Peter Thiel's Religion - David Perell (1)

Human culture began with a murder. That culture was fueled by rage and rivalry, which led to violence. Managing that violence is the secret reason for all religious and political institutions.

人类文化始于一场谋杀。这种文化被愤怒和竞争所推动，导致了暴力。管理这种暴力是所有宗教和政治机构的秘密原因。

In The Bible, The Cain and Abel story is the first act of life after the Garden of Eden. Cain is a farmer and the older brother to Abel, who is a shepherd. Initially, Cain admires Abel. But eventually, when Cain turns envious of his younger and more successful brother, he kills him. The two brothers represent two halves of the human psyche: Abel represents the part that looks up towards the transcendent, where Cain represents the other that looks down towards death and destruction.

在《圣经》中，该隐和亚伯的故事是伊甸园 (2008 年电影) 之后人生的第一幕。该隐是一个农夫，也是牧羊人亚伯的哥哥。起初，该隐崇拜亚伯。但最终，当该隐嫉妒他更成功的弟弟时，他杀了他。这两兄弟代表了人类心灵的两部分: 亚伯代表着向上看的超然部分，而该隐代表着向下看的另一部分，向下看的是死亡和毁灭。

Depending on who you ask, the significance of the Cain and Abel story ranges from nothing to everything. For some, the Christian cross is too strange to be taken seriously. It’s archaic and stuck inside a biblical world that can no longer speak to the challenges of life with iPhones, Tinder, and $12 avocado toast. But to others, religion is the foundation of human culture. Without it, peace cannot be maintained and violence will erupt like an angry volcano.

取决于你问谁，该隐和亚伯的故事的意义从无到有。对于一些人来说，基督教的十字架太奇怪了，不值得认真对待。它已经过时了，被困在一个圣经世界里，再也不能用 iphone、 Tinder 和 12 美元的鳄梨吐司来应对生活的挑战。但对其他人来说，宗教是人类文化的基础。没有它，和平将无法维持，暴力将像一座愤怒的火山一样爆发。

What does Peter Thiel think? Is religion a superfluous add-on or the origin of everything?

彼得 · 泰尔怎么想? 宗教是多余的附加物还是万物的起源？

In this essay, we’ll explore the significance of religion and the Cain and Abel story. We’ll learn why the story is an archetype for human relationships, even in the Western world where people stiff-arm religion like it’s the Heisman trophy.

在这篇文章中，我们将探讨宗教的意义以及该隐和亚伯的故事。我们将了解为什么这个故事是人类关系的原型，即使在西方世界，人们像海斯曼奖杯一样强硬地对待宗教。

We’ll study religion through the lens of Peter Thiel. He’s an investor who found wealth in PayPal, a student who found wisdom in Libertarian ideals, and a philosopher who found faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thiel was raised as an Evangelical and inherited the Christianity of his parents. But his beliefs are “somewhat heterodox.” In a profile in the New Yorker, Thiel said: “I believe Christianity to be true. I don’t feel a compelling need to convince other people of that.”

我们将通过彼得 · 泰尔的视角来研究宗教。他是一个通过 PayPal 发现财富的投资者，一个在自由意志主义理想中找到智慧的学生，一个在耶稣复活基督中找到信仰的哲学家。希尔从小就是福音派教徒，继承了他父母的基督教信仰。但他的信仰 “有点异端” 在《纽约客》的一篇人物简介中，泰尔说: “我相信基督教是真实的。我觉得没有必要让其他人相信这一点。”

Three simple statements will lead us towards our ultimate answer about the importance of religion:

关于宗教的重要性，有三个简单的陈述可以引导我们找到最终的答案:

Rather than focusing on Thiel’s actions, I’ve chosen to focus on his ideas. First, we’ll explore the principles of Peter Thiel’s worldview. We’ll begin by explaining Thiel’s connection to a French philosopher named Rene Girard. We’ll return to old books like The Bible, old ideas like sacrifice, and old writers like Shakespeare, and see why this ancient wisdom holds clues for modern life. Then, we’ll return to the tenets of the Christian story. We’ll cover the shift from cyclical time to linear time, which was spurred by technological development and human progress. We’ll see why the last book in The Bible,The Book of Revelation, is a core pillar of Thiel’s philosophy. Then, we’ll close with Thiel’s advice and wisdom almost as old as Cain and Abel: the Ten Commandments.

我选择关注他的想法，而不是关注他的行为。首先，我们将探索彼得 · 泰尔世界观的原则。我们将首先解释泰尔与一位名叫雷内 · 吉拉德的法国哲学家的关系。我们将回到像《圣经》这样的旧书，像牺牲这样的旧观念，以及像莎士比亚这样的老作家，看看为什么这种古老的智慧为现代生活提供了线索。然后，我们将回到基督教故事的教义。我们将讨论从周期时间到线性时间的转变，这种转变受到技术发展和人类进步的推动。我们将会看到为什么圣经的最后一本书《启示录是 Thiel 哲学的核心支柱。然后，我们将以 Thiel 的建议和智慧结束本文，这些建议和智慧几乎和该隐和亚伯的十诫一样古老。

Some disclaimers: I’ve never met Peter Thiel. The contents of this essay are based on public information and my own intuition. Hopefully, some of it is interesting. Inevitably, some of it is wrong. I am not a Christian and only have a basic understanding of Christian theology. If you agree with everything in this essay, I haven’t challenged you enough. I’ve also chosen an interpretation of the Bible, and especially The Book of Revelation that aligns with Thiel’s philosophy. Thiel fanatics will say I’ve only scratched the surface. Others will say I’ve gone too deep. And both might complain I’ve focused too much on his relationship with Christianity.

免责声明: 我从未见过彼得 · 泰尔。这篇文章的内容是基于公共信息和我自己的直觉。希望其中一些是有趣的。不可避免地，其中一些观点是错误的。我不是基督徒，只对基督教神学有基本的了解。如果你同意这篇文章中的所有观点，那么我对你的挑战还不够。我也选择了对圣经的解读，尤其是与 Thiel 的哲学相一致的《启示录。泰尔的狂热分子会说我只是触及了表面。其他人会说我陷得太深了。他们都会抱怨我过分关注他和基督教的关系。

I don’t agree with all of Thiel’s conclusions, but I admire his rigorous and independent thought. By the time you finish reading this essay, you will too.

我并不完全同意 Thiel 的结论，但是我钦佩他严谨而独立的思想。当你读完这篇文章的时候，你也会的。

I wrote this essay because I’m fascinated by Christianity and impressed with Thiel. I’ve spent the past decade as an agnostic, just like everybody around me. But after a recent change of heart, I’m on a quest to develop my own conclusions about religion.

我写这篇文章是因为我对基督教很着迷，并且对泰尔印象深刻。在过去的十年里，我一直是一个不可知论者，就像我身边的每个人一样。但是在最近改变了主意之后，我开始寻求自己对于宗教的结论。

This essay is an introduction to his ideas, but it’s not just about Thiel. It’s about modern society, human behavior, and the philosophy of religion.

这篇文章是对他的思想的介绍，但不仅仅是关于希尔。它是关于现代社会，人类行为，和宗教哲学的。

Let’s begin.

我们开始吧。

To understand Thiel’s ideas, we need to begin with the person who influenced Peter Thiel more than any other writer: Rene Girard.

要理解泰尔的思想，我们首先需要了解对彼得 · 泰尔影响最大的作家: 雷内 · 吉拉德。

Rene Girard was a French historian and literary critic. He’s famous for Mimetic Theory, which forms the bedrock of Thiel’s worldview. Thiel studied under Girard as an undergraduate at Stanford in the late 1980s. Their relationship stretched beyond the walls of Palo Alto classrooms and became a lifelong friendship. When Girard died, Thiel spoke at the memorial service.

雷内 · 吉拉德是法国历史学家和文学评论家。他以模仿论而闻名，模仿论构成了希尔世界观的基石。20 世纪 80 年代末，希尔在斯坦福大学读本科，师从吉拉德。他们的关系超越了帕洛阿尔托教室的墙壁，成为了一生的友谊。吉拉德去世时，泰尔在追悼会上发表了讲话。

Mimetic Theory rests on the assumption that all our cultural behaviors, beginning with the acquisition of language by children are imitative. He sees the world as a theatre of envy, where, like mimes, we imitate other people’s desires. His theory builds upon the kinds of books and people that modern people tend to ignore: The Bible, classic fiction writers such as Marcel Proust, and playwrights like Shakespeare.

模仿理论基于这样一个假设: 我们所有的文化行为，从儿童的语言习得开始，都是模仿的。他把世界看作是嫉妒的舞台，在那里，我们像哑剧演员一样模仿别人的欲望。他的理论建立在现代人往往忽视的书籍和人物的基础上: 《圣经》 ，经典小说作家如马塞尔 · 普鲁斯特，剧作家如莎士比亚。

Mimetic conflict emerges when two people desire the same, scarce resource. Like lions in a cage, we mirror our enemies, fight because of our sameness, and ascend status hierarchies instead of providing value for society. Only by observing others do we learn how and what to desire. Our Mimetic nature is simultaneously our biggest strength and biggest weakness. When it goes right, imitation is a shortcut to learning. But when it spirals out of control, Mimetic imitation leads to envy, violence, and bitter, ever-escalating violence.

当两个人渴望相同的、稀缺的资源时，就会产生模仿冲突。就像笼子里的狮子，我们反映我们的敌人，因为我们的同一性而战斗，提升地位等级而不是为社会提供价值。只有通过观察他人，我们才能学会如何以及渴望什么。我们模仿的本性既是我们最大的优点，也是我们最大的缺点。如果一切顺利，模仿就是学习的捷径。但是当它失去控制时，模仿会导致嫉妒、暴力和痛苦，不断升级的暴力。

Mimesis is the Greek word for imitation. Imitation is not the childish, low-level form of behavior that many people think it is. Since humanity would not exist without it, humans aren’t as independent as they think they are. Early psychologists like Sigmund Freud didn’t take imitation seriously enough. In one essay, Thiel described human brains as “gigantic imitation machines.”

模仿是希腊语中模仿的意思。模仿不是许多人认为的幼稚、低级的行为方式。因为没有它人类就不会存在，所以人类并不像他们认为的那样独立。早期的心理学家，比如西格蒙德 · 弗洛伊德，对模仿的重视程度不够。在一篇文章中，泰尔将人脑描述为 “巨大的模仿机器”

Our capacity for imitation is unconscious. This drive towards imitation separates us from other animals, and historically, it enabled our evolution from earlier primates to humans. Imitation is linked to forms of intelligence that are unique to humans, especially culture and language.

我们模仿的能力是无意识的。这种趋向模仿的动力将我们与其他动物区分开来，并且在历史上，它使我们从早期的灵长类动物进化为人类。模仿与人类特有的智力形式有关，尤其是文化和语言。

We’ve known this for centuries. In the time of Shakespeare, the word ape meant both “primate” and “imitate.” Learning and human behavior is learned through imitation. Without it, all forms of culture would vanish. As any dancer will tell you, the heart beats fastest when two people agree to imitate each other and move in perfect sync. These are the moments when time disappears; when years of trust are built in seconds of synchronicity.

几个世纪以来我们就知道这一点。在莎士比亚时代，猿这个词既有 “灵长类动物” 的意思，也有 “模仿” 的意思学习和人类行为都是通过模仿学来的。没有它，所有形式的文化都将消失。任何一个舞者都会告诉你，当两个人同意模仿对方并且同步移动时，心脏跳得最快。这些时刻是时间消失的时刻，是多年的信任在同步性的几秒钟内建立起来的时刻。

Thiel speaks with a religious reverence for Girard’s theory:

希尔带着对吉拉德理论的宗教崇敬之情说道:

Thiel credits Girard with inspiring him to switch careers. Before he internalized Girard’s ideas, Thiel was on track to become a lawyer. He worked as an associate for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City, where the hours were long and the competition was cutthroat. As Thiel recounts, all the lawyers competed for the same shared goals. They ranked themselves not by absolute progress towards a transcendent end goal, but by progress within their peer group.

希尔认为吉拉德促使他改变了职业。在他内化吉拉德的想法之前，泰尔已经走上了成为一名律师的道路。他在纽约市的苏利文 · 克伦威尔律所公司做助理，那里工作时间长，竞争激烈。根据希尔的叙述，所有的律师都在为同一个共同的目标而竞争。他们给自己排名的标准不是朝着一个卓越的最终目标的绝对进步，而是同龄人群体中的进步。

As Peter Thiel recounted:

正如彼得 • 蒂尔 (Peter Thiel) 所述:

Competition distracts us from things that are more important, meaningful, or valuable. We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like. Trapped in a never-ending rat race, lawyers climbed the corporate ladder by winning favor with partners at the top. Others engaged in small acts of sabotage against their coworkers.

竞争把我们从更重要、更有意义、更有价值的事情上分散开来。我们用钱买我们不需要的东西，不需要给我们不喜欢的人留下深刻印象。律师们陷入了永无止境的激烈竞争之中，通过赢得高层合伙人的青睐，他们在公司的阶梯上不断攀升。还有一些人对他们的同事做了一些小的破坏行为。

Law school was worse. Like lobsters in a bucket, wannabe lawyers battled for law school placement and law firm employment. Each goal led to the next. Rather than focusing their attention on the end goal of developing a legal expertise, transforming the Constitution, or rescuing the powerless from tyrannical injustice, they elbowed their peers so they could score higher than their classmates on standardized tests. The competition was zero-sum. The better one student did, the worse their peers scored.

法学院更糟糕。就像水桶里的龙虾一样，想成为律师的人为了法学院的职位安排和律师事务所的工作而斗争。每一个目标都引领着下一个目标。他们并没有把注意力集中在培养法律专业知识、改革宪法、将无权无势的人从暴虐的不公中解救出来这些最终目标上，而是挤压同龄人，以便在标准化考试中取得比同学更高的成绩。这场竞争是零和游戏。一个学生做得越好，他们的同龄人得分就越低。

Thiel sees the world at a strange angle. His contrarian streak runs through everything he does. But until now, nobody has explained the roots of his singular philosophy.

希尔以一种奇怪的角度看待世界。他的反向倾向贯穿于他所做的每一件事。但是直到现在，还没有人解释他独特哲学的根源。

His verbal tendencies double as a mirror into his mind. Listen to a Thiel interview and you’ll notice how often he reframes the question before answering. When he speaks, he skips between perspectives faster than a game of hopscotch. He says things like “One version of this is…” or “You could say that…” He has an uncanny ability to consider cultural trends and investment trades from a diversity of perspectives. Sometimes, I wonder if he sees life as a game of chess, where he plays against himself and simultaneously switches from black, to white, and back again. Listen carefully and you’ll see how often he hides answers inside of questions. By playing both sides of the board with the rigor of a Dostoyevsky novel, he sees what others miss with crystal clarity.

他的言语倾向是他心灵的一面镜子。听一听 Thiel 的采访，你会注意到他在回答问题之前是多么频繁地重复这个问题。当他说话时，他在透视图之间跳来跳去的速度比跳房子游戏还要快。他说，“一个版本是… …”或者 “你可以这么说… …” 他有一种不可思议的能力，可以从多种角度考虑文化趋势和投资交易。有时候，我怀疑他是否把生活看作一场棋局，他和自己对弈，同时从黑色变成白色，然后又变回来。仔细听，你会发现他经常把答案隐藏在问题里面。通过像陀思妥耶夫斯基的小说一样严谨地分析事物的两面性，他清晰地看到了其他人遗漏的东西。

In the words of one of his friends:

用他一个朋友的话说:

Before playing a game, you have to know the rules. Breakthrough businesses are so innovative that people don’t have the words to describe them. He focuses on questions as much as answers, so he can identify the difference that makes the difference. For example, people still talk about Google as a search engine and Facebook as a social networking site. Both descriptions miss the point. Google succeeded because it’s a machine-powered search engine. Until Facebook, social networks mostly helped people become virtual cats and dogs. Facebook succeeded because it helped people create real identities online. 15 years after its founding, people incorrectly frame the history of social networks. He doesn’t just focus on the brushstrokes. He looks at how the painting is framed.

在玩游戏之前，你必须知道游戏规则。突破性的企业是如此的创新，以至于人们无法用语言来形容它们。他既关注答案，也关注问题，这样他就能辨别出造成差异的不同之处。例如，人们仍在谈论谷歌作为一个搜索引擎，Facebook 作为一个社交网站。这两种描述都没有抓住要点。谷歌之所以成功是因为它是一个机器驱动的搜索引擎。在 Facebook 出现之前，社交网络主要帮助人们变成了虚拟的猫和狗。之所以成功，是因为它帮助人们在网上创建了真实的身份。在它成立 15 年后，人们错误地构建了社交网络的历史。他不仅仅关注笔触。他看着这幅画是怎样镶边的。

Thiel’s companies are governed by Girard’s wisdom. Girard observed that all desires come from other people. When two people want the same scarce object, they fight. In response, as CEO of PayPal, Thiel set up the company structure to eliminate competition between employees. PayPal overhauled the organization chart every three months. By repositioning people, the company avoided most conflicts before they even started. Employees were evaluated on one single criterion, and no two employees had the same one. They were responsible for one job, one metric, and one part of the business.

