New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book • Bloomberg Best Book of 2018“Their distinctive contribution to the higher-education debate is to meet safetyism on its own, psychological turf . . . Lukianoff and Haidt tell us that safetyism undermines the freedom of inquiry and speech that are indispensable to universities.” —Jonathan Marks, Commentary“The remedies the book outlines should be considered on college campuses, among parents of current and future students, and by anyone longing for a more sane society.” —Pittsburgh Post-GazetteSomething has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising—on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.
Greg Lukianoff
August 20, 2019
352 pages
English
978-0735224919
File Size: 88 MB
Available File Formats: PDF AZW3 DOCX EPUB MOBI TXT or Kindle audiobook Audio CD(Several files can be converted to each other)
Language: English, Francais, Italiano, Espanol, Deutsch, chinese
“A disturbing and comprehensive analysis of recent campus trends . . . Lukianoff and Haidt notice something unprecedented and frightening . . . The consequences of a generation unable or disinclined to engage with ideas that make them uncomfortable are dire for society, and open the door—accessible from both the left and the right—to various forms of authoritarianism.” —Thomas Chatterton Williams, The New York Times Book Review (cover review and Editors’ Choice selection)”So how do you create ‘wiser kids’? Get them off their screens. Argue with them. Get them out of their narrow worlds of family, school and university. Boot them out for a challenging Gap year. It all makes perfect sense . . . the cure seems a glorious revelation.” —Philip Delves Broughton, Evening Standard“The authors, both of whom are liberal academics—almost a tautology on today’s campuses—do a great job of showing how ‘safetyism’ is cramping young minds. Students are treated like candles, which can be extinguished by a puff of wind. The goal of a Socratic education should be to turn them into fires, which thrive on the wind. Instead, they are sheltered from anything that could cause offence . . . Their advice is sound. Their book is excellent. Liberal parents, in particular, should read it.”— Edward Luce, Financial Times “Their distinctive contribution to the higher-education debate is to meet safetyism on its own, psychological turf . . . Lukianoff and Haidt tell us that safetyism undermines the freedom of inquiry and speech that are indispensable to universities.” —Jonathan Marks, Commentary“The remedies the book outlines should be considered on college campuses, among parents of current and future students, and by anyone longing for a more sane society.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“Perhaps the strongest argument in Haidt and Lukianoff’s favour, though, is this: if you see this issue as being about little more than a few sanctimonious teenagers throwing hissy fits on campus then, yes, it is probably receiving too much attention. But if you accept their premise, that it’s really a story about mental wellbeing and emotional fragility, about a generation acting out because it has been set up to fail by bad parenting and poorly designed institutions, then their message is an urgent one. And it is one that resonates well beyond dusty libraries and manicured quadrangles, into all of our lives.” —Josh Glancy, The Sunday Times (UK)“Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s new book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, persuasively unpacks the causes of the current predicament on campus – which they link to wider parenting, cultural and political trends . . . The Coddling of the American Mind is both an enlightening but disquieting read. We have a lot of challenges in front of us.” —Quillette, Matthew Lesh”The authors remind us of some of the campus happenings that, since 2015, have afrighted old liberals like me . . . In the end [despite some objections] I agreed with Messrs Lukianoff and Haidt that protecting kids has gone too far, and that some campus behaviour is absurd and worrying.” —David Aaronovitch, The Times (UK)”The speed with which campus life has changed for the worse is one of the most important points made by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in this important if disturbing book.” —Niall Ferguson, Sunday Times“Rising intolerance for opposing viewpoints is a challenge not only on college campuses but also in our national political discourse. The future of our democracy requires us to understand what’s happening and why—so that we can find solutions and take action. Reading The Coddling of the American Mind is a great place to start.” —Michael Bloomberg, Founder of Bloomberg LP & Bloomberg Philanthropies, and 108th Mayor of New York City“Our behavior in society is not immune to the power of rational scientific analysis. Through that lens, prepare yourself for a candid look at the softening of America, and what we can do about it.” —Neil DeGrasse Tyson, director, Hayden Planetarium, and author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry “Lukianoff and Haidt explain the phenomenon of “helicopter parenting” and its dangers—how overprotection amplifies children’s fears and makes them less likely to become adults who can manage their own lives. Children must be challenged and exposed to stressors—including different perspectives—in order to thrive.” —Susan McDaniel, University of Rochester, former President of the American Psychological Association“An important examination of dismaying social and cultural trends.” —Kirkus Reviews”I lament the title of this book, as it may alienate the very