“I am a Stranger” [我是陌生人] by Xiang Biao [项飙], as an introduction to the book Hello Stranger [你好，陌生人], CITIC Press (2025).
Translated (with abbreviation) by David Ownby; supplemental translations and emphases mine.
[I]t was only in modern times that “stranger” became a relatively stable concept, after a long period in which the idea occupied a prolonged intermediate status somewhere in between.
只有到了现代，“陌生人”成为一个相对稳定的概念，他们长期处于既不是敌人也不是客人的中间状态。
In fact, the realization that there are many people in the world that we don’t know—and that these people might at the same time be connected to us—is itself a modern phenomenon.
意识到世界上有很多我不认识的人，而且这些人可能和我有关，这本身是一个现代现象。
If one of the defining features of the modern era is that people came to understand that distant strangers might be related to them, today the reverse seems to be occurring: we are starting to feel that people we know are unfamiliar to us. Ultimately, this kind of alienation also means that we become strangers to ourselves, unable to recognize who we truly are and what we really want.
如果说，在经典的现代状态下人们意识到陌生人是跟自己有关的，那么在今天，人们感到认识的人和自己无关。到最后，“陌生化”也意味着自己成了自己的陌生人。自己不能够认得自己究竟是谁，不知道自己要什么。
Strangers remain strangers, never becoming friends, enemies, or guests, never communicating ambiguity, surprises, shadows, or highlights.
一个个陌生人就是一个个清晰的陌生人，他们不会转变成朋友、敌人、客人，不会带来暧昧、惊喜、阴影、高光。
Life has become transparent yet impermeable, part of the abstraction of the public sphere. Transparency clearly implies the notion of public—a space where everyone is fully exposed and has no place to hide—but this public is not constructed through our mutual interactions. Instead, it is shaped by third-party systems that permeate every aspect of our lives. These third parties define all individuals, dictate their behavior, and hold them directly accountable. A public sphere formed through horizontal interactions between individuals is not transparent but rather porous; the public sphere established by a unified third party is abstract and transparent.
生活变得透明而不透气，是和公共的抽象化联系在一起的。透明显然意味着公共——大家在这里一览无余甚至无处遁形，但这个公共不是由无数个体通过互动搭建出来的，而是靠一个全面贯穿我们生活的第三方系统捏合而成的。这个第三方定义所有的个体，规定所有个体的行为，所有的个体都直接对第三方负责。通过个体间横向互动而形成的公共是不透明的，而是透气的；通过一个统一的第三方建立的公共是抽象的也是透明的。
When everything is transparent, this kind of abstracted public can lose its content. For example, moral considerations may become meaningless. People have moral questions largely because of limited information. When things are not transparent, people need to make judgments and choices, which is why they need morality, which allows people to continue to interact meaningfully even in the absence of transparency.
当一切都是透明的，抽象的公共性往往也失去了内容。比如道德考虑可能变得虚无。人类之所以有道德问题，很大程度上是因为人们信息有限。在事情不透明的情况下人们需要做出判断和选择，这时候人们就需要道德，道德使人和人可以在不透明中继续有意义地交往。
In a transparent world, a person’s fate is already determined by the powers that be; an uncertain future is an individual’s misfortune and it has no meaning. At the same time, if a person truly conforms to the rules of the transparent world, these unpredictable events can be overcome and transformed into predictable ones. The meaning of life seems to lie in overcoming one’s own opaque experiences according to the slogans that hang on the walls and in the air, thereby becoming a person everyone can recognize. Finally, transparency is the way society is organized, an image through which people understand personal and social relationships, and thus also becomes their objective state of existence.
在透明的世界，人的命运已经被系统的力量决定了，未卜的前途是个人的不幸，它们没有意义；同时，如果一个人真正符合了透明世界的规则，这些未卜事件都可以被克服，变成可卜。人生的意义似乎就在于按照那些写在墙上、挂在空中的标语来克服自己那些不透明的经历，变成人人认可的人。归根到底，透明是社会组织的方式，是人们理解个人和社会关系的一个意象，从而也成为人们客观的存在状态。
The sense of being a stranger felt by the small-town test-takers reflects the nature of Chinese social life, which again is transparent but impermeable. We see the transparency in the fact that their life trajectories and achievements accord with the standards and expectations set by the system, leading to the expected stamp of approval. The impermeability lies in their inability to freely express their personal struggles, hesitations, and anxieties. While they have earned approval, what they lack is recognition in the sense of being understood and seen. Approval is the system’s evaluation of an individual’s achievements based on predetermined standards, determining whether to reward or punish. Recognition, by contrast, involves agency: it is one subject’s comprehension of another subject—seeing that person’s emotions, thoughts, struggles, and history, with no relation to testing, judgment, or rewards and punishments.
