Glenn Loury on the Cover story and the Real Story (Ep. 171)

It happened that I was in Bogotá, Colombia, teaching summer school when Jackson died.

杰克逊去世时，我正在哥伦比亚波哥大教授暑期学校。

And our host took us out to one of these four-hour lunch extravaganzas at a restaurant out in the countryside.

我们的主人带我们去乡村的一家餐厅参加了一场为期四小时的午餐盛宴。

It was beef, beef, beef, and more beef, and it just kept coming.

牛肉、牛肉、牛肉、更多的牛肉，而且源源不断。

All of the waitpersons were dressed as Michael Jackson impersonators, and there were big screens playing Michael Jackson videos everywhere you looked, and this was in Colombia.

所有的服务员都打扮成迈克尔·杰克逊的模仿者，到处都有大屏幕播放迈克尔·杰克逊的视频，而这是在哥伦比亚。

Such was the force of Michael Jackson’s celebrity and musical genius and personality.

这就是迈克尔·杰克逊的名人、音乐天才和个性的力量。

I don’t know.

我不知道。

I don’t have a problem listening to Michael Jackson, although you’re right, I don’t hear it being played on the radio .

我听迈克尔·杰克逊没有问题，虽然你是对的，但我没有听到收音机里播放它。

Bluegrass — now, I love a brilliant banjo solo as much as the next guy.

蓝草音乐——现在，我和其他人一样喜欢精彩的班卓琴独奏。

I can really get with it when it comes up in the soundtrack of a movie that I’m watching or whatever, but I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to find it.

当它出现在我正在看的电影或其他什么的配乐中时，我真的可以接受它，但我不会特意去找它。

It’s just something that comes across my screen, so I’m not very knowledgeable at all about bluegrass, or about country, for that matter.

这只是我屏幕上出现的东西，所以我对蓝草音乐或乡村音乐一点也不了解。

Better than relying on monopoly would be having a government that could estimate what the right non-priced external cost of the use of the fuel is, and then slap that tax on, but that’s a political impossibility.

比依赖垄断更好的办法是让政府能够估计燃料使用的正确非定价外部成本是多少，然后征收该税，但这在政治上是不可能的。

Now, here’s an, I think, 1979 release from Glenn Loury.

现在，我想这是 Glenn Loury 1979 年发行的。

Are large or small firms better at innovation?

大公司还是小公司更擅长创新？

What do you think these days?

这些天你有什么感想？

I didn’t get at all into real industrial organization, which would have to do with oligopoly and a size distribution of firms in the industry and so on.

我根本没有了解真正的产业组织，这与寡头垄断和行业内企业的规模分布等有关。

I’m trying to remember what I had to say about the relationship between a number of firms and the rate of innovation.

我试图记住我所说的关于许多公司与创新率之间的关系。

I think the rate of innovation is increasing in the number of firms, but I think that’s what I found, but it’s a long time ago, Tyler.

我认为公司数量的创新率正在增加，但我认为这就是我发现的，但那是很久以前的事了，泰勒。

I was at Northwestern in my first job in the late ’70s, and get this, the year that I was hired, Roger Myerson was also hired in the theory group at Northwestern.

70 年代末，我在西北大学找到了第一份工作，就在我被聘用的那一年，罗杰·迈尔森 (Roger Myerson) 也被西北大学的理论小组聘用了。

The next year, Bengt Holmström showed up.

第二年，本特·霍姆斯特罗姆出现了。

The following year, Paul Milgrom showed up.

第二年，保罗·米尔格罗姆出现了。

Leonid Hurwicz was always around because he and Stan Reiter were very close buddies.

Leonid Hurwicz 总是在身边，因为他和 Stan Reiter 是非常亲密的朋友。

Leo was up at Minnesota, but he was always around at conferences and seminars and stuff like that.

利奥在明尼苏达州，但他总是参加会议、研讨会和类似的活动。

I was right there at the birth of mechanism design and information economics and the revolution and theory of auctions and bargaining, and stuff like that that was going on in my midst.

我当时正值机制设计、信息经济学、拍卖和讨价还价的革命和理论的诞生，以及类似的事情正在我身边发生。

I didn’t appreciate fully, at the time, the extraordinary and revolutionary character of the developments in economic theory that I was in the midst of.

当时，我并没有充分认识到我所处的经济理论发展的非凡和革命性特征。

I was still using my differential calculus and just trying to write down these silly little models.

我仍在使用微分学，只是试图写下这些愚蠢的小模型。

I didn’t have deep questions.

我没有什么深层次的问题。

This is what I’m trying to get to.

这就是我想要达到的目标。

But these days, my kind of applied-theory life that I took up more or less successfully in the decade after I left graduate school is passé.

但如今，我在离开研究生院后的十年里或多或少成功地开始的应用理论生活已经过时了。

Everybody is calibrating and estimating, and they’re looking for a natural experiment or a quasi-natural experiment or whatever it is.

每个人都在校准和估计，他们在寻找自然实验或准自然实验或其他任何东西。

They’re doing the kind of empirical work that you can do now with the computing power that we have and the data availability and whatnot.