希尔的公司是由吉拉德的智慧管理的。吉拉德注意到，所有的欲望都来自他人。当两个人想要同样的稀缺物品时，他们就会争吵。作为回应，作为贝宝的首席执行官，泰尔建立了公司结构，以消除员工之间的竞争。贝宝每三个月对组织结构进行一次彻底改革。通过对员工进行重新定位，公司避免了大多数冲突，甚至在冲突开始之前就开始了。员工的评估只有一个标准，没有两个员工有同样的标准。他们只负责一项工作，一个指标，和业务的一部分。

Thiel provided the first outside money into Facebook and still serves on the company board. His $500,000 investment was partially informed by Mimetic Theory because he saw Girard’s ideas validated by social media. As Thiel said: “Facebook first spread by word of mouth, and it’s about word of mouth, so it’s doubly Mimetic. Social media proved to be more important than it looked, because it’s about our natures.”

蒂尔向 Facebook 提供了第一笔外部资金，目前仍在公司董事会任职。他 50 万美元的投资部分来自于模仿理论，因为他看到了吉拉德的想法得到了社交媒体的验证。正如希尔所说: “Facebook 最初是通过口碑传播的，它是关于口碑的，所以它是双模仿的。事实证明，社交媒体比看上去更重要，因为它关乎我们的本性。”

To be sure, not all of Thiel’s investments have been successful. Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital, was unsuccessful. The fund fell 13 percent in August 2008, 18 percent in October 2008, and lost money for the third year in a row in 2009. By September 2009, the total assets under management had fallen from a peak of $7.8 billion to a mere $850 million, most of which was Thiel’s personal capital.

可以肯定的是，并非所有 Thiel 的投资都是成功的。希尔的对冲基金 Clarium Capital 未能成功。该基金 2008 年 8 月下跌 13% ，2008 年 10 月下跌 18% ，2009 年连续第三年出现亏损。到 2009 年 9 月，管理下的资产总额从最高峰时的 78 亿美元降至仅 8.5 亿美元，其中大部分是希尔的个人资本。

People who work with Thiel are told to look for heterodox ideas and people with clear visions of the future. Thiel doesn’t like to be an operator because it’s a low-leverage activity. Instead of banging the keyboard himself, Thiel installs strong CEOs and leaders whose judgements are similar to his own. Time and again, these skilled operators have the agency to act without Thiel’s approval, and are encouraged to pursue bold visions of the future. They have freedom to pursue bizarre ideas and people who don’t fit the standard mold.

与希尔一起工作的人被告知要寻找非正统的想法和对未来有清晰愿景的人。希尔不喜欢做经营者，因为这是一种低杠杆活动。希尔没有亲自敲打键盘，而是任命了与自己判断相似的强有力的首席执行官和领导人。一次又一次，这些技术熟练的操作人员有机会在没有希尔批准的情况下采取行动，并被鼓励去追求对未来的大胆设想。他们有追求怪异想法的自由，也有追求不符合标准模式的人的自由。

In an epic exchange between two billionaires, Jeff Bezos said:

在两位亿万富翁之间史诗般的对话中，杰夫 • 贝佐斯 (Jeff Bezos) 表示:

“Peter Thiel is a contrarian, first and foremost. You just have to remember that contrarians are usually wrong.”

“首先，彼得 • 蒂尔 (Peter Thiel) 是一位逆向投资者。你只需记住，逆向投资者通常都是错误的。”

In an email to Ryan Holiday, Peter responded as such:

在给瑞安 · 霍利迪的一封电子邮件中，彼得这样回复:

“Contrarians may be mostly wrong, but when they get it right, they get it really right.”

“反向投资者可能大多是错误的，但当他们做对了，他们就真的做对了。”

Across PayPal and Facebook, Peter Thiel’s philosophy can be summarized in a single sentence: Don’t copy your neighbors. It’s like a search for keys. Instead of looking in the light, Thiel and his employees look in the dark, where nobody else is looking.

在 PayPal 和 Facebook 上，Peter Thiel 的哲学可以用一句话来概括: 不要模仿你的邻居。这就像是在寻找钥匙。希尔和他的员工不是在光明中寻找，而是在黑暗中寻找，那里没有其他人在寻找。

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” — 1 John 2: 15–17

“不要爱世界，也不要爱世界上的事物。若有人爱世界，父的爱就不在他里面。因为凡在世上的，就是肉体的情欲，眼睛的情欲，生命的骄傲，都不是出于父，乃是出于世界。世界和世界的情欲都要过去。惟有遵行神旨意的、必永远长存ー约翰一书 2:15-17

Everybody imitates. We cannot resist Mimetic contagion, and that will never change. But there are bad ways to copy and good ways to copy. Bad imitators follow the crowd and mirror false idols, while good imitators copy a transcendent goal or figure.

每个人都在模仿。我们无法抗拒模仿传染，这一点永远不会改变。但是复制的方式有坏的，复制的方式有好的。坏的模仿者随大流，模仿虚假的偶像，而好的模仿者则模仿一个超然的目标或形象。

Imitation draws people together. Then, it pulls them apart like an ocean riptide.

模仿把人们拉到一起，然后像海洋激流一样把他们分开。

At first, two people who share the same desire will be united by it. But if they cannot share what they both desire, their relationship will transform. They’ll turn from the best of friends to the worst of enemies. Conventional wisdom says that we loathe people who are nothing like us. But when it comes to envy, jealousy, and resentment Girard takes a different perspective. Since small disagreements loom large in the imagination, Girard wrote that social differences and rigid hierarchies maintain peace. When those differences collapse, the infectious spread of violence accelerates. The fiercest rivalries emerge not between people who are different, but people who are the same. The more two people share the same desires, the greater the risk of Mimetic competition.

起初，两个有着相同愿望的人会因此而结合在一起。但是如果他们不能分享双方都渴望的东西，他们的关系就会发生改变。他们会从最好的朋友变成最坏的敌人。传统观点认为，我们厌恶与我们完全不同的人。但是，当谈到嫉妒、嫉妒和怨恨时，吉拉德采取了不同的观点。由于小的分歧在想象中显得尤为突出，吉拉德写道，社会差异和僵化的等级制度维持着和平。当这些差异消失时，暴力的传染性扩散就会加速。最激烈的竞争不是出现在不同的人之间，而是出现在相同的人之间。两个人分享的欲望越多，模仿竞争的风险就越大。

Consider the famous opening words of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “Two houses, both alike in dignity…” Through bloody battles between the Montagues and the Capulets, Shakespeare reminds us that people fight not because they’re so different, but because they’re so alike. Similar people are most prone to Mimetic envy because we tend to compete for status with the people who are closest to us. When two people are different and far away from each other, the tension will stay calm. Thus, the more we resemble our peers, the more Mimetic conflict will arise.

Shakespeare wasn’t the only writer to identify the vicious Mimetic impulse. Sigmund Freud called the tendency for conflict between two similar people “The Narcissism of Small Differences.” We reserve tooth-grinding envy for people most like ourselves. Thomas Hobbes wrote that “if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End… endeavor to destroy, or subdue one another.“

莎士比亚并不是唯一一个发现这种邪恶模仿冲动的作家。西格蒙德 · 弗洛伊德将两个相似的人之间的冲突倾向称为 “微小差异的自恋” 我们对最像我们自己的人保留着令人难以忍受的嫉妒。托马斯 · 霍布斯写道: “如果任何两个人都想要同样的东西，尽管他们不能共同享受，他们就会成为敌人; 在他们走向终点的道路上… … 他们努力摧毁对方，或者征服对方。“

True to the observations of Shakespeare, Freud, and Hobbes, academics are famous for institutional elbow-knocking.

正如莎士比亚、弗洛伊德和霍布斯的观察一样，学术界以体制上的挑战著称。

Prestige-oriented environments can create nasty feuds over little prizes. A family friend named Julia tells a head-spinning story about her time at Columbia University. She couldn’t leave her books in the library. When she did, competing students often stole them. Not because they needed money or material goods, but because they felt surges of envy. Rather than absorbing the course material and preparing themselves for a life after college, students sabotaged their peers and shared false study guides. Relationships were shattered by sour resentment. Classmates could not be trusted, especially those who wanted to help.

声望导向的环境可能会在小奖品上引发恶劣的争斗。一位名叫朱莉娅的家族朋友讲述了一个令人头晕目眩的故事，讲述了她在哥伦比亚大学的时光。她不能把书留在图书馆里。当她这样做的时候，竞争对手经常偷走它们。不是因为他们需要金钱或物质，而是因为他们感到嫉妒的涌动。学生们没有学习课程材料，没有为毕业后的生活做准备，而是破坏同学，分享错误的学习指南。关系被酸楚的怨恨破坏了。同学不可信，尤其是那些想帮忙的人。

As Julia’s story demonstrates, academic rivalries are vicious because they focus on hierarchies over knowledge. They bicker over trivial details and compete for a limited set of status-based titles. In each department, there can only be one chairman. In each university, one president. Speaking about the faculty relationships at Harvard, Henry Kissinger once said: “The battles were so ferocious because the stakes were so small.” By obsessing over their competitors, the faculty lost sight over the big picture and fought over the small scraps of superficial status games. The more they strived to be different, the more their actions mirrored each other.

朱莉娅的故事表明，学术竞争是邪恶的，因为他们关注的是等级制度而不是知识。他们为琐碎的细节争吵不休，争夺有限的身份头衔。每个部门只能有一个主席。每所大学有一名校长。在谈到哈佛大学的教职工关系时，亨利 · 基辛格曾经说过: “这场战斗之所以如此激烈，是因为利害关系如此之小。” 由于过分关注竞争对手，教师们忽视了大局，只关注肤浅的地位游戏中的一小部分。他们越是努力与众不同，他们的行为就越能反映彼此。

Choose your enemies well. Like two children who fight for a toy, the more you fight somebody, the more you resemble your enemy.

好好选择你的敌人。就像两个孩子为了一个玩具而打架一样，你和别人打得越多，你就越像你的敌人。

I’ll be honest. When I first read about Mimetic Theory, I was skeptical. Girard’s ideas seemed trivial and I couldn’t find any evidence to support them. Then, I started seeing his ideas everywhere. Once I saw empirical evidence of Girard’s ideas, I started taking them seriously.

老实说。当我第一次读到模仿理论的时候，我很怀疑。吉拉德的想法似乎微不足道，我找不到任何证据来支持它们。然后，我开始到处看到他的想法。一旦我看到吉拉德的想法的经验证明，我就开始认真对待它们。

Mimetic Theory shines brightest in trivial everyday moments, such as watching children play with toys. First, you have to understand Mimetic Theory at an intellectual level. Then, you have to understand it at an emotional one. Until then, Girard’s ideas might feel like ancient and irrelevant ideas. Once you watch these ideas impact your family, your friends, and your coworkers, you will have the same revelation Peter Thiel had as a student in Girard’s class at Stanford.

模仿理论在日常琐碎的时刻最为耀眼，比如看着孩子们玩玩具。首先，你必须在智力水平上理解模仿理论。然后，你必须在情感上理解它。在那之前，吉拉德的想法可能看起来像是古老而无关紧要的想法。一旦你看到这些想法影响了你的家庭，你的朋友，你的同事，你会有同样的启示作为一个学生在吉拉德的班级在斯坦福大学。

Girard observed that even when you put a group of kids together in a room full of toys, they’ll inevitably desire the same toy instead of finding their own toy to play with. A rivalry will emerge. Human see, human want.

吉拉德观察到，即使你把一群孩子放在一个装满玩具的房间里，他们也不可避免地会想要同样的玩具，而不是找到自己的玩具玩。竞争将会出现。人类明白，人类需要。

Our capacity for imitation leads to envy. Babies’ interest in a particular toy has less to do with the toy itself and more to do with the fact that the other babies desire the toy. As soon as one child desires the toy, so do the others. Eventually, even though there are many toys available to play with, all the children want the same toy.

我们模仿的能力导致了嫉妒。婴儿对某种玩具的兴趣与玩具本身关系不大，更多的是与其他婴儿对玩具的渴望有关。一个孩子想要玩具，其他孩子也想要。最终，即使有很多玩具可以玩，所有的孩子都想要同样的玩具。

Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich found empirical evidence for Girard’s observations about children and toys. In his book, The Secret of Our Success, he shows that humans are cultural learners. Mimetic desire is innate, not learned. We copy other people spontaneously, automatically, and unconsciously. And we are especially likely to copy people who are more successful than us, especially in moments of difficulty or uncertainty.

哈佛人类学家 Joseph Henrich 为 Girard 关于儿童和玩具的观察找到了经验证明。在他的书《我们成功的秘密》中，他指出人类是文化学习者。模仿的欲望是与生俱来的，而不是后天习得的。我们自发地、自动地、无意识地模仿别人。我们特别容易模仿比我们更成功的人，尤其是在困难或不确定的时候。

Henrich illustrates our Mimetic nature by studying children and how they desire toys. Even at a young age, and especially in moments of confusion, they emulate people around them. In one study, Henrich found that babies engaged in social referencing four times more often when an ambiguous toy was placed in front of them. When faced with an ambiguous toy, babies altered their behavior based on adults’ emotional reactions. In their early years, babies depend on elders to navigate the world and outsource their decisions to them.

亨利克通过研究儿童以及他们如何渴望玩具来说明我们的模仿本性。即使在年轻的时候，特别是在困惑的时候，他们也会模仿周围的人。在一项研究中，亨利克发现，当一个模棱两可的玩具放在婴儿面前时，他们参与社会参考的次数是平时的四倍。当面对一个模棱两可的玩具时，婴儿会根据成年人的情绪反应改变自己的行为。在婴儿的早期阶段，他们依靠长辈来驾驭这个世界，并把自己的决定外包给他们。

I can relate. Nothing piques a child’s desire like watching their friends receive a new toy. Throughout my childhood, I remember coming home to my parents to ask for new toys. Back when I needed a car seat to ride in a vehicle, I asked for Thomas the Tank Engine train sets. Once I could read and write, I asked for the same LeBron James jersey my friends had. And in my first month of college in North Carolina, I demanded the same “Nantucket Red” Vineyard Vines pants as my fraternity brothers.

我能感同身受。没有什么比看到朋友们得到一个新玩具更能激起孩子的欲望了。在我的整个童年时期，我记得回到家，我的父母要求新的玩具。当我需要一个汽车安全座椅来坐车时，我要了一个汤玛士小火车 (角色) 的火车组。当我能读能写的时候，我要了一件和我朋友一样的勒布朗 · 詹姆斯的球衣。在我在北卡罗来纳州上大学的第一个月，我要求和我的兄弟们穿一样的 “楠塔基特红” 葡萄园葡萄酒的裤子。

None of these desires were my own. Looking back, these desires came from my peers. I wasn’t the only one. My friends’ desires moved in perfect synchronicity. Once one kid received a cool new toy, so did the rest of the group. When my parents wouldn’t buy me a toy, I shot back with Mimetic-fueled social proof: “But my friend Jeremy just got a new baseball glove and now I need one.”

这些欲望都不是我自己的。回想起来，这些欲望来自于我的同龄人。我不是唯一一个。我朋友的欲望完全同步。一旦一个孩子得到了一个很酷的新玩具，其他的孩子也得到了。当我的父母不愿意给我买玩具时，我用模仿驱动的社会认同反击: “但我的朋友杰里米刚买了一个新的棒球手套，现在我需要一个。”

Turns out, I’m not crazy.

事实证明，我没有疯。

Through toys, Girard and Henrich show how our tendency to desire the same scarce resources as our peers leads to envy and competition.

通过玩具，吉拉德和亨利克展示了我们渴望和同龄人一样稀缺资源的倾向是如何导致嫉妒和竞争的。

Mimetic competition is visible in every aspect of social life. People shift their attention from the object of desire to the other person, and the drive to beat them. From bored students, to ambitious graduate school students, to empire-building business professionals, the objects we fight about change, but human nature doesn’t.

模仿竞争在社会生活的各个方面都是可见的。人们把注意力从渴望的对象转移到另一个人身上，并驱使他们去击败他们。从百无聊赖的学生，到雄心勃勃的研究生院学生，再到建立帝国的商业专业人士，这些我们为改变而奋斗的目标，但是人性却没有。

Thiel’s Christianity-inspired worldview lines up with Michael Porter’s philosophy of business strategy. Porter is a Harvard Business School professor known for his theories on economics and business strategy. He believed that strong businesses aim to be unique, not the best. Trying to outcompete rivals leads to mediocre performance, so companies should avoid competition and seek to create value instead of beating rivals.

希尔受基督教启发的世界观与迈克尔 · 波特的商业战略哲学是一致的。波特是哈佛商学院 (Harvard Business School) 教授，以经济学和商业战略理论著称。他认为，强大的企业旨在成为独特的企业，而不是最好的企业。试图在竞争中战胜对手会导致业绩平平，因此企业应该避免竞争，寻求创造价值，而不是打败对手。

As Thiel once wrote:

正如希尔曾经写道:

After the 2008 financial crisis, when the new General Motors went public in 2010, CEO Dan Akerson announced that his company was free of legacy costs and ready to compete again. As he shouted to reporters: “May the best car win!” This phrase reflects an assumption that competition is the best way to grow shareholder value. It implies that if you want to win, you should try to be the best. But this is the wrong way to think about competition.

