MAPS OF MEANING|阿船在读书

来整理读书笔记啦!

这是一本非常冗长的书,内容长达700页,引述长达200页。

刚开始读这本的时候感觉很多观点角度都非常新奇,也很符合我的口味,作者很有野心,从这本书的取名就可以略知一二,当然想把“意义”这个东西论证阐述清楚并非易事, “意义”这个概念本身就很抽象。作者从很多方面想把这个抽象的概念剥茧抽丝地一一捋清,从神经,语言,哲学,社会,历史,宗教等等来讲述人类的发展,成长,融入社会,自由的追求,自我救赎,邪恶的本来面目,天才和平庸者等等方面,继而回归到“意义”本身。 普及了很多知识,但是其实很多内容都重叠在一起,反复叙述从而读这本书的体验并不是很好,甚至有点折磨。到了本书最后,能略微感觉到作者还是没有很好得把这个“意义”具象化,而是作者在探寻“意义”的过程也还没有达到他自己想要的终点。

然后,读书笔记整理了百余条,里面有我觉得是作者很独到的见解,还有我同意的观点,还有一些我觉得语言写得特别好的部分。有一些笔记后面有我当时读这本书的想法(即使我现在看,我自己都读不明白我当时的想法,所以即时做笔记是非常有用的,因为读这一书时的我和现在的我是不一样的自己)。



The Reading Notes of MAPS OF MEANING


1. The mythic imagination is concerned with the world in the manner of the phenomenologist, who seeks to discover the nature of subjective reality, instead of concerning himself with description of the objective world. Myth, and the drama that is part of myth, provide answers in image to the following question: “how can the current state of experience be conceptualized in abstraction, with regards to its meaning?”

我的想法: “意义”的意义是把所有实际的感官体验全都抽象化吗?

2. Our most fundamental maps of meaning—maps which have a narrative structure—portray the motivational value of our current state, conceived of in contrast to a hypothetic ideal, accompanies by plans of action, which are our pragmatic notions about how to get what we want. 

我的想法: 对于我们来说,“意义”就是如何得到想要的。

3. It is not primarily interested in the “objective” nature of the new circumstances—a rat cannot actually determine what is objective and what is merely “personal opinion.” Nor does it care. It just wants know what it should do. 

我的想法: 人类区别于大部分的动物对客观事物的主观性。

4. There prefrontal cortex is the newest part of the motor unit, and “grew” out of the direct motor control centers, in the course of cortical evolution. More sophistication in development of the prefrontal center means, in part, heightened capability for abstract exploration, which means investigation in the absence of actual movement, which means the capacity to learn from the observation of others and through consideration of potential actions before they emerge in behavior. 

我的想法: 抽象的形成是和大脑的前额叶皮层有关。

5. Creative exploration, concrete and abstract, is therefore linked in a direct sense to being. 

6. This entire argument implies, of course, the more complex and behaviorally flexible animals inhabit(“construct,” if you will) a more complex universe. 

我的想法: The more you observe, the more layers of the world will be discovered. 

7. This is because comparatively large areas of the motor cortex are given over to control of the face and hands, which are capable of an immense number of complex and sophisticated operations. 

我的想法: 面部和手部的运动神经比其他地方的要多得多,给的神经多,更容易反应心灵的活动?

8. It is useful to consider the structure of the homunculus, because it is in some profound way representative of our essential nature, as it finds expression in emotion and behavior. 

我的想法: 这一章节大概都是讲从生物学上,思想和感情在大脑里的控制区域。

9. The hand, used additionally to duplicate the action and function of objects, also allows first for imitation (and pointing), and then for full-blown linguistic representation. Used for written language, the hand additionally enables long-distance (temporal and spatial) transfer of its ability to another (and for the elaboration and extension of exploration, during the process of writing, which is hand-mediated thinking). 

我的想法: 这一段非常有意思,指尖的动作模仿联系着语言的诞生,使得指尖上的书写语言演化成人类的另一种进阶思考方式。

10. Consideration of the structure and function of the brain must take this primary fact into account. A dolphin or whale has a large, complex brain—a highly developed nervous system—but it cannot shape its world. It is trapped, so to speak, in its streamlined testtube-like form, specialized for oceanic life. It cannot directly alter the shape of its material environment in any complex manner. Its brain, therefore, is not likely prepared to perform any traditionally “creative” function (indeed, as one would suspect, lacks the sophisticated structuring characters of primate brains).