他们正在做那种你现在可以利用我们拥有的计算能力和数据可用性等进行的实证工作。

The profession is completely different.

职业完全不一样。

I wouldn’t advise a young graduate student to follow in the path of writing papers like the papers that I wrote, because (a) they’re not going to get in the AER , and (b) you want to get a job.

我不会建议年轻的研究生走我写的论文之路，因为（a）他们不会进入 AER，（b）你想找到一份工作。

You want to be able to sell yourself.

你希望能够推销自己。

I confess to being a little bit alienated from the profession these last years, especially as my public intellectual profile has risen.

我承认，最近几年我对这个行业有点疏远，尤其是当我的公共知识分子形象有所提高时。

I don’t spend that much time worrying about what to tell graduate students.

我不会花太多时间担心该告诉研究生什么。

I don’t teach graduate students.

我不教研究生。

I used to teach microeconomic theory to our first-year PhD students, but two years ago I stepped aside from that.

我曾经向一年级博士生教授微观经济学理论，但两年前我放弃了这一点。

We have eight theorists in our department, and the younger full professors weren’t able to get at the graduate students of the first year.

我们系有八个理论家，年轻的正教授都搞不定一年级的研究生。

There are eight of us, and there are only those two courses.

我们八个人，只有那两门课。

I thought it was time for me to make room for some other people to teach theory to our graduate students.

我认为是时候为其他人腾出空间来向我们的研究生教授理论了。

So, I’m not doing very much interacting with graduate students these days.

所以，这些天我和研究生的互动不多。

Tom is a friend.

汤姆是一个朋友。

He helped to recruit me because he was on the committee that Henry Rosovsky, the famous and powerful dean of the college of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, who hired me — the committee that Rosovsky put together to try to find someone who could fill the position that I was hired into: professor of economics and of Afro-American Studies.

他帮助招募了我，因为他是亨利·罗索夫斯基（Henry Rosovsky）的委员会成员，亨利·罗索夫斯基是哈佛大学文理学院著名而有权势的院长，他雇用了我——罗索夫斯基组建的委员会试图找到一个人来填补我被聘用的职位：经济学和非裔美国研究教授。

They said Afro-American in those years.

那些年他们说美国黑人。

Tom was my connection.

汤姆是我的联系人。

He’s the guy who called me up when I was sitting at Michigan in Ann Arbor in early ’82, and said, “Do you think you might be interested in a job out here?” He had helped to recruit me.

82 年初，当我坐在密歇根州的安娜堡时，他给我打电话，说：“你认为你可能对这里的工作感兴趣吗？”他帮助招募了我。

So, I had this crisis of confidence.

所以，我遇到了这次信任危机。

“Am I ever going to write another paper?

“我还会再写一篇论文吗？

I’m never going to write another paper.” I’m saying this to Tom, and he’s sitting, sober, listening, nodding, and suddenly starts laughing, and he can’t stop, and the laughing becomes uncontrollable.

我再也不会写论文了。”我对汤姆说这些，他清醒地坐着，听着，点点头，突然开始大笑，他停不下来，笑得无法控制。

I am completely flummoxed by this.

我对此感到完全困惑。

What the hell is he laughing at?

他到底在笑什么？

What’s so funny?

有什么好笑的？

I just told him something I wouldn’t even tell my wife, which is, I was afraid I was a failure, that it was an imposter syndrome situation, that I could never measure up.

我只是告诉他一些我什至不会告诉我妻子的事情，那就是，我担心我是一个失败者，这是一种冒名顶替综合症的情况，我永远无法达到标准。

Everybody in the faculty meeting at Harvard’s economics department in 1982 was famous.

1982 年哈佛大学经济系教员会议上的每个人都很出名。

Everybody.

大家。

I was six years out of graduate school, and I didn’t know if I could fit in.

我已经从研究生院毕业六年了，我不知道自己是否能融入其中。

He’s laughing, and I couldn’t get it.

他在笑，我听不懂。

After a while, he regains his composure, and he says, “You think you’re the only one?

过了一会儿，他才恢复平静，说道：“你以为只有你一个人吗？

This place is full of neurotics hiding behind their secretaries and their 10-foot oak doors, fearing the dreaded question, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ Why don’t you just put your head down and do your work?

这个地方充满了神经质的人，躲在他们的秘书和 10 英尺高的橡木门后面，担心可怕的问题：“你最近为我做了什么？”你为什么不低下头做你的工作呢？

Believe me, everything will be okay.” That was Tom Schelling.

相信我，一切都会好起来的。”那是汤姆·谢林。

I have a few questions about America for you.

我有几个关于美国的问题想问你。

Where’s the best place to raise a family in the United States today?

如今在美国哪里是组建家庭的最佳地点？

I live on the East Side of Providence, and Brown University sits up on a hill.

我住在普罗维登斯东区，布朗大学坐落在一座小山上。

You go down the hill, across the river to the flatlands, and that’s where the “real” city of Providence is, and it’s a working-class town.

你下山，过河到达平原，那就是“真正的”普罗维登斯市，它是一个工人阶级城镇。

It’s doing better than it had been doing 30 years ago.

它的表现比 30 年前更好。

I think the restaurants are good.

