Whether People Define Themselves as Happy Depends on the Era
To me, the most interesting statistic from the Pew Research Center's recent poll on happiness wasn't that 84% of the 3,000 Americans interviewed described themselves as being "very" or "pretty" happy. Nor was it that 15% said they weren't so happy. It was that 1% of the sample -- 30 people -- couldn't say if they were happy or not.
Maybe those "don't knows" were historians. Because for the past 2,500 years, scholars, theologians and politicians have wrangled over the definition of happiness and, more specifically, what makes people happy. Is it sensory pleasure? Satisfied desires? Freedom from sorrow or pain? Purposeful labor or a life of leisure? Is it luck? Money? Goodness? Or is it just an accident of biology, some people seemingly born cheerful, others innately crabby?
Perhaps because the Declaration of Independence staked out the pursuit of happiness as one of three unalienable rights of humans, Americans seem particularly vexed when their happiness is thwarted. Indeed, in the 19th century, Americans filed hundreds of lawsuits in federal and state courts accusing the government and fellow citizens of impeding their sacred right to happiness, writes Darrin M. McMahon in his new book, "Happiness." But when an unhappy American complained to Benjamin Franklin that his country was not fulfilling its promise to him, Franklin was said to have replied, "The [Declaration of Independence] only gives you the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
America's earliest settlers, like their Old World forebears, were suspicious of happiness that wasn't associated with morality and Christianity. "The Puritans regarded virtue as the basis of prosperity, rather than prosperity as the basis of virtue," wrote Reinhold Niebuhr in "The Irony of American History." In a sermon to the General Court of the Massachusetts Colony in 1663, John Higginson preached, "When the Lord stirred up the spirits of so many of his people to come over into the wilderness, it was not for worldly wealth or better livelihood… Nor had they any rational grounds to expect such things in such a wilderness."
But by the time Alexis de Tocqueville toured America in 1831, that attitude had begun to change: Happiness had become less about being good, more about feeling good. And with the country's nearly infinite natural resources and new technologies for exploiting them, almost anyone willing to work hard could achieve a comfortable prosperity. If happiness was a full stomach, a roaring fire and a few trinkets that, as Jean Jacques Rousseau suggested, were desirable mainly because your neighbors desired them, then maybe happiness didn't have to be postponed until you went to heaven.
Americans never stop thinking of the good things they have not got, Tocqueville wrote. No one could work harder to be happy than Americans, until finally, "Death steps in… and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him."
Indeed, where Old World happiness was predicated on not having to work, especially doing manual labor, in America, work was increasingly considered a source of satisfaction, even pleasure. That was convenient for a capitalist democracy, where ever-increasing consumption stoked the engine of industrial growth. Millions of immigrants who fled the poverty of their native countries during the 19th and early 20th centuries sought in America the kind of happiness that comes from freedom from want. But because people adapt so quickly to higher levels of affluence, many found themselves on what economists call a "hedonic treadmill," working harder to make more money to buy things that make them -- but only temporarily -- happy.
The word "happy" is derived from an Old Norse word, happ, meaning chance or luck; the word "hapless," from the same root, means unfortunate. Until the past two centuries, happiness was considered a gift of God or the gods; people could pursue it, but they couldn't control it, and they certainly couldn't will it. That notion also changed in the 20th century, as attaining happiness became a question of mind over matter. In 1952, Norman Vincent Peale's bestselling book, "The Power of Positive Thinking," declared, "You can think your way to success and happiness."
The idea that people can engineer their own happiness with the right combination of material and emotional goods has a corollary: Those who are unhappy have failed. As Mr. McMahon writes, "For a society in which the unhindered pursuit of happiness is treated as a natural, God-given right, the inability to make steady progress along the way will inevitably be seen as an aberration, a suspension of the natural order of things."
So, on second thought, maybe the most interesting statistic in the Pew poll isn't the 30 respondents who didn't know if they were happy or not. It's that 15% -- 450 people -- admitted that despite living in a culture that believes happiness can be bought, willed and chosen, they haven't fulfilled what some think is a good citizen's duty to be happy.
