其他
TED演讲：拒绝年龄歧视！
之前大火的乘风破浪的姐姐大家都看了吗？身边很多盆友说，看着姐姐们青春活力的样子，年龄似乎真的是个数字，变老也不再可怕了。
确实，也许正直青春的孩子会无所畏惧，可到了25之后，不少人却会逐渐生出一丝对年龄的恐惧——我们害怕脸上的细纹，害怕时间走得飞快，害怕来不及做很多事情。而今天的主讲人Ashton女士，正是希望通过这次TED演讲呼吁人们战胜恐惧，行动起来，反对最后一种社会习以为常的偏见。 她说：衰老不是一个需要解决的问题，也不是一种需要治疗的疾病。衰老是自然的、有力的、终身的进程，它将我们联结在一起。
演说者：Ashton Applewhite
演说题目：让我们一起终结年龄歧视
在座的每个人都会变成什么样？变老。而且大多数人一想到变老就吓坏了。这个词会让你产生怎样的感觉呢？我过去也有这样的感受。我曾经最担心的是什么呢？最终在养老院阴冷的走廊上流着口水。 And then I learned that only four percent of older Americans are living in nursing homes, and the percentage is dropping. What else was I worried about? Dementia. Turns out that most of us can think just fine to the end. Dementia rates are dropping, too. The real epidemic is anxiety over memory loss.之后我了解到只有4％的美国老年人，居住在养老院。而且这个百分比正在下降。我还曾担心过什么呢？失智症。其实大多数人在去世前保持着正常的思考能力。失智症的比例也在下降。真正的流行病是我们对失忆的焦虑。 I also figured that old people were depressed because they were old and they were going to die soon. It turns out that the longer people live, the less they fear dying, and that people are happiest at the beginnings and the end of their lives. 同时，我发现老人们是抑郁沮丧的。因为他们老了，而且很快就会去世了。其实人活的越长，越无惧死亡。而且人们在生命最初和最末的阶段是最开心的。 It's called the U-curve of happiness, and it's been borne out by dozens of studies around the world. You don't have to be a Buddhist or a billionaire. The curve is a function of the way aging itself affects the brain.这被称作U型幸福曲线。这个结论是由全世界许多研究产生的。你不需要是佛教徒或者亿万富翁。这个曲线说明了年龄自身对大脑的影响作用。 So I started feeling a lot better about getting older, and I started obsessing about why so few people know these things. The reason is ageism: discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of age. We experience it anytime someone assumes we're too old for something, instead of finding out who we are and what we're capable of, or too young. 所以我开始对变老的观感没那么负面了。然而我开始困扰为什么很少人明白这些道理。原因是：年龄主义。针对年龄的歧视和刻板印象。每时每刻都有人认为我们太老了，不再适合做很多事情了。而不是了解清楚我们是怎样的人，我们的能力如何。又或者是太年轻了以至于扛不起某些事。 Ageism cuts both ways. All -isms are socially constructed ideas -- racism, sexism, homophobia -- and that means we make them up, and they can change over time. All these prejudices pit us against each other to maintain the status quo, like auto workers in the US competing against auto workers in Mexico instead of organizing for better wages.年龄主义对两方面都有影响。所有「主义」都是社会建构的观念——种族主义，性别歧视主义，同性恋恐惧症。这意味着我们创造了这些观念，而且它们能随时间改变。所有这些偏见使我们针锋相对，只为维持现状。就像美国的汽车工人和墨西哥的汽车工人互相竞争，而不是联合起来，争取更高的薪酬。 We know it's not OK to allocate resources by race or by sex. Why should it be OK to weigh the needs of the young against the old? All prejudice relies on "othering" -- seeing a group of people as other than ourselves: other race, other religion, other nationality. The strange thing about ageism: that other is us. 我们知道不能根据种族或性别分配资源，那为什么要将年轻人和年长者的需求对立看待呢？所有的偏见都来自于“他者” - 将一群人视为「他者」，跟我们自身区别。他们来自其它的种族，宗教信仰，国籍。关于年龄主义，有件很奇怪的事情是：我们终将成为「他者」。 Ageism feeds on denial -- our reluctance to acknowledge that we are going to become that older person. It's denial when we try to pass for younger or when we believe in anti-aging products, or when we feel like our bodies are betraying us, simply because they are changing. Why on earth do we stop celebrating the ability to adapt and grow as we move through life? 年龄主义建立在否认之上 - 我们不愿意承认，我们终有一天也将成为老人。我们假装自己还年轻，我们相信抗衰老产品，我们感觉身体背叛了自己，其实只是因为身体衰老了。我们究竟为什么不再赞美自己在展示进入生命新阶段时适应成长状语从句：的能力呢？ Why should aging well mean struggling to look and move like younger versions of ourselves? It's embarrassing to be called out as older until we quit being embarrassed about it, and it's not healthy to go through life dreading our futures. The sooner we get off this hamster wheel of age denial, the better off we are.为什么变老意味着努力保持年轻时的容貌，像年轻时一样行动？被别人称作老年人是件很尴尬的事情，除非我们不再因为衰老而感到难为情。而且对未来感到恐惧也不是健康的生活方式。我们越早放下对衰老循环般的恐惧，我们的生活就会越好。 Stereotypes are always a mistake, of course, but especially when it comes to age, because the longer we live, the more different from one another we become. Right? Think about it. And yet, we tend to think of everyone in a retirement home as the same age: old --当然，刻板印象总是一个错误，但特别是到了一定年龄，因为我们越年长，就越来越不同于他人。对吗？想想看。但是我们还是倾向于认为养老院的所有人都是一样的年纪：老年人。
