It's a Glad, Sad, Mad World

摘要

It's probably impossible for most americans even to begin to under-stand how it must feel to live in the extreme poverty of Calcutta, India, surviving in a crude shack or on the street with little, if any, access to clean water, nutritious food or decent health care. The filth. The crowds. The disease. From the perspective of the comfortably housed, amply fed and lavishly entertained, such conditions sound hopeless, and the suffering they must breed seems unimaginable. But not as unimaginable as this: according to a respected researcher who employs a method of ranking human happiness on a scale of 1 to 7, poor Calcuttans score about a 4, meaning they're slightly happier than not. They may not be as happy as average Americans (who are pretty darned happy, statistically speaking, and positively euphoric when compared with the glum Russians and morose Lithuanians), but they're certainly happier than one might expect.