2011年11月27日星期日
2011年11月20日星期日
abercrombie Winch Pond
2011年11月7日星期一
政治秩序的起源——福山
三联生活周刊:政治秩序的起源
薛巍
根据对历史的研究,福山提出良好的政治秩序的三个要素以及它们为何、如何出现的。这三个关键因素是强大的国家、法治和让统治者负责的机制。
从宗族到国家
在1989年因发表了论文《历史的终结》而名声大噪后,福山又写了很多著作,包括1996年出版的《信任》和2003年出版的《我们的后人类的未来》。福山的新书《政治秩序的起源》不只局限于整个的人类历史,而是始于史前时期,结束于美国和法国大革命前夕。他挖掘了人类学、考古学、生物学、进化心理学、经济学和政治学、国际关系理论,建立了一个理解政治机构的演化的框架。下卷要几年后才出,一直写到现代。
在书的开头,福山提出,达尔文的自然选择理论和政治的演化是相关的。因为人性具有普遍、演化的特征,建立在偏爱亲人、互利、创造和遵守规则、有好战倾向等行为的基础上。因此人类政治受到一些反复出现的超越时间和文化的模式的影响。生物学决定和限制了政治机构可能的形式。
《纽约时报》科学记者尼古拉斯•韦德评论说:“以前对人类社会发展的宏大论述往往聚焦于某一个因果解释,如经济学或战争,或者像戴蒙德的《枪炮、细菌和钢铁》那样,聚焦于地理因素。福山的特别之处在于,他考虑了好多种因素,包括战争、宗教,尤其是偏爱亲人等人类的社会行为。”
福山把政治的发展分成四种类别:家族,宗族,酋邦和国家。前二者是以血缘关系为基础的,酋邦和国家更加复杂,它们在领土而非世系的基础上树立起权威。宗族在人类发明了农业之后才成为可能,因为农业比采集和狩猎社会能支撑更高的人口密度。“人类相互接触的范围变得宽广之后,需要不同的社会组织形式。”宗族形成的另一个必要条件是宗教,宗教把崇拜一个共同祖先的大量人口团结起来。由于宗族能够迅速动员起很多人参战,临近的宗族也必须动员起来,或者被打败。
战争也促成了从宗族向国家的转变。跟宗族比起来,国家组织得更好、更稳定,因为宗族首领在战斗中丧命之后,宗族往往会解体。只有国家能提高个人的生存概率时,人们才会放弃宗族的自由,接受国家的强迫。
福山的很多分析针对的都是国家是如何从宗族演化而来的。在他看来,这一转变受到了地理、历史和国家的几个要素形成的顺序的影响。根据事件发展顺序的不同,中国、印度、伊斯兰世界和欧洲,甚至欧洲内部,形成了不同种类的国家。
国家的形成是一个更加模糊的过程。宗族是自愿把权威交给一个强大的统治者吗?还是人口增多导致土地稀缺、引发冲突之后,只有一个强大的、中央集权的权威才能解决问题,使国家成为必须?福山提出,后者很可能更接近真相。他写道,向国家的转变是人类自由历程中的一大退步,因为国家往往不那么平等。因此宗族很可能是在暴力的胁迫下放弃了它们的自主。一个宗族征服了另一个。官僚机构被建立起来统治被征服的宗族,又建立起常备军和警察机构。如美国社会学家查尔斯•蒂利所说:“战争制造了政府,政府又制造战争。”
宗族是以人类求助于家人和亲属为基础,国家则有赖于人类创造和遵守规则的倾向。在中国产生了世界上第一个国家。建立于公元前221年的秦朝超越了宗族主义,发展出了忠诚于国家而非家族的官员阶层。在秦朝变得完善的控制机制在秦以前500年的东周就开始发展了,小的相互交战的邦国开始合并。这些控制机制包括以功绩而非贵族身份为基础的军事领袖任命制度、大规模征兵、复杂的税收制度和选贤任能的官员选拔制度。秦朝只是做得太过分了,在建立集权统治的过程中攻击社会的各个阶层。秦朝灭亡后,汉朝寻求与贵族精英之间的妥协,得以延续了400多年。
世界各地的统治者努力建立一个强大的国家,同时与阻碍他们的世袭制做斗争。“中央集权的国家和世袭制群体之间是负相关的。即使在现代国家被建立起来之后,宗族主义仍然是政治组织的默认模式。”偏爱自己的家人的本能从来没有消失,一有机会就会复辟。
