友誼的黑暗面：“我們需要一個共同的敵人”

As a rule, friendship is considered an unalloyed good, one of life’s happy-happies, like flowers and fresh fruit. “Report: It Would Probably Be Nice Having Friends,” read a recent headline in The Onion. Ha ha! Of course it’s “kind of fun” and “pretty cool” to “have a few select people in your life to do stuff with on a regular basis.”

友誼一般被認為是絕對的好事，像花朵和新鮮水果一樣，是生命中一種單純的快樂。最近，洋蔥網(wǎng)(The Onion)的一個新聞標題是《報告：擁有朋友可能是件不錯的事》(Report: It Would Probably Be Nice Having Friends)。哈哈!要是“生活中能有幾個經(jīng)常一起做些什么的人”當然“有點意思”，也“挺酷的”。

Most people can name at least half a dozen people they view as reasonably good friends. The only society where people don’t have any friends, according to Daniel Hruschka, an evolutionary anthropologist at Arizona State University, is found in the science fiction of C.J. Cherryh’s “Foreigner” series.

大多數(shù)人都能說出至少五六個算得上好朋友的人。按照亞利桑那州立大學(Arizona State University)進化人類學家丹尼爾·赫魯詩卡(Daniel Hruschka)的說法，唯一一個沒有朋友的社會，只在C·J·切麗(C.J. Cherryh)的科幻小說《外來者》(Foreigner)系列中出現(xiàn)過。

Yet researchers who explore the deep nature of friendship admit the bond can have its thorns, bruise spots and pesticide traces.

但考察友誼深層性質(zhì)的研究人員認為，這種感情可能帶刺，有傷痕，有殺蟲劑殘留。

Take the new evidence that people choose friends who resemble themselves, right down to the moment-to-moment pattern of blood flow in the brain. The tendency toward homophily, toward flocking together with birds of your inner and outer feather, gives rise to a harmonious sense of belonging and shared purpose, to easy laughter and volumes of subtext mutually, wordlessly, joyfully understood.

要說新的證據(jù)，可以是人們會選擇與自己相像的朋友，也可以是大腦中時刻出現(xiàn)的血液流動模式。這種“同質(zhì)相吸”、物以類聚的趨勢，都加強了和諧的歸屬感和共同的使命感，彼此間能輕松歡笑，更能在無言之中讀懂對方的潛臺詞，在快樂之中達到理解。

But homophily, researchers said, is also the basis of tribalism, xenophobia and racism, the urge to “otherize” those who differ from you and your beloved friends in one or more ways.

但研究人員表示，這樣的同質(zhì)性也是同族意識、仇外情緒、種族主義的基礎(chǔ)，當你面對那些或多或少與你和你親愛的朋友們不一樣的人時，這讓你產(chǎn)生“排他”欲望。

The impulse can yield absurd results. One recent study from the University of Michigan had subjects stand outside on a cold winter day and read a brief story about a hiker who was described as either a “left-wing, pro-gay-rights Democrat” or a “right-wing, anti-gay-rights Republican.”

這樣的沖動會帶來荒謬的結(jié)果。在密歇根大學(University of Michigan)前不久的一個研究中，實驗對象被安排在寒冷的冬季里站在室外并閱讀一個關(guān)于徒步旅行者的小故事，這位旅行者或被描述為“支持同性戀權(quán)利的左翼民主黨人”，或被描述為“反對同性戀權(quán)利的右翼共和黨人”。

When asked whether the hypothetical hiker might feel chilly as well, participants were far more likely to say yes if the protagonist’s political affiliation agreed with their own. But a political adversary — does that person even have skin, let alone a working set of thermal sensors?

當被問及這位假想的旅行者是否也感覺寒冷時，如果主人公的政治派別與自己相一致，被試者則更有可能回答“是”。但是如果政治派別對立——別說他們還能不能感受得到溫度，這人有皮膚嗎?

“Why must it be the case that we love our own and hate the other?” Nicholas Christakis of Yale University said. “I have struggled with this, and read and studied a tremendous amount, and I have mostly dispiriting news. It’s awful. Xenophobia and in-group bias go hand-in-hand.”

