如何优雅地怼上司：“你瞎扯淡！” 作者：André Spicer 译者：王津雨 & 邵海灵 策划：邹世昌 How can you question your superiors’ bullshit without incurring their wrath? 怎么才能在不激怒上司的前提下质疑他们的瞎扯淡呢？ 本文选自 The AEON | 取经号原创翻译 关注 取经号，回复关键词“外刊” 获取《经济学人》等原版外刊获得方法 After getting lost in the conference hotel, I finally located the ‘creativity workshop’. Joining the others, I sat cross-legged on the floor. Soon, an ageing hippie was on his feet. ‘Just walk around the room and introduce yourself,’ he said. ‘But don’t use words.’ After a few minutes of people acting like demented mimes, the hippie stopped us. ‘Now grab a mandala,’ he said, pointing to a pile of what looked like pages from a mindfulness colouring-in book. ‘And use those to bring your mandala to life,’ he said pointing at a pile of magic markers. After 30 minutes of colouring, he told us to share our mandalas. A woman described how her red mandala represented her passionate nature. A man explained how his black mandala expressed the negative emotions haunting his life. A third person found words too constraining, so she danced about her mandala. Leaving the room after the session, a participant turned to me and quietly said: ‘What a load of bullshit.’ 在会议酒店里绕得晕头转向之后，我总算找到了那个“创造力工作室”，然后与其他人一起盘腿坐在了地板上。不一会儿，一位上了岁数、嬉皮士风格的人站起来说道：“大家在房间里四处走走，并做个自我介绍吧——但不要用语言表达。”于是，人们像疯子一样开始表演起哑剧来。几分钟后，嬉皮士先生叫停了我们。他指着一叠像从正念填色书里扯下来的纸，说：“去拿一张曼荼罗。”然后又指向一堆记号笔：“用它们为你的曼荼罗注入生命吧。”涂颜色涂了30分钟后，他让我们挨个分享，介绍自己的曼荼罗。一位女士描绘了她的红色曼荼罗是如何彰显了自己的奔放天性；一位男士解释了他的黑色曼荼罗表达了萦绕在生活中的负面情绪；而第三位参与者发现自己词穷了，于是为她的曼荼罗跳了一段舞。活动结束离开房间的时候，一位参与者转过头，低声对我说：“真是瞎扯淡。”
All over the world, organisations encourage kooky activities unrelated to employees’ work. I have attended workplace retreats where I learned beat-boxing and African drumming. I have heard about organisations that encourage employees to walk across hot coals, take military assault courses, and guide a raft down dangerous rapids. There are organisations that force their employees to stage a lingerie show, take part in a ‘bush-tucker trial’ by eating insects, and dress up in giant animal costumes to act out fairy tales. 放眼全球，到处都有公司鼓励员工参加一些与本职工作毫无关联的奇葩活动。我曾参加过一些职场人士的静修会，并在那学习了B-Box和非洲鼓。我也听说有公司会鼓励员工去在烧热的火炭上行走、参加军事野战训练，或者在危险的急流中驾驶筏子；还有一些公司强迫员工举办内衣秀，参加那种要吃虫子的“丛林食物尝试”，还有穿上巨大的动物服装来演童话故事。
My cynical fellow participant in the mandala-colouring workshop described it as ‘bullshit’. She had chosen her words wisely. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt at Princeton University defined bullshit as talk that has no relationship to the truth. Lying covers up the truth, while bullshit is empty, and bears no relationship to the truth. 我那位在曼荼罗填色培训班上愤愤不平的同事将类似活动形容为“瞎扯淡”，措辞可谓十分贴切了。普林斯顿大学的哲学家哈里·法兰克福就把“bullshit”定义为与事实毫无关系的谈话。谎言能用来掩盖真相，但“瞎扯淡”则内容空洞、且与事实完全无关。
The mandala workshop bore many of the tell-tale signs of bullshit. The session was empty of facts and full of abstractions. Participants skipped between buzzwords such as ‘authenticity’, ‘self-actualisation’ and ‘creativity’. I found it impossible to attribute meaning to this empty talk. The harder I tried, the less sense it made. So, during the event, I politely played along. 曼荼罗填色培训班就表现出了许多“瞎扯淡”的迹象。课程中没有任何与事实相关的内容，却充满了抽象概念，参与者满嘴都是“真实性”、“自我实现”和“创造力”等时髦词儿。我还发现，这种毫无内涵的交流很难被赋予意义，我愈加努力去尝试，它就愈加显得荒诞不经。因此在整个过程中，我只能礼貌性地配合大家的表演。
