In today’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Michael talked about a recent University of California study that concluded that conservatives find more meaning and satisfaction in life than liberals. “Of course, it makes sense,” said Knowles.
“I am not surprised at all,” he said of the study’s findings. “You see it all throughout literature, you see it all throughout politics and history. But especially this moment with the rise of the ‘nones.’ The people who do not affiliate with any religion. Which is taking place almost entirely in the Democratic Party and on the left-wing of the political spectrum. You are seeing a simultaneous rise, almost one for one, in suicides, in depression. I am not saying that that is a causation, but I am saying that those two things are coinciding, that they are happening at the same time. It’s hard to imagine that they don’t have some relationship to one another. Of course, it makes sense.”
He continued: “If you really believe — as prominent left-wingers are trying to tell us, and has become a sort of mainstream view among a major political party — if you really believe that life has no purpose, you have no inherent dignity, you’re a random accidental collection of cells, there’s no good, there’s no evil, there’s no love, there’s no joy. It’s all just a trick, it’s all just an illusion and the only reason, the only momentum you have to keep going is pleasure — you’re not going to ultimately be gratified by that. When the pleasure turns off, then you are going to want to turn off too. It’s a horribly dystopia and distressing way to live through life, and conservatives don’t have that.”
Video and transcript below:
There’s a new study out of University of California. It was a study that analyzed surveys from about 16 different countries. It found a higher life satisfaction, that conservatives found more meaning in life, across the board. Conservatives over lefties found more meaning in life and had more happiness and had more life satisfaction. Why is that? Well, let’s just see what the study says. They found that “Conservative states were happier than left wing states, even just within the United States.” One of the reasons for that is because conservative states are less neurotic. Having come from New York and California, I can personally attest to that, it’s very true.
This is according to Gallup, Health Ways Wellbeing Index, The US Census bureau, CBS News, New York Times, Pols, and obviously the Presidential election results, 2000 to 2008. The study also found that happiness and finding meaning in life are more likely related to social issues rather than economic issues. I don’t use the term social issues because all issues are social issues. If it’s political it’s social because it involves more than one person. But it is cultural, and that is the real crux of it. It’s cultural and it gets down to the cult, it gets down to what you worship.
I am not surprised at all, that people who view life as sacred and who view the human being as having certain roles and certain teleology and certain purpose is going to find more meaning in life. And therefore happier than people who just want lower taxes. It’s the cool thing to be in college, you know, a social liberal but a fiscal conservative. “I really don’t care about culture at all but I like me and I like money a lot, man.” Puff, puff, pass.
I am not surprised at all … You see it all throughout literature, you see it all throughout politics and history. But especially this moment with the rise of the “nones.” The people who do not affiliate with any religion. Which is taking place almost entirely in the Democratic Party and on the left wing of the political spectrum. You are seeing a simultaneous rise, almost one for one, in suicides, in depression. I am not saying that that is a causation, but I am saying that those two things are coinciding, that they are happening at the same time. It’s hard to imagine that they don’t have some relationship to one another. Of course it makes sense.
If you really believe — as prominent left-wingers are trying to tell us, and has become a sort of mainstream view among a major political party — if you really believe that life has no purpose, you have no inherent dignity, you’re a random accidental collection of cells, there’s no good, there’s no evil, there’s no love, there’s no joy. It’s all just a trick, it’s all just an illusion and the only reason, the only momentum you have to keep going is pleasure, you’re not going to ultimately be gratified by that. When the pleasure turns off, then you are going to want to turn off too. It’s a horribly dystopia and distressing way to live through life and conservatives don’t have that.
Conservatives are buttressed against that. One, because conservatives tend to be more religious, and two because of the tradition, conservatives tend to be more traditional. And thankfully, even when bad ideas crop up and sort of purvey the culture, the tradition keeps you rooted as long as you do rituals as long as you sort of preserve the traditions in a society, you’re still going to be connected to that thing which has some sanity which has some foundation.
On the neurosis, I noticed that my conservative friends, broadly speaking, are a lot less anxious and worried and nervous and angry all the time. My left-wing friends, they’re pulling their hair out. This is true when the Conservatives lose a presidential election they’re unhappy about it. They are not pleased. But, they don’t like flood into the streets and start burning down cities like the Democrats do. They don’t refuse to concede elections as happened in 2000, as happened in 2016. They just sort of move on, they try to be constructive, they try to channel their frustration into something better because they have a purpose.
You know, neurosis is a symptom of narcissism. I say this to my friends all the time in New York and LA. They are shocked in horrified. But it is. It’s a symptom of narcissism. It means you are obsessing over yourself all the time. People who are too obsessed with their personal health, what they’re eating, “you know this month I am a crypto vegan paleo daily dairy GMO whatever” It’s narcissism. Because you are only concerned with yourself and how every little thing feels on you. Well maybe if I change this you’re treating yourself as an idol. Your treating your body as a machine that you are worshipping as an idol. Don’t do that. You’re not perfect.
So that is going to leave you not gratified but when you look outside of yourself then I think you’ll have much better psychological effects. You’ll have more happiness, you’ll find more meaning in life and the study by the way even looked to two different kinds of happiness. Not just quality of life, you know well being, smiley smiley pleasure, but also a eudemonic, like eudaimonia, the Aristotelian sense of really having meaning. Of pursuing a good, of pursuing virtue. You will have more of that because you are looking outside of yourself, you know. A man wrapped up in himself makes a small package indeed.
Look outside of yourself. Conservative are able to do that. That’s why conservatives are better at understanding different people’s points of view. That’s why the left is much worse at understanding the right than the right is at understanding the left. It’s why the left will un-friend people on social media who disagree with them but the right doesn’t do that nearly as often as the left does.
There is a little more understanding. There’s a putting something outside of yourself. Don’t be a narcissist, and it’s frequently people who accuse others of being narcissists … who scream all the time “Trumps a narcissist” you know, get in peoples faces really angrily. I think they have the problem don’t they? Because narcissism has a meaning. It has the excessive love of self. Of constantly adoring yourself, looking at yourself all the time. I think it’s those – I don’t think President Trump is a narcissist. I don’t see much evidence of that. He might be crude, he might be brash, he might be self-interested. But I don’t see him as a narcissist. I see him as too blunt and too connected to reality for that. That’s an important thing. Your life will be better.
Rates of depression, rates of anxiety. People are popping all of these meds. It’s proliferating the culture. You can do it — just stop thinking about yourself all the time.