小镇做题家的陌生感，反映了社会生活“透明不透气”的特征。他们生活的透明性体现在，他们的成长轨迹和成绩符合体系规定的标准和预期，被毫无悬念地认可。他们体会到的不透气，体现在他们无法从容地表现个人的挣扎、犹豫和苦恼。他们获得了“认可”，欠缺的是“认得”。认可是系统根据既定的标准，评价一个人的成果，决定给予奖励还是惩罚。认得，则是一个主体对另外一个主体的理解，是一个人对另一个人的情绪、考虑、挣扎和历史的看见，它不涉及考验、判断和奖惩。
The issue we are currently facing is not merely that approval has replaced recognition; more critically, approval has become the very basis of recognition. The idea that “love is conditional”—you will only be loved if you prove you are worthy—is a significant reason why many young people feel from an early age that life is a burden. Most of them do not lack love, but the conditional nature of love instilled by family, school, and society has turned nurturing into a burden. The condition for obtaining love and understanding is to first obtain approval. The reason many people sacrifice so much time and effort in pursuit of approval is precisely because this is the first step to earning recognition—when I prove that I am normal and successful, I earn attention, understanding, and love.
我们现在面临的问题，不仅仅是认可取代了认得，更严重的是，认可成了认得的基础。“爱是有条件的”——你要证明你值得爱，爱才存在——是不少年轻人从小感到生活沉重的重要原因。他们中的大部分人并不缺乏爱，但是家庭、学校和社会灌输的爱的“条件感”让滋养变成了负担。而获得爱和认得的条件，就是要先获得认可。很多人之所以要牺牲这么多时间和精力来追求认可，正是因为这是他们获得认得的基础——通过证明我是正常的、成功的，以获得关注、理解和爱。
Husserl argued that the process by which we know the world is not one of discovering an objectively existing external world, but rather one of perceiving the world through experience. Therefore, the nature of one’s experience—the “lifeworld”—determines the kind of world one perceives. Following Husserl’s concept, Schütz emphasized the lifeworld as the “paramount reality of everyday life.” It is the only real world for the individual because it is the world people realize directly through their own experiences; it is not defined by concepts or theories, but formed directly by the senses and experience. Existence beyond the lifeworld, such as the “educational system,” “labor market,” or “technological sector,” is virtual. Habermas extended this further, arguing that the mutual understanding formed through direct human interaction in the lifeworld is the foundation of effective democracy; we must be wary of the “system” (especially state power and market forces) encroaching upon the lifeworld. Although we may not agree that the lifeworld is the foundation of the entire social meaning system, we must admit that the lifeworld directly affects our cognition of society and ourselves. A narrow lifeworld weakens a person’s experiential foundation; they may have a strong self-consciousness, but they lack the “stock of knowledge at hand” (Schütz) to form a rich understanding of others or careful judgments of social situations, thus failing to establish effective distance.
胡塞尔认为，我们认识世界的过程，并不是一个客观存在的外在的世界等待我们去发现，而是我们通过经验来认知世界。所以，什么样的经验（生活世界）决定了我们会感知到什么样的世界。舒尔茨沿用胡塞尔的生活世界概念，强调它是“前概念存在”，是对个人来说唯一真实的世界，因为它是人们直接根据自己的经验而意识到的世界，它不是靠概念、理论去定义的，而是感官和经验直接形成的。超越生活世界的存在，比如“教育系统”“劳动力市场”“科技界”都是虚拟性的。哈贝马斯进一步延伸，认为生活世界里通过人和人直接交流形成的互相理解，是有效民主的基础；我们必须警惕“系统”（特别是国家权力和市场力量）对生活世界的侵占。尽管我们不一定同意生活世界是整个社会意义系统的基础这个说法，但是我们不得不承认，生活世界直接影响我们对社会和对自己的认知。狭窄的生活世界使人的经验基础变得非常薄弱，他可以有强烈的自我意识，但是没有形成可以调用的“知识储备”（舒尔茨）对其他人形成丰富的理解，对面临的社会情况形成仔细的判断，从而不能形成有效间隔。
The understanding that “we are all the same” can also lead to alienation. ... We may be lonely because we can’t find anyone like us, but we may also be lonely because everyone around us is just like us. The meaning and destination of life have already been defined; everyone is a copy of one another. There is nothing to say, and no need to speak. I call this “negative empathy”.
“大家都一样”的想象也会导致陌生化。一个人感到孤独，可能是因为你找不到和你相似的人，但也可能是因为当你放眼望去，到处都是和你相似的人。生命的意义和归宿都已经被定义好了，大家都是对彼此的复制。无可言说，不需要言说。所以我称之为“反向共情”。
“Negative empathy” is a construct created by humans. The “utilitarian assumption” is one aspect of this process of construction. The utilitarian assumption does not mean imagining one another as competitors but refers instead to the idea that people should understand the world and handle interpersonal relationships based on this assumption. Since everyone makes their own calculations when doing things, it is best not to ask too many questions, nor is there any need to do so. The utilitarian assumption also serves as a reminder to focus attention on matters that can bring tangible benefits, and not to concern oneself with matters that have no direct consequences. This differs from judging others according to one’s standards or putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. When you do either of these, the “self” is clearly defined, and the assumption is that others are the same as oneself. // However, negative empathy and utilitarianism do not have a clear sense of self as their starting point. They emphasize that all people “ought” to be the same, and one should align one’s thoughts and actions with this “ought.” It is not about putting yourself in another’s shoes, but rather “putting others into your shoes.” The utilitarian assumption is, in a certain sense, also a self-protection mechanism. It does its best to eliminate the emotional, complex, subtle aspects of life that cannot be optimized, making the world simple and transparent, making thoughts swift and smooth, a single logic capable of explaining everything.
