> because people with such beliefs are more aware of societal injustices, and because unhappy people are more likely to want change

That's well proven.

Yet, for the record, mental health is known to be much worse in the far-right and far-right libertarians (conspiracy theories, projection etc.)

>> unhappy people are more likely to want change

> That's well proven.

Is that something that needs proving? Doesn't being unhappy logically imply that you want change?

> for the record, mental health is known to be much worse in the far-right and far-right libertarians

Every paper I've seen on the subject has pretty much monotonic improvement in reported mental health outcomes almost all the way to the right, and if there's any non-monotonicity, it's insufficient to come even close to the reported negative mental health outcomes on the far left. This is not a formal scientific paper, but the SSC survey has the benefit of tighter granularity and more heterodoxy than most sources. https://mobile.twitter.com/phl43/status/1227338353101672450

Low granularity research from gallup: https://news.gallup.com/poll/102943/republicans-report-much-...

Interesting data points, but in isolation polling seems to be a rather poor method for determining this.

More conservative viewpoints are also associated with higher stigmatization of mental health conditions[1] and one indisputable measure of a mental health crisis (suicides) is more prevalent in rural areas compared to urban[2].

This seems like an obvious confounding variable. If you poll people have they been formally diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and one group of people refuses to seek treatment for it in the first place due to stigma, then _of course_ fewer of them are formally diagnosed.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6600024/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909802/

A shallow search seems to support that people with right leaning ideologies tend to stigmatize depression more and to not support mental health help and intervention.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6600024/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2378023120921652

A person who stigmatizes mental illness would be more likely to not seek help and would not admit that they have problems in a public survey.

As an example of this, the slate star codex post shows that alt-right people reported a very low percentage of diagnosed depression. The popularity of Jordan Peterson and his videos in that space is a clear signal that a lot of these people are seeking ways to deal with mental health problems. Even more, they're not looking for them through official channels, but through online celebrities and communities.

I would be very glad to be corrected with data on this as I'm not an expert, but I think it's an important point to consider when discussing mental illnesses where self-reporting makes a big difference in their diagnosis.

The God fearing right? Having a believe in a higher leads to better mental health outcomes in general. Conspiracy theories like 9/11 UFOs or are often far leaning left views although both side have a distrust with the government. Framing conspiracy beliefs as right wing missing the real split. Those who trust power structures and people in power and those who distrust.

Well, the foundation of Christianity is the establishment of a source of hope that transcends the tragedies and corruption of the prime material plane. That hope is incredible source of strength for many. I think it's an interesting examination of people to understand where they derive hope from, and just IME for many it's their spiritual belief system. "What gives you hope (about humanity, the world, your personal life, your family, etc.)" always seems like an enjoyable conversation. To the extent that one feels and internalizes gratitude I think is also strongly correlated to hopefulness, just IME.

> because unhappy people are more likely to want change.

Things are constantly changing wrt. societal+economic measures - Gini, GDP, longevity (excl. short term perturbations). If anything conservatives might be unhappy that things are changing at all, and left-wing supporters that they're not changing fast enough.

> There's actually some evidence that having left-wing political beliefs is associated with mental health consequences

This is certainly true, at least based on polling, cf https://news.gallup.com/poll/102943/republicans-report-much-...

> because people with such beliefs are more aware of societal injustices in general

There is no evidence I'm aware of that this is the underlying causal relationship.

Maybe there's something to that too. Left wingers also typically, like big government and believe that its fine for us all to collectivised and made to follow governments rules. Is that how empathy is used against the empath? Can govt just say that such-and-such is for the greater good, and most will go along with it? It seems so, at times.

Not sure that’s a left wing mentality.

counter-examples: the patriot act, military spending, police funding.

The right seems just as happy to support big gov and tow the official/collectivist line when it comes to “law and order”, international power, nationalism, etc.

Put another way, anti-vaxers come in two flavors: right wing conspiracy nuts (alex jones), and left wing flakes (goop).

