What is it about our way of inhabiting our own agency that makes us so directed towards future states of affairs

我们内心深处为何如此倾向于关注未来的事态呢

that we don’t completely control whether or not they come about?

而且那些还是我们根本无法控制是否会发生的事

So these are things that may happen.

那些事情可能会发生

They’re things that we can work towards, but we never have any guarantee that they will happen.

我们可以为之努力 但却无法保证它们一定会出现

And yet we invest a lot of our energy in that.

但我们却依然乐此不疲地为之奋斗

I’ve come to think of that as a very special and characteristic feature of our own human agency, that we are structured in that way.

我觉得那是我们人类特有的性格特点 我们生来就是这个样子

We just do not have very fulfilling or happy human lives if we’re not directing our agency,

如果我们不去憧憬未来 不去向往那些让人期待的事情 不对未来抱有希望

our energy towards those anticipated events, hoped for events.

我们的生活就不会充实 不会快乐

When we think about human development we’re a very atypical kind of species insofar as when we’re born, unlike most other species,

想想人类的发展 我们生来就是一种极其特殊的物种 不同于其他多数物种

we have very little self-standing capacity to survive in the world. We need other people. We need our parents.

我们的自立能力太弱 无法在世上存活 我们需要他人 需要父母

We need other caregivers to help us develop the kinds of skills or capacities we need to be able to survive, to be able to flourish in our world.

需要其他看护人来教会我们生存所需的技能或能力 以便在这世上繁荣昌盛

So we rely on others to give us those skills, to teach us those skills, to enable us to become fully fledged autonomous individuals.

我们依赖他人教会我们这些技能 让我们成为全面发展的独立个体

And that process is a long drawn out one and it involves a certain important relationship with our caregivers

而这个过程很漫长 包括我们与看护人之间产生的某种很重要的关系

that they’re able to structure our environment in such a way that they bring us little by little into certain rather complex sorts of engagements with the world,

他们能构建我们周围的环境 并让我们慢慢与这个世界产生各种复杂的联系

allowing us little by little to build up our capacities for linguistic engagement, for the kind of skills we need to play with toys.

让我们逐渐建立起语言能力 玩耍能力

You know when you think about very early development and the way a mother may be interacting with her child.

想想人生最初的阶段 妈妈与孩子之间的互动方式

Showing the child how to handle a toy or something so the child now comes to be able to do it for him or herself.

妈妈向孩子展示怎么玩玩具 让他/她后来能够自己玩耍

Those are very small acts but those are the way we build up all our skills through our long protracted development.

这些都是很细小的行为 但我们就是以这种长期持续发展的方式掌握了这些技能

And that’s what psychologists have called parental scaffolding

这就是心理学家所谓的父母脚手架

that we treat our infants as if they’re capable of doing things that they’re not quite yet capable of

在婴儿还不能做某些事的时候 我们以他们已经拥有了这些能力的方式来对待他们

but we’re structuring a world for them in which they’re able to try and explore their limitations and maybe be frustrated at times.

但我们会为他们构建一个世界 让他们尽情去尝试和探索自己的极限 时不时还会遭遇打击

But slowly, little by little, learn how to do things for themselves that they couldn’t do initially.

但他们会慢慢一点一点地学会那些一开始不会做的事情