New polling from the Wall Street Journal:
According to the survey, the share of Americans saying that patriotism is very important to them fell from 70 percent in 1998 to 38 percent today. The percentage calling religion very important fell from 62 percent to 39 percent over the same period. The percentage saying that having kids was very important dropped from 59 percent to 30 percent. Only money saw its professed importance rise.
The problem with the trends represented here, as Ross Douthat explains in the essay I took this from, is not that American patriotism, religion, or child-bearing are such all-out wonderful things that we should mourn their decline. The problem is that no alternative sources of meaning have come along the take their places. By and large, the less patriotic, religious, and family-oriented people are, the less happy they are, and the more they suffer from mental illness. Young secular childless leftists are the most miserable of all.
Why are leftists so unhappy? The huge progress in gay rights, the reconstruction of marriage on a more equal basis, the decline in racism, the vast improvement in the quality of our water and air, the easing of runaway population growth, and all the other changes that liberals might be expected to cheer have not made us happier about the world. I have to say that I personally find this puzzling. I can think of explanations: the bureaucratization of work, our complete inability to change the direction of the economy away from globalized inequality, rising rents, fear of climate change. But the lack of pride in our obvious progress – we had a black president! – and the insistence in some quarters that things like racism and ecological destructions have gotten worse simply mystifies me. Life in America just isn't that awful.
I wonder if the insistence that everything (nations, institutions, art) is tainted by racism, colonialism, and other ills doesn't contribute. It seems to help people get by when they feel that they belong to something great and important, or are heirs to some great legacy. So if you think that nothing is great, that on the contrary everything your parents thought was great is actually evil, does that make it harder for you to feel good about your own life?
Meanwhile on the right, people are sad partly because they also feel like they are losing the great things they thought they belonged to. Down to the 1990s, conservative Christians believed that they were the real majority in America, and that if you could just get rid of liberal judges and rotten politicians things would be great again. It is getting harder and harder to believe this; thus the increasing fear that America is sliding off a cliff, or is about to.
I find it fascinating that in this world of ours we all feel like we are losing, even when the evidence seems to refute it. Why is that? Are we unsettled by too much change, too much uncertainty about the future? Is something about the Internet messing with our minds?
13 comments:
What do you mean "we"?
Various things. A sentence like "we all feel like we are losing" refers to polling showing that a majority of both liberals and conservatives think their side is losing in America. Other places it refers to "American liberals like me"; I think it's clear where those are.
I think this is hugely important, and I don't know the answer. Douthat's essay, like many of his recent ones, was quite good. I recommend the essay he linked to here: https://damagemag.com/2023/03/22/anti-social-socialism-club/. It's partly in the "Bowling Alone" vein--and I can definitely say that joining a local bowling league would NOT make me more happy--but the author is still onto some important things. Some of his individual statements don't seem quite right (I'm not sure leftists dominate all social media, except Pinterest; what about Truth Social, or 8chan?). But overall I found it interesting. I was especially struck that it was on Damage, which otherwise seems like Central HQ for a pretty anti-humanist, burn-it-all-down leftism.
I think any answer has to factor in the massive age-based culture divide in America.
Young people in America are more liberal than at any point in history, and they by and large feel smothered in a nation that is run by a literal gerontocracy which fears and reviles their liberalism, and which is depriving them of power, wealth, influence, etc, by hoarding it all for themselves. Young people for the most part feel like they're being robbed of a future by old people who refuse to give up the spot in the sun they've enjoyed for half a century and more.
Simultaneously, the oldest generations feel that the world they grew up with is "under attack", and are trying to fight back against changes they refuse to accept. They feel their place in the sun is both intrinsically deserved and meant to be everlasting, and they're going to cling to it to their dying breaths (which are fast approaching). They reject change, and long for the past.
Why is no one happy? Because for the young people, there's simply not enough change; and for the old people, there's simply too much change.
Why are "young secular childless leftists" miserable? I'd argue at least part of it is because the old religious family-rearing right-wingers have worked to make them so.
Young people struggle economically in ways that the older generations not only directly caused, but then refuse to acknowledge the reality of, much less do anything to help change.
Young people struggle politically in a system which is dominated by elderly people who directly oppose the things they most value and believe in.
Young people desperately want the country to change in really quite dramatic ways, and such change is being steadfastly prevented by a cabal of decrepit ghouls who insist on clinging to the past at all costs if necessary.
