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I would like to begin with a little experiment. In a moment, I'm going to ask if you would close your eyes and see if you can work out what emotions you're feeling right now. Now, you're not going to tell anyone or anything. The idea is to see how easy or perhaps hard you find it to pinpoint exactly what you're feeling. And I thought I'd give you 10 seconds to do this.
OK?
Right, let's start.
OK, that's it, time's up. How did it go? You were probably feeling a little bit under pressure, maybe suspicious of the person next to you. Did they definitely have their eyes closed? Perhaps you felt some strange, distant worry about that email you sent this morning or excitement about something you've got planned for this evening. Maybe you felt that exhilaration that comes when we get together in big groups of people like this; the Welsh called it "hwyl," from the word for boat sails. Or maybe you felt all of these things. There are some emotions which wash the world in a single color, like the terror felt as a car skids. But more often, our emotions crowd and jostle together until it is actually quite hard to tell them apart. Some slide past so quickly you'd hardly even notice them, like the nostalgia that will make you reach out to grab a familiar brand in the supermarket.
And then there are others that we hurry away from, fearing that they'll burst on us, like the jealousy that causes you to search a loved one's pockets. And of course, there are some emotions which are so peculiar, you might not even know what to call them. Perhaps sitting there, you had a little tingle of a desire for an emotion one eminent French sociologist called "ilinx," the delirium that comes with minor acts of chaos. For example, if you stood up right now and emptied the contents of your bag all over the floor. Perhaps you experienced one of those odd, untranslatable emotions for which there's no obvious English equivalent. You might have felt the feeling the Dutch called "gezelligheid," being cozy and warm inside with friends when it's cold and damp outside. Maybe if you were really lucky, you felt this: "basorexia," a sudden urge to kiss someone.
(Laughter)
We live in an age when knowledge of emotions is an extremely important commodity, where emotions are used to explain many things, exploited by our politicians, manipulated by algorithms. Emotional intelligence, which is the skill of being able to recognize and name your own emotions and those of other people, is considered so important, that this is taught in our schools and businesses and encouraged by our health services. But despite all of this, I sometimes wonder if the way we think about emotions is becoming impoverished. Sometimes, we're not even that clear what an emotion even is.
You've probably heard the theory that our entire emotional lives can be boiled down to a handful of basic emotions. This idea is actually about 2,000 years old, but in our own time, some evolutionary psychologists have suggested that these six emotions -- happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise -- are expressed by everyone across the globe in exactly the same way, and therefore represent the building blocks of our entire emotional lives. Well, if you look at an emotion like this, then it looks like a simple reflex: it's triggered by an external predicament, it's hardwired, it's there to protect us from harm. So you see a bear, your heart rate quickens, your pupils dilate, you feel frightened, you run very, very fast.
The problem with this picture is, it doesn't entirely capture what an emotion is. Of course, the physiology is extremely important, but it's not the only reason why we feel the way we do at any given moment. What if I was to tell you that in the 12th century, some troubadours didn't see yawning as caused by tiredness or boredom like we do today, but thought it a symbol of the deepest love? Or that in that same period, brave men -- knights -- commonly fainted out of dismay? What if I was to tell you that some early Christians who lived in the desert believed that flying demons who mainly came out at lunchtime could infect them with an emotion they called "accidie," a kind of lethargy that was sometimes so intense it could even kill them? Or that boredom, as we know and love it today, was first really only felt by the Victorians, in response to new ideas about leisure time and self-improvement? What if we were to think again about those odd, untranslatable words for emotions and wonder whether some cultures might feel an emotion more intensely just because they've bothered to name and talk about it, like the Russian "toska," a feeling of maddening dissatisfaction said to blow in from the great plains.
