你的記憶，你真的了解嗎？

記憶，騙你沒商量

我們藉由記憶回顧往事，構建自我，以為自己就是記憶中的那個樣子。殊不知，記憶會騙人，而且不會留下蛛絲馬跡。渾然不覺中，記憶會誇大我們過去歷經的磨難，縮小我們過去犯下的錯誤，將發生過的事從我們頭腦中抹去，將不曾發生的事安在我們頭上。不信？翻翻自己若干年前的錄像、日誌，又或是進行一個簡單的網路搜索，你就會發現：記憶騙你沒商量。

I』ve always been proud that my columns are 100% accurate, which isn』t all that hard since I write only about me. But it turns out that I』m an awful source. I get dates and places wrong. I replace former girlfriends with my lovely wife Cassandra in many stories, despite the fact that after 14 years together it would be far more exciting to do the opposite. I know about these errors because camp friends e-mail me corrections, IMDb.com shows that the movie I thought Cassandra and I went to see together had left theaters before we met, and themullet (「胭脂魚」 髮型：前面及兩側頭髮短、 腦後頭髮長)photos of me on the Internet prove that I could not have lost my virginity at 17.

我的專欄內容百分之百的準確真實， 對此我一直引以為傲。 做到這一點並不那麼困難， 因為我只寫自己的事。 然而事實證明， 我作為信息來源極不靠譜。 我會把時間與地點搞錯。在很多故事裡， 我會把前任女友寫成是我可愛的老婆卡珊德拉——儘管在與老婆共同生活14年後， 我覺得把兩者顛倒過來會令我更加振奮。 我之所以知道自己犯了這些錯誤， 是因為露營時結識的朋友給我發來電子郵件更正我的說法； 互聯網電影資料庫上的信息顯示， 我自認為和卡珊德拉一起看過的那部電影在我倆相識之前就已經從電影院下線； 而我在網上的一張留著「胭脂魚」 髮型的照片證明， 我在17歲時絕對還是一個童男。

It is a universal truth among journalists that nothing ruins a story like reporting. You hear an insane fact, like Newt Gingrich is still running for President. A few phone calls later, you find out he』s actually just sleeping 13 hours a day and forgetting to take his name offballots (候選人名單). The problem is, our own personal stories are now being reported. That night we fell in love instantly with our spouse? There』s a wall post on our Facebook Timeline and a Gmail to our best friend about how we weren』t sure if we wanted a second date. If I tell my son that I walked six miles in the snow to school, he』ll GPS it on hisGoogle Goggles (谷歌推出的圖形搜索應用)and tell me it was only 1.7 miles. Then he』ll spend a lot of time on Wikipedia trying to fgure out what this pre-globalwarming 「snow」 stuff was.

記者們普遍認同一個真理：沒有什麼東西能像報道那樣毀滅故事。比如，你聽到一件荒誕的事兒：紐特·金瑞奇還在競選總統。然而幾通電話過後，你發現事實上他是因為每天要睡13個小時，而忘了把自己的名字從候選人名單上刪掉而已。但問題在於，我們個人的故事現在也會被「報道」 毀滅。 我們那晚是對自己的另一半一見鍾情嗎？但Facebook時間軸留言牆上的一個帖子和發給好友的Gmail郵件都表明，當時我們根本就不確定是否還想和對方進行第二次約會。如果我跟兒子說我上學時要在雪地里走六英里才能到達學校，他會用谷歌的Goggles程序定位這段路程，然後告訴我那段路只有1.7英里。之後，他會在維基百科上花大量時間，試圖弄清楚全球變暖之前的「雪地」到底是什麼情況。

My dad recently dug up some 16-mm films from my childhood, and I realized all kinds of things I was sure of from photos and stories were wrong: my house was smaller, we vacationed in different places, my dad』s family was around more, my mom dressed inappropriately, and people in the early 1970s were unable to make any noise whatsoever. My son won』t have to dig up old movies since, like every other parent I know, I have 10 iPhone photos of him from every hour I』ve been with him. Not because I love him. Because I』m bored.