我的想法: 环境确实限制着思考。

11. Consciousness also evidently expands or sharpens during the course of activities designed to enhance or increase adaptive competence—during the course of creative exploration. Processing of novel or otherwise interesting sensory information, associated with the orienting complex, heightened awareness and focused concentration, activates large areas of neocortex. Similarly, increased cortical mobilization takes place during the practice phase of skill acquisition, when awareness appears required for development of control. The area of such engagement or mobilization shrinks in size as movement becomes habitual and unconscious, or when sensory information loses interest or novelty. 

我的想法: 这才是学习一项新技能大脑内在神经活动的本质。某些神经放大,某些神经缩小自身的空间。

12. The operation of these systems appears mediated in part by the neurotransmitter dopamine—involved in producing subjective and behavioral response to cues of reward, in the form of hope, curiosity and active approach.

我的想法: 当学习一项新技能时,多巴胺也会释放。也是因为多巴胺的释放才使得学习更容易促成。

13. Our physical attributes (the abilities of the hand, in combination with the other physiological specializations of man) define who we are and enable us to endlessly elicit new properties from previously stable and predictable elements of experience. 

我的想法: 人类成为人类(有意识地自主抽象思考等)是很多物理特征的使然。

14. We carve out the world as a consequence of our direct interactions with the unknown—most notably, with our hands, which enable us to manipulate things, to change their sensory aspects and, most importantly, to change their importance to us, to give them new, more desirable value. The capacity for dextrous manipulation is particularly human, and has enabled us to radically alter the nature of our experiences. 

我的想法: 手的触感是我们去认知这个世界最直观的感官,也通过这种触感我们改变了世界在眼里的样子,也改变了我们的价值观。

15. Animal exploration is primarily motor in nature. An animal must move around an unfamiliar thing or situation to determine its affective relevance and sensory nature. 

我的想法: Unlike the animals, we transform the sensations into words, with the words we recreate the sensations. 

16. The right hemisphere, less language-fluent than its generally more dominant twin, appears specialized for the inhibition and extinction of behavior (and, therefore, for the production of negative emotion), for generation and manipulation of complex visual (and auditory) images, for coordination of gross motor actions, and for rapid and global recognition of patterns. 

我的想法: 不可言喻的感觉是有无法主宰语言的右脑控制。

17. The life hemisphere, by contrast, appears particularly skilled at linguistic processing and communication, at detailed, linear thinking, at fine motor skill, and at the comprehension of wholes in terms of their constituent elements. 

我的想法: 左脑在感受上,整体大于局部,语言控制中枢。

18. The uniquely specialized capacities of the right hemisphere appear to allow it to derive from repeated observations of behavior images of action patterns that the verbal left can arrange, with increasingly logic and detail, into stories. 

我的想法: 熟能生巧的真正意义,就是很多我们天生的直觉(右脑控制)我们并不能开始就明白和掌握,只能通过重复掌握,过渡到语言(左脑控制)。

19. The story appears generated, in its initial stages, by the capacity for imagery and pattern recognition characteristic of the right hemisphere, which is integrally involved in narrative cognition and in processes that aid or are analogous to such cognition. The right hemisphere has the ability to decode the nonverbal and melodic aspects of speech, to empathize (or to engage, more generally, in interpersonal relationships), and the capacity to comprehend imagery, metaphor and analogy. The left-hemisphere “linguistic” systems “finish” the story, adding logic, proper temporal order, internal consistency, verbal representation, and possibility for rapid abstract explicit communication. 

我的想法: 进一步阐述左脑的语言中枢和右脑倾向于直觉体验的交互和转换。

20. This model, I would propose, is a story.

我的想法: 故事,总以反转,扭曲,未知等而产生趣味性,因为我们的原始右脑就擅于背这些元素说抓住注意力。后面说到 it is the right hemisphere, which is activated by the unknown.

21. Much of our knowing what, however—our description of the world—is about knowing how, which is behavioral knowledge, wisdom. Much of our descriptive knowledge—representational knowledge—is representation of what constitutes wisdom (without being that wisdom, itself).

我的想法: 知识和知道的区别。我们大部分掌握的是知识,而不是知道(道也,智者).

22. Our capacity for abstraction allows us to take our facility for imitation one step further, however: we can learn to imitate not only the precise behaviors that constitute adaptation, but the process by which those behaviors were generated. 