when they can span four decades. Can you imagine thinking that way about a group of people between the ages of 20 and 60? When you get to a party, do you head for people your own age? Have you ever grumbled about entitled millennials? Have you ever rejected a haircut or a relationship or an outing because it's not age-appropriate? 尽管他们的年龄跨度有四十年。你能想像用这种方式来对待一群20岁到60岁之间的人吗？当你参加聚会的时候，是否会去寻找和你年纪相仿的人？你是否吐槽过千禧世代？你是否拒绝过一种发型，一段感情或者一次出游，因为年龄不合适？ For adults, there's no such thing. All these behaviors are ageist. We all do them, and we can't challenge bias unless we're aware of it. Nobody's born ageist, but it starts at early childhood, around the same time attitudes towards race and gender start to form, because negative messages about late life bombard us from the media and popular culture at every turn. Right? Wrinkles are ugly. Old people are pathetic. It's sad to be old.对于成年人来说，这些事情不会发生。这些都是歧视年龄的行为。我们都有这些歧视行为。我们无法挑战这种偏见，除非我们认识到它的存在。没有人是天生的年龄歧视者，但年龄歧视在童年早期就已发生，在种族，性别意识产生的同时。因为关于老年的信息对我们进行狂轰滥炸，每时每刻都要来自媒体和流行文化的轰炸。对吗？皱纹是丑的。老年人是可怜的。衰老令人悲伤。 Look at Hollywood. A survey of recent Best Picture nominations found that only 12 percent of speaking or named characters were age 60 and up, and many of them were portrayed as impaired. Older people can be the most ageist of all, because we've had a lifetime to internalize these messages and we've never thought to challenge them. 看看好莱坞，关于最佳影片提名的一项调查显示，影片中有12％的主要角色是60岁以上的老年人，而且许多角色被描绘成有缺陷的，受损害的。老年人自己可能是年龄歧视最强有力的支持者。因为我们有一生的时间来内化这些歧视的信息，而且从未想过要挑战它们。 I had to acknowledge it and stop colluding. "Senior moment" quips, for example: I stopped making them when it dawned on me that when I lost the car keys in high school, I didn't call it a "junior moment."我不得不承认而且退出这种集体歧视。比如说：老糊涂。我不再使用这些讽刺性的词语，因为我发现当我在高中丢失了车钥匙的时候，我并没有将它称为「青年人的糊涂」。 I stopped blaming my sore knee on being 64. My other knee doesn't hurt, and it's just as old. We are all worried about some aspect of getting older, whether running out of money, getting sick, ending up alone, and those fears are legitimate and real. 我不再将膝盖疼归归于64岁高龄，我的另一个膝盖并不疼，但它也一样变老了。我们都会对变老的某些方面感到担忧，也许是经济上的困难，也许是疾病，孤老终生，而且这些恐惧都是合情合理的，真实存在的。 But what never dawns on most of us is that the experience of reaching old age can be better or worse depending on the culture in which it takes place. It is not having a vagina that makes life harder for women. It's sexism.但是我们大多数人没有发现的是，衰老的过程是幸福还是痛苦，取决于你所属的文化。并不是阴道让女性的生活更加艰难。是性别歧视。 It's not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys. It's homophobia. And it is not the passage of time that makes getting older so much harder than it has to be. It is ageism. When labels are hard to read or there's no handrail or we can't open the damn jar, we blame ourselves, our failure to age successfully, instead of the ageism that makes those natural transitions shameful and the discrimination that makes those barriers acceptable. 并不是同性之爱让男同志的生活更加困苦。是同性恋恐惧症。并不是时间的流逝让衰老更加艰辛。是年龄歧视。当我们很难看清标签的时候，或者是没有栏杆的时候，或者是打不开可恶的罐头时，我们谴责自己，我们把失败归于年龄，而不是归于年龄歧视，它使人羞辱于年龄的自然更替。也没有归于于年龄歧视，它让人们接受这些壁垒。 