Certain truths seem inimitable, like: Age is just a number.
某些真理似乎不可模仿，比如：年龄只是一个数字。
Wrong! Age is a word.
错了！ 年龄是一个词。
Friedrich Nietzsche helpfully explains in Human, All too Human (1878), “Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.”
弗里德里希·尼采在《人性，太人性化》（1878年）中解釋說：「信念是真理比谎言更危险的敵人。」
Postmodernist, post structuralist, post “Life Jim, but not as we know it”. 2020 was a year where many grand narratives have weakened, waned and died. A year when that which many never imagined came to pass, and brought a friend with it. Summers in the armpit heat of the Tropics, separation from loved ones over space, and often too, over time, prolonged exposure to those same loved ones in quarantine. Some lighter losses; The Guardian reports that women have ditched the iVenus and the hot wax, going au-natural in the body hair department. Yes kids, Mummy is doing Movember… Some harder losses; many lives have been taken by the virus. For those it’s touched, it’s been tough. This is life.
后现代主义、后结构主义、后“生活吉姆，但不是我们所知道的”。2020年是许多宏大叙事被削弱、衰落和消亡的一年。 一年，许多人从未想象过的事情发生了，并带来了一位朋友。 热带炎热的夏天，在空间上与亲人分离，而且经常随着时间的推移，长时间接触隔离中的亲人。 一些较轻的损失；据《卫报》报道，女性已经放弃了iVenus和热蜡，在身体毛发部门变得自然。 是的，孩子们，妈妈正在做Movember…… 一些更严重的损失；许多人的生命被病毒夺走了。 对于那些被触动过的人来说，这很难。 这就是生活。
COVID has changed the way many of us view life. 2020 was a year of re-evaluations. Like some horrible, inverse countdown, the uncertainty rises with the years of the fledgling century. What does it mean to be an expat in the middle of a global pandemic? What does it mean to be grounded, literally, to a breed of wanderlusts? What does it mean to be good in a world gone mad?
新冠病毒改变了我们许多人看待生活的方式。2020年是重新评估的一年。 就像一些可怕的反向倒计时一样，不确定性随着刚刚起步的世纪而增加。 在全球疫情中成为外籍人士意味着什么？ 从字面上看，以流浪癖为基础意味着什么？ 在一个疯狂的世界里，善良意味着什么？
Thankfully, there is a whole field of thought which suggests that this may be a move towards an honest appraisal of life, rather than away from it. The idea that telling someone what we want and how we feel is easy seems pretty straightforward. This is at the heart of many stories, a hero pursuing a goal at all costs; the goal ever present and unwavering, like a mosquito in the bedroom in the depths of night. But simply opening the mouth and declaring the feeling or intention may be more difficult in practice than in theory.
值得庆幸的是，有整个思想领域表明，这可能是对生活进行诚实评估的举动，而不是远离生活。 告诉别人我们想要什么以及我们的感受很容易的想法似乎很简单。 这是许多故事的核心，一个不惜一切代价追求目标的英雄；目标永远存在且坚定不移，就像深夜卧室里的蚊子。 但只是开口宣布感觉或意图在实践中可能比在理论上更难。
Culture and nurture play a huge role in determining the things people feel able to speak openly about, and those which must be hidden away behind the skeletons in the closet. Missteps in communication of an authentic and honest truth begin early, when children are not allowed to speak openly about their feelings, or to express them in the authentic ways known only to the young; screaming, hissing, biting, punching, tearing, crying and whining. Angry retaliations, or fragile pleas for quiet by parents similarly quietened in their own childhoods quickly teach children to hide or modify natural impulses to chew on each other or explore their full lung capacity at a supersonic pitch. Slowly, slowly, educational and childhood theories promote positive emotional nurturing for apprentice humans.
