"PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" DEBATE
Declaration of
Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
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ISSUE: Why Conservatives Say They Are
Happier Than Liberals
Arthur Brooks
new book Gross
National Happiness returns the focus to one of the
promises of this country "the pursuit of happiness" as an
""unalienable right." His study examines why some seem to
have found more happiness than others, specifically how
Conservatives self-define as being happier than Liberals.
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| Context 1 to analyze the issue: Inductive vs. Deductive reasoning | |
|
History relies on |
Deductive reasoning refers to
the process of concluding that something must be true because it is
a special case of a general principle that is known to be true. For
example, if you know the general principle that the sum of the
angles in any triangle is always 180 degrees, and you have a
particular triangle in mind, you can then conclude that the sum of
the angles in your triangle is 180 degrees.
Inductive reasoning is the process of reasoning that a general principle is true because the special cases you've seen are true. For example, if all the people you've ever met from a particular town have been very strange, you might then say "all the residents of this town are strange". That is inductive reasoning: constructing a general principle from special cases. It goes in the opposite direction from deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning consists of three components, that can be expressed in the following equation: FACT (that which is observed) + EXPERIENCE (the observer's background, way of understanding things) = CONCLUSION Inductive reasoning is why two people can look at the same thing and see it so differently. |
| Context 2 to analyze the issue: Contrasting views & judgments of the "left" & "right" | |
 James Loewen's book LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME |
 Dinesh D'Souza's book WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT AMERICA |
| Basis of judgment of the Left: "Equality" | Basis of judgment of the Right: "Liberty" |
|
James Loewen: “Once we know these truths we shall see that opportunities are not available to all because of the system; we lack true equality. [The] American system needs to undergo a profound transformation to improve THINGS.” |
Dinesh D'Souza: "American system is not the primary problem. Critics [of America] would have you believe this. It is up to individual Americans to appreciate what great opportunities are made available by the existing imperfect but generally effective system." |
Tasks for the History Thinking Machine
> Analysis of sources
Q&A with Arthur Brooks, whose new book says the liberal agenda takes a personal toll
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2008/05/05/why-conservatives-say-they-are-happier-than-liberals_print.htm
What's the key to happiness? Liberals might tell you a hot latte, vivid expressions of diversity, and a copy of the New York Times. That doesn't sound too bad, but in data mined for his new book, Gross National Happiness, Arthur Brooks, a professor of business and government at Syracuse University, finds that conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to say they're happy. That's not necessarily because of their politics but because they are statistically more likely to be married, go to church, and be optimistic about their future—boosting personal happiness. For liberals, the rates are lower. The author suggests that while the liberal equity agenda may be honorable, it exacts a personal toll. Indeed, happiness is full of surprises: Political ideologues are positively joyful—by making others miserable. Brooks explains to U.S. News the quirks and politics of happiness.
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Arthur Brooks,
author of "Gross National Happiness."
His website is http://www.arthurbrooks.net/
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Why are liberals so bummed out?
Liberals are more likely to feel like victims and feel that collective
action is the best way to make things happen. That may be right, but it's a
frustrating way to live. The Democratic Party is a coalition of oppressed
groups. These are legitimate grievances in a lot of cases, but that does not
make for a happy party.
So is this book another thing for liberals to feel bad about?
It shouldn't be. There's something like 17 million happy liberals in
America. America is a happy country notwithstanding its politics. But there
is a political breakdown. If we understand why certain groups have the
happiness edge, there's no reason other groups can't get it, too. Liberals
shouldn't read this book and say, "Hey, the reason I'm unhappy is because
I'm evil and wrong." There is no claim that conservatives are better or
righter. But it's undeniable that there is something conservatives have in
their lives that makes them happier than liberals.
Conservatives aren't known as a jolly bunch. What makes them feel
so happy?
Half of the difference between conservatives and liberals is demographic. It
has to do with religion and marriage, which is more frequent among
conservatives. The real question is why is the other half unexplained?
Conservatives have a different orientation. Conservatives think there is a
lot of opportunity in America. A lot of liberals feel this way, too, but
conservatives overwhelmingly believe if you go around and work hard and
persevere, you're going to get ahead, as opposed to you are a victim of
circumstance or oppression and you are screwed in life. Again, that might be
right, but it's not happy.
Plenty of liberals' reaction to that would be, "Well, ignorance
is bliss."
That, of course, is the fox and the grapes. It's Aesopian. The Republicans
get out their big foam fingers on this, and Democrats say it's all baloney
anyway. They say, "You would be depressed if you had any idea what's going
on." Again, I don't think it's like that. My own feeling is that
conservatives are a lot more optimistic about what opportunities are out
there for them.
The fact that people who are on the fringes politically—in other
words, ideologues—are most likely to describe themselves as very happy makes
one question the merits of happiness.
