Republicans are Happier Than Democrats
Men are happier than women, older people are happier than the middle-aged, and Republicans are happier than Democrats. This according to the latest PEW survey as reported by Robert Roy Britt in Live Science.
How can this be, with the GOP in disarray?
I think it is because conservatives are better able to separate real life from politics and pop culture. We don't derive our identity from movements and causes. Conservatives also tend to be realists, understanding that mankind is irreparably flawed. World peace will never happen and ending poverty is a pipe dream. We are Hobbeseans; we know that life outside the shadow of a benign leviathan is nasty, brutish and short. It's the natural order of things. Working to carve out a clean, secure corner for ourselves and our kinfolk is rewarding. It makes us happy and gives our lives a purpose.
Liberals on the other hand, fall prey to fantastic worries like global warming, Christian theocracy, and gender equity. They see the world as it is and they don't like it: There's a hobgoblin around every corner. Every silver lining brings a raincloud. The sky is always falling.
Liberals are not content with rolling up their sleeves and cleaning up their little corner of the world. They demand gargantuan national and international movements that gobble trillions of dollars in the chimeric pursuit of eradicating every perceived evil.
Progressive agitators and their know-it-all politicos have been preaching deliverance through the state for generations. The hopeless, the helpless and the gullible are still waiting.
No wonder liberals are unhappy.
Live Science - Britt
Yahoo - Live Science - Britt
4 comments:
"Conservatives [understand] mankind is irreparably flawed."
I don't understand. How can anyone know mankind is flawed? The statement implies there is a standard that our mankind doesn't measure up to. But what standard are you using?
Rape, murder, genocide, theft...
These are things almost universally accepted as wrong. The same humans who cast opprobrium on this conduct also have a propensity for it.
Is mankind perfectible? We have yet to see any evidence...
But that's just an arbitrary standard. You're comparing what mankind is to what you think it should be, so it looks flawed compared to your expectation. You're saying mankind is flawed because it is not what it is not. It's like saying the universe is flawed because its expanding, and one believes the flawless universe would be static. It doesn't make any sense. How can the universe or mankind be compared to something that doesn't exist? There isn't another universe or mankind that can objectively be compared to. Is there objective evidence that mankind is flawed? Evidence not based on an idea?
"The same humans who cast opprobrium on this conduct also have a propensity for it."
I agree. The judges also do what they condemn. So how can we use their standard, if it's so obviously ridiculous? Mankind will never reach a standard like that. Fortunately saying something is wrong doesn't make it true.
My original thesis about why conservatives are happier than liberals still stands, regardless of whether man is perfectible or not.
Conservatives accept the human condition and try to deal with it; liberals want to mobilize international, money-gobbling armies to correct everything.
Both camps accept that something's wrong, but differ in what to do about it.
Does anybody really think this is as good as it gets?
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