Ted英语演讲：Nic Marks全球幸福指数
统计学家 Nic Marks 提问，为何我们以一个国家的生产力来衡量其成功与否，而非人民的快乐与身心健康？他因此推出了「快乐星球指数」（HPI），用以追踪一国安康与资源利用之间的关系，因为快乐人生不需要赔上地球，那些国家的 HPI 最高呢？各位可能会吓一跳。Nic Marks 收集让我们感到快乐的证据，用以提倡将人民身心健康与地球摆在优先顺位，他是英国智库新经济基金会（NEF）身心健康中心的创办人。
为何要听他演讲：
Nic Marks 认为生活质量是可测量的，真正的快乐并非来自物质财富的累积，而是来自与他人的联系、与世界接轨及自主权。这并不只是一位身心健康领域研究先锋的理论，Marks 创造出统计的方法来衡量快乐、分析并解释所收集的证据，进而援用于教育、永续发展、保健及经济等政策领域。
英国伦敦独立智库新经济基金会（NEF）身心健康中心的创辨人，Marks 特别热衷于提倡永续发展与生活质量间的平衡，为了加以研究，他设计了「快乐星球指数」，一项人类身心健康与对环境影响的全球指数，研究结果冲上头条：住在世界上最富有国家的人民消费最多地球资源，但却非身心最健康的人。这激发了一个问题：解套的经济成长又有何意义？
Nic Marks: The Happy Planet Index 全球幸福指数
Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a nightmare,” when he inspired the civil rights movements. He said, “I have a dream.” And I have a dream. I have a dream that we can stop thinking that the future will be a nightmare, and this is going to be a challenge, because, if you think of every major blockbusting film of recent times, nearly all of its visions for humanity are apocalyptic. I think this film is one of the hardest watches of modern times, “The Road.” It’s a beautiful piece of filmmaking, but everything is desolate, everything is dead. And just a father and son trying to survive, walking along the road. And I think the environmental movement of which I am a part of has been complicit in creating this vision of the future.
马丁•路德•金恩未说：「我有一个恶梦」，当他启发民权运动时，他说:「我有一个梦想」，我也有一个梦想，我的梦想是我们可以停止想象未来将会是恶梦一场，而这将是一个挑战，因为，端看近期每一部主要的热门电影，其人类文明愿景几乎全部都像圣经《启示录》所载，我认为《末路浩劫》这部电影是现代最难看懂的电影之一，电影制作很美，但触目皆凄凉，放眼人烟惨绝，只有父子两人试图生存地沿着马路前进，至于环境运动，我身为其中一员，与产生这种未来愿景串成一气。
For too long, we have peddled a nightmarish vision of what’s going to happen. We have focused on the worst-case scenario. We have focused on the problems. And we have not thought enough about the solutions. We’ve used fear, if you like, to grab people’s attention. And any psychologist will tell you that fear in the organism is linked to flight mechanism. It’s part of the fight and flight mechanism, that when an animal is frightened — think of a deer. A deer freezes very, very still, poised to run away. And I think that’s what we’re doing when we’re asking people to engage with our agenda around environmental degradation and climate change. People are freezing and running away because we’re using fear. And I think the environmental movement has to grow up and start to think about what progress is.
长久以来，我们都在散播恶梦似的愿景，针对将发生的未来，我们假想了最坏打算的情景，重心放在问题上，但却没有相对地考虑解决方案，我们总是使用恐惧来抓住人们的注意力，任何心理学家都会说，这种生物恐惧和逃离机制心理有关，那是攻击或逃离反应机制的一部份，当动物受到惊吓，想象一只鹿受到惊吓，牠会先吓到僵直，准备要逃离，而那也是我们的反应，当我们邀集别人加入环境恶化与气候变化的议程，人们会吓住并逃离，因为我们使用恐惧的手法，我认为环境运动必需成长，并开始思考相关进步。
What would it be like to be improving the human lot? And one of the problems that we face, I think, is that the only people that have cornered the market in terms of progress is a financial definition of what progress is, an economic definition of what progress is — that somehow, if we get the right numbers to go up, we’re going to be better off, whether that’s on the stock market, whether that’s with GDP and economic growth, that somehow life is going to get better. This is somehow appealing to human greed instead of fear — that more is better. Come on. In the Western world, we have enough. Maybe some parts of the world don’t, but we have enough. And we’ve know for a long time that this is not a good measure of the welfare of nations.