为了创造一个忠实的管理阶层,有些国家采取了各种破坏家庭的极端措施。中国的皇帝组建了宦官群体,他们没有家人,比普通官员更受信任。11世纪晚期,天主教会坚持要求教士保持独身,迫使他们在教会和家庭之间做出抉择,这使欧洲在建立法治方面领先于其他社会。独身是教皇格里高利七世推行的几项重要改革之一,带来了教会法的发展以及连国王也要服从它的观念。格里高利使神圣罗马帝国皇帝亨利四世也屈从于他的意志,强迫欧洲最有权势的人到卡诺莎城堡赤脚在雪地里站立了三天,向教皇“忏悔罪过”。独身对于打击遗产造成的腐败和教会内部的寻租活动非常重要。教皇的改革使教会获得了道德地位,演变成一个现代的、等级制、官僚制和法治的机构,建立起了它在精神事务方面的权威,为接下来的世俗国家确立了基本原则。
8世纪的阿巴斯帝国、埃及的马穆鲁克苏丹和奥斯曼帝国发展出了军事奴隶制度,以降低裙带关系和忠诚于宗族造成的内部冲突。从巴尔干地区的基督教家庭带过来男孩,把他们当奴隶养大,训练成士兵。马穆鲁克是一种只维持一代人的贵族,只忠诚于苏丹。同时,奥斯曼帝国皇帝的精英奴隶军队的禁卫军士兵则不许结婚。这种制度虽然很怪异,但非常有效。军事奴隶马穆鲁克们击败了蒙古兵,赶走了十字军。但最后这两种体系都瓦解了,弱小的苏丹允许士兵们的儿子接替他们父亲的职位,马穆鲁克和禁卫军变成了强大的利益集团,士兵们的忠诚从国家转向了他们的家人,推翻了他们要保卫的中央集权国家,世袭制又复辟了。
穷国为什么穷?
秦朝建立1000年之后,宗族主义才在西方消失。宗族主义先是转变成了封建主义,农民为领主劳动,以换取领主的保护。所以当国王出现时,他们很少得到绝对的权力,因为他们要与封建领主分享权力。另一个妨碍了绝对统治出现于欧洲的因素是法治概念出现得比较早,这主要是因为教堂在11世纪发展出了律法。所以当强大的统治者开始建立国家时,他们要考虑新兴的民法。欧洲接着发展出了特别的观念:法律而非统治者应该是绝对的。在追求这一原则时,英国的议院处死了国王查理一世,驱逐了国王詹姆斯二世。这被证明是一种既能建立起强大的国家又让统治者承担责任的办法。
其他欧洲国家发展出了与英格兰类似的机构,但没有能够实现统治者与精英们的权力之间的平衡。在法国,贵族反对国家向他们征税,所以负担越来越落到农民头上,直到他们无法忍受,引发了法国大革命。在福山看来,欧洲国家中,只有英格兰和丹麦发展出了强大国家的三个核心要素:强大的国家,社会所有部分都实行法治,让国王承担责任的机制。这一成功的公式后来被其他欧洲国家采纳,就像自然选择过程偏爱最成功的变异。
福山说:“体制虽然是文化性的,但也很难改变。一旦它们被创造出来,人们就开始赋予它们内在的价值,通常是宗教价值。这一过程在稳定人类社会方面有着演化论的意义,因为接受了一套规则之后,一个社会在多年内都不必再为此而努力了。体制的惰性解释了为什么社会的变化一般很缓慢。体制不仅很难改变,而且很难发展出来。福山写道:“贫穷的国家之所以穷,不是因为缺少资源,而是因为缺少有效的政治体制。”在他看来,缺少法治是贫穷国家没能实现更高增长率的一个主要原因。欧洲的法治源自有组织的宗教,其民主却只是历史的偶然。如果没有封建制,欧洲的统治者也许也能拥有绝对的权力。
《经济学家》杂志说,福山的洞见有助于我们理解现代国家及其形成过程。“比如,从良好政治秩序的三个要素来看,现在的印度是一个国力弱小但能够向领导人问责、近乎迂腐地讲究法治的国家。福山的主题仍旧很宏大,但他能够准确地找出富有启示意义的细节。政治理论方面的著作很少有像这一部这样让人手不释卷。”
www.lifeweek.com.cn/2011/0418/31914.shtml
薛巍
根据对历史的研究,福山提出良好的政治秩序的三个要素以及它们为何、如何出现的。这三个关键因素是强大的国家、法治和让统治者负责的机制。
从宗族到国家
在1989年因发表了论文《历史的终结》而名声大噪后,福山又写了很多著作,包括1996年出版的《信任》和2003年出版的《我们的后人类的未来》。福山的新书《政治秩序的起源》不只局限于整个的人类历史,而是始于史前时期,结束于美国和法国大革命前夕。他挖掘了人类学、考古学、生物学、进化心理学、经济学和政治学、国际关系理论,建立了一个理解政治机构的演化的框架。下卷要几年后才出,一直写到现代。
在书的开头,福山提出,达尔文的自然选择理论和政治的演化是相关的。因为人性具有普遍、演化的特征,建立在偏爱亲人、互利、创造和遵守规则、有好战倾向等行为的基础上。因此人类政治受到一些反复出现的超越时间和文化的模式的影响。生物学决定和限制了政治机构可能的形式。
