The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being By William Davies

《幸福产业》：政府和大公司是如何向我们兜售幸福的

'Happiness is the ultimate goal because it is self-evidently good. If we are asked why happiness matters we can give no further external reason. It just obviously does matter.' This pronouncement by Richard Layard, an economist and advocate of 'positive psychology', summarises the beliefs of many people today. For Layard and others like him, it is obvious that the purpose of government is to promote a state of collective well-being. The only question is how to achieve it, and here positive psychology - a supposed science that not only identifies what makes people happy but also allows their happiness to be measured - can show the way. Equipped with this science, they say, governments can secure happiness in society in a way they never could in the past.

“幸福是最终的目标，因为它本身毫无疑问是有益的。如果我们被问到为什么幸福很重要，我们不用给出进一步的外部原因，很明显幸福是很重要的。”作为一名经济学家和“积极心理学”的支持者，Richard Layard的这一说法概括了当今很多人的想法。对 Layard和其他与之类似的人来说，很明显政府的目的是促进一种共同幸福的状态。唯一的问题是如何达到这种状态，在这方面积极心理学会提供方法，这门所谓的科学不仅界定什么使人们感到幸福，也会使幸福能够被测量。他们说，在这门学科的帮助下，政府可以用一种之前从未有过的方式来保障社会幸福感。

It is an astonishingly crude and simple-minded way of thinking, and for that very reason increasingly popular. Those who think in this way are oblivious to the vast philosophical literature in which the meaning and value of happiness have been explored and questioned, and write as if nothing of any importance had been thought on the subject until it came to their attention. It was the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) who was more than anyone else responsible for the development of this way of thinking. For Bentham it was obvious that the human good consists of pleasure and the absence of pain. The Greek philosopher Aristotle may have identified happiness with self-realisation in the 4th century BC, and thinkers throughout the ages may have struggled to reconcile the pursuit of happiness with other human values, but for Bentham all this was mere metaphysics or fiction. Without knowing anything much of him or the school of moral theory he established - since they are by education and intellectual conviction illiterate in the history of ideas - our advocates of positive psychology follow in his tracks in rejecting as outmoded and irrelevant pretty much the entirety of ethical reflection on human happiness to date.

这是一种令人吃惊的粗糙和简单的思考方式，并且正是由于这一原因变得越发流行。那些以这种方式思考的人并未了解丰富的哲学文献，在其中幸福的含义和价值已经被探究和问询，并且他们在写作时，就像在他们开始关心这一主题之前任何重要的事情都没有被思考过一样，哲学家 Jeremy Bentham(1748~1832)比其他任何人都更应为这种思考方式的发展负责。对 Bentham而言，很明显人类的幸福包括喜悦和无痛苦，希腊哲学家亚里上多德或许在公元前4世纪将幸福定义为与自我实现有关，这一时代的思想家们似乎在努力处理好对幸福的追求与其他人类价值之间的关系，但对 Bentham而言这一切都只是形面上的或虚构的东西。这些积极心理学的倡导者们由于受到教育和确定信念的影响，在思想史方面是无知的。他们对 Bentham和他建立的道德理论学课一无所知，这些积极心理学的倡导者们跟随着他的足迹，拒绝追溯那些对人类幸福的伦理反映，在他们看来这是不合时宜又无关紧要的。

But as William Davies notes in his recent book The Happiness Industry, the view that happiness is the only self-evident good is actually a way of limiting moral inquiry. One of the virtues of this rich, lucid and arresting book is that it places the current cult of happiness in a well-defined historical framework. Rightly, Davies begins his story with Bentham, noting that he was far more than a philosopher. Davies writes, 'Bentham's activities were those which we might now associate with a public sector management consultant'. In the 1790s, he wrote to the Home Office suggesting that the departments of government be linked together through a set of 'conversation tubes', and to the Bank of England with a design for a printing device that could produce unforgeable banknotes. He drew up plans for a 'frigidarium' to keep provisions such as meat, fish, fruit and vegetables fresh. His celebrated design for a prison to be known as a 'Panopticon', in which prisoners would be kept in solitary confinement while being visible at all times to the guards, was very nearly adopted. (Surprisingly, Davies does not discuss the fact that Bentham meant his Panopticon not just as a model prison but also as an instrument of control that could be applied to schools and factories.)