Is happiness legitimate if your enemies have it? I can't answer that. It's a
universal human cognition; people have it. We can measure it. How you get it
can be suspect. You can feel good from smoking crack. That doesn't make
feeling good a bad thing, but the means to it can be a bad thing. I'm just
observing these are the people who are happy. There are things we can do:
One is to make our politicians not accountable to extremists; the other is
to stop feeding them because they are political entertainment.
But you also argue that religion may be the biggest factor of
all.
Religious liberals are pretty happy people. And you can say conservatives
don't care about the needy, but you'll find conservatives are giving more to
private charity. That's not because of their politics; it's because of their
religion. There is this view that liberals believe in human goodness and
conservatives are hardhearted, but the data don't bear that out.
So, what is the cure for miserable liberals? Will turning them
into conservatives put a smile on their faces?
You can't vote against your principles, or you'll be less happy. I don't
want to turn liberals into conservatives. I don't want to make people who
have sincerely held beliefs that preclude religion go to church. That's not
just silly, it's un-American. I do believe people can cultivate their
spiritual life—even if it's a nontheistic spiritual life. We need to take
more seriously, as a country, spiritual life. This should be an American
national priority. People who take their spiritual life seriously are
dramatically happier than people who don't.
Does the same apply for family life?
It's not necessarily traditional marriage between a man and woman that makes
people happy. People need to be in a serious, loving relationship, and we
need to make it easier for people to do that as a culture.
Is worrying about happiness an indulgence for rich Americans?
Happiness is a goal to which we should aspire universally. People don't get
dramatically unhappier because they get richer, once they're above the level
of subsistence.
If happiness follows partisan lines, does having our party
control the White House fill us with joy?
There is a natural tendency for someone like me or a political journalist to
be really shocked to find if you're conservative and a liberal wins the
White House it wouldn't make you less happy. Most Americans just don't care
that much. What determines whether or not they're happy is their private
lives. Politics thankfully is not that important to people.
Excerpt from "The joys of parenthood"
From The Economist print edition
Online source: http://www.economist.com/world/na/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10924082
Why conservatives are happier than liberals
IN EVERY nursery there is one child known as the Biter. Who suffers the most from this child's delinquency? Not his classmates, whose bite marks quickly heal. It is the Biter's mum and dad, who endure sideways glances from other parents when dropping him off in the morning and fret constantly that their own poor parenting has produced a monster.
Arthur Brooks was once the father of a Biter. For a year, his son gnawed on boys, girls, siblings, friends and so many guests that he had to be removed from his own fourth birthday party. Mr Brooks worried, argued with his wife, lost sleep and sought professional help. So he speaks from experience when he says that having children does not make you happy.
Happily for the reader, his book, “Gross National Happiness”, is not a memoir. It is a subtle and engaging distillation of oceans of data. When researchers ask parents what they enjoy, it turns out that they prefer almost anything to looking after their children. Eating, shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: “There are many things in a parent's life that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from [one's] children.”
Despite this, American parents are much more likely to be happy than non-parents. This is for two reasons, argues Mr Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University. Even if children are irksome now, they lend meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy are also more likely to have children. Which leads on to Mr Brooks's most controversial finding: in America, conservatives are happier than liberals.
Several books have been written about happiness in recent years. Some have tried to discern which nations are the happiest. Many more purport to offer a foolproof guide to self-fulfilment. Others wonder if the obsessive pursuit of happiness is itself making people miserable. Mr Brooks offers something different. He writes only about Americans, thus avoiding the pitfalls of trying to figure out, for example, whether Japanese people mean the same thing as Danes when they say they are happy. And he writes intriguingly about the politics of happiness.
In 2004 Americans who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” were nearly twice as likely to tell pollsters they were “very happy” as those who considered themselves “liberal” or “very liberal” (44% versus 25%). One might think this was because liberals were made wretched by George Bush. But the data show that American conservatives have been consistently happier than liberals for at least 35 years.
This is not because they are richer; they are not. Mr Brooks thinks three factors are important. Conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to be married and twice as likely to attend church every week. Married, religious people are more likely than secular singles to be happy. They are also more likely to have children, which makes Mr Brooks confident that the next generation will be at least as happy as the current one.
When religious and political differences are combined, the results are striking. Secular liberals are as likely to say they are “not too happy” as to say they are very happy (22% to 22%). Religious conservatives are ten times more likely to report being very happy than not too happy (50% to 5%). Religious liberals are about as happy as secular conservatives.