我的想法: 模仿的起源和变量。

23. Every novelty-inspired, exploration-drive “learning experience” has a revolutionary element; it is just that those reconstructions that involve stories with very limited “sized” (that is, spatial-temporal areas) release only a proportionate amount of emotion. 

我的想法: 读书的力量,通过文字,通过故事会让你的神经活动,产生不同的感知去感受这个世界的多维。

24. In the latter case, we may well turn to war as an alternative deemed emotionally desirable. 

我的想法: 改变就意味着除去之前的行为模式,也许战争和死亡是对于彻底改变来说是最极端的方式。

25. This mediator, I would suggest, is those metaphoric, imagistic processes, dependent upon limbic-motivated right-hemispheric activity, that help us initially formulate our stories. 

我的想法: This is what poets are doing. 

26. Nested stories, Processes of Generation, and Multiple Memory Systems helps explain the idea of this “unconscious”—the broadest span stories, which are determined by complex social interactions, are episodic (imagistic) or even procedural (manifested only in socially modified behavior) in nature. There is a very narrow window of expressible “frames of reference”—conscious stories. Just ask any young child or unsophisticated adult to describe the “rationale” for their behaviors. 

27. Metaphors mediate between our procedural wisdom and out explicit knowledge; they constitute the imagistic declarative point of transition between the act and the word. 

我的想法: 比喻是现有的知识体系中剥离出的智慧,是抽象思考和实体的语言转变。

28. We are all, in consequence, imitation a story that we don’t understand. 

29. It is impossible to properly appreciate the nature of the categories of the mythological imagination without some understanding of the process of categorization. The act of categorization enables us to treat the mysterious and complex world we inhabit as if it were simpler—as if it were, in fact, comprehensible. We perform this act of simplification by treating objects or situations that share some aspect of structure, function or implication as if they were identical. 

我的想法: 人类思考最擅长简化复杂,对号入座。

30. Stories describe the interactions of the contents of the categories of the imagination, which take embodied form, in the shape of dramatic characters. 

我的想法: 很喜欢这一段对“故事”的概括。

31. Operation within this set of constraints allows for generation of the following straightforward hypothesis: the “partially implicit” mythic stories or fantasies that guide our adaptation, in general, appear to describe or portray or embody there permanent constituent elements of human experience: the unknown, or unexplored territory; the known, or explored territory; and the process—-the knower—that mediates between them. These three elements constitute the cosmos—that is, the world of experience—from the narrative or mythological perspective. 

这一章就开始从神话角度讲人类对于未知领域,已知领域的探索,以及探索者的内心经历过程。

32. Finally, he must adapt to the presence of himself—must face the endlessly tragic problem of the knower, the exploratory process, the limited, mortal subject; must serve as eternal mediator between the creative and destructive “underworld” of the unknown and the secure, oppressive patriarchal kingdom of human culture. 

33. Finally, we remain ignorant of our own true nature, because of its intrinsic complexity, and because we act toward others and ourselves in a socialized manner, which is to say a predictable manner—and thereby shield ourselves from our own mystery. 

我的想法: 人的社交本质让清醒的天才分外孤独。

34. In chaos lurks great potential. 

我的想法: 很喜欢这句话。

35. What is now table was once tree; before that, earth—before that, rock; before that, star. What is now table also has before it an equally complex and lengthy developmental history waiting in “front” of it; it will be, perhaps, ash, then earth, then—far enough in the future—part of the sun again (when the sun finally re-envelops the earth).

我的想法: I like you all the way down you were formed even before you exist. All the elements you are not even aware of are constantly flowing from your odors, your scents, your behaviors. 

36. Is that “thing” everything it once was, everything it is, and everything it will be, all at the same time? 

我的想法: Time again shows its just feature separating apart your different forms of existence in spatial entities. It shall mean that without the consistency of memory function which with the memory cells play as a role, you are becoming not the same being as every split of second passing by. There, enough amount of time accumulated, you started to recognize. 

37. He acts, and observes himself acting; then imitates the action, forming a primordial representation of himself later, formulates a more abstracted model of his own actions. 

我的想法: 在模仿的过程中也许能认识到真正的自己。

38. Such re-establishment closed the circle of temporal being. 

我的想法: A close of a circle, if you try to imagine that you live in a state of unconsciousness, it is the truth of the end of a circle of your life. Heaven is not the end, it is just the atmosphere around the surface of the earth. 