我觉得餐厅都不错。

The economic climate here seems to be healthy.

这里的经济气候似乎很健康。

There are challenges, but up here on the East Side, it’s a bedroom community of middle, upper-middle class, mostly single-family housing on decent-sized lots.

挑战是存在的，但在东区，这是一个中上层阶级的卧室社区，大部分是面积适中的单户住宅。

It’s quiet.

很安静。

There’s crime in Providence; there’s not so much crime on the East Side.

普罗维登斯有犯罪行为；东区的犯罪率并不高。

It’s not a bad place.

这不是一个坏地方。

I like the smaller town — Providence is maybe 200,000 — relative to .

我喜欢较小的城镇 —— 普罗维登斯大约有200,000 —— 相对于。

.

。

.

。

I lived in Boston for many years.

我在波士顿住了很多年。

I was born in Chicago.

我出生在芝加哥。

There are no traffic jams to speak of around here in Providence.

普罗维登斯附近没有交通堵塞。

When I wanted to vote and had to go to city hall in order to cast my ballot, I could park my vehicle across the street from city hall and walk in, cast my ballot, walk back out again.

当我想要投票并且必须去市政厅投票时，我可以将车停在市政厅街对面，然后走进去，投票，然后再走出来。

Things like that.

诸如此类的事情。

I like those myself, personally — the smaller scale of this town that I’m living in.

我个人就喜欢这些——我所居住的这个小镇规模较小。

That’s part of it, but you’re asking the wrong guy.

这是其中的一部分，但你问错人了。

You need a culture critic to respond.

你需要一个文化批评家来回应。

I think there are, for the black students, the kinds of pressures that I mentioned, which might be moderately ameliorated by the fact that affirmative action, both in postgraduate admissions programs and in employment, gives them a leg up.

我认为，对于黑人学生来说，存在着我提到的那种压力，这种压力可能会因研究生招生计划和就业方面的平权行动给他们带来优势而得到一定程度的缓解。

A black kid with a decent portfolio coming out of Brown probably is in a relatively advantaged competitive position for the next step.

一个来自布朗大学、拥有不错的投资组合的黑人孩子可能在下一步中处于相对有利的竞争地位。

But they’re black kids, and depending on the background, they may feel exactly, perfectly comfortable in an elite environment if they come from the increasingly large number of prosperous black families who are sending their children off to places like Brown.

但他们是黑人孩子，根据背景，如果他们来自越来越多富裕的黑人家庭，他们将孩子送到布朗这样的地方，他们可能会在精英环境中感到完全、非常舒服。

But I’ve known many kids of color, as they say, who didn’t have those advantages and nevertheless find themselves — because they’re crackerjack smart, and they got discovered here or there and channeled into the funneling mechanism that leads to them getting admitted to Brown — who didn’t feel all that comfortable socially in this environment, which is pretty high-pressured and self-consciously elite, almost smugly so.

但我认识很多有色人种的孩子，正如他们所说，他们没有这些优势，但却发现了自己——因为他们非常聪明，他们在这里或那里被发现，并被引导到导致他们进入布朗大学的漏斗机制——他们在这种压力很大、自我意识精英化的环境中感到不太舒服，几乎是自鸣得意。

But I’m in my 70s, and the kids don’t come and cry on my shoulder, so I don’t know what’s keeping them up at night.

但我已经70多岁了，孩子们不会过来靠在我肩上哭泣，所以我不知道是什么让他们彻夜难眠。

But breaking through to other elements of the population — you’re right.

但突破人口的其他部分 —— 你是对的。

It’s not yet, as far as I know, anything like the crack epidemic of the ’80s and early ’90s was for urban black America.

据我所知，美国城市黑人还没有像 80 年代和 90 年代初那样流行。

Heroin is not an unknown drug of choice in those precincts.

在这些地区，海洛因并不是一种未知的首选药物。

I gather they’re highly substitutable.

我认为它们具有很强的可替代性。

Again, I’m going to confess ignorance, but I’m worried.

再次，我要承认我无知，但我很担心。

You’ve got me worried now.

你现在让我很担心。

In it, I tell the story of being addicted to freebasing crack cocaine in the late ’80s.

在其中，我讲述了 80 年代末对游离碱强效可卡因上瘾的故事。

I went into treatment, and I went to a halfway house, and I went and I fought.

我接受治疗，去了中途之家，我去战斗。

Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, the support of my lovely wife, the late economist Linda Loury.

戒酒互助会、戒毒互助会、我可爱的妻子、已故经济学家琳达·洛里的支持。

Thank God for her, for the church, that community that took me in, and so on, and I kicked it.

感谢上帝赐予她、感谢教会、接纳我的社区等等，然后我就放弃了。

But I thought I was missing something.

但我觉得我错过了一些东西。

I thought that there was a kind of fun, a kind of excitement, a kind of sensation of euphoria.

我觉得那是一种乐趣，一种兴奋，一种欣喜的感觉。

Having gone two years sober, I took myself back to one of my places where I would cop.

清醒两年后，我回到了我可以应付的地方。

I bought a little cocaine.

我买了一点可卡因。

I prepared it, and I smoked it.

