José Posté 22 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 22 avril 2008 Trigger HappyBy ARTHUR C. BROOKS April 19, 2008; Page A10 In words that he has come to regret, Barack Obama opined as to why he was having a hard time winning over many blue-collar voters: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." It was a throwaway line to a private audience at a San Francisco fund-raiser. And it was made public on a liberal Internet blog, not by right-wing commentators. But Mr. Obama's opponents seized on the quote. It was evidence, they claimed, that he is "elitist," caricaturing middle Americans as gun-toting, immigrant-despising, religious rednecks – who are also deeply unhappy people. And as a contrite Mr. Obama admitted, "I am the first to admit that some of the words I chose, I chose badly." The comment may or may not be an indication of Mr. Obama's real views about those ordinary Americans who've not enjoyed the full fruits of economic growth over the past decades. Yet his casual portrayal no doubt had heads nodding vigorously in assent among his supporters, and probably among many others. That anybody would find this portrayal realistic illustrates how little some Americans know about their neighbors. And nothing reveals the truth better than the data on guns. According to the 2006 General Social Survey, which has tracked gun ownership since 1973, 34% of American homes have guns in them. This statistic is sure to surprise many people in cities like San Francisco – as it did me when I first encountered it. (Growing up in Seattle, I knew nobody who owned a gun.) Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group. Nor are they "bitter." In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were "very happy," while 9% were "not too happy." Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy. In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling "outraged at something somebody had done." It's easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn't true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don't have guns. The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest. Why are gun owners so happy? One plausible reason is a sense of self-reliance, in terms of self-defense or even in terms of the ability to hunt their own dinner. Many studies over the years have shown that a belief in one's control over the environment dramatically adds to happiness. Example: a famous study of elderly nursing home patients in the 1970s. It showed dramatic improvements in life satisfaction from elements of control as seemingly insignificant as being able to care for one's plants. A bit of evidence that self-reliance is at work among gun owners comes from the General Social Survey. It asked whether one agrees with the statement, "Those in need have to take care of themselves." In 2004, gun owners were 10 percentage points more likely than nonowners to agree (60% to 50%). That response is not evidence that gun owners only care about themselves, however. In 2002, they were more likely to give money to charity than people without guns (83% to 75%). This charity gap doesn't reflect their somewhat higher incomes. Gun owners were also more likely to give in other ways, such as donating blood. Are gun owners unsentimental? In 2004, they were more likely than those without guns to strongly agree that they would "endure all things" for the one they loved (45% to 37%). None of this is to dictate what gun policy should be in our nation and its communities, let alone whether gun owners deserve to be happier than those of us without firearms. Guns are an important area of debate about freedom and security, not to mention constitutionality. What we do know, however, is that contrary to the implication of Mr. Obama's comments, for many Americans, happiness often does indeed involve a warm gun. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1208564548…in_commentaries
walter-rebuttand Posté 22 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 22 avril 2008 Ca me rappelle ceci Why conservatives are happier than liberalsIllustration by Kevin Kallaugher IN EVERY nursery there is one child known as the Biter. Who suffers the most from this child's delinquency? Not his classmates, whose bite marks quickly heal. It is the Biter's mum and dad, who endure sideways glances from other parents when dropping him off in the morning and fret constantly that their own poor parenting has produced a monster. Arthur Brooks was once the father of a Biter. For a year, his son gnawed on boys, girls, siblings, friends and so many guests that he had to be removed from his own fourth birthday party. Mr Brooks worried, argued with his wife, lost sleep and sought professional help. So he speaks from experience when he says that having children does not make you happy. Happily for the reader, his book, “Gross National Happiness”, is not a memoir. It is a subtle and engaging distillation of oceans of data. When researchers ask parents what they enjoy, it turns out that they prefer almost anything to looking after their children. Eating, shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: “There are many things in a parent's life that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from [one's] children.” Despite this, American parents are much more likely to be happy than non-parents. This is for two reasons, argues Mr Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University. Even if children are irksome now, they lend meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy are also more likely to have children. Which leads on to Mr Brooks's most controversial finding: in America, conservatives are happier than liberals. Several books have been written about happiness in recent years. Some have tried to discern which nations are the happiest. Many more purport to offer a foolproof guide to self-fulfilment. Others wonder if the obsessive pursuit of happiness is itself making people miserable. Mr Brooks offers something different. He writes only about Americans, thus avoiding the pitfalls of trying to figure out, for example, whether Japanese people mean the same thing as Danes when they say they are happy. And he writes intriguingly about the politics of happiness. In 2004 Americans who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” were nearly twice as likely to tell pollsters they were “very happy” as those who considered themselves “liberal” or “very liberal” (44% versus 25%). One might think this was because liberals were made wretched by George Bush. But the data show that American conservatives have been consistently happier than liberals for at least 35 years. This is not because they are richer; they are not. Mr Brooks thinks three factors are important. Conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to