39. The unexpected information itself, information necessary for the constant expansion of adaptive competence. Such information comes packaged in danger and promise. 

40. Everything we know, we know because someone generated something valuable in the course of an encounter with the unexpected. 

我的想法: 知道的过程总会有新的价值产生。

41. It may burst in sudden eruptions up from the depths of the should with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitement, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. 

我的想法: 探索未知带来的刺激。

42. Representations of the unknown constitute attempts to elaborate upon its nature, to illuminate its emotional and motivational significance (to illuminate its being, from the prescientific or mythic perspective). This is categorization of all that has not yet been explored and represented, in the service of adaptation to that with which has not yet been understood. 

我的想法: 你必须要有一样极致感兴趣的事情让你摆脱生活重复的日常带来平淡的毁灭感。

向着未知就是活下去最本能的动力之一。

43. The unknown as Nature appears as paradoxical formidable overwhelming power, applied simultaneously in one direction and its opposite. Hunger, the will to self-preservation, drives living creatures to devour each other rapaciously, and the hunters have no mercy for the hunted. Sexuality bends the individual will inexorably and often tragically to the demand of the species, and existence maintains itself in endless suffering, transformation and death. 

我的想法: 人类被本能的欲望驱使也被其束缚。例如“意识”让我们认知到“自己”的存在,伴随着意识到 “自己”存在的痛苦和死亡。

44. Disease, hunger, hardship, war above all, are her helpers, and among all peoples the goddesses of war and the hunt express man’s experience of life as a female exacting blood. 

我的想法: 从这一大章开始,作者从“阴阳”的角度阐述自然运行的规律:混乱与秩序。

45. Human beings are curious about the structure and function of everything, not least themselves; our capacity to tell stories reflects our ability to describe ourselves. 

我的想法: 人类的语言倾向始终落脚在“故事”上,因为故事逻辑的循环,循环到自身。

46. The generation of new information from contact with the unknown means the construction of experience itself; the destruction of previous modes of adaption and representation (previous “worlds”) means return of “explored territory” to the unexplored condition that preceded it, and then its restructuring, in more comprehensive form. 

我的想法: 新的知识,都是在已知里上发现未知。

47. The depression, anxiety and physical breakdown that is characteristic of too early childhood separation from parents is the result of exposure to “too much unknown” and incorporation of “too little cultural structure.”

48. The boys know that they are to be introduced to some monstrous power who exists in the night, in the forest or cave, in the depths of the unknown. 

49. “Freeing” phenomena previously adapted to from the grasp of familiar action and valuation. The phenomena, thus “free”, then once again “possess” sufficient “energy” to motivate their reconceptualization (that is, to make of that process of reconceptualization something sufficiently vital and important to stamp itself into memory—into permanent incarnation as “personality”).

我的想法: 青春期的成长叛逆是基因里的古老重生。

50. For a thing to be well done, it must be done as it was the first time. But the first time, the thing—this class of objects, this animal, this particular behavior—did not exist: when, in the beginning, this object, the animal, this institution, came into existence, it was as if, through the power of Gods, being arose from nonbeing. 

我的想法: 这里跟道家的思想挺像的。不过西方人认为一切都是由上帝创造的,一切生物,一切行为。

51. They already indicate a new life in course of preparation. 

我的想法: 每一次毁灭都是为了重生,更好地回到最初原始的状态,去更好地理解最原始的自然,因为我们还没有完全理解宇宙的最初,包括我们的最初。

52. For archaic thought, then, man is made—he does not make himself all by himself. It is the old initiates, the spiritual masters, who make him. 

我的想法: 跟看《西部世界》里似的。

53. Intrapsychic representation of culture—establishment of group identity—protects individuals from overwhelming fear of their own experience. 

我的想法: 社群的作用是躲避未知的恐惧。

54. A return and a homecoming to a remote, primordial, and inclusive household of the soul, out of which those concepts grew originally. 

我的想法: Returning is recreating. 

55. Representation of this (primarily social) moral code in form of episodic memory constitutes the basis for myth; provides the ground and material for eventual linguistically mediated development of religious dogma or codified morality. Advantages of such codification are the advantages granted by abstraction per se—ease of communication, facilitation of transformation—and formal declaration of (historically sanctified) principles useful in mediation of emergent value-centered dispute. Disadvantages—more subtle, and more easily unrecognized—include premature closure of creative endeavor, and dogmatic reliance on wisdom of the (dead) past. 