我准备好了，然后抽了。

The feelings of euphoria came back just as I had remembered them, but also with them came a sense of shame.

正如我记忆中的那样，欣快的感觉又回来了，但随之而来的是一种羞耻感。

There was no doubt that I was experiencing a titillation, a euphoric sensation.

毫无疑问，我正在经历一种兴奋、一种欣快的感觉。

There was “happiness” there.

那里有“幸福”。

But having gone through, as it were, the valley of the shadow of death, and having emerged from it to the arms of a loving wife who stuck with me and a young family that was coming along — my sons Glenn and Nehemiah, who are in their 30s now.

但我已经经历了死亡阴影的幽谷，并从那里来到了一位慈爱的妻子的怀抱，她一直陪伴着我，还有一个即将到来的年轻家庭——我的儿子格伦和尼希米，他们现在已经 30 多岁了。

Having done all of that, I asked myself, “Is this what you were willing to risk everything for?”

做完这一切后，我问自己：“这就是你愿意冒一切风险的原因吗？”

I realized that there was no doubt about the euphoria.

我意识到这种欣快感是毫无疑问的。

The euphoria was certainly there, but my obsessive pursuit of it, which had nearly destroyed me, was a way of living that was just undignified and contemptuous.

欣快感确实存在，但我对它的痴迷追求几乎摧毁了我，这是一种不尊严和轻蔑的生活方式。

So I put the pipe down after a couple of hits, packaged everything up, threw it in the trash, and never touched cocaine again.

所以我吸了几次后就把烟斗放下，把所有东西都打包起来，扔进垃圾桶，再也没有碰过可卡因。

So, I was wondering about your question about what was I missing.

所以，我想知道你关于我错过了什么的问题。

I decided having done this thing, this unforgivable thing from the Alcoholics Anonymous point of view — it was unforgivable what I did, but I just had to find out.

我决定做了这件事，从戒酒互诫协会的角度来看，这是不可原谅的事情——我所做的事情是不可原谅的，但我必须找出答案。

What I’ve done in producing this book and reliving these critical junctures .

我在制作这本书和重温这些关键时刻所做的事情。

.

。

.

。

For example, I really did lose my nerve when I got to Harvard in the early 1980s.

例如，20世纪80年代初，当我进入哈佛时，我确实失去了勇气。

I didn’t do what Tom Schelling advised me to do, which is just put my head down and write my little papers about natural resources or imperfect competition or imperfect information or whatever.

我没有做汤姆·谢林建议我做的事情，那就是低下头写关于自然资源或不完全竞争或不完全信息或其他什么的小论文。

I didn’t do that.

我没有那样做。

I jumped ship.

我跳船了。

I left economic theory behind entirely, and I became a Reagan conservative political-pundit black guy.

我完全抛弃了经济理论，成为了里根保守派政治专家的黑人。

I was pretty good at it.

我很擅长。

I would say in retrospect, I was more often right than wrong in some of the political positions that I took.

回想起来，我想说，我所采取的一些政治立场是正确的，而不是错误的。

This will come as an upsetting remark to some people who know and love me, but I think conservatives had the better of those arguments in those years.

对于一些了解并喜爱我的人来说，这可能是一个令人不安的言论，但我认为保守派在那些年里在这些论点中占了上风。

Be that as it may, the real reason — I’m just giving an example.

不管怎样，真正的原因 —— 我只是举个例子。

You asked me what have I learned about myself, and I’ve learned that my capacity for self-delusion is almost unbounded.

你问我对自己了解了什么，我发现我自我欺骗的能力几乎是无限的。

And it’s a very dangerous thing, too, because I had persuaded myself that the economics department was cold at Harvard in the early ’80s.

这也是一件非常危险的事情，因为我说服自己，八十年代初哈佛的经济系很冷淡。

I didn’t have any buddies except for Tom.

除了汤姆之外我没有任何朋友。

I had persuaded myself that Harvard saddled me with these dual responsibilities in Afro-American studies and in economics — almost impossible.

我说服自己，哈佛让我承担起非裔美国人研究和经济学的双重责任——这几乎是不可能的。

You’re going to be a humanist and you’re going to be a theoretical social scientist at the same time.

你将成为一名人文主义者，同时你将成为一名理论社会科学家。

It’s almost impossible for anybody to do, let alone a 34-year-old guy who’s barely got his legs under him.

这对任何人来说几乎都是不可能的，更不用说一个 34 岁、双腿几乎无法站立的男人了。

I had persuaded myself of everything other than the real story.

除了真实的故事之外，我已经说服了自己一切。

The real story was that I choked, I blinked, I lost my nerve, I was afraid of failure.

真实的故事是我哽咽，我眨眼，我失去了勇气，我害怕失败。

I found something else that I could do that would generate acclaim.

我发现了一些我可以做的、会引起赞誉的事情。

I went from the economics department to the Kennedy School.

我从经济系转到肯尼迪学院。

They were very happy to have me at the Kennedy School of Government.

他们很高兴我来到肯尼迪政府学院。

It’s a wonderful place, a wonderful place.

