Gad Saad: Of course conservatives are happier — they believe society is worth it

Progressives doom themselves to unhappiness by praying at the altar of noble self-loathingAuthor of the article:Gad SaadPublished Dec 13, 2023  •  Last updated 5 hours ago  •  4 minute read

In my latest book, The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life, I explain that when it comes to individual differences in happiness, roughly 50 per cent stem from our genes. Of course, the good news is that the other 50 per cent is up for grabs. The decisions that we make (e.g., choice of spouse and career) and mindsets we adopt (e.g., moderation, resilience, persistence, playfulness, variety-seeking, anticipatory regret) also affect our sense of well-being. In the book, I discuss many variables that correlate with happiness, including money, health, personality, religiosity and culture.

I’d like to focus on whether people’s political orientation affects their happiness. Many studies have yielded the robust finding that conservatives are generally happier than liberals and progressives. Why would this be the case?Article content

By definition, conservatives believe that there are values, beliefs, attitudes and ideas worth conserving. Hence, they wake up every morning with a sense of existential glee; they recognize that their society, whilst far from perfect, contains many tried and tested ideas worth preserving. Liberals and progressives on the other hand wake up with a dark cloud of existential doom because their society is apparently racist, sexist, transphobic, Islamophobic and ableist. Canada supposedly sits on stolen land. Capitalism is an exploitative system that rapes Mother Earth. We have less than 15 minutes to go because of the existential crisis associated with climate change. Hence, from the perspective of the Noble Progressive, we must dismantle the current system and fight for Unicornia, which lies just around the corner. How could one be happy when there is so much ugliness in the world?

If I were a progressive, I would have so much to be guilty (and sad) about, which I could only assuage with a rigorous regimen of self-flagellation. According to Noble Progressives, some of my sins include: 1) I’m toxic because I’m male; 2) I’m transphobic because I chose to marry a woman with a vagina, and never considered marrying a woman with a penis; 3) I’m a successful author and professor so I perpetuate ableism; 4) I support a meritocratic ethos rather than using Victimology Poker as the means by which people are judged; 5) I’m an Earth rapist because I eat meat; 6) I’m a science denier because I’m unwilling to turn off my electronics and use low-carbon homing pigeons for my communication needs; 7) I perpetuate white supremacy because I posit that the scientific method is the sole epistemological means by which one can adjudicate between competing scientific hypotheses, and as such I reject “other ways of knowing”; 8) I’m fatphobic because I lost tons of weight during COVID and 9) I am Islamophobic because I recognize that many Islamic tenets are incompatible with Western liberties.

Perhaps my two worst transgressions of all are my friendship with Jordan Peterson (and we all know that only monsters would associate with the Overlord of Darkness, espouser of the radically dangerous idea that young men should assume personal responsibility) and my appearances on Tucker Carlson’s television show and podcast, which led to my cousin, with whom I went through the Lebanese civil war and who was my closest childhood friend, to chastise me publicly for having “no shame” in associating with Carlson. There are many other “progressive thought crimes” that I am guilty of, but rather than wallow in my existential shame and self-loathing sadness, I choose to be happy.

By the way, people think that I am coy when I refuse to definitively state what my own political orientation is. I am a one-issue-at-a-time individual. When it comes to immigration policy or the death penalty, I’d be considered a conservative because I am against pathological if not suicidal empathy. The lax immigration policy that Canada has enacted will ultimately destroy the fabric of this nation, and as such I fully support the right of a country to selectively choose immigrants who fully share in the foundational values of the host nation. When it comes to the death penalty, I think that it is barbaric and immoral to exclude it for crimes that attack human dignity. A recidivist predatory pedophile who rapes and kills children does not deserve to live. A moral society does not exclude each and every crime from the death penalty, using a misguided calculus of non-barbarism. A society could reserve the death penalty for extreme cases wherein the evidence is truly unassailable (e.g., a perpetrator’s DNA is found on or in the bodies of more than two children). This is perfectly moral and just.

On many other issues such as sexual or gender orientation, I would be considered liberal. I do not care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. I support the right of transgender people to live dignified lives, but this does not mean that I will be espousing the imbecilic positions that “men too can menstruate” and “men too can bear children.” As I explain in The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, one can be socially liberal without murdering the truth in the service of so-called social justice.

Well-adjusted individuals have a confident sense of self. The same principle applies at the societal level. Healthy societies are proud of their heritage, and this leads to a form of existential glee. Regrettably, progressivism requires that one prays at the altar of noble self-loathing, a sure recipe for existential angst and unhappiness. Life is fleeting. Every moment is infinitely precious. Do not waste your time wallowing in the pursuit of Unicornia, which solely exists in the parasitized minds of those who are fully decoupled from an understanding of human nature.

National Post

Dr. Gad Saad is an evolutionary behavioral scientist, professor and bestselling author. His latest book, The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life was released this past July.