Being left-wing makes you unhappy. Being an activist makes you happier!

The data suggests it's not our beliefs that make us unhappy, but our (lack of) actions

A few months ago, Ian Leslie wrote a piece on this platform about how left-wing people are, on average, less happy than right wing people. This is true in nearly every country where this has been measured, even though more liberal/left countries are happier than conservative ones(!). It’s an interesting piece, and, while I share neither the full analysis nor perhaps the politics of the author (some of the characterisations of left culture and attitudes feel overdrawn…) from a statistical analysis point of view it has interesting points and is worth reading in full. 

That said, pieces like this deserve, if not a response, at least a small (medium?) addendum. For it is true, statistically, sociologically, maybe even in a strict sense philosophically, that left-wing people are on average less happy than right wing people. And left-wing views may well actually cause some of this unhappiness; as Leslie documents in his article, the relative unhappiness of the left-wing appears to hold even when one controls for other variables.

However, there is an interesting additional thing to consider:

Activists are, statistically, and perhaps even causally, happier than non activists.

Left-wing activists protest against Alternative for Sweden, Carl Ridderstråle

This point is not worth pulling out as some sort of bizarre justification for left-wing beliefs, or some kind of happiness contest with the right. No, visiting this point is interesting because of what it suggests about what activism does for those who practice it. Firstly, it suggests that much of our happiness may come not from left political views themselves or from seeing the world as super-political (as Leslie argues) but from having left-wing views while lacking a sense of personal agency and purpose. And secondly, it suggests that if you wish to be a happier left-wing person, it might just be wise to get involved in activism. 

Activists as the happy ones! But what about burnout? (Tired activists always ask when I relate this.) Yes, there is evidence of burnout, which of course makes people less happy, but on the whole, the finding remains. But surely we shouldn’t pick our political views so they make us happy? Absolutely, nor should political action be simply to make us “happy”; but hey, we might as well notice that benefit too, right?

For Leslie’s suggestion, notably, is that being left-wing effectively takes away a lot of the stable and reliable sources of human happiness. And sociologically, in many areas he’s not wrong: as he draws out in his piece, it makes you more likely to see rifts in friendship, it makes you more likely to self-criticise and worry, It (probably) makes you more likely to follow the news closely which, of course, makes every left or liberal person I’ve ever met very, very unhappy. Leslie also cites Jonathan Haidt’s idea that left-wing culture often encourages people to take their feelings as the guide for what to think (so that if something feels upsetting, that feeling should always be believed and it’s actually good to feel more and more upset about it, rather than try to reduce one’s upset). I have seen this sort of mental logic occasionally, but mostly in very specific kinds of left-wing groups, not the majority; so personally, I am less convinced this is at play. In any case, Leslie and the author he’s summarising also think that people are made unhappy in part by considering everything to be political, which makes them incapable of enjoying it and more suspicious of other humans. The worry, in a way, is that thinking about politics too much is bad for us, in itself. 

(Leslie is of course not the only one to  have drawn on this data to make these points;  in fact, I suspect conservatives somehow enjoy writing pieces like this about how being liberal or left-wing makes you miserable. There’s quite a few of them around the internet!)

But let’s consider it another way, now that we have this data about activists. If activists are happy, happier than other left-wing people, then perhaps it's not “seeing everything as political” that makes us unhappy, but rather seeing the whole world as political and bad, and feeling one can’t do anything about it. If this is true, then left-wing people are unhappy not so much because their worldview inevitably traps them into bleakness and suspicion, but because being left-wing in the modern world leaves them feeling dissatisfied and powerless. When they discover that they can in fact exercise some power, however small, their lot radically improves - at least mentally. 

I noticed this possibility right away when reading this article not only because of the data on happy activists (which will also feature in my forthcoming book - there’s actually a huge amount of fascinating stuff on how activism changes people for life!) but because it’s an ongoing common finding that feeling powerless can cause significant unhappiness for people, even depression. And, conversely, that feeling a sense of agency improves one’s wellbeing. Having sources of meaning and purpose in life increases wellbeing too, and presumably activism helps in this regard as well. (Basically, our brains are set up for us to be active, meaning-driven, sociable agents in the world, and it’s pretty clear that when this part of our lives gets impeded we wither). 

