An unhealthy preoccupation with politics

A reference in today's Free Press newsletter led me to "Why Does Being Left-Wing Make You Unhappy?" Following the link will bring you to that substack article. In the excerpts below I have not included his references but they are there.

Note: I’m using the terms “liberal” and “conservative” to denote left-leaning and right-leaning, while acknowledging that they’re imprecise. I’m also using a lot of American data simply because that’s where the bulk of this research has been carried out, although the basic finding does seem to be replicated globally. ....

.... Conservatives tend to be more religious, more patriotic, and more married, and all these things correlate with happiness. Indeed, it has been argued that political conservatism is not the important variable here — that liberals who feel deeply connected to country and religion and family would be equally happy. I’m not sure if this is a real distinction since those liberals would be behaving in ‘conservative’ ways even if they espouse liberal beliefs, but anyway, church-going conservatives tend to have better mental health than church-going liberals, so it seems that conservatism does provide benefits independent of religiosity. ....

Liberals not only tend to be more emotionally unstable, they also value emotionality more than conservatives — they like to dwell on emotions, to talk about them, to expound on trauma and pain. Studies find that they are more upset than others by public tragedies, like school shootings, or catastrophes like Covid-19, and that their distress lasts far longer. ....

Modern liberals, or progressives, take grim satisfaction in asserting the inescapability of politics. One of their favourite turns of phrase is “But X is inherently political” — i.e. that activity or human behaviour that you fondly imagined to be unsullied by the machinations of power is, in fact, governed by them. Friendship is political. Science is political. Journalistic objectivity is political. Fiction is political. Music is political. Food is political. Love is political. ....

There’s an element of status display in pushing politics into everything: the implication is usually that anyone who doesn’t agree is either complicit in oppression or, worse, naive and unsophisticated.

Most pertinently, for our purposes, it’s bleak. For a certain kind of progressive, anything that might seem above or beyond politics — a commitment to objective truth, a love of music or food or sport — is just politics by other means, part of the relentless battle of tribe versus tribe, identity versus identity. That’s pretty depressing, especially if you sincerely believe it. ....

At the same time it is for some reason necessary to insist that it’s the other side who engages in ‘culture war’. ....

You might say that just as conservatives find meaning in family or religion, liberals find meaning through activism and political discourse. But these different kinds of social participation do not have equal payoffs in well-being. The evidence suggests that going to church or spending time with loved ones tends to be good for people, whereas a preoccupation with politics is bad for your mental health. ....

Of course, conservatives aren’t immune to the over-politicisation of everything. In the US in particular they’re increasingly prone to see everyone in public life, including and especially those working for government institutions, as participants in a grand conspiracy against them. That’s deeply unhealthy too. .... (much more)

Ian Leslie, "Why Does Being Left-Wing Make You Unhappy?," The Ruffian, April 13, 2024.