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Is Everybody Happy?
人人都幸福吗？
John Ciardi
约翰•查尔迪
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.
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。
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.
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。
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。
