原文-中文译文在最后
The desire to fit in is the root of almost all wrongdoing
Imagine that one morning you discover a ring thatgrants you magic powers. With this ring on your finger, you canseize the presidency, robFort Knoxand instantly become the most famous person on the planet. So, would you do it?
Fort Knox：位于美国肯塔基州最大城市路易斯维尔市西南约50公里处，这个只有3.6万人的小镇，占地面积却高达440平方公里。自从1940年美国陆军装甲兵司令部 （US Armor Center），搬到这里以后，诺克斯堡成为美国装甲力量最重要的军事训练基地，美联储的金库也设在这里。高度戒备的诺克斯堡是美国国库黄金存放处，有7道电网围护，全副武装的保安，一道重达24吨的安全门，据估计诺克斯堡有大约4570吨的黄金条，以及其他大量未知的国家宝藏。
Readers of Plato’s Republic will find thisthought experimentfamiliar. For Plato, one of the central problems of ethics is explaining why we should prioritise moral virtue over power or money. If the price of exploiting the mythical‘Ring of Gyges’ – acting wrongly – isn’t worth the material rewards,then morality isvindicated.【vindicate：prove one's innocent]
出自 柏拉图哲学杰作《 理想国 》（The Republic）中，柏拉图详细讲述了裘格斯的神话。一个名叫吕底亚（Lydia）的国家，有一个贫穷但诚实的牧羊人，他的名字叫裘格斯。有一天，他跟随羊群走进了一个隐蔽的山洞，发现一座坟墓里有一具佩戴着一枚黄金戒指的尸体。裘格斯发觉这枚戒指具有让他隐身的魔力。很快，穷苦的牧羊人就被这枚戒指赋予他的力量所控制。在偷偷潜入国王的宫殿后，裘格斯使用他的魔力诱惑了皇后，并在她的帮助下杀死了国王，成为吕底亚的下一任国王。
Notice that Plato assumes that westray from the moral paththrough being tempted bypersonal gain– that’s why he tries to show thatvirtueis more valuable than the gold we can get throughvice. He isn’t alone in making this assumption.[vice: sin][virtue: integrity]
In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes worries about justifying morality to the ‘fool’ who says that ‘there is no such thing as justice’ and breaks his word when it works to his advantage.
And when thinking about our reasons to prefer virtue to vice,in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) David Humeconfrontsthe'sensibleknave', a person tempted to do wrong when he imagines thatan act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune’.[knave: bastard] 【iniquity：sin evil】【infidelity：betray cheating】
Some of history’s greatest philosophers, then, agree thatwrongdoing tends to be motivated by self-interest. Alas, I’m not one of history’s greatest philosophers. Although most assume that an immoral person is one who’s ready to defy law and convention to get what they want, I thinkthe inverse is often true. Immoralityis frequently motivated by a readiness to conform to law and convention in opposition toour own values. In these cases, it’s not that we care too little about others; it’s that we care too much. More specifically,we care too much about how westack up in the eyes of others.
Doing the wrong thing is, for most of us, prettymundane.It’s notusurpingpolitical power or stealing millions of dollars. It’s nervouslyjoining in the chorus of laughsfor your co-worker’sbigoted jokeor lying about your politics toappeaseyour family at Thanksgiving dinner.We 'go along to get along' in defiance of what we really value or believe because we don’t want any trouble.[bigoted: biased prejudice][appease: pacify satisfy]
Immanuel Kant calls this sort of excessively deferential attitudeservility. Rather than downgrading the values and commitments of others,servility involves downgrading your own values and commitmentsrelative to those of others. The servile person is thus the mirror image of the conventional, self-interested immoralist found in Plato, Hobbes and Hume. Instead ofstepping on whomever is in his way to get what he wants,the servile person is, in Kant’s words, someone who‘makes himself a worm’ and thus ‘cannot complain afterwards ifpeople step on him’.[deferential: civil respectful] [servility: slavery]
Kant thinks that yourbasic moral obligationis to nottreat humanity as a mere means. When you make a lying promise that you’ll pay back a loan or threaten someone unless he hands over his wallet, you’re treating your victim as a mere means. You’re using him likea tool that exists only to serve your purposes, not respecting him as a person who has value in himself.