You can't make money off satisfaction, but shame and fear create markets, and capitalism always needs new markets. Who says wrinkles are ugly? The multi-billion-dollar skin care industry. Who says perimenopause and low T and mild cognitive impairment are medical conditions? The trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry.你无法从人们对生活的满足感中赚钱，但是羞愧和恐惧能够创造市场，而且资本主义总是需要新的市场。谁说皱纹是丑陋的？那些价值数十亿美元的皮肤保养产业这样说。谁说近更年期，睪丸素偏低，轻度认知障碍是医学上的疾病呢？这都是那些上万亿的制药产业说的。 The more clearly we see these forces at work, the easier it is to come up with alternative, more positive and more accurate narratives. Aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured. It is a natural, powerful, lifelong process that unites us all.我们越清楚这些力量如何运作，就越容易找到替代方法，找到更积极，准确的叙述方式。衰老不是一个需要解决的问题，也不是一种需要治疗的疾病。它是自然的，有力的，终身的进程，它将所有人联结在一起。 Changing the culture is a tall order, I know that, but culture is fluid. Look at how much the position of women has changed in my lifetime or the incredible strides that the gay rights movement has made in just a few decades, right?我知道改变文化是很困难的，但是文化是流动的。看看在我的一生中，女性的地位得到了多么大的提升。或者是同志平权运动取得的惊人飞跃，仅仅发生在过去的几十年中，对吗？ Look at gender. We used to think of it as a binary, male or female, and now we understand it's a spectrum. It is high time to ditch the old-young binary, too. There is no line in the sand between old and young, after which it's all downhill. 看看性别议题。我们以前认为性别是二元的，男性或女性，我们现在了解到性别是连续的光谱。现在也是时候抛弃老人与年轻人的二元对立了。老人与年轻人之间没有明确的分界线，这样想一切都容易多了。 And the longer we wait to challenge that idea, the more damage it does to ourselves and our place in the world, like in the workforce, where age discrimination is rampant. In Silicon Valley, engineers are getting Botoxed and hair-plugged before key interviews -- and these are skilled white men in their 30s, so imagine the effects further down the food chain.我们越晚挑战这个观点，它对我们自身和我们在世界的定位就伤害越大。比如在工作场所，在那里年龄歧视猖獗 。在硅谷，工程师打医疗美容针，做人工植发，来迎接重要的面试。而且他们是技术高超的，三十多岁的白人男性，所以可以想像食物链下游所受的影响。
The personal and economic consequences are devastating. Not one stereotype about older workers holds up under scrutiny. Companies aren't adaptable and creative because their employees are young; they're adaptable and creative despite it. Companies --We know that diverse companies aren't just better places to work; they work better. And just like race and sex, age is a criterion for diversity.个人的，经济上的后果是非常沉重的。现在许多关于老年工作者的刻板印象需要仔细斟酌。公司不会因为年轻员工而具有适应能力和创造力。没有年轻员工，公司也能保有适应能力和创造力。公司──多元化的公司不仅是适合工作的地方，而且它们工作得更好。和种族，性别一样，年龄也是检验多样性的标准。 A growing body of fascinating research shows that attitudes towards aging affect how our minds and bodies function at the cellular level. When we talk to older people like this (Speaks more loudly) or call them "sweetie" or "young lady" -- it's called elderspeak -- they appear to instantly age, walking and talking less competently. People with more positive feelings towards aging walk faster, they do better on memory tests, they heal quicker, and they live longer. 越来越多很有吸引力的研究显示，关于衰老的态度会在细胞层面上影响我们的大脑和身体的运作。当我们这样与老年人沟通（音量提高） 或者称他们为“亲爱的”或者「年轻的女士」 - 这种沟通方式被称作「老人语 」 - 他们似乎会立即衰老。步伐不再矫健，不再谈吐自信那些对衰老持有积极态度的人，他们走得更快，他们在记忆测试上的表现更好 ，他们康复得更快，而且他们活得更久。 Even with brains full of plaques and tangles, some people stayed sharp to the end. What did they have in common? A sense of purpose. And what's the biggest obstacle to having a sense of purpose in late life? A culture that tells us that getting older means shuffling offstage. That's why the World Health Organization is developing a global anti-ageism initiative to extend not just life span but health span.