《纽约时报》科学记者尼古拉斯•韦德评论说:“以前对人类社会发展的宏大论述往往聚焦于某一个因果解释,如经济学或战争,或者像戴蒙德的《枪炮、细菌和钢铁》那样,聚焦于地理因素。福山的特别之处在于,他考虑了好多种因素,包括战争、宗教,尤其是偏爱亲人等人类的社会行为。”
福山把政治的发展分成四种类别:家族,宗族,酋邦和国家。前二者是以血缘关系为基础的,酋邦和国家更加复杂,它们在领土而非世系的基础上树立起权威。宗族在人类发明了农业之后才成为可能,因为农业比采集和狩猎社会能支撑更高的人口密度。“人类相互接触的范围变得宽广之后,需要不同的社会组织形式。”宗族形成的另一个必要条件是宗教,宗教把崇拜一个共同祖先的大量人口团结起来。由于宗族能够迅速动员起很多人参战,临近的宗族也必须动员起来,或者被打败。
战争也促成了从宗族向国家的转变。跟宗族比起来,国家组织得更好、更稳定,因为宗族首领在战斗中丧命之后,宗族往往会解体。只有国家能提高个人的生存概率时,人们才会放弃宗族的自由,接受国家的强迫。
福山的很多分析针对的都是国家是如何从宗族演化而来的。在他看来,这一转变受到了地理、历史和国家的几个要素形成的顺序的影响。根据事件发展顺序的不同,中国、印度、伊斯兰世界和欧洲,甚至欧洲内部,形成了不同种类的国家。
国家的形成是一个更加模糊的过程。宗族是自愿把权威交给一个强大的统治者吗?还是人口增多导致土地稀缺、引发冲突之后,只有一个强大的、中央集权的权威才能解决问题,使国家成为必须?福山提出,后者很可能更接近真相。他写道,向国家的转变是人类自由历程中的一大退步,因为国家往往不那么平等。因此宗族很可能是在暴力的胁迫下放弃了它们的自主。一个宗族征服了另一个。官僚机构被建立起来统治被征服的宗族,又建立起常备军和警察机构。如美国社会学家查尔斯•蒂利所说:“战争制造了政府,政府又制造战争。”
宗族是以人类求助于家人和亲属为基础,国家则有赖于人类创造和遵守规则的倾向。在中国产生了世界上第一个国家。建立于公元前221年的秦朝超越了宗族主义,发展出了忠诚于国家而非家族的官员阶层。在秦朝变得完善的控制机制在秦以前500年的东周就开始发展了,小的相互交战的邦国开始合并。这些控制机制包括以功绩而非贵族身份为基础的军事领袖任命制度、大规模征兵、复杂的税收制度和选贤任能的官员选拔制度。秦朝只是做得太过分了,在建立集权统治的过程中攻击社会的各个阶层。秦朝灭亡后,汉朝寻求与贵族精英之间的妥协,得以延续了400多年。
世界各地的统治者努力建立一个强大的国家,同时与阻碍他们的世袭制做斗争。“中央集权的国家和世袭制群体之间是负相关的。即使在现代国家被建立起来之后,宗族主义仍然是政治组织的默认模式。”偏爱自己的家人的本能从来没有消失,一有机会就会复辟。
为了创造一个忠实的管理阶层,有些国家采取了各种破坏家庭的极端措施。中国的皇帝组建了宦官群体,他们没有家人,比普通官员更受信任。11世纪晚期,天主教会坚持要求教士保持独身,迫使他们在教会和家庭之间做出抉择,这使欧洲在建立法治方面领先于其他社会。独身是教皇格里高利七世推行的几项重要改革之一,带来了教会法的发展以及连国王也要服从它的观念。格里高利使神圣罗马帝国皇帝亨利四世也屈从于他的意志,强迫欧洲最有权势的人到卡诺莎城堡赤脚在雪地里站立了三天,向教皇“忏悔罪过”。独身对于打击遗产造成的腐败和教会内部的寻租活动非常重要。教皇的改革使教会获得了道德地位,演变成一个现代的、等级制、官僚制和法治的机构,建立起了它在精神事务方面的权威,为接下来的世俗国家确立了基本原则。
8世纪的阿巴斯帝国、埃及的马穆鲁克苏丹和奥斯曼帝国发展出了军事奴隶制度,以降低裙带关系和忠诚于宗族造成的内部冲突。从巴尔干地区的基督教家庭带过来男孩,把他们当奴隶养大,训练成士兵。马穆鲁克是一种只维持一代人的贵族,只忠诚于苏丹。同时,奥斯曼帝国皇帝的精英奴隶军队的禁卫军士兵则不许结婚。这种制度虽然很怪异,但非常有效。军事奴隶马穆鲁克们击败了蒙古兵,赶走了十字军。但最后这两种体系都瓦解了,弱小的苏丹允许士兵们的儿子接替他们父亲的职位,马穆鲁克和禁卫军变成了强大的利益集团,士兵们的忠诚从国家转向了他们的家人,推翻了他们要保卫的中央集权国家,世袭制又复辟了。
穷国为什么穷?
