03.个体／THE INDIVIDUAL

［03］个体／THE INDIVIDUAL

更有甚者，他们都变成了个体。 Better yet, they have all become individuals.

使徒圣保罗在纪元初创造了个体，但现在他们又重新诞生了。 The individual was invented by St. Paul at the beginning of our era, but it has been born again in our time.

一直到近期，我们的生活都是有所属的：法国人、天主教徒、犹太教、新教徒、伊斯兰教、无神论者、南方人、北方人、男、女、穷、富…… Until recently, we lived in what we might call our“belongings”: French, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Muslims, atheists, Southerners or Northerners, females or males, poor or rich...

我们归属于地区，宗教，文化（乡村或是城市），团队，社区，城镇，性别，方言，党派或者说是祖国。 We belonged to regions, religions, cultures \(rural or urban\), teams, towns, a sex, a dialect, a party, and a motherland.

通过旅行、图像、网络、以及可恶的战争，几乎这些小集体都崩溃瓦解了。 Through travel, images, the web, and abominable wars, almost all these collectives have broken apart.

那些仅存的也处于风雨飘摇之中。 Those that remain are unraveling.

个人不再明白如何相处夫妻关系，于是离婚的人越来越多。 The individual no longer knows how to live in a couple; it divorces.

孩子们不再安于自身的囹圄，与大家进行交流聊天，不再将心灵的困惑与灵魂的慰藉寄托给一个宗教。 It no longer keeps to its own kind; it moves about and chats with anyone and everyone; it no longer prays in its own parish.

在2011年夏，法国国家足球队队员们发生内讧，军心涣散，大家不知如何再建立一支团结的队伍。 In the summer of 2011, the French soccer players no longer knew how to be a team.

我们的政治家们目前还知道如何去建立一个可靠的政党和一个稳定的政府吗？ Do our politicians still know how to construct a plausible party or a stable government?

人们都说意识形态消亡了，其实正在消失的，是这些意识形态招募起来的归属依附关系。 Everyone speaks of the death of ideologies, but what is disappearing is rather thebelongingsrecruited by these ideologies.

这种新生的个体的诞生是一件好消息。 This newly-born individual is good news.

当我把那些性情乖戾的老家伙们口中抨击的“利己主义”和由归属依附关系的力比多驱使所犯下的罪行做比较——后者写就了血流成河、尸横遍野的战争史——我简直爱极了这些“利己”年轻人。 When I weigh the harm done by what grumpy old men call “egoism” against the crimes committed by and for thelibidoof belongings — hundreds of millions of deaths — I love these young people to death.

话虽如此，我们与世界之间新的联系需要被发明。就如Facebook将全球人都平等地维系起来，证明了新的联系正在孕育之中。 That being said, new links still need to be invented, as evidenced by the number of people who use Facebook, quasi-equivalent to the world’s population.

就好像一个没有化合价的原子，拇指姑娘们对于新的时代来说毫无准备地如一丝不挂般。 Like an atom without valence, Thumbelina is completely naked.

我们成年人并没有发明出新型的社会关系，反而充斥着怀疑、批判和愤怒，起着破坏的效果。 We adults have not invented any new social links; our generalized tendency toward suspicion, critique, and indignation had led instead to their destruction.

这些演变在历史中十分罕见，我把它们称之为“人类新生”，它在我们的时代和群体中制造了一个断层，但是很少人洞见了这一剧变。③ Rarely seen in history, these transformations, which I callhominescent, have created, in our time and in the midst of our own collectivities, a rupture so large and obvious that few have measured its magnitude.③

这个断层比起新石器时代的生产革命，基督教时代的开创纪元，中世纪的结束与文艺复兴等这些以往的时代巨变要显著得多得多。 It is comparable to the more visible ruptures of the Neolithic, the beginning of the Christian era, the end of the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.

即使我们处于这个时代断层的另一边，我们仍然在教我们的年轻人我们自己都不明白其来源的制度框架。 Although we are on the other side of this fault line, we are still teaching our young people in institutional frameworks that come from a time they no longer recognize.

教学楼、操场、教室、大礼堂、大学、图书馆、实验室甚至是知识的形式——这些架构起于过去的时代，这种制度适应的世界和人类社会与现在已经完全不同了。 Buildings, playgrounds, classrooms, lecture halls, campuses, libraries, laboratories, even forms of knowledge—these frameworks, I am saying, date from a time and were adapted to an era when both the world and humans were something they are no longer.

钱如意：我们与世界的联系需要被发明，我们未来的生活更需要被发明。过去的一套可能都不管用了，工作需要我们自己去寻找与创造（也许这也意味着人人都需要去创业，创造自己的事业，寻找自己安身立命的道路）！当然也许也可以苟且几十年，把自己安插到某个工作中，拿一份工资了事。

我和朋友谈这个事情觉得是很焦虑的，因为我们都实习过，深知坐在办公室的一个小格子中的自己就如同大机器中的一个小零件。再多的热情迟早会消磨至尽，一切打拼不知是为了谁的宏图与抱负。大企业是一只巨兽，既让人感到安稳，也吞噬人的理想。我们也知道理想与现实的差距，很多事不是说任性辞职就能甩手不干的，明知自己的梦想最终会被工资劳动消磨殆尽也不得不强行把自己安顿到一个职位上，这才是人生。

那么怎么摆脱这种局面？勇敢地走自己的路，即使不能保证自己最后究竟去做了什么工作，永远不要把它当做是一个结局，如释重负地认为此生可以安于某个工作了。要保持一种与周围世界积极联系的姿态，一种创造的姿态，工作可能就在其中了。（这是笔者目前的浅见，可能有的地方说的也有问题，希望能听到更多的建议！）

我现在提三个问题作为例子。 Three questions, for example.