不同的时代 不同的“幸福”
在Pew Research Center最近所作的有关幸福的民意调查中，在我看来，最有趣的结论并不是在接受调查的3,000名美国人中有84%的人认为自己“很”或者“非常”幸福，也不是15%的人认为自己不那么幸福。最让我感兴趣的是，有1%的受访者（30人）说不出他们是幸福还是不幸福。
我猜，也许这些“说不出”的人都是历史学家吧，因为过去2,500年来，学者、神学家和政治家在“幸福”的定义、也就是是什么让人快乐的问题上互相纠缠不休。幸福究竟是什么？是感官的愉悦、还是愿望得到满足？是免予悲伤和痛苦？是有意义的劳动还是悠闲的生活？是运气、金钱、仁慈？或者，它只是一种生物学上的偶然──有人似乎天性就愉快，而有人则生来脾气暴躁？
也许是因为美国《独立宣言》将追求幸福列为人类不可予夺的三大权利之一吧，所以，美国人在他们的幸福受到阻碍时似乎特别地愤怒。比如，达林?麦克马洪(Darrin M. McMahon)在他的新书《幸福》里写到，十九世纪时，美国人在联邦或州法院有数百件官司指控政府或其他公民妨碍了他们追求幸福的神圣权利。但是，据说当有一位美国人向本杰明?富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)抱怨称他的国家没能实现对公民的承诺时，富兰克林这样回答他：（《独立宣言》）只是给了你追求幸福的权利，你得自己去找到它。
美国最早的定居者像他们在欧洲大陆的先人一样，对于于道德或基督教无关的幸福持怀疑态度。 莱茵霍德?尼布尔(Reinhold Niebuhr)在《美国历史之讽刺》(The Irony of American History)一书中写道：“清教徒将美德视为财富的基础，而不是反将财富视为美德的基础”。约翰?黑金森(John Higginson) 1663年在马萨诸塞殖民地法庭演讲时说，上帝鼓动他的臣民中的许多人来到这个蛮荒之地时，不是为了世俗的财富或更好的物质生活，他们也没有任何的理性依据可以期待在这样的地方得到这些。
但在阿里克西斯?德?托克维尔(Alexis de Tocqueville ) 1831年游历美国的时候，这种看法已开始改变：幸福已经不再强调事物本身是好的，它更多是说感觉是好的。在美国这样一个似乎有无尽资源的地方，帮助人们利用资源的新技术也层出不穷，所以，任何人只要愿意劳动就能获得可观的财富。如果幸福像让?雅克?卢梭(Jean Jacques Rousseau)所说的那样，是吃饱的肚子、温暖的炉火和几件心爱的小玩意，人们希望得到它们主要是因为邻人们想要，那么，或许无需等到进天堂，你就能得到幸福。
美国人对他们没有的好东西从来不会停止追求。没有人能像美国人那样为了幸福孜孜以求、辛勤劳作，直到最后，“死亡到来了，在他对彻底然而总是躲著他的幸福的毫无结果的追求感到厌倦之前，迫使他停下了”。
的确，在欧洲，幸福取决于不用工作、特别是不用体力劳动，但在美国，工作却越来越多地被人们认为是产生满足感乃至幸福感的源泉。这种观念对美国当时资本主义的发展非常有利，不断增长的消费让工业增长的炉火越烧越旺。十九世纪直至二十世纪初，数以百万计的移民逃离贫穷的祖国来到美国，追求那种“免予匮乏”的幸福。但是，随著人们很快就对更高水平的富足习以为常，许多人发现他们踩著经济学家所谓的“享乐主义的水车”停不不来了，他们不得不更加努力地工作、挣更多钱、去买那些能让他们感到快乐（但也只是暂时快乐）的东西。
“幸福”一词的英文happy出自古挪威语happ，意思是机会或运气，hapless出于同一词根，意思是“不幸”。在过去两个世纪之前，幸福一直被认为是上帝或众神赐予的礼物；人们可以追求它，但不能控制它，而且，当然也不能通过强迫得到它。这种观念20世纪也发生了变化，获取幸福已经变成一个关乎心灵对于物质的的问题。1952年，挪威人文森特?皮勒(Vincent Peale)在其畅销书《积极思考的力量》(The Power of Positive Thinking)中宣称，人们可以按照自己的思路争取成功或幸福。
人们可以借助物质和精神产品的恰当结合设计自己的幸福这样一个理念，产生了一个必然的推论：那些不幸福的人是失败的。就像麦克马洪在书中写道的那样：在这样一个社会里－－对幸福不受阻碍的追求被视为一种与生俱来、上帝赐予的权利，在追求幸福的道路上不能稳定前进，将不可避免地被认为不合常规，是事物自然秩序的中断。
这样再一想，在Pew的调查中，最有趣的统计结果或许也不是有30位受访者称不知道他们是否幸福，而是那认为自己不幸福的15%（450人）的受访者，他们是在承认，虽然自己生活在一种相信幸福可以购买、可以凭借意志去实现、可以选择的文化里，但他们却没能实现在一些人看来是一个好公民职责所在的幸福。