秦朝建立1000年之后,宗族主义才在西方消失。宗族主义先是转变成了封建主义,农民为领主劳动,以换取领主的保护。所以当国王出现时,他们很少得到绝对的权力,因为他们要与封建领主分享权力。另一个妨碍了绝对统治出现于欧洲的因素是法治概念出现得比较早,这主要是因为教堂在11世纪发展出了律法。所以当强大的统治者开始建立国家时,他们要考虑新兴的民法。欧洲接着发展出了特别的观念:法律而非统治者应该是绝对的。在追求这一原则时,英国的议院处死了国王查理一世,驱逐了国王詹姆斯二世。这被证明是一种既能建立起强大的国家又让统治者承担责任的办法。
其他欧洲国家发展出了与英格兰类似的机构,但没有能够实现统治者与精英们的权力之间的平衡。在法国,贵族反对国家向他们征税,所以负担越来越落到农民头上,直到他们无法忍受,引发了法国大革命。在福山看来,欧洲国家中,只有英格兰和丹麦发展出了强大国家的三个核心要素:强大的国家,社会所有部分都实行法治,让国王承担责任的机制。这一成功的公式后来被其他欧洲国家采纳,就像自然选择过程偏爱最成功的变异。
福山说:“体制虽然是文化性的,但也很难改变。一旦它们被创造出来,人们就开始赋予它们内在的价值,通常是宗教价值。这一过程在稳定人类社会方面有着演化论的意义,因为接受了一套规则之后,一个社会在多年内都不必再为此而努力了。体制的惰性解释了为什么社会的变化一般很缓慢。体制不仅很难改变,而且很难发展出来。福山写道:“贫穷的国家之所以穷,不是因为缺少资源,而是因为缺少有效的政治体制。”在他看来,缺少法治是贫穷国家没能实现更高增长率的一个主要原因。欧洲的法治源自有组织的宗教,其民主却只是历史的偶然。如果没有封建制,欧洲的统治者也许也能拥有绝对的权力。
《经济学家》杂志说,福山的洞见有助于我们理解现代国家及其形成过程。“比如,从良好政治秩序的三个要素来看,现在的印度是一个国力弱小但能够向领导人问责、近乎迂腐地讲究法治的国家。福山的主题仍旧很宏大,但他能够准确地找出富有启示意义的细节。政治理论方面的著作很少有像这一部这样让人手不释卷。”
www.lifeweek.com.cn/2011/0418/31914.shtml
2011年11月1日星期二
同南开中学的师生们谈心
同南开中学的师生们谈心
温家宝
(2011年10月25日)
《 光明日报 》( 2011年10月29日 02 版)
同学们、老师们:
屈指算来,我阔别南开中学已51年了,正式回母校看望师生,这还是第一次。我愿借此机会同大家谈谈心。
我1942年农历八月出生在天津北郊宜兴埠一个书香门第。我爷爷在村子里办学校,曾祖父是农民。再往以前,我家都是农民。我们家是从什么地方来到天津的,至今也没有人能说清楚。据说是从山西来投奔这里的温氏家族的。因为家里穷、没有地位,温氏家谱始终没有把我们家列入其中。
爷爷办的乡村小学,是冲破地主豪绅的阻力,第一个招收女生的学校。我记得,他常年为两件事奔波:一件是招聘教师,一件是为学校筹款。就是这样一所小学,很多教师都是大学毕业生,有的解放后当了教授。外婆家也在本村,外公去世很早,外婆靠开一个小药店谋生,家里还种着几亩地。每年秋天收玉米时,我坐在板车上玉米堆里从地里回家的情景至今历历在目。
我出生的年月正是日本侵略者在华北大扫荡和实行“三光”政策的时期。妈妈对我讲的一件事,至今记忆犹新:日本侵略者将全村人集合在村西南的空地上,四周架起机关枪,用刺刀杀死无辜的平民。当时,妈妈把我紧紧搂在怀里。这件事深深刻在我的脑海里。
