生於1980—2000年, 頑固的樂觀主義者

Suddenly, as you may have noticed, millennials are everywhere. Not that this group of people born after 1980 and before 2000 — a giant cohort now estimated to number at least 80 million Americans, more than the baby boom generation — was ever invisible. What's changed is their status. Coddled and helicoptered, catered to by 24-hour TV cable networks, fussed over by marketers and college recruiters, dissected by psychologists, demographers and trend-spotters, the millennial generation has come fully into its own. The word "millennial," whether as noun or adjective, has monopolized the nonstop cultural conversation, invariably freighted with zeitgeisty import.

你可能已經注意到了，突然之間到處都是千禧一代，也就是出生在1980年之後、2000年之前的人。在美國，這個龐大的羣體估計至少有8000萬人，比嬰兒潮時代的人還多。你之前並不是沒有注意到他們，只是他們的地位發生了變化。他們被嬌慣，享受24小時有線電視網，被市場營銷人員和大學招生人員過分關心，被心理學家、人口學家和時尚達人剖析，如今他們終於形成了氣候。“千禧”這個詞不管是用作名詞還是形容詞，已經壟斷了無休無止的文化交流，總是盛載着時代思潮。

This newspaper is no exception. A recent search of The New York Times database turned up no fewer than 122 mentions of "millennial" so far in 2014, on topics ranging from TV and pop music to travel and literature.

《紐約時報》也不例外。最近在本報的數據庫裏進行搜索，發現2014年到目前爲止“千禧”一詞至少被提到122次，主題涉及電視、流行音樂、旅行和文學。

A random sampling:

我隨便選了幾段：

1. "Fusion was created in October as both a cable network and a digital network aimed at a younger, so-called millennial audience and is committed to telling and delivering the news in ways that a young audience expects."

1. “10月份創立的Fusion是針對更年輕的千禧一代的有線電視網和數字網絡，致力於用年輕觀衆期待的方式講述和傳遞新聞。”

2. "Lana Del Rey, the pouty, retro torch singer for the millennial generation. ..."

2. 復古傷感歌手“拉娜·德雷(Lana Del Rey)有着撅起的嘴脣，深受千禧一代喜愛……”

3. "On the heels of hotels like Yotel and Aloft, a crop of new brands is designed for millennial travelers.

3.“繼Yotel和Aloft等旅館之後，出現了一大堆爲千禧一代旅行者設計的新品牌……”

4. "Elyria is disengaged and depleted in a manner that put me in mind of the characters in the novels of Tao Lin, that Zen summoner of millennial ennui."

4. “林韜堪稱千禧年倦怠感的禪宗召喚者，伊利里亞(Elyria)的與世隔絕和精疲力竭讓我想起了他小說中的人物。”

Why this microscopic attention paid to a generation whose oldest members are only now entering the prime of their adult lives? One answer is that millennials, the first people to come of age in the 21st century, with its dizzying rate of technological change, have been forced to invent new ways of navigating it.

千禧一代中年齡最大的現在也纔剛步入成年的巔峯時期，可人們爲什麼對這一代人進行了如此細緻的觀察？其中一個原因是，他們是21世紀的第一批成年人，技術革新的飛速發展迫使他們想出新辦法來駕馭它。

But first, what besides youth sets millennials apart from their elders — the wizened silent generation, the graying boomers, the midlife Gen-X'ers?

但是首先，除了年輕，還有什麼能把千禧一代和老去的沉默一代、頭髮花白的嬰兒潮一代和步入中年的X一代區分開來呢？

The usual answer seems to be "narcissism" — self-absorption indulged to comical extremes. We all can recite the evidence: the breathlessly updated Facebook profile, the cascade of selfies, the Kardashians.

