【纽约时报】语言暴力伤害大脑，破坏民主

语言暴力伤害大脑，破坏民主

译者：邓小雪 倪婷

校对：王妍

策划：周树人

When Is Speech Violence?

言论什么时候才是暴力？

本文选自 The Economist | 取经号原创翻译

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face. A week later, he walks up to you and breaks your nose with his fist. Which is more harmful: the punch or the threat?

想象这样一个场景：一个恶霸扬言要揍你的脸。一礼拜之后，他走向你，用拳头打断了你的鼻子。到底哪一个造成了更多伤害：是拳头还是威胁？

The answer might seem obvious: Physical violence is physically damaging; verbal statements aren't. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

答案似乎很明显：身体伤害肉眼可见，言语威胁则不然。因此常有言道 ， “棍棒石块会伤我筋骨，但言语绝不会伤我分毫。”

But scientifically speaking, it’s not that simple. Words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system. Certain types of adversity , even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain — even kill neurons — and shorten your life.

但科学研究表明，事情并非如此简单。语言可以对你的神经系统产生深远的影响。在某些 不利条件 下，即便没有肢体接触，也能令你患病，改变你的大脑——甚至杀死神经元——进而缩短你的寿命。

adversity / ədˈvɜːsətɪ; ədˋvəsətɪ/ n [U] unfavourable conditions; trouble 逆境; 不幸; 厄运

Your body’s immune system includes little proteins called proinflammatory cytokines that cause inflammation when you’re physically injured. Under certain conditions, however, these cytokines themselves can cause physical illness. What are those conditions? One of them is chronic stress.

当你身体受伤时，你体内免疫系统中一种叫做“促炎性细胞因子”的蛋白质会介导机体产生炎症反应。然而在特定情况下，这些细胞因子自身也能引发疾病。那么哪些属于特定情况？其中之一就是长期压力。

Your body also contains little packets of genetic material that sit on the ends of your chromosomes. They’re called telomeres . Each time your cells divide, their telomeres get a little shorter, and when they become too short, you die. This is normal aging. But guess what else shrinks your telomeres? Chronic stress.

你的染色体末端还有一小段叫“端粒”的遗传物质。体细胞每分裂一次，端粒就缩短一些。当端粒缩短至极限，你就会死亡。这即是正常老化。但是还有其他因素也会缩短你的“端粒”，你猜是什么？就是 长期 压力。

Chronic / ˈkrɔnɪk; ˋkrɑnɪk/ adj (esp of a disease) lasting for a long time; continually recurring （尤指疾病）长期的, 慢性的; 连续复发的

If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech — at least certain types of speech — can be a form of violence. But which types?

如果语言可以引发压力，且长期压力会造成身体上的伤害，那么这样看来，言论似乎就称的上是一种暴力形式，至少某类言论是这样。

This question has taken on some urgency in the past few years, as professed defenders of social justice have clashed with professed defenders of free speech on college campuses. Student advocates have protested vigorously, even violently , against invited speakers whose views they consider not just offensive but harmful — hence the desire to silence, not debate, the speaker. “Trigger warnings” are based on a similar principle : that discussions of certain topics will trigger, or reproduce, past trauma — as opposed to merely challenging or discomfiting the student. The same goes for “microaggressions.”

在过去的几年中，大学校园里那些 自称 为社会公平的拥护者们与自称为言论自由的支持者们争论不休，使这个问题变得亟待解决。鉴于此，外来的特邀演讲者遭到了学生中的活跃分子的强烈抗议，更有甚者以暴力示威。在他们看来，演讲者的观点不仅是种冒犯更是种威胁。因此，面对此景，演讲者只能缄默不语。“触发警告”基于类似原理：某类话题的讨论会触发或再现过去的创伤，这就不仅仅只是在挑战学生或只是让其感到不适。“微侵略”也如此。

professed /prəˈfest/ adj [only before noun] used to describe a belief that someone has stated openly 公开宣称; 承认; 表示; 自称;

This idea — that there is often no difference between speech and violence — has stuck many as a coddling or infantilizing of students , as well as a corrosive influence on the freedom of expression necessary for intellectual progress. It’s a safe bet that the Pew survey data released on Monday, which showed that Republicans’ views of colleges and universities have taken a sharp negative turn since 2015, results in part from exasperation with the “speech equals violence” equation.

言论等同于暴力的观点震惊了很多人，也小看了学生们，同时这个观点也削弱了言论自由对知识进步的必要性的影响。周一公布的皮尤调查数据表明，共和党人对于高等院校的看法在2015年突然向负面逆转是早已预见的，部分原因就在于其对“言论等同于暴力”的观点甚是 恼怒 。

exasperation / ɪg,zæspə`reɪʃn / noun [uncount] the feeling of being extremely annoyed because things are not happening in the way you want them to happen 恼怒; 惹人恼怒的事; 激怒

The scientific findings I described above provide empirical guidance for which kinds of controversial speech should and shouldn’t be acceptable on campus and in civil society. In short, the answer depends on whether the speech is abusive or merely offensive.

以上所提到的科学发现为下面的问题提供了实证指导，即在校园和公民社会中，哪些争议性言论是应该被接受的，哪些不能被接受。简而言之，这要看言论是侮辱性的还是仅仅只是说话没有礼貌。

Offensiveness is not bad for your body and brain. Your nervous system evolved to withstand periodic bouts of stress, such as fleeing from a tiger, taking a punch or encountering an odious idea in a university lecture.

攻击性对大脑和身体来说并不是件坏事。人类神经系统已进化到可以承受短暂的压力冲击，类似虎口脱险、一记重拳或是大学课堂时听到令人生厌的内容时的体验。

Entertaining someone else’s distasteful perspective can be educational. Early in my career, I taught a course that covered the eugenics movement, which advocated the selective breeding of humans. Eugenics, in its time, became a scientific justification for racism. To help my students understand this ugly part of scientific history, I assigned them to debate its pros and cons. The students refused. No one was willing to argue, even as part of a classroom exercise, that certain races were genetically superior to others.

兼容他人的异见是有教育意义的。在我的早期职业生涯中，我教授的一门优生学课程倡导人类进行选择性生育。在那个时代，优生学是种族歧视的科学依据。为了使学生理解科技史上的这段黑历史，我让他们从正反两方对此进行辩论，但学生们拒绝了。即使只是课堂练习也没有人会愿意就某些种族在基因上优于其他种族这一问题进行讨论。

So I enlisted an African-American faculty member in my department to argue in favor of eugenics while I argued against; halfway through the debate, we switched sides. We were modeling for the students a fundamental principle of a university education, as well as civil society: When you’re forced to engage a position you strongly disagree with, you learn something about the other perspective as well as your own. The process feels unpleasant, but it’s a good kind of stress — temporary and not harmful to your body — and you reap the longer-term benefits of learning.

于是我将班级里非裔美国学生组成一队，作为优生学的支持方和我进行辩论，在辩论的中场再互换立场。此举是为向学生展示大学教育以及公民社会的基本运行规则：当你被迫站在自己对立方时，你同样可以从中学到知识。这个过程虽然不甚愉快，但确是一种良性压力，且只是暂时性的，对身体亦无害处。从长远来看会让你在学习上有所收获。

What’s bad for your nervous system, in contrast, are long stretches of simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.

相比之下，对人体神经系统真正有害的是长期压力的累积。如果你长期处于担心生命安全的恶劣环境，你的大脑就会因这种压力产生病变。比如在一个使用仇恨式言语无休止互相 攻击