After spending more than a decade studying business and organisations, I can assure you that my unheroic response is the norm. Most people are likely to follow my bad example, and stick to the script. There are many reasons for this, but politeness is an important one. Bullshit greases the wheels of sociability. Questioning bullshit can be a sure way to lose friends and alienate people. Even when we smell bullshit, we are willing to ignore it so we can avoid conflict and maintain a polite atmosphere. Our desire to keep social interaction going smoothly prevails over our commitment to speak the truth. 我已花了十多年时间研究商业和组织，所以能向你保证，这种随大流的胆怯反应是很正常的。大多数人可能都会像我一样，口是心非地走过场。这样做的原因有很多，但出于礼貌是其中一个重要因素。“瞎扯淡”能在社交过程中起到调剂作用，如果提出质疑，则很可能失去朋友或让他人疏远你。就算我们察觉到了“瞎扯淡”的苗头，也还是愿意忽略它，这样就能避免冲突、维持一团和气。我们要保持社交顺畅的愿望，战胜了要讲真话的责任感。
In a short aside in his book On Bullshit (2005), Frankfurt describes an interaction between the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and Fania Pascal, Wittgenstein’s friend and Russian teacher. ‘I had my tonsils out and was in Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself,’ Pascal wrote. ‘Wittgenstein called. I croaked: “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.”’ Wittgenstein, apparently, was disgusted: ‘You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.’ 法兰克福在他所著《论扯淡》（2005）一书中，插过一段关于哲学家路德维希·维特根斯坦与其俄语教师兼友人法尼亚·帕斯卡的题外话。书的原话是这样的：帕斯卡写道：‘我刚摘除了扁桃腺，正在伊芙琳疗养院里为自己感到难过。这时维特根斯坦打来了电话，我就对他发牢骚，说：“我感觉自己就像一条被辗过的狗。”’维特根斯坦似乎很反感，说：‘你才不知道狗被辗过会是什么感觉呢。”
Wittgenstein’s response seems not just odd, but rude. So why did the great philosopher do this? Frankfurt’s answer is that throughout his life ‘Wittgenstein devoted his philosophical energies largely to identifying and combatting what he regarded as insidiously disruptive forms of “non-sense”.’ Wittgenstein is ‘disgusted’ by Pascal’s remark because ‘it is not germane to the enterprise of describing reality’. She is ‘not even concerned whether her statement is correct’. If we were to react like Wittgenstein whenever we were faced with bullshit, our lives would probably become very difficult indeed. 维特根斯坦的回答听起来不但奇怪，而且粗鲁。为什么这位了不起的哲学家会做出这种反应呢？法兰克福的解释是，维特根斯坦一生的哲学研究，都在‘致力于揭露那些有混淆视听之危害的“废话”形式，且终其一生都在与之做斗争。’他之所以‘反感’帕斯卡的话，是因为‘这完全不是一种想要描述事实的努力’。帕斯卡甚至‘不在乎自己的话是否正确’。假如我们每次面对瞎扯淡的言论时，都像维特根斯坦那样去回应，人生恐怕真的会变得很艰难。
Instead of following Wittgenstein’s example, there are ways we can politely call bullshit. The first step is to calmly ask what the evidence says. This is likely to temper our interlocutors’ views, even if the results are inconclusive. The second step is to ask about how their idea would work. The psychologists Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil at Yale University found that when they asked subjects to tell them, on a scale of 1 to 7, how they would rate their knowledge about everyday objects such as toilets, most people would say about 4 or 5. But when asked to describe precisely how a toilet worked, they dropped the rating of their own toilet expertise to below 3. Asking over-confident bullshitters exactly how their idea might work is another way to slow them down. Finally, ask the bullshitter to clarify what he means. Often, bullshit artists rely on ‘zombie nouns’ such as ‘globalisation’, ‘facilitation’ and ‘optimisation’. Pushing beyond linguistic boondoggles helps everyone to see what is solid and what is clothed in ornamental talk. 