这是一个美妙的地方，一个美妙的地方。

It’s just not a place, if you’re a serious economic theorist, that you would want to spend most of your time.

如果你是一位认真的经济理论家，你不会想在这里度过大部分时间。

It was just too easy for me to do.

这对我来说太容易了。

Now, I could blame affirmative action.

现在，我可以责怪平权行动。

I could blame the larger political environment and whatnot, but I know, within myself, I was afraid of failing.

我可以归咎于更大的政治环境等等，但我知道，我内心害怕失败。

Every time I opened up Econometrica and I saw another paper from Roger Myerson or Paul Milgram, I was asking myself, “Would I ever write a paper like that?”

每当我打开《计量经济学》并看到罗杰·迈尔森或保罗·米尔格拉姆的另一篇论文时，我都会问自己：“我会写一篇这样的论文吗？”

I had an out here.

我曾在这里。

If I go over to the Kennedy School and become a pundit, no one’s ever going to ask me to write a paper like that.

如果我去肯尼迪学院并成为一名专家，没有人会要求我写这样的论文。

I learned that about myself through forcing myself to be honest, in retrospect, about what was really going on with me.

通过强迫自己诚实地回顾自己的真实情况，我认识到了自己的这一点。

There are many other stories like that.

类似的故事还有很多。

I won’t try to recount them all because I want to save something for the book.

我不会尝试全部重述，因为我想为这本书保留一些东西。

That’s what I’d like them to understand.

这就是我希望他们明白的。

I don’t think that my right-wing acolytes — I don’t think many of them get that.

我不认为我的右翼助手 —— 我不认为他们中的很多人明白这一点。

I think they think this is an alien imposition upon an otherwise more or less pristine Euro-American canvas.

我认为他们认为这是对原本或多或少原始的欧美画布的外来强加。

They think there are shithole pockets of America that they need to protect themselves from.

他们认为美国有一些屎坑，他们需要保护自己免受伤害。

True enough, they do sometimes need to protect themselves, but those are our people over there.

确实，他们有时确实需要保护自己，但那是我们那边的人。

That’s our failure.

这就是我们的失败。

This is an American story, not a black American story.

这是一个美国故事，而不是美国黑人的故事。

Everybody has a story that a little bit of generosity would go a long way.

每个人都有这样的故事：一点点的慷慨就会大有帮助。

I could say that to black activists, and they would have a hard time hearing it.

我可以对黑人活动人士这么说，但他们很难听到。

It may be that empathy and a suspension of disbelief, a kind of interrogation of your gut, visceral instinct to react with an ad hominem and react with a categorical dismissal and with a stereotype — it may be that the ability to resist that impulse is difficult for anybody to come by.

这可能是一种同理心和暂时的怀疑，一种对你直觉的审问，一种对人身攻击做出反应的本能，对断然驳回和刻板印象的反应——也许任何人都很难有能力抵制这种冲动。

I would also say that — I speculate here a little bit, but you’re not going to let me stop speculating — that the political interest of various actors, who have to marshal majorities of the electorate and who have to develop narratives that get the juices flowing in one way or another for their supporters, militates against that more moderate and self-effacing and humble posture.

我还要说的是——我在这里做了一点推测，但你不会让我停止推测的——各种参与者的政治利益，他们必须召集大多数选民，他们必须发展叙事，让他们的支持者以这样或那样的方式流动，这不利于这种更加温和、谦逊和谦逊的姿态。

I’m not the Christian that I used to be.

我不再是以前那样的基督徒了。

When I was coming out of drug addiction, I was much more observant and fervent.

当我戒掉毒瘾后，我变得更加敏锐和热情。

But it seems to me that in the teachings that I can recall from my encounters with Christianity about humility, about walking, thinking, doing, and acting as Christ would do, as he would have us do, there’s just a lot there.

但在我看来，我在接触基督教时所得到的关于谦卑的教导，关于像基督那样行事、思考、行动和行事，就像他希望我们做的那样，有很多。

I think that it’s a lot easier to talk the talk than it is to walk the walk on that.

我认为说起来比付诸行动容易得多。

I have this ongoing conversation with my friend John McWhorter at The Glenn Show where we talk about Omar.

我和我的朋友约翰·麦克沃特在《格伦秀》上进行了持续的对话，我们谈论了奥马尔。

Omar is a type.

奥马尔是一种类型。

He’s just a stand-in representation of dysfunctional — probably on the wrong side of the line in terms of law enforcement, bragging about having babies by three different women, can’t keep a job, dropped out of school, et cetera.

他只是功能失调的代表——在执法方面可能站在错误的一边，吹嘘与三个不同的女人生了孩子，无法保住工作，辍学等等。

Problematic kid in the ghetto.

贫民窟里有问题的孩子。

John says, “Omar makes me sad, and Omar makes you mad.” He says this to me.

约翰说：“奥马尔让我伤心，奥马尔让你生气。”他对我这么说。

This is one of our things.

这是我们的事情之一。

How do we react to the fact of this dysfunction that is so prevalent in low-income black communities, that creates such problems for others who share those communities with them, and for society more broadly, that redounds to the discredit of African American society?