people who need to engage with its arguments and obscures its message of inclusion. Equal parts mental health manual, parenting guide, sociological study, and political manifesto, it points to a positive way forward of hope, health, and humanism. I only wish I had read it when I was still a professor and a much younger mother.” —Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO, New America, and author of Unfinished Business “A compelling and timely argument against attitudes and practices that, however well-intended, are damaging our universities, harming our children and leaving an entire generation intellectually and emotionally ill-prepared for an ever-more fraught and complex world. A brave and necessary work.” —Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Emeritus Chief Rabbi of UK & Commonwealth; professor, New York University; and author of Not in God’s Name “No one is omniscient or infallible, so a willingness to evaluate new ideas is vital to understanding our world. Yet universities, which ought to be forums for open debate, are developing a reputation for dogmatism and intolerance. Haidt and Lukianoff, distinguished advocates of freedom of expression, offer a deep analysis of what’s going wrong on campus, and how we can hold universities to their highest ideals.” —Steven Pinker, professor, Harvard University, and author of Enlightenment Now “This book synthesizes the teachings of many disciplines to illuminate the causes of major problems besetting college students and campuses, including declines in mental health, academic freedom, and collegiality. More importantly, the authors present evidence-based strategies for overcoming these challenges. An engrossing, thought-provoking, and ultimately inspiring read.” —Nadine Strossen, past President, ACLU, and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship “How can we as a nation do a better job of preparing young men and women of all backgrounds to be seekers of truth and sustainers of democracy? In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt provide a rigorous analysis of this perennial challenge as it presents itself today, and offer thoughtful prescriptions for meeting it. What’s more, the book models the virtues and practical wisdom its authors rightly propose as the keys to progress. Lukianoff and Haidt teach young people—and all of us—by example as well as precept.” —Cornel West, professor, Harvard University, and author of Democracy Matters; and Robert P. George, professor, Princeton University, and author of Conscience and Its Enemies“Objectionable words and ideas, as defined by self-appointed guardians on university campuses, are often treated like violence from sticks and stones. Many students cringe at robust debate; maintaining their ideas of good and evil requires no less than the silencing of disagreeable speakers. Lukianoff and Haidt brilliantly explain how this drift to fragility occurred, how the distinction between words and actions was lost, and what needs to be done. Critical reading to understand the current campus conflicts.” —Mark Yudof, president emeritus, University of California; and professor emeritus, UC Berkeley School of Law”This book is a much needed guide for how to thrive in a pluralistic society. Lukianoff and Haidt demonstrate how ancient wisdom and modern psychology can encourage more dialogue across lines of difference, build stronger institutions, and make us happier. They provide an antidote to our seemingly intractable divisions, and not a moment too soon.” —Kirsten Powers, author of The Silencing “We can talk ourselves into believing that some kinds of speech will shatter us, or we can talk ourselves out of that belief. The authors know the science. We are not as fragile as our self-appointed protectors suppose. Read this deeply informed book to become a more resilient soul in a more resilient democracy.” —Philip E. Tetlock, author of Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction “In this expansion of their 2015 piece for the Atlantic, Lukianoff and Haidt argue that the urge to insulate oneself against offensive ideas has had deleterious consequences, making students less resilient, more prone to undesirable “emotional reasoning,” less capable of engaging critically with others’ viewpoints, and more likely to cultivate an “us-versus-them” mentality . . . the path they advocate—take on challenges, cultivate resilience, and try to reflect rather than responding based solely on initial emotional responses—deserves consideration.” —Publishers Weekly About the Author Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Lukianoff is a graduate of American University and Stanford Law School. He specializes in free speech and First Amendment issues in higher education. He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate and Freedom From Speech. Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and then taught at the University of Virginia for 16 years. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and The Happiness Hypothesis. <div id="
