The farther left you lean, the more anxious, depressed, and unhappy you are | Hacker News Reader

The farther left you lean, the more anxious, depressed, and unhappy you are

greglukianoff.substack.com

23 pointsdelichon48 comments

You want social justice. Every unjust thing that happens anywhere is blasted all over the internet. Life seems hopeless. You become unhappy.

It's likely that simple.

Actually, I’d like to be able to do simple things like legally use the toilet that matches the gender I’ve lived in (and had full surgery for) for 12+ years when I’m in Red States.

Is that really so much to ask for?

(Given the downvotes I’m getting I’m going to assume it is apparently too much to ask for. Either that or people do not believe me when I state that this is indeed an issue in several red States, such as Florida for example which prohibits trans people from using bathrooms in government buildings if their gender doesn’t match their birth certificate)

I am supportive of the idea of trans bathroom rights, but there are many details to work out. Where are the lines? Does a person need to have full surgery? Do they need to have a gender presentation of the gendered bathroom they wish to use? Can any gender use any bathroom?

There is a lot of bigotry involved, but I don't think you can point to lack of laws solely as a bigotry problem. There are a lot of lines to define and details to iron out.

This is a lot of imagined complexity that's been resolved in other countries by simply adopting gender-neutral restrooms.

Car pollution is an imagined complexity because other countries have simply adopted mass transportation.

There are millions of gendered restrooms today. It is an issue that has to be addressed by any law.

Okay, but so what? There are nuances involved in all policy implementation, that's not a compelling reason to oppose bringing it to the table. If it is offered in earnest (and I'm not convinced it is), it's reductive.

What you are calling nuances are major points though. At what point are you "identified" enough with your preferred gender to use that gender's restrooms and locker rooms? I feel no one want to pick a line because someone will be offended they didn't pick a more progressive line.

The best option, if available, is to use a single-stall (gender neutral) restroom.

Otherwise? If you "pass" then no one is going to say anything, because they will never know. If you don't "pass", then tough, go to the men's restroom. Women don't want a man in their restroom, and parents don't want a man in the restroom with their girls.

Bottom line: You being trans is not anyone else's problem.

Two problems with that, first one is these men are often unaware of the extent to which they don't pass. Second one is that some of them get off to defying women's boundaries, it gives them a thrill.

Only solution is to legislate against it so at least there's some consequence of being caught.

There’s an awful lot of projection in your comment.

Here's an even simpler explanation: The planet is dying and the leading candidate on the right is publicly whoring it out to the highest bidder. The people on the left aren't much better because most of US politics is under the thumb of the worst market forces.

It's hard not to be depressed in the middle of an extinction event for most species.

It’s clear that the real culprit is misinformation if you truly think the planet is dying.

"The planet is dying" is shorthand. We're changing it too rapidly for existing species to adapt and they are dying out. That is fact. Does that mean the planet will become uninhabitable forever? Probably not, Earth can bounce back if given a few million years. That's a small comfort for those of us alive today.

It's a lazy misleading shorthand. The planet has and will survive and thrive even when 90% of species go extinct.

90% of species going extinct is a pretty bleak scenario, no hyperbole is necessary.

Misleading to who? Sounds like we both knew what I meant.

In any case, my point stands that accelerated extinction is depressing, and this is applauded by the right.

You're also wrong that we'll be in the 10% that survives. Unless you've learned how to live without water.

> live without water.

The Middle East is surviving just fine without sufficient access to fresh water; desalination makes water more expensive but not significantly so.

The things we're doing to the ocean won't be fixed with desalination.

Here's a much, much simpler explanation: believing in delusional nonsense correlates strongly with mental illness.

Seems sound, one look at the stolen election true believers, jewish space laser upvoters, anti vaxxer brain wormers, et al and the correlation is clear.

Doesn't seem to mesh so well with "the further left.." part of the assertion though.

The more intellectual/sophisticated you become, the more anxious, depressed and unhappy you are.

Everyone in the data being analyzed were from the same colleges and universities.

That makes this data even more striking, honestly. If you are a young conservative on a college campus are generally very alienated for their positions.

Maybe there's a survivorship fallacy - if you are conservative in a college environment it's because you are very self-assured and not reliant on the opinion of others.

> If you are a young conservative on a college campus are generally very alienated for their positions.

Are they? Data showed not much difference in self censorship.[1]

> Maybe there's a survivorship fallacy - if you are conservative in a college environment it's because you are very self-assured and not reliant on the opinion of others.

Maybe. Maybe the median college environment is not what you think. Maybe conservatives avoid words associated with mental illness. Maybe students think national and global issues are more important than campus issues. Maybe the question about feeling like you have no time for yourself was a bad match for the others. Maybe liberal students with conservative parents have stressful and frustrating interactions and conservative students with liberal parents are rare.

Certainly LGBT people more often report anxiety and depression. Certainly people who attend religious services less often report loneliness. Certainly family income and mental health are correlated. Certainly 1st generation students more often report feeling isolated and more often are from low income families, are immigrants or children of immigrants, or are in other minorities. Certainly these factors correlate with political identification.

[1] https://www.intelligent.com/college-students-fear-expressing...