我们如何应对这种在低收入黑人社区中如此普遍的功能失调这一事实，这种功能失调给与他们共享这些社区的其他人以及更广泛的社会带来了这样的问题，这加剧了非裔美国社会的声誉？

You can’t be proud of a “thug,” can you?

你不能以“暴徒”为荣，不是吗？

Our reaction to this dysfunction — he makes me mad.

我们对这种功能障碍的反应 ——他让我生气。

I don’t understand him.

我不明白他。

I don’t understand how you take a pistol, fire it out the window of a vehicle in a residential area where you know people are sitting on the front porches — you have no idea where that bullet is going to land — and then crow about it.

我不明白你如何拿着一把手枪，在住宅区的车窗外开枪，你知道人们坐在前廊上——“你不知道子弹会​​落在哪里”——然后大喊大叫。

I don’t understand.

我不明白。

I don’t know what those frustrations are.

我不知道那些挫败感是什么。

I don’t know Omar’s story, not really.

我不知道奥马尔的故事，真的不知道。

I know stereotypes about the story, cartoon representations of the story.

我知道关于这个故事的刻板印象，以及故事的卡通表现。

Is he angry?

他生气了吗？

Is he disconsolate?

他郁闷吗？

Does he have hope?

他还有希望吗？

What does he believe in?

他相信什么？

I’m saying, “he,” and I’m saying “Omar,” but of course, it doesn’t just apply to the guys.

我说“他”，我说“奥马尔”，但当然，这不仅仅适用于男人。

I don’t really know what’s going on, and when I meet people — social workers, cops, nurses, religious people — who are working on the ground in these communities, they’re trying to tell me a little bit about what life is like and so on.

我真的不知道发生了什么事，当我遇到在这些社区实地工作的人们 ——社会工作者、警察、护士、宗教人士时，他们试图告诉我一些关于生活是什么样的等等。

I wish I knew more about it.

我希望我能了解更多。

I wish I could have more factually grounded empathy for the people who I am so quick to castigate for creating the problems, but whose genuine life stories I don’t know so much about.

我希望我能够对那些我如此迅速地谴责制造问题的人有更多基于事实的同情心，但我对他们真实的生活故事了解不多。

I wish that the creative arts and the journalistic practice would get grittier, wouldn’t be so much in the service of a “progressive political program” but would just tell me what’s going on.

我希望创意艺术和新闻实践能够变得更加坚韧，不会太多地服务于“进步的政治计划”，而只是告诉我正在发生什么。

I want to go inside those housing projects and find out what people are actually saying to each other and doing to each other, and how they feel about it.

我想深入这些住房项目，了解人们实际上彼此说了什么、做了什么，以及他们对此有何感受。

I don’t trust the reportage that I get because it’s all too tendentious and in the service of making sure that Donald Trump doesn’t get any more votes than he might otherwise get, or that Black Lives Matter comes out smelling like roses.

我不相信我收到的报道，因为它们太有倾向性了，是为了确保唐纳德·特朗普不会获得比他原本可能获得的更多的选票，或者“黑人的命也是命”出来闻起来像玫瑰。

I want to know the real story, which — if I flatter myself with this, forgive me — I think would allow me to be less mad and more sad when I encounter the mischief that Omar is creating throughout the country.

我想知道真实的故事，这 —— 如果我以此自夸，请原谅我 —— 我想，当我遇到奥马尔在全国各地制造的恶作剧时，这会让我不那么生气，更加悲伤。

This is my wife talking to me complaining about critical race theory or whatever.

这是我的妻子跟我说话，抱怨批判种族理论之类的。

“It’s just a dodge.

“这只是一个闪避而已。

It’s a smoke screen from confronting the underlying power dynamics that generate and sustain inequality and privilege and disadvantage and whatnot in the society, and that’s what I want you to talk about.

这是一个烟幕弹，来自于面对潜在的权力动态，这些权力动态产生并维持了社会中的不平等、特权和劣势等等，这就是我想让你们谈论的内容。

I want you to talk about why people can’t pay the rent, about why the wage is so low, about why they can’t get decent healthcare.

我想让你谈谈为什么人们付不起房租，为什么工资这么低，为什么他们无法获得像样的医疗保健。

“And about why the fat cats get away, on Wall Street and everywhere else — practically they get away with murder.

“以及为什么那些肥猫在华尔街和其他地方都逃脱了惩罚——实际上他们谋杀了却逃脱了惩罚。

No one ever holds them to account.

没有人追究他们的责任。

You’re an economist.

你是一位经济学家。

Why aren’t you developing and expositing critical theories that address yourself to the real foundation of disparities of power, influence, and success in our society, instead of shooting fish in a barrel?”

你为什么不发展和阐述批判理论来解决我们社会中权力、影响力和成功不平等的真正基础，而不是在桶里射鱼？”

I paraphrase, but this is pretty much her argument.

我解释了一下，但这几乎就是她的论点。

She doesn’t really disagree with me about a lot of this stuff.

她在很多事情上并没有真正不同意我的观点。

It’s just that she thinks it’s the wrong target.

只是她认为这是错误的目标。

I was a highflier.

我是一个志存高远的人。

I had shaken hands with the president of the United States.

