Posted on 02/08/2008 8:44:55 PM PST by Squawk 8888
After virtually ignoring happiness for more than 100 years, social scientists are making up for lost time. They're churning out hundreds of research papers on the subject each year. There are happiness conferences, a Journal of Happiness Studies, a World Database of Happiness. Happy, you might say, is the new sad.
All of this cogitating about contentment has revealed much about who's supposedly happy and who isn't. Most studies show that wealthy people are marginally happier than poor ones. People with pets or children are no happier than those without. People with active sex lives are -- surprise! -- happier than those without. No single morsel of happiness data, though, is more intriguing than this: Republicans are happier than Democrats.
A 2006 Pew Research poll found that 45 percent of Republicans describe themselves as "very happy," compared with only 30 percent of Democrats (and 29 percent of independents). This is a sizable gap and a remarkably consistent one, too. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey, conducted biannually by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, began asking about happiness in 1972.
What to make of this finding? Is there something about being a card-carrying member of the GOP that induces a warm, fuzzy feeling, a sort of political Prozac? Or does the river of causality flow in the other direction: Are happy people more likely to become Republicans than Democrats? Or maybe neither explanation holds water and it only appears as if Republicans are happier than Democrats.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
That’s true. When you see and accept that Utopia can not and will never happen then unhappiness begins to dissolve.
lol. reading his response, I find it difficult to imagine the circumstances in which such a creature would be happy.
So far you are the only one that has made any sense.
I'm happy because I see America the Beautiful as the solution. Dems are unhappy because they see America the Horrible as the problem.
Godspeed and good night all ;)
Your tagline reminds me of an article that appeared in Popular Electronics back in the 1980s- Fred the Head had all of us tech geeks busting a gut.
http://ca.geocities.com/xxxtoytech/motormouth.html
You are on to something there. There is absolutely, positively, nothing that is more stressful than waiting for somebody else to take action about something upon which your life depends.
LOL....Just asking...
“Are happy people more likely to become Republicans than Democrats?”
In my experience people who make bad decisions, have a miserable life and are bitter about everything are almost always Democrats.
Try to imagine the maddening conflicts raging in the mind of a rabid feminist working overtime to excuse the clearly misogynist behavior of a Bill Clinton or a Ted Kennedy. Imagine the mental contortions that must be necessary to simultaneously believe that fighting al Quaeda terrorists in Afghanistan is good and legitimate, but fighting al Quaeda terrorists in Iraq is evil and illegal. Can you even conceive (no pun intended) of the mental gymnastics that you have to go through to convince yourself that eating meat or killing or injuring animals is immoral, yet aborting a human fetus is simply a 'choice'? Or believing that sodomy and abortion are clearly protected by penumbras emanating from the text of the Constitution, yet the plain text of the second amendment means something, anything other than what it actually says. And so on...
The list is endless- the contradiction that veritable screams at me is how the feminist lefties can claim that fighting the Taliban is a bad thing. The only way to reconcile that is to completely deny the overwhelming evidence of their attitude towards women.
Q: Why Republicans Are So Darn Happy??
A: They’re not Democrats
Yes! Focusing on how blessed we are and how God (and our dogs) love us so much makes this whole life a gift, no matter how painful or scary it sometimes feels. On the other hand, the Left has to complain (as if following their ideals has historically lead to anything good) and escalate the complaints, no matter how good it gets! I agree - the simple basics are what make me the most wealthy, and I don’t want to miss out on the gratitude.
Its due to change.. Mclaim is producing CHANGE...
Love your post! So grateful for our military; to be an American.
Conservatives believe things are already being run almost as well as can be expected. Liberals believe that there is a monstrous and selfish conspiracy preventing humanity from the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
Not hard to see who would sleep better at night.
I work around liberals a lot, and they all have a huge sense of entitlement. They view life in totally materialistic terms. If someone owns an expensive car, they’re immediately jealous that they don’t have one just like it. And the thing is, no matter how much they have, they never stop wanting more and feeling deprived for not having it.
Add in the fact that more liberals are involved in conduct that leads to depression. Promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality, nihilistic secularism, etc.
Thank you :)
Great reply. The first thing I thought of when reading the replies to the article was - just look at the difference between FR and the DUmp.
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