“反向共情”是一个人为建构的结果。“功利化假设”是其建构过程中的一个侧面。功利化假设并不意味着把彼此想象成竞争对手。它指人们应该按此预设去理解世界和处理人际关系。既然大家做事情都有各自的计算，所以最好不要多问，也不必多问。功利化假设也是在提醒自己：把注意力集中在那些最能够带来真金白银的事情上，对没有直接关系的事情没必要去管。这和以己度人、由己及人不一样。以己度人和由己及人中的“己”是明确的，从确定的自我意识出发，假设别人和自己是一样的。而反向共情和功利化假设并没有一个清晰的自我意识作为出发点。它强调的是所有的人“应该”一样，要按照这个“应该”来设定自己怎么想和怎么做，不是以己推人，而是以人推己。功利化假设在一定意义上也是一个自我保护机制。它把生活里那些情感上的复杂、细微、不能功利化的内容尽量剔除，世界从而变得简单而透明，思考因此快速而丝滑，单一的逻辑可以解释所有的事情。
Another mechanism for constructing negative empathy is “dehistoricization,” which involves discarding to the extent possible those parts of one’s life that are undignified, do not meet mainstream expectations, and are unrelated to current interests.
建构反向共情的另一个机制是“去历史化”，即把自己生命中不体面的、不符合主流期待的、和眼前的利益追求没有关系的那些部分尽量切除。
When we say “hello, stranger,” it does not mean that we consider ourselves natives of a particular place or even people who have found a place to settle down. However, to reflect carefully on the subjectivity of the statement “I am a stranger” and think about the state of stranger-making, we cannot think of it from the perspective of a stranger or an outsider. What we need is a new “grounded” way of thinking.
“你好，陌生人”，我们说这句话，并不意味着我们认为自己是本地人，是已经找到安身立命之所的人。但是，要细致地分析“我是陌生人”这样的主体性位置，反思陌生化的状态，又不能够以一种陌生人、局外人的方式来思考。我们需要的可能是一种“安生式”的思考。
So if Heidegger’s notion of dwelling focuses on the relationship between humans and nature, and humans and themselves, Pan’s adaptation emphasizes social relationships and social ethics. My idea of “groundedness” aims to combine these two concepts.
借用潘光旦的话，我们可以说海德格尔的栖息是“人本主义”的（关注人和自然、人和自己的关系），位育是“人文主义”的（强调社会关系和社会伦理）。“安生”希望把这二者结合起来。
A grounded style of thinking is based on the awareness that changing the status quo cannot be achieved through a single action or decision but rather requires a new understanding of life. From this new understanding, new behaviors, new relationships, and new meanings of life emerge. This new understanding must be grounded in concrete reality and confront various complexities: Why do I always feel like a stranger? Why do I unconsciously compare myself to others? Why is it so difficult to accept certain criticisms? Rather than making a blanket judgment about life—Why isn’t life the way I want it to be? why is everything unjust and unequal?—grounded thinking involves “consciousness-raising” of one’s own experiences.
安生式的思考是基于这样的意识：改变现状，不能靠某个行动、某个抉择，而必须对生活形成新的理解，从新的理解出发长出新的行为、新的关系、新的生活意味。这种新的理解必须是基于具体现实的，直面各种纠结（为什么我总觉得自己是个陌生人？为什么我会下意识地和别人比较？为什么我难以接受这样或那样的评论？），而不是要对生活做总体的好坏判断（为什么生活不是我想要的样子？为什么一切都是不正义、不平等的？）。
To develop a grounded way of thinking, the first step might be to treat thinking as a practical process, that is, to recognize that thinking is inseparable from observation, memory, bodily perception, expression, and dialogue. […] Whether we are getting to know acquaintances, recognizing strangers, or understanding ourselves, we first become aware of the specific scene, and then understand the people within that scene through the scene itself. […] This emphasis on the scene first implies viewing a person as a condensation of their historical experiences. […] The scene also implies that we must pay full attention to people’s positions within social relationships. […] Recognizing strangers and engaging in grounded thinking is a constantly repetitive process; it needs to occur repeatedly within the “flow of life” and requires a scene for observation and reflection.
要发展安生的思考方式，第一步可能是把思考处理为一个实践过程，即意识到，思考是和观察、记忆、身体感知、表达、对话不可分割的。[…] 不管是在了解熟人、认识陌生人，还是认识自己的时候，我们都是先意识到具体的场景，再通过场景来理解场景中的人。[…] 对场景的重视，首先意味着把人看作他的历史经历的浓缩。[…] 场景也意味我们要充分注意人们在社会关系中的位置。[…] 认得陌生人、安生式的思考是一个不断反复的过程，它需要在“生活流”里重复发生，需要一个观察和思考的场景。