“This is a book about wisdom and its opposite,” write Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind. “It is a book about three psychological principles and about what happens to young people when parents and educators—acting with the best of intentions—implement policies that are inconsistent with those principles.” In my opinion, it is also a book every American concerned with the future of our nation’s public discourse and democratic culture should read.And yes, I am serious about that.The Coddling of the American Mind grew out of the increased support among college students for censorship of controversial opinions, a trend that Lukianoff began to notice in the fall of 2013. Lukianoff is president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a leading advocate for free speech on college and university campuses. In his experience, until that time, the leading advocates for censorship had been college administrators. What was driving the rapid rise of support for censorship among students?For much of his life, Lukianoff had suffered clinical depression, even contemplating suicide in late 2007. In 2008, he underwent cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of psychotherapy that identifies distorted patterns of thinking that often underlie depression and anxiety, and this helped him tremendously. As Lukianoff interacted with students, he noticed that the way they reasoned about controversial issues often mirrored the same cognitive distortions CBT teaches people to control.This insight led to a conversation with Haidt, a social psychologist, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. That conversation led to a feature story in the September 2015 issue of The Atlantic. The book builds out the article’s core thesis.Lukianoff and Haidt unfold their argument in three parts: Part I, “Three Bad Ideas,” looks at “three Great Untruths”:1. The Untruth of Fragility: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battled Between Good People and Evil PeopleTaken together, these untruths result in “a culture of safetyism” on campus, whereby students must be protected from opposing opinions that might “harm” their “safety,” no longer defined as physical safety but now as emotional safety too.The results of this culture of safetyism, ironically enough, are intimidation and violence on the one hand and witch hunts on the other, as the Lukianoff and Haidt argue in Part II, “Bad Ideas in Action.”They cite the February 1, 2017, anti-Milo Yiannopoulos riot at the University of California at Berkeley as an example of the former, though there are many such examples scattered throughout the book. But the threats of violence are not merely coming from leftwing Antifa activists on campus. The authors point to alt-right off-campus provocation as well, specifically the neo-Nazi march through the University of Virginia’s campus on August 11, 2017. The confrontation between protesters and counterprotesters the next day resulted in the vehicular murder of Heather Heyer by an alt-right driver.Lukianoff and Haidt cite several examples of academic witch hunts conducted against professors who utter heterodox ideas, even if they are liberal or leftwing. Prof. Bret Weinstein’s protest of the “Day of Absence” at Evergreen State College in Washington is a leading example of this. The school is quite liberal, as is Weinstein. On its annual Day of Absence, minority faculty students had since the 1970s gone off campus to make their absence, and hence contributions, palpable. But in 2017, organizers of the event asked white faculty and students not to show up. Weinstein thought this went too far and was subjected to vicious protests for saying so.As these events illustrate, college and university campuses, which are supposed to be beacons of free speech, have instead in many cases become their opposite. There is no one-size-fits-all explanation for why this has happened, but in Part III, “How Did We Get Here?,” Lukianoff and Haidt identify “six interacting explanatory threads”:rising political polarization and cross-part animosity; rising levels of teen anxiety and depression; changes in parenting practices; the decline of free play; the growth of campus bureaucracy; and a rising passion for justice in response to major national events, combined with changing ideas about what justice requires.This may be the most interesting part of the book, rich in social scientific detail and fair-minded in its analysis. As the parent of three elementary-age children, the chapters on “Paranoid Parenting” and “The Decline of Free Play” were thought-provoking and helpful.Part IV, “Wising Up,” builds on the analysis of the previous chapters and suggests a way forward for making “Wiser Kids,” “Wiser Universities,” and “Wiser Societies,” as the titles of the three chapters indicate. A table on page 263 summarizes the argument of the entire book, so I’ll reproduce it here:PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE // WISDOM // GREAT UNTRUTH1. Young people are antifragile. // Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. // What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.2. We are all prone to emotional reasoning and the confirmation bias. // Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother. // Always trust your feelings.3. We are all prone to dichotomous thinking and tribalism. // The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. // Life is battle between good people and evil people.As I mentioned at the outset of this review, I am serious when I say that every American concerned with the future of our nation’s public discourse and democratic culture should read The Coddling of the American Mind. It stimulated my thinking as a parent and helped form a better opinion of contemporary events as a concerned citizen. As a person, it provided an accessible introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy, identifying the cognitive distortions that misshape our opinions and hence misguide our actions. And as a politically conservative Christian, it reminded me that there are non-religious liberals (e.g., Lukianoff) and centrists (e.g., Haidt) who are intelligent and public-minded and have things to say I need to hear.So, buy this book. Read it. Then share it.