我的想法: 道德是神话的基础,神话是宗教的基础,宗教是社会组织结构的基础。

56. Once a procedure has been encapsulated in image—and, particularly, in word—it becomes easier to modify. 

我的想法: So we constantly are trapped in thoughts of abstraction without an image or a string of words to describe them. 

57. The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. 

我的想法: 所以我们选择总是更趋向于熟悉的,简单的。

58. The “object” always remains something capable of transcending the “bounds” of its representation; it is something that inevitably retains its mysterious essence, its connection with the unknown, and its potential for the inspiration of hope and fear. 

我的想法: 这一段写得特别好。就像每一个人的存在,都是“活化石”,即是古老的,又是未知的。

59. The integration of these assumptions and values into the group, through the competitive process that begins with imitation and ends with verbal abstraction, increases the permanent behavioral and abstract logical repertoire of the individuals that form that group. 

60. Freud maintained, as an ideal nineteenth-century empiricist, that “there is no other source of knowledge of the universe but the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations—that is, what is called research—and that no knowledge can be obtained from revelation, intuition or inspiration,”

我的想法: 弗洛伊德认为任何知识都不能从启示、直觉或灵感中获得?

61. If the structure of experience itself was static and finite, like the past, all things would have been conquered long ago, and the lives of the ancestors and their children would differ little in kind. But the structure of experience is dynamic and infinite in possibility. The nature of experience itself varies with time.

我的想法: 经历和感官体验是个体随着时间的变化而变化。

62. Crisis in adaption may be brought about in childhood at the onset of schooling and first independent contact with the unmediated social world. The hormonal changes and new social demands of youth may likewise transform the happy and reasonable child into the depressed and hostile adolescent.

我的想法: 青春期的叛逆是基因中去迎合社交的属性变化带来的变化。

63. The language-mediated interpersonal interaction characteristic of ever-larger human societies has provided that rapidly developing biological capacity with information whose sophistication and breadth is increasing exponentially. 

我的想法: 语言的反作用力。

64. The human capacity for abstraction has enabled us as a species and as individuals to produce self-models that include the temporal boundaries of existence. We have become able to imagine our own deaths, and the deaths of those we love, and to make a link between mortal fragility and every risk we encounter. Emergence of such capacity-which reoccurs with the maturation of every new human being-introduces the most intractable anomaly imaginable into the developmental course of every life. 

我的想法: 死亡是抽象的最高境界。

65. When heaven had been abruptly separated from the earth, that is, when it had become remote, as in our days, when the tree or liana connecting Earth to Heaven had been cut; or the mountain which used to touch the sky had been flattened out—then the paradisiac stage was over, and man entered into his present condition. In effect, all [myths of paradise] show us primordial man enjoying a beatitude, a spontaneity and freedom, which he has unfortunately lost in consequence of the fall—that is, of what followed upon the mythical event that caused the rupture between Heaven and Earth.

我的想法: 写得很美,很有诗意。

66. Maturation means expansion of ability, differentiation of self and world, transformation of possibility into actuality, but loss of potential as well, as anything developed develops in one direction, and not in any of the innumerable alternatives. Growth therefore also means decline, as each step toward adulthood is one step closer to death. 

我的想法: 成长的过程中,就像混沌开化一样,自我和世界逐渐剥离,但是随着越来越清晰的认知,很多能力都随之固化。

67. Two things that cannot be discerned from one another are not two things, however, and one thing with no discernible features whatsoever may not even be.

68. It is primordial separation of light from darkness. 

我的想法: 光和黑暗总是彼此分离又彼此融合。

69. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,

      And the earth was without for, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of waters, 

      And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

      And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 

我的想法: 有些时候,圣经可以是诗行。

70. Darkness places severe, uncontrollable external transpersonal limitations upon waking human awareness, by eliminating or dramatically restricting visually dependent temporal and spatial sensory extension. 

我的想法: 黑暗有点永恒的味道。

                 黑暗太可怕, 所以上帝让人们睡眠。

71.  The myth, like the dream, may be regarded as the birthplace of conscious abstract knowledge, as the matrix from which formed ideas spring.

我的想法: 神话和梦境,总是灵感的起始之地。

72. Things that are in themselves complex and mysterious in their attributes serve this metaphoric function most usefully, since their potential for symbolic application is virtually infinite in scope. 