但是正如William Davies在他最近的《幸福产业》一书中指出的那样，认为幸福只是理所当然有好处的想法，实际上是一种对道德追问的限制。这本书内容丰富，观点明晰并且非常有趣，它的优点之在于它将如今对幸福的狂热置于一个定义清楚的历史框架之中， Davies恰如其分地从 Bentham开始他的写作，指出他绝不仅仅是一位哲学家。 Davies写道，" Bentham做的是那些或许我们今天会和公共部门管理顾问联系在一起的事情。”在18世纪90年代，他写信给内政部建议政府部门通过一系列“通话管”联系在一起，并建议英格兰银行设计一种印刷装置来生产无法被伪造的纸币。他起草了“冷藏室”计划来保持肉类，鱼类、水果和蔬菜等储存物的新鲜。他设计了著名的“圆形监狱”，在这里犯人会被单独囚禁，并随时可以被守卫看到，这一设计几平被政府采纳（Bentham并不仅仅希望他的“圆形监狱”作为监狱的范例，他同样希望其作为一种管控工具在学校和工厂中应用，令人吃惊的是， Davies并没有讨论这一事实。）

Bentham was also a pioneer of the 'science of happiness'. If happiness is to be regarded as a science, it has to be measured, and Bentham suggested two ways in which this might be done. Viewing happiness as a complex of pleasurable sensations, he suggested that it might be quantified by measuring the human pulse rate. Alternatively, money could be used as the standard for quantification: if two different goods have the same price, it can be claimed that they produce the same quantity of pleasure in the consumer. Bentham was more attracted by the latter measure. By associating money so closely to inner experience, Davies writes, Bentham 'set the stage for the entangling of psychological research and capitalism that would shape the business practices of the twentieth century'.

Bentham同样是“幸福科学”的先驱。如果幸福要被作为一门科学，它就需要被测量， Bentham建议了两种方式使之可能被实现。可以将幸福视为一系列愉快的情感，他提出幸福可以通过测量人的脉搏率得到量化。或者，金钱可以被用作量化标准：如果两种不同的商品价格相同，就可以说它们为顾客带来了相同程度的愉悦感。 Bentham更喜欢后一种测量方式，通过将金钱与内在体验如此紧密地建立联系，Davies写道， Bentham“为心理学研究与资本主义的结合提供了舞台，这会塑造20世纪的商业实践。”

The Happiness Industry describes how the project of a science of happiness has become integral to capitalism. We learn much that is interesting about how economic problems are being redefined and treated as psychological maladies. In addition, Davies shows how the belief that inner states of pleasure and displeasure can be objectively measured has informed management studies and advertising. The tendency of thinkers such as J B Watson, the founder of behaviourism*, was that human beings could be shaped, or manipulated, by policymakers and managers. Watson had no factual basis for his view of human action. When he became president of the American Psychological Association in 1915, he 'had never even studied a single human being': his research had been confined to experiments on white rats. Yet Watson's reductive model is now widely applied, with 'behaviour change' becoming the goal of governments: in Britain, a 'Behaviour Insights Team' has been established by the government to study how people can be encouraged, at minimum cost to the public purse, to live in what are considered to be socially desirable ways.

《幸福产业》描述了幸福科学是如何成为资本主义的一部分的。我们看到了很多有趣的现象，关于经济问题是如何被重新定义并被作为心理问题对待的。此外，Davies揭示了内心的愉快或沮丧状态可以被客观测量这一观点是如何影响管理研究和广告的。像行为主义的创建者华生这一类思想家，认为人类是可以被政策制定者们和管理者们塑造或控制的。华生关于人类行为的观点并没有事实基础。当他在1915年成为美国心理协会主席时，他“从未研究过任何一个人”：他的研究局限在关于小白鼠的实验上。但随着“行为改变”成为政府的日标，华生的还原模型如今被广泛应用：在英国，政府建立了一个“行为洞察团队”来研究如何以最低成本的公共资金来鼓励人们用一种社会认可的方式生活。

Modem industrial societies appear to need the possibility of ever-increasing happiness to motivate them in their labours. But whatever its intellectual pedigree, the idea that governments should be responsible for promoting happiness is always a threat to human freedom.

现代工业社会似乎需要不断增长的幸福可能性来激励劳动者。但无论知识的流派如何，政府应当负责促进幸福的观点一直是对人类自由的一种威胁。

* 'behaviourism': a branch of psychology which is concerned with observable behaviour

*'行为主义'：心理学的一个分支，主要关注可观察的行为。