文化和培养在决定人们觉得可以公开谈论的事情，以及那些必须隐藏在壁橱里的骷髅后面的事情方面发挥着巨大作用。 传达真实和诚实的真相的失误很早就开始了，当时孩子们不允许公开谈论他们的感受，或者以只有年轻人知道的真实方式表达他们的感受；尖叫、嘶嘶作声、咬人、拳打脚踢、撕裂、哭泣和呜咽。 愤怒的报复，或父母在童年时期同样安静下来的脆弱的恳求，很快就教孩子们隐藏或改变相互咀嚼的自然冲动，或以超音速的音速探索他们的全部肺活量。 慢慢地，慢慢地，教育和童年理論促進了學徒人類的積極情感培養。
“Bad communication has its roots in the feeling that you can’t be truthful, and tolerated, and loved”, Alain de Botton, philosopher and author writes in “The School of Life; An Emotional Education” (2019). Habits formed in infancy and early childhood, can and do become hardwired into the cognitive operating system, however, and as with so much in life, it is harder to unlearn something than it is to learn it, just the same as you can’t un-fry an egg. Worldviews are nurtured in the womb; their roots reach far deeper than most are willing to believe.
哲学家兼作家Alain de Botton在《生活学校；情感教育》（2019）中写道：“糟糕的沟通根源在于你无法真实、无法被容忍和被爱的感觉。” 然而，在婴儿期和幼儿期形成的习惯可以而且确实被固有地融入到认知操作系统中，就像生活中的许多事情一样，忘记学习比学习它更难，就像你不能解开鸡蛋一样。 世界观是在子宫里培养的；它们的根比大多数人愿意相信的要深得多。
So what’s all this got to do with truth, and with me, you might well ask? What have these dishonest babies got to do with anything?
那么，这一切与真相有什么关系，你可能会问我？ 这些不诚实的婴儿和任何事情有什么关系？
As 2021 draws near, certain inequalities still exist in our global societies of which we are all aware. And yet, as a species, we are quite unable to stop ourselves from tripping over the same rock twice. Your average, garden human is hardwired to believe certain versions of reality by around 5 years of age. Implicit biases and ways of being form the basis for all future understanding. “There are no facts, only interpretations”, adds Nietzsche in “On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense” (1873), calling this tendency to pan the happenings in the physical world through subjective knowledge sieves, “perspectivism.”
随着2021年的临近，我们全球社会仍然存在某些不平等，我们都知道这一点。 然而，作为一个物种，我们完全无法阻止自己两次被同一块岩石绊倒。 你的普通，花园人在5岁左右就天生相信某些版本的现实。 隐性偏见和存在方式构成了未来所有理解的基础。 尼采在《非道德意义上的真相和谎言》（1873年）中补充说：“没有事实，只有解释”，称这种通过主观知识筛来平移物理世界中发生的事情的倾向是“透视主义”。
Culture is the non-biological or social aspects of human life. It refers to the way we understand ourselves as individuals and as members of society, including stories, religion, media, rituals and even language itself. This demonstrated itself amply in 2020 when more collective cultures enjoyed relatively shorter lockdown times than their more individualistic counterparts, valuing the greater good over individual rights.
文化是人类生活的非生物或社会方面。 它指的是我们理解自己作为个人和社会成员的方式，包括故事、宗教、媒体、仪式甚至语言本身。 这在2020年充分证明了这一点，当时更多的集体文化比他们更个人主义的文化享受相对较短的封锁时间，重视更大的利益而不是个人权利。
Unfortunately, extensive levels of individual freedom also allow for the corresponding degree of poor choices and freedom to indulge in misguided behaviour.
不幸的是，广泛的个人自由也允许相应程度的不良选择和沉迷于误导行为的自由。
And yet, surely if there is any truth, it is that there is good inside all people. And everyone considers themselves to be good. So what then, are the narratives that sustain practices of hate and prejudice in our global human culture? It can only be a story that is held to be as true as your name, your hair, your mother tongue? The very words that allow us to articulate our experience in the world? A story that paints other groups at bad, or less or wrong in some unpardonable way.