改善人类命运的前景为何？我们面临的其中一个问题是，唯一有市场的说法，以进步来说，是金融定义下的进步，经济定义下的进步，那多少，如果我们有惊人的数字，就比较容易吸引到听众，无论是股市、GDP或是经济成长数据，因为那显示生活会更好，这招对人类的贪婪很有效，但非恐惧，数字愈惊人愈好，拜托，西方世界已饱足了，也许世界有些地方尚在努力，但我们已饱足，而我们长久以来也自知，这并非衡量国家福祉的好方法。
In fact, the architect of our national accounting system, Simon Kuznets, in the 1930s, said that, “A nation’s welfare can scarcely be inferred from their national income.” But we’ve created a national accounting system which is firmly based on production and producing stuff. And indeed, this is probably historical, and it had its time. In the second World War, we needed to produce a lot of stuff. And indeed, we were so successful at producing certain types of stuff that we destroyed a lot of Europe, and we had to rebuild it afterwards. And so our national accounting system became fixated on what we can produce.
事实上，我们的全国会计系统架构，Simon Kuznets 于 1930 年代说到：「一个国家的福祉根本不能藉由其国民所得来推定」，但我们创造了一套全国会计系统，其根据稳当地来自生产和生产工具，的确，这可能是历史演变所无法避免，第二次世界大战时，我们必需要生产很多东西，而我们也的确很成功地生产了很多玩意儿，前去摧毁欧洲，之后再加以重建，所以我们的全国会计系统停留在我们能生产的东西。
But as early as 1968, this visionary man, Robert Kennedy, at the start of his ill-fated presidential campaign, gave the most eloquent deconstruction of gross national product that ever has been. And he finished his talk with the phrase, that, “The gross national product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” How crazy is that? That our measure of progress, our dominant measure of progress in society, is measuring everything except that which makes life worthwhile? I believe, if Kennedy was alive today, he would be asking statisticians such as myself to go out and find out what makes life worthwhile. He’d be asking us to redesign our national accounting system to be based upon such important things as social justice, sustainability and people’s well-being.
但早在 1968 年，这位前瞻伟人，Robert Kennedy，在其不幸总统竞选宣传的前期，即给了最有说服力的演讲，关于支解国民生产总值的迷思，史无前例的精彩，他以这一句话作为演讲的总结，「国民生产总值能衡量所有的事，除了能让人生有真实价值的事」，这话有多狂呢？我们衡量进步，我们衡量社会进步的主要工具是能衡量所有事，但却无法测出生活的真实价值？我相信，如果 Kennedy 今天仍活着，他会要统计师，像我这样的人，去找出什么能让生活有真实价值，他会要我们重新设计我们的全国会计系统，根据一些重要的事，诸如：社会正义、永续和人民福祉。
And actually, social scientists have already gone out and asked these questions around the world. This is from a global survey. It’s asking people, what do they want. And unsurprisingly, people all around the world say that what they want is happiness, for themselves, for their families, their children, their communities. Okay, they think money is slightly important. It’s there, but it’s not nearly as important as happiness, and it’s not nearly as important as love. We all need to love and be loved in life. It’s not nearly as important as health. We want to be healthy and live a full life. These seem to be natural human aspirations. Why are statisticians not measuring these? Why are we not thinking of the progress of nations in these terms, instead of just how much stuff we have? And really, this is what I’ve done with my adult life — is think about how do we measure happiness, how do we measure well-being, how can we do that within environmental limits.