2008 年金融危机之后，当新的通用汽车公司在 2010 年上市时，首席执行官丹 · 阿克森宣布他的公司没有遗留成本，准备再次参与竞争。就像他对记者喊的那样: “愿最好的车赢!” 这句话反映了一种假设，即竞争是提高股东价值的最佳途径。这意味着如果你想赢，你应该努力成为最好的。但这是对竞争的错误看法。

We analogize business to war. In war, victory requires that the enemy is crippled or destroyed. Rivals who pursue the “one best way” to compete will converge on a collision course, where everybody listens to the same advice and pursues the same strategies, leading to zero-sum outcomes where total industry profits fall towards nothing.

我们把生意比作战争。在战争中，要取得胜利，就必须消灭敌人。追求 “最佳方式” 竞争的竞争对手将汇聚到一个冲击理论，在那里，每个人都听取同样的建议，奉行同样的战略，最终导致零和结果，即整个行业的利润几乎为零。

When you compete to be the best, you imitate. When you compete to be unique, you innovate. In business, multiple winners can thrive and coexist. You don’t have to annihilate your competition. While imitation creates a race to the bottom, innovation promotes healthy competition and economic growth. In that way, business is like the performing arts, not war. In the performing arts there are many entertaining singers and actors, each with a distinct style. The more talented and differentiated performers there are, the more the arts flourish. This is the essence of positive-sum competition.

当你竞争成为最好的，你模仿。当你竞争成为独一无二的，你就创新了。在商业领域，多个赢家可以繁荣兴旺并共存。你不必消灭你的竞争对手。模仿创造了一场向下的竞赛，而创新促进了健康的竞争和经济增长。这样一来，商业就像表演艺术，而不是战争。在表演艺术中有许多有趣的歌手和演员，每个人都有自己独特的风格。表演者越是有才华，越是与众不同，艺术就越是繁荣。这就是正和竞争的本质。

To drive the point home, let’s turn back to Peter Thiel. The third chapter of his book, Zero to One is called “All Happy Companies Are Different.”

为了说明这一点，让我们回到彼得 · 泰尔。他的书《从零到一》的第三章叫做《所有快乐的公司都是不同的》

Thiel’s book applies Girard’s ideas to business. Like Girard himself, he says companies should avoid competition and walk the path of differentiation. He explains that many businesses create a lot of value, but don’t capture a lot of the value they create. As a result, even very big businesses can be unprofitable.

希尔的书将吉拉德的思想应用到商业中。与吉拉德本人一样，他表示，企业应该避免竞争，走差异化之路。他解释说，许多企业创造了很多价值，但没有捕捉到很多他们创造的价值。因此，即使是非常大的企业也可能无利可图。

According to Thiel, monopoly is the end state of every successful business. If you want to create and capture lasting economic value, don’t compete. The more unique companies are, the more the business world can flourish. Consider Thiel’s favorite example: the airline industry.

泰尔认为，垄断是每个成功企业的终极状态。如果你想创造和获取持久的经济价值，不要竞争。公司越独特，商业世界就越繁荣。想想希尔最喜欢的例子: 航空业。

As I type these words, I’m sitting in the United Airlines lounge at Denver International Airport. I’m writing during a five-hour layover on my way from New York to Los Angeles. In front of me, I see a lemon yellow Spirit Airlines jet preparing for takeoff. To advertise its affordable prices, the engine on the right wing says “Home of the Bare Fare.” Like the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 to its left, the rise of low-cost airline carriers reflects the price sensitivity of flyers. I’m part of the bargain-hungry tribe too. This morning, I woke up at 3:50am so I could take a dirt-cheap 6:10am flight from La Guardia. As part of the journey, I also swallowed a five-hour layover in Denver so I could pay with frequent flyer points. My body screams for sleep, my mind shouts for productivity, and thankfully, due to the triple-shot cappuccino on the table in front of me, I’ll meet my writing quota today.

当我打这些字的时候，我正坐在丹佛国际机场的美国联合航空公司候机室里。我在从纽约到洛杉矶的路上中途停留了五个小时，正在写作。在我面前，我看到一架柠檬黄色的精神航空公司的喷气式飞机正准备起飞。为了宣传它的实惠价格，右翼的引擎上写着 “空车票之家” 就像左边的西南航空公司波音 737 一样，廉价航空公司航空公司的崛起也反映了乘客对价格的敏感性。我也是渴望讨价还价的部落的一员。今天早上，我在凌晨 3:50 醒来，这样我就可以从拉瓜迪亚搭乘极便宜的早上 6:10 的航班。作为旅程的一部分，我还在丹佛中途停留了五个小时，这样我就可以用飞行常客积分付款了。我的身体呼唤着睡眠，我的大脑呼唤着生产力，谢天谢地，由于我面前桌子上的三杯卡布奇诺咖啡，我今天就能完成我的写作任务。

Let’s wrap my morning in economic language. Air travel is an “elastic good.” Small changes in price lead to big changes in demand for a flight. Behavior differs between leisure travelers and business travelers. Leisure travelers are particularly sensitive to price fluctuations, so they fly much less when prices are high than when they are low. In contrast, business travelers don’t have as much flexibility. Since there’s money at stake, their decision to travel isn’t as influenced by shifts in price.

让我们用经济学语言来包装我的早晨吧。航空旅行是一种 “弹性商品” 价格的微小变化会导致航班需求的巨大变化。休闲旅游者与商务旅游者的行为存在差异。休闲旅行者对价格波动特别敏感，所以他们在价格高时比在价格低时乘坐的飞机少得多。相比之下，商务旅行者没有那么多的灵活性。由于资金处于危险之中，他们旅行的决定不会受到价格变化的影响。

The airline industry suffers from near-perfect competition. Each year, U.S airlines serve millions of passengers and create hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer value. But in 2012, when the average airfare each way was $178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Whenever one airline makes a move such as lowering prices or adding an extra inch of leg room, its rivals match it. Since all the airlines chase the same price sensitive customers, they compete for every sale. That’s why, compared to the major tech companies, the major airlines in America are starving for profit.

航空业面临着近乎完美的竞争。每年，美国的航空公司为数百万乘客提供服务，创造了数千亿美元的消费价值。但在 2012 年，当平均单程机票价格为 178 美元时，航空公司每位乘客仅赚取 37 美分。每当一家航空公司采取降价或增加一英寸的伸腿空间等行动时，其竞争对手都会采取同样的措施。因为所有的航空公司都在追逐对价格敏感的客户，所以他们争夺每一笔销售。这就是为什么，与主要的科技公司相比，美国的主要航空公司都渴望获得利润。

As a contrast to the hyper-competitive airline business, consider Google. Here’s Peter Thiel:

与竞争异常激烈的航空公司业务形成鲜明对比的是谷歌 (Google):

Perfect competition is the default state in Economics 101. In a perfectly competitive market, undifferentiated companies sell homogenous and substitutable products. Firms don’t have market power, so their prices are determined by the iron laws of supply and demand.

完全竞争是经济学 101 中的默认状态。在一个完全竞争的市场，未分化的公司销售同质的和可替代的产品。公司没有市场支配力，所以他们的价格是由供求的铁律决定的。

High profits attract competition. According to economic theory, if outside entrepreneurs hear about profits, they’ll start a new firm and enter the industry. Increased supply will drive prices down, which will decrease total industry profits. If too many firms enter the market, the entire industry will suffer losses. If companies start to lose money, they’ll go out of business until industry prices rise back to sustainable levels. Most importantly, in a world of perfect competition, no company will make an economic profit in the long run. Just like the airline industry.

高利润吸引竞争。根据经济学理论，如果外面的企业家听说了利润，他们就会创办一家新公司并进入这个行业。供给的增加会使价格下降，从而降低整个行业的利润。如果太多的公司进入市场，整个行业将遭受损失。如果公司开始亏损，他们将关闭业务，直到工业价格回升到可持续的水平。最重要的是，在一个完全竞争的世界里，从长远来看，没有一家公司会获得经济利润。就像航空业一样。

Thiel offers an alternative to perfect competition: monopoly. Without competition, they can produce at the quantity and price combination that maximizes their profits. Successful strategies attract imitators, so the best businesses are difficult to copy. Firms in a competitive industry who sell a commodity product cannot turn a profit.  But companies who have a monopoly can set their own prices since they offer an in-demand product that cannot be replicated. Monopoly firms are big fish in a small pond.

提供了完全竞争的另一种选择: 垄断。没有竞争，他们可以生产的数量和价格的组合，使他们的利润最大化。成功的战略吸引了模仿者，因此最好的企业很难被模仿。在竞争激烈的行业中销售商品的公司是不能盈利的。但拥有垄断地位的公司可以自己定价，因为它们提供的是一种需求旺盛、无法复制的产品。垄断企业是小池塘里的大鱼。

Don’t copy your neighbors.

不要模仿你的邻居。

“The twentieth century was great and terrible, and the twenty-first century promises to be far greater and more terrible.” — Peter Thiel

” 二十世纪是伟大而可怕的，二十一世纪必将更伟大、更可怕ー Peter Thiel

In this section of the essay, we will depart from a focus on Thiel. Instead, we’ll explore Christianity and the history of time. By doing so, we will have the necessary context to frame Thiel’s worldview in the next section.

在这篇文章的这一部分，我们将离开对泰尔的关注。相反，我们将探索基督教和时间的历史。通过这样做，我们将有必要的背景框架泰尔的世界观在下一节。

The Christian story begins with: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” At its root, the story is about how the world went bad and how we can fix it. The world is broken because humans are broken. Human sin is responsible for the world’s evil, and our relationship with God is broken because it was ruined by human rebellion. God is the central character in the story. That’s why instead of worshiping things, Christians are instructed to worship their creator. God’s purposes are central, not theirs. Humans need to be ruled, and man must glorify its king. Only under God’s rule can man discover his deepest satisfaction and forever enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven.

基督教的故事是这样开始的: “起初，上帝创造了天地。” 从根本上讲，这个故事是关于这个世界是如何变坏的，以及我们如何能够修复它。世界被破坏是因为人类被破坏了。人类的罪恶是这个世界罪恶的根源，我们与上帝的关系因为人类的叛逆而破裂。上帝是故事的中心人物。这就是为什么基督徒不去崇拜什么东西，而是去崇拜他们的创造者。上帝的目的是核心的，不是他们的。人类需要被统治，人类必须荣耀自己的国王。只有在上帝的统治下，人们才能发现自己最深的满足，并永远享受天国。

The Resurrection is a symbol that someday, all wrongs will be made right. Christians do not take it as a symbol, but as a concrete fact. Christians say that if you believe in Jesus — that he was raised from the dead and is the Son of God — he will restore your life until every pain and heartache becomes untrue.

复活是一个象征，总有一天，所有的错误都会被纠正。基督徒不把它当作一个象征，而是一个具体的事实。基督徒说，如果你相信耶稣ーー他是从死里复活的，是上帝的儿子ーー他会让你的生命得到恢复，直到所有的痛苦和心痛都变成不真实的。

Linear conceptions of time, and especially the idea of progress, emerged with Christianity. In a cyclical conception of time, the circle of time closes where it opened. There is no beginning or end. For example, the Hindu Vedas teach that the world spins along an endless cycle: creation, rise, decline, destruction, and rebirth. Even if the cycle repeats for millions of years, it will continue to spin forever.

关于时间的线性概念，尤其是关于进步的概念，是随着基督教而出现的。在时间的循环概念中，时间的循环在它打开的地方关闭。没有开始也没有结束。例如，《印度教吠陀经》教导说，世界是沿着一个无穷无尽的循环旋转的: 创造、兴起、衰落、毁灭和重生。即使这个周期重复数百万年，它也将永远继续旋转下去。

With a linear perspective, time moves from the past to the future. It begins with the Garden of Eden at the beginning of The Bible and ends with the Kingdom of Heaven.

通过线性透视，时间从过去移动到未来。它开始于《圣经》开头的伊甸园 (2008 年电影) ，结束于《天国》。

With Jesus as its savior, Christianity is the only religion that sees a human as the Son of God. When Jesus died on the cross, he paid for the sins of humanity so he could end evil and suffering. Jesus speaks of his return to earth in Matthew 19:28. He says: “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne.” Instead of relying on a cyclical re-birth_,_ Jesus’ return will fix the material world by destroying all decay and brokenness.

以耶稣为救世主，基督教是唯一将人视为上帝之子的宗教。当耶稣死在十字架上时，他为人类的罪付出了代价，这样他就可以结束邪恶和痛苦。耶稣在马太福音 19 章 28 节提到他回到地上。他说: “我实在告诉你们，在万物复兴的时候，人子必坐在他荣耀的宝座上。” 耶稣的回归不是依靠周期性的重生，而是通过摧毁所有的腐朽和破碎来修复物质世界。

Religious or not, it’s worth studying Jesus Christ. He’s had more influence than anybody in human history. For example, Western Civilization divides time into two periods: before and after Jesus Christ. He’s a universal icon.

不管信不信教，研究耶稣基督都是值得的。他比人类历史上任何人都有影响力。例如，西方文明将时间分为两个时期: 耶稣基督之前和之后。他是全世界的偶像。

In a letter called One Solitary Life, James Allen Francis wrote_: _

在一封名为《一个人的生活》的信中，詹姆斯 · 艾伦 · 弗朗西斯写道:

Earlier this year, I attended a series of Questioning Christianity lectures in New York City. Every Thursday, Tim Keller spoke about the core tenets of Christianity: faith, meaning, satisfaction, identity, morality, justice, and hope. In one of his talks, he spoke about the human transition from hope to optimism. From praying for a better world to working hard to ensure a better future. In the sermon, Keller argued that humans are future-oriented beings. If we don’t have a positive vision for our future, we become slaves to the desires of the present day and crumble under the suffering of daily life. That’s why we need to believe that our lives are marching towards an end that’s worth striving for. Otherwise, we will become adrift like a log in the ocean.

今年早些时候，我在纽约参加了一系列关于基督教问题的讲座。每周四，蒂姆 · 凯勒都会讲述基督教的核心信条: 信仰、意义、满足、身份、道德、正义和希望。在他的一次演讲中，他谈到了人类从希望到乐观的转变。从祈祷一个更美好的世界到努力工作以确保一个更美好的未来。在布道中，凯勒认为人类是面向未来的生物。如果我们对未来没有一个积极的愿景，我们就会成为当下欲望的奴隶，在日常生活的痛苦中崩溃。这就是为什么我们需要相信我们的生活正朝着一个值得为之奋斗的目标前进。否则，我们就会像木头一样漂浮在海洋中。

In his final lecture, Keller quoted Robert Nisbet, the author of The History of the Idea of Progress. In it, Nisbet argues that ancient people saw time as cyclical, and no idea has been more important to Western Civilization than the idea of progress.

在他的最后一次演讲中，凯勒引用了《进步观念的历史》一书的作者罗伯特 · 尼斯贝特的话。在书中，尼斯贝特认为，古代人认为时间是循环的，对于西方文明来说，没有什么观念比进步观念更重要了。

The Ancients assumed that humanity was doomed to cycles of pessimism. Even if they held ideas of moral, spiritual, and material improvement, the idea that humanity can improve itself, step-by-step and stage-by-stage into an earthly paradise is uniquely Western. Christian theology sees time as linear. It moves away from the Garden of Eden, and toward a day of judgement, justice, and the establishment of a divine, peace-filled kingdom.

古人认为人类注定要走上悲观主义的周期。即使他们持有道德、精神和物质进步的观念，人类可以一步一步地改善自己，进入人间天堂的观念也是西方独有的。基督教神学认为时间是线性的。它远离伊甸园 (2008 年电影) ，走向审判日、正义日，走向建立一个神圣、充满和平的王国。

The linear perspective on time was born out of Greek philosophy. Controversial at the time, writers like Seneca wrote that mankind had advanced in the past, and will continue to advance in the future. But the idea of progress did not crystallize until St. Augustine. His book, The City of God, was the first full-blown philosophy of world history. By fusing the Greek idea of growth with the Jewish idea of sacred history, St. Augustine introduced a Christianity-inspired linear theory of humanity. He believed in the unity of mankind, a succession of fixed stages of human development, the assumption that all that has happened and will happen is necessary, and the vision of a future condition of heaven on earth.

