Unit 16B - Is Everybody Happy?
Is Everybody Happy?
John Ciardi
The right to pursue happiness is issued to Americans with their birth certificates, but no one seems quite sure which way it ran. It may be we are issued a hunting license but offered no game. Jonathan Swift seemed to think so when he attacked the idea of happiness as "the possession of being well-deceived," the felicity of being "a fool among knaves." For Swift saw society as Vanity Fair, the land of false goals.
It is, of course, un-American to think in terms of fools and knaves. We do, however, seem to be dedicated to the idea of buying our way to happiness. We shall all have made it to Heaven when we possess enough.
And at the same time the forces of American commercialism are hugely dedicated to making us deliberately unhappy. Advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising exists not to satisfy desires but to create them—and to create them faster than any man's budget can satisfy them. For that matter, our whole economy is based on a dedicated insatiability. We are taught that to possess is to be happy, and then we are made to want. We are even told it is our duty to want. It was only a few years ago, to cite a single example, that car dealers across the country were flying banners that read "You Auto Buy Now." They were calling upon Americans, as an act approaching patriotism, to buy at once, with money they did not have, automobiles they did not really need, and which they would be required to grow tired of by the time the next year's models were released.
Or look at any of the women's magazines. There, as Bernard De Voto once pointed out, advertising begins as poetry in the front pages and ends as pharmacopoeia and therapy in the back pages. The poetry of the front matter is the dream of perfect beauty. This is the baby skin that must be hers. These, the flawless teeth. This, the perfumed breath she must exhale. This, the sixteen-year-old figure she must display at forty, at fifty, at sixty, and forever.
Once past the vaguely uplifting fiction and feature articles, the reader finds the other face of the dream in the back matter. This is the harness into which Mother must strap herself in order to display that perfect figure. These, the chin straps she must sleep in. This is the salve that restores all, this is her laxative, these are the tablets that melt away fat, these are the hormones of perpetual youth, these are the stockings that hide varicose veins.
Obviously no half-sane person can be completely persuaded either by such poetry or by such pharmacopoeia and orthopedics. Yet someone is obviously trying to buy the dream as offered and spending billions every year in the attempt. Clearly the happiness-market is not running out of customers, but what is it trying to buy?
The idea "happiness," to be sure, will not sit still for easy definition: the best one can do is to try to set some extremes to the idea and then work in toward the middle. To think of happiness as acquisitive and competitive will do to set the materialistic extreme. To think of it as the idea one senses in, say, a holy man of India will do to set the spiritual extreme. That holy man' idea of happiness is in needing nothing from outside himself. In wanting nothing, he lacks nothing. He sits immobile, rapt in contemplation, free even of his own body. Or nearly free of it. If devout admirers bring him food he eats it, if not, he starves indifferently. Why be concerned? What is physical is an illusion to him. Contemplation is his joy and he achieves it through a fantastically demanding discipline, the accomplishment of which is itself a joy within him.
Is he a happy man? Perhaps his happiness is only another sort of illusion. But who can take it from him? And who will dare say it is more illusory than happiness on the installment plan?
But, perhaps because I am Western, I doubt such catatonic happiness, as I doubt the dreams of the happiness-market. What is certain is that his way of happiness would be torture to almost any Western man. Yet these extremes will still serve to frame the areas within which all of us must find some sort of balance. Thoreau—a creature of both Eastern and Western thought—had his own firm sense of that balance. His aim was to save on the low levels in order to spend on the high.
Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau's idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heightening one's perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.
Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfactions we get from a lifetime depend on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of "The pleasure of taking pains." The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.
We demand difficulties even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When the spoilsport ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.
The buyers and sellers at the happiness-market seem too often to have lost their sense of the pleasure of difficulty. Heaven knows what they are playing, but it seems a dull game. And the Indian holy man seems dull to us. I suppose, because he seems to be refusing to play anything at all. The Western weakness may be in the illusion that happiness can be bought. Perhaps the Eastern weakness may be in the idea that there is such a thing as perfect (and therefore static) happiness.