事实上，社会科学家早已站出来，向全世界提问这些问题。这是份全球问卷，提问人们想要的世界为何？毫无惊奇地，全球人们都说他们想要的是快乐，不只他们自身，还包含家人与小孩及社群，Okay，他们也认为钱有些重要，如表所示，但那比不上快乐的重要性，更比不上爱，生活中，我们都需要爱与被爱，钱也比不上健康的重要性，我们想要享受健康的好生活，这些都看似人类自然的渴望，但为何统计师不衡量这些？为何我们不以这些标准来衡量国家的进步与否？反倒是在计算我们拥有的俗物，而这正是我长大以后一直在做的事，想着我们如何衡量快乐，我们如何衡量福祉，我们如何在环境许可范围内获得快乐？
And we created, at the organization that I work for, the New Economics Foundation, something we call the Happy Planet Index, because we think people should be happy and the planet should be happy. Why don’t we create a measure of progress that shows that? And what we do, is we say that the ultimate outcome of a nation is how successful is it at creating happy and healthy lives for its citizens. That should be the goal of every nation on the planet. But we have to remember that there’s a fundamental input to that, and that is how many of the planet’s resources we use. We all have one planet. We all have to share it. It is the ultimate scarce resource, the one planet that we share. And economics is very interested in scarcity. When it has a scarce resource that it wants to turn into a desirable outcome, it thinks in terms of efficiency. It thinks in terms of how much bang do we get for our buck. And this is a measure of how much well-being we get for our planetary resource use. It is an efficiency measure. And probably the easiest way to show you that, is to show you this graph.
于是我们创立我现时服务的组织「新经济基金会」（NEF）及「快乐星球指数」（HPI），因为我们认为人们应该要快乐，星球也应该要快乐，所以，我们为何不能创造一套以快乐衡量进步的标准？所以基金会所做的便是，我们提议一个国家最终界定为成功的标准，端看它为其人民创造多少快乐与康健人生，这应成为地球上每个国家努力的目标，但我们要记得放入多少基本资源，我们使用了多少地球的资源，我们只有一颗地球，我们都共享着，这些终极的珍贵资源，我们共享的一颗星球，经济对珍贵资源很感兴趣，当它拥有珍贵资源，便想要将其转化为一个合意的结果，其思考逻辑是效率，我们可以从中获得多少经济效益，而这便是我们衡量福祉的方法，当我们取用地球资源时，一种效率测量法，可能最容易让各位明了的作法是显示这张图表。
Running horizontally along the graph, is “ecological footprint,” which is a measure of how much resources we use and how much pressure we put on the planet. More is bad. Running vertically upwards, is a measure called “happy life years.” It’s about the well-being of nations. It’s like a happiness adjusted life-expectancy. It’s like quality and quantity of life in nations. And the yellow dot there you see, is the global average. Now, there’s a huge array of nations around that global average. To the top right of the graph, are countries which are doing reasonably well and producing well-being, but they’re using a lot of planet to get there. They are the U.S.A., other Western countries going across in those triangles and a few Gulf states in there actually. Conversely, at the bottom left of the graph, are countries that are not producing much well-being — typically, sub-Saharan Africa. In Hobbesian terms, life is short and brutish there. The average life expectancy in many of these countries is only 40 years. Malaria, HIV/AIDS are killing a lot of people in these regions of the world.
图表水平轴代表「生态足迹」，意即我们使用的资源量及我们加诸于地球的压力，数字愈高愈糟；纵向衡量的是「快乐岁月」，代表国家的福祉，有点像是经快乐调整过的寿命，更像是国家中生活的质量，表中的黄点是全球平均，多数的国家围绕着这个全球平均点，表的右上角是福祉还算不错的国家，但那也表示使用了很多的地球资源，这些国家是美国与其他的西欧诸国，以三角点表示，其中还包含了一些波斯湾国家；相对地，表中的左下角是没啥福祉可言的国家，基本上，全位于南撒哈拉非洲，套用贺伯斯的语气，那里的生活短暂且残酷，那里大部份国家的平均寿命仅 40 年，疟疾、HIV / 艾滋病摧毁了很多生命，全聚在这个地方。
But now for the good news! There are some countries up there, yellow triangles, that are doing better than global average, that are heading up towards the top left of the graph. This is an aspirational graph. We want to be top left, where good lives don’t cost the earth. They’re Latin American. The country on its own up at the top is a place I haven’t been to. Maybe some of you have. Costa Rica. Costa Rica — average life expectancy is 78-and-a-half years. That is longer than in the USA. They are, according to the latest Gallup world poll, the happiest nation on the planet — than anybody; more than Switzerland and Denmark. They are the happiest place. They are doing that on a quarter of the resources that are used typically in [the] Western world — a quarter of the resources.
