《10到25岁》第二章(1)：地位游戏

说明：我正在连载《10到25岁》这本书的原文和翻译。本文是第二章的第1篇。

Just before dusk in late July, a dozen or so teenage boys and girls gathered in the hot neighborhood square. The boys were flexing, preening, showboating, intimidating, punching, feign punching, and flinching. They were jockeying for position on the ziggurat of status like fighter pilots in The Right Stuff or Top Gun.

七月下旬的黄昏时分，十几名少男少女聚集在炎热的社区广场上。男孩们正在展示肌肉、打扮自己、炫耀技巧、恐吓他人、挥拳、假装挥拳以及退缩。他们像《壮志凌云》或《顶级飞行员》中的战斗机飞行员一样，在地位的金字塔上争夺位置。

On the sidelines of that square stood an uncertain, geeky teenage boy named Melvin. He was conflicted. He longed to cruise the square with confidence, but he was terrified that he would step on a social land mine. Melvin’s concern was legitimate. He was an easy target for boys higher on the ziggurat. He was sleek and skinny with fluffy hair. His mom was his best friend. Melvin was at the bottom of the social ladder. He watched the status Olympics from afar like a kid who couldn’t muster the courage to hop into a game of double Dutch.

在这个广场的边缘，站着一个名叫梅尔文的犹豫不决、书呆子气十足的少年。他内心矛盾。他渴望自信地漫步在广场上，但又害怕踩到社交的地雷。梅尔文的担忧是合理的。他是金字塔上层男孩们容易欺负的目标。他身材修长、瘦削，头发蓬松。他最好的朋友是他的妈妈。梅尔文处于社交阶梯的最底层。他远远地观看着地位奥运会，就像一个没有勇气跳进双人跳绳游戏的孩子。

This was a problem for Melvin. To most adults, status work among teenagers seems frivolous. An anthropologist like Dr. Rachna Reddy, who observed the scene, sees it differently. She sees status work as essential for survival. How else can boys learn who’s dangerous, who’s an ally, whom to approach, and whom to avoid? And how else can they signal they bring something of value to the group? Status work is as healthy for adolescents as play is for toddlers.

这对梅尔文来说是个问题。对大多数成年人来说，青少年之间的地位争夺似乎微不足道。像拉奇娜·雷迪博士这样观察这一场景的人类学家则有不同看法。她认为地位争夺对生存至关重要。男孩们如何能学会谁危险、谁是盟友、该接近谁、该避开谁？他们又如何能表明自己对群体有价值？地位争夺对青少年来说就像玩耍对幼儿一样健康。

But here’s the thing. Status work can be subtle. To understand the nuances, you need to see it up close. In Michael Lewis’s book Lzar’s Poker, the author’s firsthand account of twenty-two-to-twenty-four-year-old trainees in high finance in 1980s New York City, he explained status competition in that milieu. The bond-trading floor, Lewis wrote, “was a minefield of large men on short fuses just waiting to explode… There were a million little rules to obey,” but trainees “knew none of them,” and so they were “impossibly out of step with the rhythm of the place.” They were constantly at risk of being ridiculed or, even worse, ignored (and eventually fired). Melvin’s task was like that of a new bond trader in the eighties. He needed to discern the difference between an alpha who would pummel him at every opportunity and one who would accept him once he’d proved himself. To learn this, he couldn’t stay a bystander. He had to throw himself into the mix. The longer Melvin stood on the sidelines, the worse off he would be.

