Non-religious, socialist societies are happier

[_Droopy]

But an explanation in French - that's really kind, and helps a lot.

Man, would this guy have a problem with National Review, especially when Buckley was still editing. One almost needed to have a dictionary of Latin terms and phrases handy to get through some of the articles. Now, I have the Web, and its all at my fingertips.

But of course, NR is nothing more than dogmatic slop, so who's minding the Latin?

[_Droopy]

Well, I was there for quite a while in the 90s. I went on long walks and travelled around using public transportation.
I saw a stunningly beautiful country, nice people, no sign of poverty that I can recall. I also do not remember any pornography. Of course, I might not be as sensitive as poor Coggy.

In Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, it was like our billboards here before most of them were banned in the early seventies. Very much of the advertising space in major towns and cities was taken up with ads for pornographic movies, with very explicit graphics. Not a single magazine or newsstand was absent a considerable porn section. An entire room at Heathrow Airport was given over to pornographic magazines and books. Pornographic movies were conspicuous and not at all segregated to a few dingy movie houses as in the states at the time. It was not so much the newsstands and bookstores, but the billboards and window posters, posters in the windows of drug stores or small shops, advertising explicit pornography, and the urban areas were saturated with it.

I don't know how by parents felt, but for a small kid it was rather stunning, to say the least.

[_Droopy]

Language is normally used for the communication of meaning - even in Academia (UT), I believe. Failure to use a language register appropriate to the context of communication suggests one is aiming to communicate something other than meaning, such as, for instance, one's amazingly high cultural level.

You don't get out much, I mean in the literary or philosophical world, do you Chap?

[_Canucklehead]

Of course, the reason I pointed out that he's a fellow at Stanford who draws on probably considerably more than a hundred peer reviewed academic studies -- I haven't actually counted them -- to support his points was to deflect any charge, by somebody who hasn't even seen the book, that it's merely "dogmatic slop."

It is, as I say, heavily documented, and the breadth of his reading was, to me at least, quite impressive.

Academics can be dogmatic. They can produce well-documented dogmatic work. It's still dogma.

The fact that he allowed his title to suggest that I somehow love my children less because I don't belong to his political camp disgusts me. I won't be reading a worthless book. If someone were to convince me that it is indeed worthwhile, and if I did not already have a very long list of books to fill my free-reading time, I'd give it a shot.

[_Canucklehead]

You have to be extremely careful with studies that use simple self-report data to make conclusions about levels of happiness. Surveys asking people to report their level of happiness are notoriously suspect to biases in that reporting.

I'm from one of the most liberal cities in the US - Madison, WI. I know a fair amount of immigrants who have lived in different areas of the US. They often say that we natives are some of the friendliest, happiest people they've met. One thing that makes them say this is if you walk down the street, people are always smiling and saying hello to one another. It's true. If I walk down state street, chances are I'll smile and say hello to random people and people will return the favor. The thing is, I understand this to be good manners. Even if I'm not happy, it's still second nature for me to act this way. It's just part of my cultural background from my particular socioeconomic status in this part of the country. For a person not familiar with this cultural expectation, they might get the wrong impression about how happy some people are. There's a disconnect between what they think measures happiness and actual happiness. I have a friend from Alabama who says that where she is from, it is considered bad to express being unhappy. On a personal level, that's odd to me, but I understand this is prevalent in some subcultures.

Well, it turns out that there are all different levels and types of pressure in various cultures and sub-cultures about how happy one should say they are and be. And these phenomena have an influence on self-report surveys.

Those are very good points, and I accept the reservations and limitations they they imply with regard to the World Values Survey study. Of course, I didn't think that one study could make the case for having secular, liberal societies. (There are plenty of other better reasons for pursuing those policies...) I simply found the report interesting and thought that it would annoy some of the more reactionary posters here.

[_Droopy]

Academics can be dogmatic. They can produce well-documented dogmatic work. It's still dogma.

1. An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true. See synonyms at doctrine.
2. A principle or belief or a group of them: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present” (Abraham Lincoln).

So, what's wrong with dogma?

[_Canucklehead]

Well, I was there for quite a while in the 90s. I went on long walks and travelled around using public transportation.
I saw a stunningly beautiful country, nice people, no sign of poverty that I can recall. I also do not remember any pornography. Of course, I might not be as sensitive as poor Coggy.

In Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, it was like our billboards here before most of them were banned in the early seventies. Very much of the advertising space in major towns and cities was taken up with ads for pornographic movies, with very explicit graphics. Not a single magazine or newsstand was absent a considerable porn section. An entire room at Heathrow Airport was given over to pornographic magazines and books. Pornographic movies were conspicuous and not at all segregated to a few dingy movie houses as in the states at the time. It was not so much the newsstands and bookstores, but the billboards and window posters, posters in the windows of drug stores or small shops, advertising explicit pornography, and the urban areas were saturated with it.

I don't know how by parents felt, but for a small kid it was rather stunning, to say the least.

Based on the track record of your memory on this board, I'm rather sceptical.

[_Droopy]

http://www.examiner.com/a-1419425~Peter ... rals_.html

[_Droopy]

And more interesting still...




http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printa ... 80F8C68808

[_Droopy]

Well, I was there for quite a while in the 90s. I went on long walks and travelled around using public transportation.
I saw a stunningly beautiful country, nice people, no sign of poverty that I can recall. I also do not remember any pornography. Of course, I might not be as sensitive as poor Coggy.

In Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, it was like our billboards here before most of them were banned in the early seventies. Very much of the advertising space in major towns and cities was taken up with ads for pornographic movies, with very explicit graphics. Not a single magazine or newsstand was absent a considerable porn section. An entire room at Heathrow Airport was given over to pornographic magazines and books. Pornographic movies were conspicuous and not at all segregated to a few dingy movie houses as in the states at the time. It was not so much the newsstands and bookstores, but the billboards and window posters, posters in the windows of drug stores or small shops, advertising explicit pornography, and the urban areas were saturated with it.

I don't know how by parents felt, but for a small kid it was rather stunning, to say the least.

Based on the track record of your memory on this board, I'm rather sceptical.

In other words, you have absolutely no idea whatever...