天津解放前夕,国民党军队为“坚壁清野”放火烧了宜兴埠。我的家连同爷爷办的学校、外婆家和她的小药店,全部化为灰烬。我们家逃难到天津城里,住在救济院。外婆在逃难中生了病,没过多久就去世了。她是最疼爱我的人。孩提时代,她抱着我,我常常揪她的头发,她一点儿也不生气。天津解放的那一晚,是一个不眠之夜。解放军包围了驻扎在救济院里的国民党军队,当晚进行了激战,手榴弹扔进了院子里,家里人都害怕地躲在床铺下,我却一点儿也没有害怕。第二天,天津解放了。
我的童年是在战争和苦难中度过的,穷困、动荡、饥荒的往事在我幼小的心灵里留下了难以磨灭的印象。我深知,这不是我们一个家庭的苦难,也不是我出生的那个年代的苦难,中华民族的历史就是一部苦难史。我逐渐认识到一个道理:中华民族灾难深重极了,唯有科学、求实、民主、奋斗,才能拯救中国。“如将不尽,与古为新”、“周虽旧邦,其命维新”。只有推翻封建专制和官僚买办的统治,人民才能得到解放;只有不断革新,中国才能进步。
在我上小学、中学期间,家境十分贫寒。父母和我们三兄妹一直租住在一间不到9平方米的小屋子里,每月的房租相当于一袋面粉钱,那时父亲月工资最低时只有37元。我患过一次白喉,父亲把仅有的一块手表卖掉,买药给我打针。此后他多年没有戴过手表。因为经常目睹普通百姓生活的艰辛,我从小就富有同情心,这尤其表现为对普通百姓特别是穷人的同情,对不公道事情的憎恶。一种朴素的平等观念在我的心中萌生:人人生而平等,社会的每一个成员都应平等相处。
我的中学是在南开上的。从12岁到18岁是一个人成长的关键时期。因此,南开六年的学习生活,对我人生观的形成有着重要影响,也给我留下了终生难忘的印象。南开中学是一所历史悠久的学校,她的建立、成长和发展始终同国家的兴衰和民族的命运联系在一起。无论是战争年代,还是建设时期,她都为国家输送了大批人才,这就是南开的道路。我在这所学校里学习,首先懂得的就是一个人必须有远大的理想,有崇高的志向。从小就应该立志把自己的一生献给祖国和人民。我努力学习知识,坚持锻炼身体,刻苦自励,从学习和生活的点点滴滴入手,努力把自己造就成为一个对国家和人民有用的人。南开的校训是“允公允能,日新月异”。这八个字就是南开的灵魂,它提倡的是为公、进步、创新和改革。我上中学时就愿意独立思考,渴望发现问题,探索真知,追求真理。我记得,那时除了学习课本知识以外,我还广泛阅读国内外政治、经济、文化书籍。南开永葆青春,这就是南开精神。在求学期间,我和同学们总是朝气蓬勃,不怕困难,勇往直前。除了学习以外,我还喜欢参加各种课外活动。我不仅爱读书,还是体育爱好者。南开永远年轻,她的学生也都充满活力。我们要坚持走南开的道路,崇尚南开的风格,发扬南开的精神。
上高中和大学以后,我家里人在接连不断的政治运动中受到冲击。爷爷在1960年因脑溢血去世,是我把他背进医院的。现在他教过书的学校还留着他的档案,里面装了一篇篇的“检查”,小楷字写得工工整整,字里行间流露出对人民教育事业的忠诚。父亲也在1960年因被审查所谓的“历史问题”,不能教书,被送到郊外一个农场养猪,后来到图书馆工作。我考上大学向他告别就是在离城很远的养猪场。父亲告假回家帮我收拾行李。他是个老实人,一辈子勤勤恳恳。今年他过世了,可谓“生得安分,走得安详”。尽管家里出现这样一些情况,我仍然追求进步。我是个善于思考的人,我总是把书本里学到的东西同现实加以比较,立志为改造社会而献身。
因为父亲喜欢自然地理,我从小就对地球科学产生了兴趣。在北京地质学院,我在地质系就读5年。大学期间,我加入了中国共产党。后来又考取了研究生,专攻大地构造。回忆在地质学院近8年的学习和生活,我曾概括为三句话:母校给了我地质学知识,母校给了我克服困难的勇气,母校给了我接触群众的机会。那段时期同样是难忘的。
