英语演讲与辩论课的期末辩论话题：金钱能否买到快乐。虽然俺是反方一辩，而且老师评价的也是反方胜出了，但作为反方一辩的我真的想说：金钱能买到快乐！绝对的快乐啊啊啊！但是我没有钱/枯萎……上传到知乎只是单纯记录，参考意义可能不大~~~（正方一辩是队友写的，上传一下，避免大家不知道我在反辩什么~注释是自己写的）

正方一辩：

Today we are debating whether money can bring happiness, so first of all we have to know that money is neutral, neither good nor evil, neither beautiful nor ugly. We believe that money can bring us happiness for the following reasons://钱是中立的

What we can't deny is that everyone's life needs a certain material foundation, and the construction of all material foundations requires money. The happiness in life that cannot even be guaranteed by material foundations can only be short-lived. Money can bring you more material than others. This is a real thing. It is something that really exists and can bring you happiness. Sometimes happiness is simple and pure, just like girls have a new dress.//生活需要物质基础，没有物质基础的快乐是短暂的，钱是实实在在存在的，可以给你带来快乐，有时快乐是很简单的，比如女生买到了一条裙子

Money can bring greater freedom and eliminate your material worries. With money, you don't have to do things you don't like in order to make a living, you can devote yourself to what you love. With money, the house goal of the young generation will no longer be a mountain that is too heavy for you to breathe. Your relatives, friends and yourself will no longer worry about lack of money for treatment if they are sick. The more choices you have, the more possibilities for life.//钱可以带来自由，解决物质焦虑，有了钱你可以做自己喜欢的事而不是被迫谋生，钱可以解决房贷，亲戚朋友生病了不用担心没钱治病

With no material worries and enough freedom, we can use money to buy experiences and enrich our spiritual world. How to buy the experience? For example, going out with a friend for a fine meal, watching a concert that you aspire to, or participating in an outdoor activity, learning a new skill, taking a walk-and-go tour, these can enrich your inner world. Over time, these experiences will turn into stories and memories.//钱可以买到经历来充实我们的精神

We discuss that money can bring us happiness instead of pursuing money to bring us happiness. When we say that money can bring happiness, it does not mean that money equals happiness, nor does it mean that if you have money, you don’t have troubles, but that you can get happiness from the many benefits it brings to you.//我们讨论钱可以带来快乐而不是追求钱给我们带来快乐，钱能带来快乐并不意味钱等同快乐，也不是你有了钱就没有困难，但你可以从钱给你带来的好处中获取快乐

In summary, we insist that money can bring happiness.

钱能买到来自于真正的爱情这些的快乐吗

Can money buy happiness beyond substance such as pure love, brilliant friendship and so on?

反方一辩：

Honorable judges, worthy opponents, ladies and gentlemen, good morning! In this material world, it is true that most people hold the firm belief that money is not everything but without money, everything is nothing and regard money as a source of happiness. However, there is also an old saying that money is the root of all evil, which indicates that money can’t buy happiness but unhappiness brought from evil. After reading numerous analyses of experiments on people’s happiness, our team negate money’s ability of buying happiness.

Before we enter the topic, let’s think about a question: What is happiness? According to Marx, who founded communism and brought happiness to the world, happiness is defined as a state where people feel the inner pleasure, serenity, peace and satisfaction brought by external things, a state where the truth of human being is with oneself. It is not a brief intuitive experience, but a lasting pleasure.

The first reason why we insist that money can’t buy happiness is that money can bring us substance but never happiness beyond substance. This kind of happiness includes warm family affection, sincere comradeship, brilliant love, precious teacher-student friendship and so on, which are not built over money. I believe that all of us have been quite familiar with the story of the millionaire who sought hard for happiness. He was fabulously rich but he was still unhappy. That’s because these relationships are natural bonds and tender feelings between people and are only created by people’s noble quality. They can’t be dealt in market with money, or they will deteriorate from happiness to indifference. Therefore, the millionaire was always in the company of loneliness and unhappiness.

Secondly, our team hold that true happiness doesn’t come from money but from our heart and spirit. Here we have to emphasize that our standpoint that money can’t buy happiness does not mean we don’t need money. On the contrary, we require money and the material foundation brought by it, but money is just a means and the material is just a brief intuitive experience, not a lasting pleasure like what Marx said. The true happiness is inner pleasure for earning enough money with your hard work to buy the material you want, serenity for utilizing the material to pursue your dreams, peace for taking advantage of the material to benefit others and satisfaction for making full use of the money and the material. That’s what Marx pursue and what our communists should pursue. They are our spiritual foundation and the source of true happiness.

Thirdly, what needs to be vigilant is that money can’t purchase happiness but it can stimulate us to buy fake happiness. It’s true that money buying happiness is not equal to pursuing money to buy happiness. However, once people affirm that money can buy happiness, they will be easily deceived by their desire and thus pursuing money to buy happiness. It is no more strange that people buy tons of things without reason and calmness on every year’s Singles Day. This follows with blankness and fake happiness.

Therefore, to sum up, it seems more acceptable that money can’t buy happiness.

***********************************************************辩论中的问答

Question: According to opponents’ point that once people affirm that money can buy happiness they will be easily deceived by their desire and thus pursuing money to buy happiness, in our team’s view, does it have something to do with whether money can buy happiness? Isn’t it caused by people’s inadequate self-control?

I think that maybe our opponents are fond of neglecting the premise of this point automatically. This point is raised under the premise that people affirm that money can buy happiness, which is the relation. It indicates that the thought of our opponents is wrong because money can’t purchase happiness but it can stimulate us to buy fake happiness, which is not happiness. It is because they hold this wrong belief that under the stimulation of money, they lose their control to buy things but what they feel while buying things with money is not happiness but blankness. That’s why we insist that money can’t buy happiness.

***********************************************************总结

Thanks for my fellow opponent’s summary. However, I still think that what my opponents see is just the superficial phenomenon of happiness, not its essence, for no matter material happiness or spiritual happiness they insist that they are bought by money instead of their inner feeling from their heart and spirit. It cannot be overemphasized that money is truly just a kind of means and the source of happiness is our heart and spirit, which applies to all ranges of people. Moreover, to summarize, our team still strongly believe that money can’t buy happiness because money can bring us substance but never happiness beyond substance, true happiness doesn’t come from money but from our heart and spirit and money can’t purchase happiness but it can stimulate us to buy fake happiness. Thank you.