Only brought it for my high school senior’s project. Can’t wait to donate it to the Koch Foundation. Or burn it.The penultimate chapter is “Quest for Justice” which says “If you just look at things our way, we don’t have any problems”. Therefore, no need for government to provide solutions. It starts off with a gem of insight (without any rationale) that young adults in college or early career only care about social justice not economics and politics. But, since the 1980s, the number of good paying jobs started to decrease while economic inequality increased. This group of young people has only known a world where their parents get laid off and their economic prospects are dim. It’s the economy, stupid.The last section of this chapter is “Correlation Does Not Imply Causation”. Note the lack of data driven analysis and absence of any data graph. It is all anecdotal. My favorite is UVA Men’s Rowing Association, self-funded, versus Women’s Rowing Team, university funded. The culprit is Title IX which the Carter administration interpreted to provide equal opportunity to college resources. The authors conveniently ignore the fact that football is by far the most expensive college sport. Instead of analyzing how this disadvantages men crew, they are apoplectic that women are getting a free ride in crew. To give their opus a veneer of logic, they used terms: ‘input’, ie, interest in crew, versus ‘outcome’, ie, women’s crew being fully funded. The former is qualitative and the latter is quantitative. No matter, they got the right outcome in their analysis.Bad input – cost of book. Good outcome – teach my child how not to think and how to spot charlatans.
Lukianoff and Haidt offer a treatise on how the moral landscape has changed over the past decade. The book revolves around 3 problematic ideas that have arisen:1. what doesn’t kill us makes us weaker (humans are fragile and need more than protection, they need safe spaces and safety nets for increasingly less dangerous events in the external world)2. always trust your feelings (feeling hurt constitutes sufficient evidence that any person or system is wrong/harmful/bad/evil)3. life is a battle of good and evil people (the world is a perpetual battle of your group versus the other group)We now live in a world where adults file accusations of harm immediately, especially with social media, before initially doing an internal check. Just because we feel offended does not automatically mean the other person is an aggressor/bad person. And being on a hypervigiliant search for harm ensures you will find it, even from decent folks that would be best served by an assumption of benevolence until proven otherwise.This book comes at a great time. A lot of societal problems have improved in just the past 100 years (see It’s Better Than It Looks by Gregg Easterbrook and Better Angles of Our Nature by Steven Pinker). Yet, explicit sexism, racism, homophobia and their related ilk still remain. Unfortunately, some of the solutions to reduce social problems has produced some undesirable side effects. This book details these problems of progress. With scientific research, sociological analysis, and interesting anecdotes, the authors do a deep dive into the culture of emotional safeguarding – where protecting people from feeling uncomfortable has taken precedence over training people to be critical thinkers.Essentially, many of the principles for protecting people from dissenting viewpoints runs counter to thousands of years of theory and practice, from stoic philosophy to cognitive-behavioral therapy.Looking forward to the debates that will arise from this book. It’s an easy read – two settings and you’ll be finished. I hope every administrator, teacher, parent, and students read this. Regardless of how much you agree with the authors, its time to have a serious conversation of whether the social progress pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and if so, what can be done.
Over 40 years ago, in Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, there is a proposal at a Senate meeting to invite a prominent geneticist as a guest speaker. One of the radical majority objects, on the grounds that “his work is fascist, and we’ve no business to confirm it by inviting him here. The conservative Dean mildly objects, “’I had always thought the distinguishing mark of fascism was its refusal to tolerate free enquiry”. The lecture goes ahead, but is broken up with violence.This is the territory of this book, with an added dimension: modern students may be opposed to such speakers, but must be defended from them lest they be upset. Welcome to a subset of the snowflake generation.Lukianoff and Haidt begin by amplifying the “three bad ideas” which, they claim, lie at the heart of the modern tendency of “campus safety”. They then give several real world examples of how this thinking manifests itself, suggest reasons for how we got here, and finally propose some ways to break the cycle.According to the authors, many students now expect “not to be exposed to intolerant and offensive ideals”. It is argued that that the suppression on campus of opinion deemed to be non-egalitarian is not new, and can be traced back to Herbert Marcuse (hence, I believe, the fictitious but realistic episode in the History Man), but has developed due to a variety of factors. These include:-Reaction to perception of intersectionality. (I first met this term last week, when watching Bath University’s video “Why is my curriculum white?” – required viewing, I suggest.) This can increase the extent of polarisation between different groups (if you’re not a good guy, you’re a bad guy).