I think what we’re all kind of lacking is the idea of statists vs non-statists. The left and right swap positions on issues like military welfare (tell me again our burn rate in Ukraine right now) and state surveillance (generally a left-loved cause these days) over the decades. The state wants power at a cost to the citizenry. People in power enable this regardless of their party. We should also acknowledge that it’s the nature of the system for the power structures to try and get their hooks in politicians as quickly as possible such that they can be made tools of the power structure. I guess the benefits are good but the consequences on people in power “fighting the system” are multimodal, relentless, and effective.

I think you might be confused because the “left” in the usa is a centrist liberal party. Liberals are not leftists. Actual leftists do NOT in my experience support state surveillance. Warfare isn’t a left vs right thing per se, e.g. leftist support for ww2 when american nazi sympathies were common. But imperialist wars are generally opposed by leftists.

I do think the state-ist vs non-state-ist thing might be useful, but as a leftist there are plenty of things I support a state-based solution to (healthcare) while others I do not (policing - as currently conceived, anything involving personal freedom + autonomy e.g. drugs, lifestyle). I’d suggest it’s more of a “i’m a healthcare state-ist” rather than “i’m a state-ist”.

You're confusing liberalism with left. People on the left tend to have as much antipathy towards the average far right western neoliberal government as the extreme right. The existence of extremist authoritarian social conservatives and economic libertarians who have similar antipathy should not be confused for left support of authoritarianism.

Although I think it's fair to characterize the left as favoring collectivism, I don't think it's fair to characterize them as following government rules any more than the right.

Typically speaking, the left want government rules determined by scientists and experts that maximizes overall freedom, the right want government rules determined by the church that maximizes the freedoms of adherents to that church.

So while the left may favor following mask mandates or vaccination drives because it benefits the overall physical health of the community; the right favors abortion bans, banning trans healthcare treatments, outlawing gay marriage, and barring race from being discussed in schools for--presumably--the moral health of the community.

The right is arguing these things are for the greater good in the same way the left argues wearing a mask in the supermarket is. Both sides want their governments to enact and enforce these rules. I'd argue that telling someone to wear cloth on their face is a lighter government touch than forcing 10 year old rape victims to travel 500 miles for care, but I digress.

After all, the government tells you to wear pants and I don't see people calling anyone sheep for doing so.

> Although I think it's fair to characterize the left as favoring collectivism, I don't think it's fair to characterize them as following government rules any more than the right.

Left/right are really just meaningless words in 2022. The woke left of today is literally as intolerant of any belief outside their moral code as the evangelical religious right is—-to the point that but for their beliefs they are indistinguishable from each other in terms of willful authoritarian support.

They are equally destructive and equally bad in my opinion as both want government or community to bend the will of everyone outside their group to the morals of their group.

Comparing intolerance of intolerance to just plain intolerance is a false equivalency.

It’s a bit like saying the abolitionists and slave owners were equally destructive and bad because the slave owners were intolerant of black people while the abolitionists were intolerant of pro-slavery advocates.

There are some overzealous or radical elements on the left, but not at all in the same way as on the right. Not in scale, not in effect.

If you want to say far left ideology is as harmful as far right ideology, fine. But when one problem is 100x larger, let’s not try to give both problems equal attention.

Sorry, that is exactly the sort of justification “the other side” always uses. Doesn’t matter which side of course, but it’s always some justification of bad action excused away with “the other side is 100x worse”.

I have no need for either side nor care if one is worse than the other. I don’t care what the “intentions” are…just that the effect is bad…especially when the effect is intentionally evil.

I could easily back it up:

The right has over the past 6 months used the levers of government to make it illegal for women to get reproductive care, banned books on LGBTQ and race from school libraries, removed elected officials for espousing different beliefs, punished companies that disagreed with their views, and outlawed care for trans youths. There are candidates on the ballot in favor of disenfranchising voters, adding the Bible to the citizenship exam, and outlawing contraception.