但问题是，地位争夺可能是微妙的。要理解其中的细微差别，你需要近距离观察。在迈克尔·刘易斯的著作《说谎者的扑克牌》中，作者亲身讲述了20世纪80年代纽约市金融界22至24岁实习生的故事，他解释了那个环境中的地位竞争。刘易斯写道，债券交易大厅“是一个充满易怒大汉的雷区，随时准备爆炸……有无数条小规则要遵守，”但实习生们“一无所知，”因此他们“与这个地方的节奏完全不合拍。”他们时刻面临被嘲笑，甚至被忽视（最终被解雇）的风险。梅尔文的任务就像80年代的新债券交易员一样。他需要分辨出不同的阿尔法：哪些会抓住每个机会打击他，哪些会在他证明自己后接纳他。要学到这一点，他不能只是旁观者。他必须投身其中。梅尔文在边缘站得越久，情况就越糟。

A few weeks prior, one of Melvin’s friends tried to join the group. He got beat up by a dominant guy. Later, another friend tried to join. He was ignored and soon retreated. For whatever reason, that afternoon Melvin got lucky. Dexter, a much older guy with nothing to prove and the freedom to be benevolent, noticed him. Dexter had the kind of cool confidence that came from having earned a safe place on the ziggurat of status. Dexter allowed Melvin to follow him around, to join the fray. Dexter wasn’t necessarily affectionate. He tolerated Melvin’s presence and subtly guided him away from behaviors that could evoke the ire of the older, stronger boys. This provided all the opportunity Melvin needed, Reddy explained to me. Dexter took Melvin from the nosebleed section at the status Olympics to the bench of the winning team. He saw the social-status land mines and learned from Dexter how to avoid or defuse them. With Dexter as a mentor, Melvin became a social learning machine. What did Dexter get out of it? He got an ally, and it cost him next to nothing.

几周前，梅尔文的一个朋友试图加入这个群体。他被一个强势的家伙打了。后来，另一个朋友也试图加入。他被忽视了，很快退却了。不知何故，那天下午梅尔文运气不错。德克斯特，一个年纪大得多、无需证明自己、可随便表现仁慈的家伙，注意到了他。德克斯特拥有一种来自在地位金字塔上获得安全位置的酷炫自信。德克斯特允许梅尔文跟随他，加入争斗。德克斯特并不一定很亲切。他容忍梅尔文的存在，并巧妙地引导他远离可能激起年纪更大、更强壮男孩愤怒的行为。这为梅尔文提供了所需的一切机会，雷迪向我解释道。德克斯特将梅尔文从地位奥运会的最高看台带到了获胜队伍的替补席上。他看到了“社会地位陆地”上的地雷，并从德克斯特那里学会了如何避开或解除它们。在德克斯特的指导下，梅尔文成为了一台社交学习机器。德克斯特从中得到了什么？他得到了一个盟友，而且几乎没花什么代价。

Years later, Reddy checked back in with Melvin. She was amazed by his transformation. He was confident, respected, strong, and well-adjusted. Not too aggressive, not a pushover. He had learned to climb the ziggurat of status. He was doing better than ever. “I’m so proud of him,” Reddy told me, even though she hardly knew him.

多年后，雷迪回访了梅尔文。她对他的转变感到惊讶。他自信、受尊重、强壮且适应良好。不太强势，也不容易被欺负。他学会了攀登地位金字塔。他比以往任何时候都做得更好。“我为他感到非常骄傲，”雷迪告诉我，尽管她几乎不认识他。

What Dexter did for Melvin is mentoring in its most basic, most primal form. I say most primal because Melvin and Dexter are chimpanzees. They live in Uganda, at Ngogo in Kibale National Park. There, anthropologists like Rachna Reddy and Aaron Sandel have been making striking discoveries about the evolutionary roots of mentorship and other forms of social relationships. Reddy and Sandel, to the surprise of their entire field, discovered that the closest ape species to Homo sapiens relies on mentors like Dexter for survival during the critical transition from adolescence into young adulthood.

德克斯特为梅尔文所做的是最基本、最原始的指导。我说最原始是因为梅尔文和德克斯特是黑猩猩。他们生活在乌干达基巴莱国家公园的恩戈。在那里，针对指导关系和其他社会关系，像拉奇娜·雷迪和亚伦·桑德尔这样的人类学家已经在进化根源方面取得惊人的发现。令整个领域惊讶的是，雷迪和桑德尔发现，与智人最接近的猿类物种，从青春期过渡到年轻成年期的关键时期，依赖像德克斯特这样的导师来生存。

Let’s take that in. Chimps mentor.