线性时间观起源于希腊哲学。当时颇具争议的是，像塞尼卡这样的作家写道，人类在过去已经取得了进步，并将在未来继续前进。但是直到圣奥古斯丁，进步的理念才具体化。他的著作《上帝之城》是世界历史上第一部完整的哲学著作。通过融合希腊的增长理念和犹太人的神圣历史理念，St. Augustine 引入了基督教启发的线性人性理论。他相信人类的统一，人类发展的一系列固定阶段，所有已经发生和将要发生的事情都是必要的假设，以及对未来地球上天堂状况的设想。

Through a belief in Redemption, Christians turned their minds to the supernatural and adopted a belief in an eternal heaven. Nisbet writes:

通过对救赎的信仰，基督徒将他们的思想转向超自然的事物，信仰永恒的天堂。尼斯贝特写道:

Christian ideals of progress are sprinkled throughout The City of God. At the end of his book, St. Augustine refers to the seven stages of early history. The last, still-yet-to-come stage will consist of peace and happiness on earth. He wrote that as a result of the inevitable historical development from the primitive world of the Garden of Eden, those who put their faith in Christ will experience an earthly paradise. ¹

基督教关于进步的理想散布在整个上帝之城。在他的书的最后，St. Augustine 提到了早期历史的 7 个阶段。最后一个阶段，也是尚未到来的阶段，将包括地球上的和平与幸福。他写道，由于从原始的伊甸园 (2008 年电影) 世界到现在的历史发展是不可避免的，那些信仰基督的人将体验到一个人间天堂。1```eginning with the Greeks and accelerated by the Christian writers such as St. Augustine, Western philosophy is defined by the march towards heavenly perfection. People in the West see progress, evolution, and innovation as synonyms. We assume that increased freedom and knowledge is limited only by the passage of time and an active commitment to creating a better future. Like a law of nature, progress was as inevitable as cherry blossoms in the spring.

从希腊人开始，经过基督教作家如 St. Augustine 的加速，西方哲学被定义为走向天堂般的完美。西方人把进步、进化和创新视为同义词。我们认为，增加的自由和知识只受到时间流逝和积极致力于创造更美好未来的限制。就像自然法则一样，进步就像春天樱花开放一样不可避免。

If time is cyclical, the future will look like the present. The arrow of time points back towards its origin and ends where it began. Taken to the extreme, cyclical perspectives on time implicitly remove human agency. No matter what you do, the world will return to its original state.

如果时间是周期性的，那么未来看起来就像现在。时间之箭指向它的起点，在它开始的地方结束。在极端情况下，关于时间的周期性观点隐含地消除了人类的能动性。无论你做什么，世界都会回到原来的状态。

Once Tim Keller’s lectures were over and I understood Nisbet’s philosophy of progress, I turned to a series of Rene Girard interviews. As I started reading, I was shocked to see Nisbet’s idea of progress fit Girard’s theory of Mimetics like a pair of puzzle pieces.

蒂姆 · 凯勒的演讲一结束，我就理解了尼斯贝特的进步哲学，于是我转向了雷内 · 吉拉德的一系列采访。当我开始阅读的时候，我震惊地发现尼斯贝特的进步理念与吉拉德的模仿论就像一对拼图。

The similarities are stunning. Girard saw sacrifice and the scapegoat mechanism as the reason for Christianity and the center of human culture. The Christian story is the ultimate Girardian ritual because Jesus is a classic scapegoat, but with an all-important twist. Where previous myths were told from the perspective of the community, the Christian story is told from the perspective of the victim. And according to Girard, this is the essence of biblical revelation. The Gospels classify Jesus as a scapegoat. True to the scapegoat phenomenon, Jesus is not killed by the Romans, the Jewish priests, or by the crowd alone, but by everybody. The death of Jesus, like a scapegoat ritual, is a collective and community murder.

这些相似之处令人震惊。吉拉德认为，牺牲和替罪羊机制是基督教产生的原因，是人类文化的中心。基督教的故事是最终的吉拉尔仪式，因为耶稣是一个经典的替罪羊，但有一个非常重要的转折。先前的神话是从社区的角度讲述的，而基督教的故事则是从受害者的角度讲述的。根据吉拉德的观点，这就是圣经启示的本质。福音书把耶稣归类为替罪羊。正如替罪羊现象一样，耶稣不是被罗马人、犹太祭司或者群众杀死的，而是被所有人杀死的。耶稣的死，就像一个替罪羊仪式，是一个集体和集体的谋杀。

Like all scapegoat victims, Jesus is killed despite his innocence. Christianity reveals the radical injustice of the scapegoat phenomenon. All scapegoats are both insiders and outsiders. At once, they must be insider enough to be part of the community, but outsider enough to blame for the community’s problems. As the Gospel of John says: “It is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed… They hated me for no reason.”

像所有的替罪羊受害者一样，尽管耶稣是无辜的，他还是被杀害了。基督教揭示了替罪羊现象的根本不公正。所有的替罪羊都是内部人士和外部人士。他们必须立刻成为圈内人，成为社区的一部分，但也必须成为社区问题的外来者。正如约翰福音所说: “一个人为百姓死，强如为全国灭亡… … 他们无故恨我。”

Sacrifice is a social event. Without sacrifice, human beings wouldn’t have a culture. All human societies are built around religion because it’s the only way to peacefully work with the scapegoat mechanism. When humans engage in a Mimetic crisis, the violence can only be fixed by murdering the scapegoat. This process of killing the victim again and again is the main peace pill in an archaic society. People perform ritual sacrifices together, and when a priest is appointed to kill a victim, he kills the victim in the name of the whole community. After all, a community can’t scapegoat somebody unless it thinks the scapegoat is guilty. That’s why scapegoating has to be unconscious. Once the group ritual is performed, violence is repelled and peace is restored for the community.

牺牲是一个社会事件。没有牺牲，人类就不会有文化。所有的人类社会都是围绕着宗教建立的，因为宗教是和平解决替罪羊问题的唯一途径。当人类陷入模仿危机时，暴力只能通过谋杀替罪羊来解决。这种一次又一次地杀害受害者的过程是古老社会的主要和平药丸。人们一起进行祭祀仪式，当一个牧师被指定去杀死一个受害者，他以整个社区的名义杀死受害者。毕竟，一个社区不能把某人当作替罪羊，除非它认为替罪羊是有罪的。这就是为什么找替罪羊必须是无意识的。一旦进行集体仪式，暴力就会被排斥，社区的和平就会恢复。

Ritual protects communities from the great violence of Mimetic disorder thanks to the real and symbolic violence of sacrifice. Girard said “sacrificial systems contain violence.” His message has two meanings. Violence is the disease and the cure for the disease. Sacrificial ritual is always violent. And yet, since the real and symbolic violence of sacrifice restores peace in the community, it prevents the escalation of runaway Mimetic violence. In that way, humanity contains violence with violence because sacrifice saves the community from its own violence.

宗教仪式保护社区免受模仿混乱的巨大暴力，这要感谢真实的和象征暴力的牺牲。吉拉德说，“牺牲系统包含暴力。” 他的信息有两层含义。暴力是疾病，是治愈疾病的良药。祭祀仪式总是暴力的。然而，由于真正的和象征暴力的牺牲恢复了社区的和平，它防止了失控的模仿性暴力的升级。这样，人类就用暴力包容了暴力，因为牺牲拯救了社区免于自身的暴力。

It’s hard to gauge the impact of various philosophies of time. Even as I argue for it, I’m skeptical that a linear perspective on time is a meaningful driver of innovation and technological progress. And yet, my skepticism is balanced by my own relationship with my future self.

很难衡量各种时间哲学的影响。即使我支持这一观点，我仍然怀疑线性时间观是否是创新和技术进步的有意义的驱动力。然而，我的怀疑被我自己与未来的自己的关系所平衡。

Creating explicit images of my future has made me healthier, happier, and much more productive. I re-write my 25-year vision multiple times per year. Then, twice a month, I meet with a personal coach to make sure my short-term actions sync up with my long-term goals. By treating my future self with the same respect as my current self, I’m better able to ignore the nagging impulses of the moment and work towards a better future for myself and humanity.

创造清晰的未来图像让我更健康，更快乐，更有效率。我每年都会多次重写我的 25 年愿景。然后，每月两次，我会见一个私人教练，以确保我的短期行动与我的长期目标同步。通过像对待现在的自己一样对待未来的自己，我可以更好地忽略当下那些令人不安的冲动，为自己和人类的美好未来而努力。

Fueled by a healthy skepticism, I’d love to see two studies. The first one would track the relationship between technological progress and conceptions of time. Scientists would ask proxy questions for determining a culture’s time horizon, and use it to evaluate its impact on productivity growth. The second study would measure the relationship between urban life and farm life. In my recent podcast conversation with Jason Zweig, he shared his experience growing up on a farm in upstate New York. Farm life encourages cyclical thinking in a way city life doesn’t. On a farm, you’re mesmerized by simple pleasures: the movement of the sun, the turn of the seasons, and the emotions of the turbulent skies. Aside from violent rainstorms and purple-painted sunsets, synthetic city environments take us away from nature. I suspect that people in cities are more likely to see time as linear, while people who grow up in nature see its cyclical traits, such as the rise of the sun, the seasonal thunderstorms, and the changing of the seasons.

在健康怀疑论的推动下，我希望看到两项研究。第一个是追踪技术进步与时间概念之间的关系。科学家们会问一些代理问题来确定一种文化的时间范围，并用它来评估它对生产力增长的影响。第二项研究将测量城市生活和农场生活之间的关系。在我最近与 Jason Zweig 的播客对话中，他分享了他在纽约上州的一个农场长大的经历。农村生活鼓励循环思维，而城市生活则不然。在农场里，你会沉浸在简单的快乐中: 太阳的运转，季节的更替，还有天空的狂暴。除了猛烈的暴风雨和紫色的日落，人造的城市环境让我们远离大自然。我怀疑城市里的人们更倾向于认为时间是线性的，而在大自然中长大的人们则认为时间具有周期性的特征，如太阳升起、季节性雷暴和季节变化。

Likewise, ancient cultures saw time like an endless wheel. They believed that every so often, the universe would wind down and burn up, and after this re-birth, history would begin again. And everything, from our bodies to our souls, would be purified. Relative to the Christian tradition, this philosophy assumes the futility of long-term progress.

同样地，古代文化把时间看作是一个无穷无尽的轮子。他们相信，宇宙会时不时地风平浪静，然后燃烧起来，在这次重生之后，历史会重新开始。一切，从我们的身体到我们的灵魂，都将得到净化。相对于基督教传统，这种哲学假定长期进步是徒劳的。

Girard offers a historical perspective for the transition from cyclical time to linear time. He identified a cyclical loop: First, when a scapegoat is sacrificed, peace is restored in the community. Then, the culture lives peacefully for a short time. But eventually, tensions flare and violence returns to the community. To restore the peace, a new scapegoat must be named and sacrificed, which re-starts the sacrificial loop.

吉拉德提供了从循环时间到线性时间过渡的历史视角。他确定了一个循环: 首先，当一个替罪羊被牺牲，和平在社区中得到恢复。然后，文化和平地生活了一段时间。但最终，紧张局势爆发，暴力事件重新回到社区。为了恢复和平，一个新的替罪羊必须被命名和牺牲，这重新启动了牺牲循环。

To Peter Thiel, short-term thinking is the essence of sin. Like The Bible, he advises us to make plans and sacrifice the present for the future. Greatness is like chess. To win, you must study the end game and work towards the one you want to see. Thiel’s favorite chess player was José Raúl Capablanca who said: “To begin you must study the end. You don’t want to be the first to act, you want to be the last man standing.”

在彼得 · 泰尔看来，短期思维是罪的本质。像《圣经》一样，他建议我们为未来制定计划并牺牲现在。伟大就像国际象棋。为了获胜，你必须学习最后的游戏，朝着你想看到的方向努力。最喜欢的国际象棋手是何塞 · 劳尔 · 卡帕布兰卡，他说: 开始你必须学习结束。你不想成为第一个采取行动的人，你想成为坚持到最后的人。”

Thiel says a bad plan is better than no plan at all. Having no plan is chaotic. He supports people who trade the shiny mirage of short-termism for the calm, controlled grace of a long time horizon. Like Capablanca, they are the kinds of people who study the end-game and work backwards from there.

希尔说，一个坏的计划总比没有计划好。没有计划是混乱的。他支持那些把短期主义的光鲜幻象换成长期视野中平静、可控的优雅的人。和 Capablanca 一样，他们是那种研究游戏结局并从那里开始反向工作的人。

In a thought-provoking essay called Peter Thiel and the Cathedral, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues that Cathedrals were the equivalent of the Apollo project in the High Middle Ages. Like America’s Apollo program, each Cathedral required a specific and ambitious plan for building it. Medieval cathedrals were the first man-made structures to soar higher than the Egyptian Pyramids, which were monuments to death. But cathedrals are dedicated to the triumph over death. Moreover, cathedrals can only be built with scientific knowledge and communal support. They require scientists, mathematicians, engineers, craftsmen, and artists. And all of them need a long time horizon.

帕斯卡 - 伊曼纽尔 • 戈布里 (Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry) 在一篇发人深省的文章《彼得 • 蒂尔与大教堂》(Peter Thiel and the Cathedral)中指出，大教堂相当于中世纪晚期的阿波罗计划。就像美国的阿波罗计划一样，每一座大教堂都需要一个具体而雄心勃勃的建造计划。中世纪的大教堂是第一座高于埃及金字塔的人造建筑，它是死亡的纪念碑。但是大教堂是献给战胜死亡的。此外，大教堂的建造只能依靠科学知识和社区的支持。他们需要科学家、数学家、工程师、工匠和艺术家。所有这些都需要一个较长的时间范围。

Long time horizons aren’t just psychological. They’re cultural. Modern society suffers from temporal exhaustion. Or as, sociologist Elise Boulding once said: “If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future.”

长远的眼界不仅仅是心理上的。它们是文化的。现代社会饱受时间耗竭之苦。或者，正如社会学家埃莉斯 · 布尔丁曾经说过的: “如果一个人在处理现在的问题时总是在精神上上气不接下气，那么他就没有精力去想象未来了。”

As I’ve written before, the speed of technology and the hyperconnectivity of society have placed us in a “never-ending now.” Like hamsters running on a wheel, we live in an endless cycle of ephemeral content consumption — a merry-go-round that spins faster and faster but never goes anywhere. Even the virtues of information consumption have changed. Most people I know care more about being informed than being well read. By focusing on the desperate screams of moody news anchors and not the books you’ll find in libraries, they let the culture’s moods dictate their own. The news has swept us into a dizzying chaos. When we whirl in its vortex, we become overwhelmed by the slightest breeze of chaos and lose sight of our place in history.

正如我之前所写的，科技的发展速度和社会的高度互联性已经让我们处于一种 “永无止境的现状” 就像仓鼠在轮子上奔跑一样，我们生活在一个消耗短暂内容的无穷无尽的循环中——一个旋转木马，转得越来越快，但永远不会去任何地方。甚至信息消费的优点也发生了变化。我认识的大多数人更关心的是获得信息而不是博览群书。通过关注那些喜怒无常的新闻主持人的绝望尖叫，而不是你在图书馆能找到的书，他们让文化的情绪主宰自己。这消息使我们陷入令人眼花缭乱的混乱之中。当我们在它的漩涡中旋转时，我们会被一丝混乱的微风吹得不知所措，忘记了我们在历史中的位置。

For the opposite perspective, consider the Japanese. Some of its citizens recently witnessed the 66th cycle of a ritual that began more than 13 centuries ago. In a city called Ise, people have been rebuilding the grand Jingu shrine with wood and thatch since the 7th century. This Shinto ritual does more than keep the structure intact. It helps the master temple builder train the next generation and injects participants with a long-time horizon. This Japanese commitment to maintenance allows it to sustain structures and rituals for millennia. We shouldn’t be surprised that Japan is home to most of the oldest companies in the world.

对于相反的观点，考虑一下日本人。最近，一些当地居民目睹了开始于 1300 多年前的第 66 轮宗教仪式。在一个叫伊势的城市，人们从公元 7 世纪起就开始用木头和茅草重建金谷神龛。这种神道教仪式不仅仅是保持建筑的完整。它帮助寺庙建造大师培养下一代，并为参与者注入一个长期的视野。这种日本人对维护的承诺使它能够维持建筑物和仪式长达数千年。日本拥有世界上大多数历史最悠久的公司，我们对此不应感到惊讶。

With that said, I don’t endorse the Japanese perspective in all its forms. The country is not as innovative as it once was. When I speak with friends who do business there, they complain about the rigid hierarchies and the inability to take risks. Instead of copying the Japanese commitment to long-term thinking, we should learn from it and use Christian-theology to build upon it.

话虽如此，但我并不认同日本人所有形式的观点。这个国家不再像以前那样富有创新精神了。当我与在那里做生意的朋友交谈时，他们抱怨等级森严，无法承担风险。与其照搬日本的长期思维方式，我们应该从中吸取教训，并利用基督教神学来建立它。

Thiel concludes that time is linear, not cyclical. The future won’t look like the present. It will either be much worse or much better. Or more explicitly, “stagnation leads straight to apocalypse.” If we don’t, we’ll suffer from limitless Mimetic violence; and if things go well, we might find our place in God’s peaceful kingdom.

泰尔的结论是时间是线性的，而不是周期性的。未来不会像现在这样。要么更糟，要么更好。或者更明确地说，“经济停滞直接导致世界末日。” 如果我们不这样做，我们将遭受无限的模仿暴力; 如果一切顺利，我们可能会在上帝的和平王国中找到自己的位置。

Informed by its linear conception of time and the Christian image of heaven, Thiel applauds the grand visions of yesterday’s leaders. Modern presidents no longer inspire Americans with positive visions of the future. The visions of the past weren’t just ambitious. They were clear and specific. Unfortunately, there is no modern equivalent of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project, or Nixon’s 1974 plan to defeat cancer by the end of the decade.

