在我二十几岁的时候，每天的工作都提醒着我是多么的幸运，能够生活在一个民选政府管理的国家，人人都享有法律代理和公开审判的权利。
每天我都看见更多有关恶人的证据，他们为了获得或维持权力加害自己的同胞。
我开始做恶梦，彻头彻尾的恶梦，梦到的都是我看到、听到和读到的事情。
然而，在国际特赦组织里我还了解到了很多人类善良的一面，有些是我从不知道的。
特赦组织调动了几千个从未因个人信仰而遭到折磨和监禁的人，让他们代表那些饱受折磨的人并为之奔走。
人类同情心的力量让我们共同行动，拯救生命，释放被关押的人们。
那些自身幸福、安全得到保证的普通人，为了拯救他们并不认识、甚至永远不会见面的陌生人而集结起来，汇聚成强大的群体。
我用自己微薄的力量参与其中，获得了很大的启发。
人类与地球上的其它生物不同，就算没有亲身经历，也可以学习和理解。
他们可以将心比心，设身处地去理解他人。
当然，这种力量，就好像我的小说中的强大魔法，在道德上中立的。
它可以被人操纵和控制，也有人选择去理解和同情。
而很多人不喜欢使用他们的想象力。
他们选择舒服地呆在自己的世界里，从不费神去想象如果自己生在别处一切将会怎样。
他们可以拒绝倾听叫喊声，也不会窥视笼子内的情况；他们都可以紧闭自己的头脑和心灵，不去看没降临到自身的痛苦；他们可以拒绝去了解这一切。
我可能会受到诱惑，去嫉妒这样生活的人，只可惜我不相信他们做的恶梦会比我少。
选择生活在狭窄范围里会导致某种对于开阔环境的精神恐惧，产生相应的害怕心理。我认为不愿展开想象的人会看到更多的怪物，
他们通常会更加害怕。
The Power of Empathy
By J.K. Rowling
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power.
I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have.
The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners.
Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet.
My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand, without having experienced.
They can think themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral.
One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.
They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.
They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.
Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters.
They are often more afraid.
整理：2024年5月19日于大理古城柠檬宿
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