我与美国总统握手。

I had spoken on five continents, I was making money, and I was famous.

我在五大洲做过演讲，我赚了钱，我也出名了。

The world was my oyster.

世界是我的牡蛎。

I was accountable to no one.

我不对任何人负责。

Not to the loving woman who was by my side and who I did not respect from the way in which I conducted our marriage for years.

不是对我身边那个充满爱心的女人，因为多年来我处理婚姻的方式，我并不尊重她。

Not to the people from whence I had come, off of the south side of Chicago, who were looking to me for a certain kind of leadership that I was not interested in providing.

不是对那些我来自芝加哥南部的人来说，他们指望我提供某种领导力，而我对此不感兴趣。

I had no real connections with community.

我与社区没有真正的联系。

I had these faux communities that I would flit around with, but I didn’t have real, deep, personal relationships that went across class lines or racial lines, for that matter.

我有这些我会闲逛的虚假社区，但就此而言，我没有真正的、深入的、跨越阶级界限或种族界限的个人关系。

I was a performer.

我是一名表演者。

I was self-absorbed.

我很自我陶醉。

I was a narcissist, and I didn’t take responsibility for that.

我是一个自恋者，我不为此承担责任。

It ended up getting me into the cul-de-sac into which I ultimately wandered.

它最终让我陷入了最终徘徊的死胡同。

But there’s a mystery here, and I don’t know.

但这里面有一个谜，我不知道。

I think the quest for belief is noble.

我认为对信仰的追求是崇高的。

I think the arrogance of a presumption of omniscience on my part — “Well, I know that that’s just a lot of bunk” — offends me.

我认为我全知假设的傲慢 ——“好吧，我知道那只是一堆废话” —— 冒犯了我。

An old dear friend of mine was the great sociologist Peter Berger, now dead, but for many years, a great man who wrote many books about many things, including about the sociology of religion.

我的一位亲爱的老朋友是伟大的社会学家彼得·伯杰（Peter Berger），他现已去世，但多年来，他是一位伟人，写了许多关于许多事物的书籍，包括宗教社会学。

He was Lutheran, and he became alienated by the Lutheran clergy because they were too postmodern-y liberal and relativist and whatnot, in his view.

他是路德派教徒，他被路德派神职人员疏远，因为在他看来，他们过于后现代自由主义和相对主义等等。

He used to go to a Greek Orthodox church in Brookline, Massachusetts, and sit in the back pew and listen to the music and smell the incense and hear the bells.

他曾经去马萨诸塞州布鲁克莱恩的一座希腊东正教教堂，坐在后排座位上听音乐、闻焚香、听钟声。

He just immersed himself in that milieu.

他只是沉浸在那个环境中。

He wasn’t looking for an answer.

他并不是在寻找答案。

It wasn’t a logical proposition.

这不是一个合乎逻辑的命题。

It was simply being in the midst of the faithful.

这只是在信徒中间。

I do that sometimes.

我有时会这样做。

I don’t go to church on a regular basis, but especially in the years after my late wife, Linda Loury, passed away in 2011, I found myself sometimes just wanting to be in the midst of people whose belief was firmer than my own.

我不定期去教堂，但尤其是在我已故的妻子 Linda Loury 于 2011 年去世后的几年里，我发现自己有时只是想和那些比我信仰更坚定的人在一起。

I don’t know if I’m answering you or not, Tyler.

我不知道我是否在回答你，泰勒。

I am not an atheist, is what I’m trying to declare.

我不是无神论者，这是我想要声明的。

And I’m, to some degree, in awe of the majesty and the dignity and the humanity of these people who are seeking to have a relationship with the creator of the universe.

在某种程度上，我对这些寻求与宇宙创造者建立关系的人们的威严、尊严和人性感到敬畏。

He got knighted — Sir Roger Casement, but he was an Irish patriot and also a closeted homosexual.

他被封为爵士——罗杰·凯斯门特爵士，但他是爱尔兰爱国者，也是一名未出柜的同性恋者。

He ends up being executed because he gets caught in a scheme collaborating with the Germans in 1915 to try to stage some event that was going to be the occasion for provoking an Irish revolt, et cetera, et cetera.

他最终被处决，因为他卷入了 1915 年与德国人勾结的计划，试图策划一些活动，以挑起爱尔兰起义等等。

Long story, but it’s Mario Vargas Llosa, a master of this kind of historical narrative.

说来话长，但他就是马里奥·巴尔加斯·略萨（Mario Vargas Llosa），他是这种历史叙事的大师。

I just love both of those novels.

我只是喜欢这两本小说。

American Pastoral is another one that I’m really very fond of, by Philip Roth.

《美国田园》是另一首我非常喜欢的歌曲，作者是菲利普·罗斯 (Philip Roth)。

I could go into details, but let’s leave it with Vargas Llosa.

我可以谈谈细节，但让我们把它留给巴尔加斯·略萨吧。

That was her favorite movie, and I love the movie.

那是她最喜欢的电影，我也喜欢这部电影。

You know the story of the movie.

你知道电影的故事。

It was an era in Hollywood of movie-making that I don’t think we’ll ever see again.