It’s plausible that activism provides many of the things that left-wing people might otherwise, sociologically, lack. It gives people a community of fellow activists. It provides a sense one’s life is personally meaningful, not just determined by outside, possibly-malicious forces. And again, provides is very possibly the right word here, not just “correlates with” it seems, for in studies where people are made to go do activism, their happiness increases. It’s also likely given what we know about the positive impact of having community, purpose, and being able to take agency in one’s life. 

Activism may also make people happier because it can provide a social care network; for, as my colleague Max Haiven notes when we teach together, even the grumpiest, sternest social movements are usually engaged in forms of social reproduction, caring for and teaching their members, connecting them to the world where they might otherwise become isolated. In short, activism likely provides a way for human beings to do things that make them happy: have community, purpose and meaning, feel agency, and feel good about themselves. Which are more or less all the things that Leslie, and others, suggest left-wing beliefs on their own work against. 

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Activism is not some kind of perfectly natural human practice. As Astra Taylor has noted, the actual word is only about 100 years old, seems to have developed in part as an insult to the left, and only became more commonplace after the left hit despair over some of their earlier tactics. The idea of activism as a specific practice of taking actions to advance a specific cause (while possibly having super long meetings) is relatively new also; in previous eras, people simply were radicals and lived their lives that way, or perhaps they thought of themselves as organising their own community, one in which they were firmly embedded. 

Activism might then reasonably be understood as a position taken up by those in modernity who are first alienated from seeing the world politically (because most people are today, that’s the default) but then have individually returned to seeing the world in political terms, even if they can’t shake some of their epistemological and social disconnection.  If you’re a left-wing non activist busy working many hours, and you buy your food from a supermarket, it’s unlikely you’ll organise about or even know about the harm that climate change is doing to food production. Activism enables people to do that; but this does not of course return them to nature or mean they really understand farming. It is an unnatural position of sorts, but one that might still have things to offer.

Regardless of this disconnected reality of a great deal of activism, there is good work to be done, good work organising, protesting, teaching, redistributing resources, making life difficult for those in power, building alternative ways of living, and more. It’s just worth noting that activism as a term, as an intentional practice, “had” to develop as its own specific form of life because our lives as we otherwise live them in modern societies do not necessarily involve the kind of social connections, immediacy and awareness that would otherwise lead to change. 

And that, in turn, matters because it brings us back to the possible reason so many left-wing people are statistically unhappy: they hold all the happiness-harming beliefs about the world being oppressive and bad, but they often have no place to put them into action and connection with others, because we do not live in a society where this is easy to do without joining an “activist” group. 

Other political belief groups simply may not face this tricky combination of belief and alienation. Conservatives, presumably, think the political order is at least somewhat more bearable; they can turn their need for connection, meaning, and purpose to other areas of life (or else become *conservative* activists). Left-wing people might not get the same comfort from the soccer team or church if they think neither is going to save the world from climate change, or if they’re fighting with their fellow soccer moms about climate change. And so, to be happy, they need to go find a group that is doing something about climate change. 

In other words, to offer my differing hypothesis again, the happiness problem facing left-wing people might not be “seeing everything as political” but “seeing everything as political in a world and not feeling able to take action.” With activism, some of these possibilities for agency, meaning, and connection reopen. 

Is this hypothesis definitely true? Are left-wing people sad because they see a problem but lack purpose, agency, and social ties? Are left activists doing better because they can access these? Since we haven’t really researched it this way, it’s hard to know for certain. Meantime, however, I find this way of thinking about the issue useful. 

And so I’m not going to worry about seeing the world as incredibly political. Nearly everything is political; and that's ok. It should however be a spur for us to do something, and do it with other people. And that’s what I intend. 

Wanna join? It might even make you happy.