Happiness is never more than partial. There are no pure states of mankind. Whatever else happiness may be, it is neither in having nor in being, but in becoming. What the Founding Fathers declared for us as an inherent right, we should do well to remember, was not happiness but the pursuit of happiness. What they might have underlined, could they have foreseen the happiness-market, is the cardinal fact that happiness is in the pursuit itself, in the meaningful pursuit of what is life-engaging and life-revealing, which is to say, in the idea of becoming. A nation is not measured by what it possesses or wants to possess, but by what it wants to become.
By all means let the happiness-market sell us minor satisfactions and even minor follies so long as we keep them in scale and buy them out of spiritual change. I am no customer for either Puritanism or asceticism. But drop any real spiritual capital at those bazaars, and what you come home to will be your own poorhouse.
参考译文——人人都幸福吗？
人人都幸福吗？
约翰•查尔迪
从一出生，美国人便被赋予了追求幸福的权利，但似乎没有人确切地知道幸福在哪里。就像授予了我们狩猎许可证却不给我们提供猎物一样。乔纳森·斯威夫特似乎也是这么认为的，他抨击幸福的想法是“鬼迷心窍的上当”，是“骗子堆中的傻瓜”的自鸣得意。因为斯威夫特把社会看做是充斥着虚假目标的名利场。
当然，用傻子、骗子这样的字眼来对幸福进行思考是不合美国人的习惯的。然而我们似乎确实热衷于花钱购买幸福。当我们拥有足够多时，我们便觉得能过上天堂般完美的生活了。
同时，美国商业主义势力却又殚精竭虑地故意使我们感到不幸福。广告业是我们的主要产业之一，广告的存在与其说是为了满足人们的欲望，不如说是为了激发他们的欲望——而且是以超出任何人的收入所能承受的速度激发这些欲望。就此而言，我们的整个经济是建立在一种无法自拔的贪得无厌之上的。我们受到的教育是“拥有即为幸福”，然后我们便被迫产生欲望。我们甚至被告知，拥有欲望是我们的义务。举一个简单的例子，就在几年前，全国各地的汽车经销商还悬挂着“你应该立刻购买汽车”的横幅。他们号召美国公众采取爱国行动，立即用他们并没有的钱去购买他们并不真正需要的汽车，而且要求他们在第二年的新款汽车上市之前就对旧款产生厌倦。
或者看看任何一本女性杂志。正如伯纳德·德沃托曾经指出的那样，杂志前几页上的广告诗情画意，而在后面几页却如药典和治疗方法一样结束。前几页的诗情画意是完美美女的梦想：这该是她拥有的婴儿般的肌肤；这些该是她完美无瑕的牙齿；这该是她呼出的芬芳气息； 这该是她保持到40岁、50岁、60岁甚至到永远的16岁少女般的身材。
一旦读完这些隐约让人振奋的小说和专题文章，读者在杂志最后几页就会发现梦想的另外一面：这是妈妈们必须要束上的塑身带，以展示完美的身材；这些是她们睡觉时必须戴着的下巴托；这是可以修复一切的药膏；这是通便剂；这些是可以溶解脂肪的药片；这些是可以使人永葆青春的激素；这些是可以遮掩静脉曲张的长袜。
显而易见，即使心智不健全的人也不会完全相信这些诗境或是这些药典和矫形术。然而有人显然正在竭力购买这些广告所兜售的美梦，并为此每年花费数十亿美元。显然，这种幸福的市场上从不会缺乏顾客，但他们在竭力购买的是什么呢？