最常見的答案似乎是“自戀”——他們的自戀已經到了可笑的地步。我們都能舉出很多例子：不停更新的Facebook，數不清的自拍照，以及卡戴珊姐妹。

Millennials know this litany, too. "People have been calling me a narcissist since I was 3," says Hannah, the character Lena Dunham plays in "Girls," her comedy of millennial manners. It's a small joke on Hannah but a bigger one on the anxious, hovering adults who supplied the clucking soundtrack when she was growing up.

千禧一代也知道這些長篇大論。“從我三歲起，就有人說我自戀，”電視劇《都市女孩》(Girls)中莉娜·杜漢姆(Lena Dunham)扮演的漢娜(Hannah)說。杜漢姆創作的這部喜劇講的是千禧一代的行爲方式。對漢娜來說這是個小玩笑，但是對她成長過程中的那些焦慮彷徨，嘖嘖做聲的成年人來說，這可不是小事。

But a very different picture of millennials emerges from what may be the most illuminating literary project of our era, the Pew Research Center's sequence of reports on millennials. The 2010 edition, subtitled "Confident. Connected. Open to Change," offered an X-ray of its first wave, the "roughly 50 million millennials who currently span the ages of 18 to 29."

皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)關於千禧一代的系列報告可能是我們這個時代最具啓發性的人文項目，它展示出一個非常不同的千禧一代形象。該報告2010年版的副標題是《自信，互聯，樂於變革》(Confident. Connected. Open to Change)，它剖析了第一批千禧一代，也就是“大約5000萬18歲至29歲的千禧一代”。

What Pew found was not an entitled generation but a complex and introspective one — with a far higher proportion of nonwhites than its predecessors as well as a greater number of people raised by a single parent. Its members also have weathered many large public traumas: the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, costly (and unresolved) wars, the Great Recession. Add to those the flood of images of Iraq and Katrina (and, for older millennials, Oklahoma City and Columbine) — episodes lived and relived, played and replayed, on TV and computer screens.

皮尤研究中心發現，這一代人並不是只懂享受，他們複雜而自省——和前輩們相比，非白種人的比例高了很多，而且有很多人是在單親家庭長大的。這一代人還經歷了很多重大公共創傷：911恐怖襲擊，代價慘重（且懸而未決）的戰爭，經濟大衰退。另外，伊拉克和卡特里娜颶風的圖像在電視和電腦屏幕上播了一遍又一遍——對於年長的千禧一代來說，還有俄克拉荷馬市颶風和科倫拜恩校園槍擊案。

For a generation digitally wired from childhood, and reared on apocalyptic videos and computer-generated movie epics, not to mention the exploits of hackers, these events showed the real world to be as tightly networked, and for that reason as easily disrupted as the virtual one, even as the grown-ups in charge, the guardians of order, seemed overwhelmed and overmatched, always a step behind.

這一代人從小就使用數碼產品，觀看災難視頻和充滿電腦特效的電影大片，還遭受過黑客攻擊，所以在他們看來，現實世界是密切相連的，因此也像虛擬世界一樣易受攻擊，而那些掌控大局的成年人和秩序維護者似乎不知所措，總是處於下風，晚了一步。

It is no surprise, as Pew reported, that the millennial generation is skeptical of institutions — political and religious — and prefers to improvise solutions to the challenges of the moment. It is one thing to own a smartphone, as so many of us do. It is quite another to have mastered its uses at age 10.

皮尤研究中心的報告指出，千禧一代對各種機構（政治機構和宗教組織）都持懷疑態度，更喜歡趕快想出解決當下問題的辦法。這並不奇怪。有智能手機是一回事，我們中的很多人都有，但是從十歲就掌握它的各種用處是另一回事。

Thus, in a range of areas, millennials have not only caught up, but have jumped out in front.

所以，在許多領域裏，千禧一代不只是趕上了我們，而且已經跳到了我們前面。

Consider the approach many take to the workplace. Thanks to the 2008 economic crash, millennials know how fleeting wealth can be. Their solution? For many, it is to acquire not more, but less.

