少消费，多创造，更有趣_风闻

Consume Less. Create More. It’s More Fun.

少消费，多创造，更有趣

Pavel Durov 帕维尔 · 杜罗夫

原文地址

按：未必同意他所说的全部，但内容观点确有启发。

Big corporations use marketing to trick us into thinking that the solution to all our problems lies in buying more of their stuff.

大公司利用市场营销欺骗我们，让我们认为解决所有问题的方法在于购买更多他们的产品。

The real solution is often the exact opposite: it consists in consuming less, not more. In most cases, our problems are caused by overconsumption in the first place.  

真正的解决方案往往恰恰相反: 消费更少，而不是更多。在大多数情况下，我们的问题首先是由过度消费引起的。

For example, if you are overweight, you will be bombarded with ads for gym subscriptions or food supplements. But the key to losing weight is eating less – not new shoes and protein powder.  

例如，如果你超重，你会被健身房广告或食品补充剂的广告轰炸。但是减肥的关键是少吃——而不是新鞋和蛋白粉。

Or, if you struggle with headaches and stress, they will try to sell you headache pills and antidepressants. But to really decrease stress, you should start sleeping and walking more instead of consuming entertainment products and browsing social media late at night. Pills are never designed to be a permanent solution: they lose power over time and cause side effects that will in turn require more pills. Once you embark on the endless journey of consumption, you get stuck in a trap designed to make you miserable and corporations happy.

或者，如果你正在与头痛和压力做斗争，他们会试图向你推销头痛药和抗抑郁药。但是为了真正减轻压力，你应该开始多睡觉和走路，而不是在深夜消费娱乐产品和浏览社交媒体。药丸从来都不是一种永久的解决方案: 它们会随着时间的推移而失去作用，并产生副作用，这反过来又需要更多的药丸。一旦你踏上了无止境的消费之旅，你就会陷入一个陷阱，陷入这个陷阱的目的是让你痛苦，让公司高兴。

Through evolution, Mother Nature has equipped us to efficiently cope with deficits of resources, but it never prepared us for life in the relative abundance we have now. Today, more people die from obesity than from hunger, and more people suffer from anxiety caused by information overload than from lack of news. 

通过进化，大自然母亲使我们能够有效地应对资源的短缺，但是它从来没有让我们为我们现在拥有的相对丰富的生活做好准备。今天，更多的人死于肥胖而不是饥饿，更多的人遭受由信息超载引起的焦虑而不是缺乏新闻。

Human DNA, our hardware, is obsolete. It stopped evolving about 10,000-20,000 years ago when we still lived in small hunter-gatherer communities. Back then, every sweet bite and every piece of information was extremely valuable. We now live in megacities, surrounded by tons of cheap sugar, but our DNA doesn’t know that. Our bodies still accumulate excess fat to prepare for harsh hungry winters that never come. Our minds cling to every disturbing piece of news telling us about threats that never materialize.

人类的 DNA，我们的硬件，已经过时了。当我们还生活在小型的狩猎-采集社区时，它就停止了进化。那时候，每一口甜食和每一条信息都是极其宝贵的。我们现在生活在大城市里，周围环绕着成吨的廉价糖，但我们的 DNA 并不知道这一点。我们的身体仍然在积累多余的脂肪，为永远不会到来的严酷饥饿的冬天做准备。我们的头脑紧紧抓住每一条令人不安的消息，这些消息告诉我们威胁从未实现。

This biological paradox is made worse by our economic system which emphasises GDP growth and maximized corporate profits. People are encouraged to increase consumption by both governments and corporations. It’s not a coincidence that the US, a country that excelled in economic growth in the 20th century, is also the most obese developed country in the world. Their market-driven society became too efficient for its own good.

