評論
打印
Is Everybody Happy?
人人都幸福嗎？
John Ciardi
約翰•查爾迪
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.
從一出生，美國人便被賦予了追求幸福的權利，但似乎沒有人確切地知道幸福在哪里。就像授予了我們狩獵許可證卻不給我們提供獵物一樣。喬納森•斯威夫特似乎也是這么認為的，他抨擊幸福的想法是“鬼迷心竅的上當”，是“騙子堆中的傻瓜”的自鳴得意。因為斯威夫特把社會看做是充斥著虛假目標的名利場。
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.
當然，用傻子、騙子這樣的字眼來對幸福進行思考是不合美國人的習慣的。然而我們似乎確實熱衷于花錢購買幸福。當我們擁有足夠多時，我們便覺得能過上天堂般完美的生活了。
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 t hat 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.
同時，美國商業主義勢力卻又殫精竭慮地故意使我們感到不幸福。廣告業是我們的主要產業之一，廣告的存在與其說是為了滿足人們的欲望，不如說是為了激發他們的欲望——而且是以超出任何人的收入所能承受的速度激發這些欲望。就此而言，我們的整個經濟是建立在一種無法自拔的貪得無厭之上的。我們受到的教育是“擁有即為幸福”，然后我們便被迫產生欲望。我們甚至被告知，擁有欲望是我們的義務。舉一個簡單的例子，就在幾年前，全國各地的汽車經銷商還懸掛著“你應該立刻購買汽車”的橫幅。他們號召美國公眾采取愛國行動，立即用他們并沒有的錢去購買他們并不真正需要的汽車，而且要求他們在第二年的新款 汽車上市之前就對舊款產生厭倦。
