the unhappy american way 译文.pdf

The Unhappy American Way Bertrand Russell It used to be said that English people take their pleasures sadly. No doubt this would still be true if they had any pleasures to take, but the price of alcohol and tobacco in my country has provided sufficient external causes for melancholy. I have sometimes thought that the habit of taking pleasures sadly has crossed the Atlantic, and I have wondered what it is that makes so many English-speaking people somber in their outlook in spite of good health and a good income. 人们常说英国人哪怕遇上乐事也还是落落寡欢。这一说法无疑是正确的—如果他们 还有乐事可遇的话—可如今的酒价烟价，让我的同胞们有的是理由发愁。有时我觉着对 乐事落落寡欢这种习惯已经飘洋过海到了美国，我还纳闷到底是什么使得英语国家人士 态度消沉，尽管他们身体健康，收入颇丰。 In the course of my travels in America I have been impressed by a kind of fundamental malaise which seems to me extremely common and which poses difficult problems for the social reformer. Most social reformers have held the opinion that, if poverty were abolished and there were no more economic insecurity, the millennium would have arrived. But when I look at the faces of people in opulent cars, whether in your country or in mine, I do not see that look of radiant happiness which the aforesaid social reformers had led me to expect. In nine cases out of ten, I see instead a look of boredom and discontent and an almost frantic longing for something that might tickle the jaded palate. 在美国期间，给我留下深刻印象的是一种根深蒂固的抑郁；这种抑郁在我看来极为 普遍，给社会改革家出了莫大的难题。多数社会改革家认为，一旦摆脱贫困，经济不复 动荡，就能迎来黄金盛世。如此说来，那些开着豪华车的人脸上应该洋溢着幸福了，可 恰恰相反，十有八九，我在这些人（不论是在我国还是贵国）脸上看到的是厌烦、不满、 以及一种近乎疯狂的渴望，渴望有什么东西能刺激他们业已疲惫的兴味。 But it is not only the very rich who suffer in this way. Professional men very frequently feel hopelessly thwarted. There is something that they long to do or some public object that they long to work for. But if they were to indulge their wishes in these respects, they fear that they would lose their livel