Posted on 02/28/2025 12:39:31 PM PST by karpov
My friend James Creigh recently alerted me to a new study showing that relatively young (18-to-40-year-old) American women who consider themselves “liberal” are more than twice as likely to be unhappy as those calling themselves “conservative.” According to the 2024 American Family Survey of 3,000 individuals, only 12 percent of liberal women said they were “completely satisfied with life,” compared with 28 percent of moderate and 37 percent of conservative women. Other statistics, for example on very high suicide rates among young American males, suggest that the existence of a depressing ennui is not restricted to women.
How and where do young Americans form their political beliefs and other perspectives on life? In many different ways and places, of course, but the college experience is often the most important, training young persons during that critical transition between adolescence and adulthood.
It is indeed the universities that have been at the forefront of the modern DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) obsession, stressing perceived racial and other injustices. Many studies have shown that college faculty are overwhelmingly liberal in their orientation. Exploding administrative bureaucracies have also contributed to the crowding out of analyses of traditional truths and ideas.
Moreover, student-affairs offices often almost rejoice in flouting traditional moral standards. For example, undergraduate students tell me that their schools practically drop condoms out of airplanes over campus and not only tolerate but almost tacitly encourage premarital sex in student housing. And, returning to female unhappiness, remember that today’s colleges are dominated by women, who constitute nearly 60 percent of enrollments.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
My college years were very miserable although for likely proprietary reasons. I had a debilitating medical issue that took doctors 2.5 years to diagnose when I was in college plus it was my first time in life where I experienced putting up a herculean effort and doing poorly inspite of the effort. Really left me as a dried up husk to be honest.
Yes, enrollments are in decline. And the primary way these colleges try to keep their enrollment numbers up is by recruiting from the bottom of the barrell. That is, admitting students who are totally unqualified for college. Which is why many colleges have dropped nearly ALL admissions requirements, except a HS diploma (and even that may be in play too). The vast majority of these kids will wash out, but not before they accumulate a lot of debt — most of which they imagine will be forgiven.
Nothing, really, once those dreams of forgetting about registering for a class that I never attended went away.
The know-nothing “Professors”.
Or maybe people who blame other people instead of taking responsibility for their own lives are unhappy — and liberal.
College pretty much destroyed my life.
I came out of college completely incompetent. Just about everything I learned—I had to unlearn.
Took me decades.
Does Leftism make people happy, or does unhappiness make people Leftist? Perhaps it’s a vicious spiral.
Yes, that’s part of the Leftist Indoctrination. They cover all the bases.
Because humans are designed by evolution to want to find mates, form family units, and start having children when they’re 18 to 24 years old, but college is four-plus years of indoctrination telling them no, it’s stupid and wrong for them to want to do that. The resulting cognitive dissonance causes profound depression and unhappiness.
liberal women are unhappy?
shocking!
you mean spreading their legs for anyone and everyone isn’t making them happy? murdering their own babies that result isn’t making them happy? Denying God and having to live with the knowledge they are going to die and rot without hope of an afterlife for themselves and everyone they ever cared about isn’t making them happy? Believing the man made global warming lie and suffering from TDS isn’t making them happy?
shocking.
...
not.
"Why Do Colleges Make People Unhappy?"
Federal government requirements for colleges to indoctrinate students with repugnant political agendas (eg. vote Biden) in exchange for receiving unconstitutional taxpayer dollars facilitated by corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification (popular voting for federal senators) Congress's abuse of its16th Amendment powers (direct taxes).
They sure didn’t make me unhappy 40 years ago. PSU West Halls. Keg parties in the dorms, frats, apartments. Bars downtown like the Skeller - $4 for a case of Rolling Rock ponies.
What the hell is to be unhappy about when you’re in college?
Because after 4 years of drinking, smoking, and screwing, many move back home, get dumped into Mom’s basement, and realize they’re 20 pounds overweight, broke, have no skills, and won’t ever get laid again.
Reality kicks in.
Because the DemocRATS have designated them as the planet’s misery centers. Misery centers are the only “safe” place where Liberal RATS are completely happy.
Uh, because so many of them hear for 4 years that:
America is an awful country,
that white people are bad,
that men are bad,
that white men are the worst,
that boys can be girls and girls can be boys,
that it’s OK to your baby,
...
Mixed bag. Freshman year, the hot chicks wouldn't go out with you because you (and I mean me) lived in the dorms and drove a crappy car. But got top honors. Unhappy with social scene.
Sophomore year, joined a frat. Lived off campus. Worked two part time jobs. Had a cool car and a motorcycle. Was in a band that played all the local establishments. AFROTC. ROTC baseball league. Newman Society. Had hot chicks galore. Grades went into the basement. Unhappy with latter.
Junior year, same as Sophomore, but got into a better routine, partied a lot less, studied harder, settled on one girl. Grades were back into Dean's List at least. Not unhappy, but...meh.
Senior year, moved out of frat house. Dumped girlfriend. Working only one part time job that paid better. Grades went through the roof. Band cut a record - I will not name said band. Didn't get a pilot slot. There were only 5 allocated, and frankly there were better cadets who earned them. That was bitter, but the rest of it quite happy.
Still, every day since then has been better than the next.
Most college students are sold information that is untrue, trained in skills that produce nothing of value, and encouraged to live a hedonistic lifestyle all financed by debt that cannot be discharged. Doesn’t seem like a recipe for happiness to me.
You can’t have revolution without anger.
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