想想他們中的很多人對待工作的態度吧。2008年的經濟危機讓千禧一代明白財富可能轉瞬即逝。他們的解決辦法是什麼呢？對他們中的很多人來說，不是要去賺更多的錢，而是要少賺些錢。

"Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of millennials said they would rather make $40,000 a year at a job they love than $100,000 a year at a job they think is boring," the Brookings Institution recently noted in a report by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais titled "How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America."

布魯金斯學院最近的一份報告指出，“將近三分之二(64%)的千禧一代說，他們寧願做一份自己喜歡的、年薪四萬美元的工作，也不去做他們覺得無聊的年薪十萬美元的工作”。該報告的作者是莫利·威諾格拉德(Morley Winograd)和邁克爾·海斯(Michael Hais)，標題是《千禧一代將如何顛覆華爾街和美國的所有公司》(How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America)。

The generation that gave us Occupy Wall Street has embraced its own modes of entrepreneurship, found across the broad spectrum of "creatives," from stylists to techies, who reject the presumed security of the corporate job and riskily pursue their own ventures, even if it means working out of their parents' basement. At the same time, record numbers of new college graduates are applying for jobs in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps or Teach for America.

進行“佔領華爾街”運動的千禧一代有自己的企業家精神，他們出現在各個“創意”領域，從造型師到計算機專業人員，他們拒絕一般人認爲有保障的公司工作，冒險去追求自己的創業夢，即使要在父母的地下室裏玩命工作也沒關係。與此同時，應聘美國和平隊(Peace Corps)、美國國民服務隊(AmeriCorps) 或“爲美國教書”組織(Teach for America)的大學畢業生人數也創下了紀錄。

Consider millennial shopping habits. Even in the realm of fashion, many are indifferent to prestige brands and lavish ad campaigns, preferring to buy online or get "disposable" clothing at H & M or Zara, which boasts that its organically farmed cottons are "completely free of pesticides, chemicals and bleach."

再來看看千禧一代的消費習慣。甚至連時尚界的很多千禧一代也不在乎大牌和奢華的廣告營銷，他們更喜歡網購或者在H&M或Zara購買“可以丟棄的”衣服，這些衣服號稱用的是“完全不含殺蟲劑、化學制劑和漂白劑”的有機棉花。

The do-goodish pitch is aimed squarely at millennials, who collectively favor companies that embrace the values of good citizenship. The Brookings report says millennials overwhelmingly "responded with increased trust (91 percent) and loyalty (89 percent), as well as a stronger likelihood to buy from those companies that supported solutions to specific social issues (89 percent)."

這種行善的營銷方式針對的正是千禧一代，這一代人喜歡那些信奉良好公民理念的公司。布魯金斯學院的報告稱，千禧一代中的絕大多數人“都對那些爲具體社會問題提供解決方案的公司有着更高的信任(91%)和忠誠度(89%)，而且更有可能購買它們的產品(89%)”。

And consider food. The new generation may have had health-consciousness drilled into them at home or in school. But they have raised it to a new level. "For millennials, food isn't just food. It's community," The Washington Post reported last year in an article on the Silver Diner chain, which has developed an up-to-the-minute locavore menu and "started actively catering to those on vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free diets."

再來看看飲食。千禧一代可能已經在家裏或學校被灌輸了健康理念。但他們把它提高到了一個新的層次。《華盛頓郵報》去年的一篇關於Silver Diner連鎖餐館的報道說，“對千禧一代來說，食物不只是食物，還是社羣。”該連鎖餐館開發了一份最新的本土菜單，而且“開始積極迎合那些嚴格素食者、一般素食者和堅持無麩質飲食的人”。

It was a shrewd calculation. An estimated 12 percent of millennials say they are "faithful vegetarians," compared with 4 percent of Gen X'ers and 1 percent of baby boomers, according to one study.

這是個聰明的做法。一項研究表明，約有12%的千禧一代稱自己是“忠實的素食者”，而只有 4%的X一代和1%的嬰兒潮一代會這麼說。

Taken together, these habits and tastes look less like narcissism than communalism. And its highest value isn't self-promotion, but its opposite, empathy — an open-minded and -hearted connection to others.