我爸爸最近翻出了拍攝於我兒時的幾段16毫米錄像膠片。看過後我才意識到， 我從照片和別人講述的故事裡了解到的那些我確信無疑的事情原來都是錯的：我家的房子要更小，我們曾在不同的地方度假，父親的親戚來串門的頻率比我印象中高，媽媽的穿著不得體，20世紀70年代早期的人們無論如何也不會製造噪音。我的兒子將來就不需要翻出這樣的舊錄像來看了，因為我與其他我所認識的父母一樣，每次只要跟兒子待一個小時， 就會用iPhone手機給他拍十張照片。這不是因為我愛他，而是因為我感到無聊。

If, asNietzsche (尼采，德國著名哲學家，西方現代哲學的開創者，同時也是卓越的詩人和散文家)said, truth is merely our irrefutable error and if the Internet is a huge refuting machine, then we』re all running out of truths. For all of history, we』veknitted (將事實、 觀點等緊密結合起來)facts together until they formed stories that fit our identity. Now there will be no moreJay Gatsbys (指美國著名小說《了不起的蓋茨比》里的主角傑伊·蓋茨比), no moreDon Drapers (唐·德雷珀， 美劇《廣告狂人》中的主角). Which means there will be nothing forthe 1% (指美國最富有的那部分上流人士)to talk about at parties. It also means that we』ll have our confdence crushed by facing our actual selves instead of the characters we』ve built through our false stories. Sure, all of this was said in The Iceman Cometh in 1939, but that was a long, depressing play. People will actually notice this, because it will come in two-minute YouTube clips in which there are no characters besides ourselves.

如果像尼采說的那樣，真相是我們無法辯駁的錯誤，如果網際網路是個大型的「辯駁機器」，那麼這個世界很快就無真相可言了。自有史以來，我們一直習慣於將所有事實編織到一起，直至它們構成符合我們特徵的故事。但現在，不會再出現自欺欺人的蓋茨比，也不會再有謊話連篇的唐·德雷珀了。這意味著美國最富有的上流社會人士在聚會時將無話可談。這也意味著我們的自信會被擊得粉碎，因為我們不得不面對真實的自我， 而非我們通過虛構的故事捏造出來的自我。當然，193年的《送冰的人來了》已經提到過以上所有這些，但那部戲太長也太壓抑。其實人們將會自行注意到這一點，因為它將出現在YouTube上那些兩分鐘長的視頻短片里，短片中的唯一角色就是我們自己。

Iran (說過)thisdystopic (異位的)future byElizabeth Loftus (伊麗莎白·洛夫特斯， 記憶研究領域的領軍專家), a psychologist famous for her research on false memories, including experiments in which she convinced adults they were lost in a mall as children and got people to eat healthier by tricking them into believing they once got sick from ice cream. She thinks a future of constantly realizing our stories are wrong will be a happy one. 「It should make us more tolerant when we hear people say things that we don』t think are true, because it doesn』t necessarily mean they』re lying,」 she says. 「It will be better for relationships. It』s going to make things better for justice.」 In the future, when Mitt Romney says that he went to theGolden Jubilee (50周年紀念日)of the invention of the car with his father, which took place nine months before he was born, or that he joined his dad on a march with Martin Luther King Jr., something his dad never did, we won』t make fun of him for lying. We』ll make fun of him for not getting to spend any time with his dad.

這些實驗中，她使成年人相信自己小時候曾在商場里迷過路，還通過哄騙手段讓人們相信自己曾因為吃冰淇淋生過病，以此讓他們選擇健康的飲食。她認為，如果未來人們能不斷認識到自己的記憶會出錯，那將是一件美好的事情。「這樣的話，當我們聽到別人陳述一些我們認為並不屬實的事情時，我們會變得更加寬容，因為這不一定意味著他們在撒謊，」她說，「這更有利於人際關係的和諧，這樣也更公平。」 將來，如果米特·羅姆尼說他和父親一起參加了汽車發明50周年慶典(該慶典實際上發生在他出生九個月前)，或者他和父親跟隨馬丁·路德·金一起遊行(他父親從來沒參與過這事兒)，我們也不會因為他撒謊而取笑他，我們只會笑他從來沒有時間與父親在一起。

The point is that the informationavalanche (大量)should make us a little lessentrenched (確立), a little more easily swayed. Also, you never laughed as hard as you did at the first paragraph of this column. There』s no need to reread it.

我要說的是，不斷湧來的海量信息讓我們不再那麼確信無疑，而是變得更加搖擺不定。另外，你讀這篇專欄文章的第一段時，笑得絕對沒有你記憶中的那麼厲害。不過你沒必要回頭再讀一遍。

本文選自《新東方英語》，Joel Stein文，宋曉璐譯。

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