基于其线性的时间概念和基督教的天堂形象，希尔为昨天领导人的宏伟愿景喝彩。现代总统不再用对未来的积极愿景来激励美国人。过去的愿景不仅仅是雄心勃勃。它们清晰而具体。不幸的是，没有现代版的曼哈顿计划，阿波罗计划，或者尼克松 1974 年的计划能够在 2020 年之前战胜癌症。

Christians were the first group to reject cyclical time. They shouted that the future could be meaningfully better than the past. By doing so, they initiated a positive feedback loop, where progress led to progress, which led to more progress.

基督徒是第一批拒绝循环时间的人。他们喊道，未来可以比过去更美好。通过这样做，他们发起了一个积极的反馈循环，在这个循环中进步导致进步，进步导致更多的进步。

Guided by this belief in the possibility of progress, Christians follow a high-resolution painting of a perfect future. It’s as if humanity is on a mission. They believe humans are here to reflect God’s light onto the world. Instead of returning to the Garden of Eden, humanity will march forward, from the past to the future, and create “a new heaven and a new earth.”

基督徒相信进步是可能的，在这个信念的引导下，他们追随一幅高分辨率的绘画，描绘了一个完美的未来。这就好像人类在执行一项使命。他们相信人类在这里是为了把上帝的光反射到世界上。人类将不再回到伊甸园 (2008 年电影) ，而是从过去走向未来，创造 “一个新的天堂和新的地球”

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” — Revelation 21:1

我又看见一个新天新地。因为先前的天和先前的地都过去了，再没有海了ー启示录 21:1

“The cliche goes like this; live each day as if it were your last. The best way to take this advice is to do exactly the opposite: live each day as if you would live forever.” — Peter Thiel

“俗话是这么说的: 把每一天都当作生命的最后一天来过。接受这个建议的最好方法就是反其道而行之: 把每一天都当作你将永生一样生活。” ー Peter Thiel

The Book of Revelation is the last chapter in the New Testament. In this section, I interpret it in a way that supports the rest of Thiel’s conclusions. Inevitably, I have misspoken here. If I met Thiel, this is the section I would focus on. It’s foundational to Thiel’s worldview and I’ve never heard him speak about this section of The Bible in public.

启示录是新约的最后一章。在本节中，我以支持 Thiel 的其余结论的方式来解释它。不可避免地，我在这里说错了话。如果我遇到了泰尔，我会关注这一部分。这是希尔世界观的基础，我从来没有听他公开谈论过圣经的这一部分。

Here’s what I do know: Thiel is trying to save the world from apocalypse.

我所知道的是: 希尔正试图从世界末日中拯救世界。

The Book of Revelation paints two outcomes for the future of humanity: catastrophic apocalypse or a new heaven and a new earth. Some of the Christians I know believe that humans aren’t literally taken out of this world and transported into heaven. Instead, as explained in Revelations 21, heaven comes down to earth. According to this vision, humanity will be cleansed, renewed and perfected. The horrors of the world will be undone. People will receive the lives they’ve always wanted. All evils will be repaired, and the pain of existence will vanish like evaporating water after a thunderstorm. Better yet, the joy and glory of a world after redemption will be greater because humans have suffered to reach it.

启示录为人类的未来描绘了两个结果: 灾难性的天启或者一个新的天堂和新的地球。我认识的一些基督徒相信，人类并不是真的从这个世界被带到天堂。相反，正如《启示录》第 21 章所解释的，天堂降临人间。根据这一愿景，人类将得到净化、更新和完善。世界上的恐怖将被消除。人们会得到他们一直想要的生活。所有的罪恶都会被修复，生存的痛苦就会像雷雨过后蒸发的水一样消失。更好的是，在救赎之后，世界的喜悦和荣耀将会更大，因为人类已经遭受了达到它的痛苦。

I suspect Thiel holds this philosophy. To Thiel, The Book of Revelation is more than a metaphor. It’s a playbook for guiding humanity from the garden of the past to the city of the future.

我怀疑泰尔持有这种观点。对于 Thiel 来说，启示录不仅仅是一个比喻。这是一个引导人类从过去的花园到未来的城市的剧本。

As Thiel once wrote:

正如希尔曾经写道:

The probability of a civilization-ending apocalypse is increasing. Just because we no longer believe that Zeus can strike humans with sky-lighting thunderbolts, doesn’t mean that existential risk isn’t possible. Like Girard, he worries that the world is becoming more Mimetic. Worse, globalization is raising the threat of runaway mimesis and an apocalyptic world with cold corpses, dead horses, and splintered guns.

文明终结的可能性越来越大。只是因为我们不再相信宙斯可以用天空中闪电击中人类，并不意味着世界末日是不可能的。和吉拉德一样，他担心这个世界正变得越来越模仿。更糟糕的是，全球化正在加剧失控模仿的威胁，以及一个充斥着冰冷的尸体、死去的马匹和支离破碎的枪支的世界末日。

In an essay called The Optimistic Thought Experiment, Thiel advises us to build the modern equivalent of Noah’s ark, so we can survive the floods of Girardian evil. Thiel fears that due to technologies like nuclear weapons, humans are already capable of destroying the world. With modern technology, a tiny number of people are capable of inflicting unprecedented levels of damage and death with the push of a single button. That though, doesn’t mean we should stop innovating. A lack of progress leads straight to a bleak, ravaged, and apocalyptic world. He writes:

在一篇名为《乐观的思想实验》的文章中，泰尔建议我们建造现代版的诺亚方舟，这样我们就能在吉拉尔主义邪恶的洪水中生存下来。泰尔担心，由于核武器等技术，人类已经有能力摧毁世界。有了现代科技，只要按一下按钮，极少数人就能造成前所未有的破坏和死亡。但是，这并不意味着我们应该停止创新。缺乏进展直接导致了一个黯淡、遭受蹂躏和世界末日的世界。他写道:

Here, Thiel encourages us to be specific about the long-term future we want to create. Here, he counters the secular and Eastern philosophy. Under the secular mindset, there is no transcendent future after death. This is it. You have one life. Similarly, according to Eastern religions, we lose our individuality and lose our material lives so we can become part of the whole again. But Christianity offers a different perspective: work for the fruits of eternity instead of chasing the fleeting pleasures of the day. Don’t place too much weight on the present moment. Instead of focusing on meaningless scandals, endless political dramas, or the limitless accumulation of wealth, we should focus on the impending catastrophe at the end of the road. Work to prevent runaway Girardian violence. That way, when the Day of Judgement comes, we’ll lean towards the side of the good.

在这里，希尔鼓励我们明确我们想要创造的长期未来。在这里，他反对世俗哲学和东方哲学。在世俗的心态下，死后没有超验的未来。就是这里。你只有一次生命。同样，根据东方宗教，我们失去了我们的个性，失去了我们的物质生活，所以我们可以再次成为整体的一部分。但是基督教提供了一个不同的观点: 为永恒的果实而工作，而不是追求每天短暂的快乐。不要把太多的重心放在当下。与其关注毫无意义的丑闻，无休止的政治戏剧，或无限制的财富积累，我们应该关注即将到来的灾难在道路的尽头。努力防止失控的吉拉尔族暴力行为。这样，当审判日来临的时候，我们就会倾向于正义的一方。

If there was ever a silver bullet, Thiel believes living with a long time horizon is it.

如果说有什么灵丹妙药的话，希尔认为那就是长期生活。

Whether the future is better or worse will depend on our actions. Like Girard, Thiel, believes that Western political philosophy cannot cope with global violence. In 2004, three years after 9/11, Thiel sponsored a philosophical conference called “On Politics and Apocalypse.” Thiel contributed an essay called The Straussian Moment. In it, he tried to find common ground between Girard’s Mimetic theory and the work of two right-wing political philosophers: Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt. He argued that the issue of violence and existential risk has not been taken seriously enough since the Enlightenment.

未来是好是坏取决于我们的行动。和吉拉德一样，泰尔认为西方政治哲学无法应对全球暴力。2004 年，也就是 9/11 事件发生三年后，泰尔主办了一个名为 “论政治与启示录” 的哲学会议泰尔撰写了一篇名为《施特劳斯瞬间》的文章。在书中，他试图在吉拉德的模仿论和两位右翼政治哲学家的著作之间找到共同点。他认为，自启蒙运动以来，暴力和世界末日问题一直没有得到足够的重视。

Here are Thiel’s words:

以下是希尔的话:

As a libertarian who holds the New Testament as a seminal text, Thiel seeks to increase individual freedoms while preventing runaway Mimetic violence. As promised, here’s where Girard’s observations of the past can shape our understanding of the present. Everybody condemns hate-fueled online speech. If Girard’s theories are accurate, online fighting might be the preventative medicine we need, even if it tastes disgusting and comes with painful side-effects. The forces of globalization and technology may have abolished the boundaries of violence.

作为一个把新约作为开创性文本的自由意志主义者，希尔寻求增加个人自由，同时防止失控的模仿性暴力。正如所承诺的，这里是吉拉德对过去的观察可以塑造我们对现在的理解的地方。每个人都在谴责仇恨煽动的网络言论。如果吉拉德的理论是正确的，那么网络斗争可能是我们需要的预防性药物，即使它尝起来很恶心，并伴随着痛苦的副作用。全球化和技术的力量可能已经消除了暴力的界限。

If so, the cure is nested inside the disease. Online, social-media based arguments might repel an apocalyptic scenario. Perhaps Thiel sees Facebook as a place to contain unbounded Mimetic violence. It simultaneously perpetuates violence and prevents it from happening. After all, if people fight on social media, they won’t fight on the streets. Like a boiling kettle, we have to let out steam somewhere. Better to cool the pot on social media than in the streets. In the words of Thiel, “social media proved to be more important than it looked.”

如果是这样的话，治愈就是嵌在疾病里面的。在网上，基于社交媒体的争论可能会排斥世界末日的场景。也许希尔认为 Facebook 是一个包含无限模仿暴力的地方。它同时使暴力永久化，并防止它发生。毕竟，如果人们在社交媒体上打架，他们就不会在街上打架。我们必须在某个地方放出蒸汽，就像烧开的水壶一样。最好在社交媒体上给大麻降温，而不是在街上。用 Thiel 的话来说，“事实证明，社交媒体比它看起来更重要。”

The pull towards Girardian conflict stems from pessimism and short-term thinking. In Zero to One, Peter Thiel describes four ways of thinking about the future: definite optimism, indefinite optimism, definite pessimism, and indefinite pessimism. In a definite world, the future is knowable. There is a predetermined plan for what the future will look like. An indefinite world is more of a random walk. Like a lottery, the future is out of our control. It’s governed solely by probabilities and chance events, which makes it impossible to act with any agency.

拉向吉拉德冲突源于悲观主义和短期思维。在《零到一》一书中，彼得 · 泰尔描述了对未来的四种思考方式: 明确的乐观、不确定的乐观、明确的悲观和不确定的悲观。在一个确定的世界里，未来是可知的。对于未来将会是什么样子，有一个预先确定的计划。一个不确定的世界更像是一个随机漫步。就像彩票一样，未来是我们无法控制的。它完全由概率和偶然事件决定，这使得它不可能与任何机构一起行动。

Thiel defines the four quadrants as such:

希尔将四象限定义为:

Innovation begins with inspiration. Positive visions of the future inject people with imagination, which pulls the future forward.

创新始于灵感，对未来的积极憧憬为人们注入想象力，推动未来向前发展。asdfasdf

A quick browse through the history books shows that Americans, and especially the government, used to make big plans and live with Definite Optimism. To illustrate the idea, let’s turn to my favorite example: The Reber Plan.

快速浏览一下历史书，就会发现美国人，尤其是政府，过去常常制定宏伟的计划，过着乐观的生活。为了说明这个想法，让我们看看我最喜欢的例子: Reber 计划。

The Reber Plan is my favorite example of Definite Optimism. In the 1940s a San Francisco-based teacher and amateur theater producer devised a plan to reconstruct the San Francisco Bay Area. People took the plan seriously. Newspaper boards across California endorsed it.

里伯计划是我最喜欢的绝对乐观的例子。20 世纪 40 年代，旧金山的一位教师兼业余戏剧制作人设计了一个重建旧金山湾区的计划。人们认真对待这个计划。整个加利福尼亚的报纸委员会都支持它。

Reber proposed two large earth and rock dams, one between San Francisco and Oakland, and another between Marin County and Richmond. Dams would drain water from north to south and convert the Bay from saltwater to freshwater. Congress explored the project. Engineers planned to construct a 32-lane highway and scatter high-rise buildings throughout the reconstructed city. To test the plan, the Army Corps of Engineers built a 1.5-acre scale model of the proposed design.

里贝尔提议修建两座大型土石坝，一座位于旧金山和奥克兰之间，另一座位于马林县和里士满之间。大坝将从北向南排水，把海湾的咸水变成淡水。国会研究了这个项目。工程师们计划修建一条 32 车道的高速公路，将高层建筑分散在整个重建的城市中。为了测试这个计划，美国陆军工兵（印度）建造了一个 1.5 英亩的比例模型。

Ultimately, the Reber Plan didn’t work. The freshwater lakes would have evaporated too quickly. Nevertheless, due to the spirit of the post World War II age, people gave the Reber Plan the respect it deserved.

最终，Reber 计划失败了。淡水湖会蒸发得太快。然而，由于二战后时代的精神，人们给予了 Reber 计划应有的尊重。

As Americans geared up for World War II in the early 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) called upon the nation to increase its production of airplanes. But in a 1940 speech to Congress, FDR said: “I should like to see this Nation geared up to the ability to turn out at least 50,000 planes a year.” At the time, nobody thought FDR’s goal was possible.

20 世纪 40 年代早期，当美国人为第二次世界大战做好准备时，富兰克林 · 德拉诺 · 罗斯福总统呼吁美国增加飞机产量。但在 1940 年对国会的一次演讲中，罗斯福说: “我希望看到这个国家做好准备，每年至少生产 5 万架飞机。” 当时，没有人认为罗斯福的目标是可行的。

Americans were still plagued by the Great Depression. Roosevelt spoke to 132 million Americans. Only 48,000 of them earned more than $2,500 per year, the modern equivalent of $40,000 in today’s dollars. Nearly one-third had no running water. And none of them had antibiotics or unemployment insurance.

美国人仍然受到大萧条的困扰。罗斯福对 1.32 亿美国人发表了讲话。其中只有 48000 人年收入超过 2500 美元，相当于现在的 40000 美元。近三分之一的人没有自来水。而且他们都没有抗生素或失业保险。

At the time, Americans were producing fewer than 1,000 planes per year. The Nazis had 7 million soldiers, but America had less than 200,000. American industry responded with passionate intensity. Ford Motors had never built an airplane, but America sought to produce more airplanes at Willow Run than Hitler produced in all of Germany. To build the plant, builders moved 650,000 cubic yards of dirt and laid 58 miles of grain tile underground. Production exceeded expectations. Ford Liberator bombers took flight in the spring of 1942, ahead of schedule. Within five years, Ford produced tens of thousands of airplanes per year. War production board chief Donald Nelson captured the ambition of the moment: “When we are talking about America’s war production job we are discussing the biggest job in all of history.”

当时，美国每年生产的飞机还不到 1000 架。纳粹有 700 万士兵，而美国只有不到 20 万。美国工业界对此反应强烈。福特汽车公司从来没有制造过飞机，但是美国试图在 Willow Run 生产的飞机比希特勒在整个德国生产的还要多。为了建造这座核电站，建筑工人搬运了 65 万立方码的泥土，并在地下铺设了 58 英里的谷物瓷砖。产量超出预期。1942 年春天，福特解放者轰炸机提前起飞。在五年内，福特每年生产数万架飞机。战争生产委员会主席唐纳德 · 纳尔逊抓住了当时的雄心壮志: “当我们谈论美国的战争生产工作时，我们讨论的是历史上最大的工作。”

Today, these bold visions would be ignored and dismissed as lunacy. Definite Optimism is withering. Big dreams are now seen as childish illusions. We no longer trust amateurs with vast imaginations, and we no longer challenge people to imagine futures that look radically different from the present. Instead, we defer only to experts with mainstream opinions.

今天，这些大胆的愿景将被忽视，并被视为精神错乱。明确的乐观主义正在消亡。大梦想现在被视为幼稚的幻想。我们不再相信拥有丰富想象力的业余爱好者，我们也不再挑战人们去想象与现在截然不同的未来。相反，我们只听从主流意见的专家。

The Reber model has been demoted from a grand vision of the future to a meager Sausalito tourist attraction. “Let’s dam the San Francisco Bay” is too grand and too specific. Instead, we say “Let’s improve the economy” or “promote information.” We doubt the potential of grand plans. Instead, we put our faith in small tweaks and A/B tests, implying that millions of small actions are a better way of improving the world and creating a desired future.