I mean it is complex. You have genes like ADCYAP1R1 that are part of the turn on stress -> turn off stress loop. Variants in it lead to higher stress, but lower cortisol so so higher neurogenesis. So the group with the variants associated with PTSD (such as https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs2267735 C;C) may be smarter, but have a lower bar for developing PTSD.

I haven't read the article, but my guess is that the more extremist one is, the more one sees oneself as deviating from society and the more anxious one would be. One can be an extremist in many ways, not only in political dimensions.

The studies account for extremism but people on the extreme right are not nearly as unhappy as people on the extreme left.

You can even account for things like extreme poverty or cultural suppression.

Teasing out cause or effect is likely tricky here, but has anybody done any work to do so? It seems likely that anxious & depressed people also naturally gravitate towards more extreme political views.

This article teased causation twice but did not deliver.

It seems far more likely that unhappiness and left-leaning have a common driver.

Wow I started reading thinking that this was going to be an interesting article about body posture! Leaning back now !

I went here first too, I thought I need to start putting my laptop on the right side of my main screen to make me lean the other way to increase my mood.

This is the Terror Squad's recommendation.

I’d argue that for many (way too many) of us it’s the constant attacks by those on the right to our freedoms that can cause much of what is described.

It’s hard to feel safe and content, when you see your very rights being removed on a daily basis.

Both sides feel their values are under attack. I don't know how to fix that disconnect.

A national dialog might help, but the politicians on at least one side have no interest in bridging the gap.

Both sides may feel it, but it isn't equally true for both sides.

One side suffers, the other co-opts the language of the suffering.

Even if you’re right, and I’m inclined to agree, that still means a conversation is necessary.

For all that it’s gained us, changing from 3 national networks to an infinite number of entertainment-masquerading-as-news silos has done immeasurable damage to the U.S.’s cultural coherence.

> It’s hard to feel safe and content, when you see your very rights being removed on a daily basis.

There's someone literally on the other side making this exact same argument to their camp. Maybe both are true, or maybe neither.

Not seeing how being asked to use my pronoun is somehow akin to making it illegal to get married, use toilets, or even keep my job.

One one side people are angry at losing their long held privileges that have been abused, on the other side we’re looking for respect and basic human rights.

No one on the right side of the argument is at risk of losing their job, being physically attacked, or having actual rights being taken away just for existing.

Me? As a trans woman I’ve been verbally assaulted, lost a job, and constantly have to justify my existence with each new job, just because I’m trans.

That’s in 12 years I’ve been out as a trans woman. Before then, in over 25 years of adulthood, I never once had a single issue.

What rights are being removed from the other side?

A fair amount of the left/right divide in America is actually a proxy for Emotional Intelligence. So a lot of the political traits we associate with the left are emotional - empathy, compassion, anger, and maybe a bit of neuroticism.

It's also why thinks like "wokeism" or "cancel culture" are so divisive - if you were born with lower EQ it might feel like you are being segregated against by a set of invisible rules against your lack of intelligence.

I think that's an overly simplistic view that itself stems from a lack of empathy. While the "left" may look at a right-leaning rally and see a crowd of MAGA zealots in a blind rage trying to destroy all that is good, so may the right see a crowd of devil-worshipping child-abusers trying to corrupt all good God-fearing Americans.

The divide results from *both* sides lacking emotional intelligence. If either side were able to understand and empathise with the other, they'd be able to connect and the divide would collapse.

Rather than focusing on the bad, you might be able to understand better if you look at the *good*. If your mental image starts with someone unreasonable and enraged, it's going to be hard to move past that. Instead, try thinking of your "enemy" at a barbecue, happy and surrounded by friends, family and community. Try to think what might cause *that* person to hold the positions you oppose so strongly.

For the record, I'm not American so don't belong to either camp.

It's not even really a "may". My left-leaning friends see "the right" as idiotic boomers destroying the country through bigotry. My right-leaning family see "the left" as idiots and plants destroying the country by removing and disrespecting its values.

At least in my circles, the divide is almost perfectly one side fearing(/angry about) losing/changing what currently exists and the other side angry the other side tries to stop them from making changes.

For the record, I think that a "push-and-pull" approach to progress and democracy is probably helpful. If every progressive policy of the last 150 years was actually enacted it would be pretty terrible - eugenics, prohibition, reeducation, de-industrialization, etc. To the extent that a democracy is still healthy good ideas should still win out in the long run over bad ideas. One side applies the gas and one side applies the breaks.

But I also don't think that's a great description of current politics in the US either. Both parties are in alignment on a lot of key issues, especially economic: both support de-globalization, both fight for entitlements (for different groups though, of course), both are fighting for government expansion.

A lot of the "culture war" issues are kind of a political window dressing for the actual war over the economy.

Feels like an abrupt 180 from the “facts over feelings” crowd.

From outside the US it reads like a lot of pearl clutching from the acolytes of Jonathan Haidt, FIRE, and OMG Woke! end of 'Merica as we know it doomers.

There are a lot of countries in the G20 further left than the US.

Speak for yourself woke-nut!

I'm very left wing (not just "leaning"), and don't experience any of these symptoms.

These neurotic symptoms are the result of a massive failure of perspective: people fail to appreciate just how lucky they are to be alive...

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