第172期：感觉身体被掏空？这并非本时代独有

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《感觉身体被掏空？这并非本时代独有》 The Myth of Modern Burnout “I’m so tired.” We hear this complaint all the time. These days, it seems everyone is exhausted. Everyone is at the end of their rope1). Everyone needs some time off. Indeed, 53 percent of American workers report feeling burnt out. It’s easy to blame this on modern work culture. Meanwhile, we’re spending more and more time in front of our computer screens, to our own detriment2): Recent research says emails cause emotional exhaustion. A 2014 study found that using a smartphone before bed made workers more tired and less productive the next day. Exhaustion can feel like the by-product of a new and modern era, where work has slithered3) past the four walls of the office or the three walls of the cubicle into the home; where emails invite themselves on our beach vacations; where the media consistently reminds us of climate change, terrorism, and the chaotic political scene. Surely, it wasn’t always this way? There was a time when the sun and the seasons dictated work schedules and instead of clocking in on Sunday people observed4) the Sabbath5), and everything was just so ... simple. Right? Actually, as much as we’d like to think that our feelings of exhaustion are unique to today, it turns out our ancestors weren’t more relaxed or less worn out. “At any point in history, people have experienced exhaustion and theorized it in many different ways,” says Anna Katharina Schaffner, a medical researcher at the University of Kent and the author of the new book, Exhaustion: A History, which chronicles the trajectory6) of exhaustion discourse. “For each era, exhaustion was this hybrid7) creature, which was not only understood through biological and physical contexts, but at times, also wrapped up in the social and political climates as well.” What could be comforting to the fried, 21st-century worker is that regardless of the epoch, regardless of whether humans were living in agrarian societies or were bystanders to a world that was modernizing at an unprecedented velocity, people were tired. Really tired. But how they sought to explain their weariness changed over time. The first theories of exhaustion date back to the 5th century BCE when Greek physician Galen8) touted the importance of balance between the four bodily “humors9)”: blood, yellow bile10), black bile, and phlegm11). When an excess of black bile—the humor associated with melancholia—threw off the body’s internal scales, the individual exhibited symptoms emblematic of exhaustion, including lethargy12), lack of energy, and sluggishness. Though some people tended to naturally lean toward melancholia, Galen believed the condition could also be a result of individual behaviors such as eating the wrong foods, and excessive worry. In that respect, exhaustion existed in a very holistic13) realm and parts of that brand of thinking are very much present today. “Though the humors have disappeared as a medical model, the holistic theory of balance is something that is still currently practiced in many Eastern models of medicine,” Schaffner says. “Many people also believe that a disrupted body can lead to a disrupted mind.” In the Middle Ages, exhaustion theories migrated from the medical realm to the church and the responsibility to remain energized was placed solely on the individual. Labeled as “acedia14),” exhaustion stemmed from participating in sinful activities that drained energy or submitting to an apathetic attitude that shunned interest in God and the divine good that he created. This explanation held the individual accountable for lacking the willpower to choose more godly and active pursuits. The solution to acedia was simple: upping one’s commitment to God and work. This was one of the only times in history that doing work was prescribed as an antidote15) to exhaustion, whereas now and even in the 19th century, it’s the last thing anyone would suggest. In the years that followed, exhaustion leaped from one field to the next. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that medical theories once again took over, when American neurologist George Beard popularized the diagnosis of neurasthenia16). The root of the condition was “weak nerves,” and when energy levels of the nervous system were depleted, an individual exhibited fatigue, anxiety, and even complete mental collapse. While the idea that nerves are a part of the larger reservoir of human energy has been disproved, there is a part of 19th century exhaustion models that still resonates today. “It’s the era that’s the most similar to ours in terms of pointing the finger at modernization as the cause of exhaustion,” says Schaffner. “You had lots of people arguing that city life was draining people’s energy reserves and the lights, new inventions like the telegraph and the steam engine, and hustle and bustle were overstimulating society.” The advent of electricity meant the worker didn’t have to clock out when the sun went down and the rise of a more capitalistic way of thinking encouraged managers to take advantage. But if 19th century workers were “burnt out,” they didn’t refer to it that way; the term wouldn’t be coined for nearly another century. In the early 1970s, German-American psychologist Herbert J. Freudenberger was working as a psychiatrist at St. Mark’s Free Clinic in New York’s East Village. At the time, the decrepit neighborhood was one of the epicenters for the rampant drug use that was sweeping the city. While he was consulting with drug addicts and homeless youth with a group of volunteers, he began to notice that they were growing weary and emotionally depleted from the service work. In his 1974 book, he chronicled their decline and labeled them as “burnt out,” a term he ironically borrowed from the illicit drug scene in which they were working. Following Freudenberger’s poignant label, researchers began to study burnout in the service industry, describing the emotional exhaustion and gradual depletion of motivation that was experienced by those whose professional trajectories were devoted to helping others: nurses, doctors, and teachers. Today, the term’s reach has expanded to anyone who experiences chronic stress and who is simply maxed out. What’s clear from Schaffner’s book is that exhaustion is messy, and the theories behind it don’t necessary build on each other—they vacillate17) between somatic18) and psychic, between pointing the finger at modernization and placing the blame on the individual. Some explanations, like sin, fall out of fashion completely, while others like capitalism, continue to play a role in discourse today. But what the 21st century lacks, in stark contrast to eras past, is a clear medical paradigm19). “Ours is an eclectic age, a historical moment that is distinct because we have so many models that attempt to explain exhaustion,” Schaffner says. “Every other era tends to have one distinct theory that everyone believed. Now we live in an age where people choose what chimes with them, whether it’s holistic, biochemical, hormonal20), or something else.” It’s hard to tell what the future of burnout will hold. While Schaffner maintains that given the ample time she has spent with the research, she speculates we’ll come full-circle. “I would expect that a return to more holistic explanatory models like Galen’s will become prominent again; a model that looks more closely at the interplay between mind and body. Something like mindfulness, which is now a very popular method of coping with stress and exhaustion.” “我真是太累了。” 这样的抱怨不绝于耳。现今，似乎每个人都精疲力竭，每个人都快要被掏空，每个人都需要休息。 实际上，在美国，53%的劳动者都说自己感到疲倦。我们很容易把这种现象归咎于现代的工作文化。同时，我们在电脑屏幕前花费的时间越来越多，结果害了我们自己：近期的研究表明电子邮件会引起情绪上的精疲力竭。2014年的一项研究发现，睡前使用手机导致劳动者更加疲倦，第二天工作效率更低。 倦怠感觉像是摩登新时代的副产品。在这个时代，工作已悄然穿过办公室的四面墙壁或小隔间的三面隔板溜进家里；在这个时代，当我们在沙滩上度假时，邮件会不请自来；在这个时代，媒体会不停地提醒我们气候变化、恐怖主义和政治乱象。 当然，以前并非一直这样？曾几何时，太阳和四季决定了劳作的日程，周末人们过安息日而不是打卡上班，每一件事都是如此的……简单。 对吗？ 其实，尽管我们喜欢把我们的疲惫感想像成当代所独有的，但事实证明我们的祖先也没有比我们更轻松或比我们少劳累。“无论哪个历史时期，人们都有精疲力竭的经历，并用各种方式将其理论化。每一个时代，倦怠都是混合产物，不能仅仅根据生理和物理环境去理解，同时也受到社会和政治气候的裹挟。”肯特大学的医学研究人员安娜·凯塔琳娜·沙夫纳说道。其新作《倦怠史》记录了人们对倦怠描述的轨迹。 对于这些生活在水深火热之中的21世纪的工作者来说，可以觉得宽慰的是，不管在什么时代，不管是生活在农业社会，还是作为旁观者看着这个世界以前所未有的速度实现现代化，人们都一样的累。真的很累。但是他们试图解释疲倦的方式随着时间的推移而变化。 ………… 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2016年11月号