雷伯模型已经从一个宏伟的未来愿景降格为一个微不足道的索萨利托旅游胜地。“让我们在旧金山海湾筑坝吧”太宏伟、太具体了。相反，我们会说 “让我们改善经济” 或“推广信息”我们怀疑宏伟计划的潜力。相反，我们把我们的信念放在小的调整和 a/b 测试上，这意味着数以百万计的小行动是改善世界和创造理想未来的更好方式。

We’ve moved from an atmosphere of utopian promises to one of dystopian threats. Definite Optimism has disappeared.

我们已经从乌托邦式的承诺转变为反乌托邦式的威胁，明确的乐观主义已经消失。

Since the Financial Crisis, tens of thousands of Americans have moved into the Indefinite Optimism and Definite Pessimism quadrants.

自金融危机以来，成千上万的美国人已经进入了无限乐观和确定悲观的象限。

According to Thiel, this shift has been worse than acknowledged. A 2011 essay called The End of the Future, which lives on the homepage of the website of his venture capital firm, argues that progress has stagnated. We’ve shifted away from funding transformational companies and toward companies that solve incremental problems, and sometimes even fake ones. To be sure, he doesn’t only invest in companies with little competition like Palantir and DeepMind. His firm also invested in Airbnb, Stripe, and Postmates.

泰尔表示，这种转变比人们承认的更糟糕。2011 年，一篇名为《未来的终结》的文章，出现在他的风险投资公司的主页上，文章认为进步停滞不前。我们已经从资助转型公司转向解决增量问题的公司，有时甚至是假冒的公司。可以肯定的是，他不仅仅投资于像 Palantir 和 DeepMind 这样几乎没有竞争对手的公司。他的公司还投资了 Airbnb、 Stripe 和 Postmates。

Today, we’ve narrowed the definition of technology to Angry Birds and goofy SnapChat filters. That’s why Thiel longs for the days when technology alluded to space, airplanes, and rockets that generated more energy than a small atomic bomb.

今天，我们已经把技术的定义缩小到愤怒的小鸟和愚蠢的 SnapChat 过滤器。这就是为什么希尔渴望科技能够提及太空、飞机和火箭，它们能够产生比小型原子弹更多的能量。

NASA’s star spangled splendor transformed consciousness. Astronauts with stomachs of steel traveled the impossible distances of space. The Apollo 8 mission required superhuman precision, equivalent in scale to throwing a dart at a peach from a distance of 28 feet, and grazing the top of the fuzz without touching the fruit’s skin. To reach the moon, America’s pioneers traveled across 240,000 miles, about fifty-eight times the distance Columbus sailed when he discovered the Western world. As the Apollo rockets pierced through the stratosphere, and navigated the pin-drop silence of outer space, they inspired people back on earth to expand their horizons.

美国宇航局的星光灿烂改变了人们的意识。肚子里装着钢铁的宇航员飞行了不可思议的太空距离。阿波罗 8 号的任务需要超人的精确度，在规模上相当于从 28 英尺的距离向一个桃子投掷飞镖，以及在没有接触到果皮的情况下擦拭绒毛的顶部。为了到达月球，美国的拓荒者们跨越了 24 万英里，大约是哥伦布发现西方世界时航行距离的 58 倍。当阿波罗号火箭穿过平流层，穿越外太空的静寂时，它们激励着地球上的人们开拓他们的视野。

Literally.

真的。

America’s imagination peaked in 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. He stepped on moon-dust less than a decade after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, and only 8 years after President John F. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University where he said: “We choose to go to the moon, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.”

美国的想象力在 1969 年达到顶峰，当时尼尔 · 阿姆斯特朗踏上了月球。在艾伦 · 谢泼德 (Alan Shepard) 成为第一个进入太空的美国人后不到十年，他就踏上了月球上的尘土，而且距离约翰 · f · 肯尼迪 (John f. Kennedy) 总统在赖斯大学 (Rice University) 的演讲只有 8 年，他在演讲中说: “我们选择登上月球，不是因为它很容易，而

As the American people watched their comrades explore the distant skies and travel to the moon, they thought they’d witnessed the opening of a new frontier. Humans were no longer trapped on the pale blue dot. Soon, all of humanity would traverse the stratosphere and soar through space. Science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke predicted imminent commercial space travel, interstellar exploration, and genuine artificial intelligences. The Apollo Project didn’t just shake the Florida launchpads. It shook the entire world.

当美国人民看着他们的同志们探索遥远的天空和月球旅行时，他们认为他们见证了一个新的边疆的开放。人类不再被困在这个淡蓝色的小点上。很快，所有的人类都将穿越平流层，在太空中翱翔。科幻小说作家，比如亚瑟 · 查理斯 · 克拉克预言即将到来的商业太空旅行，星际探索和真正的人工智能。阿波罗计划不仅动摇了佛罗里达州的发射台。它震撼了整个世界。

To echo the point, Thiel likes to quote a 1967 best-selling book called The American Challenge. The book predicted that America would be a post-industrial society by the year 2000. Americans would work four days per week and seven hours per day. The year would be comprised of 39 work weeks and 13 weeks of vacation.

为了呼应这一观点，泰尔喜欢引用 1967 年的畅销书《美国挑战》(The American Challenge)。这本书预测到 2000 年美国将成为后工业社会。美国人每周工作四天，每天工作七小时。这一年将包括 39 个工作周和 13 个星期的假期。

Unfortunately, this dream never arrived. Transportation machines soared higher and faster for 200 years. In the span of a single lifetime, people went from traveling by horse and buggy to walking on the moon. Depending on who you ask, it seemed like humanity was guided by the invisible hand or an all-powerful God. Interstellar travel and vacations on the moon were the future, and everybody knew it.

不幸的是，这个梦想从未实现。200 年来，运输机械的发展速度越来越快。在人的一生中，人们从乘坐马车旅行变成了在月球上行走。取决于你问谁，似乎人类是由看不见的手或全能的上帝引导的。恆星际旅行和月球度假是未来，每个人都知道这一点。

In an unexpected twist, the physics stagnated. Transportation stopped improving. And today, we’re no longer pushing the limits of height and speed.

出乎意料的是，物理学停滞了。交通状况停止改善。今天，我们不再挑战高度和速度的极限。

Just ask Pan American World Airways, the iconic airline of the Post World War II era. After Americans stepped foot on the moon, the airline’s customer center was inundated with phone calls from around the country. First the astronauts. Then, the people. Customers wanted to reserve seats on the first trips to the moon. Between 1968 and 1971, Pan Am accepted 93,005 reservations for planned commercial flights to the moon. Fast forward five decades and only 12 men have ever walked on the moon. No American, let alone any ordinary human being, has stepped foot on the moon since 1972.

问问泛美航空航空就知道了，它是二战后时期的标志性航空公司。在美国人踏上月球之后，该航空公司的客户中心被来自全国各地的电话淹没了。首先是宇航员。然后是人民。乘客们想在第一次登上月球时预订座位。在 1968 年至 1971 年间，泛美航空接受了 93005 个飞往月球的商业航班预定。快进 50 年，只有 12 个人曾经在月球上行走过。自 1972 年以来，没有一个美国人踏上过月球，更不用说任何普通人了。

The rate of technological progress is slowing. The only major exceptions are semiconductors, DNA sequencing, and communications technology. Side effects of slow growth plague the economy. Real median wages haven’t risen since 1973. Meanwhile, the costs of housing, healthcare, and education are rising faster than inflation. More than 40 million Americans are collectively liable for more than $1.5 trillion in student loans.

技术进步的速度正在放缓。唯一的例外是半导体、 DNA 测序和通信技术。经济增长缓慢的副作用使经济深受其害。自 1973 年以来，实际工资中位数一直没有上升。与此同时，住房、医疗和教育成本的上升速度快于通胀。超过 4000 万美国人需要偿还 1.5 万亿美元的学生贷款。

In response, we’ve lowered our efficiency standards. The Golden Gate Bridge was built in less than four years in the 1930s. The recently completed Golden Gate Bridge access road, Doyle Drive, took seven years to build and cost more in real dollars than the original bridge. Buildings, too. The Empire State Building was built in 15 months from 1931-1932. 80 years later, The Freedom Tower took more than 12 years to build. We’ve masked our lack of progress with government money printing, rising debt levels, and distractions of digital technology.

作为回应，我们降低了我们的效率标准。上世纪 30 年代，金门大桥在不到四年的时间内建成。最近完工的金门大桥道路，道尔大道，花了七年时间建成，花费比原来的大桥还要多。建筑物也是如此。帝国大厦建于 1931-1932 年间，历时 15 个月。80 年后，自由塔花了超过 12 年的时间才建成。我们掩盖了政府印钞、债务水平上升和数字技术分散注意力等方面缺乏进展的事实。

America is not as dynamic as it once was. We see it in the statistics and feel it in our politics. And yet, ask the average person, and they’ll tell you that we’re living in a world of exponential technological growth.

美国不再像以前那样充满活力。我们在统计数据中看到了这一点，在我们的政治中也感受到了这一点。然而，如果你问一般人，他们会告诉你，我们生活在一个技术指数增长的世界里。

Don’t believe Thiel?

不相信泰尔？

Follow the money. Warren Buffett, the richest investor in America bets against change. The less the world changes, the more Buffett succeeds. BNSF Railway, where Buffett recently invested $44 billion is the largest non-financial company in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Thiel proclaims that 40 percent of railroads involve the transport of coal, so Buffett’s investment will do especially well if the travel and energy consumption patterns of the 21st century look like the past.

跟着钱走。沃伦 · 巴菲特，美国最富有的投资者，押注于变革。世界变化越少，巴菲特成功的机会就越多。BNSF 铁路公司，巴菲特最近投资了 440 亿美元，是伯克希尔 · 哈撒韦投资组合中最大的非金融公司。希尔宣称，40% 的铁路运输涉及煤炭运输，因此，如果 21 世纪的旅行和能源消费模式看起来像过去，巴菲特的投资将特别有利。

After digging through the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report, I’d like to add context to Thiel’s thesis. Buffett’s firm has poured millions of dollars into renewable energy. In addition to coal and natural gas, Berkshire Hathaway Energy (90% owned by Berkshire Hathaway) has made meaningful investments in solar, nuclear, hydro-electric, geo-thermal, and in particular, wind.

在深入研究了 2018 年伯克希尔 · 哈撒韦年度报告之后，我想给 Thiel 的论文增加一些背景知识。巴菲特的公司在可再生能源领域投入了数百万美元。除了煤炭和天然气之外，波克夏 · 哈萨威能源集团 (90% 的股份由伯克希尔 · 哈撒韦集团持有) 还在太阳能、核能、水电、地热能，特别是风能等领域进行了大量投资。

From a distance, we see a mirage of progress. From up-close, once we remove the smartphone screens in front of us, we feel the reality of struggle and stagnation. According to a recent survey, 80% of Americans think the next generation will be worse off than the current generation. As Tim Keller wrote in Making Sense of God:

从远处看，我们看到了进步的海市蜃楼。从近处看，一旦我们移开面前的智能手机屏幕，我们就会感受到挣扎和停滞的现实。根据最近的一项调查，80% 的美国人认为下一代会比现在这一代更糟糕。正如蒂姆 · 凯勒在《上帝的意义》一书中写道:

This intuition is supported by data. Millennials are less well off than members of earlier generations were when they were young. They have lower earnings, fewer assets, and less wealth. Children born in 1940 had a 90% chance of earning more than their parents. But children born in the 1980s have only a 50% chance. Christoper Kurz, an economist at the Federal Reserve has shown that millennial households had an average net worth of about $92,000 in 2016, nearly 40% less than Gen X households in 2001, adjusted for inflation, and about 20% less than baby boomer households in 1989. Wages tell a similar story. In short, millennials have it tough and it isn’t their fault. With the rise of dystopian films, Hollywood creates and reflects these dark predictions about the future.

这种直觉是有数据支持的。现在的千禧一代比他们年轻时候的前几代人更不富裕。他们的收入更低，资产更少，财富更少。1940 年出生的孩子有 90% 的机会比他们的父母挣得多。但是 80 年代出生的孩子只有 50% 的机会。美联储经济学家克里斯托弗 · 库尔兹表示，2016 年千禧一代家庭的平均净资产约为 92,000 美元，经通货膨胀调整后，比 2001 年的 x 一代家庭少了近 40% ，比 1989 年婴儿潮时期出生的家庭少了约 20% 。工资的情况也差不多。简而言之，千禧一代过得很艰难，这不是他们的错。随着反乌托邦电影的兴起，好莱坞创造并反映了这些关于未来的黑暗预言。

Unable to pay for college or afford an apartment in a job-filled city, many Millennials have lost hope.

由于无力支付大学学费或在一个充满工作的城市买不起公寓，许多千禧一代已经失去了希望。

One friend doesn’t want to have kids because “the entire state of California is going to be underwater by 2050.” Or, in the words of a comedian on Twitter: “The fun part about living right now is we get to see how it ends.”

一个朋友不想要孩子，因为 “到 2050 年，整个加利福尼亚州都将被淹没。” 或者，用一位喜剧演员在 Twitter 上的话说: “当下生活的乐趣在于我们能看到它的结局。”

When I speak with friends and travel the 50 states, I’m struck by how numb many people are to the world. Besides immigrants and their children, both of whom inspire me with their ambition and passionate work ethic, I see fear, complacency, and extreme risk-aversion everywhere.

当我和朋友们交谈，在 50 个州旅行时，我惊讶于许多人对这个世界如此麻木。除了移民和他们的孩子，他们的雄心壮志和充满激情的职业道德激励着我，我看到恐惧、自满和极度厌恶冒险的情绪无处不在。

Benjamin Franklin once said: “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”

本杰明 · 富兰克林曾经说过: “如果每个人的想法都是一样的，那么就没有人在思考。”

The most talented people follow the same narrow tracks. People are afraid to dream big or stand out. Without a positive vision for their future, these young Americans are stuck playing vicious, zero-sum status games. Instead of constructing our own desires, they mirror the goals of people around them. Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, shared a similar observation:

最有才华的人都遵循同一条狭窄的道路。人们害怕梦想太大或者太突出。如果对自己的未来没有一个积极的愿景，这些年轻的美国人就会陷入恶性的零和游戏。它们反映了周围人的目标，而不是建构我们自己的欲望。帕特里克 · 科里森的 CEO，也有类似的观察:

There’s a lack of differentiation. As Thiel observed:

正如希尔观察到的那样:

The top colleges have become vocational schools for investment banking and management consulting. In 2007, for example, half of Harvard seniors took jobs in finance or consulting. This mirrors my own experience. My college jobs department steered us towards high-status jobs instead of high-impact ones. Students, professors, and advisors cared more about perception than reality. It felt as if the goal of life wasn’t to improve the world, but to win awards and build an impressive resume. Instead, my smartest friends were pushed towards a handful of fields: law, management consulting, and investment banking. Other options were peripheral and besides the point.

顶尖大学已经成为投资银行和管理咨询的职业学校。例如，在 2007 年，有一半的哈佛大学毕业生从事金融或咨询业。这反映了我自己的经历。我的大学就业部门引导我们走向高地位的工作，而不是高影响力的工作。学生、教授和顾问更关心的是感知而不是现实。感觉好像生活的目标不是改善世界，而是赢得奖项和建立一个令人印象深刻的简历。相反，我最聪明的朋友被推向了一些领域: 法律、管理咨询和投资银行。其他的选择都是次要的，除此之外。

Young Americans are trapped by student loans, crippled by path dependence, and constrained by runaway housing costs. They’re raised in institutional environments where conformity is praised and originality is punished. Like Pavlov’s rats, they’ve responded with authoritarian obedience. To no fault of their own, they’re sleepwalking through life as if their best years are already behind them.

年轻的美国人被学生贷款所困，被路径依赖所削弱，被失控的住房成本所束缚。他们成长在一个机构环境中，在这个环境中，遵从被称赞，创造被惩罚。就像巴甫洛夫的老鼠一样，它们以专制的服从作为回应。虽然不是他们自己的错，但他们在梦游中度过一生，仿佛他们最好的时光已经过去了。

I recently had dinner with a fraternity brother in Manhattan. Let’s call him Jim. Right after the bacon cheeseburgers arrived and just as we splattered ketchup on our crispy French Fries, I asked him how he liked his job. First, he paused for time. Then, he wiggled his eyes left and right, and said “Good. I’m learning a lot.”

最近，我和一位在曼哈顿的兄弟会成员共进晚餐。我们叫他吉姆吧。刚吃完培根芝士汉堡，我们刚把番茄酱洒在炸薯条上，我就问他喜不喜欢他的工作。首先，他停顿了一下。然后，他左右晃动着眼睛，说: “很好。我学到了很多。”

Immediately, I smirked and questioned his answer. It reeked like Orwellian doublespeak. In my experience, “learning a lot” is code for “boring, but I’m putting up with it.”

我立刻傻笑起来，质疑他的回答。它散发着奥威尔式的双关语的恶臭。根据我的经验，“学到很多”是 “无聊” 的代名词，但我能忍受

Jim told me he liked his job because it taught him how to “collaborate” and “work with people.” His words sounded like they were parroted from the company’s Human Resources department. I poked and poked. And after 10 minutes, we reached the truth.

