Political Animals by Rick Shenkman: why we shoot our democracies in the foot

Rick Shenkman新書《政治動物》：為什么我們會搬起石頭砸民主的腳

作者:Olivia Archdeacon @ 2016-01-22
譯者:babyface_claire(@許你瘋不許你傻)
校對:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
來源:CapX,http:///political-animals/

Best-selling historian and Emmy award-winning investigative reporter Rick Shenkman is back. He explains in the latest of his seven books, Political Animals – How our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics, that despite our species’ pride of rational thinking, our world is anything but rational.

暢銷歷史書作家和艾美獎?wù){(diào)查記者獲得者Rick Shenkman回來了。他在最新的第七本書《政治動物：石器時代的大腦如何妨礙政治精明》里解釋到，盡管我們?nèi)祟愐岳硇运伎紴榘?，但是世界卻一點也不合理。

Like economists, political scientists base their models on rational choice, and do not want to think that a one off event like a shark attack can have a significant effect on voting. Yet it has been proven time and again that when times are bad, people vote against the incumbents. If a meteor hit Arizona, they’d vote against the incumbents. Extraneous forces have political consequences. Unfortunately for politicians, this is especially the case when the effect is negative.

像經(jīng)濟學者一樣，政治學者以理性選擇為基礎(chǔ)建構(gòu)其模型，并且不愿意認為一件像鯊魚攻擊這樣的一次性事件可以對投票結(jié)果產(chǎn)生重大影響。然而事實一次又一次證明，一旦碰上光景不好，人們就會投票反對當權(quán)者。如果有隕石擊中亞利桑那州，他們會投票反對當權(quán)者。外來力量能夠造成政治后果。 不幸的是，對政治家而言，如果這種影響是負面的，情況更是如此。

Readers of Shenkman’s previous book, ‘Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the truth about the American voter’ may be reluctant to pick up another anthology of painfully embarrassing truths about the general public of the world’s most powerful economy. But they should be reassured that Political Animals is a forgiving, empathetic and motivational read.

讀過Shenkman上本書《我們是多么愚蠢？正視美國選民的真相》的人，可能不愿再讀一本關(guān)于世界最大經(jīng)濟體的一般公眾的痛苦尷尬真相的匯編。但是我可以向他們保證，《政治動物》是一本寬容、體貼且激勵人心的讀物。

It is tough love, however. Shenkman points out that despite the human brain being packed with eighty-six billion neurons – making human beings smarter than the smartest computer that ever existed (yet) – when it comes to politics, the public is very easily fooled. What is more alarming is that we’re fooling ourselves. We cannot blame the politicians or the Illuminati.

然而，這是嚴厲的愛。Shenkman指出，盡管人類的大腦擠滿了860億個神經(jīng)細胞（使人類比迄今為止最聰明的電腦更加聰明），可是一旦涉及政治，公眾卻非常容易被欺騙。更令人擔憂的是，是我們自己在欺騙自己。我們不能把責任推給政治家或“光照派”。

“We often lie about out reasons for doing what we do in politics. We don’t just lie to others, we lie to ourselves. Therefore we can only detect what people are thinking when we study patterns of behaviour in groups.”

“我們經(jīng)常會在我們政治行為的緣由方面撒謊。我們不止對別人撒謊，我們對自己也撒謊。因此，我們只能通過研究群體的行為模式來檢測人們在想什么?！?/p>

Shenkman’s genuine passion for his subject matter shines through. As much as we rationalise our actions in hindsight, we’re not in a position to truly know ourselves seeing as so much of what happens in our brain happens outside of conscious awareness. So attempting to understand why people vote the way they do simply by asking them will get us nowhere. We need science.

Shenkman 對他的研究主題閃耀著真正的熱情。我們會在事后盡力合理化自己的行為，鑒于大腦中發(fā)生的大量事情處于我們的自覺意識之外，我們就處在一個不能真正了解自己的境地。所以，只是追問人們?yōu)槭裁慈绱诉@般投票，對我們理解這一問題毫無益處。我們需要科學。

Political Animals does this. It uses breakthroughs in neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, behavioural economics, political science, political psychology and game theory to give new insights into political behaviour.

《政治動物》要做的就是這件事。它利用了神經(jīng)科學、遺傳學、進化心理學、人類學、行為經(jīng)濟學、政治科學、政治心理學和博弈論等學科的新突破，尋求對于政治行為的新見解。

The basic premise of the book is that our brain evolved roughly 1.8 million years ago and so the instincts that were baked into human DNA then are now often not the most appropriate or efficient response to our environment: “In politics, [instincts] often don’t work: they malfunction, misfire and lead us astray.” Shenkman even goes as far as to argue that “when it comes to politics, the times when we can unquestioningly go with our instincts is almost nil.”

這本書的基本前提是：我們的大腦大約在180萬年前進化形成，因此那些整合到人類DNA中的本能通常并非我們對環(huán)境所能做出的最合適或最有效反應(yīng)。“在政治中，[直覺]通常不可行，他們會失靈，無法奏效，還會帶我們誤入歧途?！?Shenkman走得很遠，他甚至認為，“當談到政治時，我們可以毫無疑問的跟隨直覺走的時候基本為零”。

In essence: we frequently sabotage ourselves, upending democracy in ways none of us intended.

從本質(zhì)上說，我們經(jīng)常會在沒有人刻意如此的情況下傷害自己、顛覆民主。

Shenkman focuses on four problems that we continually make: political apathy; failure to correctly size up our political leaders; a habit of punishing politicians who tell us the hard truths we don’t want to hear; and our failure to show empathy in situations that clearly demand it.