如果不去效法维特根斯坦的榜样，揭穿对方在瞎扯淡的礼貌方式其实也很多。第一步：平静地请对方拿出依据来。这可能会给他一个台阶下，让他调整自己的观点，尽管结果究竟如何仍是无法预料的。第二步：问问他们这个想法要如何实现。耶鲁大学的心理学专家莱昂尼德·罗森布利特和弗兰克·基尔发现，他们请被试者判断自己对日常用品（比如马桶）的了解程度，从1到7打个分，大部分人都给了自己4到5分。但如果让他们准确说出马桶的工作原理，他们对自己的马桶知识的打分就降到3分以下了。对于那些过分自信的扯淡者，问一问他们的想法要怎么实现，也是让他们闭上嘴巴的一种办法。最后，请那个瞎扯淡的人解释一下自己的意思。扯淡艺术家们往往离不开诸如“全球化、简易化、最优化”之类大而无当的僵尸词。语义上的字斟句酌能让每个人都看清楚，哪些话语具有实在的内涵，而哪些只是话语装饰下空无一物的扯淡。
Politely questioning a peer is one thing, but it is much trickier to call out the bullshit of junior colleagues. Decades of research has found that people listen to positive feedback and ignore negative feedback. But Frederik Anseel from King’s College, London has found that people are willing to listen when negatives are focused on the future. So instead of concentrating on the bullshit a junior might have created in the past, it is best to ask how it can be minimised in the future. 礼貌地质疑同辈是一回事，但揭穿下属的瞎扯淡需要动用更加高级的手段。数十年的研究发现，人们都能听进积极的回答，忽略负面的反馈。但伦敦国王学院的弗雷德里克·安塞尔发现，如果负面反馈的重点在于未来，那人们也是愿意倾听的。所以最好的方法不是纠结下属在过去胡扯过什么，而是想想以后要怎么把他的扯淡减少到最低限度。
Calling out an underling’s piffle might be tough, but calling bullshit on the boss is usually impossible. Yet we also know that organisations that encourage people to speak up tend to retain their staff, learn more, and perform better. So how can you question your superiors’ bullshit without incurring their wrath? One study by Ethan Burris of the University of Texas at Austin provides some solutions. He found that it made a big difference how an employee went about posing the questions. ‘Challenging’ questions were met with punishment, while supportive questions received a fair hearing. So instead of bounding up to your boss and saying: ‘I can’t believe your bullshit,’ it would be a better idea to point out: ‘We might want to check what the evidence says, then tweak it a little to make it better.’ 板起脸来批评下属说的蠢话可能不容易，而要指出老板是在瞎扯淡，往往根本不可能。但我们也知道，那些鼓励员工发表看法的公司，往往也更能留住人，员工也会学到更多、表现更好。那要怎么才能在不激怒上司的前提下质疑他们的瞎扯淡呢？德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校伊桑·伯里斯的一项研究为我们提供了一些方案。他发现，员工提问的不同方式会产生截然不同的效果。“挑战性”的问题会招来惩罚，而支持性的问题会让人乐于聆听。所以不要跳到老板面前说：“我才不信你的鬼话。”更好的方式是向他指出：“我们可能要先看看实际情况怎么样，然后稍微调整一下，把它变得更好。”
Next time you’re faced with a bullshit attack, it might be tempting to politely zone out. But that only gives the bullshit artist time and space. Or you might be tempted to follow the example of Wittgenstein, and fight back. Sadly, bullshitters are often impervious to full-frontal attack. The most effective tactic in the war on empty talk seems to be to outflank the bullshitter by posing your questions as constructive tweaks, rather than refutations. That way, you might be able to clean up the mess from within, rather than raging from the outside. 下次遇到有人跟你瞎扯淡的时候，你可能会倾向于礼貌地边听边走神。但那只会给瞎扯淡的人留出更多发挥的余地。或者你可能不禁想要狠狠反击一句，就像维特根斯坦一样。但遗憾的是，正面攻击对瞎扯淡的人往往完全起不了作用。在这场针对空谈的战争中，最有效的策略是侧翼包抄，把你的问题作为建设性的提议拿出来，而不是正面驳斥它。这样你可能就会从内部厘清这团乱麻，而不是站在外面大发脾气。 |
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