The most recent developments in cognitive science show that emotions are not simple reflexes, but immensely complex, elastic systems that respond both to the biologies that we've inherited and to the cultures that we live in now. They are cognitive phenomena. They're shaped not just by our bodies, but by our thoughts, our concepts, our language. The neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has become very interested in this dynamic relationship between words and emotions. She argues that when we learn a new word for an emotion, new feelings are sure to follow. As a historian, I've long suspected that as language changes, our emotions do, too. When we look to the past, it's easy to see that emotions have changed, sometimes very dramatically, in response to new cultural expectations and religious beliefs, new ideas about gender, ethnicity and age, even in response to new political and economic ideologies. There is a historicity to emotions that we are only recently starting to understand. So I agree absolutely that it does us good to learn new words for emotions, but I think we need to go further. I think to be truly emotionally intelligent, we need to understand where those words have come from, and what ideas about how we ought to live and behave they are smuggling along with them.
Let me tell you a story. It begins in a garret in the late 17th century, in the Swiss university town of Basel. Inside, there's a dedicated student living some 60 miles away from home. He stops turning up to his lectures, and his friends come to visit and they find him dejected and feverish, having heart palpitations, strange sores breaking out on his body. Doctors are called, and they think it's so serious that prayers are said for him in the local church. And it's only when they're preparing to return this young man home so that he can die, that they realize what's going on, because once they lift him onto the stretcher, his breathing becomes less labored. And by the time he's got to the gates of his hometown, he's almost entirely recovered. And that's when they realize that he's been suffering from a very powerful form of homesickness. It's so powerful, that it might have killed him.
Well, in 1688, a young doctor, Johannes Hofer, heard of this case and others like it and christened the illness "nostalgia." The diagnosis quickly caught on in medical circles around Europe. The English actually thought they were probably immune because of all the travel they did in the empire and so on. But soon there were cases cropping up in Britain, too. The last person to die from nostalgia was an American soldier fighting during the First World War in France. How is it possible that you could die from nostalgia less than a hundred years ago?
But today, not only does the word mean something different -- a sickening for a lost time rather than a lost place -- but homesickness itself is seen as less serious, sort of downgraded from something you could die from to something you're mainly worried your kid might be suffering from at a sleepover. This change seems to have happened in the early 20th century. But why? Was it the invention of telephones or the expansion of the railways? Was it perhaps the coming of modernity, with its celebration of restlessness and travel and progress that made sickening for the familiar seem rather unambitious? You and I inherit that massive transformation in values, and it's one reason why we might not feel homesickness today as acutely as we used to. It's important to understand that these large historical changes influence our emotions partly because they affect how we feel about how we feel.
Today, we celebrate happiness. Happiness is supposed to make us better workers and parents and partners; it's supposed to make us live longer. In the 16th century, sadness was thought to do most of those things. It's even possible to read self-help books from that period which try to encourage sadness in readers by giving them lists of reasons to be disappointed.
These self-help authors thought you could cultivate sadness as a skill, since being expert in it would make you more resilient when something bad did happen to you, as invariably it would. I think we could learn from this today. Feel sad today, and you might feel impatient, even a little ashamed. Feel sad in the 16th century, and you might feel a little bit smug.
Of course, our emotions don't just change across time, they also change from place to place. The Baining people of Papua New Guinea speak of "awumbuk," a feeling of lethargy that descends when a houseguest finally leaves.
Now, you or I might feel relief, but in Baining culture, departing guests are thought to shed a sort of heaviness so they can travel more easily, and this heaviness infects the air and causes this awumbuk. And so what they do is leave a bowl of water out overnight to absorb this air, and then very early the next morning, they wake up and have a ceremony and throw the water away. Now, here's a good example of spiritual practices and geographical realities combining to bring a distinct emotion into life and make it disappear again.
One of my favorite emotions is a Japanese word, "amae." Amae is a very common word in Japan, but it is actually quite hard to translate. It means something like the pleasure that you get when you're able to temporarily hand over responsibility for your life to someone else.
Now, anthropologists suggest that one reason why this word might have been named and celebrated in Japan is because of that country's traditionally collectivist culture, whereas the feeling of dependency may be more fraught amongst English speakers, who have learned to value self-sufficiency and individualism. This might be a little simplistic, but it is tantalizing. What might our emotional languages tell us not just about what we feel, but about what we value most?