Shenkman關(guān)注我們經(jīng)常犯的四個錯誤：政治冷漠，不能正確地認識政治領(lǐng)袖，習慣性地懲罰跟我們講述我們不愿意聽的殘酷事實的政治家，在明確需要的情況下不能表示同情。

Hearing all of this, it is sorely tempting to conclude that democracy is hopeless. But all is not lost.

聽到這一切，讓人很容易得出結(jié)論，民主是無望的。但這并不意味著一切。

Throughout the book we are reminded that the way our brain is constructed does not mean we are fated to behave as cavemen, even though we might be inclined to think that based on the morning’s headlines. He shows us with numerous thought experiments (that readers can conduct on themselves) that is better to think of our brains as being pre-wired rather than hard-wired. We have certain innate traits but whether they determine how we behave in a particular situation depends on a range of factors. This shouldn’t be so surprising – think how easily and dramatically our energy levels can affect our decision making and self-control.

這本書從頭到尾一直在提醒我們，我們的大腦如此構(gòu)造，并不意味著我們注定要像穴居人那樣行動，盡管根據(jù)早上的頭條新聞我們可能傾向于這樣認為。他通過許多思想實驗（讀者可以自己進行）向我們表明，我們最好將大腦看作是預(yù)設(shè)的而并非是固設(shè)的。我們有某些天生的特質(zhì), 但這些特質(zhì)是否會決定我們在特定情況下的行為則取決于一系列因素。這并不應(yīng)該讓人感到驚訝——想想我們的精力水平能如何容易、如何顯著地影響我們的決策和自控能力吧。

What is more controversial is Shenkman’s challenge to the convention that the main political problem society faces is a lack of information: “Modern Platos raise a huge cry over the problem ignorance poses to democracy, turning alarmism about ignorance into a virtual cottage industry”

更有爭議的是Shenkman對社會面臨的主要政治問題乃是缺乏信息這一傳統(tǒng)觀念的挑戰(zhàn)，“現(xiàn)代柏拉圖們大聲疾呼，宣稱無知威脅民主。他們已經(jīng)把對無知的擔憂警惕幾乎變成了一種祖?zhèn)骷裔劇！?/p>

And he’s right – critics have been beating the same horse for generations, crying ‘mass man is ignorant!’ After the Second World War and the rise of Nazism, university professors became consumed with the problem of public ignorance. It is not that simple, unfortunately. Proving that unknowledgeable voters can be turned into knowledgeable ones doesn’t prove much we didn’t already know. We send children to school because we believe they can learn. The truth is more unsettling: it is not an intelligence or information problem. It’s a motivation, environment, social and, above all else, a human being problem. The problem is that voters on their own don’t try to learn.

他是對的——評論家們世世代代都在鞭打同一具尸體，喊叫“大眾是無知的！”第二次世界大戰(zhàn)和納粹主義興起之后，大學教授們開始全心關(guān)注公眾無知的問題。不幸的是，這不是那么簡單。證明了無知的選民可以轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)橛兄倪x民，這并不能證明多少我們事先就不知道的事情。我們送孩子去學校是因為我們相信他們有學習的能力。真相是更讓人不安的：這不是一個智力或者信息問題。這是激勵、環(huán)境、社會的問題，最重要的是，這是人性問題。問題在于選民們自己不嘗試去學習。

Perhaps voters need to be motivated, probably financially. But no government has tried this (directly) because voters would find it insulting – anyone who dared suggest that voters need to be paid because they are citizen delinquents would instantly be branded as elitist.

或許選民需要刺激，比如經(jīng)濟刺激。但是沒有任何政府（直接地）試圖這么做，因為選民們會感到這是侮辱——任何人若膽敢建議給選民支付費用【編注：從上下文看，意思好像是付費讓選民接受公民培訓(xùn)，但也可能是指為投票行為付費?！?，而且給出的理由是因為他們是公民群氓，那他立馬就會被貼上“精英主義”的標簽。

Equally, the Scandinavian experience shows culture can be just as effective (75% of Swedes participate in adult civics-study circles at some point in their lives having retained an interest in politics from school-age). But why should it take either money or culture to get people to perform their civic responsibilities? Shouldn’t people want to be involved?

同樣的，北歐的經(jīng)驗表明文化同樣奏效 （瑞典人中凡是曾在生活中某一時間參與過成人公民學習圈的，有75%都保留了從學生時代起培養(yǎng)出的政治興趣）。但是為什么需要錢或者文化的驅(qū)使才能讓人們履行公民責任呢？難道人們不想?yún)⑴c嗎？

So this is not a guidebook for how to be the perfect citizen. Shenkman is far from being an idealist. Instead, he offers un-patronising, concrete steps to ‘do politics’ better: don’t place a lot of confidence in your natural curiosity; don’t delude yourself into believing you can read politics; whenever possible, try to put yourself in a position where you can experience politics directly.

所以這不是一本怎樣成為完美公民的指南。Shenkman遠非一個理想主義者。相反，他提出的是并不高高在上的、具體的步驟，來更好地“做政治”：不要過分信賴你天生的好奇心上；不要欺騙自己說你可以讀懂政治；有可能的話，嘗試坐到某個位置上，直接體驗政治。

In this engaging, illuminating and often humourous portrait of our political culture, Shenkman probes the depths of the human mind to reveal what we must do to fix our floundering democracy, and to become more political, less animal.

在這幅引人入勝、發(fā)人深省且常常帶些幽默的政治文化肖像中, Shenkman窺探到人類心靈的深處，告訴我們必須做什么來修復(fù)我們掙扎的民主，多一些政治性, 少一些動物性。

Political Animals was first published on the 21st January 2016 by Basic Books, ￡17.99 RRP, hardback.
《政治動物》由基本圖書公司在2016年1月21日首次出版，精裝版標價￡17.99 。

（編輯：輝格@whigzhou）

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