But Kant also says that you shouldn’t treat yourself as a mere means. This part of his categorical imperative gets less publicity than hisinjunctionagainst mistreating others, but it’s no less important. Thomas Hill, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, notes in Autonomy and Self-Respect (1991) that servility involves a mistaken assessment of your moral status. Crucially,the servile person is guilty of the same root error as the person who deceives or threatens others– namely, denying the basic moral equality of all persons.It’s just that the person you’re degrading is you.But servile behaviour neglects the fact that you’re entitled to the same respect as anyone else.[imperative: necessary compulsory][injunction: decree ban]
Now, maybe you’re thinking that lying about your opinion of Donald Trump to placate your parents so you can eat your cranberry sauce in peace is no big deal. Fair enough. But servility can cause muchgravermoraltransgressions.[grave: heavy dull] [transgression: misbehavior violation]
Take the most famous psychological study of the 20th century:Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments. Milgram discovered that most of his subjects would deliverexcruciating– and sometimes apparently debilitating or lethal – electric shocks to innocent victims when an experimenter told them to do so. In ‘The Perils of Obedience’ (1973), Milgram explained that one reason why the typical subject goes along withmalevolent authorityis because he ‘fears that he will appear arrogant, untoward, and rude if he breaks off’.[excruciate: agonize afflict][malevolent: hateful wicked]
The subjects’ commitment to politeness overwhelmed their commitment to basic moral decency. And a lot of us are more like Milgram’s subjects than we’d care to admit: we don’t want to appear arrogant, untoward or rude at the dinner table, the classroom, the business meeting. So weswallow our objections and allow ourselves – and others – to be stepped on.
Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments: The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner." These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real. The experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of men would fully obey the instructions, albeit reluctantly. 米尔格拉姆实验是一系列由耶鲁大学心理学家 Milgram Stanley 发明的社会心理学实验。这个实验的目的是测量那些参与实验的人，在被一位领导人命令做一些与他们本身个性和道德观相冲突的事的情况下，会愿意服从那位领导人到什么程度。在实验中，被试需要让自己的“学生”承受电击，随着电击的强度不断加大，学生也会做出越来越痛苦的反应（其实学生都是托儿，电击也是假的，否则肯定被电死了）。实验的结果出乎意料：大部分被试尽管不太情愿，但仍然服从了实验方的指令，持续向无辜的“学生”施加致命的电击。
The pernicious consequences of servility aren’t confined to the lab, either. Indeed, Milgram’s experiment was motivated partly by his desire to understand how so manyordinary-seemingpeople could have participated in themoral horrors of the Holocaust.More recently, the military violence at Abu Ghraib has been explained in part bythe soldiers’ socialisation into conformity. These examples and reflections on our own lives reveal anunderappreciatedmoral lesson.It’s not always, or even usually, the case that we do wrong because we lack respect for others. Often it’s because we lack respect for ourselves. [underappreciated: not pay enough attention]
词句学习
1 grants you magic power 赋与你神奇的魔力
2. prioritise moral virtue over power or money 把...置于...之上
3. westray from the moral paththrough being tempted bypersonal gain 被私利引诱而偏离道德正规
4.prefer virtue to vice
5.an act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune
6.the inverse is often true
7.we care too much about how we stack up in the eyes of others.
8.We 'go along to get along' in defiance of what we really value or believe because we don’t want any trouble.