Most people who tell us to pay attention to our well-being talk of the importance of naming our emotions. But these names aren't neutral labels. They are freighted with our culture's values and expectations, and they transmit ideas about who we think we are. Learning new and unusual words for emotions will help attune us to the more finely grained aspects of our inner lives. But more than this, I think these words are worth caring about, because they remind us how powerful the connection is between what we think and how we end up feeling. True emotional intelligence requires that we understand the social, the political, the cultural forces that have shaped what we've come to believe about our emotions and understand how happiness or hatred or love or anger might still be changing now. Because if we want to measure our emotions and teach them in our schools and listen as our politicians tell us how important they are, then it is a good idea that we understand where the assumptions we have about them have come from, and whether they still truly speak to us now.
I want to end with an emotion I often feel when I'm working as a historian. It's a French word, "dépaysement." It evokes the giddy disorientation that you feel in an unfamiliar place. One of my favorite parts of being a historian is when something I've completely taken for granted, some very familiar part of my life, is suddenly made strange again. Dépaysement is unsettling, but it's exciting, too. And I hope you might be having just a little glimpse of it right now.
Thank you.
(Applause)
我想以一个小实验来开始今天的演讲 稍后之后我会请你们闭上眼睛 然后看看是否能够辨别 你们当下所感受到的情绪
我并不是要 让你们来分辨什么人或物
这个实验的目的 是让大家感受一下
准确辨别情绪的难易程度 我会给你们十秒钟
可以吧
好的 我们现在开始
好的 结束了 时间到 怎么样 你可能感觉到有一点压力 也许在猜疑旁边的人 他们真的都闭上双眼了吗
也许你会有些异样的感觉
隐隐担心今早发出的电子邮件 或者为你今晚的计划感到兴奋
也许你为我们一群人齐聚一堂
而觉得欣喜不已 威尔士人把这叫做 hwyl(激情) 来源于单词 船帆 又或者你体会到了上述的所有情绪
有的情绪可以 占据你的整个内心世界 比如汽车打滑时的恐惧 但通常情况下 我们的各种情绪 会互相交织在一起 很难将它们严格区分开
有的情绪来得太快 你甚至都注意不到 比如思乡情绪 它让你在超市里 情不自禁地伸手去抓 自己熟悉的那个品牌
