尋找勇氣之源英語作文

　　勇氣是人類文明亙古不變的主題，但是對勇氣的系統(tǒng)性研究卻是最近才開始的。什么是勇氣？勇氣從何而來？它在身體和大腦中是如何體現(xiàn)的？為何我們會對它如此之摯愛？沒有恐懼感是不是件好事情呢？本文將一一予以解答。

　　In his 20 years as a firefighter and paramedic in Colorado Springs, Bruce Monson, 43, has had his little fist-bumps with death: a burning roof collapsing on top of him, toxic fumes nearly suffocating him.

　　在其作為科羅拉多斯普林斯（Colorado Springs）市消防員和急救人員的20年生涯里，43歲的布魯斯·蒙遜（Bruce Monson）跟死神有過小小的親密接觸：一座燃燒的屋頂從他頭頂坍塌，有毒氣體幾乎令其窒息。

　　Yet far more terrifying than any personal threats are what Mr. Monson describes as the "bad kid calls," like the one from a mother who had put her 18-month-old son down in his crib right next to a window with a Venetian blind and its old-fashioned cord.

　　但是比所有的個人威脅都要恐怖得多的，是被蒙遜先生描述為"搗蛋鬼電話"的，就像是一位媽媽打過來的電話一樣，這位母親把自己18個月大的孩子放到了嬰兒床上，而嬰兒床則正好靠近一個帶有軟百葉窗和老式繩索的窗戶。

　　"The kid had grabbed the cord and gotten it twisted around his neck, and the mother came in and found him hanging there," said Mr. Monson. "I'm the first one in the door, she's in a panic, and she shoves the kid into my arms, crying, 'Please save him, please save him!' "

　　"小孩抓住了那條繩子，然后被繩子繞住了自己的脖子，接著母親進(jìn)來就發(fā)現(xiàn)他懸在那里了"，蒙遜先生說："我是第一個上門的，她還在恐慌之中，一把就將孩子塞到我手臂里，哭著說，'請救救他，快救救他！'"。

　　The child's body was blue, but Mr. Monson and his fellows met parental despair with professional focus and did everything they could. "We worked on him for over an hour," said Mr. Monson. "It's like a state of calm. You're so tuned in to what you're doing, you're not thinking about the reality of the situation."

　　孩子的身體都已經(jīng)發(fā)紫了，但蒙遜先生和同伴的職業(yè)素養(yǎng)遭遇了父母的絕望眼神，他們竭盡所能。"我們在孩子身上努力了一個多鐘頭"，蒙遜先生說："那就好像是進(jìn)入了一種入定的狀態(tài)。你對自己的正在做的事情是如此的全神貫注，以至于到了棄現(xiàn)實情況于不顧的地步"。

　　Their best was not enough, however, and later, at the hospital, the terrible sadness settled in.

　　然而，盡其所能仍回天乏力，隨后在醫(yī)院里傳來了噩耗。

　　As Mr. Monson filled out his report, the mother sat in the trauma room's designated "bereavement rocking chair," rocking her dead son, saying her goodbyes, while family members filed in and wailed at the sight.

　　正如蒙遜在報告中所寫的那樣，那位母親坐在創(chuàng)傷室指定的"喪親搖搖椅"上，不斷搖晃著她死去的孩子，喃喃著自己的告別，此情此景，一旁的家庭成員也哀嚎不已。

　　An image of that mother in her rocking chair comes to Mr. Monson's mind every time he answers another "bad kid" call, spurring him to keep going, to never give up or grow sloppy or cynical, to simply do his job; and through doing his job, he has saved far more lives than he has lost.

　　每次接到一個又一個的"搗蛋鬼"電話時，蒙遜先生的腦海總會浮現(xiàn)出那位母親坐在搖搖椅上的景象，激勵著他不斷前進(jìn)，永不放棄，永遠(yuǎn)都不能麻痹大意或者是憤世嫉俗，只想著做好自己的工作；通過他的努力，他所救活的生命遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過了失去的。

　　Only once did he allow the furniture connection to spook him — when his own wife was at the same hospital having emergency surgery for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, and his young daughter happened to climb onto the bereavement seat. "I knew it was a totally irrational thing to do," he said, "but I made her get out of that chair."

