导读： 主观的东西是最客观的，最客观的东西是最主观的。 心理现象是主观的，但是其规律是最客观的。 物质是客观的，但是其规律是无限的，人类对它永远是无知大于已知，从而走向了主观。 Britain to Measure Happiness By ROBERT MACKEY http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/britain-to-measure-happiness/ In an attempt to make good实现 on a centuries-old idea, that the happiness of a nations citizens is the ultimate goal of all government, （ 英国率先提出福利国家的概念，丘吉尔确立英国建设福利国家的目标，1948年英国工党首相爱德礼宣布英国建成福利国家） British Prime Minister David Cameron is planning to ask for a survey of the general well-being of residents of the United Kingdom. Allegra Stratton of the Guardian reported on Monday that Mr. Camerons government will ask Britains independent national statistician, Jil Matheson, to add questions to an annual household家庭 survey in an attempt to gauge测量 the national mood民心. Ms. Stratton explained: It will be up to Matheson to choose the questions but the governments aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective主观 well-being, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective客观 sense of how well they are achieving their life goals. The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a bundle of indications说明 about our quality of life. Mr. Cameron has been talking about the concept of putting well-being at the center of the national agenda for several years. In 2006, a few months after he became the leader of the British Conservative Party, Mr. Cameron said in a speech at the Google Zeitgeist conference: Its time we admitted that theres more to life than money, and its time we focused not just on G.D.P., but on G.W.B. general well-being. Well-being cant be measured by money or traded in markets. It cant be required by law or delivered by government. Its about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, and above all the strength of our relationships. Improving our societys sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times. As the BBC reported that day in 2006, Mr. Camerons remarks echoed words Tony Blair had written in 1999: Money isnt everything. But in the past governments have seemed to forget this. Success has been measured by economic growth, G.D.P., alone. Delivering the best possible quality of life for us all means more than concentrating solely on economic growth. 布莱尔 While Mr. Blair was prime minister, in fact, his strategy unit published a paper which suggested that happiness might be measured and encouraged促进, by developing a happiness index , encouraging volunteerism爱心、慈善、恻隐之心, teaching people about happiness, and introducing higher taxes for the rich. While Mr. Cameron is unlikely to follow the final one of those suggestions, the idea that happiness is a central concern of government is not a new one in fact, it is extremely old. 边沁的功利主义 In 1789, a few years after Thomas Jefferson put the Purfuit of Happinefs near the top of Americas founding document, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote, in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, that the happiness of the individuals, of whom a community is composed, that is their pleasures and their security, is the end and the sole end which the legislator ought to have in view. （边沁主张用苦乐作为衡量善恶的最终标准。） How exactly such an elusive模糊 concept as happiness is to be measured, though, is far from clear. In the United States , Gallup regularly polls people about their well-being, but the end product, a dizzying array of charts表格 and graphs图表, offers anything but a clear picture of how happy Americans are. A European think tank, the N.E.F., also carries out surveys of well-being in several countries, but, again, the final data set数集合 can be hard to parse从语法上描述或分析, even when expressed in the form of interactive, color-coded maps. 英国幸福指数的堕落史 Some recent research, however, might suggest that Mr. Cameron has not chosen the best time or place to ask British citizens if they are happy. In 2006 a BBC study of national happiness found that the proportion of people saying they are very happy has fallen from 52 percent in 1957 to just 36 percent today. On Monday, Randeep Ramesh of the Guardian reported that a new study, due to be published next month in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, says there is increasing evidence that psychological health and mental well-being is getting worse across Europe . Mr. Ramesh explained that the researchers found that even before the recent economic crisis, Europeans were apparently becoming less happy: While Britain became richer by more than 40 percent between 1993 and 2007, the study says, measures of neurotic symptoms and common psychiatric disorders rose during the same period. Similar results are observed across the continent. 勃朗宁 While it might be argued that some degree of dissatisfaction with ones life could be a spur激励 to greater achievement after all it was an English poet, Robert Browning, who wrote that a mans reach should exceed his grasp another recent study found that, next to Ireland, Britain is by some measures the worst place in Europe to live. 辛苦的英国人 In September, uSwitch.coms European quality of life survey found that life in Britain was essentially miserable, with Britons enjoying worse weather, less vacation and a shorter life expectancy than several of their neighbors. As Mark King explained in the Guardian, an even more galling难堪 finding of the study was that Britons are just across the Channel from the best place to live in Europe: U.K. workers enjoy a week less holiday than the European average and three weeks less than the Spanish, while the U.K.s spend (as a percentage of G.D.P.) on health and education is below the European average and U.K. food and diesel prices are the highest in Europe. Unleaded petrol无铅汽油, electricity, alcohol and cigarettes all cost more than the average across the continent. France enjoys the earliest retirement age (joint with Poland), spends the most on health care (11 percent of G.D.P.) and has the longest life expectancy in Europe at 81.09 years. Its workers also benefit from 36 days holiday a year compared with just 28 in the U.K. and it comes only behind Spain (second in the rankings) and Italy for hours of sunshine. So, will Britains happiness survey discover a nation of malcontents ready to rise up in revolt暴动, or perhaps flee逃亡 their frequently cold and dark home for happier shores? Maybe not. 骄傲的英国人，约翰-穆勒 To start with, national pride even while splintered破碎 is still quite strong across the U.K. As another resident of rain-soaked British Isles, John Stuart Mill a philosopher who was also a member of Parliament observed发现 long ago, it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Then there is also the fact that, in at least one of the categories measured by the European think tank, Britons did quite well: resilience适应、无铅顽强. Toughing it out stiff upper lip and all that has long been a national characteristic the British are proud to talk about. As the writer John Lanchester explained in a New Yorker article on the election that brought Mr. Cameron, eventually, to power: Visitors to Britain are rarely able to grasp理解 sometimes after decades of residency the vital distinction its inhabitants make between complaining and moaning . The two activities seem similar, but there is a profound philosophical and practical difference. To complain about something is to express dissatisfaction to someone whom you hold responsible for an unsatisfactory state of affairs; to moan is to express the same thing to someone other than the person responsible. The British are powerfully embarrassed by complaining, and experience an almost physical recoil from people who do it in public. They do love to moan though. 4 Readers' Comments 3. Terezhina San Francisco November 16th, 2010 10:29 am They should check with the kingdon of Bhutan where Gross National Happiness is the measuring stick of the government. This kind of survey has been done in the past (I seem to remember one in Canada a number of years ago) and to no one's surprise happiness I believe it has always been found to correlate positively with the amount of money one has. It is easy to be happy if you don't have to worry about where your next meal is coming from, or if you should halve削减 your medications药物 to be able to afford them.
标签: 福利
