What Stories Are True in Your Universe? Examining the words of the enigmatic Philip K. Dick.

您的宇宙中哪些故事是正确的？ 检查神秘的菲利普·迪克(Philip K. Dick)的话。

Author Philip K. Dick’s existentialist philosophy found its way into his literary works in a fantastical sense. It most notably took — I dare say its “literal” reasoning — when he was given the opportunity to speak publicly. From theories on simulated universes to lives being lived simultaneously in different historical timelines, Dick did his best to bring a sense of logic to far-out ideas.

菲利普·迪克(Philip K. Dick)的存在主义哲学以一种梦幻般的感觉进入了他的文学作品。 当他有机会公开发表讲话时，最值得注意的是-我敢说它的“字面意义”。 从模拟宇宙的理论到在不同历史时间轴上同时生活的生命，迪克竭尽全力为遥远的观念带来逻辑感。

However, perhaps his most overlooked and likely most notable words of wisdom came during his famous “How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” speech at Disney in 1978, where he spoke on the power storytellers hold in shaping our reality (amongst other topics). While stories shape our realities, he noted that stories also find themselves full of chaos, character development, and usually aim to better explain or further understand an idea.

但是，也许他最被忽视和最有名的智慧之言是在1978年他在迪斯尼举行的著名的“ 如何建立一个不会在两天后崩塌的宇宙 ”演讲中发表的，他在演讲中讲述了讲故事者塑造我们的力量。现实(以及其他主题)。 尽管故事塑造了我们的现实，但他指出，故事也发现自己充满混乱，角色发展，并且通常旨在更好地解释或进一步理解一个想法。

Dick’s speech at Disney in 1978 was a wild ride. During it, he revealed that some of the stories he wrote turned out to be prophecies of sorts, in so far that he eventually met the characters he wrote about and found that they were living the actual lives he penned. The speech is rich and worth a read in its entirety, if not to at least ponder what those in attendance thought of Dick’s revelations.

迪克(Dick)在1978年在迪斯尼(Disney)上的演讲简直是疯狂。 在此期间，他透露出他所写的某些故事被证明是种预言，到目前为止，他最终遇到了他所写的人物，并发现这些人物过着他所写的真实生活。 演讲内容丰富，值得一读，即使不至少考虑一下出席者对迪克的启示的看法。

Despite the fact that some would consider Dick’s words outlandish, there is an astonishing section of the speech in which he touches on the power of technology and storytelling:

尽管有些人会认为迪克的话有些古怪，但讲话中有一个惊人的部分，他谈到了技术和讲故事的力量：

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups — and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener…

今天，我们生活在一个社会中，在这个社会中，虚假的现实是由媒体，政府，大公司，宗教团体，政治团体制造的，并且存在将这些伪世界直接传递给读者的电子硬件。 ，观众，听众...

… Unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind…

…不断地，我们被非常老练的人使用非常老练的电子机制制造的伪现实轰炸。 我并不怀疑他们的动机。 我不相信他们的力量。 他们有很多。 这是惊人的力量：创造整个宇宙，心灵宇宙的力量……

… Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans.

……虚假的现实会造假的人。 否则，伪造的人将产生伪造的现实，然后将其出售给其他人，最终将其变成伪造的自己。 因此，我们不禁冒充虚假的人发明虚假的现实，然后将其兜售给其他虚假的人。

If Philip K Dick were alive today he wouldn’t be surprised at the nature of social media and the internet. Technology has fundamentally changed the way we structure our reality and understand our world. And yes, powerful proprietors have gotten hold of this tech and used it to shape the world to serve their own interests — we needn’t look much further than the Cambridge Analytica scandal, one that served the interests of Brexit and the Donald Trump 2016 Presidential campaign to see that technology can be used to tell stories that in essence become reality.

