Being right-wing hasn’t made me happy

Can being more Right-wing make you happier? According to the right-wing Daily Mail it can:

‘People with conservative views are more content than their more liberal-minded neighbours, research suggests. ‘Those with politics that lean to the Right were found to have higher levels of well-being – even when their favoured political party was in opposition. ‘They benefit from the belief that problems are a person’s own making – which helps them deal better with whatever life throws at them.’

I can’t say it has exactly worked for me, but being an evolutionary conservative I tend to think that our internal political compass has a lot to do with simple biology, and that conservatives are more fearful and depressive by nature. My Guardian-reading neighbours will see a group of teenagers and think how wonderful to have a vibrant youth scene in the neighbourhood; my reaction is ‘oh God, hoodies, they’ll probably throw rocks at me and shout “paedo!”’.

One of the essential problems with politics is that conservatives tend to tell people what they don’t want to hear, but they are often essentially right. Optimists tend to live longer but when it comes to avoiding cack-handed schemes that will get the entire tribe killed, it’s best to listen to the depressive realists. I would even go as far as to say that conservatism can be a sort of mild mental illness; personally I often wish I could go along with the comforting beliefs that most of my contemporaries seem to adhere to, about the perfectibility of man or the mysterious social structures that cause injustice and which can somehow be removed (despite every previous attempt at doing so being a failure).

What will probably make one happier is living a conservative lifestyle – getting married, settling down in one area, going to church and exercising self-control and taking personal responsibility. The things that tend to make people happy are companionship, religion and a strong sense of community.

In fact many wealthy people on the Left already do live such a conservative lifestyle, as Charles Murray pointed out in his recent book ‘Coming Apart’, but fail to preach what they practise, partly because conservative social views are low-class status signifiers.

Anyway, life! Don’t talk to me about life!