但好消息还是有的！表上以黄色三角点代表的那些国家，位于全球平均之上，聚集在表中左上角，这是张众人梦寐以求的图表，我们都想移到左上角，因为那意指好生活不以牺牲地球为代价，这些点代表拉丁美洲，那个独自位处高点的国家是我尚未到访过的地方，也许在座有人去过，哥斯达黎加，哥斯达黎加的平均寿命是 78 岁半，比美国长寿。根据最新盖洛普世界投票结果，他们是地球上最快乐的国家，比瑞士和丹麦国民更快乐，其国民住在最快乐的地方，而这么快乐只用了四分之一的资源。
What’s going on there? What’s happening in Costa Rica? We can look at some of the data. 99 percent of their electricity comes from renewable resources. Their government is one of the first to commit to be carbon neutral by 2021. They abolished the army in 1949 — 1949. And they invested in social programs — health and education. They have one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America and in the world. And they have that Latin vibe, don’t they. They have the social connectedness. (Laughter)
对比于传统西方世界的用量，四分之一的资源，他们是怎么办到的？哥斯达黎加有何秘诀？让我们来参考一些数据数据，99% 的用电来自可更新能源，其政府是最早承诺在 2021 年达到碳平衡的国家之一，他们早己解除军备，早在 1949 年，1949 年！将预算挪到社会计划上，诸如健康与教育，他们的识字率在拉美和全世界都是名列前茅，当然，他们还有拉美的热情，他们的社交联系很强（笑声）。
The challenge is, that possibly — and the thing we might have to think about — is that the future might not be North American, might not be Western European. It might be Latin American. And the challenge, really, is to pull the global average up here. That’s what we need to do. And if we’re going to do that, we need to pull countries from the bottom, and we need to pull countries from the right of the graph. And then we’re starting to create a happy planet. That’s one way of looking at it.
我们必需要思量的可能挑战是，未来可能不在北美，也不是西欧，但可能是拉美，而真正的挑战是将全球平均拉高到这里，那是我们的努力目标，但如果我们真的要那么做，则必需要将垫底的国家及位于表中右侧的国家全拉到左上方来，那么我们就能创造出一颗快乐星球，那是一种分析模式。
Another way of looking at it is looking at time trends. We don’t have good data going back for every country in the world, but for some of the richest countries, the OECD group, we do. And this is the trend in well-being over that time, a small increase, but this is the trend in ecological footprint. And so in strict happy-planet methodology, we’ve become less efficient at turning our ultimate scarce resource into the outcome we want to. And the point really is, is that I think, probably everybody in this room would like society to get to 2050 without an apocalyptic something happening. It’s actually not very long away. It’s half a human lifetime away. A child entering school today will be my age in 2050. This is not the very distant future. This is what the U.K. government target on carbon and greenhouse emissions looks like. And I put it to you, that is not business as usual. That is changing our business. That is changing the way we create our organizations, we do our government policy and we live our lives. And the point is, we need to carry on increasing well-being. No one can go to the polls and say that quality of life is going to reduce. None of us, I think, want human progress to stop. I think we want it to carry on. I think we want the lot of humanity to keep on increasing. And I think this is where climate change skeptics and deniers come in. I think this is what they want. They want quality of life to keep increasing. They want to hold on to what they’ve got. And if we’re going to engage them, I think that’s what we’ve got to do. And that means we have to really increase efficiency even more.
另一种方式是从时代趋势的角度来看，我们没有全球所有国家的历史数据，但 OECD 富国集团数据是有的，而这是那段时间的福祉趋势仅微幅上升，而这却是生态足迹的趋势，所以，从严格，快乐星球方法论的角度来看，我们变得较无效率，就将我们终极珍贵资源转化为我们想要结果这事来说，而重点真的是，不只我认为，可能在座各位也都希望 2050 年的社会不会像世界末日那样的情节，时间过得很快，那是人类一半寿命的时间罢了，今天，假设有一位小童开始上学，2050 年就会长到我这个年纪，那并非很遥远的未来，虚线是英国政府减少碳与温室效应排放的目标，我将此呈现给各位，因为过往的解决方法已不合时宜，这些都在改变我们的做法，那在改变我们建立组织的方式，我们制定政府政策及我们生活的方式，重点是，我们必需要持续提高福祉，没有人会投票赞成让生活质量下降，我想，没人会想要看到人类进步停滞，我们想要看到进步延续，我们都想要人类文明的命运继续进步，而这是怀疑与否认环境变化者的发言点，这是他们愿见的情景，他们想要生活质量继续提升，他们想要紧握所拥有的一切，如要邀集这些人加入，而我认为，我们必需要邀集这些人加入，意即，我们必需真正地大幅提升效率.