即使是在充满了斑块和缠结的大脑里，有些人直到去世前头脑依然敏锐。他们有什么共同点呢？目标明确 。在晚年生活中，什么会严重阻碍人们保有目标呢？一种文化，认定衰老即走下人生舞台。这是为什么世界卫生组织开展全球反对年龄歧视的倡议。不仅增加寿命，还能延续健康。 Women experience the double whammy of ageism and sexism, so we experience aging differently. There's a double standard at work here -- shocker --女性经历着双重打击，来自年龄主义和性别歧视主义，所以我们对衰老有不同的体会。这里运作着双重标准-震惊- the notion that aging enhances men and devalues women. Women reinforce this double standard when we compete to stay young, another punishing and losing proposition. Does any woman in this room really believe that she is a lesser version -- less interesting, less fun in bed, less valuable -- than the woman she once was? 衰老让男性增值，却使女性贬值。当女性争着保持年轻的时候，这样的双重标准得以增强。保持年轻是艰苦的，注定失败的想法。这个房间里难道真的有女人相信衰老后的她了成为次等品── 不再有趣，不再性感，不再有价值──和年轻时的她相比起来？ This discrimination affects our health, our well-being and our income, and the effects add up over time. They are further compounded by race and by class, which is why, everywhere in the world, the poorest of the poor are old women of color.这样的歧视影响着我们的健康，我们的幸福和收入，而且影响与日俱增。种族和阶级因素使这种歧视雪上加霜，这就是为什么在世界上每一个角落，最穷的人往往是有色人种的老年妇女。 What's the takeaway from that map? By 2050, one out of five of us, almost two billion people, will be age 60 and up. Longevity is a fundamental hallmark of human progress. All these older people represent a vast unprecedented and untapped market. 我们能从这张地图上了解到什么知识呢？到2050年，五个人中就会有一个，大概总计二十亿人，是60岁以上的老年人。长寿是人类进步的重要标志。年长者代表着一个巨大的，史无前例的，从未被牵涉的市场。 And yet, capitalism and urbanization have propelled age bias into every corner of the globe, from Switzerland, where elders fare the best, to Afghanistan, which sits at the bottom of the Global AgeWatch Index. Half of the world's countries aren't mentioned on that list because we don't bother to collect data on millions of people because they're no longer young. 然而，资本主义和城市化把年龄偏见推进到世界的每一个角落，从瑞士，在那里老年人得到了最好的照顾，到阿财汗，在全球老年观察指数中垫底。世界上近半数的国家没有出现在排行榜中，因为我们不屑于收集进两百万人的数据，因为他们不再年轻。 Almost two-thirds of people over 60 around the world say they have trouble accessing healthcare. Almost three-quarters say their income doesn't cover basic services like food, water, electricity, and decent housing. Is this the world we want our children, who may well live to be a hundred, to inherit? Everyone -- all ages, all genders, all nationalities -- is old or future-old, and unless we put an end to it, ageism will oppress us all. And that makes it a perfect target for collective advocacy.在全球60岁以上的老年人中，近三分之二认为他们获得医疗卫生服务是困难的。进四分之三的老年人认为他们的收入无法支付基本生活费用，比如食物，水，电和像样的住房。这真的是我们想让子孙后代继承的世界吗？他们可能会活到100多岁。每个人不分年龄，性别，国籍，已衰老或终将衰老，如果我们不终结它，年龄歧视将会压迫我们每一个人。这让它成为了集体倡议的最佳目标。 Why add another -ism to the list when so many, racism in particular, call out for action? Here's the thing: we don't have to choose. When we make the world a better place to grow old in, we make it a better place in which to be from somewhere else, to have a disability, to be queer, to be non-rich, to be non-white. 为什么又把一个「主义」加入到斗争的行列中？特别是种族歧视主义，还没有得到彻底根除。事情是这样的：我们不需要进行选择。当我们把世界变成适合老年人居住的地方，我们也把它变成了适合他人居住的地方，适宜残疾人居住， 适宜与众不同的，贫困的，甚至是有色人种居住。 And when we show up at all ages for whatever cause matters most to us -- save the whales, save the democracy -- we not only make that effort more effective, we dismantle ageism in the process.当我们在不同年龄阶段，为其它重要的事情奋斗时 - 拯救海豚，拯救民主- 我们不仅使那个倡议更加有效，同时也解决了年龄歧视的问题。 Longevity is here to stay. A movement to end ageism is underway. I'm in it, and I hope you will join me.Thank you. Let's do it! Let's do it!长寿现象将一直存在，终结年龄歧视的运动正在开展。我身处其中，希望你能加入这项运动。谢谢。让我们一起行动起来吧！
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