参加工作以后,我有14年时间是在海拔4000到5000米的极其艰苦的祁连山区和北山沙漠戈壁地区工作。这期间,我一边工作一边接触基层群众,更使我深深懂得了民生的疾苦和稼穑的艰难。我来自人民,我也有苦难的童年,我同情每一个穷人,愿为他们的幸福献出自己的一切。到中央工作后,从上世纪80年代中期开始,我用整整10年时间,深入农村、厂矿、科研院所调研。在农村,我白天坐在农民家的炕头上了解情况,晚上开座谈会。我住过乡里、住过粮库,经常在一个县一呆就是一个星期。我几乎走遍了中国科学院的研究所,同科学家交朋友、谈心。我认为,一个领导者最重要的是要懂得民情、民心、民意,而民心向背决定政权的存亡。衡量政策好坏的标准只有一条,就是群众高兴不高兴、满意不满意、答应不答应。我之所以经常讲穷人的经济学、穷人的政治学和穷人的教育学,就是想让人们懂得在中国乃至世界上,穷人占多数。一个政府、一个社会应该更多地关爱穷人,穷人应该拥有平等的权利。在中国,不懂得穷人,不懂得农民和城市贫困阶层,也就不会懂得穷人的经济学,更不可能树立穷人的教育观。公平的核心是在生存、竞争和发展的机会上人人平等,而不是基于财富或其他特权的平等。一个政府如果忽视民众和民生,就是忽视了根本。而公平和正义是社会的顶梁柱,失去了它,社会这个大厦就会倒塌。“国之命,在人心”,说的就是人心向背决定社会的发展和政权的存亡。政府是穷人最后的希望,民众的贫穷是政府最痛心的事。只有把这些道理真正弄懂,才算真正理解“以人为本”的含义。
新中国成立60多年来,特别是改革开放30多年来,我国经济社会发展取得了很大的成就,这是有目共睹的,必须充分肯定。但也要看到,我国经济社会发展还存在不平衡、不协调、不可持续的问题,城乡差距、地区差距依然存在;一些地方还存在干部脱离群众,形式主义、官僚主义严重,甚至以权谋私和贪污腐败的现象;收入分配不合理,有的地方社会矛盾比较突出,群体性事件时有发生。在这种情况下,我们必须做好经济发展、社会公正、民主法治和干部廉洁这几件大事。这都是人心所向,无论哪个方面出了问题,都会影响到社会稳定和国家安宁。而要做到这一切,必须在党的领导下,推进改革开放,坚持走中国特色社会主义道路。
我担任总理已近9年了。这段时期,我们国家遇到许多灾害和困难。从2003年的“非典”到2008年的汶川大地震,再到2010年舟曲特大山洪泥石流灾害,各种自然灾害和突发事件几乎没有中断过。百年不遇的国际金融危机已持续4年之久,给中国经济发展带来了极大的冲击。在这种情况下,我们的人民没有畏惧,没有退缩,总是满怀信心、坚持不懈地努力把自己的事情办好。我十分清楚,实现现代化目标,任务还十分艰巨,需要许多代人的长期艰苦奋斗。这一历史任务必将落在你们青年人肩上。未来是属于青年的。青年兴则国家兴,青年强则国家强。但愿青年朋友们以青春之人生,创造青春之中国、青春之社会,实现中华民族的伟大复兴。
讲到这里,我又想起了南开,中国没有南开不行,南开不与时俱进不行。这句话的意思是,中国需要教育,更需要有理想、有本领、勇于献身的青年,这是中国命脉之所在。张伯苓先生自创办南开之日起,就善于借鉴世界优秀文明成果,紧密结合中国国情,坚持自主办学,重视教育改革和创新,提倡个性教育和多样化教育,推崇“独立之精神、自由之思想”,努力培养全面发展的人才。57年前,当我坐在这座礼堂里第一次参加开学典礼的时候,杨坚白校长和杨志行校长穿着一样的米色中山装,并肩站在讲台上,用他们特有的气质给大家讲话,告诉我们做人的道理,这一幕我至今难以忘怀。南开之所以涌现出一大批志士仁人和科技、文化俊才,是因为她有自己的灵魂。人是要有灵魂的,学校也要有灵魂。让我们牢记“允公允能、日新月异”的校训,共同努力把南开办得更好,使“巍巍我南开精神”发扬光大,代代相传。
南开培养了我,南开是我心里的一块圣地,我是爱南开的。过去如此,现在依旧,而且愈发强烈。南开精神像一盏明灯,始终照亮着每一个南开人前进的道路。我愿同师生们一起奋斗,做一个无愧于南开的南开人!