“為什么愛自己這類，就一定要恨其他那類呢?”耶魯大學(Yale University)的古樂朋(Nicholas Christakis)說。“我對此有過掙扎，進行了大量的閱讀和學習，但大多都是令人沮喪的消息。這太糟糕了。仇外情緒和群體內(nèi)偏見是不分家的。”

Game theory models predict it, real-life examples confirm it. “In order to band together, we need a common enemy,” Dr. Christakis said.

對此，博弈論模型有所預測，生活中的現(xiàn)實案例也可以證實。“要團結(jié)起來，我們就需要有共同的敵人，”古樂朋說。

Fortunately, he added, no model insists that the out-group must be exterminated or otherwise eliminated from the scene. “It’s possible to treat the out-group with mild dislike or even grudging respect,” he said. “Cultivating in-group distinctiveness does not require that the other must be killed.”

不過他還說，幸好還沒有哪個模型主張圈外人士必須被消滅或驅(qū)離。“以輕度的不喜歡或勉強的尊敬來對待群體之外的人是有可能的，”他說。“建立群體內(nèi)的獨特性不一定要把其他人消滅掉。”

Nevertheless, even the ordinary business of making friends is an exclusionary act, a judgment call, and therefore threaded with the potential for pain.

然而，就連普通的交友也是一種排外行為，是一種主觀判斷，因此也帶有受傷的可能。

“A friendship is always a little bit of a conspiracy,” said Alexander Nehamas, a professor of philosophy at Princeton. “We two are here, they are over there, and we’re going to do our thing whether they want us to or not.”

“一段友誼總會帶有一絲共謀的意味，”普林斯頓大學哲學教授亞歷山大·內(nèi)哈馬斯(Alexander Nehamas)說。“我們倆在這邊，別的人在那邊，不論他們愿不愿意，我們都會做我們自己的事情。”

And if they try to join us, we can say, no, sorry, that seat is taken. We’re saving it for a friend.

如果他們想要加入，我們可以說，不行，抱歉，這位置有人了。這是我們給朋友留的。

Who may not return the favor. Abdullah Almaatouq of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues recently showed that people are poor judges of who their friends are.

但這位“朋友”不一定會禮尚往來。麻省理工學院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)的阿卜杜拉·阿瑪圖克(Abdullah Almaatouq)和同事最近證明，人們對于誰是自己的朋友判斷力欠佳。

When the researchers asked 84 college students to identify which of their classmates qualified as friends, the researchers found that in half the cases, those labeled friends failed to reciprocate the designation.

研究人員要求84名大學生在同學中指出自己認為稱得上朋友的人，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，被稱為朋友的那方有半數(shù)的人都沒有相應地指認回去。

Other studies have shown similar discordances or worse, with one survey revealing that 66 percent of supposed friendships were cases of unrequited like.

類似的或者更糟的不協(xié)調(diào)性在其他研究中也有所表現(xiàn)，一項研究顯示66%的假想友誼都是“單相思”。

Friendships are also surprisingly fragile. Based on a detailed survey of 540 participants, researchers at Oxford University determined that people had a falling out with a member of their social circle about once every 7.2 months, or nearly two times annually, and that a year later 40 percent of those ruptures remained unhealed.

友誼還驚人地脆弱。根據(jù)對540名參與者進行詳細調(diào)查，牛津大學(Oxford University)的研究人員測定，人們每隔7.2個月，或以將近一年兩次的頻率，會與自己社交圈內(nèi)的一人鬧僵，而其中40%的關(guān)系破裂在一年后都依然沒有修復。

The overall rates of friendship conflict did not differ between men and women, but women were more likely to clash with close friends, to express feelings of anguish over the breakup, and to be more demanding of evidence of remorse before reconciling.

友情發(fā)生沖突的整體比率在男性和女性之間沒有差別，但女性更可能與親密好友發(fā)生沖突，在關(guān)系破裂后更可能表現(xiàn)痛苦，并且在和好之前會需要有更多悔恨的表現(xiàn)。

Sure, love may mean never having to say you’re sorry. But friendship is a stricter taskmaster, and sorry may not be enough.

當然了，愛可以意味著永遠都不需要說抱歉。但友誼是個更加嚴格的“工頭”，一句抱歉可能不夠。