我认为我们再也不会看到好莱坞电影制作的时代了。

I don’t know if we’re ever going to see it again.

我不知道我们是否还能再次看到它。

Wonderful characters, wonderful human aspiration, competition, excellence, the pursuit of excellence, dignity.

精彩的人物，精彩的人性志向，竞争，卓越，追求卓越，尊严。

What’s his name?

他叫什么名字？

Harold Abrams, the runner — Jewish guy in upper-class British society.

哈罗德·艾布拉姆斯（Harold Abrams），英国上流社会的跑步者。

He was somebody that I could identify with.

他是我可以认同的人。

I like that movie a lot.

我非常喜欢那部电影。

I also like Pulp Fiction.

我也喜欢低俗小说。

I mentioned Jackie Brown, but I do like Pulp Fiction.

我提到了杰基·布朗，但我确实喜欢《低俗小说》。

I like The Godfather I.

我喜欢《教父I》。

I was going to report that I just saw a fantastic movie that reminded me of why I like movies.

我要报告的是，我刚刚看了一部精彩的电影，它让我想起了我为什么喜欢电影。

This is not my favorite movie.

这不是我最喜欢的电影。

It’s The Banshees of Inisherin.

这是《伊尼舍林女妖》。

This is a movie set in Ireland, about a friendship that goes rotten, and I won’t even try to say anything more about it.

这是一部以爱尔兰为背景的电影，讲述的是一段腐烂的友谊，我什至不想再多说什么。

It’s quirky and weird in a certain kind of way, and yet, it’s deep and it’s unpretentious in a way.

它在某种程度上是古怪和奇怪的，然而，它在某种程度上是深刻的和朴实无华的。

I like that kind of movie.

我喜欢那种电影。

What is another movie like that kind of movie?

还有什么类似的电影？

They don’t make them like that anymore.

他们不再让他们变成那样了。

They don’t make movies anymore.

他们不再拍电影了。

It’s all whiz-bang and —  COWEN: What is there in the black visual arts that is especially important or meaningful to you?

一切都很精彩，而且 —  COWEN：黑人视觉艺术中有什么对你来说特别重要或有意义？

For me, it’s Haitian art, of course, but I suspect your answer is different.

对我来说，这当然是海地艺术，但我怀疑你的答案有所不同。

I asked myself as I was watching this, were I in the same situation, knowing that there was no hope, that I’m going to die, that I’m going to die from this cancer in my liver and in my brain, that it’s going to kill me, and the question is when.

当我看到这个的时候，我问自己，我是否也处于同样的情况，知道没有希望，我会死，我会死于肝脏和大脑中的癌症，它会杀死我，问题是什么时候。

The when doesn’t measure in years and may not even measure in months.

时间不是以年为单位，甚至可能不是以月为单位。

Could I have carried myself with the courage and the dignity that she exhibited it?

我能像她那样表现出勇气和尊严吗？

I’ve got serious doubts about it.

我对此抱有严重的怀疑。

Right now, I don’t know what will happen when this moment comes — because it’s coming — but right now I imagine that I’d be furious beyond consolation.

现在，我不知道当这一刻到来时会发生什么 —— 因为它即将到来 —— 但现在我想象我会愤怒得无法安慰。

Why me?

为什么是我？

That I would be impossible to deal with.

我将无法应对。

Nothing anyone could do, solicitous of my needs, would be enough because I’m the one that’s going to die.

任何人都无法满足我的需求，这也不够，因为我就是那个即将死去的人。

All of this stuff that they tried to teach me when I was becoming a Christian, about grace and about belief and about acceptance and about faith, would be of no consolation whatsoever.

当我成为一名基督徒时，他们试图教我的所有这些关于恩典、关于信仰、关于接受和信仰的东西，都不会带来任何安慰。

Nietzsche would be my friend, not the New Testament, I imagine.

我想尼采会是我的朋友，而不是新约。

That bitter old, dying man — feeling sorry for himself, angry at his fate — is not who I want to be in my last days.

那个苦涩的垂死老人——“为自己感到难过，对自己的命运感到愤怒”——不是我在最后的日子里想成为的人。

I don’t want to be that guy, but I fear that that’s the guy that I would be.

我不想成为那样的人，但我担心我会成为那样的人。

I fear further than that, that my stepping away from Christianity makes it more likely that that’s the guy that I would be.

我更担心的是，我远离基督教会让我更有可能成为那样的人。

Even though I think it’s ridiculous to assert that a person lives on after they die — the person is the brain and the consciousness, which will go to dust.

尽管我认为断言人死后继续存在是荒谬的——人是大脑和意识，它们会化为尘埃。

There’s no life there.

那里没有生命。

I think that’s an absurdity at one level.

我认为这在某种程度上是荒谬的。

On the other hand, it may be that only by embracing some such belief could I manage to pass away, as I must, in a manner that is honorable and dignified.

另一方面，也许只有接受这样的信念，我才能设法以光荣和有尊严的方式去世，而我必须这样做。

I don’t know.

我不知道。

I am worried for myself as that moment approaches.

随着那一刻的临近，我为自己担心。

It will come.

它会来的。