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Why People Work
Everyone
needs
to
work
but
what
does
work
mean
to
him?
In
the
following
essay
Leonard
R.
Sayles
explores
the
relationship
between
work
and
human
beings'
well-being.
每个人都
必须劳动，
可是劳动意味着什么？在下面这篇文章里，
莱昂纳多
·
塞勒
斯研究了
劳动和人类幸福之间的关系。
Jobs
and
work
do
much
more
than
most
of
us
realize
to
provide
happiness
and
contentment. We're all
used to thinking that work provides the material
things of life
－
the goods and services that make
possible our version of modern civilization. But
we are much less conscious of the
extent to which work provides the more intangible,
but more crucial, psychological well-
being that can make the difference between a full
and an empty life.
< br>工作和劳动带来的幸福和满足感要比我们意识到的大得多。
我们习惯于认为，
劳
动提供了生活的物质财富——它带来的商品和服务使我们的现代文
明成为可能。
可是，
我们却很少意识到劳动带来的无形的、
更关键的心理健康，
它关系着我们
的生活是
充实还是空虚。
Why is it that most
of us don't put work and human satisfaction
together, except when
it comes to the
end product of work: automobiles and houses and
good food?
为什么大多数人除了劳动转化为其最
终产品：
汽车、
房子和珍馐美味的时候，
并
不能把劳动和满足感结合起来？
It's always useful to blame someone
else and the Greeks of the ancient world deserve
some
blame
here.
At
that
time
work
was
restricted
to
slaves
and
to
those
few
free
citizens
who
had
not
yet
accumulated
adequate
independent
resources.
The
citizens
of
Greece
－
whom
Plato
and
others
talked
about
－
expected
to
spend
their
time in free discussion and contemplation.
责备别人总是有用的，
而古老世界的
希腊人负有一定责任。
那时，
劳动只局限于
奴隶和少数没有积累到足够独立财富的自由民。柏拉图等人谈到的那些“真正”
的希
腊公民，只想把时间都花在自由辩论和冥想上。
The
Middle
Ages
didn't
help
the
reputation
of
work.
It
became
more
acceptable
to
engage
in
work.
In
fact,
it
was
asserted
that
man
had
a
religious
duty
to
fulfill
his
To
fail
to
work
was
immoral
－
worse,
work
was
thought
of
as
a
punishment for the sins of
man.
中世纪时期劳动的声誉也没能提高，
劳动开始更多地
为人们接受。
但事实上，
当
时强调的是
人要履行自己
“使命”
的宗教义务。
不
劳动是不道德的——更糟糕的
是，劳动被看作是对人类罪孽的惩罚。
It's
not
difficult
to
understand
the
tarnished
reputation.
Historically,
work
has
been
associated with slavery and sin,
compulsion and punishment. And in our own day we
are used to hearing the traditional
complaints:
could stay home
today.
and not enough time to do
it.
learn that not only psychologists
but other behavioral scientists have come to
accept
the positive contribution of
work to the individual's happiness and sense of
personal
achievement. Work is more than
a necessity for most human beings; it is the focus
of
their lives, the source of their
identity and creativity.
因此
，不难理解劳动声名狼藉。历史上，劳动一直同奴役、罪孽、强制和惩罚联
系在一起。在
我们的时代，我们习惯于听到这些传统的抱怨：
“我简直等不及要
放假。
”
“我真想今天能呆在家里。
”
“老板对我很苛刻。
”
“我要干的活
儿这么多，
却没有足够的时间干这些活。
”
在这种环境中，
如果我们了解到，
不仅心理学家，
其它的行为科学家也都承认劳动对个人幸福和成就感的积极贡献，
也许就
会很吃
惊。对大多数人来说，
劳动不
仅仅是一种必须，而是生命的焦点，是自我身份
和创造力的源泉。
Rather
than
a
punishment
or
a
burden,
work
is
the
opportunity
to
realize
one's
potential.
Many
psychiatrists
heading
mental
health
clinics
have
observed
its
therapeutic
effect.
A
good
many
patients
who
languish
in
clinics,
depressed
or
obsessed,
gain
renewed
self-confidence
when
gainfully
employed
and
lose
some,
if
not all,
of their most acute symptoms.
Increasingly, institutions dealing with
mental
health
problems
are
establishing
worships
wherein
those
too
sick
to
get
a
job
in
can work, while every
effort
is
exerted
to
arrange
for
those well enough to work outside.
劳动不是惩罚或负担，
而是实现个人
潜力的机会。
很多主持心理健康诊疗所的精
神病学家，
都观察过劳动的治疗效果。
很多病人在医院里郁闷憔悴、
心情沮丧或
被思绪困扰，
当
他们获得有益的工作时，
就会找回自信，
原来严重的症状也大都
——如果不是全部的话——消失。
越来越多的心理健康问题研究
机构正在建立劳
动场所，
那些病情太重无法在
< br>“外部”
产业中找到一份工作的人可以在其中工作，
同时
，他们也尽一切可能为那些可以在外面工作的人安排“真正的”工作。
And
the
reverse
is
true,
too.
