The Alt-goal is to be so filled with joy, we jump in the air–we just might not be going about it in the best way…/Image Credit: Licensed Shutterstock stock.
Salutary Salutations, dear Alt-right Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) readers! This week in Wellness we want to discuss a topic that’s more complicated than almost anyone gave it credit for up until recently: happiness. For too long, “happiness” has been culturally synonymous with “pleasure.” So the things that made us feel good were what were thought to bring about that state of being so many of us pursue. The most current research shows that pleasure is just one facet of this complex life-gem.
Let’s review SYRW’s five dimensions of happiness, and then consider some ways we on the right-wing, right-thinking end of the political spectrum can achieve those. Their successful apprehension will, then, bring to fruition your personal path to the well-being that comes from a life filled with hate.
National Geographic Tours the Happiest Nations
A recent National Geographic cover story titled, “The Search for Happiness” motivated us at SYRW to delve into this topic and tease out what it means for the right-wing community.
The NatGeo story interviewed the author of several books about the happiness in general and the world’s Blue Zones–its happiest places–author Dan Buettner. We’re still scratching our heads about why the United States is relatively low on the list. After all, we have to pay through the nose for our health care, we have easy access to firearms and can take them all over town, and body-and-soul-crushing work is expected to take up the most hours in our lives. Go figure!
Related: See what Tomi Lahren said about her daily hair-health regimen.
What makes Denmark, Costa Rica, and Singapore so high on this azure-colored list? Well, dear readers, their societies, led by their governments, aid their citizens in structuring their lives around three concepts: pleasure, purpose, and pride. To that SYRW adds people and piety. Now, let’s get more into what Buettner and we mean by these five Ps.
Buettner’s Blue Zone Ps
Pleasure
This is the what most of us think of as activities that we enjoy engaging it, that are fun, stimulate our senses in such a way that our minds and bodies are rewarded: swimming in a cool lake, curling up with a compelling book, savoring a tasty meal.
Purpose
By purpose, Buettner means what gives our lives meaning. What do we pursue that imbues our lives with a sense that we’re doing something that we believe in, believe in the value of?
Pride
No, not in the Seven Deadly Sins, type. This pride is the kind that makes you smile and hold your head high because you know your particular life has meaning and significance. That knowledge fills you with dignity and self-worth.
Our Two Additions
People
Barbra Streisand sang, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” And yes, they are. The human animal is an inherently social one, down to our DNA. Relationships and communities, and positive engagement with them, fulfill and satisfy us. In fact, this may be the main thing required for happiness because of the following: healthy relationships with people (or animals, for that matter) force us to get outside ourselves. And avoiding obsessing about our own needs and desires is truly the only way to be happy. It may be a daily effort, too, not an event, but keep at it! We are actually at SYRW involved in an hourly struggle. [Though this is a satirical website and article, we feel strongly about this, here at SYRW!]
Piety
Again, don’t think of this in terms of obedient religiosity. At SYRW, we mean it as a sense of a higher purpose to life, that it’s more than biological needs met on a daily basis and random things happening in a cold universe. We mean to say a belief in some meaning to it all, the opposite of randomness and chaos, that there is a spirit in the human experience that needs succor the same way the body needs food. [though this is a satirical website and article, we feel strongly about this, here at SYRW!]
And: Did you hear about Ivanka’s ingenious legal strategy for the Trump team?
What Does It All Mean for the Right Wing?
Just this, readers: we’re on the right path–never, ever doubt that. Let’s look at specific ways in which current conservative politics are setting us up for a life of misery and dissatisfaction–oops!–we mean utter ecstasy.
Pleasure, you say? Well, we’re glad you asked! It soothes your eye to behold hands raised in Hitler salutes at an Alt-right protest, doesn’t it? The smell of the explosive device you plant in Times Square, the capital of Liberal Land, delights your olfactory organ. The chilly computer screen underneath your finger as you digitally vote another right-wing nut job into office is quite something. The taste of blood on your knuckles as you get into a melee at a pro-Confederate-statue rally is finger-lickin’ good! The sound of the cries of DACA recipients being torn from their families and deported pleases the ear.
Purpose, someone wants to know? Well, tearing it all down, of course. We want to tear U.S. society in 2018 down to the ground, so the Left knows our truth. We’d rather this nation as we know it not exist than former-marginalized-groups outnumber us, leading us to feel awkward and unwelcome. We’re draining the swamp, without a giving any thought to what monsters live below.
Pride? Oh, come on! The glorious lives of the once-celebrated-groups that find ourselves having to share some of the riches of the U.S., our collective cultural egotism, our nationalism, our comforting tribal affinities, those are our pride.
People, they inquire? We’re all about people on the right! People who look and think exactly like us. We include some people and exclude a bunch of others, but we check off the “people” box in the prescription for happiness just fine.
And piety? Oh, yes, piety. Well, we Alt-righters actually do approach this in the traditional sense, though SYRW wanted to give it a more nuanced meaning. That was our mistake. Nuance is not the forte of conservatives. We have our traditional religious pieties, and those fulfill this category. But we also now have the religion of Trumpism. Our prophet is The Donald, and despite daily, mounting, logically-incontrovertible evidence that he cares for only two things–himself and his ego–we continue to believe in him. He says, “Jump,” we say, “Into what moral abyss?
Happy Is as Happy Does
There you have it, dear SYRW readers. Your recipe, your prescription, your plan for an empty life pursuing the five Ps. Pretty soon, the U.S. will be a blue zone, and–hey! The Liberals made that term up just so we’d have to say we want the nation to be Blue. No way! We’re not buyin’ it! Pretty soon the U.S. of A. will be a shining example of living the Five Ps of Happiness! Red Ps, because they’re based on the conservative mission!
We at Spread Your Right Wings generally don’t like people, the Internet, or interacting with people on the Internet. Seek out someone—in person—to talk to and laugh with about this article. Check back with us as we continue to mock the right wing. Follow us on Twitter at @worstaltlife join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @worstaltlife. If you simply must get in touch with us, DM us through our Facebook group. Also, please, please see the disclaimer in our About section.
© 2018 Akbar Khan