吉姆告诉我，他喜欢自己的工作，因为这份工作教会了他如何 “合作” 和“与人共事”他的话听起来像是公司人力资源部门的鹦鹉学舌。我又戳又戳。10 分钟后，我们找到了真相。

He explained how the school system taught him to follow rules, mimic his peers, and listen to teachers. That’s how Jim was taught to succeed, so that’s his strategy for climbing the corporate ladder. It’s as if the age-based fraternity hierarchy never left his mind. Pledge first. Succeed later. All the while, he’s spent years marching along the institutional track, obeying orders and doing exactly what others told him to do, without questioning why he should listen to them in the first place.

他解释了学校是如何教他遵守规则，模仿同龄人，听老师讲课的。这就是吉姆被教导要成功的方法，也是他攀登公司阶梯的策略。就好像年龄层次的兄弟会从未离开过他的脑海。先保证。以后再成功。与此同时，他花了数年的时间沿着制度的轨道前进，服从命令，完全按照别人告诉他的去做，没有质疑为什么他应该首先听取他们的意见。

Spoiler alert: Jim is wasting his time.

剧透一下: 吉姆在浪费时间。

He knows how to get things done, but never asks if it’s worth doing in the first place. Instead of working on important problems, he’s building “options” for the future. Like so many other college graduates, he’s been pushed into a mundane and uncreative profession. His dream-filled heart is crushed by the cold logic of investment banking. His words echo those of another friend, who said: “I’m just trying to get through the next 25 years as fast as possible.”

他知道如何把事情做好，但是从来不会问一开始是否值得做。他不是在解决重要的问题，而是在为未来构建 “选项”。像许多其他的大学毕业生一样，他被迫从事一个平凡而无创意的职业。他那颗充满梦想的心被投资银行的冷酷逻辑击碎了。他的话与另一位朋友的话相呼应，后者说: “我只是想尽快度过今后的 25 年。”

Sparkling dreams have become minor annoyances, like a buzzing fly in a lakeside cabin. Student loans keep him stuck on the institutional treadmill. He paid too steep a price for college, and now he’s unable to question the system and forced to accept the institutional doctrine as gospel. As I listened, I wondered what would happen if a high-voltage defibrillator shocked him and he woke up from his intellectual slumber.

闪闪发光的梦已经变成了小小的烦恼，就像湖边小屋里嗡嗡作响的苍蝇。学生贷款让他陷入了单调乏味的机构生活。他为上大学付出了过高的代价，现在他无法质疑这个体系，只能被迫接受教育机构的教义。我一边听着，一边想，如果一个高压除颤器电击了他，使他从昏睡中醒来，会发生什么。

Until then, he’ll stagger along the soul-crushing stepping stones of life: work hard in middle school so you can do well in high school; work hard in high school so you can do well in college; work hard in college so you can get a respected job; and get a respected job so one day, towards the end of your career, you can finally do what you want to do. All the while you “build skills” and “accumulate options,” as if the next corner will provide the happiness you’ve been seeking all along.

在那之前，他会蹒跚地走在生活的垫脚石上: 在初中努力学习，这样你才能在高中好好学习; 在高中努力学习，这样你才能在大学里好好学习; 在大学里努力学习，这样你才能得到一份受人尊敬的工作; 在你职业生涯即将结束的某一天，你终于可以做你想做的事情了。一直以来，你都在 “积累技能” 和“积累选择”，就好像下一个拐角会带给你一直以来所追求的幸福。

In an essay called The Trouble with Optionality, Harvard professor Mihir Desai worries that the language of finance has polluted life. He condemns the modern, finance-fueled affair with optionality. Rather than taking risks or working on important projects, students acquire options. In finance, when you hold an option and the world moves with you, you enjoy the benefits; when the world moves against you, your downside risk is protected and you don’t have to do anything. The more optionality, the better. Picking a path reduces optionality, so people stay in limbo and don’t make commitments. This language doesn’t only apply to career planning. Some students talk about marriage as the death of optionality. But life is not like options trading.

哈佛大学教授 Mihir Desai 在一篇名为《选择性的麻烦》的文章中担心金融语言已经污染了生活。他谴责现代的、由金融推动的、有选择性的事件。与其冒险或者从事重要的项目，学生们获得了选择权。在金融领域，当你持有一个期权，世界随你而动时，你就享受到了好处; 当世界与你为敌时，你的下跌风险就得到了保护，你不必做任何事情。选择性越大越好。选择一条道路可以减少可选择性，因此人们处于不确定状态，不做出承诺。这种语言不仅仅适用于职业规划。一些学生认为婚姻是可选性的死亡。但生活不像期权交易。

Optionality is a means to an end, not the end itself. Our obsession with optionality can backfire. In theory, these safety nets give them freedom. Bolstered by the confidence of security, they can jump head-first into ambitious projects. In practice, they become habitual acquirers of safety nets and never work on anything of substance. The longer they spend acquiring options, the harder it is to stop.

选择性是达到目的的一种手段，而不是目的本身。我们对选择性的执迷可能会适得其反。理论上，这些安全网给了他们自由。在安全信心的支持下，他们可以一头扎进雄心勃勃的项目中。在实践中，他们成为习惯性的安全网获取者，从来不在任何实质性的事情上工作。他们获得期权的时间越长，就越难停下来。

Desai advises:

德赛建议:

When we pursue optionality, we avoid bold decisions. Like anything meaningful, venturing into the unknown is an act of faith. It demands responsibility. You‘ll have to take a stand, trust your decision, and ignore the taunts of outside dissent. But a life without conviction is a life controlled by the futile winds of fashion. Or worse, the hollow echoes of the crowd.

当我们追求选择性时，我们会避免大胆的决定。就像任何有意义的事情一样，冒险进入未知领域也是一种信仰行为。这需要责任感。你必须表明立场，相信自己的决定，无视外界不同意见的嘲弄。但是没有信念的生活就是被无用的时尚之风所控制的生活。或者更糟的是，人群的空洞回声。

By brainwashing us into thinking that prosperity is inevitable, privilege can have a numbing effect. Among my friends in the upper echelons of society — the ones with the means to pursue transcendent dreams — I wonder if they’re too comfortable. Nobody believes in destiny. Social events revolve around binge drinking and conversations so superficial a robot could automate them. They’re dozing off in an intellectual slumber. Rather than rising to the level of their dreams, they fall to the average of their environment. In my college classes, where the annual education costs $40,000 per year, the vast majority of students wasted the time away on Facebook. Office hours were an afterthought. “Try hards” were mocked and made-fun-of, and nobody had a vision for their future.

通过给我们洗脑，让我们相信繁荣是不可避免的，特权可以产生麻木的效果。在我那些上层社会的朋友中ーー那些有能力追求超凡梦想的朋友ーー我想知道他们是否过于舒适。没有人相信命运。社交活动围绕着酗酒和交谈，以至于肤浅的机器人可以自动完成这些活动。他们在思想的沉睡中打瞌睡。他们没有达到自己梦想的水平，而是降到了环境的平均水平。在我的大学课堂上，每年的教育费用是 40000 美元，绝大多数学生把时间浪费在 Facebook 上。办公时间是事后才想到的。“尝试顽固派” 受到嘲弄和取笑，没有人对自己的未来有远见。

We lack courage, not genius. We’re swimming in money, but starving for ambition. Every venture capitalist I meet says there’s too much money and not enough good ideas. As Peter Thiel reminds us:

我们缺乏勇气，而不是天才。我们有很多钱，但是却渴望野心。我遇到的每一个风险投资家都说钱太多，好点子太少。正如彼得 • 蒂尔 (Peter Thiel) 提醒我们的那样:

We increasingly believe that progress is inevitable. Progress, though, is not guaranteed. We must work for it. Otherwise, our living standards will not improve, and may get worse.

我们越来越相信，进步是不可避免的。然而，进步并不是一定的。我们必须为此而努力。否则，我们的生活水平将不会提高，甚至可能变得更糟。

To offer solutions, Thiel turns to the Christian value of hope. He has a heterodox view of Christianity. In his reading of history, the non-violence of Jesus is the antidote to Mimetic conflict.

为了提供解决方案，希尔转向希望的基督教价值。他对基督教有不正统的看法。在他对历史的解读中，耶稣的非暴力是模仿冲突的解药。

When I speak with Christians, they always return to the importance of hope. They have a point. Our beliefs about the future impact our thoughts about the present. The more we can turn our attention away from the ephemeral present and towards the eternal future, the more we can pursue grand visions and persist through the challenges of the day. The present cannot be divorced from the future. They are codependent.

当我与基督徒交谈时，他们总是回到希望的重要性。他们说得有道理。我们对未来的信念影响着我们对现在的想法。我们越能把注意力从短暂的现在转向永恒的未来，我们就越能追求宏伟的愿景，并在当今的挑战中坚持下去。现在不能脱离未来。他们是相互依赖的。

One of my friends works for a California-based investment firm which manages $6 billion in investment assets. For the first three years, during the initial fundraising process, investors turned their cheeks. The firm struggled to raise capital. And yet, in the face of rejection, the fund’s Christian founder maintained faith in the face of struggle. As my friend observed: “She succeeded because her Christianity gave her hope.”

我的一个朋友在加州一家投资公司工作，该公司管理着 60 亿美元的投资资产。在最初的筹资过程中，头三年，投资者转向了自己的目标。这家公司努力筹集资金。然而，面对拒绝，该基金的基督教创始人保持信念，在面对斗争。正如我朋友所说: “她之所以成功，是因为她的基督教信仰给了她希望。”

Our spirits rise when hopes are high. That’s why the day before Christmas is as exhilarating as Christmas Day. Big, bright gifts sit under the tree. Smaller ones hang in firetruck-red socks over the living room fireplace. Children play. Parents cook. Grandparents tell stories. And the rush of anticipation releases everybody’s serotonin.

当我们的希望很高时，我们的精神就会振奋起来。这就是为什么圣诞节前一天和圣诞节一样令人兴奋的原因。大而明亮的礼物放在圣诞树下。小一点的挂在客厅壁炉上方的消防车红色袜子里。孩子们玩耍。父母做饭。祖父母讲故事。期待的冲动会释放每个人的血清素。

Likewise, everybody knows that a team with belief is hard to beat. But a team that doesn’t believe they can win is hopeless. The importance of belief and momentum is evident to any shouting fan in any arena across the country. And yet, few consider its importance at the societal level.

同样，每个人都知道有信念的球队很难被击败。但是一支不相信自己能赢的球队是毫无希望的。信念和动力的重要性对于全国任何一个竞技场上的任何一个大喊大叫的球迷都是显而易见的。然而，很少有人考虑它在社会层面的重要性。

Christianity promises a Living Hope that enables believers to endure unimaginable suffering. A hope so resilient that like a Captain America’s shield, it can survive any evil, any sickness, or any torture. No matter the obstacles, certainty about the future gives you the confidence to act in the present.

基督教承诺给信徒一个活生生的希望，使他们能够忍受难以想象的痛苦。这个希望如此坚韧，就像美国队长的盾牌一样，它能经受住任何邪恶、任何疾病或任何折磨。不管遇到什么障碍，对未来的肯定会给你信心，让你在当下行动起来。

Thiel’s idea of Definite Optimism is Christian theology cloaked in secular language. By raising our spirits, a positive vision for the future unites society and raises our spirits. And that’s what the Western world needs right now.

的确定的乐观主义的思想是披着世俗语言外衣的基督教神学。通过提升我们的精神，对未来的积极展望凝聚了社会，提升了我们的精神。而这正是西方世界现在所需要的。

Technological growth is the best way to reduce suffering in the world. Technological progress has stagnated since the 1970s, which contributes to the vile political atmosphere and the pessimism of modern Westerners. Thiel says we should acknowledge our lack of progress, dream up a vision of Definite Optimism, and guided by Christian theology, work to make it a reality.

技术发展是减少世界痛苦的最好方式。20 世纪 70 年代以来，科技进步停滞不前，造成了现代西方人的恶劣政治氛围和悲观情绪。说我们应该承认我们缺乏进步，设想一个明确乐观的愿景，并在基督教神学的指导下，努力实现它。

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13)

”“从窄门进去。因为通到灭亡的门是宽的，路是宽的，有许多人从那里进去。但通往生命的大门是小的，道路是狭窄的，只有少数人能找到它。”(马太福音 7:13)

Now that we’ve outlined the Christianity-inspired foundations of Peter Thiel’s worldview, we’ll close with Peter Thiel’s advice for how to live. I’ll conclude with three actionable, Thiel-inspired principles: (1) create a positive vision for the future, (2) be careful who you copy, and (3) follow the Ten Commandments.

既然我们已经概述了彼得 · 泰尔的世界观基于基督教的灵感，我们将以彼得 · 泰尔关于如何生活的建议结束。我将以三条可行的、受 thiel 启发的原则来总结: (1) 为未来创造一个积极的愿景，(2) 小心你复制的东西，(3) 遵循十诫。

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” — Proverbs 25:2

隐藏一件事，乃神的荣耀。查明一件事，乃君王的荣耀ー箴言 25:2

Thiel opposes the idea that luck is all-powerful. He encourages human agency and believes in the power of a single individual to bend the future to their will. Thiel believes we attribute too much to luck, which stops us from actually doing things. As he proclaimed, “you are not a lottery ticket… you can either dispassionately accept the universe for what it is, or put your dent in it, but not both.”

希尔反对运气是万能的这种观点。他鼓励人类的能动性，相信一个人的力量可以让未来屈从于他们的意志。泰尔认为，我们把太多的东西归功于运气，这阻止了我们实际行动。正如他宣称的那样，“你不是一张彩票… … 你可以冷静地接受宇宙的本来面目，也可以在宇宙中留下你的凹痕，但不能两者兼而有之。”

For example, if you treat startup investments like a series of lottery tickets, you won’t think hard about them, and as a result, you will fail. Thiel asks: “Is this a business that I have enough confidence in that I would consider joining it myself?” If yes, he’ll consider an investment. If the answer is no, he won’t. He doesn’t see the world as a mere distribution of luck-based outcomes. Instead, he praises conviction, bets on transcendent founders, and invests in the kind of companies he’d want to work for.

例如，如果你把创业投资当作一系列的彩票，你就不会认真考虑它们，结果，你就会失败。泰尔问道: “我对这个行业有足够的信心，会考虑自己加入吗?” 如果是的话，他会考虑投资。如果答案是否定的，他就不会。他并不认为这个世界仅仅是一个基于运气的结果分布。相反，他赞扬信念，把赌注押在卓越的创始人身上，并投资于他想为之工作的公司。

God is an all-encompassing term for things we don’t understand. Under that definition, luck is the secular God. Naturally, Thiel speaks about luck in the context of startup investing. “It’s just a matter of luck” is a statement of the deep nature of the universe. Deferring to luck is counter-productive. Treating people and events like lottery tickets makes us doubt our agency.

上帝是一个包罗万象的术语，用来描述我们不理解的事物。根据这个定义，运气是世俗的上帝。很自然地，希尔在创业投资的背景下谈到了运气。“这只是一个运气问题” 是对宇宙深层本质的陈述。相信运气是适得其反的。像彩票一样对待人和事让我们怀疑我们的机构。

Look for secrets instead of luck. Thiel recommends one book: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by Rene Girard. The title is as revealing as the contents of the book. It comes from Matthew 13:35, which reads: “I will proclaim what has been hidden [since] the foundation of the world.”

寻找秘密而不是运气。泰尔推荐了一本书: 雷内 · 吉拉德的《世界建立以来的隐秘事物》。书名和书的内容一样具有启发性。它来自马太福音 13:35: “我要宣扬创世以来所隐藏的。”

In job interviews, Thiel famously asks: “What very important truth do very few people agree with you on?” With it, Thiel can identify heterodox thinkers who aren’t blinded by Mimetic dogmas or intellectual fashions. He insists that there are still secrets left to uncover. Some are small and incremental. But the most valuable secrets are big enough to shake the world. Like Easter eggs, these broad and unconventional truths are hidden in places where nobody looks. You can find them, but you have to dig in obscure places. Other secrets are hidden in plain sight. They’re so obvious that nobody thinks about them. And once you learn about them, you’ll pinch yourself for not seeing them before.

在工作面试中，泰尔有句名言: “什么是非常重要的真理，很少有人同意你的观点?” 通过它，希尔可以识别出那些不被模仿的教条或知识分子时尚所蒙蔽的异端思想家。他坚持认为还有一些秘密有待发现。有些规模较小，而且是渐进式的。但是最有价值的秘密足以撼动世界。就像复活节彩蛋一样，这些广泛而非传统的真理隐藏在没有人注意的地方。你可以找到他们，但你必须在偏僻的地方挖掘。其他的秘密都隐藏在显而易见的地方。它们是如此明显，以至于没有人会去想它们。一旦你了解了它们，你会因为之前没有看到它们而责备自己。

Writing in Zero to One, Thiel says:

希尔在《从零到一》中写道:

“The big secret is that there are many secrets left to uncover. There are still many large white spaces on the map of human knowledge. You can go discover them. So do it. Get out there and fill in the blank spaces. Every single moment is a possibility to go to these new places and explore them.”