9.servility involves downgrading your own values and commitments
10.the servile person is guilty of the same root error as the person who deceives or threatens others
翻译
渴望合群是几乎所有错误行为的根源
想象一下，某天清早你发现了一枚戒指，它能赋予你魔力：只要戴上这枚戒指，你就能登上总统宝座，能去抢劫美国诺克斯堡金库，还能立刻成为地球上最为知名的人物。那么，你会戴上它么？
读过柏拉图《理想国》的人会觉得这项思想实验很眼熟。在柏拉图看来，伦理学的核心问题之一是解释为什么我们应该优先考虑道德和美德，而不是权力或金钱。如果利用神话故事中的“盖吉斯之戒”——即犯下错事——所获得的物质利益却不足以弥补付出的代价，那么人们就会站在道德那边。
请注意，柏拉图的假设是，我们会因为受到个人利益的诱惑而背离道德准则——这也就是为什么他一直努力向世人展示，美德要比通过恶行获得的黄金更有价值。他并不是唯一一个做此假设的人。在《利维坦》（1651）一书中，作者托马斯·霍布斯就苦于难以向“那些认为根本没有‘正义’一说的傻瓜们”去解释道德的合理性，对这些人而言，只要环境对自己有利，他们就会出尔反尔。另外，大卫·休谟也在思考人们选择从善而非作恶的原因，并在其著作《道德原则研究》（1751）中与那种“理智的流氓”进行对峙——这种人如果认为某种邪恶或背叛行为能给他增加一大笔财富，就会忍不住诱惑去作恶。
因此，一些历史上最伟大的哲学家一致认为，人们从事不当行为往往是出于自身利益。唉，可惜我不是历史上最伟大的哲学家之一。虽然多数哲学家认为，所谓不道德的人，是指那些为了得到自己想要的东西而不惜违抗法律和社会惯例的人，但我认为事实往往相反。人们进行不道德行为的动机，往往在于他们更愿意去遵守那些与常人价值观恰恰相反的法律和惯例。在此情况下，并不是我们不关心他人，反而是因为我们过于在意他人了。更具体地说，我们太过在意自己在别人眼中的形象了。
对我们大多数人来说，做错事是再平常不过的。这些错事并不是篡夺政治权力或窃取百万美元，它们可能是：同事讲了个很难get到笑点的笑话，你却要紧张地跟着一起尬笑；或者在感恩节晚宴上，你为了安抚家人而隐瞒了自己真实的政见。我们为了“随大流”，不顾自己真正所珍视或所相信的，因为我们不想惹麻烦。伊曼努尔·康德将这种过分恭敬的态度称为“奴性”。奴性并不是让你贬低别人的价值观和责任意识，而是让你把自己的价值观和责任感降低到别人之下。因此，柏拉图、霍布斯和休谟所界定的那种传统意义上推崇利己主义的不道德，其实是奴性的反面。用康德的话讲，卑躬屈膝的人并不会将那些妨碍他获得自己想要东西的人踩在脚下，而是“把自己变成一条虫子”，因此“这样如果别人踩了他，他也不能抱怨什么了。”
或许你在想，为了换来片刻宁静好好吃你的蔓越莓酱，在如何看待特朗普的问题上对父母撒个谎也没有什么大不了。话是没有错，但奴性导致的道德越界行为可能会比这严重得多。
康德认为，不把人纯粹当成工具，是我们基本的道义责任。如果你起假誓保证归还欠款，或是威胁他人交出钱包，那就是把受害者降格为工具了。你是为了达成自己的目的而把对方当成工具来使用，而不是把他当成一个有价值的个人来对待。
但康德也说，你不应该把自己纯粹当成工具。在他认为毋庸置疑且势在必行的原则中，这一条的知名度比“不能把他人当工具”要来得小，但其重要性绝不逊于那一条。就职于北卡罗来纳教堂分校的哲学家托马斯·希尔在《自主与自重》（1991）里指出，奴性涉及对自我道德状态的错误判断。尤为关键的一点是，卑躬奉迎在本质上跟欺骗、威胁犯下了同样的错误，即否认了人与人最基本的道德平等。区别仅在于，你所降格的那个人正是你自己。但奴性的行为忽略了一个事实：你也值得被尊重，就跟所有其他人一样。
拿20世纪最著名的心理学研究——米尔格拉姆的服从实验来说吧。米尔格拉姆发现，当实验主持方的要求下，大多数被试都会让无辜的受害者承受令人痛苦的——有时看起来会造成重伤甚至致命的电击。在《服从的危险》（1973）一书中，米尔格拉姆解释说：典型的被试者之所以会服从来自权威的邪恶命令，原因之一是他害怕“如果拒绝服从，会让自己显得傲慢、事儿多、粗鲁无礼”。被试对“礼貌”的坚持超过了他们对基本道德原则的坚持。而我们许多人和这些被试者的相似程度都是我们不会愿意承认的：无论是晚餐桌上、教室里还是商务会议上，我们都不想让自己看起来傲慢、事儿多、粗鲁无礼。所以我们虽然反对，但话到嘴边又会咽回去，任凭自己——和别人——被踩在脚下。
奴性造成的灾难性后果也不仅仅限于在实验室。事实上，米尔格拉姆的实验动机部分来自他想了解为什么那么多看似平凡的普通人会参与二战期间惨无人道的大屠杀。最近几年发生在阿布格莱布监狱的军事暴力也能从中得到一定程度的解释，即士兵为了融入集体而发生的社会化过程。这些例子和对我们自身生活的反思揭示了一个从未受到足够重视的道德教训：我们犯错并不总是——甚至通常不是——因为缺乏对他人的尊重，而往往是因为我们不尊重自己。
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