋取私利的说客，将其人脉资源转化为新利益集团的财富。

　　How does a bias become a policy? Insidiously, just the way that stop-and-frisk, for instance, became over time a bureaucratic numbers game. How does a slogan become a movement? Virally, in the way that the Tea Party, for instance, was able to take the "Don't Tread on Me" flag from the American Revolution, or how, on the other side, a band of activists could take a magazine headline, "Occupy Wall Street," and turn that into a global meme and movement.

　　偏见如何转变为一项政策? 比如，不知不觉地，拦截盘查变成官僚的数字游戏，从这转变的方式便可见一斑。一个口号如何变成一场运动? 举个例子来说，从在美国革命中扛起“不要践踏我”的旗帜的茶党身上就能知道答案。或者，另一方面，一群激进分子从刊在杂志上的头条， “占领华尔街”开始，发展成为一场全球性的运动。

　　The thing is, though, most people aren't looking for and don't want to see these realities. So much of this ignorance, this civic illiteracy, is willful. There are some millennials, for instance, who think the whole business is just sordid. They don't want to have anything to do with politics.

　　事实上，大多数人并不情愿，也不期望看到这些事实。所以，无知，对公民教育的无知，很大程度上是有意的。例如，00后中新一代中，很多人认为整个政界都是肮脏的，他们不想与政治有任何交集

　　They'd rather just opt out and engage in volunteerism. There are some techies out there who believe that the cure-all for any power imbalance or power abuse is simply more data, more transparency. There are some on the left who think power resides only with corporations, and some on the right who think power resides only with government, each side blinded by their selective outrage.

　　他们甘愿退出，而致力于社会志愿服务。也有很多极客认为解决一切权力失衡或权力滥用的万能良药，在于更多的数据，和更大的透明度。一方面有人认为权力只掌控在企业手里，另一方面有人认为权力只掌控在政府手里。

　　There are the naive who believe that good things just happen and the cynical who believe that bad things just happen, the fortunate and unfortunate unlike who think that their lot is simply what they deserve rather than the eminently alterable result of a prior arrangement, an inherited allocation, of power.

　　他们都是被各自的选择性愤怒蒙蔽了双眼。有些幼稚的人，坐等美好的事情来临，也有愤世嫉俗的人，相信糟糕的事情注定会发生。还有那些幸运的或不幸运的人认为他们的命数已定，而不是悬而未决的，他们不知道权力的倾倚会左右命运。

　　As a result of all of this creeping fatalism in public life, we here, particularly in America today, have depressingly low levels of civic knowledge, civic engagement, participation, awareness.

　　社会上这种无可救药的宿命论的结果就是，尤其在当今的美国，我们，对公民教育、公民参与以及公民意识，知之甚少。政界里里外外都已 “分包”给一群专家、富豪、圈外人、掌握信息的人、研究人员。

　　The whole business of politics has been effectively subcontracted out to a band of professionals, money people, outreach people, message people, research people. The rest of us are meant to feel like amateurs in the sense of suckers. We become demotivated to learn more about how things work. We begin to opt out.

　　剩下的人注定感觉如外行一般，是不折不扣的失败者。我们变得没有动力去探究事情怎样运作，我们开始被排除在外了。

　　Well, this problem, this challenge, is a thing that we must now confront, and I believe that when you have this kind of disengagement, this willful ignorance, it becomes both a cause and a consequence of this concentration of opportunity of wealth and clout that I was describing a moment ago, this profound civic inequality.

　　那么，这个问题，这个挑战，我们必须直面。如果你一直冷漠下去，一直有意地视而不见，这种冷漠就会促成我刚才所说的财富、势力的`聚集，这种聚集又会加深你的冷漠的态度。这是深刻的公民权力不平等。

　　This is why it is so important in our time right now to reimagine civics as the teaching of power. Perhaps it's never been more important at any time in our lifetimes. If people don't learn power, if people don't wake up, and if they don't wake up, they get left out.

　　这就是为什么，以权力的教育来理解公民教育是如此得重要，如此得迫在眉睫。也许从没有像在今天这么重要过。如果人们不懂得权力，如果人们不觉醒，如果人们不觉醒，就会被遗弃。

　　Now, part of the art of practicing power means being awake and having a voice, but it also is about having an arena where you can plausibly practice deciding. All of civics boils down to the simple question of who decides, and you have to play that out in a place, in an arena.

