时代与信仰的变迁

此段摘自《个人与群体事件的本质》第五章“经验的运作机制”，第八三一节

有组织的宗教犯过许多重大错误，但世代以来，基督教提供了一个被当时的大部分世界所接受的背景，在这个背景下，个人经验可以由非常明确的“规则”来评判——经验一度被仔细审视、雕凿，但却容许一些丰富的表达，只要它仍停留在宗教教条所限定的范围内。

如果一个人是罪人，仍然有赎罪之道，而灵魂的不朽性当然也基本不被质疑。几乎各种社交和宗教经验都有固定的规则可循。几乎所有人都接受为出生、死亡及人生重要阶段所设定的仪式。教会即权威，而个人终其一生几乎自动地组织个人经验，以使其符合公认的规范。

在那些界限内，某些类型的经验活跃起来，当然其他的就没有。在你们现在的社会里没有这种整体的权威。个人必须在枪林弹雨般形形色色的价值体系中走他自己的路并且做决定，那是一个在子承父业或交易婚姻时代过活的人根本想象不到的。

因而，你们现在的经验与中世纪的先人十分不同，而你们已无法领会自己目前的主观态度、社交种类和特质与过去的不同。基督教尽管存在许多错误，但它最好的地方是告知了每个人人生的终极意义。那时，人生有意义是绝无疑问的，不论你是否同意它被赋予的那个特定意义。

在那个时代，人们的梦也是不同的，充满了许多形而上的形象，比如说到处是圣人和魔鬼——但整体上存在着一个信仰架构，而所有的经验都从那个角度来评判。如今，你们有多得多的决定要做，而在一个充斥着各种矛盾信念的世界里，当各种信念通过报纸和电视被带进客厅，你们必须试着去找到自己人生的意义或生命本身的意义。

Organized religion has committed many important blunders, yet for centuries Christianity provided a context accepted by large portions of the known world, in which experience could be judged against very definite "rules" — experience once focused, chiselled, and yet allowed some rich expression as long as it stayed within the boundaries set by religious dogma.

If a man was a sinner, still there was a way of redemption, and the immortality of the soul went largely unquestioned, of course. There were set rules for almost all kinds of social encounters and religious experiences. There were set ceremonies accepted by nearly all for death and birth, and the important stages in between. Church was the authority, and the individual lived out his or her life almost automatically structuring personal experience so that it fit within the accepted norm.

Within those boundaries, certain kinds of experience flourished, and of course others did not. In your society there is no such overall authority. The individual must make his or her own way through a barrage of different value systems, making decisions that were largely unthought of when a son followed his father's trade automatically, for example, or when marriages were made largely for economic reasons.

So your present experience is quite different than that of those forefathers who lived in the medieval world, say, and you cannot appreciate the differences in your [present] subjective attitudes, and in the quality, as well as the kind of, social intercourse that exists now. For all its many errors, at its best Christianity proclaimed the ultimate

meaning for each person's life. There was no question but that life had meaning, whether or not you might agree as to the particular meaning assigned to it.

Men's dreams were also different in those times, filled far more with metaphysical images, for example, more alive with saints and demons — but overall one framework of belief existed, and all experience was judged in its light. Now, you have far more decisions to make, and in a world of conflicting beliefs, brought into your living room through newspapers and television, you must try to find the meaning of

your life, or the meaning of life.

——摘自《个人与群体事件的本质》（The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events）Laujenny 校译

《赛斯说●第四十八期》

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