The left has done what to abridge anyone's freedoms in that time? What are their candidates campaigning on to reduce other's freedoms?

It's a silly argument to have. One side is clearly embracing authoritarianism and you're here arguing both sides are the same.

The inability for both sides to see their own ugly behavior is common to both as well. It’s really remarkable how alike they are.

I once heard someone describing politics as in the shape of a “C”, where both “left and right” actually bend towards each other and being ultimately closer to each other than they are to middle of the road political thought. I think it’s a clever and accurate visual.

At any rate, I don’t engage in debate with zealots, there is nothing they can say that will change my mind, and there is nothing I can say to change theirs. That is one of the reasons why both left and right zealots always try to use authoritarianism to move the needle in their direction. Have a good day

I respect that, although I wish I could claim to be a zealot. I hope you have a good day, too.

I like to work in facts, so I gave a short list of government actions I’m aware of (I could give many more) done by Republicans that restrict freedoms all within the span of the past six months. I can provide links to articles about each.

However, when engaging with right-wingers I often get zero proof of the reasoning behind their feelings. Like above just brushing it off as an inability to see authoritarian moves by the left. If you’re trying to argue they’re the same, using actual facts and data would go a lot further towards proving your point than just sharing smart-sounding but ultimately empty rhetoric.

> If you’re trying to argue they’re the same, using actual facts and data would go a lot further towards proving your point

It’s my opinion that they are the same, and that opinion is based on my own interactions with folks on those sides. I see a common thread of behavior when items they believe to be incontrovertibly true might be questioned—even minor and inconsequential things. When in positions of power over people, be it governments or in any relationship with a power dynamic, the end result seems to be trying to find ways of using authority to hurt, degrade, or marginalize those folks that might disagree with them.

No matter how righteous you believe your beliefs to be, if the actions you willingly take because of those beliefs hurt people, you are doing evil. If you are doing evil, your righteous intentions are corrupted. So left or right it’s the same.

> Typically speaking, the left want government rules determined by scientists and experts that maximizes overall freedom, the right want government rules determined by the church that maximizes the freedoms of adherents to that church.

I don't think you have the slightest clue about what you're talking about.

> Typically speaking, the left want government rules determined by scientists and experts that maximizes overall freedom, the right want government rules determined by the church that maximizes the freedoms of adherents to that church.

c'mon, do you really think that? It's blatantly the work product of demagoguery.

The evidence clearly points in that direction, so yes.

Supreme Court rulings notably trending towards increasing Christian freedoms at the expense of others (reintroducing staff-led prayer at school, allowing businesses to discriminate against gay couples, mandating public funding be sent to religious schools, abortion no longer being within one’s right to privacy).

Then there was the Muslim ban to start off the previous Presidential term. The extreme Zionist stance of some red states, going so far as to legally punish companies practicing BDS. The Texas GOP basically shut out gay Republicans from participating and deemed them an “abnormal lifestyle choice.” They also want prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments back in public schools. There is a growing discussion of finding a way to make gay marriage illegal again. Then there’s the trans panic. The church is also against the legalization of marijuana. It’s challenging to find a place where the party’s policy stance is separate from evangelical churches.

The anti-vaccination stance was also widely promulgated by churches painting the vaccine as the mark of the beast. Similarly have read many argue against mask mandates because we were created in god’s image and it would be an insult to Him. Further, churches were one of the loudest against occupancy mandates or other restrictions on in-person congregations (the loss of revenue hurt). Don’t get me started on the number of popular churches that give sermons on the election being stolen, Trump being a Prophet or Messiah or Chosen One, and Biden being possessed by Satan. Not normal stuff btw.

The founder of conservative social media app Gab probably said it most clearly: “We don't want people who are atheists. We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country.”

Now maybe you’re part of the libertarian wing of the party. Or maybe you support marijuana legalization. Or you don’t want abortion to be completely banned. Or you go to a regular old church that doesn’t give political sermons. But if so, I hate to break it to you but you have little say in the direction of the party.