Why should this be so? Mr Brooks proposes that whatever their respective merits, the conservative world view is more conducive to happiness than the liberal one (in the American sense of both words). American conservatives tend to believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can succeed. This makes them more optimistic than liberals, more likely to feel in control of their lives and therefore happier. American liberals, at their most pessimistic, stress the injustice of the economic system, the crushing impersonal forces that keep the little guy down and what David Mamet, a playwright, recently summed up as the belief that “everything is always wrong”. Emphasising victimhood was noble during the 1950s and 1960s, says Mr Brooks. By overturning Jim Crow laws, liberals gave the victims of foul injustice greater control over their lives. But in as much as the American left is now a coalition of groups that define themselves as the victims of social and economic forces, and in as much as its leaders encourage people to feel helpless and aggrieved, he thinks they make America a glummer place.
So much for right versus left. Mr Brooks also finds that extremists of both sides are happier than moderates. Some 35% of those who call themselves “extremely liberal” say they are very happy, against only 22% of ordinary liberals. For conservatives, the gap is smaller: 48% to 43%. Extremists are happy, Mr Brooks reckons, because they are certain they are right. Alas, this often leads them to conclude that the other side is not merely wrong, but evil. Some two-thirds of America's far left and half of the far right say they dislike not only the other side's ideas, but also the people who hold them.
Oddly for a political writer, Mr Brooks thinks his country is doing pretty well. Americans are mostly free to pursue happiness however they choose with little interference from the state. Well-meaning coercion is less common than in Europe, though it can still backfire spectacularly. He cites this example: a county in Virginia recently banned giving food to the homeless unless it was prepared in a county-approved kitchen, to prevent food poisoning. Churches stopped ladling soup, and more homeless people were forced to scavenge in skips. This hurt not only the hungry, but also the volunteers who might have found satisfaction in helping them. The surest way to buy happiness, argues Mr Brooks, is to give some of your time and money away.
Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
By Jeanna Bryner
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,354424,00.html
Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.
Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing
individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than
left-winger, the new study found.
Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which
gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.
The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really
that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than
others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how
equal people are." To justify economic inequalities, a person could
support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their
economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In
that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower,
would be perceived as totally fair and justified.
If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted both a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings. "Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light." The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer. The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.
"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."
The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright © 2008 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Smile if (and Only if) You're Conservative
By George F. Will
Thursday, February 23, 2006; A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/22/AR2006022202012.html
To bemused conservatives, it looks like yet another example of analytic overkill by the intelligentsia -- a jobs program for the (mostly liberal) academic boys (and girls) in the social sciences, whose quantitative tools have been brought to bear to prove the obvious.
A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that conservatives are happier than liberals -- in all income groups. While 34 percent of all Americans call themselves "very happy," only 28 percent of liberal Democrats (and 31 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats) do, compared with 47 percent of conservative Republicans. This finding is niftily self-reinforcing: It depresses liberals.
Election results do not explain this happiness gap. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the survey began in 1972. Married people and religious people are especially disposed to happiness, and both cohorts vote more conservatively than does the nation as a whole.
People in the Sun Belt -- almost entirely red states -- have sunnier dispositions than Northerners, which could have as much to do with sunshine as with conservatism. Unless sunshine makes people happy, which makes them conservative.
Such puzzles show why social science is not for amateurs. Still, one cannot -- yet -- be prosecuted for committing theory without a license, so consider a few explanations of the happiness gap.
Begin with a paradox: Conservatives are happier than liberals because they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the Book of Job got it right ("Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward"), as did Adam Smith ("There is a great deal of ruin in a nation"). Conservatives understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder mobile -- touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong, they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
The right to pursue happiness is the essential right that government exists to protect. Liberals, taking their bearings, whether they know it or not, from President Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 State of the Union address, think the attainment of happiness itself, understood in terms of security and material well-being, is an entitlement that government has created and can deliver.
On Jan. 3, 1936, FDR announced that in 34 months his administration had established a "new relationship between government and people." Amity Shlaes, a keen student of FDR's departure from prior political premises, says, "The New Deal had a purpose beyond curing the Depression. It was to make people look to Washington for help at all times." Henceforth the federal government would be permanently committed to serving a large number of constituencies: "Occasional gifts to farmers or tariffs for business weren't enough." So, liberals: Smile -- you've won.
Nevertheless, normal conservatives -- never mind the gladiators of talk radio; they are professionally angry -- are less angry than liberals. Liberals have made this the era of surly automobile bumpers, millions of them, still defiantly adorned with Kerry-Edwards and even Gore-Lieberman bumper stickers, faded and frayed like flags preserved as relics of failed crusades. To preserve these mementos of dashed dreams, many liberals may be forgoing the pleasures of buying new cars -- another delight sacrificed on the altar of liberalism.
But, then, conscientious liberals cannot enjoy automobiles because there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America's reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is -- was -- all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl's victims -- that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do -- the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living. And automobiles . . .
You see? Liberalism is a complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding, creed. And not one conducive to happiness.
For further exploration (send in your recommenations):
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