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Conservatives are happier than liberals. There should be a "Mission to Liberals" to save them.


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2020 Sep 29, 8:21am   552 views  6 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

First I was a liberal arts major, studying German. It was a common worry among all liberal arts majors that they wouldn't be able to get a job that would cover the cost of their education. We all talked about it, and it was depressing.

And it was true. I got a German degree, and then could not get work except some sporadic translation jobs which didn't pay well. I ended up working in a bookstore.

Then I went back to the university (UM Ann Arbor) to engineering school and was struck by how happy the students were. They all knew they would get good jobs, and pretty much exactly how much they would be paid right out of school. They did not get stuck in vague and endless debates like liberal arts majors did. Debates among engineering students usually ended quickly with "look, that doesn't compile" or some other solid proof.

Engineering students were also much more conservative than liberal arts students. They did not protest, certainly not riot, were pretty punctual and polite, etc.

I found Christians on campus to be the same way. They were happier than atheists, and didn't worry about the future as much. Even if you don't think they had the right answer, they do think so, and it works for them.

There should be a "Mission to Liberals" by conservatives, pointing out that the traditional life of studying a useful skill, getting a job, getting married, and having kids is very fulfilling and will make them much happier than grievance studies, bumming around, and sleeping around.

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1   clambo   2020 Sep 29, 8:28am  

Money and work issues do affect mood.

I noticed the difference between Santa Cruz California and Florida; everyone you see in Santa Cruz knows he can’t buy a house there, so he knows that he must leave someday and have something better.

Lately, I see exceptions around, there are tech jobs and people who commute to Santa Clara, etc. They seem happy.

But where I lived in Florida it was interesting to see how much fun people were having.

Which mortgage would you like to pay; $200,000 or $600,000?
How well would you sleep at night knowing you were one faux pas at work away from losing your place?
2   ignoreme   2020 Sep 29, 9:42am  

Patrick says
Then I went back to the university (UM Ann Arbor) to engineering school and was struck by how happy the students were.


Go Blue. What years were you there and what was your major? I assume computer science?
3   rocketjoe79   2020 Sep 29, 10:04am  

Thank you for "Grievance Studies." That term is GOLD. I'd never heard that before, but I'll be using it from now on. Lots.

Even PM Churchill knew: Let's focus on winning WW2 first, folks. Then we can all take up painting.
4   Ceffer   2020 Sep 29, 5:08pm  

Who says grievances can't co-exist with happiness, you fuckers, I'll get you, just wait!
6   Patrick   2022 Sep 14, 9:54am  

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/why-conservatives-are-happier-than-liberals/


Why conservatives are happier than liberals
Time to follow The Science and acknowledge that unhappiness is a choice ...

After 2,000 years of Christian witness and theology, and pro- and anti-Christian polemics, it’s reasonable to conclude that on the question of whether Christianity is true, there are respectable arguments on both sides. The odds are at least fifty-fifty that there is a God — a prime mover, a creator, a designer — that the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are reliable historical documents, and that our lives have an eternal purpose. This is against the belief that the universe is the product of chance and random evolution, that the New Testament is a conspiracy theory, and that our lives have only such meaning as we give them. ...

Marriage is the often proposed second pillar on which conservative happiness rests. Marriage might be less easily willed because it requires a willing partner, but conservatives are nevertheless much more likely than liberals to want to get married and have children. Liberals apparently see marriage as an inhibition to their freedom. ...

The generally cited third source of conservative happiness is “personal agency” or what you and I might call the can-do spirit. Conservatives are much more likely than liberals to believe they can improve their circumstances through hard work. While conservatives revere the past and tradition — where they find examples of American grit and pluck — they are, in fact, future-oriented, focusing on achievement, supporting a family (the next generation), and one’s eternal reward. You could call it: the purpose-driven life.

Yet just as liberal cosmology denies free will, so too does it deny the idea of meritocracy (at least in its popular formulation). We live, in the liberal view, in a world shaped by an oppressive white, male, Christian patriarchy that needs to be overthrown. To that end, we should sort ourselves (if we are not conservative Christian white males) into a wide variety of alleged oppressed minority groups — a rainbow coalition, if you will. ...

In practice, this sorting leads to a relentless pursuit (intentional or not) of immiseration, pessimism, grievance, and anger — not to mention the creation of ever more obscure (and perverse) group identities. This, again, is a choice. ...

But today’s liberals are not much interested in reality — no matter how often it mugs them. They have prior ideological commitments.

If you think we live in a crazy world, it’s because we live in their world, a world where liberals who have lost reason and faith dominate every institution and use their bully pulpits to impose their neuroses on the rest of us.

Luckily, however, there is a cure. The ballot box is one part of it. Making the right choices ourselves is another.

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