Early Morning Open Thread
Good news for John McCain angry activists! The Boston Globe says that psychologists Tim Kasser and Malte Klar find “activism”, however futile, makes people feel better about themselves!
Psychologists curious about what fuels human happiness have looked at political engagement and political activism, and they’ve found that it provides people with a sense of empowerment, of community, of freedom, and of transcendence. Political activists, in other words, are all happy warriors…Kasser and Klar ran a study in which they sought to get subjects to think like activists, then measured how it affected their short-term happiness. They gave their subjects, again college students, a survey about the food in the dining hall. Some were given questions that primed them to think about what Kasser and Klar call the “ethical-political aspects” of the food: For example, they read a statement asserting that the cafeteria should offer fair trade products, then were asked to rate the importance of two different rationales offered for that decision. Another group was given suggestions that focused on apolitical aspects like the variety and the taste of the food. Both groups were then asked to write a note to the cafeteria director about the aspect of the food that was most important to them.
The students were then tested on a variety of psychological well-being scales. And while there were not appreciable differences on most of the scales, on one, “vitality” – a measure of both well-being and motivation – the students primed to think like activists did indeed outperform those who were primed simply to think about food quality.
“What we found,” says Kasser, “was that the activist felt significantly more vital and alive and energized than did the nonactivist group.”
Complaining about cafeteria food is probably the perfect example of Sisyphean futility, after all. Being dreadful is the whole point to cafeteria food (“Cheap, fast, good: pick any two”), so if complaining about its political incorrectness is more satisfying than complaining about its tastelessness, might as well go with the whine that gives you a warm glow!
True happiness, Thomas Jefferson insisted, is private, not political, something found “in the lap and love of my family, in the society of my neighbours and my books, in the wholesome occupation of my farms and my affairs.” Of course, Jefferson himself, despite his family and farms and books and myriad private interests, was drawn time and time again back to public life and to politics, in a way that suggested a deeply personal yearning…
Hope you’re feeling better soon, John Cole.
freelancer
aimed at JK:
Five Words. Tell Me You Love Me.
—.
Cole, if you are still feeling like you have been, you need to see a Doctor. Today. Without fail. We want you around, at least until 2012. But still, get it looked at. Today.
MelodyMaker
Just shared some cottage cheese with the cat. Off to some activist sleep helped along by 30min of the beeb.
c’mon. It’s got to be relevant, somehow.
Anonymous
You need to add http:// to the link for it to work properly.
geg6
I read about this study somewhere else a few days ago. It chilled my soul because I really don’t think Teabaggers need any more self-esteem. That seems to me to be the underlying problem with these people after all. Excessive amounts of self-esteem coupled with excessive lack of IQ points. A dangerous combination. Personally, I am not a big fan of self-esteem. I have found that a little self-doubt is a grounding thing and it is generally not very productive to asuume the universe revolves around you. It always seems to result in things like John McCain and George W. Bush.
demkat620
Mornin’! It’s a bit nip here in SEPA and I am debating whether to wear an honest to god sweater to work.
I think I caught John’s cold.
WereBear
I send my good health wishes to John. I’ve just spend 2 weeks getting, fighting, and getting over something, though fever seemed to be missing from the equation.
Crockpotted a 2 lb London broil yesterday; ten hours on a bed of onions, 1 cup of water, 2 tbl soy sauce and random spices.
Now that will tenderize it. And now I have onion soup, too.
Little Dreamer
@geg6:
That equals great comedy without the cost of a movie ticket.
Ann
Anne Laurie – Thanks! A helpful thought for my dissertation!!
beltane
This is true. There is absolutely nothing worse than the feeling of helplessness. It is the same reason why most people are more afraid of dying in a plane crash than in a car crash; they feel they can do something, anything, to avoid getting into a car accident, while an airplane is totally out of their control.
An inch of snow here on the ground this morning. I will make myself feel better about this by going outside and demanding the sun to give me warm weather.
DBrown
Thomas Jefferson -slave owner, rapist (serial at that) and family man who, whenever he needed a case of that special French wine, would tear a slave family apart by selling one of them for the wine. Hell, one of the slaves might even have been fathered by him.
So, while the slaves were worked to near death, he had time to practice politics – what a … words fail me. If there was a hell, that animal would be in it.
SGEW
This is hardly surprising, eh? But it’s nice to see that there’s been an official psychological study that explains part of the motivation behind the last eleven years of my life.
Save
the Whales[my emotional well-being]! StopGlobal Warming[my sense of despair]! Say No toWar[depressive tendencies]!Seriously, tho’ – save the whales, stop global warming, and say no to war anyway, and not just to help out my state of mind ;)
(And it’s no wonder that dedicated activists have better sex lives.)
SGEW
Oh, and get well soon, Mr. Cole.
harlana pepper
I hate to pee on your parade, but activism is no emotional substitute for a snappy bumpersticker.
SGEW
And speaking of activism, even when ultimately futile, Scott Horton puts the Nobel Peace Prize’s aspirational and inspirational functions into some perspective:
Remembering Carl von Ossietzky
Who cares if “activism” is partly done out of a feeling of “empowerment” or interest in one’s own “well-being”? It’s still the right thing to do.
