A recent study from researchers at the University of Turku in Finland has uncovered a correlation between progressivism and levels of happiness.
And you don’t really need to guess which way the level of happiness goes when progressivism increases.
Just scroll TikTok for five minutes — if you don’t mind being spied on by China — and you will see hundreds of miserable social justice warriors whining about everything from being misgendered to having to go to work.
TikToker goes on racist tirade against white people. Says all whites are oppressors simply because they’re white and it’s life-threatening if white people are not actively working to be anti-racist
White people are the only group you’re allowed to be racist towards pic.twitter.com/fptnxrNcR9
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 17, 2024
Trans activist films himself harassing employees at a restaurant because they misgendered him by calling him sir pic.twitter.com/ImmR4jptXd
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 13, 2024
Would you hire this person if they showed up to an interview like this? pic.twitter.com/TJE1IPmXnv
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 4, 2024
In general do conservatives seem happier than wokesters?
The study of the Finnish population, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, developed a first-of-its-kind “Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale” to measure commitment to progressive principles like intersectional feminism, critical race theory, and queer theory, according to the New York Post.
Lead researcher Oskari Lahtinen said, “No reliable and valid instrument existed prior to the study to assess the extent and prevalence of these attitudes in different populations,” according to the Post.
After surveying over 5,000 Finns, the scale identified seven core ideas associated with being “woke,” such as beliefs that racial income gaps are due to racism, that reading lists should reduce the presence of white or European authors, and that white people cannot fully understand the experience of being a person of color.
The demographic patterns showed that 60 percent of women held positive views of woke ideas compared to only 14 percent of men. Those in STEM fields tended to critique social justice efforts, while colleagues in social sciences, education, and humanities were more supportive.
But surprise, surprise, the results also revealed another pattern.
The “woker” you are, the more miserable you seem to be.
Researchers found a significant negative correlation between “wokeness” and mental well-being.
Those who agreed that racial income gaps were due to racism were much more likely to report anxiety and depression, Lahtinen said, according to the Post. Left-wing participants, in general, tended to have lower happiness levels overall, the study showed, according to the New York Post.
Of course Finland is a small country, with a population of only about 5 million, and largely homogenous ethnically, according to the CIA’s World Factbook. And Lahtinen encouraged U.S. researchers to conduct a similar study of Americans, but the results aren’t likely to be much different.
While the researchers may have been surprised by their findings, for the rest of us, they made perfect sense.
When your entire worldview is hyper-focused and even fixated on issues of gender, race and perceived societal power structures and imbalances, you tend to get a little cranky.
And although the study didn’t look into it, it’s a fair bet that these “wokesters” don’t have much faith in God or traditional marriage.
Several studies over the years have shown that faith and marriage can lead to higher levels of happiness.
A Wall Street Journal-NORC poll in September revealed that while the number of Americans who rate themselves as “very happy” has decreased drastically since 1972, the values that most “very happy” Americans have in common are a belief in God and the importance of marriage, according to the Salt Lake City, Utah, Deseret News.
There was a 30-point “happiness” differentiator between married and unmarried people, with the “happiest” group being those who have children.
The report didn’t show that people of faith and those who were married had fewer hardships, but simply that it did not affect their joy as much.
Although not definitive, the results of the Finnish study further confirm what many have long suspected — that an ideology obsessed with perceived injustices and societal divides is not a recipe for personal happiness and fulfillment.
“Wokeness” cultivates a grievance mindset fueled by resentment and a victim mentality. This quasi-religion of intersectional social justice indoctrinates its adherents to pit race against race and focus on dead-ends for humanity, such as transgenderism and abortion.
In contrast, faith rooted in love, forgiveness, gratitude and a calling higher than oneself tends to produce more joy and life satisfaction, as does bearing and raising children.
Adherents of the woke religion have convinced themselves that they’re fighting for a better world.
Instead, they’re only creating a much unhappier one.
