Even explaining it sounds like a garbage humble brag — let me assure you I’m no genius. What I meant was, when I first understood “ignorance is bliss”, I was like “well, I’m particularly cursed because I am very smart”
it's really much more aggressive than that at this point.. it actually is a game of "give the liberals all the worry" for them.. or, act like a screaming child, and treat liberals like mommy..
Yeah, I think that’s what it is. Take climate change for example. These days, even denier of climate change aren’t usually denying that it exists, but rather that humans are causing it, that we can do anything about it, or that it matters. For those deniers, climate change isn’t stressful or depressing at all. If anything, to them it’s just an annoyance that people are trying to get them to make changes.
But to people who don’t bury their head in the sand, climate change is terrifying. The idea that we’re making the world less hospitable to ourselves and our children is horrible enough, but it’s made worse by the fact that we could be taking action to reduce it… but don’t.
And then there’s dozens of similar issues besides climate change, like access to healthcare, LGBT rights, genocides occuring around the world, the growing wealth inequality, police violence, etc etc etc.
I would say some of this depends on the reaction of the family and peers. If you are a child in a liberal family and said you need help with depression the chances of you getting help and it getting reported is much greater than if your are in a consecutive family.
I grew up very conservative with a very conservative father. I was severely depressed. My father straight up used to say that mental health issues were not real and believed therapy was bad thing. He once yelled at an allergist that prescribed me Zyrtec because he got it confused with Zoloft. 16 year old me would have killed myself before admitting to him or anyone else that I was thinking about suicide.
I’m much better now, on the whole, but sometimes I do wonder how I managed to get through my teen years alive. I think I honestly was just stubborn. My father takes a much more relaxed view of mental health now, and had even offered to go to therapy with my mother before he filed for divorce (she was worse than him and refused to see a therapist even to save their marriage). But yeah, teens in conservative households are going to toe the line for what they are taught. Even if they know there’s something wrong they aren’t going to ask for help for their parents if they feel their parents reaction will be negative. This was my lived experience anyway.
Happy to report I’m a raging liberal now and my father and I don’t discuss politics in order to maintain our familial relationship. Occasionally I’ll trick him into agreeing with a principal that conservatives say they support and then bring up some legislation from the GOP that directly contradicts that principal. I don’t press it though and he doesn’t seem to absorb it much, but that’s just how it is for people convinced the GOP are the good guys.
Hey maybe it’s because it’s really fucking depressing to watch a bunch of reactionary theocratic nationalist racist imbeciles rig our voting systems so it’s impossible for them to not win and then constantly read stories about how those same imbeciles are doing catastrophic amounts of damage to so many things in so many ways that it would be difficult to name them all?
Yes, because when you are raised conservative, that comes with a lot of lies and indoctrination that some mysterious entity out there actually loves you and that you too can be rich like Bill gates or Elon musk.
Then you grow up and realize you weren’t raised or loved at all, just lied to.
The tiny differential (look at the actual numbers) between liberal/conservatives isn’t much of a story, but it makes for good clickbait and will help the researchers establish themselves in their discipline.
I think maybe the biggest takeaway from this article is that it points out that all seniors in high school have reported steadily increasing depression over the last thirteen years. I’m willing to bet this trend started earlier in the 2000s. And it’s right in line with more and more and more and more and more of all the available money ending up in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Everyone is more depressed.
Other studies have shown that conservatives are also much more ignorant than liberals. By the transitive properties, this is just confirmation that “ignorance is bliss.”
It’s easier to he happy when you don’t know how fucked up the world is.
Find things to do, kids. Get out into meat space and organize with like minded people. Of course it is overwhelming when you see all the problems of the world. Find something local you can do. Start a Food not Bombs chapter with some friends, for example.
I mean, conservatives go out of their way to know as little as possible, feel as little as possible, and help others as little as possible. It doesn’t surprise me that the group of people who think intelligence is weakness, also don’t have strong moral compasses or compassion for anyone else.
If intelligence is indeed strength, how the fuck did the smart-ass liberals fail to overpower the conservatives? Real liberals are way less intelligent than what we would like to believe.
I’m guessing you’re talking about US politics, where politicians are largely owned by the wealthy.
It’s pretty easy: Democrats are the good cops, Republicans are the bad cops. One takes away your rights while the other goes through the motions of fighting for them but, as a whole, they’re both “cops”. They’re on the same team, largely serving the rich.
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