Why are secular liberals so unhappy? This question is provocatively discussed in Arthur Brooks' new book Gross National Happiness. Brooks is a sociologist and statistician at Syracuse University. I am reading his book while vacationing with my lovely wife on the beautiful island of Santorini. So it's natural for me, watching the most beautiful sunsets in the world, martini in hand, to think about the question of happiness.
Brooks' book is full of interesting data. We learn, for instance, that money does buy happiness, but only upto a point. Poor people and poor countries are unhappy, and by the self-description of the people involved. So the movement from grinding poverty to the comfortable middle-class brings a huge gain in happiness. But interestingly economic improvement at this point brings diminishing marginal returns. This is not to say that rich people aren't happier: they are. But not by very much.
Brooks also shows that, in his own words, "people who say they are conservative or very conservative are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy than are people who call themselves liberal or very liberal. Conservatives are much less likely to say they are dissatisfied with themselves, that they are inclined to feel like a failure, or to be pessimistic about their future." Conservatives' mental health is far better than that of liberals.
Equally fascinating, Brooks notes that "faith is an incredible predictor, and cause, of happiness. Religious people of all faiths are much, much happier on average than secularists." Specifically, 43 percent of those who attend church weekly or more call themselves "very happy," versus 23 percent who attend seldom or never. Observant Jews and Christians are by Brooks' measure the happiest people in America.
So why are secular liberals in general so miserable? I offer two reasons. The first is that liberals are political utopians. They consider human nature to be wonderful, and they expect freedom to be used wonderfully well. So they are always bitterly disappointed when they discover that this is not the case. Conservatives, by contrast, have a dimmer view of human nature. So their expectations are more modest. When things don't turn out half-badly, conservatives are pleasantly surprised. They are happier because it takes less to make them happier.
It's not too hard to figure out why religious people are happier. Belief in God gives people a powerful sense of higher purpose in life. It assures people that the universe is in the benign hands of a omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate higher power. It offers people a code for how to live. It gives us a reason to hope in cosmic justice, which is better than the imperfect justice of our terrestrial world.
By contrast, secular people have little to hope for. They are sure that they came from nowhere--the chance product of random mutation and natural selection--and are going nowhere. They know that terrible things happen, and they don't believe there is any purpose in this. No wonder that secular people have so few children: they have much less reason than religious people to believe in the future.
So why is an atheist like Richard Dawkins so frequently wearing a conspitated scowl? And why am I usually smiling? Some may attribute these differences to our genetic temperaments. Others may put it down to the fact that I live in sunny California, eating healthy nouvelle cuisine and going on walking tours in Santorini. Dawkins, by contrast, lives in dank, rainy England and eats abominable English food. ("May I offer you some more kidney pie, Professor Dawkins? It's somewhat bland, I know, but perhaps it will work as a laxative.")
But Arthur Brooks would probably say that our temperaments are also the consequences of two very different worldviews, one producing the wholesome optimism of What's So Great About Christianity, the other the angry bitterness of The God Delusion. Read Brooks' new book yourself to see if he's right.
Reader Comments ( Page 7 of 42)
91. to 82: I was leaning toward the British (which I'm not) 'to harshly criticize' which I thought was a fair call in this case. But let's not belabor the point. Generally, in my experience, happier people are less critical of others, but that could just be those rose tinted spec's I'm wearing.
fanmanaf1 at 4:21PM on May 23rd 2008
92. Thanks Bridget; hope you have a great one too.
fanmanaf1 at 4:22PM on May 23rd 2008
93.
DD's implied message seems to be that if liberal, non-theistic people want to be happier, they should become conservative Christians.
Suppose that DD discovered that mainstream Mormons are the happiest people of all? Would that convince him to convert to Mormonism?
Skwunkus at 4:26PM on May 23rd 2008
94. Dinesh,
While you and your wife are out getting expensively crapulent, where is your daughter, and why is she not in your list of things that make you happy?
He doesn't even try to keep integrity in his day-to-day argumentation. Today he acts like a parody of himself, which is downright hilarious.
Mokele Mbembe at 4:26PM on May 23rd 2008
95. In the previous blog, I re-iterated Einstein's "Imagination is more important than knowledge." quote. I think that when knowledge is COMBINED with imagination, then you approach the levels of 'intelligence' approaching that of DaVinci, et al. Think on that.
Aloha!
Robert at 4:26PM on May 23rd 2008
96. ATHEIST
Why does Dr. Gregory House take Vicodan? Makes him happier.
YOu can take drugs to make you happy. Morphine is great for that.
Happiness... is easy to attain. So what?
Reply to: It's not too hard to figure out why religious people are happier. Belief in God gives people a powerful sense of higher purpose in life. It assures people that the universe is in the benign hands of a omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate higher power. (end)
However...
God does NOT exist.
I chose to live in Reality, not a Delusion.
And I'm happy. Seriously.