And this also explains the unhappiness of the older generations - they desperately want to avoid change, and despite all their efforts (and all the misery they inflict in making said efforts), change in inevitably coming, and they're doomed to disappointment.
My prediction is that things are going to remain in a state of tension - with the country mired in dissatisfaction as the younger generations remain unable to overpower their more highly advantaged elders to enact real change - right up until the point where the old vanguard starts to die off en masse, and all their wealth, power, influence, etc, finally is FORCED to transition to the younger generations whom have been so long deprived of it.
Any other outcome seems wildly unlikely, as it would require the worshipers of the status quo to give up the fight and abandon they hill they've chosen to die on.
What "young people", @verloren? The ones you are talking about are only slightly above half of the young generation if to believe the surveys - and in the surveys the rightwingers are recently seem to be underpolled. You, as usual, are projecting your own desires and prejudices onto the world.
@szopeno
I'm likely I'm wasting my breath, but... people being "more liberal" than in the past doesn't mean "more people identify as liberal", it means the people who are liberal lean further to the "political left".
With that cleared up, do you have any comments or concerns about other sections of my post beyond the literal second sentence? I've got time, I can go on invalidating your imagined criticisms of my arguments by explaining how you've fundamentally misunderstood them.
Or given that we're now at my ~fourth~ sentence, have I already exhausted your attention span? Again?
@szopeno
You, as usual, are projecting your own desires and prejudices onto the world.
Right. And Looooooooooongwindedly, as usual. When a comment is longer than the post, you know something's wrong.
Or given that we're now at my ~fourth~ sentence, have I already exhausted your attention span? Again?
You exhausted my attention span around the 50th time you posted this kind of ramble. Honestly, you don't think anybody is actually reading all these same screeds you constantly post, do you? How many times do you think somebody is going to wade through your multi-comment walls of text about the virtuous young folk being held down by the Man?
Here's a tip - if you need to overlap multiple comments because your comments are way too long, your comment is way too long. It's a comment, not a blog post. It's not your website. Set up your own blog and shove off.
I don't really like these ad hominem attacks.
@David
I suppose I should have just not dignified szopeno with a response. My bad.
@Verloren
"Dignified", lol.
Verloren, there is no need to address your comment, where it's based on the false premise. BY taking literally the motte-and-bailey say that the "young generation is more liberal that at any point in the history" - well, in the last few decades every young generation more liberal in some sense, but it also usually becomes more conservative as they age. As such your observation is trivial and have no explanatory power, _unless_ there is some additional factor. There is also question of "liberal in what sense?"
Plus your country is ruled by Biden, an epitomy of gerontocracy... who is NOT rightwinger.
Plus, why invent additional explanation, when it's generally known what factors are contributing and which are mitigating the happiness? Religion, children, being involved in local community is usually correlated with more happiness. Urban dwellers are less involved in local community and are more liberal. Without knowing evrything else you would predict that a group with less religiosity, less children and less ties to local community will be less happy. So why invent some BS about young people being made unhappy by those evil rightwingers, who seem to just plot day and night to prevent changes which would magically transform the country into a better place?
And there is actually a way to check it. If Verloren is right, younger people in more conservative states should be less happy than younger people in more liberal states. Am I correct? If so, does anyone have a data to confirm this?
@David
Sorry about saying that he is projecting his prejudices. I just become rather unnerved after reading yet another comment about how those evil rightwingers are evil.
https://stacker.com/health/happiest-states-teenagers
Most happy: Washington DC (without checking, I presume governor is D)
Georgia governor is R
New Jersey (I presume D, not checking)
Louisiana D
Alabama R
Hawaii D
Missisipi R
North Dakota R
South Carolina R
South Dakota R
So far so good from ten most happy: 6 ruled by republicans, 4 by democrats. About as expected.
Least happy: Oregon D
Nevada: R
Idaho: R
Alaska: R
Wyoming: R
Colorado: D
Indiana: R
Utah: R
west wirginia: R
Oklahoma: R
HUh. Now that was unexpected and could validate the Verloren's claim, but look at the suicide data.
Another (Swedish) perspective on what causes depression amongst the teenagers.
https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/becky-is-depressed
Author describe him(her?)self as rationalist, but it seems this is just normal conservative view condensed into small essay. In short, simplyfing extremely: especially low-achieving young females are depressed, because, well... they are low-achieving and while in the past it was OK (their task was to be wife and mother anyway) now it's not in itself.
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