be married and twice as likely to attend church every week. Married, religious people are more likely than secular singles to be happy. They are also more likely to have children, which makes Mr Brooks confident that the next generation will be at least as happy as the current one. When religious and political differences are combined, the results are striking. Secular liberals are as likely to say they are “not too happy” as to say they are very happy (22% to 22%). Religious conservatives are ten times more likely to report being very happy than not too happy (50% to 5%). Religious liberals are about as happy as secular conservatives. Why should this be so? Mr Brooks proposes that whatever their respective merits, the conservative world view is more conducive to happiness than the liberal one (in the American sense of both words). American conservatives tend to believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can succeed. This makes them more optimistic than liberals, more likely to feel in control of their lives and therefore happier. American liberals, at their most pessimistic, stress the injustice of the economic system, the crushing impersonal forces that keep the little guy down and what David Mamet, a playwright, recently summed up as the belief that “everything is always wrong”. Emphasising victimhood was noble during the 1950s and 1960s, says Mr Brooks. By overturning Jim Crow laws, liberals gave the victims of foul injustice greater control over their lives. But in as much as the American left is now a coalition of groups that define themselves as the victims of social and economic forces, and in as much as its leaders encourage people to feel helpless and aggrieved, he thinks they make America a glummer place. Extreme happiness So much for right versus left. Mr Brooks also finds that extremists of both sides are happier than moderates. Some 35% of those who call themselves “extremely liberal” say they are very happy, against only 22% of ordinary liberals. For conservatives, the gap is smaller: 48% to 43%. Extremists are happy, Mr Brooks reckons, because they are certain they are right. Alas, this often leads them to conclude that the other side is not merely wrong, but evil. Some two-thirds of America's far left and half of the far right say they dislike not only the other side's ideas, but also the people who hold them. Oddly for a political writer, Mr Brooks thinks his country is doing pretty well. Americans are mostly free to pursue happiness however they choose with little interference from the state. Well-meaning coercion is less common than in Europe, though it can still backfire spectacularly. He cites this example: a county in Virginia recently banned giving food to the homeless unless it was prepared in a county-approved kitchen, to prevent food poisoning. Churches stopped ladling soup, and more homeless people were forced to scavenge in skips. This hurt not only the hungry, but also the volunteers who might have found satisfaction in helping them. The surest way to buy happiness, argues Mr Brooks, is to give some of your time and money away.
pankkake Posté 22 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 22 avril 2008 Quoi, même pas de comparaison de la taille du pénis ?
Jesrad Posté 22 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 22 avril 2008 Et n'oublions pas non plus que les gens plus libres sont plus heureux.
Abominable NH Posté 22 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 22 avril 2008 Quoi, même pas de comparaison de la taille du pénis ? "Obsédé ? affirmatif … sexuel !"
Wenceslas Posté 23 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 23 avril 2008 Quoi, même pas de comparaison de la taille du pénis ? Trop compliqué, pense aux transexuels qui se font insérer le polichenel.
Invité jabial Posté 24 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 24 avril 2008 N'empêche que ça devrait quand même faire réfléchir un brin. Si les conservateurs religieux sont plus heureux, il y a une raison. Quelque chose manque manifestement aux progressistes athées. A vérifier tout de même, le biais lié au fait que les personnes se décrivent elles-mêmes comme heureuses ou non ; il est possible que dans la culture conservatrice il soit simplement mal vu de se déclarer malheureux. A voir. Ceci dit j'ai toujours pensé que les gens ont besoin d'une base métaphysique et d'une communauté avec un fort sentiment d'appartenance, et il est probable que tout conservateur religieux US ait tout ça.
pankkake Posté 24 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 24 avril 2008 La vie et la mort, vu par un athée, c'est beaucoup moins marrant. Ça ne m'étonne donc pas, mais je ne vois pas pourquoi il faudrait s'inventer des histoires magiques pour être plus heureux.
A.B. Posté 24 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 24 avril 2008 La vie et la mort, vu par un athée, c'est beaucoup moins marrant. Ça ne m'étonne donc pas, mais je ne vois pas pourquoi il faudrait s'inventer des histoires magiques pour être plus heureux. Le bonheur sans la lucidité est vain.
Tremendo Posté 24 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 24 avril 2008 N'empêche que ça devrait quand même faire réfléchir un brin. Si les conservateurs religieux sont plus heureux, il y a une raison. Quelque chose manque manifestement aux progressistes athées. A vérifier tout de même, le biais lié au fait que les personnes se décrivent elles-mêmes comme heureuses ou non ; il est possible que dans la culture conservatrice il soit simplement mal vu de se déclarer malheureux. A voir. Ceci dit j'ai toujours pensé que les gens ont besoin d'une base métaphysique et d'une communauté avec un fort sentiment d'appartenance, et il est probable que tout conservateur religieux US ait tout ça. Je suis pas croyant mais je me sens heureux, jsuis pas progressiste et je suis pour le port d'arme, quel dròôle d'oiseau je suis.
pankkake Posté 24 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 24 avril 2008 Le bonheur sans la lucidité est vain. Heureux les pauvres d'esprit, parce que le royaume des cieux leur appartient
Invité jabial Posté 25 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 25 avril 2008 Heureux les pauvres d'esprit, parce que le royaume des cieux leur appartient Mauvaise traduction.
pankkake Posté 25 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 25 avril 2008 Mauvaise traduction. Quel est l'original ? J'ai Googlé cette phrase et elle était présente dans une infinité de variations.
Abominable NH Posté 26 avril 2008 Signaler Posté 26 avril 2008 Quel est l'original ? J'ai Googlé cette phrase et elle était présente dans une infinité de variations. Tiens, tu arrives encore à dire autre chose que "prout" toi ?
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