　　施展权力的艺术，部分在于保持警醒，并有自己的见解，也在于拥有一个可以施展决断力的舞台。所有公民教育的问题都可归结为这一简单问题：谁来决策? 因此，你必须有一个地方，有一个舞台来施展。

　　And this brings me to the third point that I want to make today, which is simply that there is no better arena in our time for the practicing of power than the city.

　　这就引到了我今天想强调的第三点，当今而言，没有比城市更适合作为施展权力的舞台。

　　Think about the city where you live, where you're from. Think about a problem in the common life of your city. It can be something small, like where a street lamp should go, or something medium like which library should have its hours extended or cut, or maybe something bigger, like whether a dilapidated waterfront should be turned into a highway or a greenway, or whether all the businesses in your town should be required to pay a living wage.

　　想一下你生活的城市，你来自的城市，想一个你的城市里日常生活中的问题，可以是小事情，比如路灯应安装在何处; 或是稍微大一点的事情，比如某个图书馆开放时间该延长还是缩短; 或是更大的事情，比如废弃的海滨是否应改建为高速路或绿化带，或者当地所有的公司是否需支付生活工资。

　　Think about the change that you want in your city, and then think about how you would get it, how you would make it happen. Take an inventory of all the forms of power that are at play in your city's situation: money, of course, people, yes, ideas, information, misinformation, the threat of force, the force of norms.

　　考虑一下你希望你的城市要做出的改变，并且考虑你如何实现它，如何让它成为现实。列出你所在的城市里全部形式的权力：金钱?当然了。人?是的。理念、信息、错误的信息、武力的威胁、规范的力量

　　All of these form of power are at play. Now think about how you would activate or perhaps neutralize these various forms of power.

　　所有形式的权力都在发挥着作用。现在考虑一下你如何激发或调和这些不同形式的权力。

　　This is not some Game of Thrones empire-level set of questions. These are questions that play out in every single place on the planet.

　　这不是《权力的游戏》中帝国层面的问题，这是地球上任何地方都在上演的问题。

　　I'll just tell you quickly about two stories drawn from recent headlines. In Boulder, Colorado, voters not too long ago approved a process to replace the private power company, literally the power company, the electric company Xcel, with a publicly owned utility that would forego profits and attend far more to climate change.

　　下面我快速地讲两个故事，这两个故事都来自于近期头条新闻。在科罗拉多州的博尔德，选民在不久前通过了一项决议，将一个私有的电力公司，即艾克赛尔能源公司，转变为公有制，不谋利润，而会更多关注气候变化。

　　Well, Xcel fought back, and Xcel has now put in play a ballot measure that would undermine or undo this municipalization.

　　艾克赛尔公司回击抵抗，目前，它在通过一种投票的方式，试图干扰或驳回这次公有化运动。

　　And so the citizen activists in Boulder who have been pushing this now literally have to fight the power in order to fight for power.

　　因此推动这项运动的博尔德的积极人士，现在不得不对抗电力公司来争取权力。

　　In Tuscaloosa, at the University of Alabama, there's an organization on campus called, kind of menacingly, the Machine, and it draws from largely white sororities and fraternities on campus, and for decades, the Machine has dominated student government elections.

　　在塔斯卡卢萨，阿拉巴马大学，校园里有个组织听起来有些邪恶，叫“机器”。其成员多大来自学校白人姐妹会和兄弟会。

　　Well now, recently, the Machine has started to get involved in actual city politics, and they've engineered the election of a former Machine member, a young, pro-business recent graduate to the Tuscaloosa city school board.

　　数十年来，“机器”控制了学生的政府选票。最近，“机器” 开始参与到真正的城市政治中。他们主导了一个前“机器”成员的参选，让这位近期毕业的年轻的成员进入塔斯卡卢萨市教育局。

　　Now, as I say, these are just two examples drawn almost at random from the headlines. Every day, there are thousands more like them. And you may like or dislike the efforts I'm describing here in Boulder or in Tuscaloosa, but you cannot help but admire the power literacy of the players involved, their skill.