温家宝
(2011年10月25日)
《 光明日报 》( 2011年10月29日 02 版)
同学们、老师们:
屈指算来,我阔别南开中学已51年了,正式回母校看望师生,这还是第一次。我愿借此机会同大家谈谈心。
我1942年农历八月出生在天津北郊宜兴埠一个书香门第。我爷爷在村子里办学校,曾祖父是农民。再往以前,我家都是农民。我们家是从什么地方来到天津的,至今也没有人能说清楚。据说是从山西来投奔这里的温氏家族的。因为家里穷、没有地位,温氏家谱始终没有把我们家列入其中。
爷爷办的乡村小学,是冲破地主豪绅的阻力,第一个招收女生的学校。我记得,他常年为两件事奔波:一件是招聘教师,一件是为学校筹款。就是这样一所小学,很多教师都是大学毕业生,有的解放后当了教授。外婆家也在本村,外公去世很早,外婆靠开一个小药店谋生,家里还种着几亩地。每年秋天收玉米时,我坐在板车上玉米堆里从地里回家的情景至今历历在目。
我出生的年月正是日本侵略者在华北大扫荡和实行“三光”政策的时期。妈妈对我讲的一件事,至今记忆犹新:日本侵略者将全村人集合在村西南的空地上,四周架起机关枪,用刺刀杀死无辜的平民。当时,妈妈把我紧紧搂在怀里。这件事深深刻在我的脑海里。
天津解放前夕,国民党军队为“坚壁清野”放火烧了宜兴埠。我的家连同爷爷办的学校、外婆家和她的小药店,全部化为灰烬。我们家逃难到天津城里,住在救济院。外婆在逃难中生了病,没过多久就去世了。她是最疼爱我的人。孩提时代,她抱着我,我常常揪她的头发,她一点儿也不生气。天津解放的那一晚,是一个不眠之夜。解放军包围了驻扎在救济院里的国民党军队,当晚进行了激战,手榴弹扔进了院子里,家里人都害怕地躲在床铺下,我却一点儿也没有害怕。第二天,天津解放了。
我的童年是在战争和苦难中度过的,穷困、动荡、饥荒的往事在我幼小的心灵里留下了难以磨灭的印象。我深知,这不是我们一个家庭的苦难,也不是我出生的那个年代的苦难,中华民族的历史就是一部苦难史。我逐渐认识到一个道理:中华民族灾难深重极了,唯有科学、求实、民主、奋斗,才能拯救中国。“如将不尽,与古为新”、“周虽旧邦,其命维新”。只有推翻封建专制和官僚买办的统治,人民才能得到解放;只有不断革新,中国才能进步。
在我上小学、中学期间,家境十分贫寒。父母和我们三兄妹一直租住在一间不到9平方米的小屋子里,每月的房租相当于一袋面粉钱,那时父亲月工资最低时只有37元。我患过一次白喉,父亲把仅有的一块手表卖掉,买药给我打针。此后他多年没有戴过手表。因为经常目睹普通百姓生活的艰辛,我从小就富有同情心,这尤其表现为对普通百姓特别是穷人的同情,对不公道事情的憎恶。一种朴素的平等观念在我的心中萌生:人人生而平等,社会的每一个成员都应平等相处。
我的中学是在南开上的。从12岁到18岁是一个人成长的关键时期。因此,南开六年的学习生活,对我人生观的形成有着重要影响,也给我留下了终生难忘的印象。南开中学是一所历史悠久的学校,她的建立、成长和发展始终同国家的兴衰和民族的命运联系在一起。无论是战争年代,还是建设时期,她都为国家输送了大批人才,这就是南开的道路。我在这所学校里学习,首先懂得的就是一个人必须有远大的理想,有崇高的志向。从小就应该立志把自己的一生献给祖国和人民。我努力学习知识,坚持锻炼身体,刻苦自励,从学习和生活的点点滴滴入手,努力把自己造就成为一个对国家和人民有用的人。南开的校训是“允公允能,日新月异”。这八个字就是南开的灵魂,它提倡的是为公、进步、创新和改革。我上中学时就愿意独立思考,渴望发现问题,探索真知,追求真理。我记得,那时除了学习课本知识以外,我还广泛阅读国内外政治、经济、文化书籍。南开永葆青春,这就是南开精神。在求学期间,我和同学们总是朝气蓬勃,不怕困难,勇往直前。除了学习以外,我还喜欢参加各种课外活动。我不仅爱读书,还是体育爱好者。南开永远年轻,她的学生也都充满活力。我们要坚持走南开的道路,崇尚南开的风格,发扬南开的精神。
上高中和大学以后,我家里人在接连不断的政治运动中受到冲击。爷爷在1960年因脑溢血去世,是我把他背进医院的。现在他教过书的学校还留着他的档案,里面装了一篇篇的“检查”,小楷字写得工工整整,字里行间流露出对人民教育事业的忠诚。父亲也在1960年因被审查所谓的“历史问题”,不能教书,被送到郊外一个农场养猪,后来到图书馆工作。我考上大学向他告别就是在离城很远的养猪场。父亲告假回家帮我收拾行李。他是个老实人,一辈子勤勤恳恳。今年他过世了,可谓“生得安分,走得安详”。尽管家里出现这样一些情况,我仍然追求进步。我是个善于思考的人,我总是把书本里学到的东西同现实加以比较,立志为改造社会而献身。
因为父亲喜欢自然地理,我从小就对地球科学产生了兴趣。在北京地质学院,我在地质系就读5年。大学期间,我加入了中国共产党。后来又考取了研究生,专攻大地构造。回忆在地质学院近8年的学习和生活,我曾概括为三句话:母校给了我地质学知识,母校给了我克服困难的勇气,母校给了我接触群众的机会。那段时期同样是难忘的。
参加工作以后,我有14年时间是在海拔4000到5000米的极其艰苦的祁连山区和北山沙漠戈壁地区工作。这期间,我一边工作一边接触基层群众,更使我深深懂得了民生的疾苦和稼穑的艰难。我来自人民,我也有苦难的童年,我同情每一个穷人,愿为他们的幸福献出自己的一切。到中央工作后,从上世纪80年代中期开始,我用整整10年时间,深入农村、厂矿、科研院所调研。在农村,我白天坐在农民家的炕头上了解情况,晚上开座谈会。我住过乡里、住过粮库,经常在一个县一呆就是一个星期。我几乎走遍了中国科学院的研究所,同科学家交朋友、谈心。我认为,一个领导者最重要的是要懂得民情、民心、民意,而民心向背决定政权的存亡。衡量政策好坏的标准只有一条,就是群众高兴不高兴、满意不满意、答应不答应。我之所以经常讲穷人的经济学、穷人的政治学和穷人的教育学,就是想让人们懂得在中国乃至世界上,穷人占多数。一个政府、一个社会应该更多地关爱穷人,穷人应该拥有平等的权利。在中国,不懂得穷人,不懂得农民和城市贫困阶层,也就不会懂得穷人的经济学,更不可能树立穷人的教育观。公平的核心是在生存、竞争和发展的机会上人人平等,而不是基于财富或其他特权的平等。一个政府如果忽视民众和民生,就是忽视了根本。而公平和正义是社会的顶梁柱,失去了它,社会这个大厦就会倒塌。“国之命,在人心”,说的就是人心向背决定社会的发展和政权的存亡。政府是穷人最后的希望,民众的贫穷是政府最痛心的事。只有把这些道理真正弄懂,才算真正理解“以人为本”的含义。
新中国成立60多年来,特别是改革开放30多年来,我国经济社会发展取得了很大的成就,这是有目共睹的,必须充分肯定。但也要看到,我国经济社会发展还存在不平衡、不协调、不可持续的问题,城乡差距、地区差距依然存在;一些地方还存在干部脱离群众,形式主义、官僚主义严重,甚至以权谋私和贪污腐败的现象;收入分配不合理,有的地方社会矛盾比较突出,群体性事件时有发生。在这种情况下,我们必须做好经济发展、社会公正、民主法治和干部廉洁这几件大事。这都是人心所向,无论哪个方面出了问题,都会影响到社会稳定和国家安宁。而要做到这一切,必须在党的领导下,推进改革开放,坚持走中国特色社会主义道路。
