Why are young liberals so depressed? | Hacker News Reader

Why are young liberals so depressed?

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4 pointsblueridge7 comments

I found an old book called The Forgotten American from 1970 or so that said almost the same thing. A bit less than 20% of young people were conservative vs about the same liberal (e.g. opposed to Vietnam war) and the former had more satisfaction that the latter in most respects.

Often quoted, but falsely attributed to Churchill:

“If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain.”

I can’t say I totally agree, but the sentiment has been around for a very long time.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/

The title implies "young and liberal, therefore depressed". Correlation does not imply causation.

Perhaps it's the other way around: "Depressed, therefore liberal". Liberalism is the policy that advocates change. If you're unhappy, you probably want things to change.

Liberals (in the sense intended) are currently the hegemony. They have all the levers of power, at least in the west. But their ideology depends on convincing themselves they are the oppressed underdog, and basically requires them to be depressed. If they ever said "hey, things are pretty good", their power structure would fall apart, even if liberalism (in the sense intended, not classical liberalism which is almost the opposite) has had a massive multi-decade bull run

Ignorance is bliss.

why shouldn't they be? a large part of their worldview is based on self-loathing

they're taught systemic, structural racism, systemic, structural economic injustice, systemic, structural environmental injustice etc etc etc

before they even turn 21 they are told everything wrong with the world is their fault and nothing they can do will change that

for bonus points they are racking up $150k++ student debt to "learn" this

I got the lesson of original sin from church, and there's no telling how much my parents spent to teach me that - 10% of your income over a lifetime really adds up I bet. I've never seen or talked to god, but I've certainly seen the police beat the shit out of black people. To be fair, I've seen them beat the shit out of all races, but it does seem to land disproportionately on the darker skinned.

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