-The tendency for social media to increase the frequency and intensity of “call-out culture” (naming and shaming for small offences against political correctness)-The belief that physical violence is a justifiable means of preventing the expression of “hateful” views, e.g. racism.As to how these factors came into play, some of the suggested causes are:-Universities have become more like large corporations, and like them have acquired an ever-growing army of administrators, for whom one main aim is to ensure students are “comfortable” – even if this means severely limiting students’ exposure to new ideas.[An example of this relates to the very article which was the origin of this book. A professor got his class to read the article, then asked them to discuss a controversial topic of their own choice (transgender issues). After the professor had said that the discussion needed to include the viewpoints of those opposed to some provision for transgender people, a student filed a “bias incident report” against him, after which the university did not rehire him.]-The students now coming to university – “iGen” arrive having had “less unsupervised time and fewer offline life experience than any previous generation”, which ill prepares them for confronting ideas alien to them. The authors suggest that this is not simply an Internet issue, as the preceding generation – the Millennials – were made of stronger stuff. As an example, the book contrasts a questionnaire given to parents of new first-graders in 1979, which majored on how independent the child was, and a modern equivalent concerned mainly with their academic level.The remedies the authors suggest are targeted at children, and include CBT, mindfulness and limitation of screen time. If the “campus safety culture” is as embedded as claimed here, and elsewhere in the media, it may take more than these techniques to shift it, but it’s a start.Bravely, Lukianoff describes how, several years ago, CBT helped him to overcome his own suicidal feelings. He uses this as an example of how to recognise cognitive distortion, the factor which influences so many modern students to exaggerate the impact of speech and ideas which do not suit them.You may or may not agree with the book, but it is valuable reading for anyone who wants to get a feel for current campus atmosphere, or is concerned about how it has developed. The raguments are generally well-presented, though the authors could havetaken slighltly more of their own medicine, i.e. included more content based on interviews with the “safety” school of thought.I started with Malcolm Bradbury, so I’ll finish with the statement, erroneously credited to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. This, as much as anything, is the core argument of the book.
Being a fan of Jon Haidt I very much enjoyed this book. Both authors explain the trends we’ve been seeing in both universities and society clearly and concisely. Being a psychotherapist who works at a university and having first hand experience with these issues, this book is a great help in my understanding. I’ve been observing for a while that the thinking patterns of (some) of the very far left (and also young people) are replicating all the very unhealthy cognitive distortions, which we often try and undo in the therapeutic setting in order to help people have happier and functional lives. It filled me with both relief and sadness to have my thoughts on this confirmed. Clearly the authors have explained all this in a way I never could, so for me it’s an excellent book and I would recommend this everyone whether you work with young people or not.
This book is about the change in the way children born after 1995 were brought up. It is not just the authors who have noted a significant change. Others such as Ben Sasse and Jean Twenge have noted the change. The authors here pointed out that it was Twenge who identified 1995 as the cut-off year. The parenting attitude post 1995, amplified by increased use of electronic devices, caused parents and administrators to practice ‘safetyism’. That is what the authors refer to as ‘coddling’. Children are over-protected. Instead of leaving them to develop an immune response to peanuts, protecting children from contact with peanuts had the reverse effect, it caused an increase in peanut allergy in children. These children belong to the generation that is known as ‘iGen’. Over-reaction to speeches that offend, students demand that universities curb such speeches. The authors point out that those speeches may offend, but they are not violent and cause no physical harm. The conventional response, especially in a place of tertiary education, is to present opposing speeches so that the audience and students can evaluate the opposing views. That is no longer the case. Protests by students have led to universities cancel planned lectures or remove speakers whose views the students do not like. Two important changes have been noted. First, iGen grow up more slowly because they spend less time in social interaction. Secondly, the rate of anxiety and depression has risen rapidly. What has driven the surge in mental illness among the young? The authors point to the spread of smart phones and social media. Combined with a lack of training to deal with adverse comments, young people become more sensitive to criticism – and in social media, social criticism can be extremely harsh. The young need to be toughened, not coddled. Consequently, those children grow up into adulthood incapable of dealing with criticism. Everything becomes a harassment to them. This leads to the curtailing of enriching alternative views, and in turn, affect one’s understanding of justice. In this regard, the chapter ‘The Quest for Justice’ is enlightening. Justice, the authors point out, is multi-faceted. How do we redress the problem of safetyism? The authors recommend ‘cognitive behavioural therapy’, a simple guide is set out in the appendix to the book. The last part of the book also provides many ways to help overcome the impact of safetyism.The CD version is very clear and very well read, with a brief epilogue by Jonathan Haidt.