“最大的秘密是，还有许多秘密需要揭开。在人类知识的地图上仍然有许多巨大的空白区域。你可以去发现它们。那就去做吧。走出去，填补空白。每时每刻都有可能去这些新地方探索。”

Thiel’s attraction to secrets comes from a conservative writer named Leo Strauss. His writing was obscure because he hid truths behind a curtain of mystery. That way, they would only be shared with a small, select group of people. Make no mistake. Even today, forbidden truths are exchanged in closed forums, private conferences, and corner offices on the 72nd floor. They’re shared in whispers, not shouts.

希尔对秘密的迷恋来自于一位名叫利奥 · 施特劳斯的保守派作家。他的作品晦涩难懂，因为他把真相隐藏在神秘的帷幕后面。这样的话，他们就只能和一小部分精挑细选的人分享。别搞错了。即使在今天，被禁止的真相还是在封闭的论坛、私人会议和 72 楼的角落办公室里交流。他们以低声细语的方式分享，而不是大喊大叫。

Strauss did not believe in transparency. He believed that even in the most open-minded societies, many truths were too problematic to be shouted. His contemporary disciples, like Thiel, conceal their words. They hide controversial ideas in esoteric language, and Strauss described the benefits as such:

施特劳斯不相信透明度。他认为，即使在思想最开放的社会，许多真相也是有问题的，不能大声说出来。他的同时代的信徒，像希尔，隐藏他们的话。他们用深奥的语言隐藏着有争议的观点，斯特劳斯这样描述这些好处:

“It has all the advantages of private communication without having its greatest disadvantage—that it reaches only the writer’s acquaintances. It has all the advantages of public communication without having its greatest disadvantage—capital punishment for the author… Their literature is addressed, not to all readers, but to trustworthy and intelligent readers only.”

“它具有私人交流的所有优点，但却没有最大的缺点，即只能与作者的熟人联系。它拥有公共传播的所有优点，却没有最大的缺点——对作者的死刑… … 它们的文献不是面向所有读者，而是面向值得信赖和聪明的读者。”

Sometimes, Straussians hide truths in plain sight. When they do, they’re concealed in unpopular characters, such as devils, beggars, and buffoons. Pseudonymous Twitter accounts are the new Straussian philosophers, but with one important twist. Instead of sharing their names and hiding the truth, today’s Straussians hide their names, but share the truth.

有时候，斯特劳斯人会把真相隐藏在显而易见的地方。当他们这样做，他们隐藏在不受欢迎的性格，如恶魔，乞丐，小丑。假名推特账户是新的施特劳斯哲学家，但有一个重要的转折。今天的斯特劳斯人没有分享他们的名字和隐藏真相，而是隐藏他们的名字，但分享真相。

“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” — Ecclesiastes 4:4

伯 11:13 我就看出一切劳碌的、和一切工作的本领、都是出於人对邻舍的嫉妒。这也是虚空、是追求风ー传道书 4:4

Even if imitation is inevitable, we can reduce the negative effects of it. We can avoid the kinds of competition that lead to violence. If Girard is right, we are not as individualistic as we think we are. If we must copy others, we should be careful who we copy.

即使模仿是不可避免的，我们也可以减少它的负面影响。我们可以避免那种导致暴力的竞争。如果吉拉德是对的，我们并不像我们想象的那样个人主义。如果我们必须模仿别人，我们应该注意我们模仿谁。

Thiel encourages people to ask themselves: “How do I become less competitive in order that I can become more successful?”

希尔鼓励人们扪心自问: “为了更加成功，我怎样才能变得不那么有竞争力?”

Ask a Christian and they’ll say that you should only imitate Jesus. That’s why, in Revelations, humanity receives a warning: “In the future, an Antichrist will come who brings a promise: we can all be Gods and models for one another, and we can all live in harmony together.” In a world where everybody is a model, anybody can become a scapegoat. This is a recipe for evil. Rather than turning to each other for answers, the Bible tells us to imitate Jesus, and nobody else. Or as Christ says: “Imitate me as I imitate the father.”

问一个基督徒，他们会说你应该只模仿耶稣。这就是为什么，在《启示录》中，人类得到一个警告: “在未来，一个敌基督者将带来一个承诺: 我们都可以成为上帝和彼此的模范，我们都可以和谐地生活在一起。” 在一个每个人都是模范的世界里，任何人都可能成为替罪羊。这是邪恶的秘诀。圣经告诉我们要模仿耶稣，而不是互相寻求答案。正如基督所说: “效法我，如同我效法父。”

I’m not sure that works for me. I feel an intellectual pull towards Christianity, but not an emotional one. Many of my secular friends feel the same way. Telling them to only follow Jesus’ teachings wouldn’t be productive. To a Christian, Jesus’ words carry the weight of the world. To me, they’re like a brick: heavy enough to make me careful, but light enough to add other ones to my mental backpack.

我不确定这对我有没有用。我感觉到一种对基督教的理性吸引，但不是情感上的。我的许多世俗朋友也有同样的感受。告诉他们只听从耶稣的教导是没有用的。对一个基督徒来说，耶稣的话具有举足轻重的地位。对我来说，它们就像一块砖头: 重到足以让我小心翼翼，但轻到可以在我的精神背包里再加上一块。

According to Girard, the more differentiated a society, the more stable it is. But on the internet, everybody feels like an undifferentiated peer. Social media decreases the distance between people and their role models, so the pull to idolize false gods is greater than ever. Pair that with the blank slate theory that anybody can do whatever they want, and you have a recipe for runaway Girardian conflict. YouTube celebrities and Instagram influencers sell the exact kinds of behaviors that the Bible warns us about. By manufacturing envy, they tell fans that if they look like them, dress like them, and act like them, they can become them.

根据吉拉德的观点，一个社会越差异化，它就越稳定。但是在互联网上，每个人都觉得自己是一个没有差别的同伴。社交媒体缩短了人们和他们的榜样之间的距离，因此对虚假神的崇拜比以往任何时候都要强烈。再加上空白的石板理论，任何人都可以做他们想做的任何事，你就有了一个失控的吉拉尔式冲突的处方。YouTube 名人和 Instagram 影响者出售圣经警告我们的确切行为。通过制造嫉妒，他们告诉粉丝，如果他们看起来像他们，穿着像他们，行为像他们，他们可以成为他们。

We all form our identity by looking towards others. Since everybody copies, we can improve society by encouraging people to copy the right people. As a kid, back when I was 100% sure I was going to be a professional baseball player, I looked up to J.T. Snow, the first basemen for the San Francisco Giants. I was obsessed. I scavenged the kids’ section for his jerseys and waited patiently for autographs at the annual Giants meet-and-greet. I copied his mannerisms, his jersey number, and his position on the baseball field. And in 4th grade, I brought a chocolate ice cream cake to school to celebrate his birthday.

我们都是通过观察他人来形成自己的身份的。既然每个人都在抄袭，我们就可以通过鼓励人们抄袭正确的人来改善社会。当我还是个孩子的时候，当我 100% 确信自己会成为一名职业棒球运动员的时候，我很崇拜纽约旧金山巨人的一垒手 j.t. Snow。我被迷住了。我在孩子们那里翻找他的运动衫，然后耐心地等待着巨人队一年一度的见面会的亲笔签名。我模仿了他的言谈举止，他的球衣号码，以及他在棒球场上的位置。四年级的时候，我带了一个巧克力冰淇淋蛋糕去学校庆祝他的生日。

Here’s how Thiel would respond to my imitative instincts: Be careful who you copy. If you’re going to follow a role model, find one who you won’t compete with. Don’t look to your peers for answers. Find somebody in a different stage of life who you admire and respect. They should be somebody who defied the status quo and took an independent path. In life, you have two options: (1) you can dispassionately accept the universe for what it is, or (2) you can put your dent in it. But you can’t do both.

希尔会这样回应我的模仿本能: 小心你模仿的对象。如果你打算追随一个榜样，找一个你不会与之竞争的榜样。不要向你的同龄人寻求答案。找一个处于不同人生阶段的你钦佩和尊敬的人。他们应该是挑战现状，走上独立道路的人。在生活中，你有两个选择: (1)你可以冷静地接受宇宙的本来面目，或者 (2) 你可以在宇宙中留下痕迹。但你不能同时做到这两点。

Win the decade, not the day. For example, if you’re a writer, your goals should transcend the New York Times Bestseller List. Think bigger than that. If you’re going to model a famous writer, pick a dead one such as Tolstoy or Hemingway. They are real enough to model. Since they’re dead, you won’t compete with them directly. Better yet, you can copy more than their writing. If you want to stretch your imagination, you can live where they lived and read what they read. That way, you can ignore superficial status competitions and think beyond the day-to-day stress of writing a book.

赢得十年，而不是一天。例如，如果你是一个作家，你的目标应该超越《纽约时报》畅销书排行榜。想得更远一点。如果你要模仿一位著名作家，选择一位像托尔斯泰或海明威这样的已故作家。它们的真实程度足以用来做模型。因为他们已经死了，你不会直接和他们竞争。更好的是，你可以复制比他们的写作更多的东西。如果你想拓展你的想象力，你可以住在他们住的地方，读他们读的东西。这样，你就可以忽略肤浅的状态竞争，超越写书带来的日常压力而进行思考。

I suspect this is why Thiel admires Elon Musk so much. Since the first day of SpaceX, Elon has been on a mission to go to Mars. Since the entire company was aligned around the mission, the employees were motivated and paddling the boat in the same inspiring direction.

我怀疑这就是为什么蒂尔如此崇拜埃隆 · 马斯克。从太空探索技术公司成立的第一天起，艾伦就开始了前往火星的任务。由于整个公司都围绕着使命团结一致，员工们积极主动，朝着同一个鼓舞人心的方向划船。

Great people trade the temptations of today for the trophies of tomorrow. Think like you’re immortal. Place the eternal before the perishable. Treat people like you’ll know them for the next ten thousand years and work on the kinds of projects you’ll be proud to tell your grandchildren about. Live like you’ll be alive forever. When in doubt, follow the Ten Commandments.

伟大的人用今天的诱惑来交换明天的奖杯。想象你是不朽的。将永恒置于易朽坏的前面。对待别人就像你将在未来的一万年里认识他们一样，并且为那些你会骄傲地告诉你的子孙后代的项目而工作。活得像永远活着一样。如果有疑问，就跟随十诫。

“Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s goods.” — 10th Commandment

“不可贪图邻居的财物”——第 10 条戒律

To return to our initial question about the significance of the Cain and Abel story, we return to Rene Girard. From history, Girard learned that human relations are built on the primacy of violence. That’s why the Cain and Abel story is the archetypal example of Mimetic conflict, and Thiel sees Christianity as the optimal solution to apocalyptic violence.

为了回到我们最初关于该隐和亚伯故事意义的问题，我们回到雷内 · 吉拉德。从历史中，吉拉德认识到人与人之间的关系是建立在暴力至上的基础上的。这就是为什么该隐和亚伯的故事是模仿冲突的典型例子，泰尔认为基督教是世界末日暴力的最佳解决方案。

As Girard once said: “There are fundamentally only two ways of looking at religion: as superfluous, added on—or as the origin of everything.” If there can be no in-between, I suspect that like Girard, Thiel sees religion as the origin of everything.

正如吉拉德曾经说过: “从根本上来说，看待宗教只有两种方式: 一种是多余的，另一种是一切的起源。” 如果没有中间地带的话，我怀疑泰尔会像吉拉德一样，把宗教视为一切的起源。

Thiel closed his Dave Rubin interview with practical career advice, inspired by the Ten Commandments.

受到十诫的启发，Thiel 以一些实用的职业建议结束了对 Dave Rubin 的采访。

The first commandment says that we should only look to God. There is only one God and you should worship him. Look up, not around. Follow The Bible, which says there is no salvation in anyone other than Jesus. You won’t figure out what to do by looking at your peers, so don’t copy the people around you. Instead, we’ll end up in copycat rivalries where we claw and fight with each other like crabs in a bucket.

第一条戒律说，我们应该只仰望神。上帝只有一个，你应该敬拜他。向上看，不要到处看。跟随圣经，它说除了耶稣以外，没有任何人能够得救。你不会通过观察你的同龄人来决定该做什么，所以不要模仿你周围的人。相反，我们最终将陷入模仿性的竞争，我们像桶里的螃蟹一样互相抓斗。

The last commandment says you shouldn’t covet your neighbor’s goods. Inspired by the 10th commandment, Thiel encourages listeners to avoid competition. True to Mimetic Theory, the last commandment focuses on the neighbor instead of the object of desire because all objects are desirable when they belong to your neighbor. Society will push you towards competition, but you shouldn’t compete with your peers or depend on them for guidance. Competition is for losers. Instead of looking to the people around you for answers, find models that you cannot compete with. If you’re Christian, follow Jesus, and if you’re not, follow an intellectual hero who is way ahead of you. Rather than using your peers as a reference point, find your own transcendent orientation.

最后一条戒律是不要贪图邻居的东西。受第 10 条戒律的启发，希尔鼓励听众避免竞争。真正的模仿理论，最后的戒律聚焦在邻居而不是欲望的对象，因为所有的对象都是可取的，当他们属于你的邻居。社会会把你推向竞争，但是你不应该和你的同龄人竞争或者依靠他们的指导。竞争是属于失败者的。与其向你周围的人寻求答案，不如找一些你无法与之竞争的模特。如果你是基督徒，那就跟随耶稣，如果你不是，那就跟随一位超前于你的智慧英雄。与其把你的同龄人当作参考点，不如找到你自己超然的方向。

Let the flame of Definite Optimism burn away the Mimetic virus. Use the Internet to curate your environment, so you can be hyper-mimetic towards the rare few who are anti-mimetic. Copy the people who don’t copy people. Take risks. Build a differentiated skillset. Pursue timeless wisdom, not intellectual fashions. Be skeptical of convention, and don’t let it double as a shortcut to the truth. Work on problems that nobody else is working on, especially if you’re uniquely capable of solving them. And ultimately, ask the questions you’re not supposed to ask, so you can find the answers you’re not supposed to find.

让绝对乐观的火焰烧掉模仿病毒。利用互联网来管理你的环境，这样你就可以对少数几个反模仿的人进行超模仿。模仿那些不模仿别人的人。承担风险。建立差异化的技能。追求永恒的智慧，而不是智慧的时尚。对传统持怀疑态度，不要让它成为通往真理的捷径。解决别人没有解决的问题，特别是如果你有独一无二的能力解决它们。最后，问一些你不应该问的问题，这样你就能找到你不应该找到的答案。

Guided by the Cain and Abel story, remember the danger of imitating the wrong person. At first, it can inspire cooperation. But over time, it leads to envy, violence, and the apocalypse.

在该隐和亚伯的故事的指引下，记住模仿错误的人的危险。首先，它可以激发合作。但随着时间的推移，它会导致嫉妒、暴力和天启。

¹ In addition to St. Augustine, writers such as Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin supported Christian ideals of progress. Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations is regarded as economics’ foundational text. Smith declares that there’s a natural order to the progress of nations. His “invisible hand” doesn’t just speak to the stability of the economic system, but also to the natural progress of wealth, labor, skill, rent, and profits. Western civilization is built on these ideals. Two of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin operated with a similar progress-inspired philosophy.

Writing two years before his death in 1824, Thomas Jefferson marveled at all the progress he had witnessed in his life: “And where this progress. No one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration, and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth.”

在 1824 年去世前两年写作的时候，美国的狮身人面像：托马斯 · 杰弗逊的性格对自己一生中所见证的所有进步感到惊讶: “这种进步在哪里。谁也说不准。与此同时，野蛮在稳步的改良之前已经消失了，我相信，它终将从地球上消失。”

Likewise, in a letter to a friend, Benjamin Franklin wrote: “It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of Man over Matter.”

同样地，在一封写给朋友的信中，本杰明 · 富兰克林写道: “人类对物质的力量在一千年内能达到何种程度，这是无法想象的。”

Thank you to Kevin Harrington for the conversations that led to this post. Your wisdom and feedback is invaluable to me, and I’m grateful for our friendship. This essay is for you.

感谢凯文 · 哈灵顿的谈话，让我们得到了这篇文章。你的智慧和反馈对我来说是无价的，我很感激我们之间的友谊。这篇文章是写给你的。

Thank you to the other people who contributed to this essay through feedback and conversation: Brent Beshore, Lyn Cook, Nick Maggiulli, Sid Jha, Bushra Farooqui, Jeremy Giffon, James Patterson, Manan Hora, Ben Colley, and Michael Naka.

感谢其他通过反馈和对话为本文做出贡献的人: Brent Beshore，Lyn Cook，Nick Maggiulli，Sid Jha，Bushra Farooqui，Jeremy Giffon，James Patterson，Manan Hora，Ben Colley，and Michael Naka。

Cover Photo: JD Lasica | CC 2.0 License via Flickr.

封面照片: JD Lasica | CC 2.0 License via Flickr。 https://perell.com/essay/peter-thiel/