　　如前所述，这只是从近期新闻头条中随意摘取的两个故事。每天都有类似的数以千计的例子。无论你喜不喜欢我刚刚描述的发生在博尔德和塔斯卡卢萨的事情，你都不得不欣赏他们的施展权力的素养和能力。

　　You cannot help but reckon with and recognize the command they have of the elemental questions of civic power — what objective, what strategy, what tactics, what is the terrain, who are your enemies, who are your allies?

　　你也不得不考虑到并且意识到他们掌握公民权力的一些最基本的问题—— 目的是什么，策略是什么，战术是什么，战场是什么，谁是敌人，谁是战友?

　　Now I want you to return to thinking about that problem or that opportunity or that challenge in your city, and the thing it was that you want to fix or create in your city, and ask yourself, do you have command of these elemental questions of power?

　　现在，让我们回过头，考虑你的城市中的问题、机会、挑战，还有你期望在你的城市中解决的事情或创造的事物。问问你自己，你是否熟稔这些问题，这些权力的最基本的问题?

　　Could you put into practice effectively what it is that you know? This is the challenge and the opportunity for us.

　　你能有效地将你知道的东西付诸实践，达到你的目的吗? 这对于我们是挑战，也是机遇。

　　We live in a time right now where in spite of globalization or perhaps because of globalization, all citizenship is ever more resonantly, powerfully local.

　　在我们如今生活的年代，即便朝着全球化发展，也许正因为全球化进程，市民交互影响的程度更深，无一例外，尤其在本地。

　　Indeed, power in our time is flowing ever faster to the city. Here in the United States, the national government has tied itself up in partisan knots. Civic imagination and innovation and creativity are emerging from local ecosystems now and radiating outward, and this great innovation, this great wave of localism that's now arriving, and you see it in how people eat and work and share and buy and move and live their everyday lives, this isn't some precious parochialism, this isn't some retreat into insularity, no.

　　确实，当今的权力正以更快的速度汇聚到城市。在美国，中央政府囿于党派，公民的设想、创新力、创造力正在当地的圈子中产生，并向外辐射，而且这股本地化的伟大创造力和伟大浪潮，正汹涌而来。你会从人们吃饭、工作、社交、购物、交通等日常生活点滴中看到。这不是矫揉造作的偏狭，这不是退却到狭隘，不是的。

　　This is emergent. The localism of our time is networked powerfully. And so, for instance, consider the ways that strategies for making cities more bike-friendly have spread so rapidly from Copenhagen to New York to Austin to Boston to Seattle.

　　这是自然发生的。当今的时代，本地化正强有力地进行。比如说，看看那些致力于让城市更适于自行车通行的理念吧，这些理念扩散得如此迅速，从哥本哈根，到纽约，到奥斯丁，到波士顿，到西雅图。

　　Think about how experiments in participatory budgeting, where everyday citizens get a chance to allocate and decide upon the allocation of city funds. Those experiments have spread from Porto Alegre, Brazil to here in New York City, to the wards of Chicago.

　　再想想“参与式预算”的实践，每天市民都有机会分配和决定市政资金的流向。这些实践已经从巴西的阿雷格里港推广到纽约和芝加哥。

　　Migrant workers from Rome to Los Angeles and many cities between are now organizing to stage strikes to remind the people who live in their cities what a day without immigrants would look like.

　　从罗马到洛杉矶，还有其间的其他城市的移民工人，正组织罢工，来提醒那些在其城市居住的人们设想一下在没有移民的城市里，一天的生活会是什么样。

　　In China, all across that country, members of the New Citizens' Movement are beginning to activate and organize to fight official corruption and graft, and they're drawing the ire of officials there, but they're also drawing the attention of anti-corruption activists all around the world.

　　在中国，全国范围内，中国新公民运动的成员正在组织行动，反对政府官员贪污腐败。他们激怒了官员，但他们也吸引了全世界的反腐败组织的目光。

　　In Seattle, where I'm from, we've become part of a great global array of cities that are now working together bypassing government altogether, national government altogether, in order to try to meet the carbon reduction goals of the Kyoto Protocol.