Are good intentions and bad ideas setting up a generation for failure? This is the proposition in the subtitle of a provocative critique of western society built from analysis of the breakdown of diversity and polarisation within the United States which is creeping our way. The authors note trends alongside this polarization: increased adolescent depression, overprotective regimes in universities, pursuit of justice that makes the best an enemy of the good, obsessive use of phones and tablets, widespread play deprivation and more fearful parenting.‘Paranoid parenting… convinces children that the world is full of danger; evil lurks in the shadows, on the streets, and in public parks and restrooms. Kids raised in this way are emotionally prepared to embrace the Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people – a worldview that makes them fear and suspect strangers. We teach children to monitor themselves for the degree to which they “feel unsafe” and then talk about how unsafe they feel. They may come to believe that feeling “unsafe” (the feeling of being uncomfortable or anxious) is a reliable sign that they are unsafe (the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings). Finally, feeling these emotions is unpleasant; therefore, children may conclude, the feelings are dangerous in and of themselves – stress will harm them if it doesn’t kill them (the Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker)’.In ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff allies social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to challenge these three ‘untruths of fragility, emotional reasoning and ‘us versus them’’ as contradictory to both ancient wisdom and modern psychology besides being harmful to individuals and communities who subscribe to them. A presenting problem is the use of social media by the passionate to rubbish people and not just ideas with loss of the time tested wisdom of giving people the benefit of the doubt. A deception that the world is made up of ‘Us versus Them’ is promoted by the same media as people live in ‘self-confirmatory bubbles, where their worst fears about the evils of the other side can be confirmed and amplified by extremists and cyber trolls intent on sowing discord and division’. Coupled to this deception is promotion of a safety culture in which people’s need to feel comfortable is put on the same level as their need to be protected from physical danger. The consequences for the rising generation is a certain naivety as they grow up protected from life experience they need to develop resilient living.The authors cite critically a quotation from an essay in EverydayFeminism.com: ‘In the end, what does the intent of our action really matter if our actions have the impact of furthering the marginalization or oppression of those around us? Such an understanding makes bigots of all of us who upset others with our views however pure our intentions’. Paradoxically distinguishing hurtful talk from harmful talk, a distinction widely accepted in ancient wisdom traditions, serves to help address the roots of conflict. This is why universities have been up to now loth to protect their students from ideas some of them find offensive bearing in mind the purpose of education as bringing people out of their comfort zones to make them think.Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is commended for rebuking a ‘pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically … divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad. You are either one or the other.’ Western society is being crippled by disrespect shown in debates lacking humility in which people rubbish one another, blind to the truth that, whatever opinions they hold, all human beings possess both fragility and beauty. The authors mention unfavourably the oratory of Donald Trump and some of the things being said in the Brexit debate.What strategies can bring the world out of such error? The authors look particularly to religion as a source of transformative vision quoting Martin Luther-King: ‘Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend… Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’ It’s ironic that the vision that impelled King is getting increasingly obscured by those offended by religion’s immemorial place in the public square. This is a challenging, inspiring and timely book.
When I went to University in Britain in my thirties, I looked forward to sitting at the feet of the intellectually gifted and thoughtful, engaging in discussion where varying viewpoints were defended or discarded and reading widely. in this book that makes for profoundly distressing reading, an arrogant, monstrous, unchallenged and self-righteous cadre of teenagers have been allowed to run riot on American campuses, causing mayhem at events, getting staff sacked and raising issues where none exist, all in the name of political correctness, an obsession with the ‘rights’ of minorities to the exclusion of all others and a scale of intolerance that puts Mao’s Red Guard in the shade. Shamefully, academe in America has capitulated to this nonsense allowing ill-formed, barely educated young people to disrupt learning, stifle debate and indulge in verbal and physical violence that might have been learnt in the re-education camps of pre-modern China. Haidt, unfortunately, is an honest if benign observer / commentator looking at solutions and offering explanations which while plausible and perceptive do nothing to stop this madness in its tracks. He is unreasonably optimistic in his conclusions. Revisiting parenting of Generation Snowflake etc might be a long term solution and even schooling for intellectual humility might help but at present a troubled and destructive group of teenagers are on the rampage and instead of ‘confronting and sending down’ the troublemakers, long time gifted academics are resigning, their careers ruined. A good book, who knows, perhaps Haidt is simply cataloguing the existential hell that is modern American life.
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We usually use Dropbox, Microsoft onedrive and Google drive to store files. Of course, we may also store backup files in other cloud content management service platforms such as Amazon cloud drive, pcloud, mega, mediafire and box. They are also great. You can choose the download link on demand.