　　這種聯(lián)想只有一次讓他被嚇到了—— 當(dāng)他自己的妻子因為宮外孕破裂在同一家醫(yī)院接受急救手術(shù)的時候，他年輕的女兒恰巧爬上了那張喪親之椅。"我知道，這完全是一件荒謬的事情"，他說："但是我把她從椅子上弄下來了"。

　　Courage is something that we want for ourselves in gluttonous portions and adore in others without qualification. Yet for all the longstanding centrality of courage to any standard narrative of human greatness, only lately have researchers begun to study it systematically, to try to define what it is and is not, where it comes from, how it manifests itself in the body and brain, who we might share it with among nonhuman animals, and why we love it so much.

　　勇氣是某種我們希望自己富有并無保留地仰慕別人擁有的東西。在人類文明的任何標(biāo)準(zhǔn)記敘當(dāng)中，勇氣的中心地位一直是屹立不倒的，盡管如此，但是研究者也只是最近才開始對它進(jìn)行系統(tǒng)性的研究，試圖去定義什么是勇氣，什么不是勇氣，勇氣從何而來，它在身體和大腦中是如何體現(xiàn)的，在非人類的動物里面我們會跟誰分享勇氣，以及為何我們會對它如此之摯愛。

　　A new report in the journal Current Biology describes the case of a woman whose rare congenital syndrome has left her completely, outrageously fearless, raising the question of whether it's better to conquer one's fears, or to never feel them in the first place.

　　《現(xiàn)代生物學(xué)》雜志的一份新報告描述了一個案例，一位患有罕見的先天性綜合癥的女人，在全然無所畏懼的情況下徹底痊愈，報告向我們提出了一個問題，是否說克服恐懼，或者永遠(yuǎn)不把恐懼?jǐn)[在首位是不是會更好？

　　In another recent study, neuroscientists scanned the brains of subjects as they struggled successfully to overcome their terror of snakes, identifying regions of the brain that may be key to our everyday heroics.

　　在另一份最新研究中，神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)科學(xué)家掃描了成功克服了對蛇的恐懼感的研究對象的大腦，確定了有可能是我們平常英雄事跡的關(guān)鍵的大腦區(qū)域。

　　Researchers in the Netherlands are exploring courage among children, to see when the urge for courage first arises, and what children mean when they call themselves brave.

　　荷蘭的研究者正在探索兒童的勇氣之源，試圖找出什么時候會催生出勇氣來，以及孩子們自稱勇敢時其意思是什么。

　　The theme of courage claims a long and gilded ancestry. Plato included courage among the four cardinal or principal virtues, along with wisdom, justice and moderation.

　　勇氣這個主題有著久遠(yuǎn)而輝煌的歷史。柏拉圖把勇氣與智慧、正義及節(jié)制一起，列為四種體液或稱之為四美德。

　　"As a major virtue, courage helps to define the excellent person and is no mere optional trait," writes George Kateb, a political theorist and emeritus professor at Princeton University. "One of the worst reproaches in the world is to be called a coward."

　　"作為一項主要美德，勇氣幫助我們定義優(yōu)秀之人，它不是可有可無的選項"，普林斯頓大學(xué)的政治理論家和名譽(yù)教授喬治·卡泰（George Kateb）說："這個世界上最糟糕的指責(zé)之一就是被稱為懦夫"。

　　Yet defining what it means to be courageous has often proved as thistly as distinguishing the wise ones from the fools. For Plato and many other authorities, courage is above all a martial art, most readily displayed on the battlefield — the iconic brave solder running into the line of fire to retrieve an injured comrade.

