什么能使我们幸福？

 

如果说，追求幸福是人活着的目的，大致不会有太大的疑问。然而，怎样才能达到这一目的，什么样的生活才能使人感到幸福，却是见仁见智的问题。获得金钱，地位，权力，名誉，健康，安全，爱情，亲情，友情，等等等等，便成了许多人衡量幸福的指标；努力追求这些具体指标也就成了实现幸福这一目标的手段。不幸的是，不少人却在追求幸福的过程中将手段和目的倒置，即使达到努力追求的指标，依然感觉不到幸福。

从社会发展的角度看，达到经济富裕，政治自由，教育发达，社会和谐，福利体系健全，。。。等等指标，无疑是全体公民的福祉。但是，在追求这些指标的过程中，很多国家往往容易转向，找不着北。现在，优先发展经济成了许多发展中国家在现代化过程中的首要目标，而刺激消费鼓励贪婪则成为经济发达国家持之以恒的任务。为了追求幸福，人们瞎折腾，给自己增加死拽死不说，还为争夺资源，破坏环境，动不动挑起战争，使全世界笼罩在核大战的恐惧当中。

刚刚看到这篇报道中提到，财富与幸福有着紧密联系，一些贫穷的非洲国家的人缺少幸福感，幸福指数明显低于其他国家。这说明，贫穷是不能带来幸福的。但是，经济落后的不丹人的幸福指数为8.0，而美国人的幸福指数为7.4，不及不丹。这又表明，财富并非产生幸福感的唯一重要指标。

不说不丹王国以GNH取代GNP的做法是否应当效法，仅就其幸福指数高于美国来说，就值得人们深思。由于时间关系，这篇文章未能翻译成中文，仅转贴原文在此，供感兴趣的朋友参阅。

Science wants to know: What makes us happy?

Researchers and governments try to determine which factors lead to a person's well-being

August 26, 2007

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan long ago dispensed with the notion of Gross National Product as a gauge of well-being. The king decreed that his people would aspire to Gross National Happiness instead.

That kernel of Buddhist wisdom is increasingly finding an echo in international policy and development models, which seek to establish scientific methods for finding out what makes us happy and why.

New research institutes are being created at venerable universities such as Oxford and Cambridge to establish methods of judging individual and national well-being. Governments are putting ever greater emphasis on promoting mental well-being.

"In much the same way that research of consumer unions helps you to make the best buy, happiness research can help you make the best choices," said Ruut Veenhoven, who created the World Database of Happiness in 1999.

When he started studying happiness in the 1960s, Veenhoven used data from social researchers who simply asked people how satisfied they were with their lives, on a scale of zero to 10. But as the discipline has matured and gained popularity in the past decade, self-reporting has been found lacking.

By their own estimate, "drug addicts would measure happy all the time," said Sabina Alkire of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute, which began work May 30.

New studies add more objective questions into a mix of feel-good factors: education, nutrition, freedom from fear and violence, gender equality, and perhaps most importantly, having choices.

But if people say money can't buy happiness, they're only partially right.

Veenhoven's database, which lists 95 countries, is headed by Denmark, with a rating of 8.2, followed by Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Finland, all countries with high per capita income. At the other end of the scale are much poorer countries: Tanzania rated 3.2, behind Zimbabwe, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia.

The United States just makes it into the top 15 with a 7.4 index rating. While choice is abundant, nutrition and violence issues helped drag its rating down.

Wealth counts, but most studies of individuals show income disparities count more. Surprisingly, however, citizens are no happier in welfare states than in purer free-market economies.

"In the beginning, I didn't believe my eyes," Veenhoven said of his data. "Icelanders are just as happy as Swedes, yet their country spends half what Sweden does (per capita) on social welfare."

Adrian White, of the University of Leicester, included twice as many countries as Veenhoven in his Global Projection of Subjective Well-being, which also measures the correlation of happiness and wealth. He, too, led his list with Denmark, Switzerland and Austria.

Bhutan, where less than half the people can read or write and 90 percent are subsistence farmers, ranks No. 8 in his list of happy nations.

By Arthur Max and Toby Sterling

Associated Press