当然，给“幸福”这个概念下定义绝非易事：最好的办法是尽量设定此概念的一些极端，然后将它们折中。把幸福看成获取财物和相互攀比，可以算是设定了物质享乐主义的一个极端；把幸福看成是一个人，比如一个印度的圣人，所感知的信念，则是幸福在精神上的一个极端。圣人的幸福概念是对身外之物一无所求。既无所求，亦无所匮。他静坐修行，陷于冥冥沉思，甚至超脱或者几乎超脱自己的肉体。若有虔诚的信徒奉上食物，圣人纳用；若无供奉，他忍饥挨饿，漠然置之。何必为此操心？物质的东西对他而言不过是虚幻。冥思是他的快乐所在，他通过要求极高的修行获得快乐，这种修行的完成本身便是他内心的快乐。
他是个幸福的人吗？也许他的幸福只是另一种虚幻，但谁能把幸福从他那里夺走呢？谁又敢说他的幸福比从分期付款计划中获得的幸福更虚无缥缈呢？
然而，或许因为我是西方人，我对这种紧张性的幸福持怀疑态度，正如同我怀疑幸福市场的梦想一样。可以确信的是，他的这种幸福方式对于几乎任何一个西方人来说都是一种折磨。尽管如此，我们仍然可以利用这些极限来划定某些范畴，在这些范畴内我们所有人都得找到某种平衡。梭罗——一个东西方思想交融的人物——对于那种平衡有自己坚定不移的认知。他的目标是在低层次上节约以便用于高层次上的追求。
为拥有而拥有或者为了与邻里相互攀比而拥有，这属于梭罗心目中的低层次。他心目中的高层次是这样一种积极向上的律条，即要使自己对自然界永恒之物的感悟臻于完美。他可将从低层次上节省下来的时间和精力用于对高层次的追求。当然，梭罗不赞成忍饥挨饿，但他在食物方面投入的精力只是为了让自己得以从事更为重要的活动。
努力奋斗是获取幸福的关键所在。我们如果不终生与困难较量，便无幸福可言。正如叶芝所言，除却某些不可能的情形，我们人生中所获取的满足皆取决于我们在多高的境界中选择我们所愿意面对的艰难困苦。罗怕特·弗罗斯特论及“以苦为乐”时，他内心所思，大体如此。商业广告中所鼓吹的幸福观，其致命的谬误在于它标榜一切幸福唾手可得，不费吹灰之力。
即便于游戏之中，我们也需要有艰难困苦。之所以需要它，是因为若没有困难，便无游戏可言。游戏就是为了享受其中的乐趣而人为地使事情变得不那么轻而易举。游戏中的种种规则，便是将困难强加于人。有些扫兴的人会使游戏变得索然无味、毫无乐趣可言，往往是因为不遵循游戏规则。下象棋时，如果你可以随心所欲，根据自己的意愿修改那些完全是任意赋予的游戏规则，获胜会更容易，然而下棋的乐趣就在于在规则内获胜。无困难，便亦无乐趣。
幸福市场上的买卖双方似乎常常体会不到困难带来的快乐。天知道他们在玩什么游戏，但是他们的游戏似乎是乏味的。我猜想印度的圣人对我们来说似乎是乏味的，因为他拒绝玩任何游戏。西方人的弱点在于他们幻想幸福可以买到。或许东方人的弱点在于他们相信存在一种完美的（因而也是静止的）幸福。
从来就没有完美的幸福。人类不存在尽善尽美的状态。无论幸福可能是别的什么东西，它既不在于拥有，也不在于实现，而在于追求。我们应该牢记：开国元勋们为我们所宣布的与生俱来的权利不是享受幸福而是追求幸福假如他们能预见到幸福市场的话，他们或许会强调这个最重要的事实，即幸福在于追求本身，在于我们终生为之努力并从中获得启迪的有意义的追求换言之，幸福是一种过程评价一个民族的标准不是看它拥有什么或是想要拥有什么，而是看它想要追求什么。
当然，只要我们掌握好一个度，或者只作为一种精神调节，不妨从幸福市场买点满足感，甚至可以花钱买点愚蠢的东西。我既不信奉清教徒主义，也不赞成禁欲主义。但如果我们在这些市场上放弃任何真正意义上的精神财富，那么到头来我们只能是一无所有。
Key Words:
felicity [fi'lisiti]
n. 快乐，幸福，幸运
dedicated ['dedi.keitid]
adj. 专注的，献身的，专用的
laxative ['læksətiv]
adj. 通便的，不简洁的 n. 泻药，缓泻药
contemplation [.kɔntem'pleiʃən]
n. 注视，沉思，打算
puritanism ['pjuəritənizəm]
n. 清教；清教主义；清教徒习俗；道德上的极端拘谨
illusion [i'lu:ʒən]
n. 幻觉，错觉，错误的信仰(或观念)
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