Now that’s all very easy to draw graphs and things like that, but the point is we need to turn those curves. And this is where I think we can take a leaf out of systems theory, systems engineers, where they create feedback loops, put the right information at the right point of time. Human beings are very motivated by the “now.” You put a smart meter in your home, and you see how much electricity you’re using right now, how much it’s costing you, your kids go around and turn the lights off pretty quickly. What would that look like for society? Why is it, on the radio news every evening, I hear the FTSE 100, the Dow Jones, the dollar pound ratio — I don’t even know which way the dollar pound ratio should go to be good news. And why do I hear that? Why don’t I hear how much energy Britain used yesterday, or American used yesterday? Did we meet our three percent annual target on reducing carbon emissions? That’s how you create a collective goal. You put it out there into the media and start thinking about it. And we need positive feedback loops for increasing well-being At a government level, they might create national accounts of well-being. At a business level, you might look at the well-being of your employees, which we know is really linked to creativity, which is linked to innovation, and we’re going to need a lot of innovation to deal with those environmental issues. At a personal level, we need these nudges too. Maybe we don’t quite need the data, but we need reminders. In the U.K., we have a strong public health message on five fruit and vegetables a day and how much exercise we should do — never my best thing. What are these for happiness? What are the five things that you should do every day to be happier?
描画图表的工作不难，但重点是我们需要扭转这些曲线，而在此，我认为我们可以借用一些系统理论及系统工程师，请他们创造回馈循环，在合适的时间提供适当的信息。「现时」对人类这种动物很有鼓励作用，假设在家中装个智能型码表，能清楚地看到现时所使用的电量及所产生的费用，你的小孩会以极速跑去将电灯切掉，那套用到社会后的光景又如何？为何电台每晚，当我收听 FTSE 100 时，总是道琼及美金兑英镑的新闻，我根本不晓得美金兑英镑升跌的好坏为何，但我却被强迫收听，为何他们不报昨天英国用了多少能源，或美国用了多少能源？我们有达到年度三个百分点的目标吗？就减碳政策而言，那才是创造共同目标的作法，透过媒体放送，让大众开始思考，我们需要正面的回馈循环来提升福祉，在政府层级，可以建立全国福祉账户，在商业层级，可以照顾公司员工的福祉，众所皆知，这些都与创意有关，与创新有关，我们将需要很多的创新来处理环境的议题，在个人的层级，我们也需要这些推动力，我们也许不需数据，但确实需要提醒，在英国，人们有很强的公卫意识，每天必需要吃五种蔬果，还有适当的运动，这项我一直做不好，这些和快乐有何关连？人们每天应做哪五件事，才能较快乐？
We did a project for the Government Office of Science a couple of years ago, a big program called the Foresight program — lots and lots of people — involved lots of experts — everything evidence based — a huge tome. But a piece of work we did was on: what five positive actions can you do to improve well-being in your life? And the point of these is they are, not quite, the secrets of happiness, but they are things that I think happiness will flow out the side from.