我担任总理已近9年了。这段时期,我们国家遇到许多灾害和困难。从2003年的“非典”到2008年的汶川大地震,再到2010年舟曲特大山洪泥石流灾害,各种自然灾害和突发事件几乎没有中断过。百年不遇的国际金融危机已持续4年之久,给中国经济发展带来了极大的冲击。在这种情况下,我们的人民没有畏惧,没有退缩,总是满怀信心、坚持不懈地努力把自己的事情办好。我十分清楚,实现现代化目标,任务还十分艰巨,需要许多代人的长期艰苦奋斗。这一历史任务必将落在你们青年人肩上。未来是属于青年的。青年兴则国家兴,青年强则国家强。但愿青年朋友们以青春之人生,创造青春之中国、青春之社会,实现中华民族的伟大复兴。
讲到这里,我又想起了南开,中国没有南开不行,南开不与时俱进不行。这句话的意思是,中国需要教育,更需要有理想、有本领、勇于献身的青年,这是中国命脉之所在。张伯苓先生自创办南开之日起,就善于借鉴世界优秀文明成果,紧密结合中国国情,坚持自主办学,重视教育改革和创新,提倡个性教育和多样化教育,推崇“独立之精神、自由之思想”,努力培养全面发展的人才。57年前,当我坐在这座礼堂里第一次参加开学典礼的时候,杨坚白校长和杨志行校长穿着一样的米色中山装,并肩站在讲台上,用他们特有的气质给大家讲话,告诉我们做人的道理,这一幕我至今难以忘怀。南开之所以涌现出一大批志士仁人和科技、文化俊才,是因为她有自己的灵魂。人是要有灵魂的,学校也要有灵魂。让我们牢记“允公允能、日新月异”的校训,共同努力把南开办得更好,使“巍巍我南开精神”发扬光大,代代相传。
南开培养了我,南开是我心里的一块圣地,我是爱南开的。过去如此,现在依旧,而且愈发强烈。南开精神像一盏明灯,始终照亮着每一个南开人前进的道路。我愿同师生们一起奋斗,做一个无愧于南开的南开人!
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.
Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.
When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.
We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true.
He was the opposite of absent-minded.
He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.
When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.
Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.
He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.
Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”
When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.
They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.
This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.
Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.
Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.
Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.
Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.
One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.
By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html
By MONA SIMPSON
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.
Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.
When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.
We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true.
He was the opposite of absent-minded.
He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.
When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.
Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.
He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.
Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”
When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.
They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.
This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.
Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.
Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.
Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.
Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.
One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.
By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html
订阅:
博文 (Atom)