This is the kind of survey liberals loathe. Not that the rest of us don’t already know they’re the most miserable people on the face of the Earth, of course, but when the survey is the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, an ongoing survey of Americans conducted since 1972, which The New York Times describes as a “widely used resource” and “the scholarly gold standard for understanding social phenomena,” that’s gotta leave a mark. This isn’t some “agenda-driven,” Fox News-funded survey generated for the purpose of creating news and making liberals look bad. This baby comes from the no-longer-hallowed halls of academia. One can only imagine how much that burns the smug, self-righteous left.
Yep, conservative women are the happiest people in America.
And the unhappiest people in America? Drum roll, please… the survey says… white liberal men. My initial reaction was: of course, they are; I assume the majority of them are either married to or in relationships with white liberal women. I mean, this is not a giddy crowd.
According to the survey, only one in five liberal men considers himself “very happy.”
Via the New York Times — in 2013:
The numbers on happiness from the survey are surprisingly consistent. Every other year for four decades, roughly a third of Americans have said they’re “very happy,” and about half report being “pretty happy.”
Only about 10 to 15 percent typically say they’re “not too happy.” Psychologists have used sophisticated techniques to verify these responses, and such survey results have proved accurate.
So, how is our happiness — or unhappiness, as the case might be — determined?
As the Times observed, it has been said that “happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” But now, says the Times, “social scientists have caught the butterfly.” After 40 years of research, they attribute happiness to three major sources: genes, events, and values.
So, researchers say, about half of our happiness is hard-wired in our genes.
And the other half? While many people assume one-time events — a “dream job” or an acceptance letter to a prestigious university — will bring the permanent happiness we seek, the wiser among us know better; jobs, promotions, “dream homes” — the list is limitless — don’t do the trick; they are short-lived at best and at worst, can even lead to a letdown and unhappiness — particularly for those who forever chase things in pursuit of happiness, only to discover that those things don’t make them happy — yet they foolishly continue to chase happiness through “thing after thing.”
According to the Times, in addition to half of our happiness being determined by genetics, about 40 percent comes from things that occurred in our past. And the remaining 10 percent? Researchers say it is under our control and that choosing to pursue four basic values of faith, family, and community, is our surest path to happiness that we can control.
As reported by New York University in November 2020, conservatives and liberals are motivated by qualitatively different psychological concerns, most notably those linked to morality, according to a then-new study that explored “how political ideology and moral values are connected to motivated social cognition.”
So there you have it, liberals. On one hand, you have an opportunity to control about ten percent of your unhappiness by the “values” you pursue, so in other words, you’re screwed on the entire 100 percent. On the other hand, if you weren’t bitter and angry, 24-7, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourselves. How much that must suck.
Journalist Tim Pool, who describes himself on Twitter as a disaffected liberal, commentator, and filmmaker, perhaps hit at least part of the nail on the head.
“Liberal men are unhappy? Or are unhappy men liberal?”
Great question. I don’t know the answer, necessarily, but it does support my “married to or in relationships with” white liberal women.