Ming
In all fairness, there’s nothing in the study, at least as described here, points to psychological benefits of angry activism.
aimai
Hm, where have I heard this before?
Oh yeah:
“It is better to light a single candle/than to curse the damn darkness.”
Of course activism, or the illusion that one is facing a manageable problem, or the illusion that one is not alone (that one can work with an interested group to solve a problem) makes people happier. That is merely to say that people who feel helpless, isolated, alone, and a pawn of fate are generally unhappy. And in this society maybe that’s lots of us. I feel happy when I’m cooking, listening to taped novels, and knowing that I’m feeding my family. I feel agitated when I talk politics. But I like being agitated.
But activism isn’t a single act, and when happiness is a momentary thing its not worth much. When those students have shown up day after day in the struggle for something important and gotten nowhere, they will be as unhappy as the rest of us. And ditto for the teabaggers if they actually try to do something other than merely showing up and ranting (that is to say, expressing themselves through art, poetry, and dress up).
A russian woman told me once that there’s a russian saying:
“Happiness is always past tense.” Savor the horror of that.
Happiness is a cultural construct.
aimai
Legalize
Dammit, I suppose this means that the Teabaggers are less likely to do as Michelle Bachman has suggested, and slit their wrists for freedom. Oh well, there’s still the possibility that they’ll all die in house fires due to smoking in bed too close to their oxygen tanks.
anonevent
@DBrown: Hopefully yelling at the clouds made you feel better.
Keith G
@geg6:
I work with, and even pal around with, some baggers of tea. I actually feel it is insecurity that fuels their odious behaviors. The ones we see, when confronted with “fight or flight” are choosing “fight”.
Max
So Tweety is hosting Morning Meeting. So far, I think he might be high. It’s pretty bizarre just 15 minutes in.
However, it was funny when he called out Mike Vaquera for not using “penultimate” correctly.
Persia
@SGEW: My husband’s going to give me all kinds of crap about this one, I know it. But the sex lives thing may save me.
matoko_chan
I was against wilin’ out on Obama to repeal DADT (he CAN do that).
I have changed my mind.
Lets roll.
But leave DOMA until after stealthcare passes.
;)
matoko_chan
yeah Keith G
...the polarization is caused by the transition of electoral power.
The GOP is now at 22% of the American electorate and homogeneously composed of teh religious, mainly WECs, white evangelical christians. Glenn Beck is a mormon convert channelling the pamphlets of mormon crank conspiracy theorist Cleon Skousen into the 912 project. The low information base of the GOP, as it has distilled down to a purely religious party, has become increasingly permeable to televangelism.
Glenn Beck is just another televangelist.
The distillation of the GOP into an increasingly white christian religious party has made the base more susceptible to televangelists like Beck and radioevangelists like Limbaugh. The other effect of becoming a purely WEC party is the GOP is increasingly unappealing to the demographics it needs to attract….youth, hispanics, teh college-educated.
But it is like a bad bio-feedback cycle—the more purely WEC the GOP becomes, the less attractive it is to the demographics it needs to court to regain power.
Look at the candiates—Romney- mormon
Palin- WEC
Huckabee- WEC
Pawlwnty- WEC
smiley
How appropriate. Today’s letter to the editor:
Love the capitalization of march.
Keith G
@smiley: And note the age of the writer: Over 50.
Textbook.
anonevent
@harlana pepper: Especially a magnetic one.
Skepticat
@Keith G: You seem spot on with the insecurity comment. They seem to fear that if they don’t tear down others, there will no longer be anyone they consider beneath them. That inferiority complex often is at the root of a lot of racism, and seeing a biracial man elevated so far above them probably is fueling incredible impotent rage. And impotent may be a key word there, too.
jwb
Local paper reprinted both Ceci Connelly’sinfomercial and Douthat’s “if I were a I responsible person I would have just said “no” to this NY Times gig because I hadn’t earned it” travesty in this morning. Such reprinting is one reason why I won’t be sorry when WaPo and/or the NY Times goes under. I’m beginning to wonder whether no national press is really a worse option than a totally irresponsible national press.
jwb
Stupid no edit. (Sometimes I get the edit function, sometimes I don’t.)
matoko_chan
Know hope.
Bobo goes third culture.
Bubblegum Tate
What about the gay teabaggers?
Yes, he seriously just said that the wingnut Christian right is the gay community’s best—only!—true ally.
And then the first two commenters come with, “I ain’t teamin’ up with no kinda queer!” Faaaaaan-tastic!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@aimai:
The way I think of it is that despite the noble sounding words “pursuit of happiness” which are enumerated as one of our inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, happiness is something that can never actually be tracked down and caught in that fashion. Instead it is something that sneaks up behind us and gives us a big wet kiss when we tire of chasing it and take a timeout from the pursuit. We don’t find it, it finds us.
Whenever I hear the word ‘revolver’, I reach for my culture.
Little Dreamer
Does laughing at Orly Taitz reprimand count for activism? Just wondering.