Why are young liberals so depressed?
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I think certain interests are using young people as their minions. They understand that young people are impressionable, and to a large extent are easy to manipulate. With little effort it's very easy whip up anger, frustration, anxiety, whatever you want.
On the surface it seems to work: anger = action. "Look, we mobilized a large crowd! we're fighting $causedujour". However the excitement eventually wears off, with now lots of angry and upset people, and a cause that they can't really fix easily. Feeling manipulated is pretty hard to accept, especially for someone who considers themselves an educated and progressive person.
I remember the Oberlin College Bakery incident. The administrators were very aware about having rigid control over the students as if they were some mind controlled zombies. (quote from [1]: Raimondo reacted to Copeland's statement in a private text message: "Fuck him. I'd say unleash the students"). I always wondered how students felt afterwards, did some realize, perhaps years later, they were used? Can't imagine that being a great feeling...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_Bakery_v._Oberlin_C...
Conscientiousness, one of the big 5, is concerned with rule oriented behavior, restraint, self-discipline, presence, and so forth. People who are more self-aware and rule oriented tend to be more physically fit, goal oriented, and are more likely to excel in their careers. They are also more likely to build strong lasting relationships as their speech and behaviors are more restrained.
None of this has anything to do with intelligence. Of the big 5 the one most correlated with intelligence is "openness". Counter-intuitively, at least to me, conscientiousness is the less correlated with intelligence by as much as -0.27. That means there are many people who are extremely intelligent yet are sloppy drug using creeps not worth the time of day and cannot manage their personal finances to save their lives. Depressing and statically more likely to self identify as "liberal".
This has a nice tie-in to development. Have you ever heard of developers wanting things to be "easy" and then their code looks like sloppy shit? But, but but... they seemed so smart in the interview and their resume is stellar, so what went wrong? Even more to the point are developers who need things to be easy, cannot build actual software without configuring tools to do it for them, and then using that experience (that quest for easy or fear of original explicitness) to gauge competence in others.
Dark Brandon is unbeatable.
I don't think it has anything to do with being a liberal; that is said to trigger "engagement."
so here comes some engagement:
as an adult liberal I am saddened by all of the rights that conservatives have been taking away from people, lately. conservatives seem hell-bent on making any ideas newer than Puritanism illegal, such as books which tell unpleasant truths, or the fact that women have rights as human beings.
this seems to be very quickly becoming a country where if you are not very conservative, you are simply not welcome, and this matches the attitudes of every true believer conservative that I've ever known in my life. every one of them wanted all diversity eliminated or expelled, though none would openly admit that, and they all experienced joy and satisfaction when they were able to tell someone "if you don't like it, get the f*** out!"
the freedom they (the conservatives I have known well in my life) want is the freedom to tell others what to do, and the freedom from being told what to do.
and yeah, that makes me sad.
The freedom they (the liberals I have known well in my life) want is the freedom to tell others what to do "for their own good". That makes me sad.
And I agree with you that many conservatives are as bad or worse when it comes to authoritarianism. But this is equally a problem on both sides of the left/right political spectrum.
if you don't want those things, and it sounds like maybe you don't, then your only option is to leave society.
societies and governments are how the people pool resources and protect themselves, as well as represent themselves to other governments and societies.
protecting its people is literally a primary role of a government.
> Like by locking students out of public schools
example?
> restricting the First Amendment right of free assembly during the pandemic.
you don't get these rights during health crises. your freedom does not extend to the point where you intentionally curtail the freedom of another; you are not free to intentionally give another person a potentially deadly disease, nor are you free to put yourself in a position where the likelihood of spreading a particularly contagious and deadly virus is dramatically increased.
> Or banning certain firearms.
the 2nd amendment does not grant the right to bear ANY firearm, and the right for anyone to bear arms who is not in a well-trained militia is somewhat shaky, imo. stick to muskets and a 45-second reload process, please. i would be extremely surprised if the founders had fully automatic weapons in mind when that was written.
> Or controlling speech under the guise of preventing harm.
fan of hate speech, are you? again, your rights do not extend to the point where the rights of another are curtailed. one can't kill transgender people and claim that is free speech. one cannot harass people of color and call it free expression.
Interesting that you bring up the Puritans in this context when the emerging New Puritanism is strictly associated with the left
you will not find a liberal who believes that everyone should commit themselves to God and dedicate their lives to worship. not a single one.