我们强调 GDP 增长和企业利润最大化的经济体系使这种生物学悖论变得更加严重。政府和企业都鼓励人们增加消费。美国，一个在20世纪经济增长卓越的国家，同时也是世界上最肥胖的发达国家，这并非巧合。他们以市场为导向的社会为了自身的利益变得过于高效。

Not only is this system harmful to humans, it is also unsustainable in the long-term. Unlike corporate appetites, our planet’s resources are finite. We became very efficient in making and selling ourselves stuff we don’t need, but it is the planet which pays the bill. Our bodies still expect us to be living in the pristine environment we had 10,000-20,000 years ago, full of green forests and clean lakes. As we keep destroying our own habitat in the eternal quest for economic growth, the number of diseases caused by pollution continues to rise. 

这个系统不仅对人类有害，而且从长远来看也是不可持续的。与企业的胃口不同，我们这个星球的资源是有限的。我们在制造和销售我们自己不需要的东西上变得非常有效率，但是付账单的却是这个星球。我们的身体仍然期望我们生活在10,000-20,000年前的原始环境中，充满了绿色的森林和干净的湖泊。随着我们为了经济增长而不断破坏自己的栖息地，由污染引起的疾病数量继续上升。

I was lucky to become wealthy early in my life. By the time I was 22, I had a million dollars in my bank account, by 25 – tens of millions, by 28 – hundreds of millions. However, this has never been what made me happy. 

我很幸运，在我生命的早期就变得富有。到我22岁的时候，我的银行账户里已经有了一百万美元，大概有2500万美元，2800万美元。然而，这从来都不是我快乐的原因。

My real luck was in realizing pretty early that the most rewarding kind of occupation is creating things, not consuming them. So instead of buying yachts, airplanes and expensive real estate, I focused on what I enjoyed most – creating social platforms that (hopefully) bring good to humanity. I spent most of my personal funds on Telegram for people to enjoy a free service that strives for perfection. 

我真正的运气是很早就意识到，最有价值的职业是创造东西，而不是消费它们。因此，我没有购买游艇、飞机和昂贵的房地产，而是专注于自己最喜欢的东西——创造社交平台，希望这些平台能给人类带来好处。我把我的大部分个人资金都花在了 Telegram 上，让人们享受一项追求完美的免费服务。

I consider the ability to create things for others the most valuable – and rewarding – asset of mine. I suspect one of the reasons I happened to get wealthy in the process of doing what I love is because money has never been an important goal for me. 

我认为为他人创造东西的能力是我最有价值和回报的资产。我怀疑我在做自己喜欢的事情的过程中变得富有的原因之一是因为金钱从来不是我的重要目标。

When I was a student, I liked building games and websites. Back then, it was considered an occupation for nerds. Promising students were expected to practice law or solve business cases. But I never really cared about how other people defined success. For me, success was in the ability to spend time creating things that I liked.

当我还是个学生的时候，我喜欢做游戏和网站。那时候，它被认为是书呆子的职业。希望有前途的学生从事法律工作或解决商业案件。但我从未真正关心过别人如何定义成功。对我来说，成功在于能够花时间创造我喜欢的东西。

I never regret not buying expensive stuff wealthy people like to surround themselves with. The only regret I have is not having more time to build things. 

我从不后悔没有买有钱人喜欢的昂贵的东西。我唯一的遗憾就是没有更多的时间去建造东西。

We live in an era when the possibilities for human creativity are endless. One can invent robots, edit genes, design virtual worlds… There are so many exciting unknown areas to explore. I hope that more people will discover the enjoyment of building things for others. I hope that one day we, as a species, will turn away from the self-destructive path of never-ending consumption to a fulfilling journey of creating a better world for ourselves and those around us.

我们生活在一个人类创造无限可能的时代。一个人可以发明机器人，编辑基因，设计虚拟世界… … 有这么多令人兴奋的未知领域可以探索。我希望更多的人能够发现为他人建造物品的乐趣。我希望有一天，我们作为一个物种，将从永无止境的消费自我毁灭的道路，转向为我们自己和我们周围的人创造一个更美好世界的充实之旅。