让我们消化一下这个发现。黑猩猩也会指导。

This finding has profound significance. It contradicts the popular idea, growing in some circles, that mentoring is new age, fluffy nonsense invented by millennials to appease Gen Z. In fact, mentorship is not a recent invention. It allowed our evolutionary ancestors to survive and thrive.

这一发现具有深远的意义。它驳斥了在一些圈子里日益流行的观点，即指导行为在新世纪没有意义，是千禧一代为了安抚Z世代的发明。事实上，指导并不是最近的发明，却使得演化的人类祖先得以生存和繁衍。

Of course, humans use forms of mentorship that chimps can’t. Human mentors spend more time jointly problem-solving. They patiently listen while mentees get something off their chests. Chimp mentors, by contrast, don’t spend much time talking about feelings or directly teaching their mentees how to do things. But chimps’ indirect form of mentoring gives us a powerful new lens for understanding human behavior. Dexter used the comfort provided by his social status to benevolently provide protection and permission to Melvin. That enabled Melvin to get close enough to peers to understand the subtleties of social success. Sometimes, it seems, a good way to use our status and privilege is just to protect others’ right to be in the room.

当然，人类使用的指导形式是黑猩猩无法做到的。人类导师花更多时间协同解决问题。他们耐心倾听，而被引导者倾诉心声。相比之下，黑猩猩导师不会花太多时间谈论感情，也不会直接教学生如何做事。但黑猩猩间接的指导形式为我们理解人类行为提供了一个强有力的新视角。德克斯特利用其社会地位带来的舒适感，仁慈地给予梅尔文保护和许可。这使得梅尔文能够足够近距离地接近同龄人，理解社交成功的微妙之处。有时，利用地位和特权的一个好方法，就是保护他人进入圈子的权利。

Melvin and Dexter’s story helps us strip away the cultural baggage of mentoring. According to a 2019 report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, all mentoring means is that a powerful or established person aligns their resources and actions with the long-term best interest of a young person. That’s different from how most people think about mentoring. They think it’s a formal job obligation, like when we’re the designated mentor to a new person at work. Or it’s a volunteering gig, like Big Brothers Big Sisters. If we’re not drawn to these roles, we might be tempted to say, Oh, mentoring isn’t for me.

梅尔文和德克斯特的故事帮助我们脱掉了指导的文化外衣。根据美国国家科学院2019年的一份报告，所有指导的意义在于，一个强大或已确立地位的人为了年轻人的长期最佳利益，整合资源，采取行动。这与大多数人对指导的看法不同。他们认为这是一种正式的工作职责，比如当我们成为工作中新人的指定导师时；或者这是一种志愿服务，比如大哥大姐会。如果不想承担这些角色，我们可能会说，哦，指导不适合我。

Reddy’s study of chimp mentoring shows that you don’t have to be like Mentor, who in Homer’s Odyssey was an avatar for Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Lowercase m mentoring is more informal. You use your position to help someone younger than you resolve their adolescent predicament. You support them as they try to earn status and respect. This mentorship addresses the mismatch between a young person’s currently low level of status and what they need to be a respect- worthy contributor to the group. That is probably why mentorship was so critical to the survival of our evolutionary ancestors.

雷迪对黑猩猩指导的研究表明，你不必像荷马《奥德赛》中的门特（英文表示导师的单词 mentor ，词源来自专有名词 Mentor）那样，他是希腊智慧女神雅典娜的化身。小写m开头的 mentor 是更为非正式的指导。你利用自己的位置帮助一个比你年轻的人解决他们的青少年窘境，支持他们努力赢得地位和尊重。这种指导是必需的，能帮助当前的地位较低的年轻人成为值得尊重的集体贡献者。指导对演化的人类祖先的生存为什么如此关键？这很可能是原因。