RESISTANCE AND RATIONALIZATION
Rationalization is Resistance’s right-hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.
MICHAEL
Don’t knock rationalization. Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who can get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
SAM
Aw, come on! Nothing’s more important than sex.
MICHAEL
Oh yeah? Have you ever gone a week without a rationalization?
—Jeff Goldblum and Tom Berenger, in Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill
But rationalization has its own sidekick. It’s that part of our psyche that actually believes what rationalization tells us.
It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.
RESISTANCE AND RATIONALIZATION, PART TWO
Resistance is fear. But Resistance is too cunning to show itself naked in this form. Why? Because if Resistance lets us see clearly that our own fear is preventing us from doing our work, we may feel shame at this. And shame may drive us to act in the face of fear.
Resistance doesn’t want us to do this. So it brings in Rationalization. Rationalization is Resistance’s spin doctor. It’s Resistance’s way of hiding the Big Stick behind its back. Instead of showing us our fear (which might shame us and impel us to do our work), Resistance presents us with a series of plausible, rational justifications for why we shouldn’t do our work.
What’s particularly insidious about the rationalizations that Resistance presents to us is that a lot of them are true. They’re legitimate. Our wife may really be in her eighth month of pregnancy; she may in truth need us at home. Our department may really be instituting a changeover that will eat up hours of our time. Indeed it may make sense to put off finishing our dissertation, at least till after the baby’s born.
What Resistance leaves out, of course, is that all this means diddly. Tolstoy had thirteen kids and wrote War and Peace. Lance Armstrong had cancer and won the Tour de France three years and counting.
抵抗与合理化
合理化是抵抗的得力助手。它的作用是防止当我们面对自己是个没有做好工作的懦夫的事实而感到羞愧。
迈克尔
不要合理化。如果没有它，我们会在哪里?我不知道谁能在没有两三个有趣借口的情况下度过一天。它们比性爱更重要。
山姆
哦,来吧!没有什么比性爱更重要。
迈克尔
哦,是吗?你是否有过一个星期没有合理安排的经历?
-Jeff Goldblum和Tom Berenger，在劳伦斯·卡斯丹的《大冷》中
但合理化也有它的伙伴。实际上我们心灵的一部分相信合理化告诉我们的。
欺骗自己是一回事。相信它是另一回事。
抵抗与合理化,第二部分
抵抗是恐惧。但是抵抗太狡猾了，它不会以这种形式暴露自己。为什么?因为如果抵抗让我们清楚地看到我们自己的恐惧正在阻止我们做我们的工作，我们可能会为此感到羞耻。羞愧会驱使我们面对恐惧而采取行动。
抵抗不希望我们这样做。所以它带来了合理化。合理化是抵抗的顾问。这是抵抗把大棒藏在背后的方式。抵抗并没有向我们展示我们的恐惧(这可能会让我们感到羞耻并迫使我们去做我们的工作)，相反，它为我们提供了一系列合理的理由来解释为什么我们不应该去做我们的工作。
抵抗给我们提供的理由中最阴险的一点是，很多理由都是真的。他们是合理的。我们的妻子可能已经怀孕八个月了;她可能真的需要我们呆在家里。我们系可能真的在进行一项会占用我们几个小时时间的变革。事实上，推迟完成我们的论文是有道理的，至少在孩子出生后。
当然，抵抗所遗漏的是，所有这些都是微不足道的。托尔斯泰有13个孩子，写了《战争与和平》。兰斯·阿姆斯特朗得了癌症，仍赢得了三届环法自行车赛冠军。
