I was thinking about the extremely high percentage of people in the arts community who are extremely liberal the other day, trying to get a grasp on why they should be liberal. I didn't want to settle for some historical explanation.
I was also thinking about the SWPL's and hipsters, liberals who I might call "good vibes" liberals. These are the kinds of liberals who like to throw concerts after the World Trade Center falls, do too much drugs, or advocate a hypersexualized lifestyle. I believe that the "good vibes" liberal tends to view conservatives as curmudgeonly sticks in the mud, people who ruin the good vibes of a free love society.
Lastly, I was thinking about the oft-repeated fact about the views on happiness of people from the East and the West: people from the East supposedly view happiness as peace and contentment, while people from the West more often view happiness as excitement. If Aristotle was right in his Nicomachean Ethics, all humans should and do pursue happiness, as this is the aim of our existence. So I expect a people's view on happiness to powerfully influence the way it approaches many issues in life.
As Westerners, we supposedly see happiness as excitement ( I would argue that Christians and conservatives actually view happiness as a kind of inner contentment or "joy," like the Easterners). Excitement, by nature, is something that is induced by an experience. One goes to an amusement park, a sports game, or a club to get excited. One might also go to a production.
Going to a production brings us back to the liberal arts community. Actors are in the business of inducing happiness in their crowds. They are often very funny and vibrant people themselves, exciting to be around. They are even better at inducing happiness in their friends, and perhaps even themselves, than they are at inducing happiness in crowds. It would be reasonable to expect that they view happiness as good vibes or happiness that is induced.
Sometimes I wonder if hipsters really believe in inner peace, contentment, and joy. They seem to mock everything that is taken seriously- the perpetually ironic attitude for which they are known.
I further wonder how many people in the West do not believe in the attainment of inner joy. I especially wonder when I hear people talk about "mental illness," which used to be described in the past as "misery." They have this concept that people who are "mentally ill" are that way because of deterministic chemistry within the brain that was present from birth. If this view of mental illness is right, the attainment of joy or contentment is an end that cannot be reached for many people, unless it can be artificially induced by a drug. Any real happiness that can be reached is only in the category of "excitement"- the rest is genetics. I further wonder about people who might doubt this conception of mental illness, but are otherwise are pessimistic-for whatever reason- about the ability to create a joyous community and a joyous life.
So if you are a liberal who just wants to keep good vibes going, you might explain the ramblings of conservatives as the crazy outbursts of insane miserable fucks. Many people do consider our views as mental illness. You will figure that you should just remove them, as all they can ever do is bring the rest of society down. Furthermore, if happiness is the end of humanity, and if the only ways that human happiness is affected is through induced excitement, there would seem to be no legitimate reason to oppose unrestricted immigration of peoples into your country. There would be little reason to oppose any societal change that is not obviously and indisputably harming people, as none of them affect your ability to ride a roller coaster, do drugs, or tell a joke. You should be able to tell jokes around anyone of any race, and therefore, you should be able to be happy around anyone of any race.
And if you believe in the above explanations of human happiness, you must believe that any unhappiness in society is the result of the curmudgeons getting to much of a voice and ruining the good vibes (even if you are not a hipster or liberal). You might want to silence the conservatives.
I believe that inner peace and joy is attainable, or at least alter-able. I think that traditional societies have held such beliefs. Most religions teach followers to organize their life for stability. Christianity explicitly teaches about peace and joy as destinations for the Christian life. Most religions also warn against the kinds of pleasure-seeking that are common today, claiming that it will lead to destruction. The reduction or elimination of things such as "spiritual anguish" are common goals of religions. What you unanimously do not see religions teach is license. Religions have not taught people to get wasted three or four days a week (but this is what people do nowadays). Religions have nothing to say about the new issue of recreational drugs, but religious people immediately reacted against them. Conservatives tend to have similar ways of looking at life as the religious.
Multiracialism and degeneracy are bad for humans (in the opinion of a conservative) because they are triggering on an instinctual level. They cause anxiety on an uncontrollable visceral level, making people fearful and distrustful - we all are familiar with the studies showing such bad effects of diversity. Multiracialism disturbs people's ability to find peace by making them fear for their genetic future, and there is no way around this, and so it is therefore bad.
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So who is right? Is misery able to be reduced, and inner peace attainable, or is it irreparable brain chemistry? Is the best (only?) way to a happy society to tell lots of jokes, do lots of drugs, and "let it go" on the dancefloor?
If misery is determined by chemistry, one might expect misery to be uniform in a country across time. However, we have seen a rise of mental illness in America. Maybe miserable people are more attractive and make more babies to spread their miserable genes....probably not.
A countersignal to the idea that "good vibes" are the best path to happiness is the suicide of Robin Williams, which subsequently sparked a conversation about mental illness in comedians, which Stefan Molyneux covered. (I hope that is the right video.) One would think that these people would be the happiest in the world, if they key to happiness is creating good vibes!
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