I don't need a delusion, or drugs, to be happy.
Dinesh has lost so many debates, he's retreated into a Delusional World where he sits in a corner and repeats, "I'm happy. I'm happy."
Pathetic loser.
William Hays at 4:27PM on May 23rd 2008
97. Rabid; you've got us all laughing with that last post; great humor. Actually Dawkins wears that scowl because DD handed him his butt the last time they debated.
fanmanaf1 at 4:27PM on May 23rd 2008
98. I was happy until I read this blog. Then I realized that people like Dinesh exist in this world. I think I'll go jump off the roof now.
AndrewV at 4:27PM on May 23rd 2008
99. jeff, why wasn't E=MC2 stipulated 2200 years ago? Getting to E=MC2 you need a previous foundation of mathematics and sciences. So, I still doubt our intelligence is greater now.
JefFlyingV at 4:30PM on May 23rd 2008
100. Moke, DD is sitting on a balcony in what is probably a very expensive villa on Santorini while he toasts our stupidity with a Martini. Who's laughing now?
Robert at 4:30PM on May 23rd 2008
101. Don't jump andrew, we need you! Throw Dinesh off the roof, that'll make you happy! (And don't mourn the loss of the one who brings us together, they'll just find another one- we all know there are plenty of them out there.)
Robert at 4:34PM on May 23rd 2008
102. "Why does Dr. Gregory House take Vicodan? Makes him happier."
Geez William, Dr. Gregory House takes Vicodin because in addition to being addicted to it he believes it is the only thing that will allow him to continue to practice medicine and avoid the debilitating pain caused by the muscle death in his leg.
Please get something right.
bigTuna at 4:37PM on May 23rd 2008
103. what if we all threaten to jump? Will DD come on here and plead with us? Or will he just watch as he sips his martini?
fanmanaf1 at 4:37PM on May 23rd 2008
104. fan-
He knows there are more of us, too. (Sigh!)
Robert at 4:41PM on May 23rd 2008
105. fanmanaf1: Rabid; you've got us all laughing with that last post; great humor. Actually Dawkins wears that scowl because DD handed him his butt the last time they debated.
You've got me laughing with that humorous post.
Before I counter your point let me say that I have nothing against average non-bigoted believers I’m married to one, I do however take issue with those who insists on shoving their beliefs down my throat, and I don’t know if you are one of those but Dinesh certainly is and my vitriol is strictly targeted at his type.
But I digress.
I recently saw a video on youtube in which a student at a debate confronts Dinesh by recalling an earlier assertion made by Dinesh that atheists, because they refuse to recognize the existence of God, are like cavemen who unable to see beyond the limits of their immediate territory assume that there is nothing beyond this limited viewpoint.
This student turns Dinesh’s own assertion against him to make the point that perhaps it is the believers who have dampened their intellectual curiosity and furthermore, uses a premise laid down earlier in the debate by Dinesh that God is something that we can never understand and is outside our human experience so we can never understand creation or how the human mind really works.
Whether you believe Dinesh or the student is immaterial because what Dinesh did in his response is defend his premise that our understanding of the universe as a species is limited because our direct experience of it is limited to what we perceive through the five senses.
What he did not do is address the student’s actual point that perhaps it is the believers and not atheists who have an underdeveloped intellectual curiosity.
Dinesh pulled a bait and switch perhaps because he was too stupid to take in the manner in which the students phrased his question, which was in keeping with how some questions are asked in a debate when there is an apparent contradiction in logic on an opponent’s part.
Even more interesting is the fact that Dinesh, to prove his point, cites examples of how our five senses fail us in our attempts to experience and understand the wider universe while also (unbelievably) providing some examples as to how we’ve managed to get around those limitations such as developing and using instruments that can see in infrared. What is the difference if let’s say, my eyes can’t see that an object far away is extremely hot if I can build an instrument that will convert the infrared waves into a picture in the visual spectrum that will relay that information to me?
Knowing that we currently have instruments capable of detecting things beyond our senses, what makes him believe that we will not develop other instruments capable of detecting data or phenomena currently beyond our abilities to detect? Is he aware that mathematicians have used math to suggest that strong possibility that there may be more dimensions than we can perceive?
Dinesh’s argument essentially boils down to the point that since we cannot directly experience creation or the universe in their totality we must therefore accept the existence of God as a matter of faith which renders his attempts to intellectually prove the existence of God in these debates as a futile and even dishonest endeavor as through this premise he all but admits that he cannot prove the existence of God.
Dinesh makes his point in such a sweeping, hyperactively rambling manner, even going so far as to pedantically quote Emmanuel Kant that the final result is that the poor student and some in the audience seem unsure of whether or not the student was trumped by Dinesh.
Dinesh baffles his opponents with bullshit because he is incapable of dazzling them with brilliance and that is his true talent as a master-debater (pun intended).
rabidmccain at 4:45PM on May 23rd 2008