For
large
numbers
of
people,
the
absence
of
work
is
debilitating. Retirement
often brings many problems surrounding the “What
do I do
with myself?” question, even
though there may be no financial cares. Large
numbers
of
people
regularly
get
headaches
and
other
psychosomatic
illnesses
on
weekends
when they don't
have their jobs to go to, and must fend for
themselves. It has been
observed
that
unemployment,
quite
aside
from
exerting
financial
pressures,
brings
enormous psychological malaise and that
many individuals deteriorate rapidly when
jobless.
反过来也是一样
。对许多人来说，不劳动会使人虚弱衰退。即使没有经济顾虑，
退休也经常带来很多问题
，
问题的中心是
“我该干什么？”
很多
人一到周末就犯
头疼，
或其它一些与身心相关的疾病，
因为那时他们没有事可做，
而不得不自己
想办法
消遣。
我们发现，
失业除了带来经济上的压力外，
还带来巨大的心理不安，
很多人失业后很快消沉下去。
But
why?
Why
should
work
be
such
a
significant
source
of
human
satisfaction?
A
good share of the answer rests in the
kind of pride that is stimulated by the job, by
the
activity of accomplishing. After
all, large numbers of people continue working when
there
is
no
financial
or
other
compulsion.
They
are
independently
wealthy;
no
one
would
be
surprised
if
they
spent
their
time
at
leisure.
But
something
inside
drives
them to work: the unique satisfactions
they derive from it.
可是为什么呢
？为什么劳动会成为人类满足感如此重要的源泉？答案的一部分
在于这份工作和完成的活
动能引发骄傲感。
毕竟，
很多人在没有经济或其它压力
的情况下仍然劳动。他们能够自立
、富有，就
是整日休闲也没有人会奇怪。但
某些内在的东西驱使他们去劳动——一种从劳动中获得的
独特满足感。
Pride in
Accomplishment
成功的骄傲
The human being craves a sense of being
accomplished, of being able to do things,
with his hand, with his mind, with his
will. Each of us wants to feel he or she has the
ability to do something that is
meaningful and that stands outside of us as a
tribute to
our inherent
abilities. This
extension of
ourselves
－
in
what
our hands and minds
can do
－
fills out our personality and expands
our ego.
人们渴求成功的感觉，
< br>渴望运用自己的双手、
智慧和意志去创造。
我们每个人都
希望自己有能力做些有意义的事，
它是我们内在能力的外在标志
。
我们的双手和
智慧所做的一切成为我们自身的延展——它能充
实我们的个性，丰富我们的自
我。
It is easiest to see this in the
craftsman who lovingly shapes some base material
into
an object that may be either
useful or beautiful or both. You can see the
carpenter or
bricklayer or die-maker
stand aside and admire the product of his personal
skill.
这一点在手工艺人身上最容易见到。
他充满感情地把原材料变成一件实用、
美观
或两
者兼备的手工艺品。
你会看到一个木匠、
砖匠或制模工站在一边
，
欣赏着用
自己的技巧完成的作品。
But
even
where
there
is
no
obvious
end
product
that
is
solely
attributable
to
one
person's
skill,
researchers have found that
employees find pride in
accomplishment.
Our own research in hospitals suggests
that even the housekeeping and laundry staffs
take pride in the fact that in their
own ways they are helping to cure sick people
－
and thus
accomplishing a good deal.
即使没有能够明显地表现个
人才能的最终产品，
研究者发现劳动者仍然能从完成
一件工作中
获得自豪感。
我们自己在医院的研究表明，
即使是负责房间整洁
和洗
衣的职工，
也自豪地感到自己在以自己的方式帮助病人痊愈
——从而完成了一件
有意义的事。
We've
watched
programmers
and
engineers
work
fifteen
and
eighteen
hours
at
a
stretch, seven days a
week, when a job really got tough and they knew
that a crucial
deadline
had
to
be
met,
or
when
a
major
project
would
fall
unless
some
tough
problem were solved. Certainly some of
this is loyalty and identification
－
giving
back to the organization something in
return for having provided them with good jobs
－
but a larger
part of it is selfishness, in the good sense of
the word. They received a
substantial
personal payoff from their efforts in the
knowledge that they could tackle
tough,
almost insurmountable problems,
yet
overcome them. They enjoyed
it,
－
winning
despite
difficult
odds;
proving
their
capacities
against
the
outsider:
nature, a competitor, a complex
problem; mastering something new every day.
我们还观察到，
有时，
程序设计师和工程师在工作中遇到很大困难，
而他们知道
工作必须如期完成；
而有时，
除非他们能解决某个棘手的问
题，
否则一项大的工
程就面临着流产，这时他们就会每天连续工
作
15
到
18
个小时，每周工作
7
天。
当然，
这部分是出于忠诚和与公司息息相关之感，
他们要回报为自己提供了好
工
作的公司。
但更大的一部分是利己的，
当然是取其积极的意义。
通过自己的努力，
他们获得了一份丰
厚的个人报酬——他们从中了解到自己能够
对付巨大的、几<
/p>
乎是不可逾越的困难，并且克服这些困难。他们喜欢“成功”
：克
服巨大的困难
而胜利；证明自己应付外界（可以是自然、竞争对手、或一个复杂的问题）
的能
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