几年前，我们接了一个科学部的案子，一个大案，名为「远见项目」，很多人，包含很多专家，每个细节都有证据基础，成果丰硕，其中有一个项目是，「哪五项正面的活动能让你改善生活福祉」？而这些活动的重点是，不一定是，但可说是快乐的秘密，而这些也是我认为快乐会显现的活动。
And the first of these is to connect, is that your social relationships are the most important cornerstones of your life. Do you invest the time with your loved ones that you could do, and energy? Keep building them. The second one is be active. The fastest way out of a bad mood: step outside, go for a walk, turn the radio on and dance. Being active is great for our positive mood. The third one is take notice. How aware are you of things going on around the world, the seasons changing, people around you? Do you notice what’s bubbling up for you and trying to emerge? Based on a lot of evidence for mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, [very] strong for our well being. The fourth is keep learning and keep is important — learning throughout the whole life course. Older people who keep learning and are curious, they have much better health outcomes than those who start to close down. But it doesn’t have to be formal learning; it’s not knowledge based. It’s more curiosity. It can be learning to cook a new dish, picking up an instrument you forgot as a child. Keep learning. And the final one is that most anti-economic of activities, but give. Our generosity, our altruism, our compassion, are all hardwired to the reward mechanism in our brain. We feel good if we give. You can do an experiment where you give two groups of people a hundred dollars in the morning. You tell one of them to spend it on themselves and one on other people. You measure their happiness at the end of the day, those that have gone and spent on other people are much happier that those that spent it on themselves.
第一项是「连结」，即各位的社交关系，这是你生活中最重要的基石，你有将时间投资在所爱的人身上吗？在能力范围内，外加精力，持续连结；第二项是活动身体，这是脱离坏心情的最快解药，走出户外，无论是散步，或是打开收音机跟着跳舞，保持活动是保持好心情的良方；第三项是留心周遭，你是否对世界发生的事，季节的变化及身旁的人们都细心留意？是否有留意到隐现和可能即将发生的事？根据很多的注意力，认知行为疗法证据，这点对我们的福祉影响深远；第四项是持续学习，其中「持续」很重要，一生都要持续学习，持续学习和保持好奇的老年人，其健康状况比那些封闭学习的人好很多，但那不一定要是正规的学习，因为学习并非只植根于知识，更多是保持好奇，学习做一道新菜色、学习一项小时候渴望把玩的乐器，持续学习；最后一项是最反经济的活动，给予，大方、利他和怜悯全都连结到我们脑中的奖励机制，我们在给予时感觉很棒，各位可以做个实验，你同样在早上给两群人一百美元，告诉其中一群人把钱花在自己身上，另一群人要花在他人身上，傍晚时，测量他们的快乐程度，那支将钱花在他人身上的小队会感到较快乐，对比于将钱花在自己身上的小队。
And these five ways, which we put onto these handy postcards, I would say, don’t have to cost the earth. They don’t have any carbon content. They don’t need a lot of material goods to be satisfied. And so I think it’s really quite feasible that happiness does not cost the earth. Now, Martin Luther King, on the eve of his death, gave an incredible speech. He said, “I know there are challenges ahead, there may be trouble ahead, but I fear no one. I don’t care. I have been to the mountain top, and I have seen the Promised Land.” Now, he was a preacher, but I believe the environmental movement and, in fact, the business community, government, needs to go to the top of the mountain top, and it needs to look out, and it needs to see the Promised Land, or the land of promise, and it needs to have a vision of a world that we all want. And not only that, we need to create a Great Transition to get there, and we need to pave that great transition with good things.
这五项活动，我们印在这些明信片上，我认为并不需用太多的地球资源，且不含任何碳原料，也不需透过物质来感到满足，所以我认为快乐不需以牺牲地球为代价是可行的。马丁•路德•金恩遇刺前夕给了一场十分感人的演讲，他说:「我明白前方有诸多挑战，也有诸多问题，但我不怕，我不管问题多难，我已到过峰顶，见过应许之地」，他是一位牧师，但我相信环境运动，事实上，商业团体、政府都应朝峰顶迈进，才能登高望远，也应看见应许之地，应许之地，应心怀愿景，针对创造一个我们都想要世界，我们还必需要建立一个「大转折」才能达阵，必须用美好的事物来为这个大转折铺路。
Human beings want to be happy. Pave them with the five ways. And we need to have signposts gathering people together and pointing them — something like the Happy Planet Index. And then I believe that we can all create a world we all want, where happiness does not cost the earth.
人类渴望快乐，用前提五项活动来铺路，我们必需设立新指标，将人们聚集在一起，指引他们，透过像「快乐星球指数」这样的指标，之后，我相信，我们都能创造出我们渴望生存的世界，当中快乐不需以牺牲地球为代价，感谢聆听（掌声）。
(Applause)