我的想法: 此时我想到的是,抽象是人们在脑海中进行的虚拟动作来模拟实际动作。人们的理解很倾向于简单的动作。比喻的作用就是把抽象具体化。

73. The feet, firmly placed on the ground, correspond to the roots of the tree, its foundation and source of nourishment. This might indicate that in daily life you stand firmly on the ground to meet life’s demands. Your head is in space, or heaven [accented in the original]. The word “heaven” in this instance means in contact with life’s energy, with a wisdom beyond the intellect…The spine is like the trunk of the tree, along which are located the various Cakras. The top pf the head is the crowning blossom of this flowering tree, the thousand-petalled Lotus of the Sharasrara Cakra. 

我的想法: 物质和精神在人体上的构造的区分,头(思想)总仰望着天空,脚(物质)总踏着大地。

74. Whatever liquor, fruit, herbs, etc., appear as the vehicles of life and immortality, including the “water” and “bread” of life, the sacrament of the Host, and every form of food cult down to the present day, we have [an] ancient mode of human expression before us. The materialization of psychic contents, by which contents that we would call “psychic”—like life, immortality, and death take on the material form in myth and ritual and appear as water, bread, fruit, etc., is a characteristic of the primitive mind. 

我的想法: 从古至今,人类对食物的敬仰,编织在神话中。

75. This means that consciousness as a phenomena depends in large part on activation of the ancient circuity designed for response to the unknown. 

我的想法: 我们的意识是远古人类的意识。

76. The birth of tragedy and the evolution of shame might be considered emergent properties of self-consciousness. The idea of redemption, which compensates for self-conscious existential anxiety, might be considered another, higher-order emergent property.

我的想法: 自我意识中最明显的表现方式是:认知到悲剧和羞愧,更高层次的自我意识是“存在”。

77. It is no easy matter to come to a clear understanding of such notions, to grasp their nature logically or emotionally, or even to determine how they could possibly be related. After all, we tend to regard the development of “clear understanding”as equivalent to the construction of a “proper set” and assume the the reality of a thing can be clearly defined.

我的想法: 自然与内心的联系,交给艺术家去解释。 

78. Reason, the most exceptional of spirits, suffers from the greatest of temptations: reason’s own capacity for self-recognition and self-admiration means endless capacity for pride, which is the act of presuming omniscience. 

我的想法: 人类执着痴迷万物的起因,这让人类更执着于自我的存在。

79. What “knowing everything” means, however—at least in practice—is that the unknown no longer exists, and that further exploration has therefore been rendered superfluous (even treacherous). This means that absolute identification with the “known” necessarily comes to replace all opportunity for identification with the process that comes to know.

我的想法: Unknown is a good state of mind to get on a journey of exploration.

80. The devil is not the uncomfortable fact but the act of shrinking from that fact. The weaknesses, stupidities, laxities and ignorances that ineradicably constitute the individual are not evil in and of themselves. These “insufficiencies” are a necessary consequence of the limitations that make experience possible. It is the act of denying that stupidities exists, once it has manifested itself, that is evil, because stupidity cannot then be overcome. 

我的想法: 邪恶不是真正的“恶”,是一种人类对自己无知无能的逃避。

81. Consciousness of ignorance and cupidity manifests itself in shame, anxiety and pain—in the guise of visitor whose arrival is most feared—and such consciousness may consequently come to be considered the embodiment of evil itself. 

我的想法: 无知和贪婪等这些与生俱来的人性弱点是人类的永恒监狱,它们使我们痛苦也走向邪恶。

82. This may mean either that God transcends all kinds of contradictions or that the existence of evil constitutes the preliminary condition for human freedom. 

我的想法: 自我意识,让我们渴望自由又不知如何追求真正的自由,自由本身也许就是一个矛盾。

83. Refusal of the good is, I think, most effectively and frequently justified by reference to the terrible affective consequences of (self)consciousness. This means that comprehension of the vulnerability and mortality of man, and the suffering associated with that vulnerability—apprehension of the ultimate cruelty and pointlessness of life—may be used as rationale for evil. 

我的想法: 生命的无意义状态是自我意识要面对的最终极脆弱。

84. It was Tolstoy’s clear apprehension of the endless conflict between the individual and the conditions of existence that destroyed his ability to work and undermined his desire to live. 