然而，如果有任何真相的话，那就是所有人的内心都有善良。 每个人都认为自己是好人。 那麼，在我們的全球人類文化中，維持仇恨和偏見做法的敘述是什麼？ 它只能是一个像你的名字、你的头发、你的母语一样真实的故事吗？ 正是这些文字让我们表达了我们在世界上的经历？ 一个以某种不可原谅的方式将其他群体描绘成坏、或更少或错误的故事。
2020 has taught me some things about truth.
2020年教会了我一些关于真理的东西。
Step 1. Think.
第1步。 思考。
Step 2. Think about what you thought about.
第2步。 想想你的想法。
Bad information leads to bad choices. In the information age, it has never been easier to seek out knowledge, to update the cerebral software. Culture encapsulates and engenders all that we know. Lack of a proper awareness of this fact leaves us lost in a sea of interpretations.
糟糕的信息會導致錯誤的選擇。 在信息时代，寻找知识、更新大脑软件从未如此简单。 文化囊括和催生了我們所知道的一切。 对这一事实缺乏适当的认识，让我们迷失在解释的海洋中。
In the face of an increasingly unpredictable world, it’s comforting to cling to that which we know to be true. Rioters and voters and people suffocating under the weight of these truths have taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers in 2020. They reclaim the right to mandate over their own bodies, the right to breathe, the right to be.
面对一个越来越不可预测的世界，坚持我们知道真实的事情是令人欣慰的。 2020年，暴乱者、选民和在这些真相的重压下窒息的人以前所未有的数量走上街头。 他们夺回了对自己身体的授权权、呼吸权、在权。
Hegemony, political or cultural dominance and authority over others, means that the ones who walk among us with souls that shine a different light from the dominant culture spectrum are subordinate to the mainstream.
霸权、政治或文化支配和对他人的权威，意味着那些在我们中间行走的人的灵魂闪耀着不同于主导文化光谱的光芒，从屬於主流。
Diversity is dangerous. Different is deadly. Back with Ug The Caveman in the Palaeolithic era, this made sense. Evolution had no space on the bus for dead weight.
多样性是危险的。 不同是致命的。 回到旧石器时代的穴居人Ug，这是有道理的。 进化论在公共汽车上没有空间放置自重。
It still doesn’t. Diversity is the spark that makes the human race electric. Understanding that the old ways may not be the best ways can be liberating.
还是没有。 多样性是使人类通电的火花。 理解旧的方式可能不是最好的方法可以解放。
There are plenty of stories we’ve outgrown, stories like women being denied the vote on account of sex. It’s 100 years ago this year since universal suffrage was granted in the U.S. Little has been made of this monumental shift in worldview in the media. Women in Saudi Arabia were granted the right to drive a car in June, 2018 and it’s been just 1 year since abortion was legalised in Ireland.
有很多故事我们已经长大了，比如女性因为性而被拒绝投票的故事。 自美国获得普选权以来，已经是100年前的一年了。媒体对世界观的这种不朽转变几乎没有了解。 2018年6月，沙特阿拉伯妇女获得了开车的权利，堕胎在爱尔兰合法化才1年。
If we are to look at how the dominant narrative about women and women’s rights has evolved over a century, it’s clear that once the hegemony absorbs new knowledge, change is possible.
如果我们要看看一个世纪以来关于妇女和妇女权利的主导叙事是如何演变的，很明显，一旦霸权吸收了新知识，变革是可能的。
Taking a deep breath and admitting that this has been a batplop crazy year, that life is sometimes blind jump into the abyss, that no one really knows their ass from their armpit- this can liberate all of us. Or that’s my interpretation. Nietzsche would warm again making absolute judgements either way.
深吸一口气，承认这是疯狂的一年，生活有时是盲目的，跳入深渊，没有人真正从腋下知道他们的屁股——这可以解放我们所有人。 或者这就是我的解释。 无论哪种方式，尼采都会再次做出绝对的判断。
As Jeremy Goldberg said, “Courage is knowing it may hurt and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. That’s why life is hard”.
正如杰里米·戈德堡所说，“勇气是知道这可能会伤害，并且无论如何都要去做。 愚蠢是一样的。 這就是為什麼生活如此艱難。」