總而言之，這些習慣和口味不太像自戀，而更像社羣主義。它的最高價值觀不是自我推銷，而是它的對立面——同情心：和別人真心交往的開放心態。

Exhibit A may be LeBron James, the N.B.A. superstar who in July announced that he would be going back to rust-belt Cleveland after four glamorous years in Miami, becoming, at age 29, one of America's wealthiest boomerang children.

第一個例子是NBA超級巨星勒布朗·詹姆斯(LeBron James)。他在邁阿密熱火隊度過輝煌的四年後，今年7月份宣佈將回歸沒落的克利夫蘭騎士隊。29歲的他成爲返回故鄉的最富有的美國孩子之一。

"Miami, for me, has been almost like college for other kids," James explained in a statement on exuding millennial earnestness. "My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn't realize that four years ago. I do now."

“對我來說，邁阿密熱火隊有點像其他孩子眼裏的大學，”詹姆斯在上發佈的聲明流露出千禧一代的誠懇，“我與俄亥俄州東北部的關係重於籃球。四年前我沒意識到這一點，但現在我意識到了。”

Four years ago, he meant, when he seemed the picture of self-importance, proclaiming on a live ESPN spectacle that he would "take my talents to South Beach."

他指的是四年前有點自大的他在娛樂體育節目電視網(ESPN)的一次直播節目中宣稱，他將“把我的才華帶到南部海灘去”。

But James didn't develop his new vocabulary of civic obligation and social responsibility overnight. On the contrary, he was a model teammate in Miami, insistently deflecting praise to others. He also helped lead the campaign to hold the former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling accountable for racially charged blurtings when they became public last spring.

但詹姆斯沒有在一夜之間想出公民義務和社會責任之類的新詞。相反，在熱火隊他是個模範隊友，總是把讚揚轉給別人。去年春天，前洛杉磯快船隊老闆唐納德·斯特林(Donald Sterling)的種族歧視言論曝光後，詹姆斯還幫助領導了要求他對此負責的抗議行動。

Tellingly, James reacted forcefully on Twitter. In common with other millennials, he has made social media, with its many opportunities for "oversharing" self-display, a means of communication that pushes outward, instead of turning inward.

詹姆斯在Twitter上進行了有力迴應。雖然社交媒體很容易成爲過度自我展示的平臺，但是和其他千禧一代一樣，他把它們變成了一種向外溝通而非只關注自我的工具。

And he is not alone. We all know about celebrity-stalking websites like Gawker and TMZ, and the harm they wantonly inflict. But the millennial Brandon Stanton, a 30-year-old former bond trader and self-taught camera portraitist, has created a counterexample in "Humans of New York," his popular photo blog.

而且這麼做的不只他一個人。我們都知道Gawker和TMZ等跟蹤明星的網站以及它們對明星的肆意傷害。但30歲的千禧一代布蘭登·斯坦頓(Brandon Stanton)卻樹立了一個相反的例子。他曾做過證券交易員，後來自學成爲肖像攝影師，創立了一個很受歡迎的照片博客——“紐約人物”(Humans of New York)。

Combing streets and parks, Mr. Stanton takes pictures of ordinary people and interviews them about their lives. The resulting images and excerpts give dignity to what might otherwise be forgotten faces in the urban crowd. Published in book form, "Humans of New York" became a No. 1 best seller last fall.

斯坦頓在街上和公園裏爲普通人拍照，並採訪他們的生活。最後的照片和採訪節選將尊嚴賦予都市人潮中可能被忽略的一張張面孔。去年秋天，結集出版的《紐約人物》榮登暢銷書榜首。

A similar theme illuminates the writings of Leslie Jamison, a 31-year-old Yale graduate student who has emerged as an accomplished essayist in her acclaimed book "The Empathy Exams." On the surface, Ms. Jamison's confessional writings look like exhibitionism — including the title essay, which records her time as a "medical actor" enacting a script of symptoms for the benefit of medical students.

