Does being happy mean you're right, and does being unhappy prove you're wrong? Let me refine that further: does being relatively happier prove you're relatively righter, or vice versa?
I vote no. I get tired of people claiming most or more people on their side are happy or happier, therefore they must be the right side. Let's take Rush Limbaugh, for instance. I am probably
more conservative than he is on a lot of things. But one thing he keeps saying (which may really represent a certain strand of "conservative" thought) that bugs me -- and I just heard him say it on TV a few minutes ago -- is "Conservatives are naturally happy. It's their nature."
Wait, I think I've got the exact quote:
"Conservatives are naturally happy. We seek happiness. We pursue it. It's part of who we are. So what can you do? Live your life."
According to this strain of thought, most often expressed by Limbaugh, conservatism is happy, peppy, perky, eternally optimistic, cheerful and positive-thinking, with an unshakeable can-do attitude permeating everything they do.
o/` Don't worry, be happy. o/` o/`Happy,happy, joy-joy o/`
Holy cow, I'm worried a lot, and I can't rmember being happy since maybe 1966. I'd call Tolkien a conservative in some sense, and that doesn't sound much like his "long defeat" idea.
Limbaugh seems to think liberals are all gloomy and fearful and pessimistic and negative and so on. I seldom get that. In general they -- or at least the well-off ones -- seem to be having most of the fun.
Well, I admit that they tend to crash lower after flashing higher, where we conservative types tend to plod or slog along on a fairly even and predictable keel, usually, except in especially "interesting times," such as now. I expect many of us to find ourselves outlaws and fugitives soon enough, or maybe just raggedy hobos.
I don't think believe humn beings are deterministic mechanisms -- "clockwork oranges" or that someone's political ideology is determined by or is a function of his or her basic personality type or temperament. I know there have been "studies" that purported to show that, but I think they're bogus, junk science. In one in particular, they defined "conservative" in such a way as to support the results they clearly wanted to find, to support a circular argument.
I don't even think you can tell which religion is true or truer by how relatively happy its adherents are (in this world anyway). There was some famous quote of C.S. Lewis about just that issue.
For that matter, I don't think someone's record collection or taste in records tells you much of anything about their politics, temperament, social class, sexual preference, or intelligence. I don't even own a record player now, and you could have always measured my intelligence as well with a dip stick as by what records I owned, or what radio station I had my car radio tuned to at any given moment.
Frankly, music never occupied the place of significance in my thinking that it seems to for many or most people. I never looked to music to mold and shape my world view. If you were trying "to dissect me with some blunt little instrument," you'd do better to look at what books (including comic books) were on my shelves, and what movies I was especially devoted to.
DWM
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)