我的想法:想到存在的意义,生命中的其他都没有意义。

85. The fact of mortal vulnerability—that defining characteristic of the individual, and the “reason” for his emergent digest with life—may be rendered even more “unjust” and “intolerable” by the specific manifestations of such vulnerability. 

86. The awareness is manifested in shame, and has been expressed mythologically as shame of nakedness, which is knowledge of essential vulnerability and weakness before the world.

对未知的恐惧最原始的表现。

87. The relative advantages that accompany increased freedom may seem frightening and of dubious value, given the comparative responsibility and lack of security that are part and parcel of maturity.

我:The freedom comes with different values.

88. As maturation takes place, the “environment” transforms. As the developing individual masters his powers, his behavioral capacity expands. He can do more things and, in consequence, experience more things. The ability to bring heretofore unknown and, therefore, frightening, phenomena into being constantly increase, and the boundaries of the experiential domain of the individual eventually extend beyond  the area shielded by the parents. The capability to endlessly further apprehension is central to the adaptive capacity of the individual; this capability, however, comes as an immense price, which is knowledge of finitude and death. 

我的想法:A part of being a man is to accept his limitations.

89. To fight desperately for maintenance of childhood ignorance, or to hide in the commands of others. 

我的想法:天真,大概就是这个意思,人们追求天真,是当时还没有发展到可以意识到自己无尽头的无知状态。

90. Spirit is offered up to the group to maintain the group’s benevolent nature, ensuring its continued protection and its grant of knowledge derived from history. It is necessary to identify with the group, in the course of normal development—that identification fosters maturity, and separation from blind maternal solicitude—but ultimately the group is tyrannical, and demands obedience at the cost of unique being. This is not to say, naively, that the group is intrinsically evil, that the root of human suffering is buried in the ground of the social world. Society is more purely expansion of power, which may be directed according to individual choice. 

我的想法:社群是庇护所给你安全感,也是拘留所把你的潜力和自由的思想都扣押起来。

91. A traveler who had seen many countries and peoples and several continents was asked what human traits he had found everywhere; and he answered: men are inclined to laziness. Some will feel that he might have said with greater justice: they are all timorous. They hide behind customs and opinions. 

我的想法:墨守成规。

92. What they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them. 

我的想法: 无条件的诚实和被暴露是我们最害怕的负担。

93. Only artists hate this slovenly life in borrowed manners and loosed fitting opinions and unveil the secret, everybody’s bad conscience, the principle that every human being is a unique wonder; they dare to show us the human being as he is, down to the last muscle, himself and himself alone—even more, that in this rigorous consistency of his uniqueness he is beautiful and worth contemplating, as novel and incredible as every work of nature, and by no means dull. 

我的想法: 艺术家的追求。

94. The human being who does not wish to belong to the mass must merely cease being comfortable with himself; let him follow his conscience, with shouts at him: “Be yourself! What you are at present doing, opining, and desiring, that is not really you.”

95. It is not necessary to define truth, to have seen and heard everything—that would make truth itself something impossible. it is necessary only to have represented and adapted to what has been seen and heard—to have represented and adapted to those phenomena characterizing the natural and social worlds, as encountered, and the self, as manifested. 

我的想法: 真相只局限在自我感官所感受到的一切。

96. Adoption of group identity and position means access to the power embodied in the past—means access to the collective strength and technical ability of the culture.

我的想法: 屈服于社群是屈服于历史。

97. The normal individual solves his problems of adaption to the unknown by joining a group. 

98. Because we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been; because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts.

When it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes, and the spirit will dissolve like empty air. Our name will be forgotten in time and no one will remember our works; our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and be scattered like mist that is chased by the rays of the sun and overcome by its heat.

我的想法: 诗意。

99. Well, the purpose of abstraction is to represent experience, and to manipulate the representations, to further successful adaptation.

我的想法: 抽象的定义和作用。

100. Man is not merely innately aggressive, a poorly socialized, and therefore uncontrolled predator; at best, such theory can account for his criminal aggression; it is in fact slavish adherence to the forces of socialization.

101. Once upon a time you were sharply intolerant. You were constantly in a rush. And you were constantly short of time. And now you have time with interest. You are surfeited with it, with its months and years, behind you and ahead of you—and a beneficial calming fluid pours through your blood vessels—patience.

You are ascending….