还有其他的情绪 我们忙不迭地想要摆脱它 害怕它们会在我们身上爆发 比如嫉妒 诱使你去搜爱人的包 当然 还有一些情绪太特别了 你可能甚至都不知道它们叫什么 也许此刻坐在这儿 你心里有一丝奇怪的冲动 一个法国著名的社会学家 称这种情绪为 ilinx 是一种精神错乱 同时伴随许多较小的混乱的活动 例如 你现在站起来 然后把你包里的东西清空 铺得满地都是 也许你曾经经历过一种奇怪的 无法言表的情绪 你可能都找不到与之对应的英语词汇 你可能经历过一种 荷兰人称之为 gezelligheid 的情绪 感觉就像外面又冷又湿的时候 你和朋友们舒服而温暖地待在家里 如果你真的很幸运 也许感受到过 这种情绪 basorexia 一种想要亲吻某人的冲动
(笑声)
我们生活在这样一个时代 关于情绪的知识 成为了非常重要的日用品 而情绪也被用来解释许多事情 被政客们利用 用公式来计算 情商 这种可以识别和命名 自己或他人的情绪的技能 被认为如此重要 甚至会 在学校和工作中被作为课程讲授 同时也是我们的健康服务所推崇的 但尽管如此 有时我还是在想 我们思考情绪的方式 是否太过贫乏 有时我们其实并不知道 某种情绪是什么
你们可能都听过这个理论 我们的整个情绪生活 可以被划分为 一些基本的情绪 这个理论其实已经存在了两千多年了 但在我们的时代里 一些研究进化的心理学家 提出过这六种情绪 快乐 悲伤 恐惧 恶心 愤怒和惊喜 全世界上每个人的表达方式都一样 因而它们代表了我们整个情绪生活的 基本组成部分 然而如果你这样看待情绪的话 它看起来就是一个简单的反射 由外界某种状态触发 是固定的 它保护我们免受伤害 所以当你看到熊的时候 你的心率加快 你的瞳孔增大 感到害怕 你会跑得非常非常快
但这种观点的问题在于 它并不能完全概括情绪是什么 当然 心理学非常重要 但它并不是我们在任何时候 感受到当下感觉的 唯一原因 如果我告诉你 在十二世纪 一些吟游诗人并不认为 打哈欠 是由于累了或者无聊了 像我们今天认为的一样 而是以为哈欠是最深的爱的象征 或者在同一时代 勇敢的人们 骑士们 会因为 沮丧 而晕倒 如果我告诉你 某些早期的住在沙漠里的基督教徒 坚信会飞的恶魔 通常会在午餐时候出没 传染给他们一种叫做 倦怠 的情绪 一种昏睡的症状 有时这种症状很严重 甚至可能导致他们的死亡 亦或者 被他们叫做 无所事事 的情绪 现在我们都知道并且很喜欢 一开始只有维多利亚时代的人 对休闲时光或者自我提升 有新的想法时才能感觉到 如果我们再想一想 这些奇怪的无法言表的情绪 以及是否有的文化可能对 某种情绪有更强烈的感觉 只是因为他们命名和谈论它 像俄语中的 toska 一种令人发狂的不满 据说是从大平原流传过来的
最近的认知科学研究结果表明 情绪并不是简单的反射 而是极度复杂的 灵活多变的系统 这系统不仅响应我们 所沿袭的生物系统 也对我们当下生活的 文化环境有反应 它们是认知现象 它们不仅被我们的身体所塑造 也被我们的想法 我们的理念和语言所塑造 神经科学家巴雷特·费尔德曼·丽莎 对这种动态的语言与情绪之间的 关系非常有兴趣 她提出 当我们学习关于 一种情绪的一个新单词 就会产生新的感觉 作为一个史学研究者 我一直猜想 当语言改变时 我们的情绪是否也会随之而变 当我们回望过去 很容易就发现 情绪会改变 有时这种改变非常剧烈 这种改变是对 新文化的期望和宗教的信仰 关于性别 种族和 年龄的新观念的响应 甚至是对新的政治和 经济意识形态的响应 情绪具有史学性 而我们直到最近 才开始理解这种特性 所以我绝对同意 学习关于情绪的 新词语对我们有益 但我认为我们还要想得更远 想要真的具备高情商 我们还需要明白这些词语从何而来 以及我们应该如何 生活和行为的理念 这些东西与情绪共存
我来给你们讲个故事吧 这个故事发生在17世纪末 瑞士巴塞尔大学镇的一个阁楼里 在阁楼里住着一个勤奋的学生 他的家离这里60多英里 他有天突然不去上课了 他的朋友来看他 发现他精神沮丧 发烧 还伴有心悸 身上长了奇怪的疮 有人叫了医生 大家以为他很严重 还在当地教堂 帮他做了祷告 当大家正在准备把这个 年轻人送回家 让他入土为安时 他们才发现发生了什么 因为当他们把他抬起来 放到担架上时 他的呼吸顺畅多了 而当他快到家门口时 他几乎痊愈了 这时候大家意识到 他一直以来得的是 非常强烈的思乡病 这种思乡情绪太强烈 差点害死了他
在1688年 一个年轻的医生 约翰内斯·霍弗 听说了这个病例 以及其他的类似病例 将这种病命名为 nostalgia (思乡病) 这种诊断很快在欧洲的 医疗圈中传播开来 事实上英国人以为 自己对这种疾病免疫 因为他们总在帝国之中 不停的到处旅行 但后来也在英国发现了类似的病例 死于思乡病的最后一个人 是在一战中 在法国战斗的美国士兵 距今还不到100年前的人们 怎么会死于思乡病呢