　　但是，要界定什么是勇敢，往往被證明跟在愚者中區(qū)分出智者一樣的棘手。對于柏拉圖和許多其他的權(quán)威來說，勇氣首先是一種搏擊術(shù)，最容易在戰(zhàn)場上展示出來——標(biāo)志性的鐵血戰(zhàn)士沖破火線救出受傷的戰(zhàn)友。

　　But Dr. Kateb points out that if courage finds its highest expression in war, then the trait paradoxically becomes an immoral virtue, ennobling war and carnage by insisting that only in battle can men — and it usually is men — discover the depths of their nobility.

　　但是卡泰博士指出，如果說勇敢在戰(zhàn)爭中有最高表現(xiàn)的話，那么其特點(diǎn)就自相矛盾地成為不道德的美德，強(qiáng)調(diào)人們，通常是指男人，只有通過戰(zhàn)爭才能發(fā)掘其靈魂深處的高貴，從而把戰(zhàn)爭和屠殺高尚化。

　　Marilynne Robinson, the novelist and social critic, has observed that courage is "dependent on cultural definition" and "rarely expressed except where there is sufficient consensus to support it." Where religious martyrdom is lionized, there will be martyrs; where social or political protest is seen as glorious warfare in civvies, there will be a rash of red-faced declaimers, soapboxes on every street.

　　瑪麗琳·羅賓遜（Marilynne Robinson），小說家和社會評論家，她已經(jīng)注意到勇氣"依賴于文化定義"，"很少被表達(dá)出來，除了在得到足夠的輿論支持的場合"。在為宗教而罹難者被奉為圣人的地方，就會有殉道者；在社會或政治抗議被視為光榮的平民斗爭的地方，每一條街道臨時搭建的演講臺上就都會充斥著面紅耳赤、激昂陳詞的演說家。

　　In pioneering work from 1970s and beyond, Stanley J. Rachman of the University of British Columbia and others studied the physiology and behavior of paratroopers as they prepared for their first parachute jump.

　　在上世紀(jì)70年代及之后的開創(chuàng)性工作中，不列顛哥倫比亞大學(xué)的斯坦利.J.拉赫曼（Stanley J.Rachman）等人在其首次跳傘準(zhǔn)備的過程中研究了傘兵的生理及行為特征。

　　The work revealed three basic groups: the preternaturally fearless, who displayed scant signs of the racing heart, sweaty palms, spike in blood pressure and other fight-or-flight responses associated with ordinary fear, and who jumped without hesitation; the handwringers, whose powerful fear response at the critical moment kept them from jumping; and finally, the ones who reacted physiologically like the handwringers but who acted like the fearless leapers, and, down the hatch.

　　這項工作發(fā)現(xiàn)了三個基本組別：超乎尋常的大無畏者，很少表現(xiàn)出心跳加速、血壓升高、手心出汗及其他的與平常恐懼有關(guān)的戰(zhàn)或逃反應(yīng)，在跳傘的時候總是毫不猶豫；躊躇緊張者，在關(guān)鍵時刻其強(qiáng)大的恐懼反應(yīng)令其不敢跳下；以及最后一組，在生理反應(yīng)上與躊躇緊張者一致，但卻像無畏的跳傘者一樣行動、最終跳下艙口的人。

　　These last Dr. Rachman deemed courageous, defining courage as "behavioral approach in spite of the experience of fear." By that expansive definition, courage becomes democratized and demilitarized, the property of any wallflower who manages to give the convention speech, or the math phobe who decides to take calculus.

　　其中最后一組被拉赫曼博士視為勇敢，即"棄恐懼體驗于不顧的行為方式"。按照這種擴(kuò)展性定義，勇氣變得民主化和非軍事化，它是任何一位設(shè)法進(jìn)行提名演講的局外人的專屬，或者是一位對數(shù)學(xué)恐懼的人決定去學(xué)微積分。

　　Through interviews with some 320 children aged 8 to 13, Peter Muris of Erasmus University Rotterdam and his colleagues found that children also equate courage with the conquering of one's fears, and more than 70 percent of the respondents claimed they had performed one or more brave acts, including rescuing a little brother who'd fallen in the swimming pool, saving a cat from a tree, biking home through the woods at night, and stealing money from one's mother's purse — yes, that will make the heart race, all right.

