只有混蛋的偏執狂才能變得偉大嗎?

Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Great?

只有混蛋的偏執狂才能變得偉大嗎？

Soren Kierkegaard asked God to give him the power to will one thing. Amid all the distractions of life he asked for the power to live a focused life, wholeheartedly, toward a single point.

索倫·基爾克果(Soren Kierkegaard)要上帝賦予他得到一樣事物的力量。生活中充滿分心之物，他要求得到這種力量，讓他度過全心全意、只追求一個目標的一生。

And we've all known geniuses and others who have practiced a secular version of this. They have found their talent and specialty. They focus monomaniacally upon it. They put in the 10,000 hours (and more) that true excellence requires.

我們都知道，天才和其餘的人實踐過這個故事的世俗版本。他們找到了自己的天賦和專長。他們像偏執狂一樣專注於其中。他們投入了實現真正的卓越所需的一萬個（甚至更多）小時。

I just read "You Must Change Your Life," Rachel Corbett's joint biography of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and his protégé, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and they were certainly versions of this type.

我剛讀完《你必須要改變生活》(You Must Change Your Life)，它是蕾切爾·庫貝特(Rachel Corbett)爲雕塑家奧古斯特·羅丹和他的門生、詩人萊納·瑪利亞·里爾克所著的聯合傳記，他們無疑屬於這種類型。

The elder Rodin had one lesson for the young Rilke. "Travailler, toujours travailler." Work, always work.

老羅丹給年輕的里爾克上了一堂課。“Travailler, toujours travailler.”工作，一直工作。

This is the heroic vision of the artist. He renounces earthly and domestic pleasures and throws himself into his craft. Only through total dedication can you really see deeply and produce art.

這是藝術家的英雄式視野。他放棄了世俗和家庭的快樂，一心鑽研他的技藝。只有全身心地投入，你才能真正看得透徹並創造出藝術。

In his studio, Rodin could be feverishly obsessed, oblivious to all around him. "He abided by his own code, and no one else's standards could measure him," Corbett writes. "He contained within himself his own universe, which Rilke decided was more valuable than living in a world of others' making."

在他的工作室裏，羅丹可能會瘋狂沉迷、察覺不到周圍的一切。“他遵循自己的準則，其他人的標準沒有能用來衡量他的，”庫貝特寫道。“他把自己關在自己的宇宙裏，里爾克認定，這比生活在他人創造的世界裏更有價值。”

Rilke had the same solitary focus. With the bohemian revelry of turn-of-the-century Paris all around him, Rilke was alone writing in his room. He didn't drink or dance. He celebrated love, but as a general outlook and not as something you gave to any one person or place.

里爾克有着同樣孤獨的專注點。世紀之交的巴黎，周圍盡是波西米亞式的狂歡，里爾克卻獨自在房間裏寫作。他沒去飲酒或跳舞。他讚美愛，但卻是就廣義而言，而非作爲你給予任何人或任何地方什麼東西。

Both men produced masterworks that millions have treasured. But readers finish Corbett's book feeling that both men had misspent their lives.

兩人都創造出了世人所珍視的傑作。但在合上庫貝特的書時，讀者的感覺是，兩人都虛度了他們的生命。

They were both horrid to their wives and children. Rodin grew pathetically creepy, needy and lonely. Rilke didn't go back home as his father was dying, nor allow his wife and child to be with him as he died. Both men lived most of their lives without intimate care.

他們對待自己妻兒的方式令人驚駭。羅丹的怪異、取索和孤僻已經到了可悲的地步。里爾克在父親臨終前沒有回家，本人去世時也不讓妻子和孩子陪在身邊。兩人一生中大部分時間都沒有得到親密的關愛。

Their lives raise the question: Do you have to be so obsessively focused to be great? The traditional masculine answer is yes. But probably the right answer is no.

他們的人生引出了一個問題：你要如此癡迷專注才能變得偉大嗎？傳統上的男性化回答是肯定的。但很可能，正確的答案是否定的。

In the first place, being monomaniacal may not even be good for your work. Another book on my summer reading list was "Range," by David Epstein. It's a powerful argument that generalists perform better than specialists.

首先，當個偏執狂或許甚至對你的工作沒有好處。我夏季閱讀清單上的另一本書是戴維·愛潑斯坦(David Epstein)的《範圍》(Range)。該書闡述了通才勝過專才的有力論點。

The people who achieve excellence tend to have one foot outside their main world. "Compared to other scientists, Nobel laureates are at least 22 times more likely to partake as an amateur actor, dancer, magician or other type of performer," Epstein writes.

