Causality is always a problem:
Research indicates that political progressives have lower levels of mental well-being than political conservatives. However, while attention has been paid to why conservatives have higher levels of well-being relatively little attention has been used to examine why progressives may have comparatively low levels of well-being. Recent events connected to a “Great Awokening” suggest that identity politics may correlate to a decrease in well-being particularly among young progressives and offer an explanation tied to internal elements within political progressiveness. Regression analysis with data from the Baylor Religion Survey indicates that identity political variables, but not a desire for higher government spending, are consistently negatively related to lower well-being and mediate the ability of progressive political ideology to predict lower levels of well-being. By paying attention to political progressives, rather than political conservatives, a nuanced approach to understanding the relationship between political ideology and well-being begins to emerge. It is plausible that political progressives are not equally prone to lower levels of well-being as those committed to a class-based type of progressive activism seem to be better off than those tied to issues of identity politics.
One possible answer is that such concerns make you unhappy. Or, alternatively, that nutters believe such things.
My own belief – belief – is that so much of this identity politics is the sort of narcissistic fluff only indulged in by those already nervous and unhappy. You know, the sort of kids who would benefit from having the faces pushed in their pink school custard a few times.
Progressivism is not a political orientation, it’s a character flaw.
People who spend their entire lives fretting about non problems and inventing new non problems to fret about have low mental wellbeing? I really can’t imagine why that would be.
The flaw with this theory is that having your face pushed in pink school dinner custard, or flushed down a school toilet, is not an effective therapy for being nervous and unhappy.
Also the kids administering such therapies are not in general conservatives, utilitarians, realists, or economic liberals seeking to relieve narcissitic soykids of their identity focus , they are instead the kind of self centred domineering bully assholes who grow up to be tories.
Bloke in Hong Kong
the kind of self centred domineering bully assholes who grow up to be tories.
Ah, the class divide! I can assure you that being kicked in the nads with a steel toe-capped DM boot is equally if not more therapeutic than immersion in pink custard, BitFR. But may not lead to Toryism in the kicker. However receiving the therapy often deters the joining of the Woke Left. A kick in the nads is often a useful, albeit painful, introduction to reality.
“… the sort of kids who would benefit from having the faces pushed in their pink school custard a few times.”
For some inexplicable reason, school-dinner pink custard (1950/60s era) was called blancmange, at least at my two schools.
Progressive, Socialism, woke, identity politics are symptoms of mental illness, and tend all to be present in the same victim.
Progressives, whether hard progressives or extreme progressives, are doomed to political frustration because there can be no end point to progressivism. Progressives are cursed like the Flying Dutchman to travel forever onward into oceans of inanity.
BiFR: the kids [pushing other chilren’s faces in their pink school custard] are instead the kind of self centred domineering bully assholes who grow up to be tories.
Allowing that Tim’s point is highly contestable, would you say that the present UK government consists of Tories? My contention is that they are the spineless pushees and that the pushers are the authoritarian nonentities, “experts” and civil servants, who control the custard-bespattered mediocre mouthpieces who sit in the HoC.
Maybe the weak should fear the strong:
Scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark collected data on bicep size, socio-economic status and support for economic redistribution from hundreds in America, Argentina and Denmark
The figures revealed that men with higher upper-body strength were less likely to support left-wing policies on the redistribution of wealth
I don’t think actual political activists suffer from low “mental well-being”, unhappiness or frustration. I think they’re living the dopamine life. The miserable and unsettled people are their unwitting / unwilling followers.
I totally disagree with Tim’s prescription. Those who get their face pushed into school custard *more than once* are liable to turn into progressives blaming the cruel world for their failures and wanting to change the rules to prohibit dunking. The self-reliant may be taken by surprise once but not repeatedly.
[For avoidance of doubt, no-one ever tried to dunk me in custard: the thugs in the Scottish mining community just tried, unsuccessfully, to beat me up during break.]
“Assholes”?
Get a fucking grip. The word is arseholes. Or are you a teenager aping American usage because it’s cool?
@ Bloke in Pictland
Are you French, or something? The English language has long enjoyed a capacity for cultural appropriation, and speakers can pick and choose as they prefer. Someone whose life is lived internationally might see a difference between versions of an expression that they find worth expressing. No need to be an arsehole about it.
PJF, I reckon asshole and arsehole share a root but aren’t quite synonyms. They have different flavo(u)rs, as it were. I can think of people or behavio(u)rs I’d call out as asshole but not arsehole.
PJF, I reckon asshole and arsehole share a root but aren’t quite synonyms. They have different flavo(u)rs, as it were.
I’d agree. You can say that you can’t be arsed to do something, which is a great turn of phrase. But saying you can’t be assed to do something sounds totally off.
In America, one can do a half-assed job; do Brits say one does a half-arsed job?
@ Anon
I reckon asshole and arsehole share a root but aren’t quite synonyms. They have different flavo(u)rs, as it were.
I agree, and that was my point.
@ Ted S., Catskill Mtns, NY, USA
In America, one can do a half-assed job; do Brits say one does a half-arsed job?
Yes, those are pretty much equivalent. One of the terms* we use when we’ve, say, dropped something, is “arseholes”. Do you lot say “assholes” in such circumstances? I’d guess not, based on general media exposure, but am not sure.
*might also be “bollocks”, “fuck it” or the ever reliable but restricted use “cunt!”
That word “progressive” they keep using. Inigo Montoya has something to say about that. The phrase they’re looking for is “illiberal authoritarian”.
You might consider ragging on James O’brien, the unthinking version of Spud and twice as aggressive
Diogenes: You might consider ragging on James O’brien, the unthinking version of Spud and twice as aggressive.
That’s quite a challenge but a worthy one.
“…the ever reliable but restricted use “cunt!””
We’re Australians now?
We’re Australians now?
From what I can tell, Australians use the word much more casually than the British.
PJF – yes I was agreeing with you.
One difference is I would call someone who’s being a bit of a jerk an asshole, while someone who is a slimy piece of work deserves arsehole.
BiP,
Sure. You are an arsehole, not an autocorrected asshole.
You are welcome.
BiG in Hong Kong.
Anon – apologies. I was in fast scan mode due to lack of time. I actually completely missed your last sentence, which is pathetic (me, not your sentence).
No problem. The Internet usually puts me on scan mode tbh – very little worth taking the time to read properly, and don’t get me started on the people who expect me to sit through a video before I can get their point.
It’s lack of empathy which makes rightists so content with their mostly undeserved good fortune.
From what I can tell, Australians use the word much more casually than the British.
Not half as casually as the French use con.
“Not half as casually as the French use con.”
But ‘con’ is really a mild term, something like the friendly “twat.”
I worked in Belgium for a few years and took some French lessons with a middle-aged lady who retold how she’d innocently blurted out ‘ha ha, you cunt’ one time in an English pub, thinking she was using the equivalent of ‘con.’