　　通過對大概320位年齡在8歲到3歲之間的小孩的采訪，鹿特丹大學(xué)（Erasmus University Rotterdam）的彼得·繆里斯（Peter Muris）及其同事發(fā)現(xiàn)，孩子們也把克服恐懼等同視為勇敢的表現(xiàn)，超過70%的調(diào)查對象聲稱自己進(jìn)行了一或多項勇敢的行為，包括搭救跌落泳池的小弟弟，拯救樹上的一個小貓咪，晚上穿越樹林騎車回家，以及從媽媽錢包里偷東西——是的，這些都會令心跳加速，好吧。

　　Joel Berger, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Montana, also distinguishes between animals that behave boldly for lack of experience — like mockingbirds unfamiliar with humans that will alight on the rim of a person's cup to take a drink — and those that are aware of a danger but proceed in the face of it.

　　喬爾·博格（Joel Berger），野生動物保護(hù)協(xié)會及蒙大拿大學(xué)的一位生物學(xué)家，也把缺乏經(jīng)驗而行為大膽的動物區(qū)分出來——像不熟悉人類的嘲鳥會飛落到某人杯子的邊緣喝上一口——而那些意識到危險的則會棄之不顧繼續(xù)飛行。

　　He cited the time he and his colleagues had immobilized a young bison in preparation for taking blood samples, and when they returned, an unrelated adult male bison was standing guard over the yearling, refusing to let the scientists approach.

　　他舉了一個例子，某次自己和同事固定住一頭年輕的野牛，準(zhǔn)備采血樣，當(dāng)他們回來的時候，一頭不相干的成年雄性野牛卻守衛(wèi)在小牛的周圍，拒絕讓科學(xué)家靠近。

　　"He knew that he could be attacked by us, and there was no genetic kinship involved," said Dr. Berger. "Courage may be a human construct, but I'd call this a courageous, even heroic act."

　　"它知道自己有可能被我們攻擊，而且它們之間也沒有遺傳的親緣關(guān)系"，博格說："勇敢也許是人類行為，但是我會把這一舉動稱為有膽量、甚至是英勇行為"。

　　Seeking to capture the sensation of courage in real time, Yadin Dudai, a neurobiologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues scanned the brains of people with a known phobia toward snakes as they were confronted with a live, large, harmless but indubitably serpentine corn snake.

　　為了能實時捕捉到勇敢的體驗，以色列雷霍沃特魏茨曼科學(xué)研究所的也丁·杜代（Yadin Dudai）及其同事，在一個放有一條大型的、活體的、無害的但是的確是蛇無疑的玉米錦蛇的現(xiàn)場掃描了一位已知對蛇有恐懼感的人的大腦。

　　Lying in the scanner, the subjects could choose either to allow a box holding the snake to come closer, or to keep it away. As reported last June in the journal Neuron, the participants who squelched their terror and pressed the "snake approach" button showed activation of a brain region called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex.

　　躺在掃描儀里，受試者可以選擇讓裝有蛇的箱體靠近自己，或把它拿開。根據(jù)去年6月《神經(jīng)元》雜志的報導(dǎo)，克服了自己恐懼感、按下"讓蛇靠近"按鈕的受試者，在一個被稱為亞屬前扣帶皮質(zhì)的大腦區(qū)域發(fā)現(xiàn)有活動。

　　Located toward the front of the brain, the structure has been implicated in depression and, intriguingly, altruistic behavior, and is thought to help negotiate between emotion and cognition, impulse and calculation.