實現卓越的人往往會在主領域外有所涉獵。“與其他科學家相比，諾貝爾獎獲得者同時也是業餘演員、舞者、魔術師或其他類型表演者的可能性，是常人的22倍，”愛潑斯坦寫道。

He shows the same pattern in domain after domain: People who specialize in one thing succeed early, but then they slide back to mediocrity as their minds rigidify.

他指出各個領域都存在同樣的模式：專長於一樣事物的人能在早年取得成功，但此後隨着頭腦僵化，他們會淪爲平庸之輩。

Children who explore many instruments when they are young end up as more skilled musicians than the ones who are locked into just one. People who transition between multiple careers when they are young end up ahead over time because they can take knowledge in one domain and apply it to another.

小時候曾經探索很多樂器的孩子，最終會成爲比侷限於一種樂器的孩子更有技巧的音樂家。年輕時在多個職業之間轉換的人最終會取得領先，因爲他們可以把一個領域的知識應用到另一個領域。

A tech entrepreneur who is 50 is twice as likely to start a superstar company than one who is 30, because he or she has a broader range of experience. A survey of the fastest-growing tech start-ups found that the average age of the founder was 45.

50歲的科技創業者創辦超級明星公司的可能性，是30歲企業家的兩倍，因爲他或她擁有更廣泛的經驗。一項對增長最快的科技初創企業的調查發現，創始人的平均年齡爲45歲。

For most people, creativity is precisely the ability to pursue multiple interests at once, and then bring them together in new ways. "Without contraries is no progression," William Blake wrote.

對大多數人來說，創造力正是同時追求多種興趣，然後以新的方式將它們結合在一起的能力。“沒有對立就沒有進步，”威廉·布萊克寫道。

Furthermore, living a great life is more important than producing great work. A life devoted to one thing is a stunted life, while a pluralistic life is an abundant one. This is a truth feminism has brought into the culture. Women have rarely been able to live as monads. They were generally compelled to switch, hour by hour, between different domains and roles: home, work, market, the neighborhood.

此外，過一種偉大的生活比創作偉大的作品更重要。專注於一件事的人生是未能充分發展的人生，多元的人生纔是豐富的人生。這是女權主義帶入文化的真理。女性很少能像單細胞生物一樣生活。她們無時無刻都要被迫在不同的領域和角色之間轉換：家庭、工作、市場和鄰里。

A better definition of success is living within the tension of multiple commitments and trying to make them mutually enhancing. The shape of this success is a pentagram — the five-pointed star. You have your five big passions in life — say, family, vocation, friends, community, faith — and live flexibly within the gravitational pull of each.

對成功更好的定義是生活在多重承諾的壓力中，並努力令它們相互促進。這種成功的形狀是一個五角星——你在生活中擁有的五種激情——家庭、職業、朋友、社區、信仰——並在每一種激情的引力之下靈活地生活。

You join communities that are different from one another. You gain wisdom by entering into different kinds of consciousness. You find freedom at the borderlands between your communities.

你加入彼此不同的社區。你通過研究不同的意識獲得智慧。你在社區之間的邊界找到自由。

Over the past month, while reading these books, I attended four conferences. Two were very progressive, with almost no conservatives. The other two were very conservative, with almost no progressives. Each of the worlds was so hermetically sealed I found that I couldn't even describe one world to members of the other. It would have been like trying to describe bicycles to a fish.

在過去的一個月裏，當我讀這些書的時候，我參加了四個會議。其中兩個非常進步，幾乎沒有保守派。另外兩個非常保守，幾乎沒有進步派。每一個世界都是如此封閉，我發現我甚至不能向其他成員描述一個世界。就像試圖向魚描述自行車一樣。

I was reading about how rich the pluralistic life is, and how stifling a homogeneous life is. And I was realizing that while we're learning to preach a gospel of openness and diversity, we're mostly not living it. In the realm of public life, many live as monads, within the small circles of one specialty, one code, no greatness.

我讀到多元生活是多麼豐富多彩，而同質生活又是多麼沉悶乏味。我意識到，當我們在學着宣揚開放和多樣性的福音時，我們大多並沒有實踐它。在公共生活領域，許多人都像單細胞生物一樣生活，侷限在一個專業、一種規範的小圈子裏，看不到更廣闊的天地。