如果Philip K Dick今天还活着，那么他对社交媒体和互联网的本质不会感到惊讶。 技术从根本上改变了我们构建现实和理解世界的方式。 是的，强大的所有人掌握了这项技术，并利用它来塑造世界，以服务于自己的利益-我们只需要看一下剑桥分析丑闻 ，该丑闻就是为英国退欧和唐纳德·特朗普2016年总统大选服务的竞选活动中，人们可以看到技术可以用来讲故事，从本质上讲，这变成了现实。

Dick explores who we are in his work — what makes us “us” and reality “reality”. Reality is personal — we can’t really be sure if our reality is like another’s. Sure, we agree on things, for instance, what the colour red is. However, we don’t know what the other person truly sees when they see red — is your red the same as my red? However, it’s shaped by something, others, and to a large extent, the stories we’re told.

迪克探讨了我们在他的作品中所扮演的角色-是什么使我们成为“我们”和使现实成为“现实”。 现实是个人的-我们无法真正确定我们的现实是否像另一个现实。 当然，我们在一些事情上达成共识，例如红色是什么。 但是，我们不知道对方看到红色时真正看到的是什么-您的红色和我的红色一样吗？ 但是，它是由某些事物，其他事物以及我们在很大程度上被告知的故事所塑造的。

Humanity has longed to answer the reason for its existence. Theology, philosophy, and science are noteworthy pursuits to answer the fundamental questions dogging our existence, however, we often look past the idea of stories as a way to explain things. We continually tell ourselves stories to help us relate to one another. Religions use stories to seek common moral grounds. The scientific method is a story structure of sorts, an investigation of a problem or thought and the act of going through a means to solve or prove this problem or thought. Stories are the common denominator in science, religion, and philosophy. They’re a dominant force in our cultural landscape.

人类渴望回答其存在的原因。 神学，哲学和科学是回答困扰我们生存的基本问题的值得注意的追求，但是，我们经常将故事的概念视为解释事物的一种方式。 我们不断讲述自己的故事，以帮助我们彼此联系。 宗教利用故事寻求共同的道德依据。 科学方法是各种故事结构，对问题或思想的调查以及通过解决或证明该问题或思想的手段的行为。 故事是科学，宗教和哲学的共同点。 它们是我们文化景观中的主导力量。

A story on social media can incite riots across the world.

社交媒体上的故事可能会引起全世界的骚乱。

A story ran by ad masters and politicians can frame a narrative that gets people to vote a particular way or act in a specified manner.

广告大师和政治人物所讲的故事可以构成叙事，使人们以特定方式投票或以特定方式行事。

A story based on science, forecasting what’s happened and what’s to come, can shape economic policies, technology, and innovation.

一个基于科学的故事，预测发生了什么以及将要发生的事情，可以影响经济政策，技术和创新。

Are these stories true? They are to the people who believe them. They become a part of their reality. People will live and die by the stories they’re told by their parents, teachers, authors, politicians. Those that understand and wield technology in efficient and effective ways tend to garner more influence and therefore power.

这些故事是真的吗？ 他们是相信他们的人。 他们成为现实的一部分。 人们会因父母，老师，作家，政客讲的故事而生与死。 那些以有效和有效的方式理解和运用技术的人倾向于获得更大的影响力，从而获得更大的动力。

Today, as we are attempting to mature through our technological adolescence with new storytelling mediums, we need to understand Dick, the power of stories, and we have to embrace the chaos stories bring. If not, we will continue to have divisions within society and in turn, we may never truly understand our own true reality.

今天，当我们试图通过使用新的讲故事媒体通过技术青春期成熟时，我们需要了解迪克(Dick)，故事的力量，并且我们必须接受故事带来的混乱。 如果没有，我们将继续在社会内部分裂，反过来，我们可能永远无法真正理解我们自己的真实现实。

We need to ask ourselves what’s real, or if our reality is merely being created by stories and those that can better tell them. Dick, in his speech, went on to address the power these storytellers have, stating, “They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later.”