　　該結(jié)構(gòu)位于大腦的前部，與抑郁、魅力及利他行為有關(guān)聯(lián)，被認(rèn)為是在情感和認(rèn)知、沖動和考量之間起到幫助的部分。

　　The thumb-size bundle of neurons acknowledges the yellow belly within but then moves to stanch its quivering power. And it does this in large part by dialing down the activity of the amygdala, long known as the brain's central headquarters of fear.

　　這個拇指大小的神經(jīng)元束能認(rèn)知內(nèi)在的懦弱，但是隨后會轉(zhuǎn)移到平息顫抖的能量。它會在很大程度上降低黃杏體的活動，長久以來那都被認(rèn)為是恐懼的中樞。

　　For the serious cowards among us, the chronic need to conquer fear can get tedious. Why not just skip the anterior cingulate reveille and muzzle the brain's fear response for good? The story of SM, a 44-year-old woman whose rare genetic condition has selectively destroyed the brain's twinned set of amygdala, shows the clear downside of a life without fear.

　　對于我們當(dāng)中具有嚴(yán)重膽怯的人來說，習(xí)慣性的克服恐懼的需要會變得乏味起來。何不干脆一勞永逸地?zé)o視大腦前扣帶的起床號，讓大腦對恐懼的反應(yīng)緘默呢？那個SM的故事，一位患有罕見遺傳病的44歲女人選擇性地破壞其大腦孿生杏黃體集之后的結(jié)果，表明了缺乏恐懼的生活的明顯缺陷。

　　As Justin Feinstein, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa, and his colleagues describe in Current Biology, the otherwise normal SM is incapable of being spooked.

　　正如衣阿華大學(xué)的臨床神經(jīng)心理學(xué)家賈斯汀·范士丹（Justin Feinstein）及其同事在《當(dāng)代生物學(xué)》雜志中所描述的那樣，在其他方面正常的SM對受驚嚇已無反應(yīng)。

　　She claimed to fear snakes and spiders, and maybe she did in her pre-disease childhood, but when the researchers took her to an exotic pet store, they were astonished to see that not only did she not avoid the snakes and spiders, she was desperate to hold them close.

　　她宣稱害怕蛇和蜘蛛，也許她在患病前的兒童時期的確如此，但是當(dāng)她被研究人員帶到一個國外的寵物店的時候，他們驚奇地發(fā)現(xiàn)，她不僅不回避蛇和蜘蛛，而且還拼命抓起它們套近乎。

　　The researchers took SM to a haunted house, and she laughed at the scary parts and blithely made the monster-suited employees jump. She was shown clips from famous horror films like "The Silence of Lambs" and "Halloween," and she showed no flickers of fright.

　　研究人員把SM帶到鬼屋，她卻沖著可怕的地方大笑，還快活地讓穿著怪物服裝的工作人員亂跳不已。給她看著名的恐怖片像《沉默的羔羊》和《萬圣節(jié)》的電影剪輯時，她都沒有表現(xiàn)出絲毫的恐懼感。

　　This fearlessness may be fine in the safety of one's living room, but it turns out that SM makes her own horror films in real life. She walks through bad neighborhoods alone at night, approaches shady strangers without guile, and has been repeatedly threatened with death.

　　這種大無畏也許在一個人的客廳里面是安全的，但是事實證明，SM在現(xiàn)實生活中制造了她自己的恐怖電影。她晚上獨(dú)自一人穿過其惡鄰的屋子，毫不保留地接近名聲不好的陌生人，并以多次受到死亡的威脅。

　　"We have an individual who's constantly putting herself into harm's way," said Mr. Feinstein. "If we had a million SMs walking around, the world would be a total mess."

　　"這里我們看到了一個不斷將自己置身于傷害方式的個體"，范士丹先生說："如果我們周圍有一百萬個SM在游蕩的話，整個世界都將變得一團(tuán)糟"。

　　The bad calls would keep coming, and the rocking chairs never stop.

　　搗蛋鬼電話仍在不斷打進(jìn)來，而搖搖椅則永遠(yuǎn)也不會停止搖擺。

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