我的想法: 找到感兴趣的事情,状态就如这样。

102. With the years, armor-plated restraint covers your heart and all your skin. You do not hasten to question and you do not hasten to answer. Your tongue has lost its flexible capacity for easy oscillation. Your eyes do not flash with gladness over good tidings, nor do they darken with grief.

我的想法: Time heals, time kills.

103. The genius is the fortunate hero who faces the unexpected consequences of his insufficiently adaptive behavior voluntarily, on ground that he has chosen.

我的想法: 在自己选择的领域里不顾一切得去探索未知。

104. Translation of moral principles from procedure, and narrative representation thereof, into an abstract semantic code.

105. A ring of ancestral spirits, invisible and unknown, surrounds the modern individual, and protects him or her magically from darkness and chaos. When this ring is broken— when the principles these spirits represent become subject to critical evaluation, to the onslaught of other forms of heroism, to other ideologies, or to the weight of individual experience—knowledge itself loses context, and the known reverts to the unknown.

我的想法: 一切都是动态变化的。没有任何知识是永久固定的。

106. Knowledge does not begin in the I, and it does not begin in the object; it begins in the interactions…. then there is a reciprocal and simultaneous construction of the subject on the one hand and the object on the other.

我的想法: 知识不是一件事物,不是一个个体,知识是一种交互的过程,随着交互过程的转变,知识也在转变。

107. The alchemist did “redeem” himself by studying the “redemptive” transformations of matter—most simply, because exploration “releases” information that can be used to construct personality.

我的想法: 这一章开始着重讲炼金师企图炼金的过程,且在过程中改变了自己。

108. The alchemical procedure was based on the attempt to redeem “matter,” to transform it into an ideal. This procedure operated on the assumption that matter was originally corrupted—like man, in the story of Genesis. The study of the transformations of corruption and limitation activated a mythological sequence in the mind of the alchemist. This sequence followed the pattern of the way, upon which all religions have developed. Formal Christianity adopted the position that the sacrifice of Christ brought history to a close, and that “belief” in that sacrifice guaranteed redemption. Alchemy rejected that position, in its pursuit of what remained unknown. In that (heroic) pursuit the alchemist found himself transformed.

我的想法: 任何生物都会慢慢地腐坏变质(生理角度), 中国的炼丹师和西方的炼金师都想要炼出长生不老的圣物。但是能炼的,只有自己的内心。

109. Anomalies manifest themselves on the border between chaos and order, so to speak, and have a threatening and promising aspect. The promising aspect dominates, when the contact is voluntary, when the exploring agent is up-to-date—when the individual has explored all previous anomalies, released the “information” they contained, and built a strong personality and steady “world” from that information. The threatening aspect dominates, when the contact is involuntary, when the exploring agent is not up-to-date—when the individual has run away from evidence of his previous errors, failed to extract the information lurking behind his mistakes, weakened his personality, and destabilized his world.

我的想法: 主动接受信息和被动接受信息对自我性格塑造的影响。

110. Interest manifests itself where an assimilable but novel phenomenon exists: where something new hides in a partially comprehensible form.

我的想法: 兴趣的使然总能在寻常的事物找出新奇的点。

111. Interest is a spirit beckoning from the unknown, a spirit calling from outside the “walls” of society. Pursuit of individual interest means hearkening to this spirit's call, journeying outside the protective walls of childhood dependence and adolescent group identification, and returning to rejuvenate society. This means that pursuit of individual interest—development of true individuality—is equivalent to identification with the hero. Such identification renders the world bearable, despite its tragedies, and reduces neurotic suffering, which destroys faith, to an absolute minimum.

我的想法: 这一段对兴趣的解释,让我更认同并坚持着自己的兴趣。无论是什么兴趣,只要投入进去,就会渐渐地摆脱自己先天性的平淡庸碌,成为一个独立思考的人。

112. I knew that the word “spirit” had been derived from the Greek pneuma— which meant wind: the wind, for example, that moved upon the water, in Genesis; the wind or breath that God blew into the adamah, the matter, to make man.

我的想法: 神话总是这样荒诞又迷人。

P.s. 如果有读过这本书的小伙伴,或者觉得这些读书笔记里面的观点有待探讨,又或者觉得这些读书笔记对你有帮助,还或者觉得这样做读书笔记的形式有什么可以改进的地方帮助你更好得吸收这本书的精华内容,更或者只是简单地帮助你提高英文阅读水平。

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