我们需要问自己什么是真实的，或者我们的现实仅仅是由故事创造的，还是可以更好地告诉他们的故事。 迪克(Dick)在演讲中继续谈到了这些讲故事者的力量，他说： “他们有很多。 它是一种惊人的力量：创造整个宇宙，心灵宇宙的力量。 我应该知道 我做同样的事情。 我的工作是创造宇宙，作为一本又一本小说的基础。 而且我必须以这样一种方式来构建它们，即它们在两天后不会崩溃。”

Of course, we are not bound by the stories we’re told. We don’t have to continually follow leaders when their shortcomings are revealed, only because we believe in the story of the particular party they’re affiliated with or the story of themselves that their public relation teams masterfully crafted, or more importantly, the story of the issues we hold near and dear to our hearts, only to realize later that the truth was not what it seemed to be. For that, Dick also has advice to us:

当然，我们不受所讲故事的束缚。 当我们发现领导者的缺点时，我们不必继续关注他们，只是因为我们相信与他们相关的特定党派的故事，或者他们的公关团队精心制作的故事，或者更重要的是，这个故事关于我们所珍惜和珍惜的问题，后来才意识到真相似乎不是事实。 为此，迪克也向我们提供了建议：

I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe — and I am dead serious when I say this — do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

我将向您透露一个秘密：我喜欢建立确实会崩溃的宇宙。 我喜欢看他们脱胶，我喜欢看小说中的人物如何解决这个问题。 我对混乱有秘密的爱好。 应该有更多。 不要相信-我在说这话时会非常认真-不要以为社会和宇宙中的秩序与稳定永远是好的。 僵化的旧事物必须始终让位给新的生活和新事物的诞生。 在新事物诞生之前，旧事物必须灭亡。 这是一个危险的认识，因为它告诉我们，我们最终必须脱离我们熟悉的许多事物。 那很痛。 但这是生活脚本的一部分。 除非我们在心理上能够适应变化，否则我们自己就会开始向内死亡。 我的意思是，对象，习俗，习惯和生活方式必须消灭，以便真实的人类能够生存。 最重要的是真实的人，可以反弹，吸收和应对新生物的有活力的弹性生物。

The heart of Dick’s work was not in his visions of the future, of alternate histories, or even that of his own reality — the heart of his work was in his understanding of humanity. We are fallible beings and we don’t like to admit that. This can create division between us as we remain entrenched in our world, our version of reality. We have to be okay with letting go, with adapting, with living in a reality that is not fake. Reality is not fixed in time, it’s fluid, constantly changing and reshaping itself. We need to accept this in order to get the most out of reality, and the most out of our lives.

迪克的工作之心不在他对未来的看法，替代历史，甚至他自己的现实的视野中–他的工作之心在于他对人性的理解。 我们是容易犯错的人，我们不愿意承认这一点。 当我们仍然牢牢地掌握自己的世界时，这会在我们之间造成分裂。 我们必须放手，适应，生活在非伪造的现实中。 现实不是时间固定的，它是不断变化的，不断变化并重塑自我。 我们需要接受这一点，以便充分利用现实，并充分利用我们的生活。

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Who is Philip K Dick?

菲利普·迪克是谁？

For those who may be unfamiliar…

对于那些可能不熟悉的人...

Dick’s prominence came after his death as many of his stories were adapted for the screen, from Blade Runner, to Total Recall, both popular enough to earn sequels and reboots respectively, to the Adjustment Bureau, the popular television series The Man in the High Castle, and most recently Electric Dreams, a TV anthology adapted from a selection of his short works.

他的死因为许多他的故事被搬上银幕， 银翼杀手 ，以全面回忆 ，无论是人气不足分别赚取续集和重新启动，以调整局 ，流行的电视连续剧吨他的人在高后，迪克的突出来了《城堡 》以及最近出版的《电子梦》 ，这是一部电视短片，改编自他的一些短篇作品。