　　在我来自的地方——西雅图，我们成为了全球一系列城市中的一员。这一系列城市团结在一起，绕开政府，绕开中央政府，努力实现京都议定书规定的减少碳排放量的目标。

　　All of these citizens, united, are forming a web, a great archipelago of power that allows us to bypass brokenness and monopolies of control.

　　所有这些市民，联合在一起，形成一个网络，虽地域分散，力量却集中，让我们可以绕开垄断权力的控制。

　　And our task now is to accelerate this work. Our task now is to bring more and more people into the fold of this work. That's why my organization, Citizen University, has undertaken a project now to create an everyman's curriculum in civic power.

　　我们现在的任务是加速这一进程，我们现在的任务是吸引越来越多的人加入到我们的行动中。这也是我的组织——公民大学在进行的一个项目的原因。

　　And this curriculum starts with this triad that I described earlier of values, systems and skills. And what I'd like to do is to invite all of you to help create this curriculum with the stories and the experiences and the challenges that each of you lives and faces, to create something powerfully collective.

　　这个项目致力于为所有人提供公民权力的课程。这个课程以我刚才所述的三方面为起点，即价值观、系统和能力。我想邀请你们所有人，帮助我建立这个课程，请你们分享故事和经历，以及生活中的挑战，来汇聚成强大的智慧的结晶。

　　And I want to invite you in particular to try a simple exercise drawn from the early frameworks of this curriculum. I want you to write a narrative, a narrative from the future of your city, and you can date it, set it out one year from now, five years from now, a decade from now, a generation from now, and write it as a case study looking back, looking back at the change that you wanted in your city, looking back at the cause that you were championing, and describing the ways that that change and that cause came, in fact, to succeed.

　　我想请你们参与一项实践练习，这是一个简单的实践，来自这项课程的初步框架。我想请你写下一段故事，一段来自你的未来城市的故事。你来决定这个城市来自多远的未来，可以是一年后，五年后，十年后，也可以是一代人之后，以那时的视角回过头来看现在，看现在的你希望你的城市做出怎样的改变，看现在的你在鼎力支持着什么事业

　　Describe the values of your fellow citizens that you activated, and the sense of moral purpose that you were able to stir. Recount all the different ways that you engaged the systems of government, of the marketplace, of social institutions, of faith organizations, of the media. Catalog all the skills you had to deploy, how to negotiate, how to advocate, how to frame issues, how to navigate diversity in conflict, all those skills that enabled you to bring folks on board and to overcome resistance. What you'll be doing when you write that narrative is you'll be discovering how to read power, and in the process, how to write power.

　　并描述一下你期望的改变和你从事的事业如何走向成功; 描绘一下你所鼓舞的市民们拥有的价值观，以及你所激发出的人们的品行道德; 叙述一下你参与到政府体制、经济市场、社会机构、组织信仰、媒体的不同的方式; 将你要施展的技能分门别类，如何协商，如何鼓舞，如何分析问题，如何在矛盾中调和不同的意见，正是这些技能让你带领人们踏上正轨，克服困难。你写下这段故事，与此同时，你会发现如何解读权力，如何用书面的形式表达权力。

　　So share what you write, do you what you write, and then share what you do. I invite you to literally share the narratives that you create on our Facebook page for Citizen University.

　　请分享你写下的故事，并将你的故事付诸实践，进而分享你的所作所为。我请你们把你们的故事以文字的形式分享到到公民大学的脸谱网站上。

　　But even beyond that, it's in the conversations that we have today all around the world in the simultaneous gatherings that are happening on this topic at this moment, and to think about how we can become one another's teachers and students in power.

　　不仅于此，此时此刻世界各地正在进行的同我们一样的集会中，在谈论公民教育这个话题。考虑一下我们如何学习权力，做彼此的老师和学生。

　　If we do that, then together we can make civics sexy again. Together, we can democratize democracy and make it safe again for amateurs. Together, we can create a great network of city that will be the most powerful collective laboratory for self-government this planet has ever seen. We have the power to do that.

　　如果我们齐心协力，就能让公民教育再度焕发生机。我们一起，能让民主思想大众化，让人人都享有民主的丰硕果实。我们一起，能创造出一个地球上前所未有的自主管辖的城市，这个城市将充满强有力的合作。我们有能力实现它。

　　Thank you very much.

　　非常感谢你们。

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