31歲的萊斯莉·賈米森(Leslie Jamison)的著作也闡明瞭同樣的主題。她是耶魯大學的研究生，憑藉飽受讚揚的《同情心檢查》(The Empathy Exams)一躍成爲知名散文作家。表面上看，賈米森的自傳體作品有點暴露癖——包括書中的同名散文，說的是她爲醫學院的學生們充當“醫學演員”，按照腳本表演各種疾病症狀。

Yet she has been deluged with mail from grateful readers, who have poured forth their own, often harrowing experiences. "I found myself becoming an unwitting confessor to countless strangers," Ms. Jamison wrote last month in The Guardian. "I started to feel like confession could be the opposite of solipsism."

不過她後來收到了大量充滿感激之情的讀者來信，他們通常是向她傾訴自己的痛苦經歷。“我發現自己無意中對着無數陌生人懺悔了，”賈米森上個月在《衛報》上發表文章說，“我開始覺得懺悔可能是唯我論的反面。”

On book tour, Ms. Jamison clinched the bond. "Whenever someone asked me to sign her book, I would ask her to sign mine," she wrote. "It was a way to create, for a moment, the kind of symmetry that felt impossible in the letters I received."

在圖書巡展上，賈米森緊緊抓住這個情感聯繫的機會。“不管什麼時候有人請簽名，我都會讓她也給我籤一個名，”她寫道，“這能營造出一種短暫的對等，這是我在讀者來信中不可能感受到的。”

Empathy was a theme sounded repeatedly by some of the millennials photographed for this article, and interviewed in an online slide show that accompanies it.

我們爲本文拍攝了其中一些千禧一代的照片並採訪了他們——在本文隨附的幻燈中你能看到他們的照片和採訪節選——從他們口中我們經常聽到的一個主題是“同情心”。

One said he hoped to succeed because "the better you're doing, the more you can share with other people." Another pointed out that while he was nursed on the traditional American dream — "this idea that if you worked hard and got good grades and did all the right stuff you would succeed" — he has developed a more pragmatic version of it suited to the economic realities of the 21st century.

有個人說他希望成功是因爲“你做得更好，就有更多的東西能和別人分享”。另一個人指出，雖然他從小接受傳統美國夢的教育——“如果你努力工作，取得好成績，做所有正確的事，你就會成功”——但他摸索出了一個更實用、更適應21世紀經濟現狀的美國夢。

"I know that as hard as I work — and I work very hard — I very well may fail. And it's liberating to know that." The key word is "liberating." In the age of the start-up, of fortunes gained and lost overnight, of flawed ideas in need of continual debugging and re-tweaking, failure is the default outcome and also, at times, the ground zero of eventual triumph.

“我知道就算我努力工作——而且我工作得非常努力——我也很有可能會失敗。知道這一點會讓你覺得釋然。”這裏的關鍵詞是“釋然”。在這個創業時代，在這個可能一夜暴富、一夜破產的時代，在這個需要對有缺陷的創意不斷矯正和調整的時代，失敗是默認結果，有時也是最終成功的起點。

No wonder, then, that "millennials are the nation's most dogged optimists," as Pew reported in a new study this spring. "They believe their own best days are ahead."

難怪皮尤研究中心在今年春季發佈的新報告裏說，“千禧一代是美國最頑固的樂觀主義者”，“他們相信最好的時光就在前方”。

They, and we, can expect some less-than-best days, too. Cultural transformations are seldom cost-free. And they're not always permanent. A new generation, as yet unnamed, is growing up in the world the millennials have made and may already be working on its own revision of the nation's moral life.

他們，還有我們，也可以預測到一些不那麼好的日子。文化轉型很少是不用付出代價的。而且這種轉型也並不是一成不變的。尚未命名的新一代正在千禧一代創造的世界裏成長，而且可能已經在書寫他們自己的美國精神生活新版本。