但如今 不仅这个词本身 代表了其他的意思 更多的是对逝去时光 而不是地点的缅怀 而且思乡病本身也没有那么严重 好像从一种可能致死的情绪 降低为你可能会担心的 比如你的孩子在朋友家过夜时 想家的小情绪 这种变化好像发生在20世纪的早期 但为什么会发生呢 是由于电话的发明 还是火车的普及 亦或是现代化的到来 对无休止的旅行和发展的大力推崇 让我们对自己所熟悉东西的 怀旧情绪看起来没那么热切了 我们所有人都继承了 这种极大的价值观转变 这也可能是我们今天 没有像过去那样 想家的原因之一 重点是要去理解 历史巨变会对我们的情绪产生影响 部分是因为它们会影响 我们如何感知自己的感觉
今天我们赞美快乐 快乐可以使我们成为更好的职工 更好的父母和伴侣 它还可能让我们活得更久 然而在16世纪 悲伤这种情绪却被认为是 具有以上大多数功能的情绪 那个时候甚至还有一些 自助的书籍可以 激发读者的悲伤情绪 通过给他们罗列一系列 应该感到失望的原因
这些自助书籍的作者认为 你可以将悲伤培养为一种技能 因为当你成为这方面的专家 在坏事临头的时候 你会更容易挺过来 谁都不会一直一帆风顺 我觉得我们可以从这其中 学到一些东西 今天你如果觉得悲伤 你可能会没有耐心 甚至有点羞愧 在16世纪觉得悲伤 你则可能会自命不凡
当然 我们的情绪不仅随时间变化 也随着地点不同而不同 新几内亚岛的拜宁人 会说 awumbuk 一种代表你家里的客人终于离开后 会逐渐减弱的没精打采的情绪
这种情况对我们大家来说也许 只会觉得松了口气 但在拜宁人的文化里 即将出发的客人 可能会留下一些沉重的情绪 这样他们在路上才能走得更轻松 这种沉重会影响周遭的空气 从而造成这种 awumbuk 所以他们会在前一天晚上 放一碗水在门口 来吸收这种空气 然后第二天一大早 他们起床 举行一个仪式 再将这碗水扔掉 还有一个很好的例子 表明精神活动和地理现实相结合 会产生生活中一种特别的情绪 然后再让其消失
这是我最喜欢的情绪之一 一个日本词语 amae amae这个词在日本很常见 但它其实非常难翻译 它代表了某种类似于当你可以 暂时将你生活的责任交付于 其他人时的欣喜
人类学家们推测 这个词语在日本被命名和推崇的 可能原因之一 是因为这个国家的集体主义文化 而独立的感觉 则可能在那些讲英语的 人群中更常见 这些人早已学会了去重视 自我满足和个人主义 这可能有点过于简化了 但这的确引人深思 我们的情绪语言告诉我们的 不仅仅是我们的感觉 还有我们最重视的是什么
许多告诉我们要关注个人健康的人 谈论着给我们的情绪命名的重要性 但这些名字并不只是单纯的标签 它们承载着我们文化中的 价值观和期望 也传递着我们对自己的看法 学习新的 不常见的这些 情绪词汇可以帮助我们 调节我们的内在生活 使其更加平顺 但不止如此 我认为这些词语值得关注 是因为它们提醒着我们 我们的想法 与我们的感觉之间 有多么强烈的联系 真正的高情商需要我们理解 社会 政治和文化的力量 塑造了我们如今 如何看待自己的情绪 理解快乐 憎恨 喜爱或者愤怒 至今可能仍然处于变化之中 因为如果我们想衡量自己的情绪 并在学校中围绕其授课 甚至听我们的政客告诉我们 它们如何重要 那么我们理解自己 关于这些情绪的设想 由何而来 以及它们对我们来说 是否仍然属实 就十分重要
我想以作为一个历史学家 常常感觉到的一种情绪作为结尾 它是一个法语词 dépaysement 它会引发一种你在不熟悉的地方 所感觉到的晕眩和迷惑感 作为历史学家我最喜欢的一点是 有时当我觉得某事理所当然 某些我生活中非常熟悉的事情 突然又变得奇怪起来 dépaysement 意思是不确定 但也令人兴奋 我希望你们现在 对此已经稍微有所体会了
谢谢
(掌声)
来自: kevingiao > 《Ted》
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The Scroll Marked6羊皮卷之六Today I will be master of my emotions.今天我学会控制情绪。Like the flowers, today''s full b...
【YOU英语每日一课】心情不大好?练完就好多了!
【YOU英语每日一课】心情不大好?Jessie老师最近心情不大好,于是说点英文发泄一下:我心情不好。I feel sort of down today.I feel rea...
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